1997

20.1

Layne Neeper
"So Much Analysis": Authority, Ephemeral Art, and the Pavement Discussion Group

Responding to a spate of lengthy and complex postings by fellow Internet users, an anonymous fan of the rock band Pavement somewhat wearily records the simple declaration, "So much analysis." Significantly, however, the fan then proceeds to add his or her own extensive critical pronouncements to the Pavement Discussion Group's electronic "pages." This one fan's offhanded comment identifies a previously unremarked phenomenon regarding online rock music fandom that is, in fact, quite remarkable: Guerrilla literature thrives on the Internet. Perhaps motivated by the old punk ethos of "DIY," or "do it yourself," a certain population among rock music fans--previously only disenfranchised, voiceless consumers--have found a medium for the production and transmission of what can only be called a kind of literary art. True, the texts of these Pavement fans are themselves modeled on the maligned and itself marginalized sub-sub-genre of contemporary literature we call "Rock Criticism," but the Pavement postings properly belong to that amorphous thing categorized as late twentieth-century "Literature" nonetheless. At the very least, analysis of these writers' documents challenges our very conceptions about what does and does not constitute the "literary" in present-day American culture.

Fandom is, of course, nothing new in American popular culture, and its participants and practices have been the subject of several recent cultural analyses. Henry Jenkins's pioneering work in Textual Poachers (1992) on organized television fandom is central to any discussion of fans and their attempts at "meaning-production" (74). Jenkins's text "describes a social group struggling to define its own culture and to construct its own community within the context of what many observers have described as a postmodern era; it documents a group insistent on making meaning from materials others have characterized as trivial and worthless" (3). Chief among Jenkins's contributions is the conception of culturally marginalized fans of, in this case, certain television series "as active producers and manipulators of meanings" (23). He argues, "Unimpressed by institutional authority and expertise, fans assert their own right to form interpretations, to offer evaluations, and to construct cultural canons" (18). In addition to his discussion of fan conventions, newsletters and 'zines, Jenkins is one of the first to note, albeit briefly, that then-emergent computer interest groups were transforming fan communication (77). Following the explosion of poplular interest in the Internet that occurred in the mid-1990s and deploying Jenkins's mode of analysis, Susan Clerc has written more recently about women and media fandom online (in "Estrogen Brigades") and more specifically about the electronic discussion groups that have appeared in response to the popular television series The X-Files. However, no one has considered in any thoroughgoing way online music fandom and the cultural documents that routinely surface in chat groups focusing on popular music.

The Pavement Discussion Group on the World Wide Web is only one of hundreds of fan-based discussion groups that have proliferated recently on the Internet. Deborah Russell, writing for Billboard Magazine, was quick to perceive in 1993 the first stages of what has since proved to be a burgeoning trend among Internet users subscribing to discussion groups devoted to particular musical performers. However, Russell's depiction of one online service, Prodigy, as providing nothing more than "a popular 'electronic gossip' hotline for music fans" (49) is too perfunctory and dismissive to account accurately for what actually goes on in most of the pages. Russell describes how "Prodigy members use the network to trade everything from pirated product and insider information to banal gossip and trivia tips" (49), but even this description falls short of convincing analysis. In fact, the Pavement Discussion Group--and this particular group may be taken as representative of other groups like it--is much more fascinatingly complex than Russell's terse commentary would suggest, and what this group reveals is a community of writers and readers, a curiously hierarchical community to be sure, that is creating shadow art, one that mimics "legitimate" rock criticism and gains its value by appeals to decorum, authority, and "literariness."

