How much do creativity, innovation and artistry in music matter to you?

Not looking for a fight, really - more seeking to understand why ILM is the way it is, especially in its stance towards overtly commercial music.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/wallpaper/images/800/chicory_tip.jpg

this much

or ok I'm drunk. somewhat? define terms?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/wallpaper/images/800/chicory_tip.jpg

― scott seward, Wednesday, October 2, 2013 4:08 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ILM is not "one way", it's a self-differential multiplicity, dawg

a) what do you listen to music for?

b) when you hear music, what makes you think 'ah YES'? a solid, well-delivered hook, a rhythm you weren't expecting, or a combination of novelty and expectedness? clearly there are grey areas, different moods. work through them.

difficult to come back from that first response tbf, this thread had better go some

Immanent ILM invoked so as to heighten controversy, appear a personal address to each individual visiting this thread, bud

"innovation" begs the question of context- innovation against the backdrop of which previous examples, measured by what yardstick, as an expression of whose values?

"artistry" too- it just seems an empty term beneath which other ideologies or value systems are hiding ("years of conservatory training"? "virtuosity"? "shredding"? "tightness"? "lyrical honesty"? "lyrical depth"?)- i.e. it seems like an incoherent placeholder for free range frustration that people like X too much or don't like Y enough- too much for whom? not enough for whom?

if you want concrete evidence of ILM valuing what I think you might mean, try this thread:

Strange scales and temperament, tracks and discussion

i.e. we don't all love HAIM around here, so chill out

I bumped that thread the other day hoping it would get going again and it didn't :(

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ln3mcbZSX01qk1j9vo1_500.jpg

I only like noncreative, bland music

this might explain why I own a Mr. Mister album

scott's pic is worth 10,000 posts itt. basically there's a limit to how 'creative' one can get before i start utterly hating them.

You're right that I need to unpack 'innovation' and 'creativity' from my own perspective - I left them vague as I know they probably mean different things to different people.

Innovation IMO is as simple as 'I've not heard this done much like that before'. There's a sliding scale where 'much' can become 'anything' or 'quite'.

Artistry IMO is the effort to produce the sharpest, purest or most intelligent expression of one's creative design. It is as opposed to Compromise. Ultimately it can only come from the artist themselves, but I think it's often possible to detect when a great deal of effort, precision or imagination has been put into a work

http://fillip.ca/content/what-is-a-participatory-practice

feel like the subtitle for this thread could be "Which era of Genesis do you prefer?"

Innovation IMO is as simple as 'I've not heard this done much like that before

i feel like i heard loads of innovation when i was 2 and then it gradually tapered off as i got older

Creativity and innovation aren't polar opposites to "overtly commercial music", which I *think* you are implying.

My sense is that I value all the characteristics mentioned in the thread title but, equally, I've said on a thread about Creosote/Hopkins that I'd happily condemn them to a life-time of making variations of "Diamond Mine" so there are times when I contradict myself.

What I want from music changes according to life. Bereavements have changed my listening, studying has changed my listening and so on.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NhHzH48sapM/UKY6x2G-6sI/AAAAAAAATUY/qA0DwfJ-6kQ/s1600/Were+Still+Here!.jpg

creativity, innovation and artistry in which area? composition? lyrics? arrangements and production? presentation and ideas?

it seems to me that humans in general (not just in music) respond to a certain sweet spot in novelty, where something is just new enough while still having a connection to something familiar. then the level of popularity is proportional to how well the music hits that sweet spot, combined with how popular the familiar aspects are at the current time. so a creative new spin on a popular old or new style will do better than a creative new spin on an unpopular style obviously, even if both pieces of music could somehow be objectively measured to be equally creative and innovative.

loads of xps

i feel like i heard loads of innovation when i was 2 and then it gradually tapered off as i got older

― You don’t get that at your local UK Garage club (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, October 2, 2013 10:30 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well exactly. i was much more forgiving in my tastes when i was young, now i'm a picky cunt :)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

Creativity and innovation aren't polar opposites to "overtly commercial music", which I *think* you are implying.

I agree and the exceptions are a joy to hear but ultimately commercial music is the friend of Compromise

Shall we have concerts of music? The miserable state of mechanism of the majority of performers is so conspicuous, as to be even at this day a topic of mortification and ridicule. Will it not be practicable hereafter for one man to perform the whole?....It may be doubted whether any musical performer will habitually execute the compositions of others. We yield supinely to the superior merit of our predecessors, because we are accustomed to indulge the inactivity of our own faculties. All formal repetition of other men's ideas seems to be a scheme for imprisoning for so long a time the operations of our own mind.

Right but a lot of outer-limits music makes its own compromise with not being enjoyable to listen to. xp

Enjoyable for some!

ARGH I guess it's all tailored for some taste - just that some are tailored for more obviously widespread tastes. ban me

"compromise" is meaningless and irrelevant to the discussion.

when I was younger I was more easily awed by interesting and novel sounds but as I get older all I care about are good songs.

Punk should never have happened.
James Brown should never have happened.

The Beatles found the perfect formula and future musicans should stick to that one. No need for "innovation".

What's a good song? A watertight narrative that flows from verse to chorus with sturdy logic? A piece that makes you want to cry with its evocation of emotional heft?

both?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/wallpaper/images/800/chicory_tip.jpg

emerson, lake, palmer & barrett

what this always, always, always boils down to is:

you use a set of words to identify qualities that must belong to music that you love, then you deny that those qualities are present in music that you don't love, although somebody else might want to say that they are. argue a bit about an objective definition of the words you're using positively, use a different set of words to indicate qualities that you personally dislike and argue that those words are objectively oh i can't do this

just realised that my DN is probably the name of the band in that photo

fuck

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mnzms07leow/T0QUnLstSII/AAAAAAAAByg/vFisVH4BkUs/s1600/Ozymandias%2B3.jpg

NV otm

crut impersonating Geir for some reason

First two not at all last one i'll take a large dash off

What's a good song? A watertight narrative that flows from verse to chorus with sturdy logic? A piece that makes you want to cry with its evocation of emotional heft?

I'm using "song" loosely there as an alternative to "composition." But for me it means a catchy memorable melody first and foremost. interesting harmony is a bonus and I like a structure that keeps moving, stays interesting, and has some contrast in it. you should be able to sing and play it on piano and still recognize that it's great, and get it stuck in your head. so in order, I respond to composition, arrangement/production/sonics, performance, then lyrics. but any of those factors can rise to a level where it trumps the others and I can sometimes enjoy listening to amazing drumming on a mediocre song. that's somewhat rare though.

with jazz or other improvised music, I like it best when it's centered around an interesting composition at its core, and when it's not as in a lot of free improvisation, I listen to it for those moments when everything comes together as though it were an amazing composition, or when the performance rises to that level I was talking about where it trumps everything else.

man oh man is this exactly the sort of question that would get you slice and diced in my old philosophy of musical aesthetics class - 1/2 grad bound philo peeps, 1/2 comp/classical music grad students.

no offense intended to you dude, but yeah the problem here is that you are forming an unanswerable question by basically taking three ill/undefined things (prob one) and then asking about their importance (bigger problem 2) to a global audience (prob 3) as applied to their individual interpretations (explosive problem nuclear tactical 4)

OK, thanks :)

So, melody, relatability, repeatability - the pleasure of something which seeks to engage its audience copiously and directly

xxp

yeah but JJJ, you know the drill. I start this thread to GET sliced, and I'm wiser at the end. Have the last seven years taught you nothing of my style? :D

Nobody really cares enough to slice about this stuff anymore tbh man

i think the music that most interests me could not be described as creative, innovative or having 'artistry' -- primarily folk idioms, songs w/out authorship... the music i like that i imagine would best fit your criteria are more complex/innovative forms that are heavily influenced from popular/communal sounds. the best music is def communal/participatory music making / singing which suggests to me that all the things itt title are corruptions of true platonic essence of music. fin.

the pleasure of something which seeks to engage its audience copiously and directly

I don't really know what this means, or what the opposite of it would be. and to me relatability seems mostly relevant to lyrics. not sure how it applies to music. repeatability? not really sure what you're getting at there either. are you talking about composition vs. improvisation?

basically this was prompted by haim vs. tunabunny right?

i listened to a little haim this afternoon but it didn't connect w/ me. i've never listened to tunabunny but the name instantly puts me off. is it a reference to the well-known phenomenon where fisherman hunting for tuna often catch bunnies in their net and those same bunnies make their way into our canned tuna supply?

The fuck kinda nonsense is that where do these ppl think tuna do be, burrowing for fuckin carrots? Clowns.

The opposite would be something that slyly sneaks up, requires a lot of effort to stick with. Something ambient, confrontational or unpredictable. Relatability concerns melody - your primary criterion - and the ease with which one can allow that melody to permeate one's regular thoughts, return to it in idle moments. Repeatability = can play it many times in fairly rapid succession and not grow bored. It's from the listener's perspective, not the composer's.

