watching the detectives (critics)

Nick Cain (see interview in perfect sound forever) is not a critic in the normal sense. But he is a critic, make no mistake. Opprobium is an excellent read because he reviews each CD on its merits and he is not afraid to give bad reviews to some of the'darlings' of the improv scene.

'The web site seems to me to be largely a push into world media of promotion of some of the most excessively self-indulgent sub-rock, attempted-failed "free" music, lazy "art-rock" and stoner jamming.'

Are we reading the same web mag? It's mostly improv based. And any rock reviewed has some connection with free jazz/improv. Can we be specific abt art-rock here (if I'm wrong then I've only paid attention to the improv they review).

I disagree with some of the reviews. I remeber Nick hated 'Kaitkei kokan' (didn't spell that correctly but there it is) but i loved that one.

And While some Wire critics go easy on some improv others like Ben stick their neck and say, that, some improv is not worth buying and he does his job better than most. the fact you'd want to boot him shows you don't like reading some thought-provoking stuff (yes, Ben/Nick are wrong on some things but they give different prespectives and that is always welcome).

ILM- Are you talking abt 'freaky trigger'- while I like the writing it's mostly popular forms (nothing wrong with that but you can't compare Opprobium with ILM).

gee thank IMD records, we were able to sell [the new Bill Direen CD] for a cool [$X

for those that don't know what George is talking about here, Nick sold some ad space and took some promos from a new independent label called IMD for the first issue of oppobrium and then printed the above statement instead of any review. Bill Direen is one of our country's most under-rated and consistently excellent musicians, but Nick had obviously decided that isn't wasn't hip to the improv scene he'd just discovered. Of course the great thing about Opprobrium being based in Chch was that the reviewers sold everything they received (even the stuff they raved about) to the second hand shop so that those of us who actually listened to music could hear it.

Getting down to the nitty gritty, lot's of free spirit method music will deliver that ecstatic release to kids who a generation ago might have enjoyed the Grateful Dead improvising on stage, with the same "cool as a rock gig" trappings thrown in, show-time tricks only Miles was cool enough to stoop too in jazz previously. Now jazz/rock/art bands too revel in their own excesses, as if anyone was interested.

So, if not for a few accidental proponents of certain musics like Moore and Coley, Johnston and FE, todays music criticism agenda might be quite different. I'm very happy that some Afro-Americans and whites who risked ridicule by playing the way they felt might actually see some reward, albeit in their later years.

But back to the "horseshit" -- take a good long look at the swagger of Cain -- just coming out and rendering a forcefully worded opinion does not mean it's a forcefully held view, and certainly doesn't make a review any more credible. I watched Opprobium and Corpus Hermeticum, local outfits in part at least, develop with interest. I wish Dead C, Dust Handful, etc.. would play more often but y'know, it always seems to me that their playing is more of a forced process, not a worthily enjoyable experience for the musos -- i mean they don't appear to enjoy their own music. It's art, relying on the "artfullnes, so can wing it" assumption, one that a lot of the embarassing free/rock bands around can't seem to deliver on. See the Dead C tell the wire what a pain in the ass performing actually is.

So, no I don't feel left out of anything because what's on offer with most material within the ambit of Opprobrium simply does not sustain interest beyond historical documentation in a university library somewhere. I think it's fine to call into question reviewers with Cain's style, a typically negative and smug feeling style, and one with small experience gleaned off some years in the field listening to all the (free)(rock) that's already been done and perhaps wasn't recognised at the time (Albert Ayler for instance, was unpopular with lot's of good ole boy jazz types in the '60s) It's weird how you can feel the prejudices seeping through into the new reviews of the new set.

Critics should be reliable enough to say and mean stuff about music that's true -- they should be into the music -- a revewier. Gonzo rock journaism has taken over, everybody's rocking free, and nothing will prepare these critics everywhere for appraising the finesse of the great 20th century masters of anbstract jazz or rock as against the latest feedback soaked dirge.

Opprobrium: good example -- most people I know who are actively involved in music think the reviews in that magazine read like bad mis-informed jokes. OK, you like the material it covers, well so do I, but when the reviewing starts you really have to wonder whether politics came before substance. All those in jokes. All the gossip about what musician "foo" did with "bar" or, er "boo" (sorry, Opprobrium level joke). Nick Cain has even dismissed entire labels on the basis of some provocative angle he's pursuing to provide sufficient "opprobrium".

How can anyone not take "opprobrium" without salt, no-doze or a personal collection of the "great records" to help with all those easy to make comparisons. Yeah, Opp. perfect example of reviewers priorities confused and abused in these half-way-dutch courage times.

My question to you (as a fellow non-critic) is why you care so much? If critics annoy you and you find their criticism and approach loathesome, weeeelll turn off your computer or put down the mag or whatever. Or try to find Jo Jo Dancer and start a revolutionary critics club. Or whatever. But don't berate non-critics for not responding to this, because I, speaking for myself anyway, think these are issues which really only torture critics by and large. The rest of the music buying public just goes on buying records. I/We just don't care that much about critics.

And Opprobrium is such a good example of nepotism, incestuousness, right there in a very small outlet, albeit closely involved with another small outlet Corpus Hermeticum, both of which Thuston Moore has pronounced "cool". Perhaps Hamish I'm using a local example to iluustrate things which perhaps it turns out Opprobrium is a particularly bad exmple of, ie badder then the norm for rock criticism. But hey, it's had the blessing of Mr "thirstin' for" Moore, so how dare I even mention it. Bad politics, yes. Good journalism ? Hey, someone point to some good journalism.

Hey, someone point to some good journalism that covers alternative bands and improv bands (Opprobrium _does_ cover both although it's negative critical perspective seems to be causing it's ambit of review material to be shrinking ever decreasingly). Where are the good music reviews that don't have gossip, scene, politics, musical fashion and old-fashioned one-eyed musical bias ?

I dont' want to have to rely on most of the critics out there now. They don't help me decide properly, they sway my interest in fact as basely as the way an ad i've seen somewhere when I go to purchase something spontaneously will sometimes influence me. Sure critics expressing any opinion can sometimes ultimately mean recognition>>enthusiasm>>trust>>purchase in a spontaneous "I feel like buying some new music" record store moment. Maybe that's my fault. But there's still that "look at this, it's new, it's cool" which is an attitude recorded music seems stuck with and critics have a vested interest in maintaining.

Perhaps it's that critics will stoop to reviewing anything where there's a slot that needs filling. This does result in a little mini- media-spin for any new music on the block. Perhaps they influenece my on-line buying, when truly, some critics i can think of would do a more impartial job by simply registering that a new release has happened.

But don't forget the implicit sujectivities which we've mentioned, not there in good reviews but there in most that are the problem. Most critics are fallable, arguably beyond the scope of what I reckon in our brave new market/competition global scheme of things is their public duty. They will still often divert attention to music in irresponsible, childish and self-serving ways. Can this be a good thing ? Should we have better critics ? There's so much music out there now and already we're admitiing some critics are more reliable than others.

Again, I don't know what Thurston's story is and I don't give a shit. Until two years ago I didn't know what forced exposure was, who byron coley was or anyhting. And is Free improv/Jazz suddenly 'cool'. You are deluding yourself. Electronic music, hip-hop, metal, UK garage, dance music I think are things that people pay far more attention to.

''I wish Dead C, Dust Handful, etc.. would play more often but y'know, it always seems to me that their playing is more of a forced process, not a worthily enjoyable experience for the musos -- i mean they don't appear to enjoy their own music.''

Never seen them play live. but I am a member of drone-on mailing group. Dead C played all tomorrow's party in LA and the reaction of the mailer who saw them was very positive. And again, how do you know they don't enjoy it. from listening to dead C it's one of the most thrilling things I 've ever heard in my life.

But back to Nick Cain: I like him because he will dismiss certain labels, for instance. Because it is TRUE that some labels just release garbage. And he can be cynical, and leave a bad taste in your mouth but he can also be enthusiastic. And yes, his style is derived from lester or that 'gonzo' school. he's not a great writer but he is a good read.

''OK, you like the material it covers, well so do I, but when the reviewing starts you really have to wonder whether politics came before substance.''

Music and the political situation are often linked. Music is not made as just music. Music is when sounds are invested in meaning.

The statement above begs the question: What kind of criticism are you looking for?

Overall I agree with you that most critics are fallable and so on...but to pick on 'Opprobium' (which is a good read along with other internet 'zines like Rubberneck, perfect sound forever and sound projector) is a mistake.

I read this stuff and very often disagree. It would be a mistake not to.

And as an addendum, caught the separate club show they did in LA the following night and it was quite, quite wonderful. The three looked very much like they were enjoying themselves -- Yates in particular kept cracking some smiles -- while Russell, who I ended up chatting with briefly, was very friendly and easy to talk to. You certainly don't have to like the Dead C's music, George, but they didn't exactly give off the air of 'oh, now we *have* to play a show, moan, complain.'

Nick Cain's ego get's in the way. He has access to good reveiwers for that magazine. Really it's when he reviews things himself that one cringes. And notice he keeps the most highly desirable free stuff for himself.

You haven't addressed the substance of his reveiws, or any of the complaints I make about reviewers in general.

Sure I'm commenting on Opprobrium because I like music it covers, but I do not take to some of the reviewers happily. Since I enjoy that sort of music, which is a much wider set than just improv, where else do I go for actual informed critique of that music -- The Wire, drone- on, ILM ? Where are some steady critics I can get to know and maybe agree with ? You haven't answered anything I've said with anything remotely objective. Opprobrium is so self-satisfied editorially that it always does itself a disservice. But hey, Oprrobrium was just an example. But enough of that.

In this thread i primarily gave reasons why I think critics can't be trusted. Nobody has said anything to dispel my concerns, only, subjectively, "well I think it's a great read" or "you're insane".

I wish people would be prepared to stick their neck out a bit -- that's going against the fashion rules of institutions like magazines sure, and nobody seems to want to do anything except leap to critics' defence. I would have thought everybody has had some experience being burned on a critic's rec.s Step forward please.

what do you really think, is it not rock'n'roll to question critics, to get good ones in and hope the critics can hrlp.

If no opiion

What, you think we don't? Here and elsewhere? I write for the AMG on a regular basis -- in fact, you'll find tons of Dead C reviews there, for one thing -- and whatever I write is exactly what I feel.

All anyone can hope to do is find a particular critic or group of critics that he or she tends to agree with and trust, and read them skeptically and with a bit of intelligence about their biases. That's all. Perhaps that's why people read and particpate in forums like ILM - to get a broad base of comparisons about a particular work and to decide which ones resonate. That's also why there are things like metacritic ( http://www.metacritic.com/music ), which allows you to see a number of different reviews of the same work.

And by the way, if you're complaining that some critics are liars, there's a simple solution for you: DON'T RELY ON THOSE CRITICS.

In closing, I should point out: I am *not* a critic.

In the micro climate of this sort of music, critics become very important as there maybe thirty CDs of interest per every hundred of this sort of music that bear repeated listenings. Let's assume some of these big critics or label/magazine guys get sent fifty per hundred of said CDs (magazines would certainly get fifty percent). Smaller critics might get ten per hundred. Now my point is simply this. Critics regularly traul through perhaps a dozen as many CDs as the average punter buys (don't worry, it's a different equation, which I won't attempt to link mathematically to the first). I say that some critics' focus on a particular CD in light of the lifestyle of regularly trauling through music divorces them from the focus of a typical punter who buys CD one at at time and enjoys them one at a time. How many listens does a critic give a CD that he doesn't like on first listen ? Let's be generous and assume he listens to it once more. The CDs he likes first time around he'll listen to again, and if he's not bored, in goes the review. Now, how many of your favourite recordings over the years would that process work for ?

Perhaps this is simply an industry truism applicable as much to the smaller scale/league music most of us are interested in as the Kylie Minogue area. I say that it shouldn't be. Perhaps grinding me teeth through the first 5 volumes of Nick Cain's collected essays on various recordings drove me to this point, gave me that axe to grind. The message it did drive home was that I got to see the lack of real independent thinking between critics and so-called artists happening in my own back yard. Let's just say the mutual back-patting became so tiresomely obvious and the prosaic Nick Cain so overbearingly boring that I now don't really trust critics. It provided examples of systematic failure, systematic political taking-of-sides, systematic favours, in all a very deliberate editorial position that became a reviewer position that in Nick's case was wholly-non-independent.

Does this happen every where ? I hope not.

Julio, the attitudes I attributed directly to the Dead C like "why bother playing live anyway" were taken from the "Dead's" own mouths, from their interview with The Wire. And if they were smiling, well no- one said what they're doing isn't fun. It's just weird that it should form one of the centre pieces of a festival. That would have me laughing on the floor -- i've seen them live lot's of times and listened again and again to their live recordings, and I'm still waiting to flip for this band the way so many critics and aesthetes claim they have. And someone "sticking their neck out for the Dead C", yeah that is funny.

Sure is. You're just so caught up in the whole sense of personal grievance you have that you can't see it from a very simple angle -- I am willing to say something about a band's release(s), put my name to it, put it out there for public consumption and consideration and be willing to take whatever responses I might get as a result, positive or negative, agreeing or violently disagreeing. I could say nothing; I chose not to do that.