First, some context and remarks about the raison d'etre of the Pavement Discussion Group. Most students of American youth culture have no doubt heard, or heard of, the "alternative" rock band Pavement, or seen articles on them in popular magazines like Spin, Option, Rolling Stone, or The Village Voice, or have watched one of their four or five videos on MTV. Pavement, a quintet headed by S. M. (Stephen Malkmus) and Spiral Stairs (Steve Kannberg), is a literate, talented band whose members know how to rock in ways that have appealed to the mainstream rock press since the band's damaged but elegant pop first transformed college radio in the early Nineties. Proving that they have surpassed the "moon-June-soon" class of rock lyricists, Pavement has to be the only rock band in recording history, for instance, that, with their 1996 single, "Give It a Day," ever "name-checked" or referenced Cotton and Increase Mather. Clearly, this is not the stuff of typical pop songs. Robert Christgau, Village Voice staffer and the grand old man of New York rock critics, has written recently that Pavement represents the best that contemporary rock music has to offer. In fact, selections from Christgau's long and laudatory review of the band's 1997 release of Brighten the Corners not only reveal why Pavement garners high critical marks from the rock press, but also serves as a useful text by which we might later implicitly compare the online writings of amateur critics. Christgau writes:

With Nirvana a skyrocket and Sonic Youth decade-bridging forebears like Neil Young before them, Pavement stands as the finest rock band of the '90s--by critical acclamation. And if you think that last phrase turns superlative to faint praise, note that it's been a while since Pavement's art project was the province of a coterie. . . . If half the 200,000 or so consumers who purchased 1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain were converted by its hoarse whines, calculated shows of feeling, jokes without punchlines, ramshackle structures, purloined riffs, exploding minimelodies, and tangy shreds of guitar, that's zip by the standards of Seinfeld or Smashing Pumpkins, but a great many by the standards of mandarin surrealist John Ashberry, who supposedly inspired the lyrics of the new Brighten the Corners, or of archminimalist Richard Tuttle, who supposedly gave heart to Whitney guard and Pavement main man Stephen Malkmus. . . .

As Malkmus pushes 30, his Geddy Lee references [Lee is the lead singer in Rush] are subsumed by images of domesticity and maturity that from "perfect roasts" to "colonized wrath" are wryly affectionate, not satiric--perfect for a skittish guy who's watched his supporting cast put their royalties into houses, horses, and, most threateningly, matrimony. He's only an upper-middle-class smarty-pants, an elitist by temperament who's enlightened enough to fight it. But he's well on his way to the cooperative construction of a body of work--an oeuvre, as they say in the academy--that means to endure in a previously uncharted cultural space somewhere this side of coterie. (55)

As Christgau's review makes abundantly clear with its references to Ashberry and oeuvres, there is in the rock establishment a widely held belief that Pavement comes as close to elitist notions of "Art" as American pop music gets today.

It is not surprising, then, that the band is very much in the eye of a certain audience (a decidedly youthful, white, middle-class, educated audience), even if the band itself remains fairly reclusive and its record sales pale by Michael Jackson standards. Nor should it be surprising that an enterprising individual known only as "Mookie" would create a Pavement Homepage on the Internet's World Wide Web, thus providing fans an opportunity to post messages to one another concerning all things related to the band.

What is surprising, though, is the realization that many of these documents seek to, and then do, easily transcend the status of mere "messages" and that, aside from the anomalous flame or nonsensical transaction, the majority of these postings aspire, in both conscious and unconscious ways, to approach the rarefied realm of "authentic" artistic product.

Given the ostensibly free-form, rule-less writerly space that theoretically can be said to characterize any given discussion group on the net, it is both paradoxical and perhaps unavoidable that "successful" texts from the Pavement group are almost uniformly (and tacitly) rule-bound and richly encoded. (I should say now that I define as "successful" documents that provoke extended and sometimes contentious responses from other reader/authors.) Upon first discovering the Homepage and its "Obligatory Discussion Thingy," as Mookie has named the group, a perceptive reader will soon perceive that there are "proper" postings that generate positive acknowledgment or debate, and there are transgressive ones that meet with either a chilly silence or derisive dismissal from ranks of Pavement fans. Non-generative messages are usually silly, irrational, non-specific, or unrelated to things Pavement. Typical of this type is a message posted by "Stephanie." (That she is an outsider is made obvious by the use of her actual name rather than a witty nom de net adopted by veterans of the page.) "Stephanie" writes and re-writes "I love Pavement" almost fifty times. Silence. Non sequitur messages are similarly received: "Shannon Nothing" hears nothing from his bizarre post: "Yogi is the head of f.d.k. Watch out for him. Please everyone check out this url . . . All you farmers will like it, especially the city ones. Capricorn rising."

