Who are bigger enemies of the ILM, the six people who voted they don't like Black Sabbath or the sixteen people who voted they don't like Led Zeppelin?

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I say the Sabbath haters because Zeppelin's catalog is so overplayed one could confuse being sick of it for not liking it.

But all 16-22 of them (allowing for overlap) are indeed enemies, make no mistake! Come clean, nay sayers!

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 00:11 (eighteen years ago)

Hahaha. I have to say I found it funny and don't regret including that option. Every poll should, but yeah people should at least post why and join in the debate rather than voting silently.

Most detractors of polls complain about lack of debate anyway. (unless it was them who actually voted of course).

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 20 April 2007 00:15 (eighteen years ago)

And of course they won't own up. Especially if you make threads to embarrass them!

But please keep the "I Don't Like" option in the polls. This is a general music board, not a board dedicated to actual bands and everyone's opinions should be allowed.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 20 April 2007 00:31 (eighteen years ago)

ok who hates sabbath????????

― river wolf, Friday, 20 April 2007 00:31 (eighteen years ago)

6 people apparently according to the poll.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 20 April 2007 00:32 (eighteen years ago)

where is the duke nukem "save the messageboard" gif?

― ian, Friday, 20 April 2007 01:40 (eighteen years ago)

That's Bad Dudes not Duke Nukem ffs!

― jim, Friday, 20 April 2007 01:44 (eighteen years ago)

Just wait until someone does best Metallica album with the i dont like option.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 20 April 2007 01:46 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.mna.hkr.se/~ene02p7/images/enemystate.jpg

― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 20 April 2007 01:47 (eighteen years ago)

I wonder who would get the most votes in a most hated band poll.
Dave Matthews band or Creed?

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 20 April 2007 02:30 (eighteen years ago)

Creed.

― Jeff Treppel, Friday, 20 April 2007 02:32 (eighteen years ago)

I was just about to start a 'most hated' thread. But not one with chart rock (someone should, tho).

― Tape Store, Friday, 20 April 2007 02:33 (eighteen years ago)

Maybe they were just being subversive due to the over-abundance of poll threads...unless they were being honest like everyone else, and there are also a handful of people who think Shaq is the best musical talent to come from NJ.

― musically, Friday, 20 April 2007 05:12 (eighteen years ago)

I voted against Zeppelin. And it wasn't ironic.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Friday, 20 April 2007 05:27 (eighteen years ago)

Why is it important, useful or valuable to have an "I don't like" option in polls? I don't get it.

― Bimble, Friday, 20 April 2007 05:44 (eighteen years ago)

So everyone can vote, I assume.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Friday, 20 April 2007 05:45 (eighteen years ago)

It pre-empts complaints of "what if you don't like them".

"Don't vote then" doesn't properly capture the difference between not caring enough to vote and actively disliking.

― mrlynch, Friday, 20 April 2007 06:57 (eighteen years ago)

i didn't vote but i would have voted "don't like" to both black sabbath and led zeppelin. i would have thought lots of ilm-ers would do the same.

― lex pretend, Friday, 20 April 2007 08:49 (eighteen years ago)

I voted "don't like" for both, does that make me a supervillain?

― Tuomas, Friday, 20 April 2007 08:51 (eighteen years ago)

I used not to like Led Zeppelin! And I started ILM! I kind of wish the people who argued with me about Led Zep then were around now so I could say "Sorry, actually they were good."

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 08:54 (eighteen years ago)

You started ILM so you could dis Led Zeppelin?

― Tuomas, Friday, 20 April 2007 08:58 (eighteen years ago)

That sorta makes sense.

― Tuomas, Friday, 20 April 2007 08:58 (eighteen years ago)

It wasn't the primary motivation.

But the Led Zep thread was really early.

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:03 (eighteen years ago)

I wouldn't know what their best album is though, I only have III and I really like it but otherwise I've just downloaded tracks people recommended.

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:03 (eighteen years ago)

I confess! I am a zep hata.

― ledge, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:07 (eighteen years ago)

I think LZ are pretty good in small doses. I've never really investigated BS.

― Scik Mouthy, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:11 (eighteen years ago)

You really, really should.

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:12 (eighteen years ago)

You started ILM so you could dis Led Zeppelin?
It wasn't the primary motivation.

It would have been great if it was... I Love Music... ALL OF IT EXCEPT FOR FUCKING LED ZEPPELIN!

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:13 (eighteen years ago)

i didn't vote but i would have voted "don't like" to both black sabbath and led zeppelin.

From the guy who said that not liking Madonna "is simply not an option," for the record...

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:15 (eighteen years ago)

I voted "don't like" for both, does that make me a supervillain?

It might, Tuomas. What do you like?

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:17 (eighteen years ago)

Almost anything that's not rock.

― Tuomas, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:17 (eighteen years ago)

I only like Good Times, Bad Times.

― MRZBW, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:22 (eighteen years ago)

Almost anything that's not rock.

Such as? Name five bands you like and I (with help from the board) can probably recomend a mix tape from both bands that you, maybe won't love to death, but possibly can appreciate. It might not be exclusive to those two bands but will be mostly those two bands and anything else included will be a lot closer to Zep/Sab than what you usually listen to.

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:37 (eighteen years ago)

i should point out that led zep are probably as close as i'm going to get to liking this kind of rock music; i actually like some of the guitars on some of their songs! the crunching punchy riffs anyway. 'immigrant song' i think i like. what's off-putting are the widdly-widdly pointless wanky riffs and, predictably for me, that cat-being-castrated voice.

― lex pretend, Friday, 20 April 2007 09:42 (eighteen years ago)

Lex I think you'd like "Trampled Under Foot" a lot.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 20 April 2007 10:40 (eighteen years ago)

I actually don't mind Sabbath. I wouldn't say I'm a fan, but if , say, "Electric Funeral" came on the radio or something I probably wouldn't change it.

Led Zeppelin, on the other hand, are wretched.

From the guy who said that not liking Madonna "is simply not an option," for the record...

Your point? Madonna is certainly much better than both Zeppelin and Sabbath...

― The Brainwasher, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:07 (eighteen years ago)

Madonna is certainly much better than both Zeppelin and Sabbath...

^^^^^^^
so colossally untrue and wrong that it defies description.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:08 (eighteen years ago)

Well for one thing you can actually understand most of the lyrics!

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:17 (eighteen years ago)

or in other words, you don't know how to argue effectively against it. (xpost)

― blueski, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:17 (eighteen years ago)

Well for one thing you can actually understand most of the lyrics!

But when you understand them you kinda wish you hadn't.

― blueski, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:18 (eighteen years ago)

i'm so glad i don't have the kind of ears/brain which would make me think led zeppelin and black sabbath were worthy of even licking madonna's boots

― lex pretend, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:19 (eighteen years ago)

funny, I was about to write the same thing, only in reverse.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:20 (eighteen years ago)

At least Madonna was actually AROUND during my life. That counts for a lot.

― blueski, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:21 (eighteen years ago)

They seem quite silly things to compare. I've had immeasurably more pleasure and use from Madonna records than either of the others, but if I wanted to listen to "War Pigs" then frankly Ms Ciccone hasn't made any acceptable substitute.

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:23 (eighteen years ago)

i'm so glad i don't have the kind of ears/brain which would make me think led zeppelin and black sabbath were worthy of even licking madonna's boots

-- lex pretend, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:19 (12 minutes ago)

funny, I was about to write the same thing, only in reverse.

-- m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:20 (11 minutes ago)

actually, I wasn't. that was an unduly stupid and rude response to a provocatively stupid and rude comment. my apologies.

but I'm intrigued - why is AROUND such a deal breaker? certainly, the artists you hear during your formative years will always be special to you - but that doesn't in any way mean that they had to be alive or active when you first heard them.

unless by AROUND you mean she came round your house to babysit you.

― m the g, Friday, 20 April 2007 12:40 (eighteen years ago)

i'm so glad i don't have the kind of ears/brain which would make me think led zeppelin and black sabbath were worthy of even licking madonna's boots

haha i love ILM.

a universe that does not have all three of those bands PLUS wu-tang clan and merzbow is not a universe i want to live in!

― Emily Bjurnhjam, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:11 (eighteen years ago)

I could write an essay as to why I think that Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin are better than Madonna however I fear that many of my objections will be dismissed as rockist bias (and they might very well be). For example, I think that the creativity involved in songwriting is kind of important as opposed to hiring songwriters and producers who do most of that work.

I can also talk to influence if you feel that counts for something (and I do) - it seems to me that although Madonna was involved in the making fo some fairly decent-selling discs, much of which was catchy and some of which holds up, she didn't really do much more than react to trends until she was already established and even how many artists speak reverently about how "Beautiful Stranger" was such an influence? Certainly not as many who look to Sabbath and Zeppelin.

And those who did take the blueprints of those respective artists, how muchquality was there? Sabbath helped begat a ton of music, commercial and underground, bands that garnered popular as well as critical acclaim. Zeppelin is a little behind and their influence is somewhat stained by that bad period in the '80s where bad Zep-clones roamed the earth. Where is Madonna's influence, I mean aside from how modern pop divas respect her (which ain't the same thing).

I'd also wager that Madonna listened to a little Zep as she grew up. Maybe not Sabbath but that's why she's not as good... :)

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:42 (eighteen years ago)

I dunno why the people here who say they like LZ and sabbath are using such strange arguments. You like sabbath because of the influence it had? because of how the songs were written. what?

I like Sabbath because they have great riffs and drums!

― frankie driscoll, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:53 (eighteen years ago)

and because sabbath are catchy!

― frankie driscoll, Friday, 20 April 2007 13:53 (eighteen years ago)

...And Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin are awesome.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 20 April 2007 14:04 (eighteen years ago)

these are all good reasons to like Madonna too.

― blueski, Friday, 20 April 2007 14:04 (eighteen years ago)

Mine weren't!

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 14:44 (eighteen years ago)

xp to frankie driscoll --- I wish I could just write "This rules" and be happy with it but my mind is too analytical and my opinions too severe and my desire for others to understand what I feel about music (and sometimes even come around to my way of thinking entirely) is too strong for me to NOT try and articulate exactly WHY something has merit in my ears and mind.

That's kinda why I write about music.

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:07 (eighteen years ago)

But yeah, I think that saying Sabbath had better riffs than Madonna would be hard to refute.

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:08 (eighteen years ago)

I must say, as a fledgling musique critique, this question rather threatens my "punk" credentials :). But I would have to opine that the greatest enemy is indeed the enemy of... Led Zeppelin.

― Ethan Gaymead, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:09 (eighteen years ago)

This fire hydrant is so much better than this tennis racket.

― blueski, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:10 (eighteen years ago)

The dealbreaker? Well, the mighty Sabbath unfortunately were never able to scale the emotional heights reached by "Stairway To Heaven". I find much more depth apparant in the Zeps' music; they were indeed able to rock out but were capable of making one retreat back into deep thought. Whereas Black Sabbath were very much one dimensional in their rockingness.

― Ethan Gaymead, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:11 (eighteen years ago)

If by "creativity in songwriting" you mean "ripping a lot of old blues/folk records" then it's a strong argument. Personally I prefer "Zeppelin Rools".

― Noodle Vague, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:14 (eighteen years ago)

sub-Comstock at best, this.