I am not interested in scenes and standards of what is cool and what isn't. I like the Dead C -- to name just *one* band out of many -- and am willing to say so. If you think I'm playing up to any sort of mafia of taste, you're an idiot. The only person I answer to is me.

Why would you read five volumes of writing by this guy, if you obviously hate him so much?

I may or may not respond to your actual queries in a while, but for now I think you need to broaden your horizions past your own scene, because it seems to be the only thing that you can mention as an example of the things you hate so much.

Ned is OTM. Why didn't we figure that out before?

So this is what it's all about. You've heard the critics, spent money on a few albums (you gave each of these many listens- how considerate!). Then you went to see 'em live. You didn't like it. Then you bought some live recordings...I wish I had that amount of patience. Here's some advice. You hear abt a band. Search some info on the web (if you can't hear a track, say and yeah, tery and get hold of a few reviews). Choose a record by this band. Buy it. Give TWO listens and if you can't hear anything that makes you listen to it again then go down to the record and tape exchange, OK.

For fuck sake. Even I don't pay that much attention to crtics because we're all critics. Each of us hears music differently so there will inevitably be differences of opinion.

I also read the Wire interview. As i recall, they undertook a 12-date tour of the USA and said 'no more'. That's why they don't play more than 3-4 times a year (that's what I've hear). So what? The drudgery of the rock circuit can kill bands and that's OK by me.

Oh, Ned. DAMN YOU! You were lucky enough to see 'em. I envy you.

Actually the fact they don't play live is a grievance of sorts in this household. If they don't come here then I'll have to go there.

(I know this contradicts the that's OK line but...there it is)

Alex- the that's OK line actually refers to- That's OK the dead C only play 3-4 times a year. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Not the it's OK for bands to die. Mind you if the bad ones died...it would be a lot of deaths. AND NOT EVEN I WOULD WANT THAT!

But Ned here I am sticking my neck out for what I think, which to be honest isn't cool, in fact it's quite bad for some aspects of my social life to talk like this, so yeah, I think we disagree on what "sticking your neck out" means.

Sticking my neck out here in ILM has been bad -- most replies are reduceable to one-liners and often seem to be a bit reductive too: Todd (editor of something apparently) -- where is the better coverage of the music scene? Most mags are much more conservative in their review material than Opp., Wire, FE when available. Oh, and which scene should I get into that's going to be more interesting than those guys ? Remember I still like a lot of the music these magazines cover, it's just that style of review that I hate, a saliant matter which seems to have been avoided by the mostly critics who've replied.

I wish I didn't have to go on about one mag, one group, but they're good examples of the problem i'm afraid. In fact most of my initial posts ideas have not been taken up on at all. Obviously pointing a finger at a critic is not cool by other critics, and various critical devices have been used to have a go at what i'm saying. Examples: "Well I don't ride on the back of the freebies" -- most critics would say that wouldn't they as has been repeated lot's in this discussion. Another example : "If you don't like it tough, there's no way to get around subjectivity anyway" -- well critics who can't get to some target audience level, method-critique their way into the head of a typical purchaser of music they don't like (themselves for personal matters of taste) and can't distinguish these competing impulses, these people shouldn't have been critics to begin with. How about "Nobody takes critics seriously anyway ..", "what's your problem, troll,..", "you're bitter and twisted for money mispent on CDs .." ....

why don't I agree with you and say hey, critics can do no wrong, we need them, we can trust their judgement without knowing anything about them,, and pity them for the waste disposal problems inherent in getting lot's of free CDs they don't like, the freebies they do like being a small well deserved reward.

it is a relief that since now everyone can be a critic if they want to use the 'net, we can forget about any quality control, forgive critics for their often side-tracked mini-tracts, surely a perk for onerous work, and look forward to the day when internet supply will force a new sort of critic out, one who says "I bought this when I first heard it but it has no long-term redeeming quality whatsover; I'd buy that for a dollar"

I think you've structured this paragraph wrong so maybe I'm reading it incorrectly, but please clarify:

1) What is a "typical record purchaser"? How much do they earn per annum? Do they like metal or country? Do they concentrate on lyrics or arrangement? Do they spend $16 a day on albums, or $16 a month, or $16 a year? How many listens do they allocate to each album in their collection? Do they listen to it fifty times in a row and never again, or once a week for the next ten years? Do they read any music magazine they can find, or did they idly pick up one while browsing in Borders? Do they eat Coco Pops or Rice Bubbles? Or toast? Do they have Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse on their boxer shorts?

And which of the above impulses am I expected to balance again?

The better way is I think sitting under our noses. Get the music for review. Copy it four times, the five people reach a consensus, argue about it, listen to this track, see why one persom doesn't like it (and make sure we know why and also what seh does like). It's the opposite of that damn modernist "this is right" stuff.

I accept that 'net robots digging up opinions from various sources is interesting and would be something useful, but five people agreeing on things, committee style, just might rid us of the horribe "critic is guru" myth and present a perculated conclusion, with even "Jack thinks this track is great but jill hates that, and David doesn't like this sort of thing, all because ...[ _resons_ ]"

[remember that the four copies only legally exist for fair use and so would obviously have to be subsequently destroyed. obviously no critics in the civilised world ever possibly stoop to copying a review CD and then selling the review copy secondhand -- it goes without saying]

Why is it under our noses ? because it already happens like that on list-serves, newsgroups and bulletin boards everywhere.

Doesn't that leave you feeling critics have an interest to protect for thmselves? Face it, is a one person review valid, once you compare it to the conclusion reached through discussion. No way, discussion wins hands down, and with the 'net you can do it.

Most of the critics in this thread (and they clearly outnumber the non-critics at this stage of the debate) have just vehemently defended the absolute status quo, with no constructive suggestions, more a "go away and shut up" sort of angle, throughout this discussion, so they may not be ideal candidates for such a consensus based system given their views appear firmly held, views that they presented here in a tone it seems as if still in their critic/guru/school teacher role. Singlemindedness. Who would want to work with them ?

People buy magazines -- people buy Wire, people bought Opprobrium when it was print, they bought FE. All these mags had criticism, review happening, in some cases up 1/3 of total issue. People obviously do want to know what "A Critic" thinks. That doesn't mean people the behave blindly like lemmings and run off and buy things (un)necessarily. It just means that any information about such'n'such music is better than none, for the average music buyer.

But hey i'm sick of some of these lame-o non-sequitors thrown at me. The world has not given up on critics; the world still apears to enjoy critics and may still be influenced by them a great deal when they buy music. I just hoped that we could get to acknowledge some issues that may or may not be true for particular critics. Now I just cannot be bothered with this thread anymore.

In legal disputes lawyers file caveats, introduce new evidence late, apply to courts late and always try for interim injunctions. I'm a lawyer and these are called stalling tactics. The stalling tactics i've come across in this thread makes me believe that had some of these ILM people been born on the other half of the world they could very easily be religious fanatics.

And then you pick on Dead C for some reason. Plenty of critics like bands that I absolutely have contempt for, you know.

I think that's enough for this thread.

George- All this on record reviews and critics.

Anyway, what time is it now in NZ. It must be the early hours. Get some sleep.

George: This new Dead C album really sucks, and here's why: bla bla blah
Ned: Naw, it's really great. You mention blah bla, but I disagree for these reasons: bla blah blah.
George: That may be true, but you're misinterpreting this part, which in my opinion bla blah
etc.

Biggest problem, obv. is space: most print titles can barely sell enough ads to run a handful of 100-word encapsulations, let alone the full-meal deal. As you've stated elsewhere, a web forum which allows for participation from both critics and fans is the way around this. Which is, uh, what you've got right here. So.

See also: the Focus Group.

actually "deep" is an interesting problem-metaphor in relation to discussions vs disquisations, seeing as "depth" (at least as usually recognised) only arrives as a product of uninterrupted — and arguably also multiple — production- creation (i mean a book or a film, or an oeuvre, are more likely to deliver standard-issue agreed-on depth than a fragment or a one-liner: GG himself tends to BIG LONG POSTS, and dislikes flip quick rejoinders... )

urgent and key disclaimer: i am a gemini and therefore greatly prefer flip and shallow, possibly — to be faux profound for a moment — because no one EVAH accuses the one-liner guy of FAKING DEPTH BY THE LENGTH AND OBSCURITY (AND CONVOLUTED TEDIUM) OF THEIR CONTRIBUTION.

Not really. The biggest problem is that one person likes an element or approach that the other dislikes. Personal opinion being all, what happens next?

You may ask why i persevered -- the advice of the more contemplative styles of criticism that preceded rock criticism. That's it. Reviews of records that just admitted the stuff under review was kind'a trancsendental in some weird way, that the critic would recommend it 15 years later too -- I used the Rolling Stone Jazz Guide to guide me through jazz and get me to the most interesting stuff -- admittedly the weirdest to the ears, but the wise sounding words of older critics reflecting on records made maybe fifteen years ago made a very compelling and straightforward case.

My favourite records have mostly been favourites for some time, but new ones emerge every so often when i discover them -- i think of these records as old friends, reliable, consisitent, not easily boring. examples off the cuff: Schoenburg Chamber Concertos 1 and 2, Cecil Taylor w/ Jazz Composers Orchestra, Another Green World, CT again with "another salty swift and not goodbye" and a couple of others by that same group, Sonic Youths youthful peak Daydream Nation, various different recordings of various Anthony Braxton projects, getting inside bebop properly, getting inside Ornnette Coleman. I'll admit that in all the above cases I went "what the fuck is this" for quite some listens and over time my perception cahanged -- and it's a wonderful thing to discover a new form of music you can enjoy - - getting to new music feelings is the best musical experience out there. Over the years I can say that now I can enjoy this material, all rich in internal musical referencing and colour and politics and (sometimes)words. It's a selection off the top of my head, but had I not been pointed to Braxton and Taylor by jazz critics I would not have bothered with the average 8 listens it took to really get comfortable with this stuff. The shock of the new -- a Robert Hughes' line ?

Yeah, Julio, I needed someone older than me and 'round the jazz block who'd seen this stuff develop in jazz to provide road maps into what initially made no sense to me. And the Schoenburg and later American serialists, well listening to them is an insanely entertainingly fierce musical bathe. The so-called "free jazz" (not "improv", but semi-composed) music of Braxton and Taylor, and the elaborate musical spectacles of the (post)serialists were daunting, did not obey the conventional dance steps, struck out initially jarring harmonies,.. but finally getting on and understanding that amount of information flow, feeling music being calculated and juggled in your head (about 1000 times more satisfying than "xpressway to yr skull", I might add), that's a naturally ecstatic communion you have with your friend the music. You don't remember how the music goes because that would be hard to remember, but once you know how it works, you're in a new world of sensations. You can go there agin. Most critics don't go there at all.

When I had these epiphanies 15 years ago I basically had to accept most rock as metronomic ritual mob chants or stoner colour fields -- I had to accept that nothing much of intelligence was actually happening in that music, that it just was, that it had lost any sense of progress or achievement I had previously equated with it. I have to thank the maturer critics who spelt out how to make sense of some of this new music and where to find it. Setting drone-on type music against this more complicated stuff is play-dough to Michel Angelo. My life has been enriched by music I had initially thought was just deliberately obtusely arty, elitist, academic, mathematical. It took many spins to get to that level of understanding which means I can take Braxton events comfortably in my stride now. Oh i'm still learning, and these weird inner logics of this complicated stuff will keep me grinning from ear to ear for years to come.

I wouldn't have this really great music, stuff that justifies what university music deprtments do around the world, if I had trusted my own ears for your 2-3 listens, my life would be stuck in rock-ish norms or I would have given up on music.

I was very lucky to have had the right amount of guidance from older friends and critics so as to let me get to the music at my own pace. This is an area of expertise rock journalists cannot really cover. Your recomended 2 listen test -- hey, that's defining your attention span. And anyway I like pop songs that I love after two spins but they all still pop after 20. To go further we need critics who have to have well informed and experienced so as to get you to know about this stuff that rocks the head first. The public are way behind and have settled for syncopated blues as the pre-dominant Western style. Commercial length songs, rock bands that look like rock bands. Rock music that's always too loud at gigs. Jeez, rock music is just like junk food at the drive-in, and cool magazines have critics telling you what upholstery you need for that car, which burgers ultimately get boring, which films are arrousing. It's all so bleeding crude.