There is a certain urgency, then, to "Patron Power's" admonition imploring fellow writers to get down to the "real" business of the group: "I started subscribing to the mailing list about a week ago and was disappointed. So much attitude. I couldn't believe it! Get to the point. Who has the time to read FILLER? Not I . . . maybe I'm just old and bitter--i.e. someone was posting about how no one in their HIGH SCHOOL likes Pavement. Boo Fucking Hoo!" Patron Power is, ironically, unaware perhaps of the aggressive "attitude" emanating from his or her own posting, but the intent is still self-evident. "Silver Grggs" articulates in a more positive fashion the suitable scope and purpose of group postings. He writes, "I don't mean to clutter up this service but this is sure a lot better than the mailing list [a rival Pavement discussion outlet] right now. After trudging through all of the crap letters I receive from that list, it is nice to come here and still find some useful info." "Useful info"--whatever that might be--is what garners respect among readers, and it is a subject we will want to turn to shortly. Finally, to quell a recent and disturbing trend of petty, ridiculous postings that have truly diminished the quality of "valid" discussion, "5-4=1" asserts, "Okay, enough with the naked mothers / nutsacks / masturbation noise. Can we get on with the real deal, i.e. Pavement. Sheesh, you're stinking up this message board. Save the non-sequiturs for the chat room."

Those few individuals who desire only to register caustic or offensive transmissions--what are commonly known in net parlance, of course, as "flames"--are astonishingly infrequent, but when they do appear they are quickly dispatched by the group's self-appointed custodians of decorum. "Marbella," a one-time only subscriber to the list, offered the following pithy assessment: "You bunch of fucking left wing pricks. Pavement sucks!" To counter, Amy, a regular contributor, shed her customary pseudonym of "L'enfant stupide" and challenged the gender-specificity of Marbella's coarse insult: "First of all," she writes, "I'd like to give a big old hearty thanks to Marbella, cause I've never been called a prick before. I think that I'll write it down in my book of accomplishments right next to 'first words,' 'first steps,' and 'first black eye.'" Amy's disdain is unmistakable. "Krellvid" wonders why any non-fan would have been compelled to engage in the Pavement discussion in the first place. Marbella is heard from no more.

These are the kinds of unsuccessful and remarkably infrequent "messages" that flash across readers' terminal screens but are ultimately abortive. I wish to reiterate: these documents that do not "work" within the group are the exception. What then characterizes the "successful" posting? One element typifies this discourse more than any other: the semblance of power. Authorial integrity or textual power--two ways of saying the same thing--are contingent upon one chief transformation. The writer must demonstrate through any number of textual strategies that he or she has overcome the inherent power differential that exists between typical rock fans and the performers they admire. Not to put too fine a point on it, the typical fan/star dynamic is an emphatically one-way power exchange, with the fan's near total secondariness standing in stark relation to the iconic stature of the "personality." As Jenkins has noted, "To speak as a fan is to accept what has been labeled a subordinated position within the cultural hierarchy" (23). To say that stars are all and fans are nothing is crude but accurate shorthand for the relationship.

Plugged into an invisible, impossibly dense information network that threatens to erase any presence of identity, anonymous individuals who would be something more--namely those who aspire to be writers--have to negotiate their own public conversion from dependent, needy fans--college students or workaday nobodies (many of the postings originate from writers ostensibly on the job)--into "authorized" culture critics. Addressing fans' conversions from powerlessness to "mastery," Jenkins writes:

Far from being syncopathic [sic], fans actively assert their mastery over the mass-produced texts which provide the raw materials for their own cultural productions and the basis for their social interactions. In the process, fans cease to be simply an audience for popular texts; instead, they become active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings. (23-24)

A crucial distinction remains, however, in that this conversion occurs for online fans if and only if they can be seen to possess the right sort of information and their "cultural productions" have the power to persuade. Authority within the Pavement discussion group, in short, is based on knowledge or at least a pretence of knowledge. "Insider" information, first-hand accounts, and technical expertise set apart informed "authors" in the group from merely slavish fans.

