About

The Post-Rockist’s dream concert would be Mozart opening for Otis Redding. Runner up: Bob Dylan opening for the caveman who first decided to hit sticks on a big stone in a continuous, rhythmic pattern, with an aftershow duet performed by Frank Sinatra and Fela Kuti, singing a Pere Ubu song, with Bach tickling the ivories and a follow-up remix by Danger Mouse. In the crowd, Joey Ramone is slowly inching his pointer and middle-fingers up Mariah Carey’s skirt, while Judy Garland and Keith Richards share addiction stories. Maybe Ray Davies smiles that crescent moon grin as he observes Aretha Franklin sass Barry Manilow for including a drastic modulation in most of the songs he’s ever recorded. Barry shrugs and admits that he learned it from The Strokes. Dizzy Gillespie and Woody Guthrie talk Yankees while Sly and Jeff Tweedy talk Elvis. And there, in the back–no, not here but way back over there–sits the Post-Rockist, soaking it all in, jotting notes, believing that this is all really happening, with the understanding that everything that is music is music. Then Thom Yorke and Ice-T ride by on unicycles and the Post-Rockist writes about it, probably in the form of a villanelle.

More straightforwardly, The Post-Rockist aims not at music criticism but at writing with passionate fervor and love about music. We try to evade negativity and aim for apotheosisizing the music we love, which is all kinds. The residue of rockism still lingers, but Bob Dylan, in Chronicles, is right when he says that there aren’t any bad songs: all songs are good in different ways. (Well, some songs and albums and artists maybe we don’t like, but you won’t hear about them here too much. In fact, it is our aim to locate the good even in the songs nearly universally regarded as “bad.”)

In his essay “Thinking About Rockism” from The Seattle Weekly, Douglas Wolk writes that Rockism is “a potentially useful concept for thinking about the way people write about popular music, and the way people experience it.” We the Post-Rockists will be writing conventionally about the music we love–the music that makes our lives worth living–but we shall also brave other types of writing. Don’t be too surprised to read a review in verse, or in a mix of words and emoticons. We shall on occasions attempt to write in ways that aim to deflate traditionalist writing about music, to savor irony and play, but to be deadly serious at the same time. Well, some of the time.

This website is a labor of love: our love for music and our love for you, gentle readers. Bang your own gong in the comments section so we know you care. Finally, if you’re a musician, or work for a record label, and would like to share your music with the world, don’t hesitate to contact Scotter (scotter AT post-rockist DOT com) and/or Todd (todd AT post-rockist DOT com).