Mordy is thinking of Tunadolphin a little known synthpop duo.

I mean, my favourite band is Cardiacs and they engage their audience VERY directly with enormous pop hooks and copious melodies and rhythms. Perhaps the sheer copiousness, in fact, the sheer exuberance and restless energy to entertain and thrill is the single most important factor in why I consider their music brilliant art. Perhaps we're all seeking the same fix :)

i'm primarily looking for music that makes good vibrations in my body

But then, other times I want music that's constantly running away, daring me to follow. There's that element in Cardiacs, too, but it's playful and supportive - always friendly. Sometimes I want music that disappears into the abyss. I'll post an example here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_VmyoAnT98

^^^this song should pretty much show you all where I'm coming from and precisely why you should ignore everything I say :-/

thx lj, ur bullshit youtube angry metal song made my baby cry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuP3AEg3Pxo

i'm primarily looking for music that makes good vibrations in my body

otm

thought lj had posted a chic track for a second

The opposite would be something that slyly sneaks up, requires a lot of effort to stick with. Something ambient, confrontational or unpredictable. Relatability concerns melody - your primary criterion - and the ease with which one can allow that melody to permeate one's regular thoughts, return to it in idle moments. Repeatability = can play it many times in fairly rapid succession and not grow bored. It's from the listener's perspective, not the composer's.

This is probably a terrible and unpopular admission to make, but I've almost never had something sneak up on me or had any lasting impact from something that I had to make an effort to get into. In my experience making an effort to get into something is usually followed by very easily losing interest in that thing later. I've spent a lot of time listening to free improv, ambient music, and avant garde music in general but as I get older I find I'm less and less interested in it. And to be clear, this isn't about pop music. lots of confrontational or unpredictable music has great melodies that get stuck in my head. Listening to something many times in rapid succession is not really important to me. It's more a symptom of something that can sometimes happen with music I like, but it's not something I seek out. It's usually followed by burning out on that song pretty quickly.

^^^this song should pretty much show you all where I'm coming from and precisely why you should ignore everything I say :-/

yeah, some of the rhythms and riffs are interesting but I get tired of that kind of singing really quickly. take away melody and harmony and the rhythm and sonic texture are doing all of the heavy lifting there. but what's really creative or innovative about the sound or arrangement of that song? that particular sonic texture has been done a lot already hasn't it?

haim are just ok, idk why a person would listen to "tuna bunny" but it turns out someone from that band is a simpleton with a keyboard; also the fans of that band are babies? with like no skin. Gross!

anyway tonight I just listened to my dick

I certainly spend less time working my way into music than I used to. Partly I have less free time to devote to concentrating on music. Partly because I don't often need to work on music the way I did when figuring out Sextant as a teenager with no useful reference points.

Ultimately what I find creative about it is the narrative of it, the unbroken 20-minute flow of ideas into a story greater than the sum of its parts, but it has some fairly astonishing sections of great musical intensity - have rarely heard careening noise, metal rhythms and melodic songcraft merged so effectively and with such deftness of touch. It's constantly shifting, seeking new paths, trying new ideas. I couldn't hum you ANY of it in a spare moment, but I could tell you that I found it a fucking amazing trip that I enjoy every second of xxp

weird tense mixup there. FIND, not found

why do you do this

A Good Day In Hell - The Official ILM Track-By-Track EAGLES Listening Thread
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (2673 of them)

;)

c'mon man

take a walk

go have a pint

listen to something you enjoy

m8, this is a midnight purge

crut impersonating Geir for some reason

it's a direct geir quote. I love punk rock & james brown

jaaaaaammmmmeeeeesss broooooowwwwwwwwnnnn

more like a midnight blurgh

jaaaaaammmmmeeeeesss broooooowwwwwwwwnnnn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpgxsJTtW18

lj what do u think of this

this question rly confuses me. e.g. how are "a solid, well-delivered hook" and "a combination of novelty and expectedness" separable, even in theory? pop music aint all mary had a little lamb. all of the terms in the title have many many diffrnt guises.

wish i'd kept my 'waluigi nono' display name so i could tag team with seandalai.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNUuI50gb2s

it has to have special feelings and emotions within

that's fucking awesome & clearly liszt either thought about it very carefully or as is more likely had a genius for expressing musical ideas. beautiful piece containing many subtleties that I'd need several listens to unpack if at all. xos

and xps too

http://raafayawan.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/sleepy_cat_1400x1050.jpg

seandalai otm

a solid, well-delivered hook is a subset of a combination of novelty and expectedness - i was building up to the latter via the former

the liszt piece if I may elaborate is not evocative of one emotional tone but a shifting patchwork of tones that finds a rested state - a contemplation-without-force - at the piece's conclusion, which is a very artful way, if you'll allow, to write a song.

every time lj posts about music i ignore it, but when i don't manage to ignore it completely, i think of the band dream theater, or dream theatre as they are known in great britain. xp lol

funnily enough I absolutely fucking detest dream theater. they can't write a song; their music is solely in the service of showing off their chops. loathsome.

they're meatheaded elitists

lj do you like dream theater

woah xxxpost

meatheaded elitism is in the air tonight

oh lord

JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

aw i'm glad you like nuages gris

it's one of my favourites and it's almost the inverse of the aesthetic delineated by 'the sheer copiousness, in fact, the sheer exuberance and restless energy to entertain and thrill', which is the negative image i think of when playing nuages gris because those words could exactly describe the early virtuosic liszt and the world he had left behind

let me finish

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

how do you feel about pink flag these days? i know we both love 154 and all that but i can't remember if you rep for 1 2 X U

nb i like all the copious exuberant liszt too

i'm glad you hate dream theater, i have never knowingly heard dream theater but i have always imagined them to be some sort of nadir of western civilization

if it's elitist to rag on multimillion-selling artists like taylor swift or lcd soundsystem or whatever then yeah i'm elitist. afaic there's taste with its value-judgements, and then there's the corporate pop nexus which allows music of varying quality to receive enormous distribution and disproportionate acclaim. for me, ILM's purpose is to work as a counterforce against this, revealing to me music I might like that I'd never have discovered any other way. questioning what I see increasingly as a celebration of the corporate narrative isn't elitist, it's punk. you can c&p that over & over, I don't gaf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9esWG6A6g-k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULvx-lGcuQs

Pink Flag was a necessary and excellent statement. As a listening experience it's quite a way down my Wire ranking, but I adore that it exists. 12XU is brilliant though, obv

Does no one like the Elton John Medley?? If not I have a Carpenters Medley or a great Jimmy Webb Medley.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA9roanWPSA

JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-U7yl7tvtU

BRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAITIMEANFRANCO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZFORfDnn7o

it's one of my favourites and it's almost the inverse of the aesthetic delineated by 'the sheer copiousness, in fact, the sheer exuberance and restless energy to entertain and thrill', which is the negative image i think of when playing nuages gris because those words could exactly describe the early virtuosic liszt and the world he had left behind

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, October 3, 2013 12:32 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd like to hear more music like this. I think some of Talk Talk's and Autechre's quieter moments come close to achieving this, maybe Hood as well.

Sad Autechre

like vletrmx and altichyre

hoo boy

it's mostly like tiny bits in songs, like the last minute of 6IE.CR or w/e. need to hear more autechre. shit need to give Exai a full hearing. tomorrow.

those tracks are as valuable as the fully engorged granular synthesizing complexity queen Dream Autechre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaIzEo013iI

the last minute of 6IE.CR, this gets tick.jpg

VLetrmx is surprisingly sprightly for that description. it's lush. doesn't feel like a liminal or absenting expression like the Liszt, but it is very solemn and defies one to think between the lines. definitely uses space as a psychological tool. I think the fact it has a repeating melody is probably why I don't find it evasive in such a profound and devastating way. sonorous bass-tone counterpoint though. weird sonic mysteries. a wonderful piece, probably unsettled me more than I presently think

for me, ILM's purpose is to work as a counterforce against this

hey guys lj just told us we're all doing ILM wrong

turns out it's just supposed to be for lj to find out about artistic creativity

here i thought it was for talking about the eagles

no u dolt I just mean that that is ILM's purpose in *my* internet life but clearly not in many others'

going to fucken bed \m/

finally.

i'd like to talk about this but the problem statement needs some work

ilm is a feeling

a peaceful, easy feeling

ilm is more than a feeling

tell me more

this isn't the best song on the album, but this is the best fake killing joke album i've heard in a really long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4IdjwjTO5E

ilm is a want

also the guy in the crab hat looks like deniro

I value creativity, innovation and artistry AND the ability to write huge naggingly commercial pop hooks. This is possibly because I'm not Geir Hongro and can hold several different and conflicting ideas of what makes music 'good' in my head at the same time. Context innit.

Aye, what I want to get out of music depends entirely on my mood. Sometimes I want to listen to freeform atonal noise, other times I wanna rock out and sometimes I just want to dance to catchy tunes.