And this is what really does piss me off -- drone-on "art" bands crashing some of the simpler ideas of greater music and bastardising it. Apparently Dead C improvise. Did their gig have a title ? Did they say what they intended ? Did anyone give a fuck anyway or would it have been cool if another dog had been killed by volume ? What sort of scene are you into man where a critic like Nick Cain has to pose as a tough guy to try and convince you the word critic actually applies to him ? What's with this search/destroy methode critique ? Does music have to "rock" in this tough, loud, heavy equipment dues- paying roadies 66 action drugs polution mosh-pit or stone-staring- star '60s all over you rock or suck like palestine or israel us burma AIDS 3rd world bougeousie coming on TV in perfect digital stereo ? Hey that's what rock can do, man, and if you don't like it, you don't get it, then stop-the-fuck-listening to music I like and talking about it that way and give me back my playstation and my doll collection and you, you can pour cement down each ear for all I care. Yeah rock was superceded in the interesting music department before Haley/Holly/Elvis/Beatles existed, but that other complicated music doesn't make people move anatomical features in harmony like rock does, because for you and me and mr. small life is about the small inconsequential things; so rock music speaks to the people man, it's on the level, and they keep churning out more because a new thing is a better thing and we don't learn nothing from history, so watch out for those fucking critics man, they may know to much for your music to be safe for you. I implore you, do not expose yourself to more complicated musical arts because you may as well be drinking radiation because to think independently from musical norms does not rock and will get you thinking about something else and hey it may be an escapist pleasure it's so good and that's got to be bad for your brain man.

of course his explanation why the dead c are lame rubbish compared to braxton is heavy on mystification and attitudinising, but handily light on concrete distinctions... the "objectivity" he was shouting for earlier on does not make an appearance in his own crit

i've never heard the dead c; i'd like to read something which made them real and intriguing for me (or something which rendered them dead to me): the extreme dislocation between george's stated aesthetics and the way he approaches his writing (haha "logic" yes george) is currently getting in the way. some of this is no doubt my ruined and impatient taste: i want to read duane z (or rainy!) on the dead c... a writer with a sense of timing is a writer whose judgment on logic and rhythm i can make sense of

i agree that this music is pretty badly written about, mostly: i think the idea that it USED to be well written about is a joke (but GG doesn't say who he means)...

Don't listen to me though, I'm "way behind."

(thanx hamish i shall perhaps pester the great man himself)

What I said was- ''Give TWO listens and if you can't hear anything that makes you listen to it again then go down to the record and tape exchange, OK.''

So after two listens you should hear something (you may not know what it is) that makes you listen to it again and again. That's the way it was with Braxton/taylor/beefheart and so on...so it works for me. Don't tell me that after a couple of spins of your first Taylor album you didn't get the feeling there was something unusual going on that made you listen.

Dead C: I can't actually make out whether they improvise or not, you know BUT what what I do know is this: That when the guitars with dogdy amps are crashing in and lock in and Morley is belting those vocals...that's all I need. And better than SY are their best too.

George: the reason why I like Dead C is that it doesn't sound quite like other rock music. The stooges/MC5 thing is boring as fuck.

The strange thing is I never got this feeling (on you last paragraph) from reading Nick Cain, you know. From what I can tell, he doesn't have time for rock as well. So I think that you're applying your last paragraph tot he mainstream rock press BUT opprobium?

I agree with some of your points: there are rich experiences to be had from other musics. But even though I'm found to be emptying the incus/matchless racks at the moment I still like the thrills offered by bands such as Dead C.

TALK TO ME NED!!!

Ned- come on, now Sean wants some info. Do not deny us.

Or perhaps corpus hermeticum will make it available via mail order.

And for those like MJark who like to suggest that writing a lot maybe inconsistent with have a lot to say, I've highlighted what I consider to be my main points. You don't have to read any of it either remember, just because it's there.

Ok I write "around the bush" you might say, don't get to the point. Well I hate that tough quick "_word_" rock-review style thing. Unless it impassioned Lester Bangs intensity of feeling towards an evolving art form (things were a lot different in his day), then so often rock- crit is style over substance. But it was fun pretending to be a rock critic. No chemicals, just anger actually, like you know, when someone doesn't really read your point, jumps on one sentence you say (like, no comment on the rest). And my point is that rock style journalism, the thrill of the five-minute rock'n'roll moment, that happens at choruses, bridges, cynically shoved together by money men, does not deserve the same critical attention as the more high-powered less populist but just as valid music I've drifted towards.

Hey Julio, I was eighteen when I started investigating jazz because I was looking at the rock music all around and thinking "this is just too simple, too escapist, too musically obvious" -- OK it's a rare rock record that does it for me these days.

So I went into jazz to find out about bebop and jazz in general using those jazz guides (The Yellow Book Rolling Stone was a handsome 200 pages so you could take it record shopping, though pre global trade my friends would just be given lists of stuff to buy when they went to the US and the UK). I was not expecting to trip over stuff as exciting as Braxton and Taylor ( and lot's of other well known and lesser known jazz talents ). That was a revelation. Eventually that post-bebop "swing" can be just too much of the same thing, but here were guys who just kicked that rhythmic element all over the place. And let's face it, you're better off most of the time with stuff that doesn't have that awful steady beat, letting the notes make the action.

I can't over-empasise how much re-listening to this stuff (well some of it and not others) rewards repeated listens like that old friens/sister idea. THAT'S MY REAL POINT. Critics are on-the spot reporters as news unfolds -- reviews will often accompany releases. How do you properly do justice to long-term music? Hey, I hate some Opprobrium reveiwers because they seriously think that if they're not satisfied after hey perhaps one listen, maybe three, then the recording's a dog -- it's there in Nick's reviews -- the level of depth he brings to bear on a given review object does not satisfy me. On the spot improv, live improv maybe, but semi-composed semi-improv music is quite different -- I have three versions of many Braxton compositions and while Taylor often may appear to repeat himself it often seems like part of one big work anyway.

And to me it has been nauseating to watch T. Moore espouse the value of this stuff to his "followers" -- SY even have their own improvising SYR label now, and gee, when they improvise, they really suck (4,5 listens were very boring -- I tried). And those major label albums just got worse and worse, from Goo downwards. So T. Moore can champion this stuff but then he tries to do it hiumself -- results have not satisfied me given the repeated listens I have generously allotted to his music. When he does it it's very watered down. Maybe it's for those "free-thinking" or "we're not goths or punks, we're alternative kids, so our music is fucked up, like us" white punks on dope who like stage diving.

The alt-music move towards finally embracing free jazz in it's various forms is a very recent trend germinated by what people like T Moore say, and probably by improvements in trans-continental communications. Yet now "free music" is everywhere, and practised by every second noise band, and the standard has dropped. To stick your neck out and do that music in the '60s meant you were ostracised by your fellow blacks as well as straight whites (often the only critics back then). You really had to have quite some musical thing you had going. Taylor's music was more complicated then, less reliant on Wm Parker type shuffle bass players, much less stuck in the one key.

Earlier serialist and semi-free music was daunting, challenging, and actually made the $20 you paid for that import CD a fair price given the use you got out of such a thing over your life. After 2 listens it barely made a pleasant impression, the pleasing aspects at that level of immersion superficial, but listening more paid off in diamonds. I didn't know how to listen I figured because here was "Conquistador" for example, getting 5 star reviews everywhere. WellI grew to understand. And 35 years later, Taylor is still delivering at that incredible speed. When free music started going through more of a honeymoon 10-15 years ago when T. Moore was getting into this stuff and FE were covering it more reverently and stoner rock more cynically, the tide of opinion meant now we have Aum Fidelity, Eremite, Emanem (back from the dead), along with Incus, Hat [whatever] and modern music on Mode, Wergo etc. available to the public via the re-issue revolution, so this sort of music is now on the fashion lists finally. Everybody had to own those "classic" ESP titles, something easy to latch onto but surely few of those artists' peak perfomances, notwithstanding those incredible acoustics.

Can rock-heads really do justice to music that will be your friend for life ? How can two spins tell you anything much with music that works like that ? THIS IS MY POINT.

As a tailpiece, beware of critics offering eternal bliss from the likes of David Ware and his ilk. This bliss out on the free rhytym thing is a very simplified, very rock-ish pludering of some aspects only of some of the greater music of the 20th century. So I wish critics weren't so starry-eyed in the headlights by the obvious total bliss angle. What's really happening musically ? One quote I remember from somewhere is "the music started 30 years ago ahs grown trees, born fruit"... well that maybe true for Taylor, Braxton, Evan Parker, for guys with this field experience. Unfortunately a band like the Dead C, that I don't think works like free jazz at all, is never-the- less typical of the standards of content for 'rock' -> 'more free music' crossover standards. I think standards are low for lot's of these noise bands, throw in this "we don't practise" (the Dead C) and you get so many bands winging it on fundamental notes, interesting/weird noises instead op interesting/weird musical abstractions.

MY POINT then is that rock practitioners of what they call their "improv" will easily cruise in on two listens, please critics, sell records. It's the stuff that is semi-improvised (Taylor's groups would practise with charts for weeks before gigs) that the here-and- now deadline haunted simple rock critic will not be prepared for. And ok, if you want evidence, there is Nick Cain in Opprobrium, whose reviews are "scenester" (great word Hamish, Mark) first, and not really musical second, third, at all. For him, it's fitting all this noise into a big picture he can understand. Critics like Nick; please keep your pompous ideas to yourself and exploit the experienced less- ego-dominated critics that do appear in your magazines. Less space for you Nick, more for some real content. Fair enough to ask for this in general ?

Oh, sorry I'm not coming over like a rock critic today, but I just spent $200 on CDs, something people like Nick have maneouvred themselves out of worrying about, their little perk that no one seems to really like to dwell on -- yeah I wish he still lived in Christchurch so I could still buy all those second hand promos that were usually the better ones of the bunch that he was selling. That would be something. And watching Nick in action over the years in print is one of the best example of the degradation in levels of (in his case his) rock criticism, base, gossipy, incestuous, and yeah, a waste of space and of a good criticism oppurtunity.

But hey, The Wire frequently over-intellectualises, or just goes on about what such and such is doing (electronica reviews seem to have a very dumb low standard; compare that music with its 4/4 loops in the one key with other stuff in that mag. -- well they have to sell issues I guess)

OK critics just piss me off -- that subjectivity thing is a red herring, a given, every body be they reveiwer or reader has to work their way around that. It does astound me that people in this thread have said i'm naive enough to be stuck at that point. I expect critics to be able to take that in their stride, and they do. It's those industry allegiances, afshion for the sason release schedules and all-round product-re-issue-product cycle that the critics I don't like buy into.

Critics can commit real feeling about some music if they had the guts to. but offend the wrong person in that line of work and an advertiser might start leaning. Cain has balls to commit to his own ideas, it's just that bi-polar love it or hate it thing -- that's insecure, mis-informed, out of depth entrepeneurship at its worst. So where are the good critics ? POINT Where do I look for decent criticism outside of all these semi-career functionaries and their petty agendas ?

anyone who would make this point with a straight face flat-out does not deserve to be argued with or listened to. end of discussion (I hope)

I don't get your clearly heartfelt indignation. To me, what you've said does not speak for itself. What makes rock critics so sacrosanct ? Ther're just different from the other critics who should be reveiwing other stuff.

Rock has crept in the back door of improv, jazz, minmalist music. But it's almost always _reduced_ that stuff to something less enduring by the rock norms being applied, reducing it to rock. I'll admit that compared to heuristics-free music rock is severely limited. To think otherwise is kidding yourself, I think.

I believe that and stand by that, but I don't think it's some higher moral or musical ground I'm standing on, just different. Please don't let falsely attributed bigotry, snobbishnes (whatever your problem is) get in the way of looking at how good a job these critics actually do and what that might say about music listening today.

End of discussion. I hope not. Would be nice to know what pissed you off so much ... eh ?

Talking to Jess last night I came up with an analogy - Travel writing. The books in the Travel section of a bookshop fall into two kinds - travel guides eg Lonely Planet, which are basically designed to be useful to every other traveler; and travel writing, which is usually a record of the individual's experiences travelling and is meant to be entertaining and/or insightful more than useful. You can draw a similar line between different kinds of music writing - reviews of product fall into the travel guide category, more personal comment falls into the travel writing one.

George's problem is that a lot of music he likes can only really be dealt with in depth using the travel-writing style, i.e. it lives with you for 20 years and you have a (sometimes uneasy) relationship with it. Writing about this kind of music is neccessarily going to be personal and literary, a kind of log-book of one's musical experience. George's dilemma as I understand it is that he gets understandably irritated when critics writing about this music use the travel-guide format because it can't cope with the richness of the music, but on the other hand the literary props of the travel- writing format piss him off because he wants to know what records to buy.

i hope, personally, to never be one of the travel guide guys, for my own reasons. i think tom's analogy is good, but it also falls down somewhat because travel writers have some more objective elements to deal with (i.e. leaky plumbing and massive roaches = dud hotel. Tomaine poisoning = dud tandoori house. Etc.)

the future - usurping the guides? - well, yr reading it i think (i hope.) or something like it.

George, why do you listen for the intricacies in "free" music but not in electronic music? Also, comments like your "with its 4/4 loops in the one key" one make it sound like you've had a frighteningly limited exposure to electronic music. And do you realize that your implicit fetishization of the importance of time and key signatures over other aspects of the music only strengthens the very traditionalist foundations that the music you claim to love tries to fight against? (Or does it not try to do that?)

a defence of journalism not so far attempted: i think (well ok i SOMETIMES think) that the "infected meme" aspect of newspaper writing is a GOOD THING not a BAD... ideas that are presenting themselves as publicly and socially USEFUL have to survive a savage darwinian baptism of being distorted (deliberately AND inadvertently) and vulgarised and generally fucked about with by clowns on deadline, and editors cosying up to vested interests

i'm actually much more inclined to agree with george on the perniciousness of the self mediation small quasi-art scenes than any "12-ft-lizards world council" idea of media self-policing (eg Resonance, the LMC's mag, is no less lame and sucky than [insert mainstream bugaboo of choice: i don't read em]: I WISH I WISH I WISH free improv boasted critics as good as tim finney tho, but it's at least plausible that the unexamined bottom-line aesthetic of the left-over avant- garde excludes them => this is (somewhat) what frank kogan was attacking in Why Music Sucks re the US zine-scene in the mid-80s => but the bottom line WASN'T economics (excepot very indirectly) or free records (a lot of it was tape- exchange based anyway) but kneejerk idealism and alt-defensiveness.