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:17 (eighteen years ago)

The odd song aside Zep mostly bore me. Whereas Sabbath CRUSH. I'm kind of indifferent to Madonna. She's one of those artists I'd never actually buy anything by but I don't mind hearing her songs when I'm out somewhere.

― Colonel Poo, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:18 (eighteen years ago)

Hmm, the thing I find with Maddonne is to understand her music more as "pop" music as opposed to "rock" music. This leads to a greater enjoyment of her as with "pop" music there is less of an intellectual elemenent so one simply has to accept that it exists (unfortunately) and accpeit it for what it is, "pop" music.

― Ethan Gaymead, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:22 (eighteen years ago)

Sub Sub Comstock

― Noodle Vague, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:23 (eighteen years ago)

but wait a minute...talking about whats its influenced and talking about 'who' is writing the songs..its still, not really talking about the 'music' still?

ie, you want to let others know what you feel about music, but, when you're listening to it, is what you're feeling..really about who is doing the writing..who its influenced?

say i'd never heard black sabbath. i should like them...why? are the reasons you've stated really the reasons you like them?

― frankie driscoll, Friday, 20 April 2007 15:48 (eighteen years ago)

If by "creativity in songwriting" you mean "ripping a lot of old blues/folk records" then it's a strong argument.

Of course neither band added a scintella more to that formula... In fact many a time I was listening to my Robert Johnson box set and swore I was hearing "Iron Man" or :Living Loving Maid" instead. Many thanks for your astute commentary.

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

You suggested that creativity was key to their superiority. I think it's a bogus argument because you have no way of judging what any of those artists contributed to the creative process. How do you know that Madonna didn't shape the songs she recorded just like Zeppelin shaped the tunes they stole? The point I'm making is that "creativity" is just as slippery and subjective as any other criterion you want to use to judge value.

― Noodle Vague, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:46 (eighteen years ago)

Frankie, at a board called "I Love Music," it seems to me that people present would want to explore music that was important, unique, and influential - even if said music was out of the realm they usuallty enjoy. Possibly these arguments I use would not pass at a board entitled "I Listen To Music On The Radio, Sometimes," but here, I was hoping that these things would at least explain a) why I like something and b) why you shoudl probably check them out.

I prefer Sabbath to other bands that might also stand the rigor of the same arguments because I have an affinity for loud guitar riffs and amazing rhythm sections - which Sabbath had in spades (and it's why metalheads still love the band and why hip-hop artists still sample the band) and Zepplin also had.

At some point personal preference comes into play and trying to explain that is like that science fiction story where the robot is asked how he does something amazing and he says that he just does it. When the person doesn't understand the robot says, "You move your hand, how did you do that?" Well, I just do it! Same thing...

There are some bands I think can offer something to a very, very wide swath of people. I happen to include Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin on this list as well as the Beatles. If you can find absolutely no use for those three bands at all, then I feel sorry for you and maybe you don't love music after all.

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:54 (eighteen years ago)

(xp) The look into the creativity aspect is as simple as the songwriting credit. This does not mean I do not think Madonna lacks all manner of creativity, only that artists who write their own material - especially artists whose material is inarguably influential and timeless - have a leg up on her in the creativity department.

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:57 (eighteen years ago)

The band is called "I Love Music" because my website already had a feature called "I Hate Music", so I thought calling its messageboard "I Love Music" would be a nice balance. Both titles were meant to be fairly clearly tongue in cheek.

I agree though that exploring why one likes the things one likes is interesting.

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:57 (eighteen years ago)

90% of the creativity in music is in the performance and production. I realised this when I realised that there are almost no songs that a Hi-NRG eurodance version doesn't make good.

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 16:59 (eighteen years ago)

And almost no songs that a slow acoustic guitar version doesn't make painful.

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:00 (eighteen years ago)

Page and Plant - and don't get me wrong, I like Zep - have got songwriting credits on songs that they straight-up stole. They may well have created new arrangements, but that's not the same as writing the song. So I don't see that a credit proves a thing. Conversely, Madonna is credited as a writer on most of her songs, so your argument that she "hires songwriters and producers" doesn't really stand either.

― Noodle Vague, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:00 (eighteen years ago)

Why is it important, useful or valuable to have an "I don't like" option in polls?

To get me to vote in a poll about the fucking Beatles.

the mighty Sabbath unfortunately were never able to scale the emotional heights reached by "Stairway To Heaven".

Add the phrase "with Ozzy around" to this sentence and you're right. I'd argue that the Dio-era Sabbath were every bit as emotionally elevated (for want of a better phrase) as LZ.

― unperson, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:09 (eighteen years ago)

90% of the creativity in music is in the performance and production.

I disagree completely.

As for you NV, I could go into songwriting credits and old interviews with Madonna's producers and compare Zep's songs to that of the bluesmen they liberally borrowed from... That seems pointless academia. So instead how's this: creativity that motivates several generations to make music with the goal to one day approximate the greatness of that creativity seems a little more important to me than creativity that motivates several generations to dance for three minute and change.

― NYCNative, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:09 (eighteen years ago)

I've got no answer to that.

― Noodle Vague, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:11 (eighteen years ago)

Wow.

― Groke, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:13 (eighteen years ago)

creativity that motivates several generations to make music with the goal to one day approximate the greatness of that creativity seems a little more important to me than creativity that motivates several generations to dance for three minute and change.

Which is more rare: A great album or a great review of an album?

Way more great albums, but that's not owing to any inherent superiority of music over criticism, just that at the moment music is a healthier environment than journalism is, and most record reviewing is imprisoned within journalism. But I wouldn't say that there are more great albums than there are great dances to albums, or great conversations about albums, or great wisecracks about albums, or great love affairs conducted to the sound of albums. So I don't exalt music above the life that surrounds it, or above the writer's life.

Ha. PWNed.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

Btw: My post is two different quotes. The second quote starts at 'Which.'

― Mordechai Shinefield, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:16 (eighteen years ago)

Oh. And here's the link to the full interview: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/10/13/064445.php

― Mordechai Shinefield, Friday, 20 April 2007 17:19 (eighteen years ago)

nycnative, i like black sabbath already. and yes you are right, on a board called i love music it is good to explore new music, but you also realise there are 239752793356 people talking about 249857928756978235 artists, right?

ok, for example, say someone here was talking about Marcus Hellieu. Really, talking about how he's responsible for writing his own songs, and that he's important...its not really enough to get me to go and find out about Marcus Hellieu. Talking about his actual music and how it sounds and thats its really exciting...well now you've got me interested

there are millions of people around the world that love music and have never heard of Madonna or Black Sabbath..or perhaps much british or american music at all. You could try telling them how important these artists are too

― 600, Friday, 20 April 2007 19:29 (eighteen years ago)

I don't see why you can't enjoy them all. I listened to Madonna and The Pet Shops boys as a kid. Long before I heard Zep or Sabbath.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Friday, 20 April 2007 19:30 (eighteen years ago)

only that artists who write their own material - especially artists whose material is inarguably influential and timeless - have a leg up on her in the creativity department

ok, so person A, who writes own songs, is more talented than person B, who performs others songs? I can live with this! Person A wrote something, person B didnt. Putting emphasis on creating a song is fine by me, i might well agree

but

is person A, who writes own songs, more talented than person C - who wrote person B's songs? they both wrote material!!

― 600, Friday, 20 April 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

i can't enjoy them all, brigadier! i only have an hour or so before i have to go out!

― 600, Friday, 20 April 2007 19:33 (eighteen years ago)

I kind of wish the people who argued with me about Led Zep then were around now so I could say "Sorry, actually they were good."

(I'm still here, Tom;))

― Sundar, Friday, 20 April 2007 22:48 (eighteen years ago)

singer not the song, dong

― sexyDancer, Friday, 20 April 2007 22:49 (eighteen years ago)

But why would you participate on a Poll thread about a band you don't like? Are you THAT bored? How does it add to the purpose of the poll to say "40 people voted this album the best of that artist, while 555 people said they don't like the artist"? Not only do I not care, but I'm not even interested in arguing with those 555 people.

The sheer musicianship involved in some of John Paul Jones' basslines and Bonzo's drumming and Page's playing is something that leaves me with far more awe and respect than Madonna, despite the fact that I've been playing her early danceable material a lot lately and greatly enjoying it. Did Madonna do her own music? No. So get outta here. She's a SINGER. Put her up against Plant if you have to, but not Zeppelin. I like the music that backs her too on much of her first record...but she wasn't responsible for that herself, and in any case NYCNative has already explained that as far as being influential, there is no comparison. I'm left wondering who these unsung heroes are, these musicians on her first record. But are they anywhere near Zeppelin? No.

― Bimble, Saturday, 21 April 2007 02:12 (eighteen years ago)

Also I do think it bears repeating that I myself refused, absolutely REFUSED to touch Led Zeppelin with a ten foot pole for over ten years since high school until someone played me Carouselambra...

― Bimble, Saturday, 21 April 2007 02:14 (eighteen years ago)

"Emotional heights" my ass. That song is the epitome of boring, soulless drivel. And Led Zeppelin's 'awesome musicianship' has never made me dance. Madonna 1, LZ 0.

― Tape Store, Saturday, 21 April 2007 02:31 (eighteen years ago)

I would love to see the popism titans fite the rockism holdouts on this thread.

But I guess that's what the ILM archives are for.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 21 April 2007 02:36 (eighteen years ago)

Sigh. I hate to add to this debate, but I feel the obvious must be pointed out: Led Zeppelin isn't supposed to make you dance. That's like the people who criticized 300 for not being subtle. No duh.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 02:47 (eighteen years ago)

(By which I mean, apples versus oranges, etc.)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 02:49 (eighteen years ago)

In answer to the Thread Question, I might suggest that some of the people who voted unfavorably might have started ILM.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 21 April 2007 02:52 (eighteen years ago)

And I feel the need to mention here, Kate Bush is 5 times better than Madonna, and I'd gladly keep Kate's CD's in the same cabinet as my Zeppelin. I refuse to be called an anti-feminist or some such drivel with this Madonna vs. stuff that this thread has sadly broken ILM down into.

I'm going to play Kashmir very loud now. Time to be quiet and quit typing.

― Bimble, Saturday, 21 April 2007 02:57 (eighteen years ago)

I'm not saying that they were supposed to make me dance. I'm saying that I get something out of Madonna's music; I get nothing out of Led Zeppelin.

― Tape Store, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:03 (eighteen years ago)

(and that Madonna accomplishes her goal while LZ does not)

― Tape Store, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:04 (eighteen years ago)

Well then, it seems fairly obvious that you have no soul, and thus further debate becomes futile.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:06 (eighteen years ago)

Also remember: John Paul Jones played keyboards in the band too. Including keyboard parts that would blast Madonna out into another zone of the universe entirely.

― Bimble, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:15 (eighteen years ago)

Damn! That explains a lot. Maybe, just maybe, I'll one day realize that Plant's vocals pack as much emotional vigor as Sam Cooke. OOHOHOHOHOOOOOHHHHOHOHOOOOO IT MAKES ME WONDER OOOOOOOOOOPOWERFULSOULLLLLLFULOOOOODOYOUFEELTHEEMOTION?OOOOS

― Tape Store, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:16 (eighteen years ago)

Also, anyone who is a Red House Painters fan and not a fan of Zeppelin, I I hope you'll get in touch with me for we've got things to discuss.