... but never ever do you want to listen to the Cardiacs

... bringing back the good old days of the zing there

It's more than just mood, the criteria by which you would judge the success or failure of Haim / Sandwell District / DJ Q / Shostakovich / The Boredoms are so wildly different from one another as to make the imposition of common rules or yardsticks basically meaningless.

I wasn't asking for a common yardstick - I was asking to see how often the (nebulous; see above) titular qualities are demanded. I'd probably ask those (nebulous; see above) things of all the music I listen to, but to varying degrees and in different ways.

Every so often I need to have this thread, largely so that I can make inner peace with the diehard chartpop massif

But if you're demanding particular qualities in the first place then the chances are you're paying insufficient attention to the intention of the piece of music in question.

I mean much of your strawmanned diehard chartpop massif would be perfectly capable of enjoying Bisch Bosch or Fuck Buttons or Vatican Shadow or whoever as well. Demanding certain qualities of all music is either something you grow out of or you need to be really rigidly adherent to them in a way that risks ridicule. The third way is a kind of K-Punk style nu-rockism that just flails at psuedo-objectivity.

They're pretty all-encompassing (and nebulous; see above) qualities. "Has the artist put much thought or contextual knowledge into this?" It's a loose demand, more a hope than anything.

also Fuck Buttons aren't a very good example of interesting or creative music IMO

"Has the artist put much thought or contextual knowledge into this?" It's a loose demand, more a hope than anything.

Why would you care?

More to the point, how would you know?

I'd make a good guess based on my existing knowledge and instincts.

For all you know an enormous amount of thought and attention has gone into the precise sound of those massive Swedish House Mafia chords.

well yeah. not dismissing that music at all, it seems to know its purpose very well

And an enormous amount of spurious thought and misdirected attention into some 20 minute prog piece (xp)

The artist, their effort, intent, emotions and training have nothing to do with the final piece once it gets to the listener, unless that listener is a fetishist, which most listeners are to some degree, and id guess most ilmers are to a high degree

Yeah, hence 'good guess'. You can't know what the artist intended for sure and neither does it matter, but their intentions can seem, their creative process can be inferred to some degree. Even these things don't matter of themselves, but IME they seem to follow music I enjoy around

Ah well I guess I answered the original question then. Those (nebulous; see above) qualities are if anything perpendicular from one's sheer sensual enjoyment of the final piece. BAN ME

that there is a thread on this with you doing this in that thread on a message board like ilm semms to me to be not such a big deal as you or others itt would like to pretend or think.

Yeah, hence 'good guess'.

no, not hence 'good guess'. hence irrelevant guess. hence, stop guessing, it's annoying the neighbours.

nobody likes everything - though some people like very little.

nobody likes everything

I think Kerr does

What's ILE about then?

arguing with ppl who love anything

How much do creativity, innovation and artistry in tipping matter to you?

LJ I think the nebulousness of your terms makes it impossible to work out what your actual question is. Whatever diverse taste criteria are operating on ILM could all be described in terms of these three qualities, cuz what's the alternative? No one here is on a 'tunes your milkman would whistle' kick. (RIP Geir.)

I guess I'm frustrated by a perceived slant of ILM's coverage towards chartpop, and a corresponding slant away from the avant-garde (whatever that is!!). Should have titled this thread 'nobody likes indieprog waaaaah' and left it at that

I can't decide which I like least - Fuck Buttons or Haim - both are boring and disposable - but then I dislike so much music

I did like that headhunters track scott posted

Obviously all of the (nebulous; see above) titular qualities apply just as much to chartpop as indieprog, because hey what can we add to the bassline to get that extra $5,000 huh?

Fuck avant-garde tbf

maybe all art is radically compromised by its relation to capital and that which has the ability to internalise that relation is therefore the truest art.

I guess I'm frustrated by a perceived slant of ILM's coverage towards chartpop, and a corresponding slant away from the avant-garde (whatever that is!!). Should have titled this thread 'nobody likes indieprog waaaaah' and left it at that

ilm tends to cover mostly new music - it's a little harder to get a discussion going on older music, or even newer music unless you are someone whose posts people read, but there is still a p good chance of chatting about whatever you like.

xp oops that sounds like a defence of damien hirst.

haha merdeyeux that's like the worst thing I've ever seen :D

much of the music I like is fairly uncompromised by capital. artists just putting stuff up on bandcamp for the fuck of it. increasingly, music is an amateur profession and I quite like it that way, although obviously if you're going to watch an artist play you should pay them for their time

I don't know what you mean by artistry.

this thread is "i don't like pop music as discussed on ilm, why don't you like the same music as me?" in disguise as whatever the hell it's in disguise as.

'nobody likes indieprog waaaaah'

Now we're talking.

I guess I'm frustrated by a perceived slant of ILM's coverage towards chartpop, and a corresponding slant away from the avant-garde (whatever that is!!). Should have titled this thread 'nobody likes indieprog waaaaah' and left it at that

All about perception again!

There's ooodles of avant-garde on ILM

... extra 'o' unintentional

we should prob have a thread, or an entire board, dedicated to discussing things which are underrated, "unfairly slept on", or not liked enough by people who are not ourselves.

Most lol-indieprog stuff that I hear is as beholden to its own conventions as anything else even if it sounds great at the same time. Like if it flatters your self-image that you're listening to something truly avant-garde then fair enough but that doesn't make it true.

often i think something is great but it just isn't liked enough in the minds of all people who are not me, collectively and individually.

this thread is "i don't like pop music as discussed on ilm, why don't you like the same music as me?" in disguise as whatever the hell it's in disguise as.

― Evil Juice Box Man (LocalGarda), Thursday, 3 October 2013 11:16 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

noooo

it's more a problem with what isn't discussed than with what is. on the one hand people don't discuss things because they don't like them, but on the other hand people don't discuss things because they don't hear them, and therein is my complaint

haha matt 'indieprog' was self-aware zingy shorthand. i've pretty much renounced 'post-rock' &c nowadays

it isn't that there aren't threads for music that is more "challenging" - it's just that it will be a handful of posts per thread once a month or year or something

^this

Like at some point you'll find yourself staring into the abyss and see Pipecock-with-an-Ultrasound-album staring back at you and you would do well to run from that vision.

except when some avant-garde or underground musician says something racist in an interview and then there'll be like 50 posts.

Well it depends on the thread but Julio, yer man Milton Parker + quite a few others are pretty regular updaters of "avant-garde" threads

haha Milton Parker is not "my man"

*zips mouth*

he is actually a lady

but rly lj i have the dubious opinion that music can't ever really be discussed on the level of brute commodity that you're suggesting* just because its signifiers work in a quite obscure way. cf greenberg on avant-garde and kitsch, i think music is especially good at avoiding being kitsch because outside of microscopically analysed moments we can't really pinpoint a generalised rule of production for 'successful pop music'. and because of that i think capitalism's relentless drive towards a fake form of the new finds itself, in the musical instance, producing things that are actually new.

*not that much really can, but i think music especially

music is especially good at avoiding being kitsch

wait what? there is SO MUCH FUCKING MUSIC THAT IS KITSCH@!@!!!

Yeah I see avant-garde music discussed fairly regularly here (and disproportionately so, perhaps) but if there's less interest it's because fewer people in the world like that music full stop. There isn't any great mystery surrounding the fact that the thread about the new Drake album is getting more posts.

it isn't that there aren't threads for music that is more "challenging" - it's just that it will be a handful of posts per thread once a month or year or something

totally otm. also when you revive these for older acts you used to at least provoke a discussion, not always the case anymore. but i dunno, i find anyone except ultra-regular posters is basically ignored on ilm - unless it's an argument. i mean, i don't feel bad about this, it's nothing personal.