When sitting back, this idea of going and buying "the latest" for xyz is well OK if xyz have just made their second album, but silly if it's Braxton's or Parker's 40th -- the reviewer cooling period would be justified because only completists will have to have it before that and that'll be despite what any review will say, along with the other people who don't pay attention to reviews. The benefit of hindsight, time, "morphically resonant" developements all make those all-encompassing "guide-style" reviews handy. But, yes, those guides have to strike a balance between inro, informed and bored. I know the Penguin Guide has had some accusations of trenchant bearacracy leveled at it, and I guess the LMC is like many Socialist Outfits after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a liitle tight, lonely, and with an axe to grind to "normals"(I'm only guessing, but would like to read it someday -- scary, I hear the periodic gigs might get 12 people, and that's London, so that is sad).

Clarke, a chance to use that word fetishization, a sure sign that you think like A Wire writer. No, Yeah Mark, I accept "the journalist's dilemna" -- how to do justice to something that may/maynot reward investigation at leisure, in the field etc.. I almost wish there was like a six month ban on all criticism per the release date GMT, though I know its impossible and faintly ridiculous and the industry would use some dodgy self-policing strategy to get around it.

When sitting back, this idea of going and buying "the latest" for xyz is well OK if xyz have just made their second album, but silly if it's Braxton's or Parker's 40th -- the reviewer cooling period would be justified because only completists will have to have it before that and that'll be despite what any review will say, along with the other people who don't pay attention to reviews. The benefit of hindsight, time, "morphically resonant" developements all make those all-encompassing "guide-style" reviews handy. But, yes, those guides have to strike a balance between inro, informed and bored. I know the Penguin Guide has had some accusations of trenchant bearacracy leveled at it, and I guess the LMC is like many Socialist Outfits after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a liitle tight, lonely, and with an axe to grind to "normals"(I'm only guessing, but would like to read it someday -- scary, I hear the periodic gigs might get 12 people, and that's London, so that is sad).

Clarke, a chance to use that word fetishization, a sure sign that you think like A Wire writer; well, no actually you can't be serious.

What you say makes no sense to me at all -- some of the most satisfying musical experiences I've had are with electronic music -- though I refuse to listen for intricacies in 4/4 disco -- that's just an insult to some major part of my nervous system, and usually presented in a way that's hard on my ears. And if i listenend more and more it would just pouind more and more. I just don't like regular beat, be it Himalayan goat milking music or Scottish bagpipes. and yeah, I find 4/4 beats will definitely get in the way of a lot of todays electronic music -- i listen to heaps of electronic music, my faves being those French guys from INA GRM, with the IRCAM atmosphere and general mystique and the quality of its output i've heard not really doing it for me. I do like some Boulez (there isn't much anyway), Milton Babbitt's Tape + [instrument] stuff and of course Davidovsky's Synchronisms -- they're like milestones for electronic music developements over the years. Stockhausen's seminal electronic music pices still do it for me. The Residents do not stand on ceremony so I can handle the 3minutemax type synth pop they used to do, and Eno's '70s stuff. I don't dig those early Russian guys so much though and Max Matthews stuff doesn't do it for me, nor the experiments for their own sake of some of Schaeffer and Henry. But hey, none of these guys use 4/4/ beats. How dare you suggest I have some secret repressed fetishistic feelings toward it. You are having me on or you're one po-faced fuck-up of a pseudo-intellectual.

In fact not liking obvious repetetive thump has nothing to do with my liking electronic music. I don't like disco music, if that's what you mean (isn't drum'n'bass just more muzak-ish non-dancing disco) -- yeah I can't get to anything that has to rely on repetition to make a case for itself the way that disco music, bass'm'drum whatever trys to -- and yeah I don't understand how the hell you would know whether I liked electronic music or not -- I've been listening to it for about twenty-five years and it's one of my favourite forms of music, although recent developements in its wide spread use are taking electronic music backwards -- that ultra stupid "BLue Monday" started it all and made me weep when I heard it -- one of the most stupid bits of music ever -- I take my hat off to them -- Joy Division should have packed up and gone home; producing that, they should be taken out and horse-whipped (fetishistic enough for you ?) It is annoying to find "Electronica" in the Wire ending up largely referring to disco music, or what ? "chill out" music -- that stuff is for dancing or relaxing completely, so I can forgive it hitting the most basic animal-like musical buttons, but it's not really "music" in the proper sense is it, more lubricant or essence I would have thought. Jeez, when I was 20 you could at least go and dance to something mildly intelligent -- those kids must be on some pretty heavy shit to be able to find the disco music of taoday interesting. That stuuf doesn't even belong in magazines, let alone given review inches. It's the most cynical youth exploitation music I've come across yet. If there was a virus I could release to rid the world of just that sort of electronic music I'd do it -- I think it would be a great leap forward for kids to get back to spending more of thjeir energy rolling in the hay. And I pity their ears by the time they're thirty. There is just no excuse for the levels on those bass frequencies. But invent a better glue and someone will get their mouse to run faster on the treadmill with it.

Yeah, Clarkey, you try and work out my larger musical world based on side-issue comments on quite-frankly side-issue music. This is just the sort of critic-like-invented garbage that has become all to common. Everyone else here is making suggestions, and I'm not ramming anything down anyone's throats, and you say I'm fetishistic in my apparently ill-advised, anti-social and broad dismissal of 4/4 beat. Well my pet examples were in the improv./free music area.

Clarke please post back and do tell how you reached these conclusions you've reached, why you waited 'til this point to say annything and why instead of really explaining what you mean choosing to simply drop three pronouncements summarily. Please post back. Ma7ybe I do need help. What's you day-job ? Tell us more about music psychology please. Tell us what music turns you on, since I'm just dying to know ...

Who said anything about critics being sacrosanct? My indignation has to do with your smug "I like it and they don't, therefore what they have to say is not valid" tone, e.g. one kind of music "does not deserve the same critical attention as" another. You're going to have to pardon me for not putting the "sort of" you may well have intended between "same" and "critical" in that sentence--that's obviously true, since writing about improv and writing about teenpop obviously require different sorts of intellectual rigor, background, experience etc.--but when you're making an argument and you don't state your case very well, that's not my fault. And based on what I've read both on this and your previous thread, I'm sorry, you don't.

I'd also like to ask how true it might be that critics of the music you like "repeat norms they've learnt from each other." My guess is that it's about the same as in rock or any other form of criticism, because that's how those things become norms: they're ideas a lot of people doing that particular work have in common, because more often than not they make sense. They may be disproven or modified over time, but that's OK, because that's how people's minds work. Everyone does it. It's called communication. It's how we move forward in the world instead of, oh, I dunno, beating the same horse for god knows how many words.

seven or eight years on, yeah, probably some arguments about the downside ought to be started: as to the scene defending its interests, well, i think the fear that if t.moore is horsewhipped and driven out of town on rail, then what's good will suddenly find itself denuded of the wherewithal to prosaper, or even survive, is a forgiveable intuition ,even if it's never very clearly stated. of the scene has an interest in its own survival: w/o it there might be NOTHING AT ALL FOREVER. (gg's only actual viable alternative is - it seems to me - to set up a rival recording, performance and distribution network: bottom line here, ppl who enjoy or anyway get on with organising things ALWAYS GET A FREE PASS TO THE FUTURE) (and anyone who's ever organised anything will be only too well aware that the MOMENT they do actually set something up, someone at the back who has never lifted a finger to move a chair or pick up a phone will complain that it should have been done in a different way: to which the only sane response is, "OK, do it yourself then next time, i'm putting my feet up")

of course the deep dynamic of the avant garde in the 20th centuiry is to ESCAPE the heirarchical dominance within "high art" music of structure (structure is a visual rather than an aural manifestation of expression anyway, so — arguably — related to an underlying psychological HOSTILITY to music), from schoenberg's ambivalence to cage's hostility, partly because the academics who obsessed about it were mainy yoking it to their own dusty self-interested shallows

abba ARE intrinsically better than boulez's electronic music: pb has a rotten ear for sound-qua-sound (proof = he uses flutes)

to me they can take one of those two roles -- every review they get, and particularly if they _can_ choose to put forward something, then we're getting more into that John Peel area where things can actually be swung.

i don't live in the UK and don't know how good, how excessive, how old hat, how pretense of newness or whatever you want to throw at him -- it's just that to me he's proved he can use critical choice, albeit subjectively to articulate new musics -- he's covered a lot of music -- is he a run away maverick ? will "John Peel" never be allowed to happen again ??

i think that right now we are equipped with the sort of you take this channel, i'll take that, communications systems which allow for sorts of music to co-exist in a non competetive way -- they don't all need to be on TOTP or John Peel or whatever it is -- they're there to be gone to and found -- which makes critics traffic controllers -- they don't have to say this is worth $X right at the moment; it's more try this _if X_is_what_you_want, ortry that. it doesn't matter so much whether the critic actually likes wahtever it is, more can he recommend it correctly

economic hierarchies in terms of media monoliths are on their knees in some areas -- well they still control the abba stuff, but 10 years ago an IMPORT in New Zealand meant two months and double the price for an unknown quantity, a gamble

i'm beginning to think a new sort of critic or service or simply proper use of newsgroups, listserves and outfits like this will produce a mix of opinion, a move away from hierarchies in criticism, a move away from Nick Cain telling you the way it is

i never said this was better than that, or didn't mean to, but I did say you're much more likely to find out about stupid dance music (as distinct from both interesting dance music and pierre boulez) with the old "critic calls the turf" arrangements -- the difference for me is that cooperation between critics and music listeners is now possible

it's weird how the worst case seems to get imputed to me -- OK it's easy to sound bad by trying to sound forceful or convincing, but there are all sorts of objective criteria that could be used to establish which music provides a more useful 3 minute punch -- OK those flutes, real and simulated got in the way of me listening to boulez -- stick that all through various standard plug-ins included with the free version of pro tools that anyone can download and suddenly that piece of music isn't whining flutes anywmore, it's got bottom end, dynamics -- you kinda get a sepia effect from all the flute action and observing that piece of music through different filters makes it a whole lot more bearable -- so much so that i haven't even bothered listening to the piano version of the same piece -- sure it's complex, but actually quaint -- the listeners hurdle is just that Boulez is a snob and wants to sound like he's in a different universe -- take that music, reverse it through the treatments, and it's hardly ordinary, it's actually quite funny

OK you shouldn't have to work around those sort of hurdles -- Boulez is a wanker who believes himself ahead of the rest of the pack -- OK dismiss the trapping -- dismiss the Taylor Afro-theatre thing (though it _is funny -- at least it's not so damn arch serious all the time) - - how can you not enjoy Braxton's diagrams -- they help appreciate the music and both swing Braxton style -- he is a very funny man (and as bit weird)

OK, Boulez, Braxton, Taylor, all rock-stars of their chosen sports admittedly -- use them to draw people in all the same -- all the "mind games" or "shamanigans", well there's something of value in it, it's not expected to be taken like holy water -- i admit these guys are easy and fun and even a bit old fashioned in some ways -- but maybe its taken the world and those guys twenty five years to reach that audience <--> performer equilibrium where there's still plenty of action, but there's a decent critical mass

to me, the critics hold some of the keys in edging listeners closer to more adventurous territory -- when you see obvious scenester backscratching as with the deadc and opprobrium its nauseating -- well i don't hate the deadc, let it detract from the partial editor and perhaps rub off on those guys when it's time for them to break up (and I think they have done their best, and the last few years have been a desperate business of living up to things that started out accidentally, an unenviable position) -- let the deadc cash in on it but we don't need fragrantly blandly screamingly bad critics to sour things for them

critics may still have to come down to a sandcastle situation of what's acceptable, reaches their standards, something arbitrary they might find they have to defend -- just let them roll out their citeria

the last thing someone citicising critics needs is some axe/agenda of his own, and i'll own up to being pissed off with a general group of people (the opprobrium crowd when they felt they'd conquered New York) but their realities pretty soon sunk in

virtually speaking critics can only get better through this sort of give and take -- my main beef with the Opprobrium site -- it has no letters page, let alone threads, newsgroups, room for discussion -- so hey, some critics are in sandcastles, some just sketching with the tides and the footprints

no music is prima facie better than other, but we can look at motives through the way the music works (eg pop-post-blues hits, beats per minute, subliminal suggestion, etc..) and whether the musicians play that stuff for themselves a/h -- you want me to provide some exhaustive citics list of dos and don'ts -- no way -- i think i can tell nitpicking from a real complaint -- i think i can tell the difference betwqeen having expressed something ambiguousley and meaning something else -- well go for it, but please do include your own helpful suggestions, unless you're sick of me or maybe if you're completely satisfied with criticism of .. (again, how please ?)