The knowledge (and hence authority) derived from technical expertise is perhaps the most easy to identify. In the case of the Pavement discussion group, technical authority is exhibited primarily through the posting of guitar tablatures for particular Pavement songs. Guitarists Malkmus and Kannberg have often been noted for their eccentric, complex guitar tunings (a lesson they learned well from punk elders Sonic Youth), and there is recurrent discussion of this performative aspect among group participants. Therefore, if a fan happens to possess any technical understanding of Pavement's music, he or she can claim a partial "mastery" of the artists, and can in turn broadcast this mastery for the scrutiny (and admiration) of others, thus enjoying some small privilege among the faceless ranks who themselves lack such knowledge. Debates concerning guitar tunings are frequent and intense. Typically, when "Fernando" posts the musical notations for guitar for the notoriously difficult song "Zurich is Stained," no fewer than five hostile rebuttals reject his tunings. In one humorously disparaging reply, a writer accuses the unreliable "Fernando" of being on drugs when he submitted his tunings. Fernando's attempted transformation from mere fan to author is in this instance ineffectual.

More interesting still are those authoritative texts that offer eyewitness accounts of live concert performances, informal "interviews" with the group, or those few rare narratives detailing anecdotal "histories," either chance or prolonged personal encounters with band members. That these are also, of course, some of the staple subjects of mainstream rock criticism is not coincidental. Besides mimicking "professional" criticism, these documents gain their currency by the content's perceived originality and the resultant insights it affords. Having heard firsthand, for instance, from a sound engineer at a recording studio that Pavement's next release is slated for a certain date is of more worth to fans online than if an individual reads the same information days or weeks later in Rolling Stone and merely recites it. During the early summer months of 1995, field reports of Pavement's live Lollapalooza performances across North America became the dominant focus for writing. Colorless, rote remarks like, "I saw Pavement in San Francisco, and they were awesome," were outclassed, even silenced, by writers cataloging the band's play lists for particular gigs, offering detailed accounts of extemporized lyrical changes, quoting stage patter, or assessing audience reactions at various shows. Some of these concert reviews were several hundred lines long.

Postings built on insider knowledge, like that information gained from actual meetings between fans and band members, are documents especially valued by discussion group readers and writers. "Fat Mike" generated considerable attention and commentary when he recounted with vivid precision a revealing, almost lurid tableau from his college days at the University of Virginia; "Fat Mike" reports that he had witnessed through an open dorm window a young Stephen Malkmus, a fellow UVA undergraduate, wildly "air-guitaring" to an Echo and the Bunnymen song blaring on his stereo, thus earning Malkmus the egregious nickname "Bunny." Not only does the account humble the star by recalling him in a ridiculously adolescent situation, this arcane bit of lore yields insights fellow fans would not have gained from a professional magazine profile. Less embarrassing and more typical is a recent account offered by veteran writer "djarum" who, by good fortune, bumped into Pavement bassist Mark Ibold at a concert by the underground band Chavez in Manhattan. "djarum" was able to report not only that Ibold was a decent, friendly chap, who was easily approachable, but also that the "pretty" and better known bassist Melissa Auf der Maur from Courtney Love's band Hole was on Ibold's arm all evening. Inquiring Pavement minds want to know this sort of thing, and the response from several fellow fans was both enthusiastic and inquisitive--two indications that the posting was a success.

