Pretending bands don't have contexts - c or d?

but i keep trying to identify them or at least contextualise them in someway.

but when i play the record, i dont think "this is a late 80s record", i just get lost in the music, rather than its time period (i was only like 4 in 1988, so i dont remember much about then really) or the records importance in terms of influence or whatever. for me, if i can get lost in record over and over again, its classic, and all other concerns of background are secondary once im actually listening to it.

The closest I think I've come to this is putting some things in my cd changer and falling half-asleep, just getting subconscious impressions of the music. I remember this happening when I had a Dave Douglas and a Wynton Marsalis cd in, and I was hearing some great out stuff that seemed really exciting at the time...I assumed it was Dave, but of course it was Wynton.

On the other hand, it has that 'blindfold test' aspect to it, with jazz it's fun to try and identify the players (if you're already familiar with a lot of musicians of course, and finding out the answers eventually is a plus).

i.e. it is important to know that dmb, hootie etc. played the same circuit but ALSO important to ignore that long enough to hear how they are nothing alike.

i sort of did the blindfold thing this morning. i was seriously grooving to an unidentifiable song when the horrific thought struck me: "uh-oh, this might be madonna...i remember mp3ing 3 tracks off ray of light."

Yes.

Yanc3y and A.R.E. Weapons to thread. Last month or so he was trying convince me to enjoy the band while pretending that the band's context didn't exist. I couldn't do it, but I tried, and it was entertaining trying to retrain myself. ilm is all contextualizing songs/bands, it's hard to just ignore the tendency.

You're probably right Ned, but it's useful to work out whether it's each band's specific aesthetic that annoys you, or whether there is an overarching (if not necessary simple or irreducible) aesthetic that the crowd shares which is likely to annoy you - ie. the crowd response to the presence of X (which may in fact be (X + Y X 2/B)) and X will always annoy you, or in fact the crowd have responded to X, Y, and Z in each band consecutively, and you're annoyed by all of these separately. To find the former isn't the same as saying that you're responding to context not text.

If somebody is suggesting you should only listen to music by artists who've biographies you've read, well, that somebody is a moron.

ok i'm going home now

*didn't read longer DMB thread so may not know what i'm talking about*

Surely this is a slight overstatement.

Listening in the car on a trip to IKEA or some such with a friend of mine and we tune in local rock station to find some guy rapping, sort of, in a very bored, blase manner over some seriously underwhelming beats. We begin to talk shit about how much this sucks and is an obvious ripoff of things that came before, and how bands like this are just pathetic. Then we arrive at the chorus and realize we've just been bitching and moaning about Beck's "Loser." We both appreciate Beck, of course, and so we spend a few moments shamefacedly trying to explain ourselves to ourselves.

Point being: Even when you take something out of its 'proper' or customary/stereotypical context (eg fratboys/hippie dancing, high school prom, AOR Gold Radio) you will only end up putting it into another - context is inescapable and the best you can do is try to put something in as many contexts as possible. My music gets re-contextualized every time I listen to it - more often than not, however, a different context which resides in memory will prove more immediately enjoyable than, say, the inside of my car on the drive to work, so I have a tendency to get nostalgic.

This relates to Chuck's point that there are billions of contexts within which to consider music, and almost all of them are specific and personal - which brings us by a commodicus vicus of recirculation back to the fact that all arguments are subjective re: music and we should not make judgements based on stereotypes! Hurrah!

oh my god yes this can be horrible. forget i mentioned it. and i will try and forget all the times that i have stared at someone to gauge their reaction. but no air guitar! well, no, now in the best of circumstances it can be enlightening. sometimes i will just put something on without thinking about it and my lovely maria will have something really cool to say about it. and sometimes SHE will put something on that i know/love/am familiar with, but by virtue of it having been HER that put it on, and i am listening with her ears in a way, i will hear it in a completely different way. or context, if you will. does that make sense?

and since blount's response to my dmb post started this, i felt the need to point out that dmb/hootie/big head todd had all regularly played my father's bar (sometimes on the same bill) just cuz it ties those bands to a college bar rock circuit. is it needed to properly appreciate them? not at all. it is interesting that they all came from the same sorta origins, however. kinda like a musical hoop dreams or something.

i always listen with a context. it's just normally either one i created, or one my father passed down to me (i.e. a record he played for me, told me stories about, etc). i think my all-time favorite way to listen to music was when my dad would teach me some country/bluegrass/folk song on guitar, and we'd play it together. only after i was good at playing it would he let me hear the real recorded version for the first time. it never sounded the way i thought it should.

if you ever want to read about me, my dad, and music you can go here, Yanc3y. but it was late and i was drunk when i wrote it. i don't know what got into me. maybe cuz i'm a dad now, it makes me think about that stuff.