― Bimble, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:17 (eighteen years ago)

I love me some Zeppelin, but yeah, I hear more nuance in (say) Madonna's "Frozen" (or Sam Cooke's really subdued "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," xpost) than I do in any Zeppelin tune ever.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:19 (eighteen years ago)

Oh my god am I being made to pull out Stairway because of ILM alone? I haven't heard that song in 7 years or something. Don't do this to me. Please, please don't embarass me. How about a live version instead?

― Bimble, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:21 (eighteen years ago)

There's always hope, Tape Store!

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:21 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, and of course I realize that LZ influenced many of my favorite bands, but that doesn't mean they don't suck. And I'm not saying they don't have any good songs (I haven't heard all of their catalog, just a lot thanks to my stoner friends), but in general, their music has the same problems that I've mentioned above and in the LZ thread (obviously, I'm mostly annoyed by Plant--not Page, Bonzo or JPJ)

― Tape Store, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:23 (eighteen years ago)

I've only recently got into Sandy Denny, too, that girl that sings with Plant on The Battle of Evermore....it's crazy, I've always kindof shied away from her before but I heard some great stuff.

So this means that I will actually force myself to listen to the entirety of IV again all because of ILM. Or something like that. I love Levee.

― Bimble, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:24 (eighteen years ago)

(Why do these arguments always seem to turn into "x vs. Madonna"?)

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:25 (eighteen years ago)

Because she stands for Overproduced Pointless Pop or Why Pop Matters depending on who you are?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:28 (eighteen years ago)

*can stand for

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:30 (eighteen years ago)

Here's the part where I would normally say "but Madonna is pop and Led Zeppelin is rock and never the twain shall meet," but I get the feeling that that argument has been going on since the dawn of ILM and I don't really feel like getting into it.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:30 (eighteen years ago)

Also, the correct answer to any "who is the biggest enemy of ILM?" question has been, is, and always will be: Juggalos.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 03:31 (eighteen years ago)

ilm doesn't have enemies. it just has friends who are wrong.

― tipsy mothra, Saturday, 21 April 2007 05:23 (eighteen years ago)

madonna and LZ are not apples and oranges they are both western pop music.

― 600, Saturday, 21 April 2007 06:06 (eighteen years ago)

i love this thread or i love ILM (where music fans express their passion).

FWIW, i'm a albums guy so the band will always win.

― Bee OK, Saturday, 21 April 2007 06:10 (eighteen years ago)

this whole debate revolves around comparing the writer/performer with the the 'performer of others material' and saying that the writer/performer is better because they WROTE

if we're going to do this then we need to compare the writer/performer with the 'WRITER of others material', then we can get past one being better because of their function..and judge on a level playing field

ie, songwriting is being priviledged way about performance here. and thats ok! but if you are going to do that then at least compare songwriter with songwriter, not songwriter with performer and find the performer lacking!

its like saying the director of a film is better than the actor in another film, because the actor in the other film never directed anything! at least compare the directors!!

― 600, Saturday, 21 April 2007 06:12 (eighteen years ago)

Sundar I am sorry! But I'd better get off this thread because my tiny late-flowering appreciation of Zeppelin is in danger of being crushed!

― Groke, Saturday, 21 April 2007 07:16 (eighteen years ago)

― Groke, Saturday, 21 April 2007 07:54 (eighteen years ago)

only that artists who write their own material - especially artists whose material is inarguably influential and timeless

So by that reasoning Bono is better than Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley combined? And so is Madonna?

― JN$OT, Saturday, 21 April 2007 08:15 (eighteen years ago)

if you put it as "the purpose of music is to generate other music" i think that's a valid point--especially if you take the position that music is about nothing else but music--that is, it cant be about anything other than itself. but to use words like creativity and greatness doesnt make much sense to me. music creates music creates music creates music....

none of this has anything to do with determining whether anything is "good" tho!

― ryan, Saturday, 21 April 2007 14:22 (eighteen years ago)

i mean, it could explain why some music is more popular or more common, but that doesnt assign it any greater aesthetic or moral value.

― ryan, Saturday, 21 April 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

That yearning to make your personal taste an objective fact is never going to go away, tho.

― Noodle Vague, Saturday, 21 April 2007 14:27 (eighteen years ago)

yes. it's a "will to power" kinda thing ain't it.

i personally think there IS some way in which it makes sense to talk about one band being better than another, but it's often slippery and dependent on a shared discourse. the fact that most people who listen to lots of music hate Nickleback shouldnt be discounted as the arbitrary vagaries of "taste"--(for one thing it acts like every person's taste is born out of the particular identity of their soul or something and has nothing to do with more communal or "objective" factors--its too subjective).

now that doesnt mean that everyone who likes music has to hate Nickleback, just that a substantial amount seem to and it's not arbitrary that this is the case.

― ryan, Saturday, 21 April 2007 14:37 (eighteen years ago)

if we're going to do this then we need to compare the writer/performer with the 'WRITER of others material', then we can get past one being better because of their function..and judge on a level playing field

I'm guessing if we did that tho the ppl defending this type of position would argue that Madonna's songwriters are lacking, as they are not also performers! It's the complete self-sufficiency (writing, singing and more often than not producing and arranging your own music) that's the attraction.

(I sorta prefer Led Zep to Madonna, but certainly prefer Madonna's working method to Zeppelin's, for the simple reason that there are more people around who can be great songwriters, producers or performers than ones who can be all three and far too many people try for the latter.)

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, 21 April 2007 14:42 (eighteen years ago)

now that doesnt mean that everyone who likes music has to hate Nickleback

yes it does!

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 21 April 2007 14:42 (eighteen years ago)

^^ they might well say the above..that these writers are lesser because they dont perform. but reading the posts in this thread, and from what ive heard before, its the creative element that is priviledged above the performing, so it shouldnt be so much to compare a performing writer with a non-performing writer

you might be right though, that its actually the division of labour that is being criticized here (though the problem here comes that a compromise has to be made here too because in a band the creative leader has to either give up playing all the instruments to some other people for live shows at least, or give up some of the writing duties - and then back to the division of labour thing again)

― 600, Saturday, 21 April 2007 14:55 (eighteen years ago)

There's no denying Creed are shite though. Even Dave Matthews Band fans can turn their nose up at them.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 21 April 2007 17:21 (eighteen years ago)

madonna and LZ are not apples and oranges they are both western pop music.

-- 600, Friday, April 20, 2007 11:06 PM (Yesterday)

They are "pop" in that they are both popular, but pop is a different genre than rock, even though there is overlap and they tend to get lumped together at retail stores. The reason I say that they're apples and oranges is that they both have very different goals with their music. Madonna is, as stated above, meant to get you to dance, whereas Led Zeppelin is, well, not. It's sort of like comparing Mayhem and Christina Aguilera, or Ghostbusters and Schindler's List, to take it to the obvious extreme. They are both nominally the same thing, yes, but they both have very different purposes and aesthetics, so it's a somewhat pointless exercise to say that Mayhem are bad because they don't make you dance or Schindler's List is bad because it doesn't make you laugh. This being ILM, somebody inevitably will, though.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 19:54 (eighteen years ago)

hah, there are tons of dancey (at least funky) zep songs though! that was absolutely part of their aesthetic.

― pretzel walrus, Saturday, 21 April 2007 20:17 (eighteen years ago)

Well, if you want to be technical about it, yes. Still, danceability isn't one of the primary criteria I look for in judging a Led Zeppelin song.

― Jeff Treppel, Saturday, 21 April 2007 20:33 (eighteen years ago)

It seems to me that Led Zeppelin and Madonna both sing about sex a lot (or sexual need, to be more exact)

― Groke, Saturday, 21 April 2007 21:13 (eighteen years ago)

a little disappointed geir hasnt posted

― JW, Saturday, 21 April 2007 21:55 (eighteen years ago)

He did post on the Led Zep poll thread.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 21 April 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

and the Sabbath.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 21 April 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

It seems to me that Led Zeppelin and Madonna both sing about sex a lot (or sexual need, to be more exact)

man this just made me realize how funny it would be if madonna sung about tolkien and vikings and led zeppelin did a version of material girl.

for the record i love LZ and madonna (dont know BS yet) and tho i prefer LZ at this point in my life what i like about both of them is that i feel there is a relentless sense of fun and excitement in their music. i dont get why people think LZ is ponderous, i think they're a blast, funky, and really creative. then again i am coming at LZ pretty fresh without having grown up listening to them like most people.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 00:56 (eighteen years ago)

i mean the last minute or so of "The Ocean"--just so joyous!

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 00:57 (eighteen years ago)

now that doesnt mean that everyone who likes music has to hate Nickleback, just that a substantial amount seem to and it's not arbitrary that this is the case.

Woah. That'll make my head explode if I think about it too much. But consider this (illustrated):

Nickelback = music.
person who likes music = likes music
thus: can person who likes music like Nickelback?
yes.

You know what's awesome though? When you think your opinion has any relationship to reality.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 22 April 2007 02:00 (eighteen years ago)

Mordy, all I think he was suggesting is that certain qualities about Nickelback that their fans find endearing others might abhor. Is that an especially controversial point?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 22 April 2007 02:06 (eighteen years ago)

I think when you consider the commercial success of Nickelback, that statement necessarily suggests that the people listening to Nickelback aren't real music fans.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 22 April 2007 02:11 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, let me qualify that a little.

He does seem to be implying that unpopularity in particular quarters says something about the quality of the art itself, and that certainly is a little ridiculous.

xpost, indeed.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 22 April 2007 02:12 (eighteen years ago)

They clearly aren't good music fans.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 22 April 2007 02:24 (eighteen years ago)

Mordechai: yeah it's does seem that im saying that. note that i said one could LOVE music and listen to a lot of it and know a lot about it and STILL like Nickleback.

yet--id still say that, on the whole, MOST people who fit that description dont like Nickleback. (whether that's really empirically true or not i guess is up for debate, but im just assuming it).

honest question: does that fact that a vast majority of the people who bother to come to ILM hate Nickleback really strike you as just random chance? is totally random certain bands are considered "good" and certain bands considered "bad"?

no doubt there is some randomness involved, some bias, but i cant believe it's ALL bias. there's both things going on.

I'm not a subjectivist or a relativist when it comes to artistic quality (i dont think it makes any more sense than extreme "rockism" in the end) and while im very sympathetic to the "popist" stance of good ole ILM I'd like to think there is a more interesting way to think about these things without simply throwing your hands up.

Possibly bad assumptions I may be making include
1) there is something called music "out there"
2) we only encounter music through a host of particular cognitive, social, historical "categories" which always shape how we receive music.
3) that the knowledge obtained in 2 is in fact real knowledge of music which also contains error and misjudgement, etc
4) that it's possible, perhaps (a big perhaps) to minimize "errors of taste" (ok now im rolling my eyes at myself but go with mehere) and get at least a working, hazy idea of what's good and what's not.

or maybe not. i just think it's worth thinking about.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 02:57 (eighteen years ago)

just saying, you know, there are other ways to think about this stuff other than being smug and unwilling to dialogue, from either side.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 02:58 (eighteen years ago)

i should add, the upshot of what im trying to get at is that while we cant ever definitively give in to relativism we arent ever supposed to be comfortable in our conclusions either....so evaluating and re-evaluating bands like LZ or Madonna is all part of the point.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 03:10 (eighteen years ago)

all of this is why i've always felt the implied ethos of ILM--"I believe X is good and HERE'S WHY...." while it's felt that everyone else will read it with good faith--to be really, really great.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 03:26 (eighteen years ago)

Hoo boy. From the top:

id still say that, on the whole, MOST people who fit that description dont like Nickleback. (whether that's really empirically true or not i guess is up for debate, but im just assuming it).