[declaration of interest for those who care but didn't know: I edited the wire from 1992-94]

well mine and byron's

I really don't appreciate your personal attacks, either. I was only trying to get you to understand how your comments about electronic music were coming across. A lot of people on this board really like "disco" - people who can write intelligently and engagingly about how their "basic animal-like buttons" are pushed by that awful, scary, physically assaulting thump.

You sound like a frigging fascist - and I don't mean you are, but you COME ACROSS LIKE ONE. You wrote: "If there was a virus I could release to rid the world of just that sort of electronic music I'd do it -- I think it would be a great leap forward for kids to get back to spending more of thjeir energy rolling in the hay..." Just read this, and in all seriousness, tell me how it comes across. You actually said "great leap forward," and you talk earlier about "going forward" - invoking the ol' Progress In Art angle that nowadays comes off as *so* tired and quaint.

What kind of music turns me on? You'd probably be surprised to know that I like a lot of the same stuff you do. But, then again, I probably don't really understand it or something.

OK Clarke, maybe I reach for some deliberately provocative phrases like a bad habit, and well, it was probably past my bed time too -- fascist ?? well I respectfully see what you mean glancing back over my shoulder at what i wrote -- however, it's hard not to be provocative, talk in absolutes when confronted with the dirth of music all going 'round like a rash at about the same beat, all guarenteed to be computer syncopated, implying to me 1/4s 1/8s 1/16ths have become contrapunctual units in such a "globalised" way -- the generic qualities in what i'll put down quite happily as disco music seems to be seeping into society all over the place, and to me that's endemic of pretty heavy media control of things like the lenghth of a soundbite, the preferred beats per minute to feed people before and after and during work, how music is used to systematically control mood all over the place now

there's this drum'n'bass stuff and half the kids (they're half my age) at the local student radio where i still try to provide light relief once a week, these kids like this syncopated stuff, call it disco, but call it drum'n'bass and it is the music os serious young men, and there aren't even any words anymore so how much of the brain have we left out of the mix just there ?

OK let's talk politics because I think it's marching music -- imagine being a soldier going from a to b and actually having to get their in syncopated dancesteps while the wing-commander examined the backs of all the young mens' legs to make sure there were no slovenly gypsies in there ? Soldiers did actually get around like that, as hard as it is to believe. Today, we have this rhythm imposed from the local radio, the boom of a passing car, at the pub, at the party, and at work; hey i just don't like the generic quality being imposed on musical activity that could be swinging to more free thought. It is the thump, thump of the thong of the latest workforce -- what do we do with them with all this spare time ? even just letting them shag seems to be a bit dangerous these days so just let them tap their feet right through to pounding their whole bodies into the dance floor to this new beat.

OK that's what I think -- the more generic the "art" the more controlled the society, and I do think the kids at the disco are going to be burnt out speed freaks in some form or other given the post-jazzersize everybodies kid is doing some variation of, that 1,2,1,2, or is it just bang, bang, bang -- to me that's the fascist stuff right there, and if I think we need a clean break from that stuff, it would be in a more human, less generic, more typically organic musical direction

i have to pinch myself and remember that the kids at the radio station have heard that same thump, thump for most of their lives, and that their learning phase is usually complete as it's ever going to be for most at the end of university -- tell me university stations aren't pumping that music out, not specialist shows, not playlisted interesting stuff, but actually what the kids want to put in between, the filler, the muzak, the drum'n'bass has actually become the art, the end, the music for a whole generation

i do think ther're some fascists involved in this vile backwards evolution in musical culture, but it's the record moguls, the taste police, the main fashion mags and the television people, not me -- we'll just skirt around giving it official branding and let it germinate, as it has,.. tell me Clarke do you think the way this dance-oriented music is arriving everywhere like triffids is not just a little scary ? i say that that music is the virus if anyone's looking for one

I got to have some cofee now- but I'll carry on with this (if if bother).

now its syncopated music, electronic clicks music, from dub (reggae) through to house (disco) with drum'n'bass being this pretend minimalist NEW thing done with computers and glasses so its VERY CLEVER, almost like you've got music in analysis -- yeah you pretend you don't like music but are instead some musical expert that believes it all reduces to the music's x-ray, the drum'n'bass imprint.

and this whole new black-turtle-neck music thing hasn't even broken into waltz yet, and since waltz would present quite different musical imprint, probably would offend hardcore, oldschool, guardians of standards type drum'n'bass listeners, so it probably would be to unccol for it ever to break into a waltz

And I certainly am. It's the sting that counts. It is true... I have never really felt humanity, let alone humanity in music. In ways, computerized syncopation has been preprogrammed into my cerebrum and I have no desire for this organicness you speak of. I quit piano lessons as a youth in a fiery rebellion. I am happy with my sampler now and will be even more gleeful once I can spread the "infection" to others.

I suppose there is no hope for associative thought outside of rigid BPM dictations. That's fine... as long as I can keep my favorites, 96 and 172. I am half your age, and I like drum and bass and I emote with synth bass lines..... a human voice will only alienate me, language will only obscure the purity of the electronic sounds I extract resonance from. When I hear a looped breakbeat in my headphones, I nod perhaps... and maybe even *march* along in some contemporary codification of gesture and movement. I do a lot of this as I walk across my college campus on a daily basis. I don't plan to stop either.

So I am a cog, spinning along by the manipulative rhythms... the perfect embodiment of every criticism you put forth. A soulless isolated machine, malfunctioning in the club alongside my faceless brethren. We have no escape.... we're simply inconsequential flies clinging to a giant corporate swing of the club... bang bang bang. The drum and bass is the art now, and we laugh nervously at the decadence and ponder ... hmmm.... this expression is beautiful!

But despite these pleasures, I also feel alone. Perhaps, I am not satisfied with my life in general. I try to compensate... I wear the latest fashion, dig the music, have a nice haircut that covers my eyes even, but its not enough to self-motivate me sometimes. Am I a fucking victim? Is it because I don't believe in God, because I'm a minority race? Is it because fascist record mogul powers have been so reductive and oppressive? Look at me... I am your nightmare, aren't I?.... Fuck it I don't care anymore, I'm going to go listen to some Dillinja now before I shut down.

Ya can't march to Timbaland or 4 Hero.

But anyway...you know, if we strictly limit ourselves to music grounded in "natural" and "organic" rhythms -- breathing, heartbeat, walking, the iambic pentameter of babbling in trance-like states -- that would also pretty much wipe quite a lot of everything you listen to, too, George.

These unanlyzed concepts of "natural" and "organic" you peddle reek of false consciousness as anything in Cribs.

Yeah, but CHRIST, these charges are so...so...MIDDLEBROW. There. I said it, and I'd say it again if I had to.

One can like a fascinating range of captivating music -- anything from straight down the line beats to freeform amorphous drones -- and still be a horrible, obnoxious person. Yup.

uh, i do not want to follow in Keith Jarrett's footsteps, but various jazz guys over the years have imagined a futuristic musical nightmare based on the imagined possibilities that could have been projected from elctronic _then_ -- well that all happened before 1984, and before 1999, but really I don't think noting a much more stylistic link between electronic music production and generic trends in music towards an electronic sound is unhealthy

musicians who used mixing desks are now using "pro tools" a lot, and built into that system is not just recording but music making ie synths in computers. more broadly, theirs a certain vision software desiners will have, a team with a list of requirements, and a shipping date

later on musicians more musically than computer literate operate within a subset of heuristics dictated by (a) normal music fashion trends and now (b) 5 years max. of wisdom using computer based digital music tools

and here we are now with music that often doesn't have any words any more, like nothing to say, or if it does isn't it a cunning installation/rep/mock-up of some artistic vision of just how metronomic life and pop music enmeshed can be or are anyway ?

rhythm has become so much more forefront, the rhythm section prescribing the tone, feel, the objects of interest the bouncing noises -- electronic and non-electronic has become a minimilist mockery of what it could be

but screw the commentary -- that's not really what we're here for is it ?

yeah looking at the replies i get i think that the times i hit here lot's of people are between lunch and tea time or somewhere else pretty useless northern hemisphere-ish & i'm just going to get people taking the piss or "being middlebrow", and so I have to say it; i just get one-liner's thrown back, which is pretty pathetic -- i could sit back and just throw a one liner in on someone else's rant, yanking out one little sentence and quoting it -- this is very boring, because we could all sit and laugh at the trivia inherent in one-over blown line

sit-coms rely on one-liners

maybe i'll adopt an alias and just throw tomatoes at others from now on because for example, do'ya really think that electronic music in total was what i was complaining about ? or was i picking on a particular sort of popular electronic music that is wretchedly lacking in substance ? what do you think ? generalise and be damned, or pick specifics and some wise guy simply offers "well you don't need to listen to that, why don't you try this" -- it's all a bit smug, and all a bit un- productive -- ok criticism productive ? maybe not -- well what are you people good at then ?

frankly i'm a little bit bored not just by these one-line quote-piss- take hit and runs but by just how easy it is to jump on something someone says and run it ad absurdum -- cheap devil's advocate stuff reminding me of university students with nothing better to do than bait christians

i don't need to be part of a lonely hearts club of people good at throwing balls at others suggestions (and hence not a little lonely), a one-upmanship club with these little in-jokes in the adsence of substance

say i'm generalising, actually i'm curious to see what is said, but i've grown in five days to not really give a damn for the level of actual devotion to anything above the level of sit-com to achieving anything in discussing anything in this place, and so i guess i really don't belong here, and there are other places other threads, hey some real life people i think might oh be a little less pushed on their papers, a liitle less jaded by the constant tussle of this flame-o group of cynics, they might have a little more commitment to this real world stuff that gets cyber-virtually boiled down to lowest common denominator bow out scepticism

actually to throw tomatoes would be reduction to levels i don't think healthy for human communication, so i'll let you guys get on with another episode of t-a-x-i, and if you want to think of me as de Vito I really don't care

Given how you resemble a fundamentalist who quakes with anger at the idea that others may have ideas different than yours which they themselves passionately believe in, you're quite spot on with that analogy, yes.

A while back, I got involved in a huge-ass discussion on these boards with Phil @ masstranfer.net regarding the nature of what 'bad' music was, or rather a spinoff discussion from that regarding if there were intrinsic values in music or differing kinds thereof or not. I can't speak for Phil vis-a-vis myself, but I kept the discussion going because I thought Phil made a lot of points *worth* discussing, and though the rhetoric could be pretty poisonous from me, we kept talking for quite a while.

There are points you make, George, which can be worth discussing. But frankly, they're not worth discussing with you. You came into this whole thing with the world's biggest chip on your shoulder, spent some time trying to deny it, and now act as if you're the only one on this thread willing to discuss ideas. But you haven't even discussed them so much as slathered them on in a series of overwhelming posts that barely develop ideas before jumping to another one, while above all else granting nobody the right to thinking that what they like is a process of their own decisions, instead cheerlessly flinging around comments about fascism and the like in an attempt to separate yourself from a perceived sheep-like majority, whether it's someone on the dancefloor or someone blowing their ears out with the latest Corpus Hermeticum release.

There's nothing to talk about here but your own anger and bitterness -- and frankly I don't care about that, at all. That's *your* problem, not mine. Don't expect sympathy from people who would be happy to talk with you about issues if you actually wanted to discuss them. But I haven't sensed that once -- and that's why I've given you little but one-liners myself, because frankly, that's about all you deserve.

You don't see the irony in this, do you?

If the machine weren't so busy pdf-ing i would scan an 18th-century etching of THE LEARNED PIG and put that up. But I think running the scanner and Adobe Distiller would carsh the system and make the mag late.

This thread started with George's attack on Opprobrium, which I'd never heard of before. Apparently, it's some kind of New Zealand- based improv/free-jazz review mag. I was actually pleasantly surprised when I took the trouble to look it up on Google. As a fan of this type of music, I know that it's not easy to find any sort of reviews of these albums, and I appreciated the fact that the Opprobrium reviews at least seemed to be written by people who had a passing familiarity with the artists and scenes involved. So I thought George's incredible ire was a bit misplaced. Perhaps these guys do take a 2-listen-per-review approach, but as I said before, when reviews of this type of music are as scarce as they are, we fans take what we can get. If there is political bias involved (I didn't see evidence of it, but maybe George is right), I agree that that's a shame, but again, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

Later in the thread, George seemed to get into a long diatribe against 4/4 dance-oriented electronic music. This is not an incredible interesting polemic to make, at least from where I'm sitting, but George does manage to throw out some interesting insights along the way. There is hardly anything original in remarking on the mindlessness of dance music. Perhaps George overlooks the reason why people like dance music: because they can DANCE to it! George seems to conceive of music as primarily, if not totally, an experience of the higher cognitive centers. To see music in this way seems incredible limiting, not to mention that it manages to overlook the way that music has actually functioned in human society since the dawn of time. There's nothing wrong with shaking your ass to a beat, George. Perhaps you should try it sometime.

