k-punk

‘I began to realize a few years ago that it had moved beyond an attack on the idea that guitar rock alone had a special claim on seriousness, art status, rebellion, etc to the rejection of those ideals altogether—the whole complex of values to do with innovation, edge, danger, difficulty, subversion, disruption, notions of music as underground or oppositional, as either “art” (vision, expression, etc) or “folk” (social energy, collectivity, the real). This is all stuff we’re supposed to jettison, not just as something no longer applicable to the current situation, our scaled-down expectations, but as something that was never valid, was always fraudulent.’

Simon comes out fighting for the rockist cause in my interview with him about his new book. Check out his amazingly in-depth responses on hip-hop, the end of the black-white conversation in pop, and the relationship between his current nu-rockism and the earlier advocacy of jouissance and texture….