Rock Culture as a Postmodern Phenomenon

Andrzej Dorobek
The State Higher Vocational School in Płock, Poland

(the text originally published in Polish under the title “Postmodernistyczny status kultury rockowej” and included in the book by Andrzej Dorobek Rock: problemy, sylwetki, konteksty - szkice z estetyki i socjologii rocka, published by Instytut Wydawniczy “Świadectwo” in Bydgoszcz in the year 2001; this revised and improved version in English was prepared for the sake of being exposed on the internet pages of the University of Olomouc in the Czech Republic)

There is a considerable controversy among the scholars, critics etc. as to the range of meaning/references or even axiological status of the term “postmodernism”. Some of them, like Ihab Hassan (1), claim postmodern literature (for example) to be one of the peak achievements of world literature in the broad sense – others, like Gerald Graff (2), seriously doubt its autonomy. In a wider sense, conservative critics, like Daniel Bell, consider postmodernism as a symbol of crisis of contemporary culture (3) - whereas their opponents argue to the contrary, replacing the old “modernist” triad of “liberty, equality, fraternity” with the postmodern one of “liberty, diversity, tolerance” (4).

The ensuing ambiguities are still greater, as some critics use the term “postmodernism” in artistic/literary reference (Hassan, Graff), whereas others (Bell) extrapolate it onto a wider field of sociocultural analysis. It seems that the distinction between “postmodernity”, understood as “the social and cultural situation of existence and experience, and structure of feeling characteristic of late capitalist life” (5), and postmodernism, understood as “the range of philosophical, literary, artistic and other discursive manifestations of and/or responses to postmodernity” (6), could go some way to clarify this confusion. Anyway, it is definitely in the perspective of “postmodernity” that the phenomenon of rock culture may be convincingly located.

From the historical/sociocultural point of view, rock is definitely a product of late capitalist era, being characterised by “new international division of labour, a vertiginous new dynamic in international banking and the stock exchanges [...] new forms of media relationship [...] computers and automation [...] along with all the more familiar social consequences, including the crisis of traditional labor, the emergence of yuppies, and gentrification on a now-global scale” (7). Still, there are critics, who consistently consider it as a postmodern phenomenon in the narrower, “artistic” sense. Gerald Graff, for instance, mentions rock and psychedelic movements as examples of “reasonable, well-balanced postmodernism” – along with happenings, Living Theater, John Cage’s music and writings, beat poetry, Ken Kesey’s fiction etc (8).

If we take a closer look at postmodern literature, we will notice that “songs” appearing in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), one of the seminal novels of the genre, resemble lyrics of rock/pop songs – or that Ronald Sukenick includes reflections on the music by The Doors in the title story from The Death of the Novel and Other Stories (1969). Moving further in time, we shall come across American Psycho (1987), a novel by Brett E. Ellis, in which the title character offers truly specialist remarks about the songs of Peter Gabriel-less Genesis and solo albums by Phil Collins (just before committing a couple of subsequent murders). We shall also find out that the term “Avant Pop” – denoting newer, less academic face, or just the “new wave” of postmodernism, represented by relatively young writers like Mark Leyner – was appropriated by “Godfathers” of the movement, Larry McCaffery and Ronald Sukenick, from an album by Lester Bowie, an avantgarde jazzman (known also for his cooperation with rock musicians) (9) . We shall even get acquainted with one of the prime examples of Avant Pop fiction – Ricardo Cortez Cruz’s Straight Outta Compton (1993) - described by McCaffery as “first major rap novel” (10). It is not clear, however, in what way (if at all) these examples may explain anything about postmodern status of rock art in narrower, artistic sense.

What definitely is clear, for that matter, is the fact that one cannot reasonably hope to assume this perspective to consider early rock and roll or, for the most part, the music of so called British invasion of the early 60s. If fiction – e.g. by Ronald Sukenick or even Philip Roth, sometimes classified as a postmodern writer (11) - does display ambitions to provide a synthetic overview of the social landscape of late capitalism, the music of young Elvis Presley and his contemporaries appears in this context as purely utilitarian, aimed at creating a substitute of community being joined by a kind of “dionysian” trance that would counteract social disintegration (according to Howe, typical of late capitalist mass society) (12). One could hardly detect any artistic ideology here – and “blue suede shoes”, from Carl Perkins’ famous hit of 1956 of the same title, are in no way to be compared to “brown shoes” that “don’t make it” (see Frank Zappa’s song from 1967, entitled, not surprisingly, Brown Shoes Don’t Make It). What we come across in the first case, is an instance of simple-minded fascination with one of many products of so called mass society – totally unlike Zappa, who, in his aforementioned song, provides a good example of exploring the rubbish dump of so called mass culture to create a kind of synthesis, marked with “highbrow” irony (typical of mature postmodern art.).

