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I am not usually such a crude and blunt person, but I have three words for you, Nick:

FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE.

I blame the whole 'branding' impulse. How apt: originally this meant to burn a dumb animal's arse while pinning it to the scrub, leaving a scar denoting ownership. Ahhh, irony.

Kate, he's not having a go at you.

Where are the prizes? Does this mean you'll send me free Momus CDs? Can I have Aphex Twin CDs instead?

what's the alternative?

Midlife crisis = waking up to the idea that capitalism is a monstrous construct denying the individual the power to change anything? Perhaps this should be seen as a test for the individual's values, i.e. why is one individual model BETTER, assuming they have one? 'New forms of society created by music movements' - ummm...I doubt this ever happened, but assuming it did, are there really no examples beyond the 70s? Or the West for that matter? (Try Algeria.)

Re the final paragraph - 'What if I want to talk?' Insistence on exercising individual 'choice' being synonymous with 'freedom' is the oxygen of consumerism! (Also, why do so few people fight for their right to LISTEN? See my 'human communication' thread! And I don't mean having background music on all the time, I dislike that too.) As for being forced to listen to crap music (which is what I assume you meant) - doesn't being a 'musician' (your words) enable you to get MORE out of whatever's playing, whether you liked it or not, and perhaps get more insight into whoever's listening and liking? Maybe the other person's trying to listen while you 'want to talk', and 'as a musician' you might have a duty (or at least the curiosity) to find out why! Shutting your ears to anything you're predisposed to dislike seems similar to the 'sidelining of ambitious artists' people accuse the industry machine of doing.

Irony of ironies: Momus the "pop" rockist. Whouda thunk it?

Aargh, I just went and read that SOTCAA thread. I wrote for NME at the start of the decade for about six months before hating it and going off to do other mags and join the Riot Grrrls. I was fresh out of uni and unprepared for the Office Culture in excelsis (b-b-but this is the NME, right?). My contemporaries were Collins, Maconie, Quantick, Swells, Mary Anne Hobbs, Barbara Ellen, Lamacq, Helen Mead (still one of my best friends) and Danny Kelly. James Brown was there too, an arsehole who caled all the female writers the Witches of Eastwick. Helen told me at the time that there were a lot of ugly Lost Boys there jealous of us very pretty girls (H looks like freckled Vanessa Paradis) and were misogynists who couldn't actually spell the word (exception: Swells, who always had the choicest girlfriends). The branding thing hadn't reared its ugly head but we were in that pre-Nirvana, post-Acid House valley known as Shoegazing so it was a struggle to find something interesting to write about and I quickly started referring to the rank and file of the writers as Can Holders, ie. pub culture ruled. Probably why I didn't get on with it.

A few years later the twuntish Sutherland took over and that's when the alliance branding started, giving us the Miller Light Brats and all the lovely erosions of writers' rights you can read about in the Guardian. Another friend (female) was writing for NME and was told her Brats review of Gene had better be positive, etc.

On another occasion, I was writing about the Union Jack/Kula Racist thing for the Guardian and Sutherland actually threatened me with legal action if he didn't 'approve' of the quotes I used from an interview with him (me: "So that's on the record then, Steve? And when it's my word and tapes against your posing and lawyers you'll become even more unpopular?").

What I'm saying is control freakery and the championing of mediocrity doesn't make for a challenging or stimulating media, whether in terms of criticism or creative production. That's why there's so much spamming and why we are so wary of any commercial activity as a potential Hormel factory. I think we have to let go of these New Establishments and take the risk of creating new things with little regard for the finances, like Kate, Paul and Nick are currently doing. The pendulum is going to swing back to people wanting unbranded (though not bereft of identity), uncontrolled (though not undisciplined) art and criticism.

Suzy, are you saying that 'people' (who?) *want* branded and controlled art and criticism at the moment?

No, I wasn't saying that at all. I was talking more about self- generated control and discipline, otherwise Nothing Ever Would Get Created and we'd just be sitting here complaining about why nobody ever does anything good or worthwhile because five major media companies have sewn up the whole bloody world.