It's never 'safe' to make unverifiable assumptions about the tastes of an ill-defined group like 'people who love music.'

does that fact that a vast majority of the people who bother to come to ILM hate Nickleback really strike you as just random chance? is totally random certain bands are considered "good" and certain bands considered "bad"?

In answer to your first question, no it is not random chance. Despite its pockets of rockists, ILM is mostly populated by a certain brand of poptimists (ugh), the prevailing ideology in music criticism these days. The fact that these poptimists tend to dislike Nickelback is completely unsurprising: you can't dance to them, they're self-serious, and they come out of a mid-90s mold that's sorely outdated. The fact that the pockets of rockists dislike Nickelback is also completely unsurprising: they use boring, recycled riffs and tend to restrict themselves to the 3 Minute Poptune song length (preventing any sweet jams), not to mention that they come out of a mid-90s mold that's sorely outdated. In the specific case of Nickelback, its been done before and its been done better.

In answer to your second question, no, it is not "random." See above.

Possibly bad assumptions I may be making include
1) there is something called music "out there"
2) we only encounter music through a host of particular cognitive, social, historical "categories" which always shape how we receive music.
3) that the knowledge obtained in 2 is in fact real knowledge of music which also contains error and misjudgement, etc
4) that it's possible, perhaps (a big perhaps) to minimize "errors of taste" (ok now im rolling my eyes at myself but go with mehere) and get at least a working, hazy idea of what's good and what's not.

Hey, you've read some philosophy. Cool.

I presume that by "real knowledge of music" in (3) you mean that despite our respective backgrounds, our opinions about music have a relationship to the (unmediated) Music-In-Itself. Our opinions are 'right' or 'wrong' based on their correspondence with Music-In-Itself.

So: where, outside the world of Forms, do you find this stuff? Where in the real world does 'unmediated Music-In-Itself' exist and (if we manage to find it) how can we ever measure the degree to which our opinions correspond to it?

Can't be done, friend.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 22 April 2007 03:41 (eighteen years ago)

yeah i've read a bit of philosophy ;)

your last question is exactly to the point though.

Music "in-itself" exists in our experiences with it, id say. it's a bit of a Peircean position im taking which is: music exists in our experience of it but it is not identical to our experience of it. hence personal taste and perspective is a big part but not the entire story.

how do we measure the degree to which our opinions correspond to it?

just an attempt at answer, you can shoot it down if you feel it's silly: maybe the extent to which our opinions seem to be accurate in predicting which music is pleasurable and which isnt, despite changing contexts in which we experience it.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 03:48 (eighteen years ago)

im not trying to say we'll know FOR SURE what is good and bad with this method, just over time that it would prove fairly reliable, and that yes id call this some form of knowledge, if not perfect.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 03:49 (eighteen years ago)

i mean, what else are we doing when we follow recommendations, make "best album" polls, attempt to find stuff that sounds "like" stuff we already like, or assume that since we liked that song we heard on the radio or in the club, we'll also like it when we buy the cd and listen to it at home?

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 04:11 (eighteen years ago)

One can, by and large, define what kind of music certain demographics will like; it does not follow that what the ILM music geek demographic likes is "good music". Taste is not completley random, but what we're finding out isn't what's good or bad, it's what's likely or unlikely to appeal to us.

a certain brand of poptimists (ugh), the prevailing ideology in music criticism these days.

Hahahaha, it so isn't. It might be in internet music criticism, if you count Pitchfork as poptimist.

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 22 April 2007 11:06 (eighteen years ago)

I'm mainly gauging by the Guardian, the New York Times, the Village Voice, the New Yorker, Salon, and yes, the internet, which is how most people learn about music these days. Certainly true, though, that Metacritic doesn't reflect a bias towards pop; perhaps I'm overstating the influence of a few major exponents.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 22 April 2007 15:06 (eighteen years ago)

Or reading too much ILM!

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 22 April 2007 16:17 (eighteen years ago)

THIS IS A GREAT THREAD

― Dom Passantino, Sunday, 22 April 2007 16:22 (eighteen years ago)

but what we're finding out isn't what's good or bad, it's what's likely or unlikely to appeal to us.

yeah im conflating the two because i dont want accept the notion of any music being "good" if no one wants to listen to it (which is precisely why extra-musical stuff like authenticity, originality, etc are always a little beside the point). what people tend to like IS good.

music is a funny case too since we make it on purpose to be good, very little of it is actively bad, the vast majority is just failed attempts to be good, and thus just sorta neither bad nor good.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 17:37 (eighteen years ago)

I think that both extremes of musical value as purely objective fact or purely subjective experience are flawed. Clearly all of our experiences are filtered through our imperfect sensory apparatus and are colored by our environment, expectations, situation, and past experiences. At the same time, I believe that good art has identifiable qualities that make it good independent of whether or not people like it.

It's not very difficult to examine the work in its larger context and make judgements about it. i.e., do Nickelback's songs stand out among the body of western pop songs as being particularly well-constructed in any aspect? I don't think that they do. If we were really going to get into it about Nickelback we could argue about these specific points with examples and such. I can't prove conclusively that Nickelback sucks, but I can make a pretty solid argument. Their music is so clearly part of a particular idiom that it's easy to compare it to other things and see where it succeeds or fails. This isn't John Cage or Marcel Duchamp or something very singular and different.

The fact that they sell a lot of records is certainly not insignificant, but I think it's would be inaccurate to attribute that solely to the quality of their music when there are many other factors at work.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 18:56 (eighteen years ago)

Despite its pockets of rockists, ILM is mostly populated by a certain brand of poptimists (ugh), the prevailing ideology in music criticism these days. The fact that these poptimists tend to dislike Nickelback is completely unsurprising: you can't dance to them, they're self-serious, and they come out of a mid-90s mold that's sorely outdated.

Uh, speaking as a poptimist, these are all perfectly good reasons to like Nickelback! especially the 'mid-90s mold that's sorely outdated' one: the immense personal joy a listener gets from the absolute generic sound of a defunct genre (especially if it's from the nineties! poptimists love the nineties) is one of the touchstone poptimist emotions, I think.

― c sharp major, Sunday, 22 April 2007 19:34 (eighteen years ago)

It was more than a little presumptious of me to speak for the poptimists, rejoinder noted.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:04 (eighteen years ago)

Let it also be noted that my (ugh) was reserved for the word and not the poptimists themselves.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

(I sorta prefer Led Zep to Madonna, but certainly prefer Madonna's working method to Zeppelin's, for the simple reason that there are more people around who can be great songwriters, producers or performers than ones who can be all three and far too many people try for the latter.)

Anyone with a talent for songwriting will also have a talent for production, and unless his/her tonsils are completely unusuable will also have a talent for performing/singing.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:23 (eighteen years ago)

Madonna is, as stated above, meant to get you to dance

This is a simplification of what Madonna is about. Madonna is not Britney Spears. Sure, part of Madonna is meant to get you to dance, but part of Madonna is also a feminist (female pop acts writing their own material was still extremely unusual back in the mid 80s) and a symbol for sexual emancipation. Plus she is a fabolous pop songwriter, including some beautiful melodic ballads that are not at all able to make anyone dance.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:27 (eighteen years ago)

is person A, who writes own songs, more talented than person C - who wrote person B's songs? they both wrote material!!

This depends whether person C writes for himself and person B, or for some audience out there that he belives might exist. Sadly, way too often, person C belongs in the latter category whereas person A first and foremost writes for himself and doesn't compromise with idea about what the market wants.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:30 (eighteen years ago)

Plus, I have more respect for person C if he sticks to writing for person B, maybe forming a band with her/him, than if he also writes material for person E, person F, person G and person H in addition.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:31 (eighteen years ago)

Anyone with a talent for songwriting will also have a talent for production, and unless his/her tonsils are completely unusuable will also have a talent for performing/singing.

Both of these statements are obviously false. I'm not sure I see the relevance in any case.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:32 (eighteen years ago)

Depends how important you think the composer is. For me, the composer is the music. The best way for the composer to have complete creative control is if he (or she, but it often tends to be a he) makes sure to sing and produce everything. If he is also a multi-instrumentalist who is able to play every note on the record it is even better, but this is rare outside purely electronic music.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:36 (eighteen years ago)

Btw. in classical music this was easier. The composer would then just notate every single note, and even if some power was still given to the director or the solist, the composer would then mostly have an absolute power of how the work would sound when performed by musicians with the required skill, and 99 per cent of all listeners don't hear the difference between different recordings of the same classical piece.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:40 (eighteen years ago)

For me the vibrating electrons are the music and nothing else matters.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:42 (eighteen years ago)

Btw. far too many non-songwriters try for being performers while far too few songwriters do.

If you can't compose a tune, you don't belong in the music biz.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:43 (eighteen years ago)

If you can't compose a tune, you don't belong in the music biz.

Sorry, Geir, but this is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on ILX.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:46 (eighteen years ago)

(xposts)

I understand how classical musicians work Geir, but how does any of that prove your previous point?

It's still not true that songwriting talent (where songwriting is about lyric writing and music composing) necessarily implies production talent (where production involves a number of technical/recording-related skills as well as arranging and people skills and such).

And yes, your last comment also makes no sense. If you can't compose a tune, you don't belong composing tunes. It doesn't mean you don't belong playing the violin or singing or mastering records. Although I wouldn't disagree that knowledge of composition helps with other musical endeavors.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:48 (eighteen years ago)

When I say songwriting talent I mean composing and just composing. Lyrics don't really have anything to do with music, and talent for writing a good lyric does of course not imply musical talent.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:51 (eighteen years ago)

i didn't vote, but both those bands are fucking terrible as far as i'm concerned.

― davie, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:57 (eighteen years ago)

A songwriter writes words and music. Someone who writes music and not words is a composer, and someone who writes words but not music is a poet or a lyricist.

I have no idea what you're trying to get at at this point.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 20:59 (eighteen years ago)

This thread has gotten way too confusing for me. Rockist Scientist OTM.

― Bimble, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:00 (eighteen years ago)

I would say the latest confusion is just Geir being ridiculous.

― Rockist Scientist, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:05 (eighteen years ago)

The melody is the song. The melody is the music. The melody is everything. Everything else is irrelevant.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:12 (eighteen years ago)

This is some kind of parody-Geir, right?

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:14 (eighteen years ago)

yeah im conflating the two because i dont want accept the notion of any music being "good" if no one wants to listen to it (which is precisely why extra-musical stuff like authenticity, originality, etc are always a little beside the point). what people tend to like IS good.

Which people, though? Critical consensus? Because what music critics and music geeks agree on is often enough stuff that non-"specialists" would definitley classify as stuff no one wants to listen to. And there's more non-specialists around than specialists (obv), so with what exact authority can we get that particular demographic to bogart a definition of "good music"? Just because they listen to a lot of the stuff?

xpost Geir I imagined your last post in a desperate "please, gentlemen, can we just agree on these basic facts??" voice and it's the cutest thing ever :)

― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:15 (eighteen years ago)

And there's more non-specialists around than specialists (obv), so with what exact authority can we get that particular demographic to bogart a definition of "good music"?

