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10 Apr 14
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The structure of the musical material requires a technique of its own by which it is enforced. This process may be roughly defined as "plugging". The term "plugging" originally had the narrow meaning of ceaseless repetition of one particular hit in order to make it "successful".
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lugging aims to break down the resistance to the musically ever-equal or identical by, as it were, closing the avenues of escape from the ever-equal. It leads the listener to become enraptured with the inescapable. And thus it leads to the institutionalization and standardization of listening habits themselves. Listeners become so accustomed to the recurrence of the same things that they react automatically.
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ince everything equals everything else to such an extent that the emphasis on presentation which is provided by plugging must substitute for the lack of genuine individuality in the material.
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epetition gives a psychological importance which it could otherwise never have. Thus plugging is the inevitable complement of standardization.
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o be plugged, a song-hit must have at least one feature by which it can be distinguished from any other, and yet possess the complete conventionality and triviality of all others.
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The publisher wants a piece of music that is fundamentally the same as all the other current hits and simultaneously fundamentally different from them.
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only if it is different can it be distinguished from other songs — a requirement for being remembered and hence for being successful.
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A further requirement of plugging is a certain richness and roundness of sound. This requirement evolves that feature in the whole plugging mechanism which is most overtly bound up with advertising as a business as well as with the commercialization of entertainment.
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It is musical glamor: those innumerable passages in song arrangements which appear to communicate the "now we present" attitude. -
Glamor is made into the eternal conqueror's song of the common man; he who is never permitted to conquer in life conquers in glamor. The triumph is actually the self-styled triumph of the business man who announces that he will offer the same product at a lower price.
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By glamorizing, they attract attention. But the means by which they are used to overcome humdrum reality are more humdrum than the reality itself. That which aims to achieve glamor becomes a more uniform activity than what it seeks to glamorize.
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But all glamor girls look alike and the glamor effects of popular music are equivalent to each other.
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the world of glamor is a show, akin to shooting galleries, the glaring lights of the circus and deafening brass bands. As such, the function of glamor may have originally been associated with a sort of advertising which strove artificially to produce demands in a social setting not yet entirely permeated by the market
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All glamor is bound up with some sort of trickery. Listeners are nowhere more tricked by popular music than in its glamorous passages
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Flourishes and jubilations express triumphant thanksgiving for the music itself — a self-eulogy of its own achievement in exhorting the listener to exultation and of its identification with the aim of the agency in promoting a great event
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Glamor, which plays on the listener's desire for strength, is concomitant with a musical language which betokens dependence.
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Genuine and pseudo-nursery rhymes are combined with purposeful alterations of the lyrics of original nursery rhymes in order to make them commercial hits.
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Some of its principal characteristics are: unabating repetition of some particular musical formula comparable to the attitude of a child incessantly uttering the same demand
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the limitation of many melodies to very few tones, comparable to the way in which a small child speaks before he has the full alphabet at his disposal;
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Moreover, the children's language serves to make the musical product "popular" with the subjects by attempting to bridge, in the subjects' consciousness, the distance between themselves and the plugging agencies, by approaching them with the trusting attitude of the child asking an adult for the correct time even though he knows neither the strange man nor the meaning of time.
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The plugging of songs is only a part of a mechanism and obtains its proper meaning within the system as a whole. Basic to the system is the plugging of styles and personalities.
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The plugging of certain styles is exemplified in the word swing.
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he lack of justification in the material for the use of the term arouses the suspicion that its usage is entirely due to plugging — in order to rejuvenate an old commodity by giving it a new title.
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Similarly plugged is the whole swing terminology indulged in by jazz journalism and used by jitterbugs, a terminology which, according to Hobson, makes jazz musicians wince.
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There is good reason to believe that this journalism partly belongs immediately to the plugging mechanism, insofar as it depends upon publishers, agencies, and name bands. At this point, however, a sociological qualification is pertinent. Under contemporary economic conditions, it is often futile to look for "corruption", because people are compelled to behave voluntarily in ways one expected them to behave in only when they were paid for it. -
The journalists speak with unbought voices. Once a certain level of economic backing for plugging has been reached, the plugging process transcends its own causes and becomes an autonomous social force.
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Above all other elements of the plugging mechanism stands the plugging of personalities, particularly of band leaders. Most of the features actually attributable to jazz arrangers are officially credited to the conductor; arrangers, who are probably the most competent musicians in the United States, often remain in obscurity, like scenario writers in the movies
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The conductor is the man who immediately faces the audience; he is close kin to the actor who impresses the public
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t is the face-to-face relation with the conductor which makes it possible to transfer to him any achievement.
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Further, the leader and his band are still largely regarded by the audience as bearers of improvisatory spontaneity. The more actual improvisation disappears in the process of standardization and the more it is superseded by elaborate schemes, the more must the idea of improvisation be maintained before the audience. The arranger remains obscure partly because of the necessity for avoiding the slightest hint that popular music may not be improvised, but must, in most cases, be fixed and systematized.
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29 Aug 13
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Glamor-mindedness may optimistically be regarded as a mental construct of the success story in which the hardworking American settler triumphs over impassive nature, which is finally forced to yield up its riches
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12 Dec 06
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According to Adorno every popular song can be made into hit by plugging it: "Provided the material fulfills certain minimum requirements, any given song can be plugged and made a success, if there is adequate tie-up between publishing houses, name bands, radio and moving pictures."
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