I dunno if it's that more ilxors like Drake vs. avant garde music -- maybe it's just that there is more they want to talk about vis a vis Drake on ilx? So much of ilx music threads are extra-musical: biographical details, reviews, chart placements

i think that's it - people want to thrash out the argument or enthusiasm about something new, that's generally what ilm is "for".

it's why new stuff that is less contentious or has less of a narrative to it doesn't really tend to stick beyond people saying they like it or posting youtubes.

it didn't used to be like this though.

i think music is especially good at avoiding being kitsch because outside of microscopically analysed moments we can't really pinpoint a generalised rule of production for 'successful pop music'. and because of that i think capitalism's relentless drive towards a fake form of the new finds itself, in the musical instance, producing things that are actually new.

my response to this would be to sit you in a room and make you listen to every single david guetta track ever

there are no hard and fast rules for pop but there are a LOT of tonal & compositional shorthands that crop up relentlessly. for instance:

- verse-chorus-bridge structure
- clean vocals
- 4/4
- electronic beats
- dance rhythms

etc

that is assuming that kitsch still exists as a category --

- verse-chorus-bridge structure
- clean vocals
- 4/4
- electronic beats
- dance rhythms

not much room for variety within the tiny confines of these walls

Yeah Imago I get the sense that you're not even talking about genuine originality or quality at this stage and just nailing your colours to vague signifiers of difference.

not true! there's been plenty of charting material I've really gone for - stuff discovered through ILM even - like idk Erykah Badu, couple of Britney songs, Lil B

But both Lil B and Badu a) don't really trouble the charts and b) consciously place themselves towards the weirder end of their respective genres.

well yeah, lots of music is ostensibly kitsch but then i don't buy the avant-garde - kitsch distinction that seems to be being reiterated here. you're demanding formal innovation but form and content are far too muddled and entangled for that to work as a basic criterion. no one (in the wooorld) wants to defend david guetta but plenty will defend people who are using many of the same formal tropes we can discern in his music, becuz that kind of formal analysis doesn't get to the root of how the music is functioning, how it operates inside those formal elements etc.

tbh i don't talk much about any kind of music any more because ILM has put me off most kinds of "talking about" music other than "have you heard this? is it dope y/n?"

and it's the convos that bat around metaphysical aspects or straw man sociocultural aspects that are the worst of the worst of the worst, sir

NV otm.

eh, i like the metaphysical straw man convos but agree that the privileging of "creativity" and "artistry" over "overtly commercial music" is a bit absurd and a dead end besides. the terms you've chosen, imago, mean different things in different contexts and describe qualities that can easily be found in chartpop if one cares to look. besides, ILM is "poptimist" (or w/e) to the core. that's its fundamental, deep character. and as others have pointed out, broadly popular music provides common ground for discussion, comes equipped with significance, narrative, thinkpieces, etc. not many people post in blue oyster cult, thin white rope or oneida threads, which bums me out sometimes, but i understand that that's inevitable.

NV 2nded

Also if you're demanding "innovation" or "originality" then it tends to encourage surface readings, especially of music in popular genres you might be less familiar with. You might be depriving yourself of the opportunity to appreciate the subtler or more nuanced, but significant, points of difference or interest that might only be perceivable on closer inspection, or by people more familiar with the genre. Everyone does this to some extent.

broadly popular music provides common ground for discussion, comes equipped with significance, narrative, thinkpieces, etc

it what with the what now

The terms (in the thread title) are unhelpful.

I do think occasionally in terms of "singularity" I guess. But that is not to say that I look for or privilege music that I think expresses it; rather, I feel compelled to drill down into the music I like in order to discover what it is.

People need to stop acting like their taste is a field that music fits onto like a jigsaw puzzle. The opposite is the case: the music is the site of interest and your taste is only interesting in how it reacts to that.

only mildly interesting in how it reacts to that.

Well it varies obv.

and it's the convos that bat around metaphysical aspects or straw man sociocultural aspects that are the worst of the worst of the worst, sir

v good post

The opposite is the case: the music is the site of interest and your taste is only interesting in how it reacts to that.

otm

this is the part where i say this: have you SEEN other music message boards? have a great day everybody!

other music msgboards: http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8508

^ i don't follow that messageboard but i remember coming across that thread. they don't seem to talk much about pop music so maybe imago would like it there.

jason lescalleet played at my store and he's a really nice and talented guy. and he totally changed my world for that time that he played. maybe i should go on that message board...

yeah jason rules

I heart Lescalleet.

But that board, ugh.

i saw Lescalleet play about a month ago -- i think he did something with an old school hip-hop or funk track, but then it went back to the subtle ashtray rattling kinda stuff that I don't have much patience for

i have never heard a piece of music that wasn't loaded with creativity and artistry. not once. i'm not sure it's possible. as for "innovation," if you must, i'm reasonably sure that every innovation is the sum of millions of smaller innovations that came before and the seed of millions of bigger innovations that will come later. trying to pinpoint any given one at any given moment seems, to me, a frustrating pursuit at best. but i realize people enjoy the pursuit nonetheless.

these guys were a hoot at my store. they like beats:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-VEbWyVgeU

i think he did something with an old school hip-hop or funk track

at the show I saw he ended his set with a slowed-down "You Dropped A Bomb On Me"

at the show I saw he ended his set with a slowed-down "You Dropped A Bomb On Me"

That's what it was!

I'm really late to this conversation and haven't really had time to read it; has this been thoroughly mocked and rejected:

Artistry IMO is the effort to produce the sharpest, purest or most intelligent expression of one's creative design. It is as opposed to Compromise.

beneath contempt perhaps

just...got...so...tired

what if one's creative design is to sound like a gazillion other things?

what if you tried really hard to sound like a gazillion other things but you failed in your artistic intention?

what if you tried really hard to sound like a gazillion other things but you failed in your artistic intention?

― lusty thoughts of big, strong, powerful hipsters (Noodle Vague), Thursday, October 3, 2013 11:12 AM (1 minute ago)

then I might actually like it!

but the artist wd have failed!

sometimes failure is fascinating and generates legitimate entertainment (see: Farrah Abraham)

what if the artist didn't have any intention because they were a giant tortoise standing on a wurlitzer?

did we have a long thread about the Shaggs and whether they intended to sound weird or if it was an "interesting failure" ... or was that on a different board?

wurlitzers always sound great

Shaggs thing sounds like a thing that has happened on here on multiple occasions every time somebody gets excited about the intentional fallacy

as a huge nurse with wound fan, im having trouble thinking of like 15 interesting posts to make on them - the problem here is that the weirdo stuff you are hewing to might be kind of discussively elusive as well.

yeah thats right i just made up the word discussively because fuck it

i mean the real problem here actually lies in some sort of epistemelogical/aesthetic nightmare, but just trying to be more helpfully specific i guess

I do think occasionally in terms of "singularity" I guess. But that is not to say that I look for or privilege music that I think expresses it; rather, I feel compelled to drill down into the music I like in order to discover what it is.

I think I do privilege it somewhat, but that doesn't mean that I like all music that has this characteristic -- and that interrogation of taste, which often entails the narcissism of small differences is what is interesting to discuss here

if it's elitist to rag on multimillion-selling artists like taylor swift or lcd soundsystem

okay I should have read this thread earlier, fucking lol

I mean sure, 2-3 million = "multimillion", but let's not let the reality of a particular artists' levels of ubiquity keep us from lumping them together like an undifferentiated monolith

going back to Fuck Buttons - mentioned upthread - at least once a day the college radio station I listen to a lot plays this band, and the DJ will back announce the song, though because it's the radio they won't actually say "fuck" - and I will have no memory of the song - 15 minutes later. Unless their complete lack of memorability to me is the result of an ingenious technical innovation to temporarily erase a listener's memory ... is that the deal with them?

i dunno i just youtubed a track of theirs it sounded like IDM without the I or the D

I mean, there was music involved, otherwise I would have remembered hearing silence for 3-5 minutes or however long their songs are

I'm really late to this conversation and haven't really had time to read it; has this been thoroughly mocked and rejected:

Artistry IMO is the effort to produce the sharpest, purest or most intelligent expression of one's creative design. It is as opposed to Compromise.

― smang culture (DJP), Thursday, October 3, 2013 6:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

beneath contempt perhaps

― Tim F, Thursday, October 3, 2013 6:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

go on then

compromise is inseparable from human thought & the artistic process

unless you're Crazy William Godwin, see upthread somewhere or other

perhaps Compromise and Artistry are dual forces present in all Art, in some the one stronger

http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/promo_650/public/Best%20Bets%202013/best-bets-albums-justin-timberlake-650-430.jpg http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/promo_650/public/Best%20Bets%202013/best-bets-albums-justin-timberlake-650-430.jpg

http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1483707.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Ian%20Brady-1483707 http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1483707.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Ian%20Brady-1483707

Compromise and Artistry are never in opposition to each other unless you fundamentally don't understand what Compromise is or are making up an incredibly immature, narrow definition for Artistry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68_cVNhilsc

Compromise between what and what? You could argue that commercial hackery is the only art that achieves exactly what it aims for.

I'm saying that they're forces that work along the same axis to ultimately bring Art to life - without Compromise, the Art would never be released due to infinite refinement, and without Artistry then the Art would be a direct copy of a previous successful Artwork

...or the creative design, unfleshed. literally, for instance, a singer singing 'Song about happy positivity!' over a single major chord

so basically you are using Artistry in a manner completely unlike anyone else in the English-speaking world

a singer singing 'Song about happy positivity!' over a single major chord

-- this could be good actually

it would be, admittedly, a fairly pure iteration of that design, albeit one without sophistication

I use Artistry how I will, hence the capital A

The example of the song I just mentioned is pure Warhol - a very simple idea given credence by the overthinking, undercritical envious

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6033/6284697172_c306f84a19_o.jpg

http://www.artistry.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr2AT0GFfKI

^ sounds not unlike a dyson vacuum

The example of the song I just mentioned is pure Warhol - a very simple idea given credence by the overthinking, undercritical envious

and you are herein -- if i am reading you correctly -- criticizing this nonexistent song based on its concept rather than on its execution. which is kinda weird.

how else do you criticize a nonexistent song

are simple ideas inherently bad

it almost does exist, actually

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSLn0s2GTaQ

stuff like this hurts my head

simple ideas are not inherently bad but simple-minded ideas usually are

I like the implication in Imago's post that singing "angry angry sad sad" over a single minor chord would somehow be preferable.