At an art opening the other day I got a badge that said 'make your own damn art, don't expect me to do it'. Hooray for this anonymous artist.

Related to the NME thing: once upon a time I really did get my trusted record-buying tips from the NME. Sure, it's a commercial publication, but the writers are objective, I told myself. They don't change their reviews according to who's advertising in the paper.

Now I'm more likely to buy a CD based on the recommendation of a record store, New York's Other Music, and more specifically their e mail newsletter with its soundclips. Now that may seem like a *more* one- sidedly commercial source than the NME, no matter how partial and promotions-related NME editoral may have become since indie went mainstream circa 1990.

But I think it's a matter of scale, and love. NME / IPC (soon to be NME / IPC / AOL) is huge and corporate. Other Music is tiny. NME does not appear to be put together by people who love music or have a vast and eclectic take on it. Other Music staff burn with enthusiasm and weird abstruse knowledge (this week recommending reissues of odd prog folk band Comus, which actually sound bloody marvellous, like Poussin paintings come to life).

So, weirdly enough, I found more integrity in a piece of sensitively done, well-targeted marketing (the Other Music newsletter) than in a piece of advertorial posing as an authoritative and trend-setting guide to music (the NME, which ex-staffers seem to think will be gone by Christmas).

The problem here is that I love commercial radio. Yet I see the frustrations. Suzy's criticisms in partic. are very real, and why I'm so selective with the mags. Except the public tends to notice these things and keep the mags roughly in line. The problem, more, I think, is that many mags aren't selling commercialism -- they're selling image. And I love image and there's a time and place for it -- I would prefer to find more of the more reflective stuff, but hey -- there's plenty of that which I haven't gotten around to reading either. I see commercial music as full of good & bad alike -- Nelly and Luda are nominated for the Source awards, but so is Lil' Bow Wow!? But that doesn't detract from the good points -- & indie has good points, but is, we must not forget, informed by the mainstream and on occasion will flip back over into the mainstream briefly. There aren't seperate cultures, just seperate communities of cultural production. Could things be better? Yes. Is spam bad? Only because it tends to want to sell me things like french porn and lists of e-mail addresses and other things I don't want. The culture machine isn't verklempt, but it could sure be heaps better to both producers and consumers.

Sterling, the public used to be able to keep the media in line but this is no longer the case. People don't bat an eyelid when events and media are synergistically branded in exchange for sponsorship; I've seen people treated badly for suggesting it's wrongheaded to do so. Companies no longer sit down, General Motors style, and work out what wage would support a family of four; they just want stock payout for their board of directors.

The reality of the situation is commercial sponsorship in the hands of multinationals is a 'give them an inch, they'll take a mile' scenario. It's part of the same pie-slice as Tony Blair pandering to media kingpins who Don't Even Live In Britain and Oil companies being able to buy off Prez Monkeyboy so cheaply (I mean, under $10 million? that's less than the entire marketing spend on the Spice Girls by their record company). The one thing I would ask Bush is why he thought he was getting a lot of money from these people, unless they brought it 'round in sacks with cartoon $'s on the side.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I support art and artistry and resent being a cog in some fuckwit's marketing/branding campaign.

What's the difference between selling a product and selling an aesthetic/ideology, except that the latter may make better business sense as it's self-perpetuating?

Very little, actually. Every producer needs customers, but we're talking about when the producers of art and their customers are manipulated by great big corporate concerns who are trying to paste their brand all over an idea of a lifestyle in an exploitative manner.

It's how you sell it, and at what scale, and using what weapons. And, above all, with what degree of real personal investment.

Brecht (sorry, I know I always drag him in) has a great satirical song about capitalism. The singer is an entrepreneur: 'Don't ask me what a man is, don't ask me my advice, I've no idea what a man is, all that I know is his price'.

The big five media companies don't know what sound, music, style and attitude are, they just know their price, and their midweek sales positions.