''Perhaps George overlooks the reason why people like dance music: because they can DANCE to it! George seems to conceive of music as primarily, if not totally, an experience of the higher cognitive centers. To see music in this way seems incredible limiting, not to mention that it manages to overlook the way that music has actually functioned in human society since the dawn of time. There's nothing wrong with shaking your ass to a beat, George. Perhaps you should try it sometime.''

exactly! Again, i agree with a lot of what he said. I don't like disco either but that's speaking from a listening experience.

Another example of music-as-social function is the balinese gamelan (a music that is dear to a lot of people who enjoy listening to more avant-garde types of music), which was used for religious ceremonies.

George, you're assuming ground that hasn't even been ceded to you yet. I refuse to accept that *any* particular sort of popular electronic music is "wretchedly lacking in substance", and I would expand that to say that one cannot merely dismiss any popular musical form whatsoever as being "wretchedly lacking in substance"... at least not in a way that will be convincing without a better demonstration of attempted engagement with the musical form than you have demonstrated re drum & bass, disco etc.

FWIW, there have been examples of drum & bass in waltz time, but these do not sound like terribly innovative achievements precisely because fiddly time signatures are not where drum & bass's innovation lies. Your insistence on a musical form adhering to such profoundly limited criteria for innovation that you have listed implies a much narrower, more rigid and unimaginative approach to music than in truth you probably have.

Further, while I agree with O. Nate and Julio's points re: dance music being about dancing, I'd argue that it's a limiting position to assume that music designed for this purpose does not support cognitive appreciation. Rather, to return to the point made in the previous paragraph, it is merely that such appreciation lies far outside the relatively small and self- enclosed realm that George seems to chart.

"electronic music" -- it's handy because i see lot's of serious young men intently inclined towards it, who might once at that same age have been listening to Public Enemy, or Mudhoney, or Sonic Youth, or whatever "it" was, that's today really quite nameless -- the music has moved in a more generic direction for more people. Ok now there're are DJs and names that make this very minimalist bass riff + drum machine music -- please someone take me out of my generally disgusted reaction to it, explain to me what there is in there to listen to, what do I use this music for ?

disco music, well that's lubricant, dancing beat + generally repetetive samples, slogans, and most definitely a bass riff -- so what have we here ? so i don't want to dance to that,.. tell me Tim what else can I use that music for -- it _does_not_ engage me to move or think about it all, because, it's all a little musically obvious -- well i've heard those same moves in popular music dressed up in different forms but essentially the same basic chordal tricks, the same rhythms, the same bpms that were used in the seventies, eighties -- it trickles down from the same music model of metronomic rhyhtm below basic blues chord changes -- recommend something that isn't please, something that will leap out from the wall, i am curious to know why so much serious thought and money is committed to this stuff otherwise i'm forced into generalising ie call it d'n'b, call it disco, it is reduceable, as far as i'm concerned -- it may have it's uses, people may have fun to it, dance to it, fuck to it, work to it - - i don't think i'd even get a good night's sleep out of it -- i'm not just defending some other style i think is better; looking at what i've written here there have been moody bursts in this thread, but looking at what i'm writing right now, i'd like to reinforce that i'm not just defending music of a bygone era, like someone's parents might do faced with a new sort of racket -- no i genuinely have not found anything to draw me into these "developements" in music enabled by the increasing use of electronic methods -- this is the first time i haven't been drawn in at all into some new idea in music, and i can take that feeling back to my first exposures to this type of music, which i'm just going to call drum machine music from now on -- there's nothing there except triggers for dancing, triggers for the suspense of waiting for 2x16 while the drum machine drops out and then, surprise, it's back again, and maybe riffs in the keys of c, f and g.

i don't hear just drum machine music, i hear cliches, i hear nothing new but something old and elementary, and i do think music can be used for better things than that -- ok i have to generalise because i'm not equipped to label sub-genres of drum machine music, but it's not likle there're any jumping out at me -- there's a new blandness that makes generic approaches to this stuff i think the correct approach when compared with well musicians were known for doing this or that, when there was an imperative for some distinguishing style -- compared to the perhaps elaborate aims of most music that's ever interested me, drum machine music seems to be happy to keep it's head down, to fit in with that same beat as the next tune

yeah, please tell me why, how people are actually even slightly passionate about this new music that's not new or interesting in any way, just new by way of date, the least interesting "new"

i may sound angry about things, ok, i think popular music has been swallowed back into the music industry, and i do think the drum machine music does not have much of life force, much of/no lyrical interest; i think wallpaper, or that computer term vanilla, i think that's fair, and i'll happily defend other music that i've used, other musics that have some value -- it is hard to define what music's value actually is, but it is easy to point to music that hasn't got it -- i think that's what i've ended up doing here -- and it's easy to criticise people that criticise

in ILM i'm finding that broad-ish comments are liable to get picked on -- maybe i will stick to music i like rather than what does feel like banging my head on a wall music

when i fish the particular thing out i'm thinking of i'll reproduce it somewhere around here : nick cain's write-up (for "le jazz non" a corpus hermeticum sampler) that however toungue in cheek still more accurately than anything else i've seen him write attributes the correct "value" to that rock-ish sub-improv, the stuff i started rambling about days ago, the stuff ned raggett "sticks his neck out" for in AMG, music maybe more puny even than drum macine music, music maybe taken even more seriously -- trickled down from different musical mountains, but surely just a trickle -- music with dull primitivism at it's core -- impromptu improv -- y'know feedback in tune, damaged shamble along sound, accidents in slow motion luckily committed to tape -- will go and have another listen and spend 3/4 of that listening imagining how much more info you could stick into that same makeshift shack, and how good it could have been had it not been robbed from real musicians and turned into someone else's lazy cut'n'paste lo-fi art/hobby

have i misunderstood you here?

But another thing is, there are probably quite a lot of people who basically don't have enough money to listen to anything except what's on the radio and maybe ten other records or cds - so they have to make something out of what's on the radio, it's their aural universe and if it isn't intelligent, then they'll interpret it in a way that satisfies them - like when I worked as a concierge in a hotel and had only one radio station to listen to, I ended up making a lot out of songs by 'The All Saints' and that sex and candy song, etc. It's like Carl Panzram said: it's not people's intelligence that's increased over the centuries, it's only their knowledge. So the people listening to All Saints on headphones in their bedroom are probably providing the same depth of response as people listening to Bach. You can IMPUTE music with things if you have to. But then you get a whole bunch of critics who DON'T have to listen to that music by necessity, trying to make out that there's something to it, when obviously THEY'VE never been stuck with only ten records, never had to impute real value into a pop song, and they're just as greedy as those scoundrel pop stars and their managers.

Dancing provides the substance of dance music. This is not to say that dance music loses its meaning from the dancefloor. This is also not to say one has to ever have danced on a dance floor to "hear" dance music. But even when you're sitting down in front of the computer playing Tweet MP3s, you're relying on the knowledge of how people move to music to "hear" what's to be heard.

So tell me about 'interesting' primitivism, george. Give an example.

''Real'' musicians are too busy learning beethoven's piano sonatas, for fuck's sake. And 'art' cannot be made by the 'common' man I suppose. I bet they have to go to college and learn how to improvise, then. And again, you seem to want tonnes of info to process so you could never appereciate feldman, say, who uses well placed gaps of silence when he has written for piano. you seem to like people who push sound around, as the great composer used to say.

Are you for real?

You are so dead, you can't even appreciate a good riff. Dead C is a racket, a great one at that and I feel it is tremendously focused (most of the time) and not a ''makeshift shack''. You are the sort of person who dismisses this stuff as mindless entertainment. Kids stuff!

You listen to music like it's rocket science!

But actually a lot of people have said they agree with a few of the points George has made. While there are similarities in our tastes the difference I don't dismiss a lot of, say, guitar pop. I give credit to it when I feel it is well done. I like some punk and so on...

Mike gets to the core; what non-dancers frequently fail to realise is that the activity of dancing - especially when in instinctive response to the music - is so inherently complex and full of subtleties that one (ie. me) could happily spend a lifetime studying the relationship between the music and the dancer - a relationship that deserves to be paid similar attention as that between the music and the listener (though they overlap, natch). Sometimes I think my primary critical activity is analysing the nature of that relationship. Isn't it awful that I've been wasting my time on such absolutely useless and empty mulch!

"Ok now there're are DJs and names that make this very minimalist bass riff + drum machine music -- please someone take me out of my generally disgusted reaction to it, explain to me what there is in there to listen to, what do I use this music for ?"

George, while it would be possible for me to put together a condensed summary of what drum & bass (at least in its heyday circa 93-97) achieved, I fear that it the required length for even that would derail this thread and my evening. I might put together some stuff I've written about D&B before and e-mail it to you in the near future. Alternately, buy Simon Reynolds' "Energy Flash" for what is an excellent history of - and argument for the worth of - "post-disco" musics of the last twenty years or so.

I think that's what a discussion group is for, really.

it's not a snob/higher ground thing -- it's just i _do_ get bored, and OK often it's with stuff others don't, and well perhaps i should let others enjoy what strikes me as boring and just generally keep out of the way of people who like Mouse on Mars for instance

i'm listening to a couple of M.on M. tracks i downloaded just to see what the fuss is and it's got me beat -- ok funny noises come in at various times and may be spanned out across the stereo spectrum, but it's all in the keys of c, f, and g -- do you know what i mean ? -- each track (3 off "Idiology") has a bass note that is too recurring -- and the rhythm is too reassuring and so the funky noises on the top don't really mean much at all -- it's pretty limp -- it's an a,b,c,.. situation to me

ok Aphex i've tried to listen to him -- same problem, beats and loops, making whatever gets put on tope pretty useless -- it's a grag just being able to see straight through this sort of electronic music and say to myself that this is very elementary pop music, all in pleasant keys, easy keys, easy rhythms -- does not present a challenge

Iku Mori -- did she do that thing with Kim Gordon and that "Garden" thing with drum machines ? that's ok -- at least it's not so transparently normal although i think i prefer the Maryanne Amarcher thing also on Tzadik, listen to it occasionally, and yet it's still easil background

the ruins are funny with that cartoon speedy thing, that bindled energy, and i've one of those "Derek and Ruins" and one of there latest prog-ish extended group things and they are fun -- that hyer- reality inducing intensity is pleasant -- you have to get drawn into their stuff at least

nels cline and brother alex -- enjoy using their alternate intersellar space along side coltrane's because coltrane has always sounded to me like he's stuck in a harmonic box and he's trying to shake off those notes that he's made his reputation on, so i like the "space" project, have heard various other cline projects which have been dreary or intense depending it seems on the rest of the band -- electric guitar not my favourite interest but have enjoyed both clines over the years, on a here and there basis

Fred Frith is pointillistically dinkey, maybe even pointlessly dinkey -- that sort of improv that i've heard him do on that victo label is too precious, and i know a guitarist who's a big fan of his and he's too precious (sound-wise) -- i like Henry Cow albums, all 4 of them from the '70s, not sure about the double live, not sure about chris cutler either

James Ulmer -- this is another electric guitarist -- ok i don't listen to instrumental electric guitarists but since you've listed several, ok, i like that serpentine funk think that somehow makes this sort of guitar which is not fat and not overdriven and just the notes for their own sake ok by me, but given the background funk context i could wish for better, and haven't heard anything from Ulmer that isn't at least 15 years old so really i don't know what he does now, but i used to like all of the haralodic guitarists when they were doing that perverse funk thing with ornette (except for Dancing in Head which bores me and always has and always will, and same for Ornette + Garcia on 'Virgin Beauty' -- Rolling Stone Album of the Year, Jazz, Jesus Fuck, pick Ornette's worst album)

ok lazy answers for the people you've listed i've heard of, because none of them have what i'd call intensity, so none of them have had as much attention from me as other stuff

i'll come back with a list of my own -- i expected Mouse and Aphex would get mentioned -- well if they're the leaders of the pack then that sort of electronic music is still as metronomicallly and rhythmically as limited and unimaginative and poised for the obvious musical pressure points as I thought it was -- please do not ask me to waste more time on them, for that is all I think they are

so bits on "man machine" suggest futuristic disco, as do those long flat kraut-rock-train bits on "trans-europe express"(although i'll still take "trans" by k.stockhausen first) but the obvious disco thing was not overwroked, nor were any of their other ideas

stockhausen was a local hero for kraftwerk and they took to his approach of set out to achieve this in this way and explore it and give it some time and give it a good try then do something else.

so they did autobahn -- ok how many "autobahn"s are there out there -- well two if you include the crass american record company miniturisation as single of the first part only for the mass market -- well that single gave them their hit and gave them something to tour america with and probably meant they kept going i suppose

but kraftwerk don't repeat themselves, so i have almost all there albums (I thought pocket calculaters etc were too silly) -- they actually played the whole of autobahn live, including the gorgeous shakey bass section under the doppler stuff which translates boring into interesting (which of course was left off the single)

kraftwerk have realised the limitations inherent in the electronic medium for them as artists -- they could only bend their musical _and_ _lyrical_ ideas around a few things, a few conceits they could do as a pop band, and they're such a great pop band because of this austere holding back, a minimal approach that seemed to be used to confine ideas to the correct size (ie autobahns are long and varied as is the tune, but most of the subject matter isn't and wasn't)

and kraftwerk had something to sing about, could even do it bi- lingually and managed to get around provincial problems by projecting germany as technological nerdish types but funnily, they were a pop band and stuck to squeezing the most out of the ideas that worked for them

one of the few bands that i think actually broke done stereotypical boundaries or at least made fun of said stereotypes

yes show me electronic bands as cunning as Kraftwerk, whose subject matter was something they could actually use words with in a relatively normal way (cf:sexy scream sampled and repeated 50 times in 50,000 failed disco mantras), an international band, with international symbolism and import -- Kraftwerk set a high very standard i think so any bands that can get as much across in as little time as Kraftwerk did (ie not waste time ploughing through the same metronomic beat endlessly just for the sake of boogie etc. whatever it's called)

kraftwerk had a political polemic that only backfired once (radioactivity) -- no band have much political to say these days have they expect ironically "anti-globalisation" and "anti-brand" band- wagon jumpers radiohead

ok kraftwerk got there first, but they didn't thrash the same material endlessly, managing to produce instead a whole four long players in the 15 years following autobahn, most all of which one can still play and enjoy a quarter of a century later, and they could play it all live too

"Autobahn" is Kraftwerk's REAL IN THE WORLD demolition of Boulez's (rather silly and very self-serving) late 50s crit of Stockhausen's 'Kontakte". Since most of Boulez's and Stockhausen's theory is obfuscatory self-delusion anyway, KWE's (post-Beuys) decision to cut the chat and just make the record puts them some way ahead of either.