(xp) you don't criticize a nonexistent song! there's nothing to criticize! unless you consider the music itself to be some kind of afterthought.

what if you tried really hard to sound like a gazillion other things but you failed in your artistic intention?

This sums up pretty much all of the music I enjoy the most lately, with huge quote marks around "failed."

dunno, sadness probably more complex than joy. definitely less marketable

we're up all night to get low-key

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybGOT4d2Hs8

http://youtu.be/PKTqg5lAHBY

wtf are these lyrics :D

very complex

are simple ideas inherently bad

yes. and simplistic music like minimalism or ambient music is for people who aren't capable of enjoying the complexities of a well crafted song

that chord i'm playing make you feel some type of way

i said simple ideas weren't inherently bad ffs

Fundamentally I am on your wavelength, lj, itt, though I think about it differently than "creativity" or w/e. "Making music to make money" is intrinsically ugly to my ears, and the more an artist can do to distract me from that reality, the better. Harvey Milk has a far easier path to my heart than Ariana Grande. I don't think a blind eye toward creativity/simplicity/artistry really factor into the ILX "hooray for pop" stream of thought, just that some people can fall in love with Max Martin-penned songs and some people cannot, depends on how sensitive they are to $_$

How do you feel about soundtracks?

or anything composed on commission

overtly commercial AND creative? Is it possible?

Soundtracks are an important part of the creative process of making a movie. Away from that context I have little to no interest in them.

commercial AND creative is most music to some extent. great quantities of both in the same work are rare but it does happen

listening to Scum all the way through now btw. it's really good :)

Commissioned work is different (and frankly the amount of $ available to people working on commissioned work is so, so low; buy every composer you know a drink, people). Soundtracks otoh I dunno, I don't listen to them independent of the films in which they appear. I have actively dumbed down so much of my film work and even joked with directors about achieving the right level of lowbrow, the word I use is 'craptastic'.

stop overthinking music, please.

no offense intended to you dude, but yeah the problem here is that you are forming an unanswerable question by basically taking three ill/undefined things (prob one) and then asking about their importance (bigger problem 2) to a global audience (prob 3) as applied to their individual interpretations (explosive problem nuclear tactical 4)

― O_o-O_O-o_O (jjjusten), Wednesday, 2 October 2013 22:59

so so OTM

Soundtracks are an important part of the creative process of making a movie. Away from that context I have little to no interest in them.

even GOBLIN???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_DedtV_SyU

this is cool crut but I am struggling with not imagining how the visuals of the film must synch up with it. it's part of an audiovisual artwork and I can't decontextualise it - call it a failure of poststructuralism if you will

back to napalm death

thanks for the backup goon tie

is the only truly valid way to comment on art with more art?

Assuming that ILM posting counts as art, then yes.

"it's part of an audiovisual artwork and I can't decontextualise it"

you should try harder!

if i were dictator, there would be mandatory listening classes in every public school. and not just listening to music. listening to everything.

yeah otm. more important than learning how to play "Birdland" on trombone, surely.

^^ realest post on ilx

i hate that fucking birdland arrangement

lj how do you feel about classical music/performance

Yesterday I got frustrated with a former teacher because he was quoting Busoni about "always be aware of how one's work was to fit into the canon". No thanks. Then a friend at dinner asked me if I ever felt the urge to "just write some dumb pop songs, make some cash, like that Norwegian band did with "The Fox"". I hate that line of thought. But neither have I ever been moved by a Britney song or harboured any desire to listen to it on my own accord, not even "Toxic", but I can't deny the skill with which that gesture is executed; same goes for Haim tbh, good work girls, good work America

Soundtracks are an important part of the creative process of making a movie. Away from that context I have little to no interest in them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_in_Pink#Soundtrack

I bought this album before I ever saw the movie. It introduced me to New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, OMD, Suzanne Vega and The Psychedelic Furs. It also fundamentally changed where and how I looked for new music. I likely never would have gotten into The Cure or industrial music had this soundtrack never existed; there's a very strong argument to be made that this soundtrack fundamentally shaped the direction of my musical tastes, and it did this without me ever seeing the movie.

I became acquainted with the fanfare to Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" via the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I heard almost a decade before I saw the movie. It was a thrilling piece of music even without the context of the movie.

My father owned and played regularly the Superfly soundtrack, which is great. I've never seen the movie.

Even with original film scores, it's madness to me that you would find yourself incapable of appreciating them as pieces of music. I loved "Axel F" years before I ever saw "Beverly Hills Cop"; I would play Vangelis's "Theme from Chariots of Fire" over and over again without needing to mentally evoke the scene of the team running on the beach in order to appreciate it; John Williams has written so many thrilling, iconic pieces of music, from his Star Wars work to the themes to Indiana Jones, Superman, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind...

t's part of an audiovisual artwork and I can't decontextualise it - call it a failure of poststructuralism if you will

IMO this is a failure in your ability to process music.

if i were dictator, there would be mandatory listening classes in every public school. and not just listening to music. listening to everything.

i remember reading once about Roy Lichtenstein's work as an art tutor - i think it was Lichtenstein. he taught a whole class on principles of seeing - i think he used different techniques to present decontextualized images/art pieces to students to encourage them to develop ways of looking that weren't reliant only on reading/signification - i've also thought a listening program along these lines wd be a good thing

to extrapolate from that - i think people who can't get beyond music as signification are not fully getting music

same for all forms of culture tbh - the reduction to "meaning" is always a mutilation of the piece

soundtrack claim seems pretty bold, and i would point to a band named ulver that i think lj has heard of as a pretty good personal counterexample

or thirlwell repurposing steroid maximus and manorexia for the venture brothers.

goddammit I left the West Side Story soundtrack off of my list; I had fallen in love with and memorized that entire thing before I ever saw the movie or a stage production

ah dan I thought you were talking about music *specifically made for a film*, not a collection of songs that were featured in the film but weren't originally intended for it

in that case, soundtracks are glorified mixtapes and yeah they can be useful

yeah i can't listen to opera without seeing people in hats

If you look at my post, I am talking about all types of soundtracks; previously recorded material, original scores, original cast soundtrack recordings, you name it.

currently playing the Broadchurch soundtrack btw

I'd dispute that I can't get into music beyond signification - I have little interest in a decontextualised movie score because it's essentially half an artwork. It MIGHT be interesting to listen to it in certain contexts, just as it might be interesting to listen to just the vocal track of a pop song, with all instrumentation removed, but I'll rarely do such a thing

I think there'd usually a difference in how I'd approach listening to a movie score and songs used in a movie, when the visuals themselves are taken out of the equation. perhaps one day I will discover the true joy of entirely open listening

I also don't find Ulver's soundtrack work as compelling as their non-soundtrack work, although the latest album had its moments (and I think is a soundtrack of sorts?)

wrt imago's statement of an inability to decontextualize film soundtrack-- and I mean the soundtrack proper, not previously recorded material-- I'd say in support that the best film music can't be decontextualized, and if it can, then it fails as film music

the playing of classical music is a fine tradition and it is by definition a search for Art. i'm probably more interested ultimately in the composition than in the performance, but there's plenty to be said for the latter

i feel like what you're beating after is always related to meaning tho - i mean come on, you're privileging the score over the performance there again, take another step back and you can lose the score altogether and just have "the idea" - and i don't want to use meaning as one half of any binary, but if you're looking for meaning it can be found anywhere, and if you're only interested in meaning then you are never fully apprehending imo

stop overthinking music, you do it a great disservice with your weird intellectual exercises

xp

wrt imago's statement of an inability to decontextualize film soundtrack-- and I mean the soundtrack proper, not previously recorded material-- I'd say in support that the best film music can't be decontextualized, and if it can, then it fails as film music

By this argument, as it is currently being applied by imago, any piece of music written for a film that you can enjoy outside of the context of that film is a failure.

not "enjoy", but remove from the context of the film. film music is by definition incomplete. lots of great music appears in films that would function as great concert music but (when it's good) it typically appears over credits or in a montage-- Taxi Driver theme, the mall scene of Dawn of the Dead, for example. I've never really considered Morricone a great film composer because his music has in my viewing experience overshadowed every film he's scored-- he is a great composer but not such a good film composer.