Finally--and it is perhaps the most democratic and liberating feature of guerrilla literature--even those readers who are deficient in esoteric knowledge may become respected "authorities"--with all the rich implications of that designation--if their prose can simulate what has become the standard discourse of the rock press establishment. Clerc has written that "The meat of fan discussion . . . is analysis and interpretation of the multilayered text" (37), and, in fact, the majority of the Pavement discussion group's postings are surprisingly complex critical assessments. Jenkins convincingly argues that "Organized fandom is, perhaps first and foremost, an institution of theory and criticism, a semistructured space where competing interpretations and evaluations of common texts are proposed, debated, and negotiated and where readers speculate about the nature of the mass media, and their own relationship to it" (86). Jenkins's axiom about fandom's primary function applies quite specifically to many of the texts produced for online music chat groups. I have chosen to reprint in its entirety a document submitted by "floyd" because it represents the prototypical "literary" document found regularly on the discussion group; it is by no means the most elaborate, or most self-conscious, or most daring in its use of figurative language, or even the most allusive (T. S. Eliot and Frederich Nietzsche have been inexplicably popular lately), but the text does possess the raw qualities of "literariness" that mark it for special consideration by group members. On 27 September 1995, "floyd" writes:

I've had my ups and downs with Wowie Zowie [Pavement's 1995 record release] so far but mostly downs. Firstly, there's not enough strong material to warrant the double LP. The pseudo-punk stuff is throwaway b-side material and should have been treated as such. In the past, even the more whimsical Pavement material has shown more imagination than "I can't stand this corporation attitude." Even as irony, that sort of stuff is weak. Don't even get me started on "Fight this Generation." On the brighter side, "Rattled by the Rush" is a thing of beauty. I think it's the most astute take on the classic rock sound since the introduction to "Silence Kid" [from 1994's Crooked Rain Crooked Rain release]. Not to mention that clever Hendrix cop on "Half a Canyon." That song illustrates my contention, that, apart from facile distinctions (i.e. detuned guitars, deliberately feeble vocals, etc.), the most distinctive aspect of Pavement is their uncanny sense of phrasing. The Hendrix cop is obvious, but sandwiched amid a typical Pavement composition/arrangement, it doesn't feel cheap. Anyway, I've gotta get a job.

Obviously, this is familiar discursive terrain to any reader of pop music reviews--we might recall Christgau's "professional" criticism, and, of course, this text seeks to gain its power and authority by readers' associations of it with that which is known, admired, and perceived as "authentic." Among the text's most prominent features are the complex aesthetic judgments, the ably argued claims, and the specifically detailed evidence. This is the kind of document that carries on the cultural work of texts posted by and for fans of one rock band in the 1990s.

What, finally, has remained unsaid here is the mutable nature of these texts. This is a most ephemeral art, more fleeting than urban graffiti. There is the definite sense that many of these postings aspire to become "Rock Criticism"--temporary art objects--in the vain hope of somehow cheating the inevitable file purges executed by Mookie once or twice monthly, file purges that will slough off the old material after only a few short weeks of luminous signification on the Internet. Simply put, these writers want their texts to matter even in the face of such a short-lived existence, and this fact compels fans-who-would-be-authors to accomplish certain authorial gestures so as to establish, even if only momentarily, an identity of authority and mastery in a culture and age that becomes everyday more hostile to the individual and any sense of permanence.

Department of English
Morehead State University
Morehead, Kentucky 40351

Clerc, Susan. "DDEB, GATB, MPPB, and Ratboy: The X-Files' Media Fandom, Online and Off." "Deny All Knowledge": Reading the X-Files. Ed. David Lavery, , Angela Hague, and Marla Cartwright. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1996. 36-51.

Clerc, Susan. "Estrogen Brigades and 'Big Tits' Threads: Media Fandom Online and Off." Wired Women: Gender and the New Realities in Cyberspace. Ed. Lynn Cherny and Elizabeth Reba Weise. Seattle: Seal, 1996. 73-85.

Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Russell, Deborah. "Music Fans Log on to Prodigy Network." Billboard 20 March 1993: 49.