The very IDEA of 'lifestyle' is a product of an affluent society, often people claim that 'consumers are being manipulated' when what they mean is that the consumers should make the same choices as THEY do. The central idea of 'choice' is more 'manipulative' than what's actually on offer. All these global marketing cross-ownership systems are just more efficient ways of delivering those 'choices'.

Uh-oh, devil's advocate in the area. Are you complaining about living in an affluent society? Don't. People actually die smuggling themselves to where you live for the prospect of a better life for themselves.

And the fact of consumer manipulation exists outside that whole smug 'my taste is better than your taste' argument. Nick has said elsewhere that the casino mentality of roling the dice to win the big jackpot is what's really killing artistry in music and the provocation of actual thought in the media, and he is right. If something seems remote and unaccountable to the public, some of us completely switch off through the complacency of a sophist's argument while others of us see it as a situation to be challenged in an everyday way.

Peple actually die smuggling themselves to King's Cross = saddest indictment of [something] I have heard for [x] [days/ minutes/decades/millisecondz]

a) WHo's complaining? b)Distribution/marketing systems grow more complex all the time, we're all part of the system and the refugees you speak of want in too.

My Important Theory, Which Informs the Remainder of This Post: Given any particular interest or issue, one will always find that the majority of the public in any culture does not care about this issue.

The above is something of a truism, correct? It's true of economic politics, true of stamp collecting, and true of music. My point is: we can carp all we want about the quality of music and its delivery being sub-standard or egregiously corrupt -- and we can even be absolutely 100% correct -- but the music industry, as with any industry, is geared toward the consumption habits of people who don't really like music. Whence the same criticisms from every corner: the well-read decrying everyone else's aliteracy, film buffs wondering how Scary Movie could gross so well, the scientifically-inclined wondering why news coverage of science is so dumbed-down and incomplete ... all the way down to stamp collectors bitching about the USPS's new designs. Only 10% of the western public actually cares about any given issue, and it's to industry's advantage to cater to the other 90%.

Possibly the above seems off-topic, and I suppose it is. But it's this line of thinking that's helped me to come to grips with the fact that so much of what's around us is crap. The average person cares not a whit that Aphex Twin exists, cares not a whit what's playing at the local cafe -- and should be expected to care any more than we should be expected to care about recent developments in particle physics.

That's "shouldn't" be expected to care.

Nitsuh, you are an intelligent dude. (By which I mean I agree with you. The world revolves around MEEEE.)

A sense of perspective may be a DUD when engaged in intellectual debate, but is certainly CLASSIC when actually living your life.

Hooray for Nitsuh and Dan, they are most sensible men.

However, I have a lot of coalface experience of incidents of jaded/ corporate behaviour inside the 10 per cent who are supposed to care about creativity and I think that's what's bugging me and Mr. Currie, because so does he. The only thing left is for those of us who do care is to put up a big Ignore 202 and worry about what to create for ourselves.

Except for caring about proper HTML usage.

I think Nitsuh is spot on with his assessments re: people who care vs. people who don't. Despite the dire picture painted by suzy and momus, I'd say look at the culture industries as a whole: the independent music labels and artists are in a far healthier position than the independent book & film industries. People my age never got to witness the golden days of Rolling Stone and the NME- they've always been irrelevant corporate behemoths to me, so why should I lament their corporate-driven agendas? Momus talks about discovering the Other Music mailing list, but this is always how I've found out about new music: through independent record stores, local independent media, zines, internet boards and chat forums, etc. I think it's a tribute to people like Calvin Johnson and Ian Mackaye and their ilk that, with the corporatization of the press and college radio, we still have so many vibrant and vital outlets for truly creative musicians. Maybe the problem lies in seeing the industry as a monolith, as one system, that brings us 'N Sync as well as Aphex Twin. There are many systems and you have to pick and choose among them.

As for music in public places, it seems to me it's just yet another legacy of the noise pollution of the 20th c., along w/ factories, cars, etc. Many people have dealt with this creatively, from 4'33" to Fluxus to ambient to detroit techno.