I mean it gets back to the same lyrics vs. poetry discussion that was had on another thread, kind of another discussion and definitely about splitting hairs. Just a word in support of what imago said

you've never watched For a Few Dollars More?

man I fucking love that movie but more than any other Leone film it felt like Leone was filming Morricone, not Morricone scoring Leone

i think the two of them play off each other just right in that one

holy toledo you guys should really listen to some good film scores. there are only a zillion of them. and they are a pleasure to listen to on their own. i had no idea people felt this way.

fwiw my best-ever is Nino Rota. Sets the mood, advances the scene, memorable enough that you'll whistle it on the way out but dialogue sits comfortably on top of it. This is a cool discussion but so off-topic that I feel guilty about continuing

maybe its cuz i'm a record guy i dunno. some of the greatest recorded sound has been for soundtracks and film scores. going way back. they spared no expense in the 40's and 50'a and made movie music that sounded as great as any classical record. and the music is quite often astounding. up to the current day, really. i've listened to hundreds of soundtracks for movies i've never seen. they're just so cool! i don't know what else to say...

(sometimes the music is the best part too. so many clunker 60's movies with amazing soundtracks.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bxrxj

i don't know if you guys can hack your way onto iPlayer or not but this was a really good show from earlier this week about the singers who dubbed all of the great Hollywood musicals

xp The value of "well produced symphonic recordings that you haven't heard a zillion times" has increased over time to the point that I can imagine 40s and 50s soundtracks as being manna for your tired ears :)

I was just reading that Piper at the Gates of Dawn thread and there was this post:

i can't even really explain why, but this is such a beautiful, evocative verse to me:

his head did no thinking
his arms didn't move
except when the wind cut up rough
and mice ran around on the ground

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, August 26, 2013 4:02 PM (1 month ago)

The word that just happens to pop into my mind: "artistry."

by calvin klein

LJ my problem with the artistry vs compromise binary is that it doesn't square with my sense of how music actually works.

Music has always been made in order to be used by its audience(s), whether that be to dance, to sing along to, to praise a deity, to reflect on weighty subject matters, to soothe, to incite lust, etc. etc. Even music which doesn't appear to suit a ready populist use still has one, short of entering into the paradoxical situation of praising music which purports to be of no use to anyone - at which point that becomes its use.

In this regard, we can consider "compromise" to be the creative fuel of all music: music is made in conversation with other prior music and in conversation with the uses to which it might be put (i.e. imagined audiences). Creativity emerges through the negotiation between the known uses that a music could cater to and "new" uses that the music might facilitate ("new" in scare quotes because what we're actually talking about is infinite shades of differentiation within existing uses).

Commercial imperatives - the need to make money - can be damaging because they can foreclose certain types of "compromise" in favour of others, but let's be realistic about what's actually going on here: the success of David Guetta dance-pop doesn't come at the expense of the avant garde, but rather at the expense of the other stylistic impulses that might fill the space it currently occupies, such as alternate forms of commercial R&B.

Conversely, commercial imperatives can also be constructive because they encourage such intensity of activity to create "new" uses within the zones where commercial success is possible.

Determining whether the negative outweighs the positive (whether historically or within a very specific period of time e.g. post-internet) would be a long and difficult process. In my opinion there's no justifiable basis for reducing the issue to an epistemological a priori of artistry vs commercial compromise.

The thing is, "compromise" suggests that something desirable was abandoned. It can be deconstructed and someone can say that *Choice X* always ignores *Desirable Element Y*, but "compromise" as it's being used here seems to me a criticism of *Choice X*. I think criticisms of this nature can be evaluated case by case. (Sorry if I'm misreading you at all.)

If all artistry involves choices between potentially desirable elements, then it's not a question of purity vs impurity. Whether a choice was resulted in a better product or a worse one (i.e. a "bad" compromise) can be assessed on a case by case basis but that will basically reflect the biases of the listener in respect of the relative desirability of the particular elements in question.

"Whether a choice has resulted", I mean.

https://www.beloit.edu/reason/images/348601.jpg

somebody beat up those stupid beatniks

hippies and parents insist that every person has the capacity for genuinely personal expression, the communication of something specifically and perhaps even uniquely theirs. meanwhile, we all know that we're capable of mimetic expression, the replication of familiar patterns. of course, no expression is ever entirely personal or perfectly mimetic, but some do tend more clearly toward one extreme or the other (at least relative to any subjective point of view).

we're also told that the discovery and refinement of a personal, coherent and flexible artistic voice takes work and time. while this process doesn't necessarily seek to eradicate the mimetic aspects of one's artistic expression, it does typically attempt to mold the whole of that expression into something distinctive. i can understand why someone might prize art that seems most effectively to accomplish that goal. same goes for displays of obvious and rare human ability.

it's myopic to equate ostentatious oddity/inaccessibility with artistic "creativity" in a general sense, especially when using that equation to lazily disparage something as wildly heterogeneous as "overtly commercial music", but there's nothing wrong with simply preferring virtuosic and insistently unconventional music. on that level, i have no objection to imago's implied positioning. i wouldn't define "artistry" and "creativity" in the same way myself, but i do get where he's coming from.

not sure that the announcement of prog fandom really justifies 200+ posts tho.

personally I don't read books because they're incomplete and only half an artwork until they're made into movies.

I prefer 200+ posts about prog fandom to an equal # of posts about what ppl are making for dinner or the idiosyncratic chewing methods of their coworkers.

Let's say an artist puts out a sloppy record and that this artist could have gone back in the studio and fixed a bunch of things up. They had the money and time to do so but chose not to because they were supposed to have it finished by a certain date. I listen to it and I say the record is compromised. The artist seems to me like someone who might have known better. I don't believe that all of this is something that can be reduced to a reflection of my own biases.

It can be reduced to "this record sounds sloppy and I think it would have sounded better if the artist had done x, y and z".

It sounds to me like the above criticism is really saying "I have identified this music's intended use as X and I think it fails to serve that use very well due to poor execution."

This is quite different from the notion of "compromise" which LJ is proposing here which is to the effect that giving the audience what they want itself a compromise. There's a distinction here between whether something is "fit for use" and whether there is a problem with its intended use per se.

Also keep in mind that "let's say an artist puts out a sloppy record and that this artist could have gone back in the studio and fixed a bunch of things up" could describe a lot of music that historically has been praised for its "raw", "unmediated", "live-feeling", "spontaneous" "energy" (ad nauseum), i.e. by failing to meet the standards you bring to the table it might (whether deliberately or inadvertently) perform well on standards brought by others.

The problem with saying "no, there's an irreducible level of objective assessment of the quality/effort/artistry present (or absent) in any piece of music is that it's unlikely to be you who is the ultimate grand arbiter of that line.

Let me restate that final line:

The problem with saying "no, there's an irreducible level of objective assessment of the quality/effort/artistry present (or absent) in any piece of music" is that it's unlikely to be you who is the ultimate grand arbiter of that line.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/wallpaper/images/800/chicory_tip.jpg

♫ the ul-ti-mate grand arbiter of that liii-eeee-ieeenn ♫

Right, but I think that there are situations where a consensus develops, even potentially including the artists themselves, that particular compromises weren't especially tasteful. And I think this reaches something close to objective truth.

That being the case, I think a particular instance where the compromise involved commercial considerations is conceivable.

Right, but I think that there are situations where a consensus develops, even potentially including the artists themselves, that particular compromises weren't especially tasteful. And I think this reaches something close to objective truth.

Like when we decided that disco sucked?

Or like when we worked out why hip hop sucked in '96?

i'm interested in why people want their responses to music to be situated in the music itself rather than just accepting their own subjectivity?

subjectivity is fun!

sadness probably more complex than joy. definitely less marketable

― check yr poptimism (imago), Thursday, October 3, 2013 7:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao i'm actually quite glad that lj just came out and said this because it looks so obviously dumb written down but we KNOW that this assumption underpins how so many people think about music

Yep

very much. and not just music. it's kinda funny LJ that you enjoy Pynchon so much who is a real literary exemplar of "other modes are just as complex and rich as tragedy"

plus come on, when has popular ("commercial") music ever struggled to find source material in sadness?

LOL, too right

Well, that came out in the hothead rush I sometimes get locked into and it looks reductive at best on second viewing.

What I *should* have said was that IME pure joy is born out of an unthinking harmony with one's surroundings, whereas pure sadness comes from an inescapable consideration of life's ills.

HOWEVER, there are all sorts of complex shades-of-grey emotions in between or off to one side; emotions of confusion, surreal bargaining, tentative desire, fear, love &c &c which lie without pure happiness or sadness. The reason I invoked PURE happiness in the first place was to make a point about a compromised brief - to make a happy song, without any complexity of consideration - and Matt DC thus invoked its inverse, an entirely sad song, the motivation for which would be automatically more unclear and thus complex IMO. I accept that I was stupid to say that happiness is more marketable given the number of charting songs that feed into a common sadness - that was my most inexplicable error.