Are you asking what authority "specialists" have in dictating things to non-specialists? I should think it would be fairly obvious. Our civilization is pretty much based on the fact that we have people who devote their lives to studying certain things so that we don't have to. Critical consensus, or inclusion into the canon or what have you, doesn't mean that one must be able to enjoy something, but I think it's usually a strong indication that there's something worthwhile, unique, or remarkable to be found there.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:19 (eighteen years ago)

And there's more non-specialists around than specialists (obv), so with what exact authority can we get that particular demographic to bogart a definition of "good music"? Just because they listen to a lot of the stuff?

What would be interesting is if someone would come up with someone who has listened to just as much music as the typical critic or music geek, and still has a very "commercial" taste whereas he classifies the stuff geeks and critics listen to (and obviously he must have listened to it as well to be able to have an opinion) as unlistenable.

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:21 (eighteen years ago)

What? Aren't there plenty of music critics like that? I would think what you're looking for would be someone with a music degree/classical training who still has commercial taste.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:30 (eighteen years ago)

Geir is volunteering.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Sunday, 22 April 2007 21:31 (eighteen years ago)

Wow, I need to get my bearings. I'm skipping over the Steve v. Geir bit because it seems to me that it's something of a tangent, but please correct me if you guys think I'm missing something that's important to discussion. OK...

Ryan:

what people tend to like IS good.

How does this account for long-overdue accolades, or the idea of the 'lost classic'? Very very few people bought Betty Davis records the first time around: does this suggest she wasn't good until she was reissued?

Daniel Rf:

And there's more non-specialists around than specialists (obv), so with what exact authority can we get that particular demographic to bogart a definition of "good music"? Just because they listen to a lot of the stuff?

Basically, yes. As Steve points out above, the best critics are those that spend their time learning about music history and theory so that they can put new music into an appropriate historical and musical context (obviously it's a big fat help if they can communicate the context in an interesting and well-written way).

Pfunkboy OTM.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:09 (eighteen years ago)

The melody is the song. The melody is the music. The melody is everything. Everything else is irrelevant.

No, melody can be important but it's only one of many elements which make music worth listening to. Stuff, I know you don't like such as rythm, texture, production, performance and feel for example.

― Billy Dods, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:14 (eighteen years ago)

What? Aren't there plenty of music critics like that?

Well. How many music critics gave good reviews to Aqua, Rednex, Whigfield or Ace Of Base, for instance?

(I mean, not that they would have deserved it IMO, but, just as some obvious examples)

― Geir Hongro, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:19 (eighteen years ago)

Well if that's what you meant, I don't see the purpose of the critic. People can just find out what everyone else is buying and then buy that, too. And isn't that what lots of people do?

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:23 (eighteen years ago)

yeah im totally willing to admit that there is a whole "some people's opinions are more right than others" way to take what im saying. which is sorta WTF and weird and im trying to avoid it.

the biggest problem is deciding "whose experience of music do we value?" and it's a creepy question. but i definitely value the opinion of something like ILM over, say, pitchfork, because ILM tends to match more closely my own experience of music. doesnt mean ILM is better for sure, but it's the best indication i have for now so im willing to go along with that.

but maybe look at it differently. i really DO think everyone's opinion is valid, ESPECIALLY the outliers, the weirdos who first started to realize Betty Davis was good, for example, or even Nickelback lovers. that's something that should be confronted. the question is never historical, as in "what was good for them?", instead it is "what will I like now, what is good now?" and one of the best ways to do that is go by what other people liked before, and see if it's still good.

"if you like X you'll like Y"--so information about this stuff is communal, it's a project carried along into the future, always under revision of course, because we could be wrong. im not saying that this will ever produce a definitive canon, we should never be that complacent, but it's ok to operate under the idea that you're trying to assemble a canon, with the help of all the other ears out there in the world.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:24 (eighteen years ago)

I'm LOST. Too many ideas being discussed at once! I thought we were talking about LZ sucking ass/Madonna rocking, but now we're into the legitimacy of music criticism/the opinion of non-critics/music composition/WHAT IS MUSIC?!?!

WTF?!?!

BUT here's what I think:
Yes, there is such a thing as good music and bad music--I don't feel comfortable saying there is such a thing as a bad genre of music, though.

And Nickelback is bad music. They are derivative hacks, but people like them because they haven't listened to a lot of other rock bands. Play them an album by Panda Bear, and they'll think it's shit. Play them an album by Beach Boys, and they'll think it's brilliant. That's because they haven't heard the links between the two.

― Tape Store, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:30 (eighteen years ago)

i do think there are trends towards consensus, however spurious that may turn out to be. it's totally possible someone will discover a new great 17th century composer and he'll take a place in the canon, but it's unlikely.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:32 (eighteen years ago)

"How You Remind Me" is memorable and achieves everything it sets out to, at the very least.

Are the trends towards consensus healthy, though? Does consensus lead to more good music being produced, to use the 'Darwinian' analysis upthread?

― Groke, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:38 (eighteen years ago)

xposts

ryan, I feel like you're conflating two senses of the word "experience."

1. a particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something: My encounter with the bear in the woods was a frightening experience.

In that sense, everyone's experience of music is equally "valid," whatever that really means. If you enjoy something, you enjoy it. If you don't, you don't.

4. knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone: a man of experience.

But in this sense, we generally value the opinions of those who have more experience. There are lots of common ways to judge the value of someone's experience. We might judge them by the type of education they received, the length of time they've been involved with the field, the range of positions they've held, the works that they've released or published, the way they are regarded by their peers, whether they can make a convincing case for themselves, etc. These things aren't necessarily accurate predictors, and certainly less so in isolation, but when taken together they're generally felt to be adequate.

You seem awfully afraid to abandon this kind of egalitarian stance where everyone is just as right as everyone else. That's not the case. Some people are experts. It seems silly to deny this.

Now, before charges of elitism are levelled, like I said before, your experience (in the sense of definition 1) is your own. Happiness is happiness, and if you enjoy something that experts might say lacks merit, it doesn't make your enjoyment into something else or somehow less than someone else's enjoyment. I think it's perfectly possible to enjoy something while acknowledging that it lacks merit in one way or another.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

im am afraid of it! i want to have my cake and eat it too! but in a broader sense if someone just loves a piece of music i abhor, it at least makes me curious what they hear in it.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:41 (eighteen years ago)

which is why i love the testamonial form of ILM at its best moments. I like X and here's why...

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:42 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah. The "here's why" is certainly no easy task to produce, though. And that's why music critics get paid the big bucks!

But for my part, that's one of the things I really like about formally studying music theory etc.: it provides a shared language to talk about this kind of stuff. If that didn't exist, I'd give a lot more credit to the aphorism about music writing being like dancing about architecture. But as it is I always roll my eyes when people drag that one out.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:50 (eighteen years ago)

Led Zeppelin isn't supposed to make you dance

"Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move, gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.
Oh, oh, child, way you shake that thing, gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting. "

"Dancing days are here again,
As the summer evenings grow
I got my flower, I got my power
I got a woman who knows"

It's sort of like comparing Mayhem and Christina Aguilera

You do realize Zep were closer to the latter, right?

― xhuxk, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:51 (eighteen years ago)

Are the trends towards consensus healthy, though? Does consensus lead to more good music being produced, to use the 'Darwinian' analysis upthread?

great question. i dont know. maybe not, maybe reaching back for abandoned or failed musical models is how creativity and the "new" is achieved. one thing music most certainly has to achieve is to be new, even literally. (ie, you cant sell someone the same record twice)

there may be both trends, both towards consensus, which creates boring old canons, which is fine, and dissensus, which becomes a source for creativity, "revolution", and the like, which in the end only expands what's in the canon.

― ryan, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:51 (eighteen years ago)

(xposts)

And what I meant to conclude with is that in my view the most enlightening way to talk/learn about a piece of music and other people's feelings about it is when everyone has a complete score in their hands and speaks the same musical language. I've studied lots of music this way and it can be very rewarding. Of course this is done much more often with classical music than with pop.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:52 (eighteen years ago)

the thing that's confusing about this thread is that zeppelin (and BS to a degree) were bluesy jam rock/guitar wankery bands from the 70s. if you're not into that, then that's OK-- but it isn't about "what is art" when comparing them to madonna, who has zero blues influence anywhere in her music.

i've never heard madonna's 20 minute long live stadium version of like a virgin (dazed and confused), where her drug-addled studio band (john bonham) just breaks up into a long drum solo (moby dick) while she goes back does 10 lines (and watches her guitar player hump 13 year old girls), then takes off her shirt and comes out stumbling for the bass line of papa don't preach (Bron-y-aur stomp) to explode then she does this satanic howling thing and starts mumbling about magick and screaming orgasms into the microphone while her fans have their acid dreams explode all over the place...

then again, i've never done aerobics to paranoid.

can someone hook me up with madonna doing that, so i can compare her to BS or zeppelin? thanks bunches!

― 7seasjim, Sunday, 22 April 2007 22:56 (eighteen years ago)

Are you asking what authority "specialists" have in dictating things to non-specialists? I should think it would be fairly obvious. Our civilization is pretty much based on the fact that we have people who devote their lives to studying certain things so that we don't have to.

Well yes, but the problem here is that most areas are a lot more easy to quantify than art. It doesn't take much to dismiss an incompetent laywer or engineer, for instance - there are objective rules and standards, and sure they might be a bit less obvious and black & white than us non-specialists might think, but at the end of the day you can still call a bluff.

But what are those standards for music criticism? The music theory and classical training mentioned here provide one sort of structure, yeah, but my experience with pop music criticism has been that one, the average critic (let alone the average music geek!) doesn't really know much of this, and two, many of those that do will tell you that it is not the most important tool at their disposal when writing reviews at all! To claim that the current pop music canon looks the way it does because a lot of ppl with that type of knowledge looked into it seems quite an absurd idea - it's fine if you think that's the way it *should* have been built (and though I don't think theory is the alpha and omega, I'd totally agree that current popcrit needs more, not less of it), but if you check through the consensus on the current canon, be it Dylan or the Sex Pistols or Motown or even the Beatles, the reasons ppl give for their greatness are always a great deal more ethereal.

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 23 April 2007 00:08 (eighteen years ago)

I work out to Black Sabbath/metal all the time!

Zeppelin also had songs about fantasy stuff and magic, as made fun of above. Anyway, I was just using extremes to try to prove my point: it's silly to dismiss Led Zeppelin as music just because they don't make you dance as much as Madonna does.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 01:14 (eighteen years ago)

(Anyway, Motorhead and Celtic Frost have songs about dancing, too, but that doesn't make them like Christina Aguilera. I mean, I suppose youcould dance to those songs, but as Lemmy said, you'd probably break your legs)

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 01:29 (eighteen years ago)

I kinda got lost in my time away... I was asked about a so-called "Darwinian" notion that music should propagate itself. Well, that's actually a cool way to put it. That isn't to say that my criteria here is just (any more than my criteria for most of the music that I enjoy is that it sounds best played loudly) but that is my criteria, although not nearly the be-all end-all of it.

My thread about YouTube clip that showed bands ahead of their time was, I thinkm my Darwinian criteria rearing it's head. I like listening to bands that don't sound like anything before them.

