Rock and Roll is the great pretender. The promise of a music that speaks to all, played by everyone. Its elements are so minimal and its practitioners so “ordinary” that the narrative myths itself, and we’re left with thirty-dollar-pockets slowly warming.

What labours behind the guise is the elitism of extremely manicured arrangement and perfectionist tone control: namely, Production. Once upon an early twentieth century and previous, the idea was to spend decades cultivating skill, and then bring that skill to the work. Recordings were the as-best-we-can-manage reproduction of live performance, and musicians built chops in general; they didn’t labour over any given performance in particular.

This is an obviously elitist model. Professional musicians can (and often did) have humble backgrounds, but working full time on their craft was a luxury few could afford, and the sheer time gave them an unsurmountable edge. Amateurs rose to the professional level only with intense luck and enormous aptitude. The assailing of this hierarchy was only possible via the more fundamentally unfair inequalities of chance and talent. In other words, only the gods could promote you.

The recording era apparently turned this situation on its head. Rather than build aptitude and capture that aptitude on record, producers soon learned to skip right to building records. Whether they were also the performers or songwriters is incidental. Recordings became the primary mode of musical delivery and record producers replaced performers as the true artisans of sound. (This, incidentally, is why production is more consistent and yields fewer one-hit wonders in the rock era than performance. And since working behind the scenes makes it much more difficult for them to be deposed by fashion, major producers from Spector to Timbaland have hit rosters that dwarf those of individual artists).

As the focus shifted from creating great sounds to creating great records, popular music in the recording era became relatively (I said relatively!) indifferent to the training or talents of any given performer. And it’s history is half-intentionally so stuffed-to-bursting with happy accidents and rags-to-riches stories that the folklore writes itself: a shaggy band of ne’er-do-wells makes simple music that everyone can relate to and anyone can make and soon enough there’s a band for every garage on the planet.

Bullshit, obviously. Reflecting on the inherently anti-amateurish perfectionism of the typical recording cycle–40 extensively manicured minutes (with 4-8 minutes culled for singles) every two years–is enough to dispel the myth. As long as they exist in this production cycle, “rough”, “lo-fi”, and “DIY” are just styles of tightly-controlled sound, not manifestos of accessibility and universality. We work as hard as ever to make music, but the locus of achievement has shifted.

So kids. If you want to be the Ramones, find someone who can make great records. If you want to make great records, best of luck. I have no idea how it’s done. All I know is this: it doesn’t have much to do with playing, writing, singing, or being in a band.

You, Baby - The Ronettes (Produced by Phil Spector)

Bonus:

Ain’t No Other Man - Christina Aguilera (Produced by DJ Premier) (Buy)

Sunshine - Lupe Fiasco (Produced by Soundtrakk) (Buy)

FutureSex/LoveSound - Justin Timberlake (Produced by Timbaland) (Buy)