RRHOF eats its own

[Dave W]

Jann Wenner Removed From Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation Board of Directors

[uwe]

I'm not joining the public execution. I think Rolling Stone as a magazine was a cultural player and so is, on a more marginal level, the RRHF (which doesn't mean you have to agree with everyone of their decisions and I don't).

BUT: (And it's a big butt!)




Wenner says his choices were "intuitive" and that he followed a 60ies/70ies zeitgeist. That may be so, but it doesn't change the fact that his list of interviewees is essentially a rock-interested white college boy's wet dream: Bono, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Townshend? Wow, what a fearless cultural explorer Herr Wenner was - to boldly go where no rock journo has gone before.

Now Wenner can't change in the aftermath who he interviewed and who he didn't, but I would have expected from someone like him to be more cognizant why he deemed Pete Townshend more interview-worthy than Jimi Hendrix, Springsteen more interesting than Lucinda Williams and Bono more important than Prince.

A 60ies/early 70ies zeitgeist omitting Hendrix as if Hey Joe and Woodstock never happened? A through-and-through cerebral person (in her mind, lyrics and music) like Joni Mitchell who in the 70ies was nearly on every musician's tape deck for the beauty of her words and music "not philosophical" enough? I also marvel at his statement that the ability to hold a "deep conversation" should decide whether someone has a satisfactory cultural impact for him. Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, BB King, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters might not have been able to intellectualize about their music like some well-educated white middle class kid, but maybe their cultural impact (hopefully not denied by Herr Wenner) relied on something other than perceptive interview statements?

Wenner could have said: "The choice of these interviewees was of course the product of a white college kid's tunnel vision, I can't change who I am or who I was." But instead he makes a crap throwaway comment like "You know, just for public relations sake, maybe I should have gone and found one Black and one woman artist to include here that didn't measure up to that same historical standard, just to avert this kind of criticism." That is the worst part of his interview, a really patronizing, mansplaining and insulting bullshit remark. F*** you too.

No, Wenner is not a cape-wearing racist or a women-subjugating misogynist, but he's a very white (geriatric) college boy - and surprisingly devoid of any self-reflection + curiously empathyless. Truly old white man set in rock.



PS: And if a committed crowd pleaser like Bono is all of the sudden supposed to meet "historical standard", then so is Chad Kroeger, pope visit or not.

[westen44]

I would rate Jimi Hendrix's intellect over Wenner's.  That is, of course, especially if the subject is music.  Personally, I'm not too interested in several of those people he interviewed, but that's just personal taste.  But I was never much of a Who fan, not a Springsteen fan at all.  I hardly know what to say about Bono except that his singing and the Edge's guitar strumming are not up my alley.  And the Grateful Dead--their music is just not for me, either.  I guess I must not have been in touch with the Zeitgeist. 

[slinkp]

I read the article that kicked off all the fuss https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/arts/jann-wenner-the-masters-interview.html.
I have not read the book of interviews itself.

Of course there's nothing wrong with putting together a book of his favorite interviewees under any criteria he feels like.
What's egregious is pretending it's purely about some kind of objective merit.
"Joni was not a philosopher of rock 'n' roll" - but Bono is?

Frankly the whole thing smacks of an ego trip. By his own admission he is/was friends with all of these guys.

[westen44]

I read the article that kicked off all the fuss https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/arts/jann-wenner-the-masters-interview.html.
I have not read the book of interviews itself.

Of course there's nothing wrong with putting together a book of his favorite interviewees under any criteria he feels like.
What's egregious is pretending it's purely about some kind of objective merit.
"Joni was not a philosopher of rock 'n' roll" - but Bono is?

Frankly the whole thing smacks of an ego trip. By his own admission he is/was friends with all of these guys.

It appears you must not have read Bono's "Being and Time" and "Being and Nothingness."   

[westen44]

I realize this guy gets on some people's nerves a lot (including my own.)  But I just saw this video by him and I think it's pretty good.

[uwe]

I agree with him through all the verbosity. And it was worth watching, because I had never heard of Ghost Hounds, but they're real good.

https://youtu.be/hMQ0uBU8CYM?si=5CP0iVndtDZp_HE3

Black singer, so he probably can't articulate the zeitgeist all that well, not to any historical standard at least.

[uwe]

It appears you must not have read Bono's "Being and Time" and "Being and Nothingness."

Yeah, he wrote for a long time on the first one. 



The mustache and the Reichsadler-lapel pin were unfortunate though during that period if somewhat in tune with the then prevailing zeitgeist.

[gearHed289]

Frankly the whole thing smacks of an ego trip.

My thoughts exactly.

[westen44]

Yeah, he wrote for a long time on the first one. 



The mustache and the Reichsadler-lapel pin were unfortunate though during that period if somewhat in tune with the then prevailing zeitgeist.

Whether he wore things like that voluntarily or whether it was expected, I don't know.  Obviously, that Zeitgeist, though, has been long gone for quite some time.  I haven't figured out the Zeitgeist we have now, although I'm not sure if anyone has. 

[uwe]

At no point under Nazi rule was ever anyone required to wear a lapel pin like that or become a member of the party. It gave you (career) advantages and a sense of belonging (sneakily, it could also make sense if you were actually trying to hide opposition to the regime), but it was never forced on you. There were even periods when the NSDAP was actually quite particular on who to accept as a member and who not (following their new-found attractiveness after coming to power in 1933 for instance, they wanted to keep opportunists out for a few years and paused all membership applications).

The far-left column shows about 100.000 party members in 1929, the far-right one the peak in 1945 with 8.5 million - not more than 10% of the then German population of the Reich. (Why did membership rise towards the end of a visibly lost war? Youths that had grown up in the Nazi era and knew nothing else, turned semi-adult and started to join the party; the evil seed was sprouting so to say.)



