steve wrote:I find this obfuscation an avoidance of the part that really matters: Making things that are good of themselves.

but nothing is, and i think this is what i was trying to get at. either you have context, or you don't (and in that case you can't "hear your way through the music" to the people on the other end of it, and their supposed intentions, which you claim to be as important as the sound itself)

once again i am sympathetic to your criticisms but at odds with the way in which you arrive at them

kind of a branch off this already esoteric discussion, how does time and context play into this? i think about this kind of stuff a lot especially with old metal/hard rock bands because i think there is always a level of 'well, for its time it was..' when i think about it.

for instance, imagine if blue cheer/cream/the yarbirds' records came out in the late 80s. it would sound exactly the same, yet after the punk rock/hardcore/no wave/whatever movements, it would no longer seem daring or extreme.

for me, part of the reason i like listening to blue cheer or black sabbath is just imagining what it was like in the late 60s to make relatively clean amplifiers sound like distorted, resonating mattresses and how it must have freaked everyone out. i wish i had more time to formulate my thoughts better, but i figured i'd throw this out there for now..

aaron wrote:"evoking an authentic essence" sounds great, but nobody knows what that means; probably because "authentic essences" don't exist.

I disagree.

who decides what musical "authenticity" is?

Me. Or in your case, you.

and who's to say "genuine expression" can't be done with mimicry and pastiche?

Oh, it can. But mere mimicry is merely that. Mere pastiche is merely that. Something better is better before (or beyond) it is mimicry.

Champion Rabbit wrote:Unless I am going completely insane, this seems ENTIRELY at odds with the points that you made regarding audio-art/music.

I don't see how. I think things can be good, and that they encompass more than their surface. I don't think redirecting the attention away from the thing makes the thing any better, or is itself of interest.

It's possible that I am being stupid.

Nah.

I think time and context can do a lot more to help a band than hurt it. For example, if you were to take a cream album and release it 20 years later under a different name the impact would not be as powerful. This is not to say it would not be successful, but it would lose that edge of being characterized a definitive/progressive album. While it has little to do with the quality of a band, time and context can contribute to its image.

A good band is going to be a good band regardless of the constraints, and is there anything worse than seeing a talentless bunch of larry's trying to be progressive just to be progressive? Perhaps the only thing worse is seeing a nation of gang of four rip-offs, which leads me to this question: If you were to take Interpol and place them circa 1972 and take Joy Division and move them to present, would I think Joy Division are a bunch of rip-off hacks and Interpol one of the most creative bands of all time?

My answer should shed some light on the time/context thing. Say we switch the release dates of the same two albums, switch Warsaw with Antics, and this assumes that Interpol is making the same music in 1972 that they are in 2004 and vice versa with Joy Division, I would probably be an Interpol fan given the time it was released. However, if I listened to the two regardless of time context, Interpol gets blown out of the water. If we change the conditions to say move the bands meaning Interpol is a young band writing new material in 1972, Joy Division the same only in 2004, Joy Divison kills all because the material they would make in 2004 would most likely be ground breaking whereas Interpol would be busy trying to rip off Pink Floyd.

General rule of thumb, good music good regardless, time and context can enhance bands image, but by no means make a band good on its own.

aaron wrote: either you have context, or you don't (and in that case you can't "hear your way through the music" to the people on the other end of it, and their supposed intentions, which you claim to be as important as the sound itself)

I have no context I can define for Japanese literature. I know nothing of its history, origins, social milieu, antecedants or value to its originating culture. That said, I think Shusaku Endo's "Silence" is an awesome novel. It hurts reading it. It made me think about more things than I can count, the least important of them being my mortality and belief in my own convictions.

I have no context for this work other than what I bring to it, which is minimal in this case. I am not Japanese. I am not a history buff. I am not a practicing Catholic. I have no reverence for religion, religious men, or even a belief in God. Come to think of it, I brought nothing to this book. Endo did all the work. He wrote a great novel, and it isn't great because of the title, its setting, where I discovered it or any other trivialities. It is great because he did the hard part: He expressed complex ideas in a genuine way that doesn't play games with the presentation or meaning of the sentences.

I suggest that context is currently (say for the last fifty years) grossly over-valued in the appreciation of art, much as it was under-valued in the couple of centuries before.

It matters, I guess, about on a par with purchase price or something, but it isn't everything -- it is far less than it is made out to be.

bingo.

It's hard to completely throw out the concept of association. Most people like or dislike things (inadvertently) in relation to what it might make them think, of how it was introduced, or how they felt when they first heard it. And if in any of these instances, scenerios were reversed, their opinions may be reversed.
I'm not saying EVERYONE is prey to this.
But it's possible that some people like/dont like things, not based on wether they actually like them, but on how it is presented.

Jeremy

But it's possible that some people like/dont like things, not based on wether they actually like them, but on how it is presented.

I agree with you here, people do like bells and whistles, but content always rules over context in time. There have been many a instance where I have been blinded by someone's ability to tomfoolerize, and as much as I may want the magic to last, acts based on image or presentation are always found out sooner or later.

Jeremy spoke in class today:

It's hard to completely throw out the concept of association.

I don't think anyone has thrown out the significance of assosciation, rather pointing out that it is insignificant in respect to the overall quality of the product.

dan fouts
jock

now there is some indisputable commentary, may I give to you the first of many salut to come mysterious namer of people