You seem to have presumed that there's a heirarchy of innovation and meaningfulness here. Even suspending my disbelief in heirarchies, I find it difficult to provide you with answers to your questions when you haven't elaborated on your own heirarchy. Without that, claiming to "see through" the innovations of Mouse On Mars is no more meaningful than me claiming to "see through" Stockhausen merely by saying "oh this is bollox you cannae dance to it."

WHO THE FUCK ARE THE DEAD C?

but i did not arrive at an enjoyment of Stockhausen because of rejection of 4/4 music or relationship to 4/4 music -- no, i just liked it -- so it appealed to me because well various stockhausen pieces work in different ways and some i like and some i don't or can't understand -- i have not clicked to what some of it is about, so yes it is intrigue and mystery and unravelling what is going on, but having unravelled it for what it is doing musically if i can i will still enjoy it for itself

true for me for stockhausen but not boulez, since S. is a do-er, or was, and kontakte (eg) is a piece of his i enjoy in a number of ways, a piece i've come to enjoy in lot's of ways and to enjoy for it's own intrinsic aims too, possibly a subset of enjoyments

but boulez is a talker and has not done much of interest to me -- the use of French language has been a barrier to some of his music for me, which has therefore become somewhat divorced from it's hollistic poetic intent, but which i still find picturesque -- the instrumental stuff all too formal and apologetic at the same time -- i wish there was more music by boulez but there isn't (and a book I read detailing the inner politics of IRCAM did not help) -- not so much of mystery to be arrived at with boulez, but perhaps remembered as a great administrator/conductor and possible terrorist

stockhausen despite various barriers has spoken to me with his various projects music first and foremost, and whatever liner notes or else i have been influenced by in my appreciation of his greater ealier works are distant seconds, the music a first and only really test of his musics worth to me

-- Tim if you do think 4/4 house, mouse on mars for instance do speak to your heart and body and that's what you want of music, and you can live with that, it's your hierarchy vs. mine there, admitting that these musics you're using "speak to your heart" well ok i'll try and keep out of your way, if well to take your postulated "if i can't dance to it it's useless" -- i don't care about admitting that there is music that pushes buttons to get to your heart when your're in a dance situation -- but i can't dance to that music because the transperancy with which it attempts to make me dance robs me of any interest in giving into it -- the cheap tricks it uses once again to get me to dance -- if that was the only music there was i would be bored by it and not drawn to move to it because it is below that kind of respect -- to me dancing to music is having let the music seduce me, it is having sex with that music really, it is one of my highly protected baser needs that i will not let be cheaply provoked because then i'd be doing it all the time and wouldn't really be looking into what i had leaped, and i have to say it that way -- it actually revolts me, being drawn into a cheap position by music that is just pumping noise, stroking music -- incidental music necessary for disney-land type illusions (dance invocation with silly lights and other cheap throbbing effects), which i believe in both cases i've grown out of

This bears no relation to anything Tim's been arguing AT ALL. How can anyone seriously take your claims of having a such a fine and discerning aesthetic sense that "sees through" the banalities of pop music when you can't even discern the substance of anyone's argument, and you have to resort to such a pathetic straw man argument, to boot!

to me dancing to music is having let the music seduce me, it is having sex with that music really, it is one of my highly protected baser needs that i will not let be cheaply provoked because then i'd be doing it all the time and wouldn't really be looking into what i had leaped, and i have to say it that way

So let me get this straight, George. You're saying your dislike of dance music is rooted in a "base need" to not be seduced by music. Now since responding to "base needs" can hardly be described as a detached or analytical affair, you're basically admitting your dislike of dance music is no more rational than our love of it. So...you've completely chopped off the legs of whatever ramshackle argument you had, AND you've used an astoundingly tasteless metaphor do it, too. Way to go, George.

no, fear of really letting my feelings hang out in public maybe, because to me dancing is personal and you need the right person and the right music

dancing used to be an intimate thing, but then everybody did it that way then (mid last century), and that way of dancing is fine with me if everybody is doing it, but no one is doing it that way to Mouse on Mars, or if they are as a kind of warm up for something else, well i don't need to do that and so i don't see others doing it because i don't go there

dancing involves committment -- to me you dance with someone else and the music helps -- you don't dance with the music no that is not what i said

if the music does not help you cannot have (I cannot have) a proper experience -- ok i don't dance with intimate associates in public, but if we were to it would have to be old fashioned dancing music

perhaps i should stick to what a typical dancer wants and not let myself generalise using myself, me who only uses dancing in a certain personal way

i am paying about as much attention to what Tim is saying as someone who is talking to five people at once; although not as busy as perhaps putting a magazine to bed but Tim is providing a distraction from what i am really thinking about

if i am going around in a circle in a philosophy 101 type of way for the amusement of philosophers in general well good luck to them and if i have moved away from the thread quite a bit well maybe it's my fault for being too general

Actually, now that I think on it, my initial interpretation is wrong, but I don't think it's sex either, unless you want to transform something that's merely a tasteless metaphor into a disturbing bit of literallness.

Then maybe the "baser need" actually the opposite of what I was saying: instead of it being a fear of being seduced by music, it's a NEED or desire to be seduced by music, which he's trying to temper out of a fear of being too promiscuous with his heart. If so, that still actually proves my point -- what prompts him to love music is really no more rational than what prompts the pop fan to love music. It's just that he's choosy and particular (though how rational is his criteria?), whereas the pop music fan is not...something I don't buy in the least. If pop fans are so darned unparticular, why is there always conflict between microgenres in metal? Why are there so many goddamned microgenres in pop music, anyway? Why does the pop fan hate 'NSYNC but love the Backstreet Boys? And so on.

pop music will fallover; listen to it too often and you will get bored and then another song will come along and so on

and whatever moves other to dance to house for instance -- the heuristics are there, bpm, and basic pop music type chordal structures or perhaps sub-pop simple riff-age, and repetition

and one piece of music repeats for as long as can be achierved without causing more generalised boredom based on impatience with repetition, and a new riff/song introduced etc

djs do thid very formulaic stuff all the time all around the world and i cannot equate that sort of music with music that you don't do that with

perhaps why dancers dance should be addressed -- for me dancing to what is now generally danced to would involve a suspension of belief - - i would have to kind of have faith in a bass riff for instance that is glaringly obviousley being a bass riff in a repetetive cycle thing relying largely on spread syncopation

i don't believe i'm a pop music consumer -- ok -- theoretically that music is just as valid for just as long as anybody wants to entertain that idea in their heads, but if i come upon a glue sniffer fixated on an illusion and remind that person that they're in an illusory space, well i burst their bubble, or i reminded a dancer they were on ecstasy, or dancing just to dance with someone else, or under some other sort of spell, if i reminded them that great entertainers "never went broke underestimating the [imagination of the public]" then i guess i'm messing up their moment

but if they step outside of that dance music situation continuum and relaxed and sobered up and eliminated the need to move, settled down, then they they may not be so appreciative of the next song in the pattern, the song that the evening may have built up to in a relative bpm kinda way

well sorry for blowing another otherwise perfect pop music moment

Interestingly Manichean view of the 'dance music' universe you've set up here. This is not a compliment.

*paging Dr. Freud... paging Dr. Freud..."

And if you (as you admit) feel the same tug of music-love that the pop fan does, only you're more choosy about what you listen to, then what's inherently superior about your criteria?

And if pop music (rock division) is so damned disposable, why are we still stuck with its artifacts twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years down the line?

well sorry for blowing another otherwise perfect pop music moment

Don't flatter yourself, kid. You haven't blown anything except your wad.

Aren't you simply proposing a more refined form of illusion and escape? Any music that puts you into some sort of ecstatic condition, whether you are sitting still or not, is going to tend to make you temporarily block out much of reality (e.g., the excessive rent you're playing, the fact that Israel is continuing to rampage through the occupied territories, etc.).

At the same time, I will grant you that because I like to dance to a certain genre (salsa, in my case), I tend to be less critical of particular songs than I would otherwise. In other words, if I didn't dance to this music, I would not be interested in listening to quite a bit of it that I now do listen to (while dancing, and at other times because it puts me in a state similar to what I feel when dancing).

Glad to be of service, as always.

specifically, Vienna c. 1815, when the waltz sparked a national craze for public dancing. We're at almost 200 years of this now, a lot more than George seems to acknowledge

i don't believe there're objective criteria that make some music better than other music, because you will always have subjective enthusiasms, and there will always be dance music enthusiasts versus people such as myself who feel a genuine distaste for tried and true heuristics based music production and reproduction to suite some new or old market niche that provide a simple pop music pay-off

to ignore these marketed trends, entertainment trends, to fail to weigh music with that intention against music with other attentions, that's a mistake

so it may not suite many people for someone such as myself to say this music is better than that because it could easily be argued that my preferred musics obey market and music heuristics of its own

but i do believe that as the amounts of music stack up that do the same thing musically as in each case hundreds of other similar bits of music, whether people dance to them or not, you may as well admit that there will be repetition of ideas

while noting that is not, should not you may argue be grounds for removing some pieces of music from interest, it's something that everybody does, whatever the style, to suite their own personal musical taste agendas

i'm not saying that i should be relied on to provide some indicia to help sort through all the music that has been and continues to be produced to satisfy various markets

but what most music criticism i read does is simply firstly admit subject "new" music exists and secondly typically comment on some distinguishing factor, and end;

and i wish criticism did more, even if it did strike out at some prevelant yet popular trend that some people like, admit that there's quite a lot of [this sort of] music already and ask do we need more, and let's compare what we have under reveiw and really see if it has what this person might want, or to take dance music, keep dance music enthusiasts of the modern post-techno genres dancing

it's not an argument for novelty, or newness of approach for it's own sake, it's simply a wish for music the subject of criticism to be set aside music that has already done whatever the music under reveiw is doing if such exits, if the critic in their subjective position can place the music in that context; it would simply be more useful than the lip sevice paid to music that is *new*, just new, as so the subject of reveiw, and so somehow deserving of print inches to the detriment of the enormous stacks of music already there, having already achieved dance music or concert hall status repectively

and the endless overlaying of older music with new music in critically delineated genres seems to suggest that this continuous repetition of the act of replacement of old music for new tends to suggest a pop music style market norm

if music is to exist in this semi-vacuum where critically it will be replaced or in the case of a dance music evening choreographed or arranged by established dj practises to fill a bpm moment and then be superceded by the next step in the evening as is the case for many dance music events (a practise not at issue apparently), then in the context of this void-fill-void newness chasing culture in criticism or simply in delineation of these musics, then cynicism is an acceptable response

it could be argued that the music was only ever meant to fill that role, that temporary void for those moments, and that is a fair subjective-consumer position

but that music under review be set alongside music that already exists and weighed up according to what already exists in music first, and given due consideration against the musical options that already exist, that already provide the same musical formula, a different approach at odds with the idea of endless newness, that is not too much to ask from criticism

but if we are too precious about what this music is really doing, the role it fills, the attention it receives, if we aren't comparative about these competing musical ends, or at least acknowledge the limitations inherent in these quite different musics, with pop music and dancing music on the more disposable end of the spectrum of music, then we are deceiving ourselves, pretending all music is of equal endurance, import, value

so different musics have different values to different people and different uses for different people -- surprise ? no, of course not -- if criticism cannot get past stepping on some toes, admittiong some lifespans, uses, intents of some musics are easily distinguishable from others, then we needn't be discussing music at all, and "criticism" is the wrong word, "acceptance" w/out due clasification being what's really going on

Your seeming absolute belief in the truth of your words post "people such as myself..." suggests a lack of real acknowledgement of subjectivity. Subjectivity does not just acknowledge different tastes, but also a multitude of criteria, of approaches, of methods of judging music. There's been too many subjective vs objective threads on this board; suffice it to say that "can one record be *better* than another?" is the least interesting issue here as far as I'm concerned. More interesting to me is your apparent insistence of priviliging certain means of approaching music that are often entirely unsuited to the music at hand.

