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that damned fly wrote:i hope kitsch would be decided by the artist and not the audience.

FYP

Dr. O' Nothing wrote:Its the non-participants, always.

I respectfully disagree. Many "participants"/artists/etc. grapple with these issues too. Mulling over such distinctions, whether they're even worth making, etc. is not exlusively the pursuit of the "non-participants."

Training and technical skill is no substitute for creativity. Ever.

Classically trained musicians might be able to out play me note for note but I can write circles around them without ever putting any of it down on a music sheet.

One thing I've learned from being a musician and around musicians both professional and amateur as a recording engineer and a fan is that the ones who have their heads filled with theory often are constrained by that theory. They won't take chances or perform anything interesting because their training prevents them from following their instincts. Their compositions would take chances but their training tells them that these creative ideas are "wrong" so they discard them.

I've learned this from experience by the way and not from any books.

That is not to say that a trained musician can not be incredibly creative, it is just that training does not equal creativity or seriousness. Only creativity and serious intent equals creativity and serious intent.

Ask this guy how serious he is about his music.

Ekkssvvppllott wrote:

Dr. O' Nothing wrote:Its the non-participants, always.

I respectfully disagree. Many "participants"/artists/etc. grapple with these issues too. Mulling over such distinctions, whether they're even worth making, etc. is not exlusively the pursuit of the "non-participants."

Yes, mulling/grappling...of course...i do it myself all the time. I was referring to the act of 'defining', or deciding the limitations, scope and intent, specifically from outside realm of the creation/creators.

What Tocharian is basically doing is accusing Steve of "rockism" ( a somewhat valid charge, perhaps) but then she goes on to promote a contrary opinion that is equally elitist and narrow-minded.

I personally feel that all music has some merit, and works should be judged on a piece-by-piece basis, instead of in terms of relative styles or genres. Sure, I have preferences among styles of music, but I feel they all have positive value worth celebrating beyond mocking them as "camp". I enjoy some electronica (as well as rock, hip-hop, jazz, country, reggae, folk classical, etc.) but I agree with Steve's distaste for the "club culture" which is mostly a big circle jerk, concerned primarily with physical appearances, affluence and fashion trends.

What I don't understand is why somebody would join a message board connected to a recording studio that specializes in rock music, then insult the studio's owner and go on to berate rock music in general. Tocharian, do you really expect the members of this forum not to take umbrage at your dismissive trivialization of the very topic this forum is intended to discuss?

BTW Dr O'Nothing, I initially read this:

SS's contentions re: camp

as "SS concentration camp".

tocharian wrote:....
However, I still think that a lot of you guys are coming across as anti-intellectual crybabies who want your Slint albums christened as "art". Ace, if you want to know what the problem with art is in democratic societies, this is it.

Slint is already christened as what it is, "art". No one's worried.

tocharian wrote:Rock music does not require the degree of engagement that serious art requires (such as classical or jazz, I'm guessing, when it ceased to be principally the music of dive bars and brothels).

You're dismissing a gigantic, and varied style of music when you're dismissing rock as a whole. There's nothing that fundamentally separates rock from "high brow" music such as classical.

Where did the argument even come from, because one style is commonly more complex in it's structure than rock music, it is automatically better?

tocharian wrote: Nor does it anywhere near approach the content of a serious work or art, such as a volume of poetry. Most people I know who "grow out" of rock do so for these reasons. What rock lacks in engagement and content it makes up for in affectation and stylization. See Fugazi, etc.

Why would you even compare music to poetry? Apples and oranges. You also fail to take into account the varied styles of poetry as you casually dismiss a genre of music.

tocharian wrote:Now, I know and care fuck all about jazz so feel free to ream me here, but it's my understanding that jazz and rock have similar musical roots and jazz branched off and became in large part "musician's music" while rock remains a popular form. And so I ask, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THAT!?! Doesn't something have to be the popular form? Isn't it ok if it's primitive and campy? Seems like by trying to make it "art" you either damage art or you damage rock, and why would you want that?

You still haven't established that rock is campy nor kitschy. There is no method that a person "follows" to produce art. You either do, or you don't, depending on how the creator of the piece views it. On the same token, there is no method of measurement, or viable argument to label something as "art/ not art".

Rock, as much as classical or jazz, can be considered "musician's music". Take progressive for instance. Certain prog bands can easily outdo many impressionist and modern composers when comparing technique, theory, song structure, and content.

BTW Dr O'Nothing, I initially read this:

SS's contentions re: camp

as "SS concentration camp".

[/quote]
Unintentional, but i spotted it too while proofing and liked it because well, either way, it works, i think. (except, was she Jewish?). nevermind.

Who anointed Susan Sontag as the Pope who "canonizes" art forms as serious, anyway? Tina Brown? Puh-leeze.

Dr. O' Nothing wrote:I think some humility might serve you better in discussing this topic seeing as how you are obviously approaching it only from SS's contentions re: camp.

Whoa.

EDIT: Oops, someone already beat me to it.

To dismiss rock as being a lesser art form than classical music or poetry makes a tiny bit of sense to me, but I still strongly disagree with it.

Most rock lyrics can't measure up to the rigor and complexity of true poetry, but, then again, it makes little sense to compare the two, since rock lyrics gain much of their appeal from their conversational, off-the-cuff nature. And some albums, like the Minutemen's "Double Nickels on the Dime," feature truly thought-provoking lyrics. If you're interested, PM me and I'll send you five single-spaced pages I wrote analyzing only the first four songs on that album from a Kantian philosophical perspective. The album is an elaborate investigation into how language deludes us and traps us into sterile categories, whether political, musical or what have you. I'm planning on continuing to work on it and then sending it to Watt and finding out what he thinks about it. Watt is a genius. I think a lot of the inspiration for that album's conceptual foundations came from his conversations with Pettibon. I once read an interview with Steve where he said he listened to that first Ramones album thirty times in a row in an attempt to get everything he could out of it. I became really interested in that album after that, and eventually I began to piece together all of its little vignettes and work through its metaphors. Everyone thinks the Ramones were so dumb, but the way that album's lyrics function is truly unique. It's like someone took fourteen little snapshots and then told you to figure out what they all had in common, why they were all reflections of the same reality that undergirded each of them. So not all rock lyrics are throwaway.

And the musical complexity of my favorite rock, while perhaps not up to the standards of a Bach or a Coltrane, is still pretty damn impressive. I'm thinking of my favorite guitarists, like John Dieterich, Duane Denison, Johnny Marr, Richard Lloyd and the early Beefheart guitarists, for example. They stretched the vocabulary of the instrument in shocking and exciting ways. If you're not hearing interesting rock music, it's because you're not paying attention or searching it out for yourself.

Rock can touch the limits of what art can accomplish. That there is so much swill out there does not throw that fact into question.