tipcat wrote:yut wrote:tipcat wrote:Artists will always find themselves tagged with a designation not of their making, where one will find charlatan hacks lumped with brilliant artists. Whether its intent is commercial or merely convenient, linguistic activity detracts from the appreciation of art on its own terms. Of course, this is ironic given that art's primary purpose is to express that which is ineffable.
Oh, blow it out your ass... Shoegaze is a genre and the bands we're talking about all have the same shtick with the delay pedals, latent G.Q. looks, and melancholia... This is exactly what I mean about the misapplication of postmodernism into some poo where everything is the same [...]
For the record, I am not a postmodernist. But my post, if you happened to read it properly, had nothing to do with either my ass or postmodernism. You have totally misunderstood me and I have no idea what you're trying to say as far as postmodernism goes; it has nothing to do with the discussion. Moreover, it is most amusing that you invoke this over-applied label to characterize my point about labeling. Hilarious! Salut, Yut! (what is a yut? rhymes with a hut.)
My argument about labels like 'shoegazer' can be boiled down to these two points:
1) Such labels have more to do with selling records than with describing the nature of the music created.
2) Such terms reduce all diversity in art to a sameness akin to wallpaper, which art is meant to disrupt.
My point was NOT to say that because art itself is beyond description, there are no words with which it can be described. That would indeed be a bullshit statement. The fact that art gets at something beyond language does NOT mean that art is unapproachable in language. But to invoke reductive terms to characterize art does an immense injustice to what art aims to achieve. This is true whether one thinks what is termed "shoegazer" rock is an art or a craft:
yut wrote:OK, shoegaze is "art"? Naw... It's a craft just like the homies bustin' rhymes to loops.
I think the activity of "homies bustin' rhymes to loops" has resulted in some pretty amazing ART.
This is probably why you find shoegaze music beyond categorization -- you're blown away by drum loops and rhymes, and think it's ART and defies categorization.
Is it art just because you hang it on the wall?
The postmodern thing is about this whole notion of "music that is beyond categorization". Postmodernists like Foucault are adamantly opposed to categorization... If you've ever read The History of Sexuality, it goes on and on about how dumb psychology is in their categorization of perversions and mental illnesses and their neat and tidy DMSR-III and everyone fits nice and neatly in these categories, but they can never quite cure any of these people. They do make a lot of money trying, though. And if Prozac cures depression in some people, and causes other people to commit suicide, well, heck... Maybe the categories aren't as well thought out as they believe. I think this is an adequate application of postmodernism...
But postmodernism is often perverted into this notion that certain forms of media defy classification.
But saying a genre of music like "shoegaze" defies categorization, and this is useless is crap. The reason people start a band and go with a certain sound, is to fit nice and neatly in a genre. The band memebers make a concious decision to be shoegaze... They're not ecclectic. You won't find a shoegaze band throw in a reggae or samba song on their album. Having recorded a shoegaze band, every track was at 120bpm and they used the same guitar sound and Pink Floyd "comfortably numb" ripoff drums on every track.
Beyond that, some genres of music are diverse. For example, art rock/progressive rock. What do Dream Theater and Magma have in common? Absoultely nothing. But they are in the same genre of music, and I saw Mike Portnoy at a Magma concert...
But shoegaze? Seriously, this "defiance of categorization" in defence of shoegaze is ludicrous. It's one of the most genre-bound forms of music there is. Read the posts... When we say "shoegaze" we all know the bands we're talking about, and the strict characteristics that make them "shoegaze".
Shoegaze is shoegaze, just like horror films are horror films. Sure, not all horror films are the same, but they all tend to have monsters and blood and guts. Shoegaze has the effiminate vocals low in the mix, the wide, repetitive, wall of guitar sound. It cracks me up when hippies say it sounds like Pink Floyd, but Pink Floyd at least write different sounding songs.
Shoegaze is not art, but craft... Same with 99% of hip-hop, metal, and country western... And unfortunately, about 95% of indie rock.
Don't fool yourself by the fact that shoegaze musicians look like people who work in art galleries. While this tends to be true, the genre is as bound and strictly adhered to as country/western.
Shoegaze is a great genre of music...
...FOR ME TO POOP ON! And I'll poop on those shoes to give them something to gaze at!