And Momus, I'm surprised to hear you say you're conflicted about commerce. How do you see Stars Forever fitting in w/ what you're talking about?

I can fill in on this, Nick might incur possibly expensive wrath if he does but I don't want to make a habit of it...

Stars Forever was a response to a lawsuit incurred by N. when Wendy Carlos took exception to a song N. had written about her. So there was a lawsuit which left him with about $40k in lawyers' bills even though the judge threw the suit out. To pay this (and thereby prevent his label from going under) N. solicited commissions for songs at a grand a pop. I think it was a creative use of the patronage system and a damn fine record. Label saved, critical acclaim, cool news story, everyone's happy. Well, except Wendy. But it was a mistake for her to be so swingeing to someone who merely appreciated her music and life story, in that order.

I know what SF is; I own it, love it, read all the essays on the web site, etc. My point is that in the "interview" at the end M. talks about turning people into brands in the songs. His attitude to branding at the time didn't seem at all conflicted: pop is product. My question wasn't meant in a derogatory way at all. I hate to put M. on the spot, but I was just curious: is this thread the result of a change of heart or what?

My Stars Forever experience, which I'd sum up in the quote from Jeff Koons

'From the realm of the commercial comes salvation'

was a bit like the surprise of finding the Other Music newsletter -- essentially marketing -- liberating. You are taught to shun the commercial sector like the plague (in Britain, for instance, I grew up with the BBC and its weird policy of refusing to allow brands to be named at all on TV), and then you discover that, correctly used, the commercial sector can be tasteful, pertinenet, full of integrity.

The problems come with monopolies and mergers, and with the illiteracy and inelegance of most marketing. I mean, have you ever bought a product after receiving an unsolicited e mail full of caps and exclamation marks? I know I haven't. Maybe they arrive in your In Box just because some sucker has bought one million e mail addresses and wants to use them somehow, but has no idea how.

I'm not very familiar w/ Koons, but the quasi-religious nature of his statement makes me uncomfortable.

Most advertising seems to work in the way Nitsuh outlined: trying to get people who don't care about a certain product or idea interested in it. Therefore, I disagree with your phrase "Advertising designed for other potential consumers..." YOU are always that other potential consumer in their eyes. It's always been run by the money grubbers who care nothing for the cultures they exploit. The commercial enterprises of things like K Records are just appropriations of their techniques while downplaying the bottom line. I agree that this is preferrable, but whether it's ever been the norm rather than the exception I highly doubt. In your original post you posited a sort of golden age in the '60s & '70s when music was shaped by movements rather than demographics. I wasn't around then, but I'm very skeptical. The Monkees don't seem to have been the result of a spontaneous movement.

I live just down the street from K and Kill Rock Stars. They're perfect definitions of narrowcasting and fragmented markets. The consumers they appeal to and the cultures they create are small, protective, cliquish (not compaining, just making an observation). But within those boundaries they're very successful. So I think these things need to have a certain modesty of intent. Making music for Thinking People will probably always be a niche market. As Nitsuh says, most people just want something to make the drive to work less tedious.

And reading your comment about the BBC makes me think we're in a situation of thinking the grass is greener on the other side. For you, commercialism is liberating. For an American, none of whom are ever taught to "shun the commercial sector like the plague", not mentioning brands on the air sounds heavenly.

Unfortunately, Momus - it's going to get worse - recent reports of both CD sales and concert sales in the US are in a slump which means we're going to see more and more attempts to crassly plug-and-place any type of promotion (Balance that against a variety of anti-spam laws in most countries and most marketeers have to tread very calculatingly into your inbox.) Problem: The giants all assumed music to be recession-proof, but Napster challenged this idea by taking the cash out of the equation... Now with Napster permanently napping - we're victim to our own worse markets.