Which takes me to compromise. Once more, I've played in the sandpit with my rhetorical toys until Tim has deigned to shoo me off (this seems to happen every time; I swear it's improving me) - let me just say that Compromise isn't QUITE 'giving the audience what they want' IMO - it's more 'deciding that this will do' when you haven't individuated or differentiated your product from your existing knowledge of treatments upon the relevant subject(s). I don't mean differentiated by post-production necessarily - often the initial execution will either consciously or not cleave closely to preceding Art - ideas which have already circulated - OR the initial execution simply won't do the lyrical or conceptial ideas justice in the mind of the listener i.e. me.

But other than that, fair points Tim - this paragraph is something I'd pretty much already said myself:

In this regard, we can consider "compromise" to be the creative fuel of all music: music is made in conversation with other prior music and in conversation with the uses to which it might be put (i.e. imagined audiences). Creativity emerges through the negotiation between the known uses that a music could cater to and "new" uses that the music might facilitate ("new" in scare quotes because what we're actually talking about is infinite shades of differentiation within existing uses).

I'd argue arder to write something that genuinely induces without coming across as chirpy and irritating than it is to do an emotional minor-key ballad, but maybe I'm wrong.

"I'd argue it's harder"

xpost

I mean - I say dumb stuff on ILX so I learn. I've done it for 7 years and I'm going to keep doing it. I've renounced countless underthought or reductive opinions and I will continue to do so. In which case, cheers for bearing with me and continuing to help :)

like sarah said this kind of thing baits my click more than "what are you having for your tea?" but i still can't help myself getting a little testy from time to time about an underlying desire to objectify the subjective that seems totally unwarrantable to me - that's the recurring core of grit that y'need to overcome in order to think about what makes your pleasure centres ring imo

and by "you" i really mean "one"

I just hope ILX forgives me if I promise to go away and think about what I've said

Will you be standing in a corner, staring at your feet?

Probably.

NV, I'm really not all about the tragedy in practice! My own novel is ultimately going to be a Utopia, a show of human triumph.

i don't doubt that's the case - which ought to offer some cause for reflection on the relative "complexity" of emotional modes i guess

plus we're still talking about signifiance as if it's the bedrock of everything

Well, true. What an artist may intend as a deeply sad song (like the one DJP posted upthread) can come off as hilarious or uplifting (like the one DJP posted upthread) on account of interpretation

Oh these threads are like catnip to me LJ, never apologise.

I didn't even realise LJ was still around till I read this thread... then it became, uh, fairly obvious!

TABULATION OF LEARNING:

- It is unfair for the listener to ascribe abstract qualities such as creativity, innovation and artistry to art which they did not themselves create

- One can only criticise from one's own knowledge, and avoid assuming what the 'intention' or 'creative design' of a piece of music is

- All music has a demographic, or none

- Music is participation, not aloofness

- ILM's purpose is whatever you use it for. It has no fixed purpose

- Taste is a nebulous fluid spilt across the escapingly vast field of music

- For any piece of music to be completed, Art and Compromise must work together - but this should not matter to the listener; only to the artist

- Discussing emotions (like 'sadness' or 'joy') as absolutes is self-defeating because they are virtually never absolute in practice. Discussing them in the context of a subjectively-received art-form such as music is even more self-defeating

END TABULATION OF LEARNING

there's a duff semicolon in the penultimate lesson there. ashamed.

also, in that final lesson, 'Discussing them in the CREATIVE context of a subjectively-received' etc etc

Actually I disagree with several of those learnings.

In particular (1), (2), (7).

So you're saying I've flipflopped too far the other way now? This is Dialectic - ultimately I'll find my level. Right?

well threads like this are still happening after all these years so i doubt it

they'll probably be happening forever

How much do creativity, innovation and artistry in ILM threads matter to you?

the other thing to remember about "compromise" is that our perception of results doesn't necessarily reflect the circumstances of artistic creation (a point tim made a few posts back). you seem tempted, lj, to assume that music must be artistically compromised if it hews too closely to commercial convention, must reflect the pure and wayward artistic will corseted by timid expectation. it may be, however, that some artists truly find the purest expression of their will-to-art in commercial (or commercial-seeming) work. likewise, unconventional music that seems to exist for art's sake alone might well be massively compromised, might reflect an artist's aspirational attempt to seem "serious", "intelligent" or "groundbreaking" more than some deeper artistic truth.

it's helpful, i think, to conceive of art as a common kind of human labor, the act of "doing art", and in turn to de-emphasize soul farming in the service of heroic CREATION.

doesn't = don't

Like when we decided that disco sucked?

― Tim F, Thursday, October 3, 2013 11:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Or like when we worked out why hip hop sucked in '96?

― Tim F, Thursday, October 3, 2013 11:42 PM (Yesterday)

No, like my own example, which might well be characteristic of a lot of instances where a person might want to make a criticism about something being compromised - an artist made a particular choice that was just not very thoughtful. They didn't put any effort into a particular something in a piece of music.

What I *should* have said was that IME pure joy is born out of an unthinking harmony with one's surroundings, whereas pure sadness comes from an inescapable consideration of life's ills.

Does this mean that music that is 'purely happy' would be background/ambient music, something you're not consciously aware of?

xpost again, that seems like a fair call, but upthread you were talking about a consensus as to what choices are not "particularly tasteful" leading to something like "objective truth".

Where do you draw the line on this? Why wouldn't it be correct of the "disco sucks" movement?

i love disco but i kinda hate how "disco sucks" gets trotted out on ILM as though hating disco is necessarily this incriminating thing

yestarday's battles, fought today

lol "yestarday"

xxpost It's not, but it's such a clean example of "social consensus re quality of X genre" being wrong that it provides a good litmus test for any argument for pseudo-objectivity.

You could use "eighties sucks" but it's too amorphous what that refers to. And "late 90s modern rock sucks" doesn't work yet because that hasn't been critically rehabilitated yet.

Nickelback wasn't THAT bad

It begins.

inglipsummoned.gif

where is some dude

So you're saying I've flipflopped too far the other way now? This is Dialectic - ultimately I'll find my level. Right?

― check yr poptimism (imago), Friday, October 4, 2013 4:09 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well threads like this are still happening after all these years so i doubt it

― lex pretend, Friday, October 4, 2013 4:13 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they'll probably be happening forever

― Evil Juice Box Man (LocalGarda), Friday, October 4, 2013 4:24 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when it's not involving imago no one seems to care. when it's not involving lex on the other side no one seems to care. is this a uk class thing? no one touches this shit when the u.s. blowhard axis trots it out on the reg.

who is the u.s. blowhard axis?

can't imagine...

but are there only 3 of them as the term "axis" suggests?

name names or it didn't happen

http://www.ducksters.com/history/world_war_ii/axis_hitler_mussolini.jpg

you can always just caption the photo l-r

That's only two people

two out of three ain't bad

wk, hurting 2

xpost again, that seems like a fair call, but upthread you were talking about a consensus as to what choices are not "particularly tasteful" leading to something like "objective truth".

Where do you draw the line on this? Why wouldn't it be correct of the "disco sucks" movement?

― Tim F, Friday, October 4, 2013 12:18 PM (2 hours ago)

I was envisioning a situation where the artists themselves recognize an error, possibly an error of judgment.

Feeling a little protective of vocabulary on this issue. If I say, "All choices are compromises," I feel like what that's doing is impeding my ability to think critically about artistic realization - a subject which I think is absolutely fundamental to critical discourse.

oh yeah, timellison

I was envisioning a situation where the artists themselves recognize an error, possibly an error of judgment.

Feeling a little protective of vocabulary on this issue. If I say, "All choices are compromises," I feel like what that's doing is impeding my ability to think critically about artistic realization - a subject which I think is absolutely fundamental to critical discourse.

― timellison, Friday, October 4, 2013 10:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would probably be okay with the usage in the limited sense of an artist saying "I did (or failed to do) this specific thing here that detracted from the end result of this recording." But this is a much more limited usage than is being proposed in this thread.

Even where artists later in life disown or criticise their own past works as being compromised, I often think they're wrong - from my perspective. An artist might say "I listened to the producer and allowed the arrangements to be more like X whereas if I could do this again I would make it more like Y", or "I was trying to make something that sounded like X but I have my own sound and I should have tried to stay true to that."

If we should privilege a notion of "artistic realisation" and assume that the artist has a monopoly on the question of whether they've achieved it (I'm not sure if you do either of these things - just playing out some of the implications), then they are by definition right.

I prefer an outcomes focused approach which looks at the result, asks whether it is successful as a result, and then traces back how that success came about. It may be because the artist stuck to her guns and refused to "compromise" her vision; it may be that she reluctantly (or enthusiastically, but from the vantage of her future self mistakenly) compromised her vision in a way that ultimately made the work better.

You said above that these things can be assessed on a case-by-case basis - as evidenced by the above I would agree with that. But I don't think there's anything remotely objective about it. The artist's opinion is an important one but not a decisive one.

