lemur68 wrote:Drop Your Pants Say What
Suck My Dick Say Mmmm

Beautiful.

DrAwkward wrote:I was gonna say something similar. I didn't "get" punk rock until i was 20, and had only discovered it two years prior at 18. Before then, i was hair metal morning, noon, and night, because that was all i knew about.

Sometimes i'm jealous of the kids coming up today, who have the internet at their disposal and can discover Pere Ubu and DEVO and Black Flag at age 10, but on the other hand, i think it's pretty rad that i ended up a johnny-come-lately, because at age 33 i'm still discovering amazing music that i missed the first time. You might think it's sad that i only heard The Wipers for the first time a couple years ago; i think it's keeping me young.

EDIT: P.S: When i did finally discover punk rock, it was from making new friends who dragged me to see live punk bands, not from some silly comp i bought at Wal-Mart.

I discovered punk rock in a book in a library. Seriously. Chilton Public Library in Chilton, WI. You were only a few towns over or across the lake. What, didn't you have any libraries there in Hilbert or Oshkosh (b-gosh!)? Through point A and point B, I was into shit like Devo, the Cramps, Throbbing Gristle, The Damned, Cabaret Voltaire, Buzzcocks, Ramones, etc. while in 7th grade in a midwestern farm town a few years before the internet. I'm a fucking genius! It wasn't a hard thing to do, really. It was hard to get LAID for awhile there once I got further into the teens and relocated to a different locale, but that had much more to do with my abrasive attitude. Like, I wouldn't dance with a chick if she liked the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was a matter of principle, at the time. If I could go back, I woulda realized that she was just some horny chick and it wouldn't have mattered what the fuck music she liked if I could get a piece. Ah, youth!

I got started sorta young, but I'm still discovering stuff all the time... Oh.

What was this thread about? The "Commidification of Indie Rock"? Didn't that happen a long time ago? You guys still listen to that modern rock shit?

KeithV wrote:What, didn't you have any libraries there in Hilbert?

Obviously you didn't spend much time in Hilbert.

The only books it ever occurred to me to check out of the Chilton public library were books about UFOs. If nothing else, i at least was living a Husker Du song.

I delivered papers in Hilbert for awhile. Also, visited the drive-in. I always liked that little swampy area north of town on Highway 57. It's no Dundas, though!

The Chilton Library had a whole series of "History of Rock'n'Roll" books. I remember they were red in color. They had a section on Hawkwind in one of those books! There was no mention of indie rock.

steve wrote: I cannot see how art can serve anything but the artist.

Audience

but...

maybe it depends on the definition of "serve."

i.e., the audience does not dictate the purpose of the art or motives of the artist (i.e. the audience is not the art's master), but the audience can gain something from the art (the art "serves" to affect the audience, regardless of the motives for its creation, dictated by the artist(s)).

nihil wrote:You are a moron.

So artists don't make logos? Who does then?

gio wrote:maybe it depends on the definition of "serve."

Or the definition of "art". It's a pretty broadly applied noun.

unarmedman wrote:

nihil wrote:You are a moron.

So artists don't make logos? Who does then?

Yeah, I don't see how unarmedman is being a moron here.

Logos are considered commercial art, which presumably gets lumped with the "worst situations" (for art) mentioned by tmidgett.

What's interesting about this is that there's nothing necessarily inauthentic about commercially oriented art and music. I'll bet the guys in the Killers or Coldplay make exactly the music they most want to make. That is, there's probably no more compromise in a Killers album than in one by an "authentic" indie band (such as Ted Leo or whomever).

There is more contrivance, especially in the marketing, but I think the Killers genuinely want to sound like they do as much as a special band like the Palace Brothers or Slint wanted to sound like they did.

The logical outcome of this, then, is to locate the crappiness of the Killers (and greatness of Palace) in the band members themselves, as people, and also in the forces and influences which constitute them as such. This is genuine rather than artificial loathing (and loving).

[Unknowing kitsch, "outsider" art, etc, complicates this: "bad"/crass/commercial influences can come together, with the worst of intentions, but result in great art]

To bring this back to commercial art and logos, I know commercial artists who make great looking snowboards, shoes, print ads, animation, TV commercials, and great sounding jingles, etc. There is craft, skill, inspiration, and art in it. And also a lucrative commission or salary. For them, it's not the worst situation, but most would be the first to agree it's not the best situation to produce art. But a lot of art "masterworks" are the product of commissions or designed to impress certain audiences, whom they service.

Meanwhile, design schools are conceived precisely to retool artistic talent into an instrumental skill set: to make art serve. Art in the service of others (the firm, the boss, the market, the product) all the way.

The same is true of intellect and thought. Institutional education channels thought in order to make it work for the powerful, and one has to work against this grain to produce non-commercial thought, if that's the goal.

In any case, for a benefactor, or collector, art functions as status, which is a special form of commodity, but a commodity nonetheless. Likewise, mere knowledge of art can serve as "cultural capital," which is also a type of commodity. Various avant-gardes have tried to work against this grain. To make art that is unassimilable, that cannot be put to work or be made to serve others. But this too can be recuperated as status and cultural capital - in hipster cache and its period variations.

Art definitely serves others. Whether it wants to or not - whether it is produced with others in mind - is not the end of the story.

unarmedman wrote:

nihil wrote:You are a moron.

So artists don't make logos? Who does then?

This is more of a craft then, isn't it? Making things to order according to the tastes of the customer. That's a craft, not art. I think craftsmanship has great value, but it is different from an expressive art.

LutherBlissett wrote:What's interesting about this is that there's nothing necessarily inauthentic about commercially oriented art and music. I'll bet the guys in the Killers or Coldplay make exactly the music they most want to make.

I imagine this is true. Their conception of music (like your conception of art) differs from mine, and you're probably right about what they want from it.

That is, there's probably no more compromise in a Killers album than in one by an "authentic" indie band (such as Ted Leo or whomever).

You're almost certainly wrong there. Situations requiring compromise come up much less frequently in less-scrutinized independent environments.

The logical outcome of this, then, is to locate the crappiness of the Killers (and greatness of Palace) in the band members themselves, as people, and also in the forces and influences which constitute them as such. This is genuine rather than artificial loathing (and loving).

This points to my perception of music as a vehicle of communication (sometimes unwittingly so). Music allows us to understand something about the people who make it. I believe this is its most important attribute.

...a lot of art "masterworks" are the product of commissions or designed to impress certain audiences, whom they service.

This is a conjecture. Some art is paid for by commission, and some particularly hollow art (Mark Kostabi's nonsense, for example, or Thomas Kinkade's) depends on an art-as-accoutrement market to exist. I contend that almost all great art is powerful because it is geniuinely, uniquely part of the artist, and is made with little consideration of its eventual audience. Some art is accidentally of interest, I suppose, but that which succeeds as intended to be great isn't ordered from a catalog.

Meanwhile, design schools are conceived precisely to retool artistic talent into an instrumental skill set: to make art serve. Art in the service of others (the firm, the boss, the market, the product) all the way.

And to equate this with art made for its own sake is to ignore the differences you articulate yourself. They are as different as throwing a bullet and shooting one.

Art definitely serves others. Whether it wants to or not - whether it is produced with others in mind - is not the end of the story.

You could claim this to be true if you equate art made for its own sake with art made to serve some decorative or identifying commercial purpose. But then that's a tautology. The second case is really the artist choosing to use the methods of artcraft to satisfy a client's requirements, and to this end, the art serves the artist. I don't equate the two (craft and art), so I still don't see how art can serve anyone but the artist.