heh heh - un scherzo di un pene? o di un equino?

From Peggy Guggenheim's palazzo garden, a fitting Coda to Jimmy Page's solo:

I know what THAT symbolizes!

Apropos of Zeppelin, a band comprised of volcanic soloists gleefully unashamed of their profound musical abilites, my good-angel academic self wags its finger to remind me of the long association of instrumental virtuosity (let's bracket for now the whole issue of divas) with masculinity (think Liszt, Parker, Coltrane, Buddy Rich).  So, it is hard to not read the Decemberists' eschewal of instrumental chops as a rejection of masculinity, and with this in mind, my good-angel academic conference persona cautions me against hating on the Decemberists and more generally on indie rockers who can't play their instruments.

It's important to remember that in indie rock, the opposite of virtuosity, the opposite of masculinity, is not feminity--no--but androgyny, more specifically the androgyny of childhood, which in the case of the Decemberists and of twee indie rockers more generally, is converted into an aesthetic driven by affects of nostalgia, fantasy, and escape (we're back to the "cinematic" and "storytelling" aspects of the Decemberists or that Scottish band from the late 90s/early 00s, Belle and Sebastian).  In terms of the cultural narrative surrounding virtuosity then--that achieved virtuosity, whatever musical end it's put toward, represents the fulfillment of the musicians' career, the goal of practice, effort, sacrifice, a deal with the devil, a death wish even--the Decembrists and other indie rockers refuse to be musicians and therefore refuse to grow up.

So, part of my loathing of the Decembrists, I have to admit, comes from a resentment of their refusal to inhabit a properly achieved, properly masculine musical role.  But only a small part because I still think that whatever my own biases and issues (clearer to the reader than to me), they are still awful.

On TV we're watching Uncle Buck subtitled in Italian. RIP John Candy.