What do you want music to do?

or what dave q said.

I don't care what the revolution's about in particular, just as long as it has just a little bit more significance than just the record / cd / tape spolls going round and round and round.

- sometimes to empathise with the artist is a good thing. it's frequently heartening to hear the artist express exactly what is on my mind. often this would be just one line or couplet, so it can be interesting to twist the meaning of the rest of the lyric to see if it can fit in with my circumstances also.

-i travel quite a distance from home to college, so yes, i need something to pass time on the long journeys.

- often, i like the music to be an emotion-free zone. rather than be bombarded by more "emotion", sometimes i would like to hear something "cold". it's strangely soothing.

- often i like music to go to sleep to. this means inevitably i don't hear the end of these albums too often, but i have a real fondness for lullaby-ish stuff.

from Q magazine :
'oskar tennis champion'
*** (3 stars)

now in 'folktronic' mode, nick currie is still the master
of weird, literary flights of fancy-optimistic communists
and sexual sewing machines both feature here. this time
though, there's more music hall pastiche, a nod to japan's
cornelius-associated shibuya-kei pop and a laptop overhaul
from michigan's emerging john talaga. as unique as ever.
(martin aston)

i remember the days when every momus
album got 4 stars in mark ellen's era.

- Transport me to alternate dimensions where emotions bloom in bright, narcotic colors and there are no clocks.

- Magikally re-conjure favorable events in my mind.

- Drown out the vaccuous bleating of whisteheaded cheesemonkeys.

- Make my wife happy.

Barring that, I want it to always be close at hand.

"I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between."

--Francois Truffaut

(There's an assumption in some replies that the qn is "What do you want music you've never heard to do?". I'm also interested in "What do you want a record you've heard 1000 times to do the 1001st time?")

I also want it to entertain and delight me. Experience has shown that funny noises, catchy hooks and good jokes help here.

I was going to say something glib about ass-shaking but I don't dance all that much. I also love rhythmic records, though. Maybe I like how rhythm is time's pitiless dominatrix, and without it my life would become more of a flabby drift. I'm probably only thinking like that because "Dr Mabuse" is on the stereo.

...the immedia community exhibits the best of such art,
eschewing reckless application of powerful technology in favor of
electronic art which seeks deeper understandings of technology's
relationship with art and life in contemporary society.

I thought to myself that it would make a great 12" etching if you were to change the statement to: I demand the reckless application of powerful technology.

I went to this conference and sat by myself to hear a lecture by Kit Clayton and to see an audiovisual installation with his girlfriend Sue Constabile. While I was there I was literally appalled by the installation itself and the attitude of the audience in their personal conversations. The vibe was smug and pretentious without the content or spark to back it up. It was a celebration of white midwestern bourgeois electro-mediocrity.

It was a gathering of people who had refused to admit that the 90's had ended and that the promise of digital media was not going to be fulfilled. It was like these people refused to take into account that the evil old white men were winning and that things are not getting better. You can gaze endlessly into your .gif files about nothing and listen intently to the random noise of your elegantly crafted MAX/MSP control structures, but how does that connect into the larger picture of American life in the beginning of the 21st century?

I want to hear records that smash apart the smary self-assured provincial boredom of upper-middle class IT professionals who are "slumming it" the greater world of popular culture. I demand technology be used ruthlessly to destroy all notions of geography, class, race, and gender. I do not want warm, kind, elegant music; I want a soundtrack to the promise of a new century being ripped apart before our eyes. I want a music about poverty, dirty air, isolation, escapism, constriction, dislocation and despair.

I want the 20th century ripped apart and pillaged without regard to classification or hierarchy. I want a record that contains homo-disco, 60's jazz, amphetamine-fueled backwoods rockabilly, academic electronic music, acid house, hillbilly blues, bedroom synth noir, 70's commercial pop, dream pop, post-punk, and soul. I want all those elements jammed into a ford fiesta with a full gas tank that has been steam-catapulted off the deck of an aircraft carrier into a brick wall at 600mph. I want that wreckage to form the crucible of a new music that will be the blueprint for 2026 and not an updated variation of 19fucking83.

I demand that all of this be accomplished on the most shitty-consumer grade audio equipment available in the bedroom of a teenager. I want it fast, dynamic, tasteless, offensive, cheap, nasty, and most importantly, it not sound anything like fucking gutter garridge. I want uplifting horror on a record that will grab you in the hips, shake you, and throw you into a wall. Any notions of taste, art, beauty, and humanity must be stripped out in difference to an all out dash towards visceral raw velocity.

I want 2026 handed to me on a plate in 2003, and I want it yesterday.

Yeah, but the problem is you mention that to people and you're bound to get somebody saying, "But Beck already did that!" And then you have to hate.

I am not really into the splatter breaks sample aethetic; I am looking for something more rooted in the contrast between sequenced electronics and physical interaction. Heavily treated traditional instruments, plus found/improvised instruments plus electronics. Instead of just sampling a record, I would rather get the musical and productions idioms behind that record, and smash those ideas into other records in a trashy art-punk sort of way.

mike - were you around & listening in the late 70's?

from '77 to about mid '81 that's pretty much what i wanted, and the promise of something like that was floating about - work of that period you might like: some TG, some CV, Ubu's 1st 2 albums & datapanik ep, Chrome's 2nd & 3rd albums & ROM ep
on the more conventional side -> low, the idiot, heroes

(much of the CV stuff, of course, has been prey to ham-fisted thud-mongers and skitter-merchants
but they helped bring that about themselves)

to save me from the fearful silence

that sounds good. in addition:

-to tell stories about death and pain and agony that i can pick out on my guitar (alas, i cannot find the folk ballads i want).
-to be so unique and different that i can listen to it over and over for a month straight

and repeat

and i third the "create new worlds in my imagination" thing.

I want cool sounds that make me feel something new. If everyone's going to hear it, it'd better make them hold hands and sing along and be happy and shit.

Anyway, I want music to excite me in places I didn't know existed.

"To travel hopefully is better than to arrive." Robert Louis Stevenson, as I remember.

Is that the kind of thing, Neddy?

With that established -- that could apply, yes, but the hope can also be where you find it, and can often come by surprise (though the surprise itself can be hoped for in turn).

Has anyone heard the Flock of Seagulls: "this bud's for you" song. New wave never sold beer better. (this is a co-post with the What song is most synonymous with "the eighties?" thread)

yes