I have a slight difference with Nitsuh's argt. above. He seems to imply that since the vast majority of ppl. don't care too much about music, therefore the producers don't put in that much effort. False! The producers put in extraordinary amounts of effort precisely because they're trying to induce fairly indifferent people to give a damn. And as there's competition at work, they want their product to work better than anyone else's product. So this leads to quality in music. Just quality of a peculiar type. What's the bigger angst-factor in the world -- people selling things, or people not affording things, eh?

Pop music's patronage of recourding artists is a devil's deal. You have a job you "love" but you are at the mercy of people who are fo rth emost part uncreative businesspeople. But if anyone feels iffy about the whole process, they can always get a day job and make Alvin Lucier-like things for a few people to listen to, I guess. I have never been able to want to have a record deal myself becasue all I've ever heard about it is it sucks. CLear CHannel is disgusting, they destroyed Luxuriamusic.com among others. Its all about micro marketing, not selling to everyone. Pop musi ccan be like a craft, like pottery, it doesnt have to be Gold and PLatinum. It can be a cottage industry

cottaging = the future hurrah!!

Mike, what exactly happened to Luxuriamusic.com? I never got the full details.

Mike, don't even bring up Luxuriamusic or I'll seriously start crying - that was such a great station and it was a damn shame to see it ripped apart like it was (although the last few shows were delivered with alot of good, disgruntled ire)...

Also - I wouldn't place safe bets on cottaging just yet. If you study your media history, we see the same pattern of pioneers toting the technology (mp3) and then getting eaten by the same titans...

Luxuriamusic was basedon the hope that people would listen to the station and then buy merchandise advertised in the "shop" section. NO one did. When CLear Channel bought the station, they closed it to make room for something else. But www.nwez.net has some of the old Lux DJs shows still.

I'm too tired to voice an opinion about all this one way or the other, but mentioning Jeff Koons was enough to almost make me dismiss Momus out of hand, certainly the foulest artist in a decade when competition wasn't exactly thin on the ground (Robert Longo, Julian Schnable, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, anyone? I feel weary just listing the names...)

Ha! I just had dinner with a prominent Neo Geo artist the other night who was involved in 80s group shows with Koons. He now loathes the man, saying Koons actively tried to block the careers of rival artists by refusing to participate in shows if they were included.

I responded that Koons will survive as precisely a symbol of the abominable atmosphere of the 80s, with its Donald Trump aesthetics and its valuation of money above everything. Reagan's America got the artist it deserved.

Koons' personal value for me is that he estranges kitsch and capitalism (that SPECIAL OFFER!!! aesthetic, from the silver whiskey trainsets to the current exploding breakfast cereal paintings). When you meet him he comes off as a cross between a Bladerunner replicant and a TV evangelist. His provocative dalliance with baroque style was an influence on my Analog Baroque style.

Like history, I don't really care what a bastard an artist was on a personal level, I just care that they startle me or fascinate me on some level, and Koons continues to do that. Blame the BBC and its ban on brands.

tha chzza: I'm not very familiar w/ Koons, but the quasi-religious nature of his statement [salvation comes from the realm of the commercial] makes me uncomfortable.

Nitsuh:People are getting pretty much what they want.

Koons' work is important because it deals with both of these points, which are perfectly correct. Of course it's disturbing to hear an artist, even one who does interviews in role (as Warhol and Koons both did) saying 'Salvation' (a religious word, a heavy word) 'comes from the commercial' (buying and selling, triviality, the everyday). It's as disturbing as Brett Easton Ellis filling a book about a serial killer with details about suits and reviews of bland mainstream CDs.

Koons is a master of unsettlingly cosy irony. In interviews he says, with an almost-convincing air of glowing, naive candour: 'I just want to make people happy.' (Warhol used to say stuff like 'Oh gee, Reagan is great' in the same tone.)

But the real meaning of Koons' work is, very probably: 'You poor fucks, for you art is a porcelain clown from K Mart, reality is TV, and soul is a glimpse of sex and paradise in a slow motion shot of milk hitting cereal '.