Now, just being first doesn't mean that you RULE automatically but I do afford you some respect. Even a band such as Korn, who not only am I not a huge fan of, but whose influence (or offspring, to keep with the Darwinin metaphors) I am even *less* of a fan of, commands a level of respect from me.

This is hardly the ONLY criteria I have for loving certain bands. I mean, I love a lot of albums whose other fans might be limited to siblings of the band itself, but even they tend to have something different about them (even if that diffference didn't get usurped into other things even indirectly) or they were part of a scene that as a whole was influential (like I consider the underground metal movement of the mid '80s, which helps qualify even the least-known relics of the era as 'influential' almost accidentally!). When push comes to shove, most of the bands that are on my list of favorites - Bad Brains, Motorhead, Ramones, Black Sabbath, Sex Pistols, Voivod, The Monks (just a handful) - did provide some kind of influence and/or were ahead of their time.

So yeah I guess Musical Darwinism is important to me. I take no shame in that. After all, when people said that the Velvet Underground only sold a few thousand records but everyone who bought it started a band, I don't think that phrase was used to denigrate VUs album sales, do you?

― NYCNative, Monday, 23 April 2007 04:26 (eighteen years ago)

Is this where I get my Oink invite?

― forksclovetofu, Monday, 23 April 2007 04:35 (eighteen years ago)

To elaborate on Chuck's question upthread: LZ and BS (or Motorhead or Celtic Frost or Jimmy Smith or Lawrence Welk...) are just as much dance music as Madonna or Xtina.

I could say Xtina/Madonna are not dance music because it's hard to Waltz or Virginia Reel to their song stylings.

We shouldn't reduce "dance music" to mean "a set of sonic and marketing cues to a certain demographic that they should dance now." (Unless you really need to, as some sort of genre shorthand, of course.)

― mark 0, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:27 (eighteen years ago)

I think there's a difference between "dance music" and "music you can dance to" and even "music you should dance to."

― NYCNative, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:29 (eighteen years ago)

Well a whole lot of Madonna and Zep and Sabbath music seems designed to provoke physical movement - does that seem fair? (Not all, in all 3 cases).

― Groke, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:30 (eighteen years ago)

Didn't people even "dance" to the 7/4 grooves of Pink Floyd's money back then?

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:34 (eighteen years ago)

I think there's a difference between "dance music" and "music you can dance to" and even "music you should dance to."

But that difference varies from person to person, in various coordinates of time and space over millenia. I just wanted to make the distinction between genre shorthand (and mistaking it for some sort of law) and the reality of a vast universe of 3/4 and 4/4 (etc.) rhythms that people have danced to and still do.

― mark 0, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:35 (eighteen years ago)

A decent number of Zep tracks are funk, for crissakes. Early disco DJs in New York regularly mixed them into their sets! And yes, that (and the fact that they're as often as not about carnal pleasures) makes them closer to Christina Aguilera (who has been known to update the blues herself) or Madonna than to stiff-assed Mayhem, Jeff. (Or at least it means that any line you draw between Mayhem/Zep and Christina/Madonna is arbitrary.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:40 (eighteen years ago)

You can dance to anything you like if you so feel inclined.
If you were watching LZ live I can bet you would be dancing. I know I would. Much less exhausting that jumping up and down like a maniac like when I was younger. (not that I don't still do that, just not as often and for as long)

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:42 (eighteen years ago)

Zep (and their ability to do strange things over an insistent, extended beat) were also frequently cited as a major influence on early Chicago house music by originators such as Marshall Jefferson:

http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_08.19.04/beat/extended.php

― xhuxk, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:43 (eighteen years ago)

I guess, if you find Led Zep "funky" you don't complain about the fact that you cannot dance to them either. But generally, the main point about Led Zeppelin wasn't about being funky or danceable.

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:44 (eighteen years ago)

That's not what John Paul Jones told me when I interviewed him a few years ago (though he said he wished they'd done dance stuff like "The Crunge" and "Trampled Under Foot" and "Fool in the Rain" -- which has a Latin rhythm, which puts it closer to "La Isla Bonita" or to "Borderline" than to anything by Mayhem -- even more than they did.)

― xhuxk, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:48 (eighteen years ago)

Never trust a drummer nor a bass player ;)

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:51 (eighteen years ago)

xp But of course suggesting that endlessly creative artists like Zeppelin or Madonna -- both of whose music is all over the fucking map -- have one "main point" is completely bizarre to begin with.

― xhuxk, Monday, 23 April 2007 11:52 (eighteen years ago)

Chuck otm

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:03 (eighteen years ago)

Neither Madonna nor Led Zeppelin are acts whose main point is to make people dance. Madonna is closer though.

The main point about most 70s disco was to make people dance though. Same about 90s Eurodance.

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 23 April 2007 12:19 (eighteen years ago)

Did you dance to them?

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 23 April 2007 14:03 (eighteen years ago)

But what are those standards for music criticism? The music theory and classical training mentioned here provide one sort of structure, yeah, but my experience with pop music criticism has been that one, the average critic (let alone the average music geek!) doesn't really know much of this, and two, many of those that do will tell you that it is not the most important tool at their disposal when writing reviews at all! To claim that the current pop music canon looks the way it does because a lot of ppl with that type of knowledge looked into it seems quite an absurd idea

Sorry to continue the sort-of derail, but I wanted to come back to this. I think you answer your own question somewhat at the beginning - music theory isn't a very important tool to music critics because a) they don't often know much about it, and b) even if they do, most of their audience doesn't, so what's the point? So I'm not claiming that the pop music canon (and what are we referring to there, anyway? It seems to me that the pop music canon is far less-defined than, say, the classical music canon or the western literature canon) was built by consensus of people with music degrees. My argument is more along the lines that if you asked people with music degrees to analyze the pop music canon, they'd in many cases be able to point out particular musical features of the songs that make them interesting, innovative, and effective (e.g. Alan W. Pollack's excellent notes on The Beatles. And perhaps by extension that if more of the music-buying public had a better grounding in music theory and history (as when most people had to make their own music rather than consuming it), bland rehashed stuff like Nickelback wouldn't sell as many CDs.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:37 (eighteen years ago)

Pretty funny to see Steve Goldberg complaining about other people's "bland rehashed shit".

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:54 (eighteen years ago)

Why? Because my music is bland and rehashed? Or because Nickelback's is fresh and original?

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:58 (eighteen years ago)

And I wasn't complaining about it, really - for the most part I'm not forced to listen to Nickelback, and if other people want to that's their prerogative.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:59 (eighteen years ago)

You said it, not me!

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:02 (eighteen years ago)

Well aren't you just an incisive little fellow!

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:03 (eighteen years ago)

Your music...

SUCKS

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:37 (eighteen years ago)

dang that's harsh

― Surmounter, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:46 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know who you are Catsup dude. We weren't discussing my music (and you haven't even heard my record, as it's not released yet), so perhaps you should go back to the kiddie table or something.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 19:05 (eighteen years ago)

catsup dude
catsup dude
everybody loves
the catsup dude

― Mr. Que, Monday, 23 April 2007 19:06 (eighteen years ago)

So I'm not claiming that the pop music canon (and what are we referring to there, anyway? It seems to me that the pop music canon is far less-defined than, say, the classical music canon or the western literature canon) was built by consensus of people with music degrees. My argument is more along the lines that if you asked people with music degrees to analyze the pop music canon, they'd in many cases be able to point out particular musical features of the songs that make them interesting, innovative, and effective

Which is all very well, but the question remains - if music theory isn't the thing that makes the consensus of music critics and music geeks more valid than that of the general populace, what is? I really can't swallow "they listen to a lot of it!" as a convincing argument, tbh, I wouldn't take "I went to a shitload of trials!" from a laywer or "check out how many operations I've been at" from a doctor either.

And perhaps by extension that if more of the music-buying public had a better grounding in music theory and history (as when most people had to make their own music rather than consuming it), bland rehashed stuff like Nickelback wouldn't sell as many CDs.

This I really don't believe at all. The times when every family household had a piano aren't too far off, and as someone who's spent much of his recent listening time trawling through 20's and 30's Chartpop, I've found no shortage of music either bland or rehashed - the sheer amount of people still vainly trying to catch up with Bing Crosby over ten years after his debut, brrr...

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 23 April 2007 19:24 (eighteen years ago)

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:05 (eighteen years ago)

Did you dance to them?

No, I hated them. Because there was nothing of what I consider musical value.

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:06 (eighteen years ago)

Which is all very well, but the question remains - if music theory isn't the thing that makes the consensus of music critics and music geeks more valid than that of the general populace, what is? I really can't swallow "they listen to a lot of it!" as a convincing argument, tbh, I wouldn't take "I went to a shitload of trials!" from a laywer or "check out how many operations I've been at" from a doctor either.

I thought we'd already adressed this. We give more weight to the opinions of people with more experience. Experience encompasses both education (knowledge of theory, history, and the like) and exposure (they listen to a lot of it). I'm not sure why you're so quick to dismiss the latter - if song X was the first song you ever heard, or more realistically the first song from genre Y that you'd ever heard, you probably can't be expected to have as solid an understanding of it as somone who is well-versed in the particular style and conventions.

We could say that aside from experience, there's a talent involved in listening to music. There are all sorts of ways we can test someone's ability to hear and understand music. So someone who is completely tonedeaf is probably not as good an authority on musical matters as someone with perfect pitch. And of course I'll again mention the caveat that these things don't function in isolation - someone is not an authority on music simply because they have perfect pitch, or a music degree, or have listened to many genres (and vice versa). But I think the combination of those sorts of factors tends to make someone an authority on music, similarly to other fields.

Fair enough on your objection to my last point - it was speculative and I don't really feel like belaboring it.

As for Geir's point, I think it's clear that musical quality is not the sole factor at work in pop music. There are external, cultural factors at work here, moreso than in any other type of music. I don't think that invalidates my point - you'd just have to add "cultural fluency" to the list of experience factors above. But it again calls into question what we mean by the "pop canon." Is that simply a function of the albums that have sold the most copies? Or is it a more complex combination of albums that sell a lot, and are critically praised by both contemporary and future critics? Or what?

So to sum up one more time: I'd say that the people with the most valid opinions on a piece of music are those most fluent in the language of that music. So Beethoven's opinion on a piece of 20th century atonal music would perhaps have less weight than Schoenberg's, but more than someone who was musically illiterate. And like I acknowledged, cultural factors are part of the language of pop music. Of course none of this can be quantified precisely, but I think it's a mistake to react to that by saying throwing out notions of real quality completely and equating what's good with what's popular.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

er, strike the word "saying" from the last sentence.

And sorry for the long-windedness!

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 20:52 (eighteen years ago)

i think you're going far in isolating particular individual's experiences. it's still way too subjective, what you propose. do we have to pass a test on musical literacy to have an important opinion?

masses of people in the aggregate over long periods of time are more likely to have more valid conclusions than one highly educated individual.

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 21:07 (eighteen years ago)

and musical literacy is a highly biased form of observation in it's own right. it needs to be complemented by other forms of observation.

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 21:11 (eighteen years ago)

I don't think people with music degrees will see what's so great about punk. I'm not even sure they will understand how "Never Mind The Bollocks" sticks out in any way musically. People with media degrees are more likely to understand punk than people with music degrees.

