When is something 'just enough' as opposed to too much?

Was Mozart too much? Coltrane? Armstrong? Who would be just enough?

That seems a very presumptuous dividing line. It also seems a bit like someone trying to tell me what my eyes and heart saw and felt based on no good information. In fact, it sounds like an attempt to pigeon hole creators and audiences alike in strokes well too broad.

When the Ramones adopted personas and created relatively liberating music in simplistic structures that evinced as much desperation as playfulness or seriousness (and they were sometimes so serious that what they did best was undercut), then got on stage, argued in utterly earnest terms, and then played songs badly that created cultural spaces that changed lives on multiple levels in multiple places and time frames, I cannot see how terms like camp or kitsch adequately apply save in the name of explaining the bounds of individual experiences of the Ramones. These are academic terms being trampled by an avalanche of real experiences which far outstrip the efforts to subdue them with nomenclature or pretense. It is not that the Ramones were never reasonably seen as campy or kitschy or whatever, but that the totality of the Ramones as a string of events and ideas and sounds serially absorbed by countless individuals goes well beyond the very narrow ideas of camp and kitsch.

That's how it seems to me.

ERawk wrote:People in the classical world have improvisational skills but it's not always developed to the extent of other musicians (rock, jazz, early music). It really depends on the teachers you've had in the past and whether they nuture improvising or not. Stop with the blanket statements, it's warm enough in here.

I'm sorry. This is silly and petty but this is BUGGIN' ME. ERawk, your friends never got play pieces with cadenzas which they composed themselves!?! They never got to play chamber music in which they could embelish!?! That was not part of their training!?! Soooo sad!!!

tocharian wrote:

Skronk wrote:

tocharian wrote:

Skronk wrote:If there is a lack of the things you mentioned, i.e. persona, theatrics, "extreme sentiment", is it still "Kitsch"?

Yes, and worse. Kitsch that can't be redeemed as camp.

You're under your own definition of kitsch now. You've bypassed even Sontag's ramblings.

As Rick Reuben often tells me, READ LOSER.

Sontag wrote:In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.

What the hell is up with you? Did I insult you somewhere? I said Sontag's ramblings. Your definition is not fitting with hers at all.

"Kitsch, when not apparent, or even non existant, is refered to as CAMP. Even though it's hallmarks are nowhere to be found..."

For instance, rock music, in it's earnestness, did not fail. It only failed to you. You see what you like, and ignore the various and valid points brought up by about 8 different posters. Not to mention the serious rock bands of the 20th century.

Sontag's blowed smoke up your ass. As if camp, in it's ridiculousness, is quantifiable.

NOW YOU GO READ, LOSER.

burun wrote:'Cos you're a g-g-g-girl!

no, 'cause she's a gangst(a/er).

Jesus Christ, 16 pages of this???

Edited in light of the post above...

tocharian wrote:

M_a_x wrote:Right. It's just hipster doofus irony...going by tocharian's academic definition.

Sorta. Keep going.

Sontag wrote:Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.

Sontag wrote:Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not.

Sontag wrote:As a taste in persons, Camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated.

Sontag wrote:In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.

Sontag wrote:Camp is art that can propose itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is "too much."... visual reward - the glamour, the theatricality - that marks off certain extravagances as Camp... And third among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of experience.

Sontag wrote: Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious... The traditional means for going beyond straight seriousness - irony, satire - seem feeble today, inadequate to the culturally oversaturated medium in which contemporary sensibility is schooled. Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality

Sontag wrote:Camp is the glorification of "character." The statement is of no importance - except, of course, to the person (Loie Fuller, Gaudí, Cecil B. De Mille, Crivelli, de Gaulle, etc.) who makes it. What the Camp eye appreciates is the unity, the force of the person

Does that help?

No. It still blathers on about subjective things. Who decides what is "too much"? I guess you do.
The right (or wrong) person with the proper perspective could deem any artistic creation "kitsch" or "camp". The words are useless. Use different words.

steve wrote:

Bernardo wrote:

steve wrote:someone who only likes rock music and only because it is rock music.

Not as rare as you´d think.

Okay, name a couple. I can't think of anyone.

Not anyone you´d know, I just happen to know a lot of people in Brazil who are into rock as something that exists in opposition to other forms of music, and see an intrinsic value in something being categorizable as "rock".

steve wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:Steve, I didn't openly accuse you of espousing this view and I don't know enough about your personal taste in music to be sure, but your dismissive attitude towards recent electronically generated/composed music might understandably be perceived by some as "rockist."

I go to some lengths to explain myself and my critical thinking. This and the open admiration I have for such a wide spectrum of music (only a small portion of it being inarguably "rock" music) ought to make it clear that my distaste for some music is based on the music itself -- "music" being broadly defined to include everything associated with the sound under discussion.

I would still like to see an example of this species, a genuine "rockist." They appear to be as imaginary as unicorns.

Well I didn't coin the term, but I imagine it was originally intended as a derisive label, applied to certain reviewers in the British music press. These reviewers apparently showed a tendency towards praising examples of rock music created in the "folk" tradition (ie. singer-songwriters composing pieces which they perform themselves along with a small ensemble, or bands composing and performing their own music in a live setting) and panning musics that are generated by other processes. A "rockist" critic would be dismissive of rap artists who rely on various record producers to create their music for them, or pop singers who perform music composed specifically for them by professional songwriters in the tradition of Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, Hitsville USA, pop artists who don't write their own stuff like Whitney Houston, Paula Abdul or Mariah Carey, pre-fab "boy bands" etc. I believe "Rockist" critics would also be highly dismissive of artists who create music using nontraditional electronic means such as MIDI sequencers, computers, or a large degree of digital sampling instead of actually physically generating their own sounds .

I'm not too familiar with the UK music press so I don't feel comfortable pointing fingers or giving examples, but the Wikipedia entry for "Rockism" provides some links to pages where the term is used and discussed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockism

I am unsure why the term 'rockist' is such a big deal. Of course there are purists out there - or, to put it another way, purposely insular people. I'm sure we all knew people in high school who thought the only real music was made by people with long hair, playing elektric guitars and singing songs about boy-girl relatonships and/or Satan.
As an insult or accusation, though, I think it's whipped out as a personal attack more than anything. Any term bandied about by UK music critics is rife with suspicion, in my eyes.