You ask, quite correctly, whether there's any point to criticism if you can't compare music of different styles. As someone who is quite fond of inter-stylistic and meta-stylistic analysis, I totally see your point. The URGENT and KEY issue is that simply judging one style on another style's terms and pronouncing it a failure tells the audience precisely nothing, except that you like the one style and dislike (possibly cannot even come to grips with) the other.

What's the better, more interesting, more useful form of comparison? Perhaps one that takes each style on their own terms, and, once it has done that, goes on to say, "What is the music trying to achieve? Does it achieve it? Do these styles have points of similarity or synthesis? If so, where do they then differ and why? Why do I respond to one style and not the other, especially when they're trying to do similar thing? Why do I hear similarities in these styles when their aims are different? etc. etc.

But saying that Mouse On Mars doesn't achieve what Stockhausen sets out to achieve tells us very little. It's basically saying "Mouse On Mars are not Stockhausen because they are not Stockhausen". It verges on tautology. And tautology is the most useless form of criticism.

You HAVE, if in a almost purely negative sense. You make few claims for the things you like, but damn what you hate in very strong sub- Adornian terms: you lumped dance music and fascism together, remember? You also repeatedly claimed to "see through" or "grown out of" the emotional manipulation of pop music, and that strongly implies -- no, fuck that, it *means* a claim to authority on music matters that people who don't like that stuff don't have.

i don't believe there're objective criteria that make some music better than other music,

What a thoroughly disingenuous statement! You're still making claims that that pop musics pander to their audiences, that the music is "disposable," that the music is simple. These smell, taste, feel, sound and look like complaints to me. And you toss these complaints off as if this badness should be completely self-evident to any rational person -- these are appeals to disinterestedness (objectivity) in all but name.

but if we are too precious about what this music is really doing, the role it fills, the attention it receives, if we aren't comparative about these competing musical ends, or at least acknowledge the limitations inherent in these quite different musics, with pop music and dancing music on the more disposable end of the spectrum of music, then we are deceiving ourselves, pretending all music is of equal endurance, import, value

See what I mean? And anyway, your reasoning stinks. It's a thinly- disguised slippery slope argument: why, if we accept POP MUSIC as having worth, then we necessarily fall into total aesthetic lawlessness. Nope. I don't think any pop fan really believes that all music is of equal value, except maybe in moments of neo- Platonist mystic communion when listening to plunderphonia -- and how often does THAt happen?

You keep harping on this idea that dance music is totally disposable, as if the music was merely a series of annihilating micro-revolutions. While that idea might play in the rock press, it holds only so much currency everywhere else. There IS a canon of dance music. Pioneers and obscure figures become legendary amongst certain circles. Old rave records are played at dances as a treat, or are remixed. Original 12" rekkids achieve fetish-quality, and go for insane amounts of money on e-Bay. Even the most inane dance music magazines like Mixmag (and LAWDY is it inane) treat old dance rekkids, whether it be from the '70's or six months ago, with reverence. None of this points to the music's inherent worth, o'course, but it does say something about the music's lastingness (which is a pretty stupid criteria for excellence as far as I'm concerned).

well for many years i have had to accept that many music listeners will say not only "i love music", but go on and say "this music is the best", or perhaps in acknowledging a personal taste, affection, attachment for some band, style, "movement in music", submit in their own good faith to a personal agenda w/out coming out and being honest about what they may be very passionate about in an unfortunately exclusive fashion

and having goofed around on a student station for so many years (too many), i have had to just grin and bear large sections of music that will from time to time suite the interests of the employed programmers to the unfair exclusion of many other types of music. the politics of supposedly free-minded student radio have taught me that in actuality it is not only a good idea to let people indulge their own particular musical preferences, ie shut up and let them positively discriminate towards some favourites, be they styles, bands, cronies;

no, it's worse than that, one actually has to participate in supposedly free and open discussion of "what music is cool" and simply keep one's opinions to oneself, biten toungue, while watching others totally flip for whatever it is _to_the_exclusion_ of the broader aims of typical student radio; that is i'm resisting presenting a negative opinion, even it is in my mind at least in the interests of offering alternative uses for that same limited radio time with which enormous enlargements of musical apprecation can be beningnly imposed and hopefully achieved; great influence can be wielded (maybe) on an accepting or at least curious "student" audience, but such power will always be tightly be guarded, particularly by student radio people hoping to "graduate" to "the real world" of commercial radio programming, fuck 'em

so what may appear as lip service to the idea of subjectivity is more accurately for me a tired acknowledgement and world wary feeling of indifference-to-boredom to the idea completely, which I agree with you is not an idea there's any point in really arguing; perhaps my various responses to this thread represent knee-jerk reaction to whatever the latest post is trying to convince me of, which has been largely what i already accept and would most happily rather agree to be beneath argument, which says more about the times of the day and the sometimes indifference both of which admittedly seem to affect my participation in these threads

The URGENT and KEY issue is that simply judging one style on another style's terms and pronouncing it a failure tells the audience precisely nothing, except that you like the one style and dislike (possibly cannot even come to grips with) the other.

yes, it is just years of having seen product niche marketed and disguised as "alternative music" that makes me feel, well, how do you include this other (different, not so pop-ish, not so based in heuristics, but _not_ "better" ok !) music into a world revolving around dominant and economically driven cultures ?

it is comparing two or more quite different things, sure, Stockhausen versus MM, and if the nature of the pop music does not equip listeners with an an ability to, for example, equate variable time spans of musical activity, irregular (non-syncopated, non bar-by-bar) unrollment of musical ideas cf: bpm or riff based musical "units" which precscribe attention span time limits absolutely, well ok it maybe no-one's loss since those potential listeners may not have ever liked that other music anyway, but it seems to me to mean that the other sorts of music have even less chance of being used for the different purposes, different ways of listening that accompany them, and that feels like a sad loss

ok, in student radio, prevailing norms were once "the enemy" and obscurity, sometimes weirdness for its own sake even, became more important, but in my 20 odd years of involvement in student radio the major record companies have adapted and produced a sort of music that is very popular, and while being so importantly "different from what your parents lsitened too" is not really offerring any food for thought to a would-be and hopefully open-minded student listener, not offering anything of significance lyrically, and i say further actually offerring the reverse of "alternative" in musical terms, more a large never-ending supply of music that all obeys very similar norms.

ok it's more impossible than ever to take y'r typical student listener and play them anything post-Mingus or post-Babbitt -- well Babbitt and Mingus represent accesibility and obscurity as good examples of what once might have been a broad range of music acceptable to student radio, but which would now result in student- changes-channel

yes, it is difficult to jump from one music to another, and yes arguably very difficult to compare those musics in any way, but what gets me impassioned is that it is more impossible in 2002 after 50 years of innovation in recording and communication technology than it once was, and the reason for that I believe is the homogenous nature of modern music, of pop music and of dance music, and the acceptance of dance music as acceptable daytime radio at a university -- that is why i do hate it, because of the position it has achieved through it's mix of underground prestige and pop music infectiosness

once the desired result becomes, for instance, to keep people dancing for four hours and to sell them water, then something has been lost, the admittedly idealistic of the hippies, the punks and of many others, the idea that music might serve many purposes for many people, an idea which seems more on the distant horizon than ever

I would have thought that the new bootleg trend shows it's a piece of cake.

"yes, it is difficult to jump from one music to another, and yes arguably very difficult to compare those musics in any way, but what gets me impassioned is that it is more impossible in 2002 after 50 years of innovation in recording and communication technology than it once was, and the reason for that I believe is the homogenous nature of modern music, of pop music and of dance music...."

Even assuming that "it's difficult to compare" is what I was saying (and it's not. I was saying that given the multiplicty of aims and effects present within music, it's foolish to posit your own preferred style of music as a standard against which you can measure all other music) I don't see how this follows. Surely if all this pop and dance music was truly homogenous and aesthetically destructive, it would be much *easier* to separate the gold from the dross. Unless you truly believe - and maybe I'm giving you too much credit in assuming you don't - that you are an enlightened exception amidst a sea of misguided fools.

"...and the acceptance of dance music as acceptable daytime radio at a university -- that is why i do hate it, because of the position it has achieved through it's mix of underground prestige and pop music infectiosness"

I'm sorry, I have no idea about this section. Are you saying dance music's infiltration into your university catalysed the downfall of popular music? Or is this merely a poignant microcosm of a tragedy operating on a far broader scale?

I've only been at uni for three years so I certainly wouldn't know, but were they *really* playing Stockhausen et. al. previously?

"once the desired result becomes, for instance, to keep people dancing for four hours and to sell them water, then something has been lost, the admittedly idealistic of the hippies, the punks and of many others, the idea that music might serve many purposes for many people, an idea which seems more on the distant horizon than ever "

1) Dance music *does* serve many purposes for many people. As someone for whom it serves no purpose, I'm not sure if you've got the most favourable vantage point from which to notice this.

2) Distinction between dance and hippie and punk = false. All three are scenes that have had strong affiliations with drugs. All have have had their bouts of idealism (the first wave of rave was nothing if not the epitome of hippyness). All have served the purpose of allowing youth to set themselves up in opposition to a generation prior, who consistently portrayed the music as immoral/amoral and meaningless, fondly harking back to the meaningful rebellions of a bygone era. I've enjoyed your oddball approach so far George, but this particular argument has always struck me as so knee-jerk reflexive that I can only assume you were feeling a bit lazy when you decided to include it.

Hey, I demand *full* sacrifices in my name!

The problem is with the 3/4 of the band not named Thurston!

I always have difficulties putting into words what I like about bands. It has become cliche to say so, but music really can't be put into words - if it can be, then I fear for the quality of the music. Why do I like Mouse on Mars? Well, rather than hear me describe it, I would point you in the direction of their latest, Idiology, which is as fine an example of their work as I've heard. I like it because it's catchy, accessible, melodic, groovy, funky - all qualities which I enjoy for their own sake - and at the same time, it uses the new electronic tools to consistently confound and amaze me - turning sounds inside and looping them in ways I wouldn't expect, modulating in all sorts of weird directions, making me think of different styles of music that I'm not used to hearing within the confines of a single song. I hope that conveys at least a small sense of what I like about them.

But there is a form of criticism to which none will object. It is impossible to come before a public so alive with sensibilities as this we live in, with the smallet evidence of a sympathetic disposition, without making friends in a very unexpected way. Everywhere there are minds tossing on the unquiet waves on doubt. If you confess to the same perplexities and uncertainties that torture them, they are grateful for your companionship. If you have groped your way out of the wilderness in which you were once wandering with them, they will follow your footsteps, it may be, and bless you as their deliverer. So, all at once, a writer finds he has a parish of devout listeners, scattered, it is true, beyond the reach of any summons but that of a trumpet like the archangel's, to whom his slight discourse may be of more value than the exhortations they hear from the pulpit, if these last do not happen to suit their special needs. Young men with more ambition and intelligence than force of character, who have missed their first steps in life and are stumbling irresolute amidst vague aims and changing purposes, hold out their hands, imploring to be led into, or at least pointed towards, some path where they can find a firm foothold. Young women born into a chilling atmosphere of circumstance which keeps all the buds of their nature unopened and always striving to get to a ray of sunshine, if one finds its way to their neighborhood, tell their stories, sometimes simply and touchingly, sometimes in a more or less affected and rhetorical way, but still stories of defeated and disappointed instincts which ought to make and moderately impressible persone feel very tenderly toward them.

There is a land of pure delight,
Beyond the Jordan's flood,
Where saints, apparelled all in white,
Fling back the critic's mud.

And as he legs it through the skies,
His pelt a sable hue,
He sorrows sore to recognize
The missiles that he threw.
Orrin Goof

In my character of Pontiff, I should tell these young persons that most of them laboured under a delusion. It is very hard to believe it; one feels so full of intelligence and so decidedly superior to one's dull relations and schoolmates: one writes so easily and the lines sound so prettily to one's self; there are such felicities of expression, just like those we hear quoted from the great poets; and besides one has been told by so many friends that all one had to do was print and be famous! Delusion, my poor dear, delusion at least nineteen times out of twenty, yes, ninety-nine times in a hundred.

What should you have done with the young eprson who called on me a good many years ago,—so many that he has probably forgotten his literary effort,—and read as specimens of his literary workmanship lines like those which I will favour you with presently? He was an able-bodied, grown-up young person, whose ingenuousness interested me; and I am sure that if I thought he would ever be pained to see his maiden effort in print, I would deny myself the pleasure of submitting it to the reader. The following is an exact transcript of the lines he showed me, and which I took down on the spot:—

"Are you in the vein for cider?
Are you in the tune for pork?
Hist! for Betty's cleared the larder
And turned the pork to soap."