music appreciation: living in the past vs. living in the present

For a while at the inception of baseball, the career home run leader changed yearly. When Babe Ruth made his way through the record books, it changed daily. But now it only changes rarely because the bar was set so high by those who came before it.

However just as we can say that people who retire with 500 homers had a nice career, new albums will come up every year that are enjoyable. But when a new disc comes along that becomes the home run leader, it's quite special.

However just as we can say that people who retire with 500 homers had a nice career, new albums will come up every year that are enjoyable. But when a new disc comes along that becomes the home run leader, it's quite special."

Whilst acknowledging immediately upfront that I know next to nothing about baseball, is it not true that; like with most other sporting activities; the bar is repeatedly being raised and the goalposts are repeatedly being moved (sorry, just couldn't resist the mixed metaphors!) to reflect the fact that standards of performance and achievement just keep getting higher and higher?

Does this not also mean that the standards and levels of sporting achievement that were considered superlative by one generation are routinely surpassed and superceded by successive generations?

Does this really apply in the same way to music?

If it did, surely this would mean that we could comfortably expect several bands / musicians to release albums this year that will be at least as as good as; if not appreciably better than; Pet Sounds, Revolver, The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust, Trout Mask Replica, London Calling, A Love Supreme, Kind Of Blue, Highway 61 Revisited, What's Going On, Forever Changes, Astral Weeks, Dark Side Of The Moon, Let It Bleed, Songs For Swinging Lovers, The Queen Is Dead.... but this just isn't going to happen, is it?

OK, levels of technical musical proficiency may have improved considerably, but - unlike in sporting activities - increased technical playing ability in music doesn't automatically lead to improved overall performance, does it?

Now before anyone suggest otherwise, I'm not trying to say that music's just not as good as it used to be.

However, I certainly don't see any evidence of it actually getting any better.

The main advantage of living in the past against living in the present is that, if you just stick with the tried-and-trusted established classics, you're substantially less likely to find yourself looking through your CD collection in ten year's time and wondering who the fuck Arctic Monkey were and why you ever bought their CD.

The main advantage of living in the present otoh is that you may well find it easier to get excited - and you'll almost certainly find it far easier to find other people who are excited - about Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I Am Not, than about The Velvet Underground & Nico.

Well, except maybe on ILM.

So what shall we tackle next? World poverty; or the vexed question of whether LCD Soundsystem are capable of making another album as good as their last one?

I think Stewart is missing the point of the analogy. Some records in sports take an exceedingly long time to get broken. Think of your personal favorite record of all time as Bob Beamon's record for the long jump. It took decades and decades for that thing to fall but it finally did and it took a monumental effort. So every year we do *not* have albums that surpass or even equal the classics in our minds. But once in a while, one will break through and when it does, it's glorious and notable.

I think the NME is silly and fun when it puts The Arctic Monkeys ridiculously high on "All-Time British Albums" lists but that's not because I think that such a feat is *impossible* as much as impossible to discern without the benefit of hindsight.

But you can still be captivated, enthralled and love a recording without needing to worry about its place in history. That place will sort itself out eventually.

Why wouldn't you think the same about say, a Bob Dylan record? Well not *who he was*, but why you ever bought it? I did, when I chucked all my 60's Dylan records. Also the problem with living in the past is that too much is known about these 'classics' - everyone's got an opinion and a theory. That's not to say that I don't live in the past myself - I do, but I try to avoid the obvious.

Darin, I like your question and your Waits quote and can only regretfully say that as a critic I'm unfortunately consumed by listening to far too much new stuff in an attempt to "gatekeep" (not goalkeep!). Otherwise Stewart OTM.

One big difference b/w sports records and music quality is that there's no objective measuring of the latter that we can rely on - the closest you might come in that statistical sense is number of records sold, which has obvious problems with it.

However, even if records are broken frequently, one still hears many sports fans complain that such and such a sport "just isn't like it used to be." It's too corporate, too professional, too wrapped up in big money and big celebrities. The technical ability is still there but the heart and soul and etc. etc. has been lost somewhere. This strikes me as pretty similar to the aging music fan's complaint.

If I absolutely must use a sporting analogy 'though, I'd be more inclined to think in terms of the 4 minute mile as being representative of the way I perceive things working in the world of sports.

For many years it was seriously believed to be physically impossible for a man to run a mile in 4 minutes or under.

As probably everyone knows, Roger Bannister was the first person to break this psychological barrier, which he did on 6 May 1954.

This was generally hailed as one of the greatest athletic achievements of all time.

Within 46 days, John Landy had beaten Bannister's record.

By the end of 1957 16 different athletes had each run a mile in less than 4 minutes and Derek Ibbotosn had broken John Landy's record.

Since then the record has been broken a further 16 times by 10 different athletes and now stands at 3 minutes 43 seconds.