The quasi-religious nature of Koons statement is *supposed* to make you uncomfortable, and yes, in this society people are getting what they want, in art just as at K Mart. The difference is that in art we tend to assume there's some level of social critique involved, just because that's art's job. And whether Koons means that critique of not, it's there the moment he puts an idiotic puppy dog in a gallery. At that point he makes people searching for higher values confront the fact that there are none.

Don't hate Koons, hate the 80s. Don't hate Koons, hate America.

There's the rub: I hate neither the 80s nor America. That's too easy.

I think that everythign is bought and sold. We live in a society that works on money. No matter how much public radio i listen to ( and the CBC is pretty good)or how much music i download i will always be sold to. This means when i am pissing and when i am fucking and even when i am praying . If i choose to live in this society it is a price i will pay. However the big 5 and clear channel are not selling or producing. These folks are Moloch, what Christ warned about in Timothy. So what do we do ? Do we play smash the windows in travellign carnivals. No of ocurse not. Do we lsiten to our leaders , no. Espically after we know so much. We preform acts of small subversion. Be it Koons and Warhol commdifying or Me refusing to use a credit card . The Soviet Union was destroyed by Smazidat (sp).

That was not an answer was it.
Listening to koons is liek listening to industrial lullabyes.

'At that point he makes people searching for higher values confront the fact that there are none.
Don't hate Koons, hate the 80s. Don't hate Koons, hate America.'

Jesus. Why not just admit to the possibility that Koons is smarter than us?

Stop being such a nihilist, Mr Q. Or it's a smacked bottom for you.
I read all of that SOTCAA forum, and was amused to see the Morrissey fans ecstatic at being able to get their hands on an NME contributor (Andrew Collins) from the days of the 'Moz Is Racist' debacle. Thank God for the interweb.

If it had been spelt Smozidat the wall would have fallen in 1985

That sorry episode (the killing of a giant of popular music, effectively, by half-truth and innuendo on the part of a lot of pygmies) relates to the 'Culture and Weather' thread on ILE, about how there's a hungry 'commentariat' in Britain circling news events like jackals, with column inches to fill every day and every week.

Andrew Collins of the NME cheerfully and unrepentingly admits that the story was just cooked up to fill space, and that it was Morrissey's refusal to answer the trumped-up charges that annoyed the NME and made them run it in such a biased way. Collins justifies it by saying 'Ah, but you remember the issue, don't you?' Well, people remember earthquakes and floods too. They remember the end of love affairs and the death of relatives. That doesn't make those things desireable.

If everything has to correspond with the fulfillment of desires then why not just chuck out any art except for pornography?

Morrissey was "destroyed" as an artist because of the ludicrously unfair pay and creatvie-credit structure built into the Smiths. When that collapsed, as it was always going to, no one who SPM could actually have worked with in ways which were creatively and critically useful to HIM — probably not a category he recognises anyway — was ever gunna. He set himself up as a island, and then found the "island" had floated away beyond popular reach.

Ah, but there's still a minor Morrisey cult in the less salubrious corners of Camden, consisting of superannuated Teddy Boys, football hooligans etc. More of a case of Moz staring into the abyss, perhaps?

"less salubrious corners of Camden" = phrase with implications I cannot accept (involving the word "more")

Okay, Mark, now justify the destruction of Stereolab and the High Llamas, please.

What destruction of Stereolab and the High Llamas??

Also, Momus, your slant on the story doesn't make much sense. The NME's treatment of Morrissey over the 'racism' issue was ridiculous and wrong, but it also provided - or seemed to provide - the spur for his most focussed and interesting solo record (Vauxhall And I), which also sold fairly well. This is hardly career-murder: I prefer somebody's (Nick D's?) suggestion over on the Smiths thread. His notebooks finally ran out and he found he'd lost the knack.

What about the NME's destruction of Burzum?