-- Geir Hongro, Monday, April 23, 2007 3:05 PM (1 hour ago

geir, not everyone with a music degree is a norweigian weirdo w/an ELO fetish.

the singer/guitarist in my former band has a masters in classical double-bass performance and also was getting his teaching degree (he now teaches elementary orchestra)...he was a total pro, played in the university of MN orchestra and loved the fuck out of minor threat, pistols etc etc...

― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 23 April 2007 21:33 (eighteen years ago)

Re: listening experience as a quantifier of expertdom, I grow more suspicious of the gigantist, listen to everything and then delete it from yr hard drive the next day school of music listening by the day, but hey.

Of course none of this can be quantified precisely, but I think it's a mistake to react to that by saying throwing out notions of real quality completely and equating what's good with what's popular.

I really don't see how one follows from the other, and I don't think anyone ever claims the latter, really (unless by "good" you mean "good to the people who like it".)

― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 23 April 2007 21:38 (eighteen years ago)

jesus fuck why am i responding to geir like he's not just apeshit..

― M@tt He1ges0n, Monday, 23 April 2007 21:42 (eighteen years ago)

Daniel, I'd guess I'm more likely to find something good if it's popular than if it's not. It's not absolute, of course, and I'm tempted to qualify that with "popular within its genre" too. But I'd say there's at least a mild correlation. The main thing that stops the correlation being stronger isn't that there's amazing music that the public doesn't 'get', it's that there are only X spaces on playlists, or in the chart rundowns, and only so much money in people's wallets, so a lot of deserving material doesn't end up selling well.

That's partly the reason I don't think pop music is a terribly difficult thing to get 'good' at listening to: it seems to me to have a very low entry level - you don't need to hear much to have an informed opinion. As you become more expert your opinion might get more informed, of course! You need to hear a hell of a lot of records to try and BE a Christgau or Xhucx or Marcello or [insert ILM fave here], but you don't need to hear many to disagree with what they say and be taken seriously.

― Groke, Monday, 23 April 2007 21:50 (eighteen years ago)

xpost

it's still way too subjective, what you propose. do we have to pass a test on musical literacy to have an important opinion?

I don't understand. You think the metric I proposed is too subjective, but you seem opposed to the idea of having a more objective gauge (i.e. passing a musical literacy test). As to your question, I'm sure to some observers it wouldn't matter, but I think it's rational to give more weight to the opinion of the person who's more fluent with the type of music in question. I mean, that's so close to tautological that I'm having a hard time following your objection to it. Do you think that it's impossible to gain knowledge about any type of music?

and musical literacy is a highly biased form of observation in it's own right. it needs to be complemented by other forms of observation.

In what sense is it biased? And I explicitly stated that these indicators all need to be taken together and not in isolation.

I grow more suspicious of the gigantist, listen to everything and then delete it from yr hard drive the next day school of music listening by the day, but hey.

Well if someone is listening to lots of music but not actually absorbing/understanding it, then that would be irrelevant to considerations of their experience. i.e., if you listened to jazz but subsequently were unable to discern a jazz track from a rock track or a hip-hop track, you obviously haven't gained any knowledge from listening to it.

I really don't see how one follows from the other, and I don't think anyone ever claims the latter, really (unless by "good" you mean "good to the people who like it".)

You don't see how what follows from what? I'm reacting against an argument which I think is common - people say that since matters of taste are obviously not 100% objective and quantifiable, they must be 100% subjective, and everyone's opinion is equally "right." As for equating goodness with popularity, I've certainly seen that claimed, and that seemed to me to be what ryan was saying earlier in the thread when he said: what people tend to like IS good. Although I guess you can take that as a post-facto observation of some kind, saying that we can usually tell what's good after it's been filtered through culture over enough time. But the point I keep trying to make is that what makes good music good and bad music bad is mostly a function of the music itself and not everyone's perception of the music. If nobody listens to Beethoven's 9th symphony in the future it will still be a masterpiece.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 21:59 (eighteen years ago)

massive xpost

Okay, okay! White flag. I give up. Mayhem was a bad comparison. I don't even like Mayhem! I was just trying to pick two divergent artists. I've failed. I mean, I was really just trying to point out the silliness of the whole "Led Zeppelin doesn't make me dance" criticism.

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:08 (eighteen years ago)

xpost to groke:

You need to hear a hell of a lot of records to try and BE a Christgau or Xhucx or Marcello or [insert ILM fave here], but you don't need to hear many to disagree with what they say and be taken seriously.

But don't you think that's more a function of how pop music is perceived in society, i.e. that it's a populist form and so anyone can be an expert, rather than any feature of the music itself? People might take you seriously even though you don't have a lot of expertise, but is that rational?

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:09 (eighteen years ago)

well, in short im simply objecting to valuing the opinion of one particular person or set of people. the point is to get past that.

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:16 (eighteen years ago)

i mean, all you'd have to do is look at the history my own field, literature, to see how the "experts" have ignored or been unaware of great literature for all kinds of reasons (race, sex, class, just plain snobbery) and THEN to see them scamper to include it within the canon. the biggest mistake you could make would be to claim to have found a vantage point from which to make complete objective sense of something. you need help from other points of view, other observations, which in turn are biased too. the only thing particularly weird thing that i am claiming is that in this communal process something like "music" in itself ("music" minus the errors of observation we necessarily suffer when we observe it) is approached.

the alternative is to say that "music" is continually deferred and we get no closer. the flaw there is that you'd have to know "music" in order to make that claim, so it's paradoxical. not knowing "music" then, i have to make the claim that we gotta keep trying to know it.

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:27 (eighteen years ago)

ryan, i don't see how pointing out that people have made prejudiced judgements about art in the past means that we can't try to make judgements about art at all. I never claimed that music can be judged completely objectively - in fact I explicitly said it could not. But again I don't think it follows from that conclusion that one person cannot be more knowledgeable about a particular type of art than another. And if one person has more knowledge about a subject than another, I'm inclined to give more weight to his opinion on the topic.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:33 (eighteen years ago)

that's fair i think. im inclined to give some opinions more weight than others too. but in that case we are talking about specific people and the tendency of their opinions to be right or wrong, rather than music itself, and whether it's good or not.

the object of study here is music, i think, and not a group of people and the rightness or wrongness of their opinions.

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:35 (eighteen years ago)

So then what is your position with regard to music and its goodness or badness? The point which I've been trying to express is that the goodness of the music is mostly inherent in the music itself and is not merely a function of our perceptions and enjoyment of it.

It would seem to me that if we agree that some people's opinions have more weight because they have more knowledge about the music, there must be something within the music that's knowable, and my point follows from that.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:38 (eighteen years ago)

x-post

for instance: we'd have to know in advance what music is good or not before we could say that experts are good at predicting what music is good!

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

i agree with you generally--that music can be good or bad independent of what any particular person thinks about it.

your second point is fine as far as im concerned, i just think it's possible for people with more knowledge of something to STILL be wrong about it. so we take their opinions seriously, maybe more seriously, but we also have to listen to everyone else.

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:43 (eighteen years ago)

I am basically saying that we have to trust those with the most knowledge about the subject. Maybe that makes some people uncomfortable when it comes to art (although I think most people accept it when it comes to other things). Now, we do know in advance what music we enjoy, so we can tell if an expert is good at predicting what music we will enjoy, and I think lots of people choose their favorite music critics in this way. But again I don't think that "art which one enjoys" necessarily corresponds to "art which is good." The former is decided by the individual, while the latter is decided by the experts on the particular art. Those experts are fallible of course (and I think this is what you're saying in your latest post and I agree), but I think that's basically how it works, and I think it's the most rational arrangement.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:47 (eighteen years ago)

I am basically saying that we have to trust those with the most knowledge about the subject.

Because they have peered into the realm of ideal forms and know some sort of objective truths about value.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:52 (eighteen years ago)

ok. but i dont feel like i have to trust them very much. music is too vast a field for any one expert or experts to really have a handle on it all. there's too much of it, too many variables, for anyone to have THAT much trust placed in them. but if you want to trust them a lot, and i want to trust them a little, it doesn't make a huge difference. as long as no one trusts them completely!

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

Rockist, I already justified that claim at great length. If you have a particular objection to my justification, then we could discuss it.

music is too vast a field for any one expert or experts to really have a handle on it all.

That's why I said many times that trust in an expert should only extend to their particular area of expertise. Yes "music" is a vast field, but the fields of "jazz" or "bebop" are far less vast.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:56 (eighteen years ago)

of course. that narrows down the chance of error, but still doesnt eliminate it.

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:00 (eighteen years ago)

Which is why I agreed that the experts are fallible, but I dismiss the objection that we shouldn't trust experts because there are too many different types of music. So we seem to be largely in agreement!

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:02 (eighteen years ago)

maybe it's your rhetoric i am disagreeing with. I dont like the word trust! so by all means, lets listen to experts! I'll hear them out.

but my own inclination is not to trust "experts" very much when it comes to art or music. I'll take ILM over most music experts. to what degree you value the opinion of an expert is important but not absolutely critical. just so long as it is not total!

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:05 (eighteen years ago)

http://enri.cas.psu.edu/images/askexpert.jpg

― m coleman, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:06 (eighteen years ago)

*is wondering if Ryan has noticed that a lot of the people that post on ILM tend to, in fact, be music experts to some extent or another, whether it be Chuck, Ned, Scott Seward, Frank Kogan, etc., which sort of defeats his point of trusting ILM more than music experts*

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:11 (eighteen years ago)

Gah, I thought we were finished here! Yes, we should evaluate arguments and not simply accept things as dogma, but there's a point at which we have to accept that other people are doing the hard work for us to come up with the answers. Again, that doesn't mean you are compelled to enjoy what the experts say is good, but in the absence of your own substantial knowledge of the field I think you should probably believe them about the value of the work.

I don't know or care very much about, I don't know, polka. If someone who's spent decades studying polka music tells me that piece X is considered one of the great works of polka, I'm probably going to take his word for it, even though I might not enjoy the piece. Were I to decide to learn about polka, I'd probably take a look at that piece and see if I could understand what made it good. Yes, he could be lying to me, or he could be insane, or whatever, but absent any indication of those things, I think it's rational to believe him that there's something valuable about that piece of music.

Now what's your reason for saying you'd take ILM over most music experts? It seems to me that ILM contains many music experts. Maybe you're viewing my usage of "expert" as some kind of exclusionary academic term or something?

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:13 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, what Jeff said.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:14 (eighteen years ago)

I don't know who you are Catsup dude. We weren't discussing my music (and you haven't even heard my record, as it's not released yet), so perhaps you should go back to the kiddie table or something.

-- St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, April 23, 2007 3:05 PM (4 hours ago)

You have your nose so far up Jeff Mangum's ass that any record you make is going to be shit. PS YOUR MP3S SUCK AND NO AMOUNT OF PRODUCTION CAN SAVE YOU

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW

― JW, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:17 (eighteen years ago)

POSTED 6:20 PM Friday
Pop con: Finding deep meaning where there is none

April 20, 2007

You learn things at the EMP Pop Conference. For instance, I did not know that rock T-shirts and posters were full of significance and meaning until I attended a panel this afternoon on "Iconography." Also, not being a mallrat, I had never heard of Hot Topic before but found out at the same panel that it's a mall retailer despised by the rock cognoscenti because it's not really punk, dammit!

In keeping with the general tone of the panel — i.e., finding deep meaning where there is none — there was also a paper on "American Idol" which postulated, shockingly enough, that all the contestants oversing! Who knew?