I'd argue it would be decisive in most cases, especially if it's a case of a third party mangling the intent of the music, like when republicans use leftish music as theme songs for campaign stumping.

I was in a band once and I had a speaker cabinet where the speakers weren't very good. I think it had a bit of a ratty sound and the amplifier I had would have sounded better with newer or better or more compatible speakers. I think about recordings we made when I had that speaker cabinet and I feel like there's really no reason why someone would say that they like that sound and actually prefer it to the alternatives I have in mind that I think would have sounded better.

So I think that's an instance where I feel like something is, as I was saying yesterday, approaching objective truth. And, of course, the object in question is that speaker cabinet.

So I would say that if that's an object I can identify, then there's no reason why I can similarly identify "objects" in sound. Compositional objects or sonic objects. It seems to me that these objects, or elements, are just as real and I'm not sure that there can't be just as much seeming consensus about them.

why I *can't*

Why is it objective? "Consensus" just means "this is what taste happens to be right now." Sure we can find some examples where disagreement is almost non-existent if we look hard enough, but (a) it's not obvious that will always be the case and (b) the examples we can locate (like yours above) are so limited in scope that they can't really tell us about anything broader.

The moment you broaden out from "use of actually impaired equipment the impairment of which seems highly unlikely to be fetishised" you're starting to move into quite contested questions of taste.

Only fifteen years ago I think you would have been able to say "the notion that gated drums sound bad approaches objective truth". But there's nothing like that same consensus today.

Objective in the sense of people recognizing an object and agreeing to a fairly wide extent about what it happens to be.

The moment you broaden out from "use of actually impaired equipment the impairment of which seems highly unlikely to be fetishised" you're starting to move into quite contested questions of taste.

But maybe not always quite so contested and acknowledging the varying scale. I like to think of critical dialogue as something that inclines toward truth. It seems to me that that is the goal!

I agree that critical dialogue inclines towards truth. However, I think the idea that consensus leads to truth in matters of musical taste is highly suspect.

We have to accept the fact that while we aim for truth in critical discussions about music there is no final arbiter we can appeal to for verification.

Rather than "gated drums sound bad" you can say that a particular production choice was more likely to have been influenced by certain fleeting trends rather than prioritizing what would have been flattering to the music in the absence of such trends.

I mean they could sound good and still be a bad strategy overall

I'd argue it [the artist's sense of realization] would be decisive in most cases, especially if it's a case of a third party mangling the intent of the music, like when republicans use leftish music as theme songs for campaign stumping.

― Philip Nunez, Friday, October 4, 2013 7:14 PM (Yesterday)

with tim f on this. the artist's sense of the work's worth and relation to "what it could/should have been" is only meaningful as historical data and perhaps as part of the human-interest backstory that colors our impression of the presented work. in certain cases - as with, say, the stooges' raw power - i think it's sensible to talk in terms of "compromise". the album we know is only what could be salvaged from a clearly botched recording job, was thus profoundly compromised by circumstance. but that's merely a fact. it doesn't tell us anything at all about the album's worth in our own little subjective universes.

to be honest, i don't fully agree that "critical dialogue inclines toward truth." historical and reportorial dialogues certainly incline toward truth, and critics should be both historians and reporters. but criticism also concerns itself with subjective evaluation, with questions of philosophy, taste and artistic worth. where such considerations are concerned, criticism has almost nothing to do with truth. the relevant quality, as relates to criticism's ultimate evaluations, is honesty.

if we're talking about whether or not the artist is pleased with the final work, then yes, we can speak of "compromise" in somewhat objective terms. otoh, if we're talking about whether or not the work is any good, then narrative details of that sort become secondary considerations.

I like sounds

i don't like music. music is just organized noise, and noise is poison to the mind.

you don't have to deny Reagan his subjective universe where Springsteen's music is in tribute to Reagan's values when rejecting his authority in favor of Springsteen's over the material.

Philip I ignored that post because the analogy means nothing to this thread.

The current Breaking Bad thread on ILE provides a good example of why the Springsteen example is a misnomer. There are some critics (and others) who are taking a counter-intuitive take on what the plot of the final episode is ~supposed~ to mean. Showrunner Vincent Gilligan isn't the decisive authority on whether the final episode of the show was the best way the show could have wrapped up, or is a good episode. But he's a pretty decisive authority on the version of the plot he intended.

Similarly, Springsteen is a decisive authority on whether the anthemism of the chorus of "Born In The USA" was intended by its writer to be ironic (the context of the balance of the lyrics certainly helps). But he's not a decisive authority on whether this "works", or whether the song is as perfect an expression of his artistry as was possible or etc.

When we laugh at things like republicans drawing for Springsteen, we are laughing at their tone-deafness in not even identifying Springsteen's intentions - which are hardly obscure - rather than their failure to privilege them above every other consideration. If the true meaning of the song was obvious only to Springsteen it wouldn't be half the story it is.

dude, tread lightly, i don't go on the breaking bad thread for a reason. i'm still watching on netflix.

We can laugh at them for being out of touch but we (rightly, I think) object to their hijacking of narrative
Also note norm's objection isn't that gilligan is wrong but that he's lying

tread lightly

think I know what episode you're up to based on those words

Norm's objection is stupid to the point where I actually hope he's trolling out of boredom at this point.

xxpost you still haven't appreciated the logical distinction though - there is a difference between being an authority on intentions and an authority on outcomes.

If you accept music or any kind of art as fundamentally an expressive act then you can't separate intentions from outcomes.
In many cases you can argue that the outcome has drifted so far from the artist's intention by either ineptness, passage of time, or whatever, that the artist no longer has surrendered claim over the material but as a culture we hope to maintain some measure of fidelity and we try to do it in many ways, some more harmful than others, but I generally think it's a good thing.

No longer has/surrendered
I mean

I think you're talking about a very narrow range of outcomes. If I think X is a unsuccessful example of Y it's not persuasive that the artist intended it be a successful version of Y.

I mean I'm not even going to get into 'Death of the Author' because I was never particularly invested in arguing in this thread that the artist has no control over what the art means, merely the more limited claim that they are not the final arbiter of whether and why the result has value.

Well there is an argument to be made that born to run is an unsuccessful version because it lent itself to be interpreted that way.
Maybe Bruce even had a moment where he says to himself "what the hell did I do wrong?"

I think in most cases we'll say The Boss is the boss so we do when possible give the artist final arbiter gavels

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ySroiuyEL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

in certain cases - as with, say, the stooges' raw power - i think it's sensible to talk in terms of "compromise". the album we know is only what could be salvaged from a clearly botched recording job, was thus profoundly compromised by circumstance. but that's merely a fact. it doesn't tell us anything at all about the album's worth in our own little subjective universes.

And some people actually think the original album with it's "botched recording job" is superior to the "uncompromised" remaster

the remaster is an abomination.

another good example of "compromised" recording that is brilliant in its "failure" is The Pop Group's How Much Longer Can We Tolerate Mass Murder?

i never had a problem with the way it sounded though. it is was it is.

when i think of the thousands of recordings made in the 50's and 60's that were made in under three hours (so that nobody had to pay union overtime), it's amazing to me. entire albums. with singers and string sections and instruments and sometimes full orchestras! people were really amazing. i don't know what happened to people, but they really had something going on back then.

have you ever heard this album? quincy was probably like 23 years old when he made it. three days of sessions, and probably less than a full day's work when all is said and done. he conducted some of the most amazing musicians on earth and came up with ahead of their time arrangements. show-stopping stuff. truly another world...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d1/This_Is_How_I_Feel_About_Jazz.jpeg

people live longer now though. so, there is that.

i think part of it is technology -- there are so many more things one can adjust and change in the recording process -- which just makes for more decisions on the part of the "artist" or engineer

When we laugh at things like republicans drawing for Springsteen, we are laughing at their tone-deafness in not even identifying Springsteen's intentions - which are hardly obscure - rather than their failure to privilege them above every other consideration. If the true meaning of the song was obvious only to Springsteen it wouldn't be half the story it is.

i'm not sure we mock them for failing to recognize springsteen's intentions so much as we mock them for taking one line completely out of context (a particular specialty of politicians of all stripes) and ignoring all the words he's screaming fairly loudly on either side of it. i couldn't tell you what exactly the intentions of that hook are -- it could be sarcastic, ironic, celebratory, defiant and 12 other things at the same time. but i can tell you with great certainty that he's also saying "you end up like a dog that's been beat too much" and "they're still there, he's all gone," among other things that 1980s republicans didn't tend to mention.

when i think of the thousands of recordings made in the 50's and 60's that were made in under three hours (so that nobody had to pay union overtime), it's amazing to me. entire albums. with singers and string sections and instruments and sometimes full orchestras! people were really amazing. i don't know what happened to people

what happened to people is they're now recording film soundtracks the exact same way, with full orchestras and sometimes singers. a few more hours, but not a lot more hours, and they're out the door before the clock strikes overtime.