Between Two Worlds: Art and Commercialism in the Record Industry

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the popular music press.* In particular it is an analysis of some of the premises which writers in the music press take for granted but which inform their imderstanding of, and attitudes to, the music about which they write. There is a series of presuppositions relating to popular music which, taken together, outline what I will call the discourse of popular music. It is the purpose of this paper to make a start at mapping these presu{>positions through an analysis of a series of interviews with journalists who work for the music press. Journalists can and frequently do disagree with each other about such things as what is or is not a good record or even about seemingly more fundamental points such as whether a record review should limit itself to discussing the music or whether it should give more general information about the performer with the implication that this is tmpOTtani for an understanding of the music. Thus a critic on one paper says: Ŵ hen I interview somebody I like to find out as much about them as possible ... you know, how they perceive their place in the universe ... [because] everything relates to the music that somebody produces. This attitude is one which is prevalent among writers on this particular music paper and gives the paper what a writer on another paper called in an interview a 'sociological' slant to the reporting of the popular music scene. This attitude is in appearance very different from that which informs the following sutement from a senior journalist on another paper concerning how concert reviews for her paper should be written:Î would like [my journalists] to write fairly straightforward, I 267 Jon Stratum would like them to write, if it*s a new band^ «iio*s in the band, what songs they played* how they were played and what the reaction was.However I would suggest that the apparent differences here are, in fact, merely differences in emphasis based on differences in interpretation and evaluation of certain common premises not articulated but taken for granted by the writers in the day-to-day practical accomplishment of their activities in relation to popular music. Whilst the two quotations just given might appear to be incompatible I would suggest that the apparent incompatibility is misleading. This incompatibility is related to the different personal points of view of the two journalists which are to a greater or lesser extent articulations of the general viewpoints of the papers for which the journalists work. However these two points of view may be said to operate within one field of discourse, that which surrounds, and indeed is, popular music It is because there are certain common themes, or premises, which individuals internalise and take for granted ^en learning through day-to-day interaction the practical accomplishment of 'understanding* popular music (it being this understanding which allows them to discuss it 'meaningfully^ that q>parently radical disagreements can take place. Disagreement, if it is not merely misunderstanding, req...

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