Of course, being a highfalutin intellectual talk-fest, the word "oversing" was never used, because it's too understandable. Oversinging was referred to as "melisma." Upping the intellectual quotient even more, Machiavelli's "The Prince" was cited because Idol "is political," according to panelist Katherine Meizel, a Ph.D. candidate on ethnomusicology at UC Santa Barbara. "It's an election, after all," she explained, to titters of laughter.

Michaelangelo Matos, a local rock writer who sometimes freelances for The Seattle Times, read his paper about Bob Marley posters on dorm room walls, without ever saying what he thinks of Marley's music, or its significance. His point seemed to be that "wasptafarians," or white college-age Marley fans, deserve to be sneered at because the only reggae artist they know is Marley, and they only like him because he smoked pot. It didn't seem to occur to Matos that maybe white male college students have Marley posters on their dorm-room walls because they actually like his music. There's probably an academic word for it, but I call it "good taste."

― latebloomer, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:18 (eighteen years ago)

Rockist, I already justified that claim at great length. If you have a particular objection to my justification, then we could discuss it.

I don't believe there are facts about value (in the sense of this is good this is bad, this is beautiful this is ugly) to be discovered to begin with, so the idea of experts on such things seems silly.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:19 (eighteen years ago)

<i>but in the absence of your own substantial knowledge of the field I think you should probably believe them about the value of the work.</i>

probably yes, but i certainly dont HAVE to believe them.

I was taking "expert" to be an exclusionary academic term, "musical literacy" as i believe you put it. if the term is not meant to designate a fairly exclusionary and rigorous group then im not sure what relevence it has at all. why not say "the community of music lovers"--which again can be deconstructed. these terms are are helpful but NOT absolute designators of who we should or should not trust.

― ryan, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:20 (eighteen years ago)

Too many xposts!

That's weird, JW.

latebloomer, you could have said "I don't care for academic discussions" in a lot less words. That reads to me like a high school student complaining about his English homework.

Rockist, I don't think we need to deal with facts about value in that kind of broad sense. I think it makes sense to say "this is a good pop song" or "this is a good symphony" without necessarily implying "this is a good thing" in some kind of general way. The idea of something being good generally is a different (and bigger) philosophical question.

ryan, scroll up to the part where I explained what makes someone an expert on a particular type of music. It's a large conglomeration of things which varies with the type of music in question, and it's not solely about "musical literacy."

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:24 (eighteen years ago)

i was not posting that article as an example of my own opinion

― latebloomer, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:26 (eighteen years ago)

latebloomer's post was from an article

― félix pié, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:27 (eighteen years ago)

xpost

― félix pié, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:27 (eighteen years ago)

I see, sorry latebloomer. So strike my first sentence to you and keep the second.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:27 (eighteen years ago)

damn this thread is like dramatic and s***. apeshit, as a word, is kindof ridic.

― Surmounter, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:35 (eighteen years ago)

KHAAAAAAAAAAAN!

― Jeff Treppel, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:44 (eighteen years ago)

I saw red when I read that "Pop Con" post the other day. There was a number listed at the bottom, I seriously considered calling and saying FUCK YOU AND YOUR SNOTTY JUVENILE WRITING STYLE.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:44 (eighteen years ago)

that article is funny! I imagine it being written by the Reggae version of alex in nyc

RASTA IN NYC!!!

― JW, Monday, 23 April 2007 23:51 (eighteen years ago)

is this thread worth reading? i just noticed how long it had gotten.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 00:04 (eighteen years ago)

I thought some parts of it were good, but then again I'm not really an expert on ILM.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 00:06 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, let me ask this (and maybe it's answered above--I haven't read every word of this thread), St3ve Go1db3rg. If the experts can be fallible (about what is a good rock song or a good merengue or a good free jazz performance), how could we potentially find out when they have been fallible? Where do we look? Other experts (who maybe come later chronologically)? I would have trouble swallowing a statement like, "A famous rock music expert used to think this was a bad rock song, but now we know he was wrong."

But honestly I originally just meant to take potshots from the sidelines.

― Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 00:10 (eighteen years ago)

(But now I do mean that question seriously about how one would know an expert got it wrong. It's not just a sarcastic rhetorical question.)

― Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 00:13 (eighteen years ago)

THIS THREAD = http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/I,_Mudd

― JW, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 00:19 (eighteen years ago)

Rockist, I'd say we'd know he was wrong if someone else came along and made an argument which showed why he was wrong (and of course that argument would have to take a form other than "he's wrong because I enjoy this song"). I don't think it would be anything like your hypothetical example, but certainly the catalogues of various artists are re-evaluated at different times and via different critical frameworks, and sometimes these re-evaluations can lead us to value the works differently.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 00:39 (eighteen years ago)

When you guys nail this all down, I'd appreciate it if you could try to bang out the aesthetics of visual art as well.

― KANTLIPS, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:03 (eighteen years ago)

"know" provisionally, of course.

― ryan, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:03 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.artsandopinion.com/2003_v2_n1/volume_images/mona-fordummies.jpg

― John Justen, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:07 (eighteen years ago)

This thread is great. Fuck the haters.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:36 (eighteen years ago)

http://feeds.static.paidonresults.net/0/gads-13130-300x300.jpg

― John Justen, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 01:47 (eighteen years ago)

"I would have trouble swallowing a statement like, "A famous rock music expert used to think this was a bad rock song, but now we know he was wrong.""

Search ILX for any Xgau discussion. He's the posterboy for "establishment" criticisms now disagreed with. (Of course, there's also a fair number of times he was the lone critic to not swallow some random bullshit...)

― I eat cannibals, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 02:00 (eighteen years ago)

It all sounds very test-of-time-ish.

― Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 02:03 (eighteen years ago)

Well of course these things aren't necessarily ever "settled" definitively. At one point there may be a large amount of consensus about a particular album or band or composer or what have you, but later on that consensus may shift or become fractured into different competing viewpoints which our hypothetical readers would have to digest and choose amongst.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 02:08 (eighteen years ago)

Lest we forget, entire books have been written that beg to differ with critical consensus.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 02:10 (eighteen years ago)

Whole books?! Really?! WOW!

― Jeff Treppel, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 02:59 (eighteen years ago)

re: dissent from consensus. id be tempted to argue that in the realm of music criticism it serves to expand the canon by pointing exactly those areas that the canon is blind to or wrong about. much like using sounds not previously considered "music" expand the idea of music and make it new.

― ryan, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 03:10 (eighteen years ago)

― ryan, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 03:14 (eighteen years ago)

oh, and i still mostly disagree about the "expert" thing!

― ryan, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 03:15 (eighteen years ago)

Rockist, it sorta is test-of-time-ish. extending inquiry into the future works like sort of a peircean "regulative hope"--doesnt mean our inquiries will result in true knowledge, but that we should operate under the assumption that they will because it's better than the alternative.

I've never been too taken with that idea, although I have to admit I haven't read Peirce himself. But I guess my big issue in this case is that I don't see what would count as evidence that we are progressing toward some point of true knowledge (even an imaginary one we couldn't possibly reach). In the sciences, it's much clearer what counts as evidence of the truth of a particular theory. The kind of "arguments" made by music critics about the worth, or lack of worth, of a particular piece of music (or particular performer) just don't strike me as very compelling.

I'm not sure why it's better to posit this imaginary end-point of knowledge about aesthetic judgments (or value judgments in general) rather than simply accepting subjectivism. (Not that I find subjectivism about these issues entirely satisfying emotionally, but the Percean idea you bring up seems akin to ungrounded religious beliefs.)

I also am too meh about pursuing it, but I think falling back on experts at least being "good rock song" (as Steve does above) assumes a degree of genre-stability that might not exist. In fact, maybe that's what changes sometimes when we "realize" that we were wrong about saying something wasn't good: our concept of genre has expanded or otherwise changed. There's also always the possibility of an artist saying, "Okay, well, I'm not even trying to make jazz, man, I'm just making music." "I don't play jazz, I play avant-garde"--Pharaoh Sanders (quoting from memory, so maybe not exact).

What do you do with a music critic like Chuck Eddy who says, "Why shouldn't I judge disco in terms of rock?" or that sort of thing? I find it sort of annoying when he does that, but on the other hand, it does kind of throw a monkey-wrench into this whole thing of, well, we can be sure it's a good disco song (or cumbia or whatever). Although personally, I don't have a lot of use for critics who don't take genres on their own terms, especially where the genre is fairly well-defined. (I realize "fairly well-defined" is pretty vague.)

― Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 03:43 (eighteen years ago)

Oh shut up Jeff. xposts

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 03:55 (eighteen years ago)

all very good points. and tough to answer. i agree with your last two paragraphs.

all i can say in response to the first half of your post is this:

1) i feel like subjectivism (or relativism) is wrong for a variety of reasons. these range from relativism being metaphysical (sorry for bringing that word in) to a denial of any world outside our perception (it's idealism, in other words) to the fact that i dont like it emotionally either!

2) it is akin to an ungrounded religious belief, unfortunately. derrida has a term "messianic hope" or something like that, too. but despite this i really think that if you look at something like ILM, or similar communities, you see that kind of inquiry going on every day. i have to think that our interest in other people's opinions, and that they can EFFECT our own opinion, means that we have a common (or communal) object of inquiry. i feel like what im arguing for here is going on anyway, it's sort of just what we do.

― ryan, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 03:56 (eighteen years ago)

but obviously you've hit at the point of most pressure in my own argument.

― ryan, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 03:57 (eighteen years ago)

not to mention a problem that goes back at least as far as Plato's Sophist, so it is an ugly problem indeed. that it can be solved at all is sort of the great assumption, hope, what-have-you of all of this stuff. there's got to be some affirmative moment on our part....

― ryan, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 04:04 (eighteen years ago)

x-post

I don't think relativism has to equal subjectivism, incidentally. (Not that I was arguing a non-subjectivist relativism, but I think someone like Joseph Margolis does so very interestingly.)

i feel like what im arguing for here is going on anyway, it's sort of just what we do.

Hmmm. Maybe there's a better way to describe it.

I tend not to like intellectual approaches that remind me of religious belief. (The whole theological turn in Continental thought--some of it anyway, certainly including Derrida--just tends to confirm my suspicions about it, but I admit I haven't remotely read enough to really make a judgment. I'm basically getting this second-hand.)

*

If I'm going to go on about it, I probably need to do a better job of saying why I find arguments about aesthetic value unimpressive. (Also I have a feeling my response varies a lot more than I'm admitting. The more constrained the subject is (e.g., say, the relative place of a particular artist's album in his overall oeuvre, especially if the artist stays within a reasonably well-defined genre), the more likely I am to find it persuasive, I think. The more distant the things compared are (the more apples and oranges), the less persuasive, generally.)

(I'm sleepy and I'm going to bed.)

― Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 04:10 (eighteen years ago)

And we still don't know who all the people were who voted "I don't like them" haha.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 12:17 (eighteen years ago)

James Joyce was probably an excellent writer. Man's inhumanity to man, the loss of innocence, the mystery of death and all that. He might have even been relevant at one point.

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 17:37 (eighteen years ago)

Two pages in and one is already half asleep, dreaming about little baby James Joyces running around screaming about the pope and whatever the word "corpuscle" means.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 17:48 (eighteen years ago)

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