Sterling: Wait, I wasn't necessarily implying that the industry is spewing out product that isn't of an acceptable quality. I only meant that the product that exists is meant to appeal to a certain type of listener -- that is, the type of listener who isn't entirely invested in music as a form. Cheap thrills, etc. -- music to distract, not music to be loved or really assimilated into one's life apart from as nostalgia for the period it's associated with. I can't really make this a value judgment, because it's what a lot of people actually want from music. And the industry provides it for them, and the money is spent, and the money is made. Whether or not it's "quality" depends on how you're judging it -- from the standpoint of the 90% who just want it that way, the 5% who want something else, or the 5% smart enough to appreciate it both ways.

All I'm really saying is that it's natural for someone who really cares about a topic to be disappointed with how it appears on the mass market.

The producers put in extraordinary amounts of effort precisely because they're trying to induce fairly indifferent people to give a damn.

While this makes sense in theory, Sterling, I think it might be a bit of an over-generalization. I can just as easily imagine a more cynical producer thinking to himself: "Is my audience really going to care what kind of hi-hat I use on this track?? Nahhh, fuck it." Mr. Cynical Producer knows full well that his audience is pretty much taking whatever's given to them (although I don't know if that gives the audience quite the credit they deserve), so he doesn't try all that hard.

And as there's competition at work, they want their product to work better than anyone else's product. So this leads to quality in music.

Well, I have to take issue with this, too. Most businesses will sell the lowest-quality, "cheapest" product that will still make them a profit. Think about it - the cereal you eat is made from ultra- crappy refined sugar and genetically modified crops. Kellogs doesn't give a fuck, because they know people will still buy it. How do they know this? Because people DO buy it.

"really cares about music" - not a formulation that gets us anywhere, it makes too many assumptions I think. DP would have suggested that none of *us* 'really' care about music and our only defense would have been "oh but we do".

'While this makes sense in theory, Sterling, I think it might be a bit of an over-generalization. I can just as easily imagine a more cynical producer thinking to himself: "Is my audience really going to care what kind of hi-hat I use on this track?? Nahhh, fuck it."'

A commercially-sussed producer will KNOW, right down to the last sonic detail, what sounds to use. Change the hi-hat sound ina garage record, the punters will notice, and probably come up with a new genre name for it.

Nitsuh, I'm a bit peturbed by the idea that "the masses" digest music merely as a mechanism for distraction - exactly who and what are we talking about here? Is my mother, who buys a) classical, b) Crosby, Stills & Nash and c) somewhat inexplicably, the Train album, someone who listens to music for distraction or artistic appreciation? Does the fact that she aquires ten albums a year rather than a hundred demonstrate that she cares less about music or rather that she is more discerning according to her tastes?

A common idea is that "we" appreciate music on a deeper level because we talk about it. This however confuses the fact that discussing music is a social exercise that is not necessary to an enjoyment of music.

'Discerning tastes' = obeisance to 'standards' = fear of 'experience' = dud

= 'dud'

Actually, I meant to remove the quote marks from 'fear of experience', sorry

'dud' = ?

Dave, your paraphrase distorts my usage of 'discerning' - I think its clear from the specific example I cited (classical, CS&N and Train) that there is no 'standard' my mother is being obsequious towards. Actually, that's sort of my point: we all make them, but generalisations about why people listen to the music they listen to (eg. they want to be 'distracted') just don't fit with the tastes of the average music listener, which are at once both impossibly haphazard and strongly held on a personal level.

If everyone's tastes were strongly held on a personal level, there wouldn't be such industry devoted (for whatever motive) to creating canons for people to refer/defer to.

Canon creation is for people on the level 'up' from Tim's, surely - people who've decided that they Really Love Music and need a few guidelines and a bit of validation.