Due to the artists like Zappa, rock has reached the level of higher, ironical self-awareness – which, in fact, questions the aforementioned statement by Gerald Graff, concerning the postmodern status of psychedelic rock of the late 60s. As is known, the aesthetics of postmodernism hardly allows any ideological bias – and it was just in times of the hippie revolution that rock music entered its “age of ideology”, having gone through the “naive” experiences of Presley or Beatlemania. Quite naturally, the ironic revaluation of this ideology should have taken place later – the history, however, does like to take truly unexpected turns: in the year of 1967, almost in the zenith of “summer of love” , there appeared the album We’re Only In it For The Money by Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention, ruthlessly satirizing the ideology of flower children, and, on the artistic side, providing a fine example of postmodern “controlled (rubbish dump) chaos”.

Indeed, many came together in the crazed kaleidoscope of rock culture of the late 60s: ideologies, anti-ideologies, revolutionary rhetorics of the MC5, pacifist vibrations of Country Joe McDonald, Rimbaud-like gestures of Jim Morrison, modernist ambitions of building monumental, closed forms (Iron Butterfly), postmodern collages and structural “discontinuity” (Zappa), “classical” ambitions (Procol Harum), contemporary minimalism evolving into atonal noise (The Velvet Underground). It could be reasonably argued, then, that rock did experience, at the same time, the ethos of constructive modernist innovations and the syndrome of postmodern, “nihilist” deconstruction – which can be most clearly seen on the example of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart: one of the most consistent, “postmodern” violators of all conventions possible and a typical purveyor of rock abstractionism, coming from definitely modernist sources.

It would be definitely hard to introduce any linear, sequential ordering into this fascinating chaos; at the same time, it would be just as hard to deny that in the early seventies, when the ephemeral era of positive rock ideology had finally reached its end, rock music effectively entered the period of ironic (postmodern?) revaluations of its own tradition, which, in literary reference, were defined by John Barth as a syndrome of “exhaustion” (13). In other words, it was then that deconstructionist tendencies, started earlier by Zappa and, independently, by The Velvet Underground (inspired by pop art virtuoso, Andy Warhol) assumed larger dimension – see British glam rock of this period, both in “naive” (Gary Glitter, The Sweet) and “sophisticated” (Roxy Music, David Bowie) version. The aforementioned opposition between Perkins’s “blue suede shoes” and Zappa’s “brown shoes” reappeared – this time simultaneously, within one artistic field. Primitive apologies of dance ecstasy like Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll (containing, by an interesting coincidence, a clear reference to the lyrics of Blue Suede Shoes) were rather simple-minded attempts to revive the spirit of original rock and roll “fiesta” in a totally different musical and sociocultural context – Bryan Ferry, encouraging young people to dance in Do the Strand from the second Roxy Music album, was addressing the problem from a higher level of artistic consciousness, i.e. from the point of view of a perverse rock dandy, ironically recommending the disco as the best cure for various youthful revolutions.

The one that was to change the face of western civilization, having found its climax (postlude?) in the famous Woodstock festival A. D. 1969 ( allusively ridiculed by Bowie in the song Memory of a Free Festival, recorded soon afterwards), ended up in a failure. No wonder then that the next one, known as punk/new wave revolution, set totally different goals for itself, having replaced “love and peace” with “hate and war”, general harmony with total chaos, construction with destruction etc. – which, from the point of view of postmodern connections of rock culture, does not seem to be especially important anyway.

Let us consider, instead, that punk revolution, in Britain at least, has always been associated in a concrete sociopolitical context (the economic crisis of the middle seventies, largely caused by the policy of the Labour Party, the conservative takeover towards the end of this decade etc.) - also because of the socialist rhetorics of such artists as Paul Weller of The Jam or Joe Strummer of The Clash. Let us consider, morever, that the originators of the aforementioned revolution, i.e. The Sex Pistols, were often quoted as an example of breaking away from the earlier tradition of rock music - and let us stress, therefore, that a) some of the leaders of the new movement undoubtedly had upper middle class connections (14), and b) its sociopolitical importance should not be overestimated. “Just as the first UK Punk groups had come out of the Bohemian, arty milieu, in much of North America, Punk came out of a post-Fluxus mixture of the mail art. and xerox end of performance art.” (15) – says Jon Savage, one of the greatest experts on the new wave movement.. “The artists who created Punk were Malcolm [McLaren – the author’s note] and Vivienne [Westwood – the author’s note], and they created it in this very sixties art-school, hippie kind of way” (16) – says Johnny Gems, a script-writer.

