musicianship?

I'm hardly a Sting apologist (although somewhere was playing "Walking On The Moon" today and it made me think of The Dismemberment Plan) but I find statements like this a bit iffy.

Yeah, you're right. I shouldn't post first thing in the morning.

I didn't intend this to be a thread defending Sting in particular or any other musicians who are derided for being highly successful throughout the world and are mainly considered to be elite artists in the realm of music today, but yet, being the idiot that I have always found myself to be, I take the bait...

"Someone like Sting isn't aiming for your mind, he's aiming for your wallet."

My mind must be real close to where I keep my wallet, because he continues to write songs, like Ghost Story for example, that somehow hit the mark and never fail to keep my mind's attention whenever I am listening. I first heard that song at a time when my forty-nine year old aunt was dying of cancer and it hit me hard. His intelligent usage of metaphors makes what is obviously a highly personal lyric applicable to any person dealing with the grief that surrounds a family while someone who is important to their lives is dying or has already passed.

And please let me know of any professional musician who wouldn't like to be successful and make shitloads of money doing the one thing that they really enjoy? I am always amused when some music fan would suggest that musicians aren't in this industry to make money; that they would prefer to starve. I highly respect any musician, especially David Sylvian, who is true to himself and to his art. But once that musician has decided to sign a contract with a label (large or independent), they have decided that they wish to be compensated for their art and thus begins their own pursuit of "aiming for your wallet". For this very reason, I've always felt that there are no "sell outs" in the music business. It's all product. Even an entirely independent singer such as Ani DiFranco is creating product. She just doesn't have to utilize a record label to sell herself. It's all product, I know that sounds cynical. When it comes down to it, they all are aiming for the wallet. It's just that some artists are better at it and the fact that they can actually play their instruments with some true ability never hurts.

Well, first of all, I've already retracted that statement as a rather thoughtless comment on my part, and your comments in regard to its validity are fair enough. However, I'm almost tempted to say something equally thoughtless now, as your last sentence indicates that you're not really interested in hearing opinions relating to the question you asked.

It's just that some artists are better at it and the fact that they can actually play their instruments with some true ability never hurts.

That's just silliness, and appears to be a reiteration of your personal prejudices in light of the contrary arguments that have been raised by numerous posters. David Sylvian is not a virtuoso, neither is Ani DiFranco--although both arguably make "intelligent" music, I don't think that either would proclaim tremendous technical proficiency. Moreover, in re Sting: the ability to turn metaphors or write lyrics has absolutely nothing to do with instrumental ability, which is ostensibly what your initial question was about.

It's absolutely fine that you enjoy these performers, and its absolutely fine that what they do resonates with you. But don't try to turn your personal tastes into some absolute criteria of musicianship, particularly if you haven't thought it through. If you want to talk about 'musicianship', fine. But at least let's talk about people who are actually virtuosos. Otherwise, your question becomes "why don't you like the music I like?" or "why don't you think that 'intelligent pop' is any good?"

J,

I might've been posting while you put up the retraction so I must have originally missed it, sorry about that. Anyway, I completely agree with you that the subject of the original thread has gone awry. I wish to say that I wasn't just writing in response to your comment, although it was the only one I cited and that was an error on my part for not being more specific.

I began on the musicianship concept and obviously made a mistake in listing Sting (even though I truly believe he is one hell of a bassist)because that only served to elicit the obligatory negative responses about his penchant for pretentiousness and the large ego. It was to those comments that I was attempting to address. And I am sure that I did not do that well.

Thanks for all the posts. I've enjoyed every opinion so far.

at punk school being the janitor is surely more punky than being a lecturer, dr c!!

For some reason Royal Trux seems like a good band to bring up here. Because RT plays in a blues idiom, even if you've never heard their songs before you instinctively feel the "right" way they "ought" to be played, but it never quite matches up with the rhythmic and melodic idosyncrasies they bring to bear... the correct thing is like a ghost car puttering along beside you, racing the track at the most optimum angle, taking all the curves at exactly the right speed... but you're in the REAL car, which is swerving crazily... the difference between the two is what makes Royal Trux good.

Bri for the record I for one didn't say anything about Sting's ego. I said he's not a good bassist any more. There's no attitude there any more, no spiky energy. Sure, he might be as technically competent (you would have to make the case though) but he's not a session player, he's Sting. We expect more from him than competence. Or at least some of us did, once.

And the janitor would pass up prog and dance records to the kids "This is the real thing!"

Hmmm... I think this whole debate is a bit moot when an obviously cerebral musician like David Bowie thinks this version of his "Space Oddity" is "a piece of art that I couldn't have conceived of, even with half of Colombia's finest export products in me"!!!

― Old Fart!!!, Sunday, 7 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

(..End Tag)

Janitor at Punk School? Isn't that dangerously close to being Noodles from The Offspring?

Someone played me some Yngwie Malmsteen once. I was appalled.

As a Brit who generally seems to like a lot of unskilful music, I feel I have to point out that if you're as unmusical as me you simply CAN'T TELL when someone is a 'good' or 'bad' instrumentalist, so my preferences might well be purely accidental. I think they're not, though - the pop discourse I grew up on had a big influence on me in two ways. First off was people telling me the music I liked was crap because it was unmusical and too easy (eg. synthpop, programmed music, pop) - so to counter this there was a second strain of thinking picked up from the NME whereby musicianship was somehow suspicious or laughable outside certain carefully constrained non- rock contexts.

That second strain of thinking I gradually realised was itself a conservative holdover from an era long past - but deprogramming takes a lot of time and effort. I'm probably never going to want to take quality musicianship as anything other than a 'neutral' quality - can make for good music, can make for bad - because the evidence of my ears is overwhelmingly that low-quality musicianship or 'easy' compositional/creative practises can move me so much.