Really? My classical guitar teachers have pretty much insisted on it.

Anthony wins all threads ever, thanks for playing everybody

my father's definitely 100000000% the biggest musical influence on my life.

also on the tape, gram doing "hickory wind" (my father's all-time fave song)

in any event i just reread the slipknot thread and i think we should have a father son day, scott, and go see les paul play uptown or something. but i fear yr dad would consider my dad a hillbilly furniture salesman and not much else. (my dad could TOTALLY beat up yrs tho etc etc)

you can't really pretend but the first time you hear certain avant garde stuff you do struggle (but even that comes from somewhere, of course). The only time that it has happened was probably when i got my first few records but maybe the only time that it happened when I had a few records, started reading record reviews was with 'trout mask' => I truly struggled to see where that was coming from but it wasn't 'pretending'.

contect is really damaging in record reviews bcz you get from an informative x reminds of y/z to x is not as good as y/z therefore rubbish.

what's interesting is that even this notion of context--the idea of all music using a musical language even if it pretends to be revolutionary--hasn't quite expelled the social as an artist's choice of which parameters (or how many!) to manipulate and/or foreground is inevitably social in part.

yeah, that's true. I don't know if you could delete context anyway which I guess was the point chuck was making.

I think the question can be re-termed to be: "Listening without prejudice - c/d" because what J0hn's question was getting at maybe is that if you divorce yourself from preconceived notions do you hear a song or band a different way.

That said, searching for and hearing music for which the context is completely unknown or fascinatingly-different or bizzare for you is one of the great pleasures of music geekdom.

the context particular to pop may make it more interesting to YOU but for me it doesn't mean its power rests on "extramusical" factors any more than this is the case for other forms of music.

x-post

i think we;re confusing the context in which you *hear* something and the context in which that something is made--a different thing altogether. which are we talking about here?

I really don't understand this. i have not learned any musical language => listening to a type of music is learning a certain language by which musicians communicate but then by listening to another language that you haven't heard before (as in a lot of so-called art music) does mean that there may not be a context.

''the idea that art music (=smaller audience) has less "context" than pop music = dud.''

art music does not just mean smaller audience.

but again:

i think we're confusing the context in which you *hear* something and the context in which that something is made--a different thing altogether. which are we talking about here?

But *how*, John? How is it possible to personally listen to music outside of history or society? What exactly *is* the difference? And how is me listening to Beethoven or Louis Armstrong (or Stanley Crouch listening to 50 Cent) (or, I dunno, an 11-year-old 50 Cent fan listening to the Mountain Goats) NOT listening within a social and historical context? Or am I completely missing your point?

But if you're unfamiliar with Greek history & you read Seven Against Thebes without reading the introduction...you're context-less! You will of course have personal context, unavoidable I think. So I think what I mean is does there come a point where it's possible to listen in a field of infinite play? And is this a worthwhile effort, or a doomed one, or a stupid one? Again I'm only askin' to be askin', I'm big on context myself. And I think with recorded music the whole notion of context does this sort of warp-and-woof act that's interesting.

But you'll also have a context which takes into account history you *do* know (and history you live in). Which was my point. And Seven Against Thebes now lives within THAT history, not just its old one.

I dunno. I get nervous when people start suggesting that music (other stuff too, but mainly music) only has one correct use -- especially when that use depends on the intentions of the music's creators, or the prejudices of the music's primary audience. That's not judging music for what it is; it's judging it for what it TRIES to be, or what it stands for, or what it stood for tens/hundreds/thousands of years ago. To me that just seems lazy, and deceitful. It's ignoring how music actually works in the world. But I'm repeating myself.

also isn't one of the central points of a review to "change the context" of something for the reader?