The latter quotation – rather astonishing, if we consider obvious reluctance of punks towards hippies – makes a clearer sense in the context of McLaren’s managerial activities (as is known, he effectively staged the career of The Sex Pistols according to typical situationist scenarios, which he absorbed in Paris, in the hot days of student revolution of May 1968). It should also be remembered that, despite postulated doing away with any musical tradition whatsoever, the music of The Sex Pistols had unquestionable connections with rock and roll in the spirit of Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent or even early Rolling Stones – and that, on the ideological level, Johnny Rotten eagerly struck the chords of ironic, catastrophic nihilism of Bowie or Ferry (definitely lacking their sophistication and decadent charm).

It is doubtful, then, whether the punk/new wave movement should be seen mainly as the expression of dissatisfaction and rebellious moods of the British youth, opressed by the economic crisis of the middle seventies (17). One could reasonably argue that it was rather the effect of Machiavelian manipulations of rock impresarios like McLaren or Rhodes. Or, more than anything else, another attempt at revaluation of the earlier tradition of rock culture – which definitely meant a further step towards “postmodernization” of rock (as has been already suggested, by “postmodernization’ we understand its succesively smaller ideological or sociopolitical bias) (18).

One can argue, obviously, that “anti-ideology” of punk “antistars” is in fact a form ideology, albeit negative – at the same time, however, one should take into account “artistic” carelessnes (reminiscent of A. Jarry), with which the leaders of punk used to treat symbols or emblems having clear ideological meaning (19). It would be even more illuminating to take a quick look at the so called grunge movement of the early 1990s, heavily promoted by rock scribblers, permanently hungry for “epoch-making” phenomena. Can we really hope to fish out (anti)ideological messages of any kind from its most representative songs (Smells Like Teen Spirit?), with lyrics largely filled with images of physical disintegration, only vaguely touching upon “generational” moods or attitudes? On the other hand, we shall definitely find there further mirrors, reflecting a good part of vital rock tradition (The Who, MC5, The Stooges, Big Star, Blue Cheer, maybe even the Beatles) reduced to the level of caricature. Consequently, it would be tempting to claim that the farther away rock music gets from its “age of ideology” and the deeper it goes into the thicket of postmodern revaluations, the weaker its artistic condition becomes. As much as we find the harvest of punk/new wave movement to be definitely less impressive than the musical legacy of flower-power revolution, we shall have to admit, at the same time, that it really does shine against the background of ephemeral grunge (compare The Fall, The Birthday Party or Joy Division with Nirvana or even Pearl Jam...)

Still, such a conclusion would undoubtedly be an oversimplification - if we consider the term “post rock” that has functioned in music journalism for a couple of years now. Applied to a relatively narrow circle of performers, the term is largely controversial - as much as symptomatic: it does sum up the aforementioned process of transformations of rock culture and confirms Jim Morrison’s remarkable prophecy concerning the end of rock as an artistic and ideological entity (20).

The situation we are facing now in the field of rock art is, arguably, quite similar to the literary landscape outlined by Barth in “Literature of Exhaustion”: all the new ground has already been broken, there is nothing new to be invented, so we are free to approach the tradition in any way we like, with no special regard for “ideology” (21) Thus, small independent publishing houses – like Fiction Collective in the U.S.A., promoting Raymond Federman, Ronald Sukenick or other postmodern experimentators – find clear analogy in small independent record companies. like Musea in France or Ambiances Magnetiques in Canada, which systematically release albums by Daniel Denis, Andre Duchesne or other open-minded rock artists, very well versed in classical/avantgarde music (also in rather limited number of copies). At present, the number of such artists is probably just as big as it used to be in times of psychedelic/progressive expansion – even though, unlike those “heroic” times, rock experimentators of last two decades (more or less) find themselves increasingly marginalised by wide audiences and commercial music market. Which, taking into account the nature of this market, is understandable: total artistic freedom that conscious rock postmodernists value so much obviously has its price which one is not obliged to pay only if his name is Frank Zappa. Or - approaching the problem from the opposite end of “postmodern” rock spectrum - Johnny Rotten (22).