No one was forced into the party and you could even step out without being shipped off to a concentration camp (though it would raise an eyebrow or two). It's a myth just like the "if I hadn't participated in the shooting squad, I would have been shot myself"-adage: There is not a single documented case during the whole war where a Wehrmacht-, Waffen-SS-soldier or Einsatzgruppen-member, what have you, was shot for refusing to participate in mass shootings. You'd be subject to ridicule, lose a promotion or at worst find yourself in a less attractive unit at the end of the day, but nothing more uncomfortable than that.

Truth is that Heidegger's philosophical humbug slotted right in with the whole Nazi mysticism and Hitler's savior image and that he was initially very enamored of the whole Führerkult.

Now being a party member or not was not all-conclusive whether you were a mensch or a monster. Oskar Schindler was a party member; the majority of the members of the Einsatzgruppen and police units who shot women and children in the East were not. I only just now read about the NSDAP-Ortsgruppenleiter of a neighboring town of my home town who was a medical doctor and the highest-ranking Nazi there. He refused to rat on known Kommunisten and Sozialdemokraten, giving them some protection (so much that they stood up for him after the war when his party membership was questioned in Denazifierungs-proceedings; he got off lightly because of their support) and when he joined the Luftwaffe as a medical officer, he was adamant that Allied airmen were treated the same medically as German ones and even protected a bailed-out USAAF bomber crew from being lynched by enraged population egged on/incited by other local NSDAP functionaries.

[Pilgrim]

Harrumph.  Any R&R hall which doesn't include Dick Dale can't be trusted.  Harrumph, harrumph.

[uwe]

Eventually, everyone is gonna be in it, no worries! 

[westen44]

At no point under Nazi rule was ever anyone required to wear a lapel pin like that or become a member of the party. It gave you (career) advantages and a sense of belonging (sneakily, it could also make sense if you were actually trying to hide opposition to the regime), but it was never forced on you. There were even periods when the NSDAP was actually quite particular on who to accept as a member and who not (following their new-found attractiveness after coming to power in 1933 for instance, they wanted to keep opportunists out for a few years and paused all membership applications).

The far-left column shows about 100.000 party members in 1929, the far-right one the peak in 1945 with 8.5 million - not more than 10% of the then German population of the Reich. (Why did membership rise towards the end of a visibly lost war? Youths that had grown up in the Nazi era and knew nothing else, turned semi-adult and started to join the party; the evil seed was sprouting so to say.)



No one was forced into the party and you could even step out without being shipped off to a concentration camp (though it would raise an eyebrow or two). It's a myth just like the "if I hadn't participated in the shooting squad, I would have been shot myself"-adage: There is not a single documented case during the whole war where a Wehrmacht-, Waffen-SS-soldier or Einsatzgruppen-member, what have you, was shot for refusing to participate in mass shootings. You'd be subject to ridicule, lose a promotion or at worst find yourself in a less attractive unit at the end of the day, but nothing more uncomfortable than that.

Truth is that Heidegger's philosophical humbug slotted right in with the whole Nazi mysticism and Hitler's savior image and that he was initially very enamored of the whole Führerkult.

Now being a party member or not was not all-conclusive whether you were a mensch or a monster. Oskar Schindler was a party member; the majority of the members of the Einsatzgruppen and police units who shot women and children in the East were not. I only just now read about the NSDAP-Ortsgruppenleiter of a neighboring town of my home town who was a medical doctor and the highest-ranking Nazi there. He refused to rat on known Kommunisten and Sozialdemokraten, giving them some protection (so much that they stood up for him after the war when his party membership was questioned in Denazifierungs-proceedings; he got off lightly because of their support) and when he joined the Luftwaffe as a medical officer, he was adamant that Allied airmen were treated the same medically as German ones and even protected a bailed-out USAAF bomber crew from being lynched by enraged population egged on/incited by other local NSDAP functionaries.

Heidegger may have been viewed in the most positive light when during a certain time frame existentialism was all the rage.  Even then, there were many people criticizing him.  I've heard the most damning thing against him is that after the war when he did get a chance to speak out against fascism he said nothing.  I would really hate to be a Heidegger apologist.  It seems Hannah Arendt never really criticized him, either.  But they were lovers; so that's the way it goes.  Never mind that she was a famous Jewish intellectual and Heidegger was a Nazi. 

What any of this has to music, no one knows.  But Jann Wenner has left out certain artists because they weren't philosophical enough for him.  So I guess we should strive to be philosophical to meet the standards of the Jann Wenners of the world.  We can try to make sure nothing like this happens again. 

[uwe]

The Guardian chips in:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/sep/19/jann-wenner-music-industry-rolling-stone

This quote made me think, I'm not free from that either (though given the choice between an Ariana Grande and a U2 gig, I'd pick the former because she's more interesting from an anthropological studies viewpoint; also, Ariana's guitarist uses less effects than Bo-no-no-no-no-no's):

In 2004, critic Kelefa Sanneh attempted to address this issue in The Rap Against Rockism. He wrote: "Rockism means idolising the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionising punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncer." Sanneh's critique helped birth what some call "poptimism", which, as critic Chris Richards describes it, "contends that all pop music deserves a thoughtful listen and a fair shake, that guilty pleasures are really just pleasures, that the music of an Ariana Grande can and should be taken as seriously as that of a U2."

This woman author here

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/19/jann-wenners-bias-against-women-and-black-musicians-is-shocking-but-not-surprising

didn't take the "women just aren't articulate enough" too kindly either. Ouch!