The thread seems to have moved on, but since I was forced to go out and play in the (relative) sunshine by my signifigant other this weekend, I missed my Intronet time. So, here's my response to all the Koons blather:

"Koons work is a late footnote to pop art which relies on one obsessive device: the exaggeration of the aura of consumer objects, a single minded devotion to gloss and glitz...The surprising thing was that Koons' main message, that - as he told an Italian art magazine - a person finds "confidence in his position by virtue of the objects with which he surrounds himself," should have been thought at all new or even interestings; it is one of the hoariest truisms imaginable, except, apparently, to collectors who wanted to display confidence in their position by surrounding themselves with Koonses. Nothing was more delicious to "advanced" taste than an enhanced sense of its own tolerance, and Koons supplied this in abudence after 1988 with his large polychrome statues...[which are] so gross, syrupy, and numbing that collectors felt "challenged" by them; they repeat the debased baroque of kitsch religious sculpture in an inflated, condescending way. Koons way of looking radical was to play a tease. Don't you really prefer silly knicknacks to Poussins? Don't you long for the paradise of childhood before discrimination began? 'Don't divorce yourself from your true being,' he wrote in one of his catalogs, in the accent of some quack therapist, 'embrace it. It's the only way you can move on to become a new upper class.' There is something so nauseating about such unctuous calls to regression from an artist so transparently on the make; even more so, perhaps than his bizarre claim that 'when someone sees my work, the only thing they see is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.' From this enervated claptrap, one might suppose Koons had psyched himself into thinking he was a latter-day Bernini. Or was it a pose? By now it hardly matters." -Robert Hughes, American Visions

Just about sums it up I think. My dismissal of Koons (and I guess tangentially Momus) was based solely on his work. I suspect Koons to be a pompous little putz, to briefly quote Lester Bangs. Much like another pompous little putz John Lydon (although manifesting itself in different behaviors.) The difference being that Lydon has produced a few *real* pop works of definite intensity and vision, and Koons has produced...well, a con. Stainless steel ballon animals and a bunch of fortune cookie pronouncements masquerading as epigrams do not a guru make.

And before anyone uses the above to accuse me of snobbery or twists Hughes' words around to further their own post-ironic theories...if it wasn't clear, I'm not making high/low distinctions here...I have *never* enjoyed Pop art (or much of the museum/gallery fodder that's followed it) but I have *always* enjoyed pop art...I treasure the first 25 issues of Mad magazine as a cultural artefact more than any piece of Pop foofera which "quotes" them (or any other comic book for that matter.)

Ditto pop music. Koons closest comparison in the music world for me is Squarepusher: too "smart" to make real pop music, too dull to be truly avant garde. But unlike cheeky chappy Jenk's mere self- delusion (thinking he came upon the idea of speeding up/chopping up breaks all by his own self), Koons work quickly moved into areas of purposeful public deception/manipulation (certainly not hindered by the fact that he more than likely knows he's a sham,) something we've never cottoned to around Casa De Jessito.

Tom stole my point - you become more aware of (and potentially subservient to) musical canons as you further immerse yourself in a social dialogue re music. If you don't intellectually engage with a form of music as a form in and of itself, you won't need a canon to give the form structural coherence. Therefore discussions of canons automatically imply a discussion of music as a concept rather than merely a discussion of what you've got on your stereo.

See for example the allusions to an oppressive ILM canon of futuristic pop music - such a canon can only exist in a social forum where pop is discussed in a self-consciously intellectual manner. The fact that it's commonly held that pop cannot be discussed intellectually causes such references to generally be made skeptically/ironically (ie. "isn't a 'manufactured' pop canon a contradiction in terms???").

Which brings up the more obvious point: most canons claim to compile all the "worthwhile" music among the dross - the music that can and should be deeply and personally felt rather than X which is merely an artistically void distraction. Pointing to a "canon industry" merely exposes further the false binary dichotomy of devotion vs. distraction.

I disagree with those who disagreed with Momus about Morrissey. Thank goodness that Momus is telling it like it is on that front. When / whether M lost it creatively is one issue - but it doesn't detract, I think, from the fact that he was ill-used. Momus's point re. earthquakes and hurricanes (hey! culture as weather) is spot-on.

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VERY GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

i havent read this post, but i'm stealing teh title for a short story someone has asked me to write. THANKS MOMUS!

plaese sent all competitions to my email address.thanks