1 See Ihab Hassan, "Neoliteratura w Stanach Zjednoczonych", trans. by Julita Wroniak, in: "Literatura na świecie" 1977, issue 3; the text is the authorised Polish version of one of the lectures delivered by Hassan during his visit to Warsaw in October 1976.
2 See Gerald Graff, "The Myth of Postmodernist Breakthrough" in "Tri Quarterly" , 1973, issue 26.
3 See Zygmunt Bauman in his interview "O ponowoczesnym stanie rzeczy" ["On postmodern condition"] in a Polish cultural magazine "Opcje" 1997, issue 1, p. 88 - as well as Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern: a History. Routledge (ITP) 1995, p. 112.
4 See Bauman in the same interview, p. 86.
5 Quoted after Tom Byers, "Tinseltown Goes Pomo: Popular Movies in the Late Capitalist Era", a lecture delivered at "(Mis)Understanding Postmodernism: American Studies Colloquium 2001" in Olomouc on September 3, 2001 (to be published soon)
6 Ibidem.
7 Frederic Jameson, "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism", as quoted by Byers in "Tinseltown Goes Pomo..."; it should be observed, though, that some of Jameson's observations can hardly be referred to the early history of rock, being born and developing in times of cold war, also in communist countries; remarks in the classic essay by Irving Howe, "Mass Society and Post-Modern Fiction" (1959), may be even more revealing here.
8 See Graff, op. cit.
9 It should be added, though, that this term is also used in purely musical context - e.g. in reference to avantgarde rock groups operating within pop song format (like Slapp Happy or News From Babel).
10 Rap being frequently located in the orbit of rock (see any rock encyclopedia from the 80s or 90s); talking about musical connotations of postmodern literary labels, one should also mention "bossa nova novels", described by Ronald Sukenick in his essay "The New Tradition in Fiction" (in Surfiction: Fiction Now and Tomorrow, ed. Raymond Federman, 1975), and actually coming quite close to the idea of "avant pop fiction".
11 Especially due to his later novels, such as The Counterlife (1986) or Operation Shylock (1993).
12 See the aforementioned essay "Mass Society and Post-Modern Fiction".
13 In his classic essay "Literature of Exhaustion"; it is also worth observing that Jerome Klinkowitz, in his text "Literary Disruptions; or, What's Become of American Fiction?" (included in Surfiction), or in the book The Life of Fiction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1977), defines "the tradition of exhaustion" (as he chooses to call it), represented mainly by such writers as Pynchon and Barth, as one of two main fields of postmodern fiction (the other would stem from Kerouac or Henry Miller and be inspired not so much by earlier literary phenomena, as by the author's direct experience of the world (e. g. books by Sukenick or Federman).
14 Like aforementioned Strummer (his real name being John Mellor), the son of a British diplomat.
15 Jon Savage, England's Dreaming: Sex Pistols And Punk Rock. London Faber & Faber 1991, p. 436; it is worthwhile to recall that Patti Smith, one of the leading individualities of American new wave, had already two published volumes of poetry to her credit, while making her debut on the rock market.
16 Savage, op. cit., p. 39.
17 Still, it should not be overlooked that the music of many punk/new wave groups is strongly marked sociopolitically (Dead Kennedys).
18 Good examples of this "postmodernization" are provided by "no wave" groups from New York, such as DNA or The Contortions, presenting minimalist, frequently atonal music, courageuously deconstructing cliches of earlier rock playing.
19 Their controversial use of swastikas or other Nazi symbols was basically a kind of aesthetic provocation (which is confirmed by Savage in England's Dreaming... - see p. 481); as for Jarry, the sequence from the film The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle, where Sid Vicious unexpectedly shoots elegant members of his audience, is of special interest; see also Chris Cutler's relevant remarks, concerning the artistic status of new wave in general, in his book File Under Popular... (1991).
20 See Rock Is Dead, a truly unusual jam, recorded in 1969 and released... in 1997 on The Doors Box Set.
21 Consider especially The Jesus And Mary Chain and their famous debut album Psychocandy (1985), which, instead of hazy generational "manifestoes", offered immaculately precise, ruthless deconstruction of a vital part of rock tradition, from beat and psychedelia of the sixties to the group's immediate punk/new wave predecessors. If we go further and compare TJAMC with Nirvana (for example), we shall identify two faces of rock "postmodernism": artistically convincing, ironically redefining its own heritage - and musically sloppy, ideologically unclear, as if unconscious of its own being "postmodern".
Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols, as totally distinct from John Lydon of Public Image Ltd., who finds himself not very far from the distinguished company of Denis, Duchesne or other "conscious rock postmodernists".

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY (books)

Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern: a History. London/New York Routledge (ITP) 1995.
Iain Chambers, Urban Rhythms. London Macmillan 1985.
Chris Cutler, File Under Popular; Theoretical & Critical Writings on Music. London ReR Megacorp & New York Semiotext(e)/Autonomedia 1991.
Raymond Federman (ed.), Surfiction: Fiction Now and Tomorrow. Chicago The Swallow Press 1975.
Simon Frith, Facing the Music. New York Pantheon Books 1988.
Clinton Heylin, From The Velvets To The Voidoids, London Penguin Books 1993.
Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols And Punk Rock. London Faber & Faber 1991.
Gene Sculatti & David Seay, San Francisco Nights: The Psychedelic Music Trip 1965-1968. London Sidgwick & Jackson 1985.
The Rolling Stone Illustrated History Of Rock And Roll. New York Rolling Stone Press 1980.
Jann Wenner (ed.), 20 Years of ‘Rolling Stone’: What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been. New York Friendly Press 1987.

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