It's interesting that you bring up the mother's voice and the naked woman in the bedroom. You use both examples to prove your main point, but it would seem that both of them undermine your argument.

Both the voice and the naked woman appeal to me on an intuitive level. I can't choose whether or not to love my mom's voice. I can't choose to pop a boner, either. Earlier you said that the governing ideas are what matter, but now you seem to be saying that the initial, intuitive feeling that strikes you when presented with a person or a song is the most important aspect of the experience. To say that mere appreciation of sound is inadequate is to state a truism, because appreciation of sound is the path to the deeper (perhaps more valuable) feelings that music stirs in me.

Music appeals to me solely on an intuitive level. Whatever ideas it represents matter very little to me because the pattern of notes itself is what strikes me. It's what gives me chills and makes me happy or mournful.

I don't think most musicians operate by trying to come up with a great idea for a song or an album and then monomaniacally submerging everything else in their lives to reaching that set goal. It's a much more intuitive process. I dont' think that this is what Steely Dan did. I can think of a few examples, though, and I think My Bloody Valentine is a perfect one, actually. It's part of the reason why that album sounds so stilted and artificial.

Music isn't even like poetry or a novel, where it's obvious that a great deal of conceptual work has gone into both the planning stages and the performance. This is why I don't pay attention to sterile classical music genres. They're meaningless to me, and, if they're not meaningless to musicians, I would suspect that they only function as launching pads for the eventual application of their own innate, mysterious, inexplicable talent. All genre classifications are ultimately arbitrary, anyway. They're useful as shorthand signifiers, but are actually counterproductive when used to describe what's going on in the music in the first place.

I don't even see the point in talking about music. Everything devolves into conversation about peripheral matters, because music, by its very nature, cannot be represented in language to any adequate degree. It's not exactly "dancing about architecture," as Robert Fripp would have it, but, still, every time I try to do it I find that a great deal is missing.

NerblyBear wrote:Music isn't even like poetry or a novel, where it's obvious that a great deal of conceptual work has gone into both the planning stages and the performance.

I disagree. Here are some examples of artists who I think obviously conceptualize and then (successfully) execute the idea:

Throbbing Gristle
Electric Eels
DNA
Sonic Youth
Gang of Four
PIL--2nd Edition era
Brian Eno
This Heat
Band of Susans
Roxy Music
Royal Trux
Wire
Minutemen
et.al.

Dr. O' Nothing wrote:I disagree. Here are some examples of artists who I think obviously conceptualize and then (successfully) execute the idea:

...

I'm not arguing that those bands don't have conceptual approaches reflected in their lyrics and their general M.O.

But how can a concept be realized in music? That's all that I'm talking about. How can a concept be put across in a non-conceptual and intuitive medium?

Maybe it's possible, but I don't think that that's how most musicians think of their task.

NerblyBear wrote:

Dr. O' Nothing wrote:I disagree. Here are some examples of artists who I think obviously conceptualize and then (successfully) execute the idea:

...

I'm not arguing that those bands don't have conceptual approaches reflected in their lyrics and their general M.O.

But how can a concept be realized in music? That's all that I'm talking about. How can a concept be put across in a non-conceptual and intuitive medium?

Maybe it's possible, but I don't think that that's how most musicians think of their task.

Music is a non-conceptual medium? What?
Musicians are 'artists', right? Artists conceptualize, then execute. Do you really think it only comes down to the choice of notes? Composition is not the end all/be all of music. The notes are often just the vehicle, or an element of the execution of the 'concept'.
If musicians only concerned themselves with what notes to play and in what succession, shit woulda died a long time ago.

I think you'd be surprised how many musicians approach their art/craft/whatever from a 'conceptual' perspective. (And the ones who don't usually suck ass.)

Here's a generic and somewhat inferred example:

Black Sabbath:

Concept: To convey a sense of 'heaviness', 'doom', 'groove', 'catharsis', 'power', and explore sonic and lyrical territory undocumented (for the most part, at that time) in popular music, etc.

Execution: Drop D tuning, instruments tuned down an octave, Orange/HIWatt amps up to 11, appropriate lyrical content, repetitive riffs favored over chord progressions, religious/pagan imagery, etc.

Concepts can work splendidly, y'all.

Example: Devo.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:Concepts can work splendidly, y'all.

Example: Devo.

Excellent example.

Also note that as their ideas thinned-out, their execution got more polished, and their records diminished. This inter-relationship and progression of bands' careers is almost depressing in its regularity and predictability.

steve wrote:

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:Concepts can work splendidly, y'all.

Example: Devo.

Excellent example.

Also note that as their ideas thinned-out, their execution got more polished, and their records diminished. This inter-relationship and progression of bands' careers is almost depressing in its regularity and predictability.

Also notice that there was a lot of tinkering in the early days to acheive their "ideal" concept. I'm thinking of all those weird early versions of things...the whole "Be Stiff" EP, for instance. Lots of ideas that needed polishing, brought to their inevitable conclusion, whatever. I think there's other reasons for bands becoming both more polished and crappier at the same time, some not very artistic in origin.

steve wrote:My point is that the effort spent "perfecting" a record by retards is evidence of a substandard foundational idea -- good ideas need much less attention from retards to be palatable.

Since I'm interested in the ideas behind the music at least as much as the mere sound coming out of the speakers, I allow myself to remain unimpressed by the tits and eyebrows of the presentation.

I'd see a band called The Tits & Eyebrows Of The Presentation.

M_a_x wrote:I think there's other reasons for bands becoming both more polished and crappier at the same time, some not very artistic in origin.

You talkin bout de co-CAINES?

steve wrote:

M_a_x wrote:I think there's other reasons for bands becoming both more polished and crappier at the same time, some not very artistic in origin.

You talkin bout de co-CAINES?

Haha, no. Specifically I was thinking about bands who had a little bit of success, or maybe a lot, and then find it dwindling away. So they think "let's get a hot new producer who knows how to get these new sounds" and there's never a happy ending to that. Or bands are going in when they're not ready, or have little new material (big problem back in the day when record companies wanted a new record every 7 months or so) and they take what they have and try to gussy it up so no one notices.