The point is that, while Roger Bannister is still remembered for being the first person to break that psychological barrier, his performance would be considered pretty mediocre by today's top runners.

Albums like Pet Sounds, Reveolver etc. etc. otoh, don't occupy the places that they do in our hearts and minds just because they were great achievements by the standards of 1966 (or whatever); but because they can be directly compared on a like-for-like basis (other than maybe in purely technical terms) with anything that's been released in the last 12 months or anything that we've got any reasonable right to anticipate being released in the next 12 months, and (unless I've missed something extraordinary in the last 12 months or something miraculous happens in the next 12) they'll still be better.

Other than that, you seem to seem to be saying pretty much the same as I am.

The analogy doesn't work in your scenario because you're messing up the analogy! You seem to be correlating an increase in athletic ability as an increase in making classic music and I never said that! Athletic ability alone does not set athletic records just as musical ability alone does not make for classic recordings.

I did say it was "substantially less likely" that you'd find yourself wondering why you'd bought something, not that it was impossible. I merely grabbed the first handful of canonical albums that crossed my mind, because I thought those would be the least contentious ones and therefore the easiest ones with which to make my point.

Then I deleted Born To Run, Rumours and The Unforgettable Fire because they're crap; and put Trout Mask Replica in instead just because I wanted to.

No, we're pointing out why the analogy doesn't work.

This is all totally subjective.

I'd liken it to preferring to watch DVDs of Brazil circa 1970 than MotD.

Great recordings can do both. But I get you point - a disc has to be timeless. Fortunately no matter how many home runs the surly steroid-taking meathead Barry Bonds takes, it does not detract from Babe Ruth's performances in relation to his peers *or* in relation to history. So in that respect, even hard statistics can be misleading and even ignored.

Sports nuts like to debate on how players of different eras would compare if on the field together. Although music has some of the limitations that this debate has in sports (it can be argued that new recording techniques, even new instruments make for an unfair basis of comparison) it's easy to compare Pink Floyd to Radiohead as if they were contemporaries. Which one you decide is better is the hard part but it's a lot easier than deciding if Ted Williams could hit .400 if he played in an era of specialized relief pitching.

xp - The analogy won't work when you fail to comprehend the analogy, sure...

Maybe I'm being musicist or anti-sportist but surely the direct result of the application of increased athletic ability will be to set / raise athletic records?

As I'm sure the Doc (and everyone else who's ever been in a band) will confirm, the application of increased musical ability usually just seems to lead to increased masturbatory widdling.

Unlike who ran fastest / jumped highest / achieved the highest number of home runs / scored the most goals.

Or something.

Having athletic ability doesn't mean anything without a lot of intangibles (and a fair amount of luck), the same with musical ability. Otherwise we'd all be worshipping Yngwie Malmsteen.

Then clearly I was being musicist and / or anti-sportist and I apologise unreservedly.

Please explain and save me from this vast sports-understanding-related wilderness that I inhabit....

But keep it short and keep it simple, eh?

I wouldn't actually, Stew. I'd say there's a place for both high technical ability and 'low conventional ability but visionary' (or something) - often in the same band. If the raison d'etre is to play as complex and fast as possible then more than likely it'll be crap, but if the intent is to explore and communicate then I think there's room for everyone. The Raincoats were intuitive and self-taught (although wasn't Vicky Aspinall classically trained) which helped them to map out new territory. On the other hand Television were, to a man, shit-hot musicians - they also move me, and I cannot recall a track on which their virtuosity becomes wankery. Same applies to Magazine (except Howard). Both types in the same band works too - Roxy Music for example, also The Banshees : Severin and Siouxsie as intuitive non-musicians, and McGeoch/Budgie as virtuosos.

You'll notice that I said *conventional* ability - I meant ability at playing an instrument rather than overall musical nous. If you include 'the ability to make interesting things happen despite not really being able to play' the definition of musical ability makes more sense. You can include people like Martin Hannett, Eno etc.

For me the ideal musician is someone like John McGeoch who is an excellent technical player, but never falls back on this as an end in itself. He always played interesting and innovative parts, and knew when to be in the background and when to cut loose.

Obviously you're right Doc, otherwise there wouldn't be all the great music that their is.

Neveretheless I have often wondered whether there is some sort of law of nature that prevents both of these abilities from being manifest simultaneously in any one individual whilst they are in a rehearsal room with me and have a guitar in their hands.

You are in the village Dr C
What do you want?
Information
Whose side are you on?
That would be telling

Actually I was just looking for some idea of the sort of "intangibles" you mentioned earlier that might prevent a gifted athlete from excelling as such.... other then the sorts of accidents of birth that might prevent someone from realising that they have certain gifts (which I'd have thought would be pretty much identical in both scenarios).

To be honest; because (as I perceive things, at least) objective ability is of far greater significance to an athlete than it is to musician, I can't even see how luck would play anything like as big a part.

Sorry if this sounds snarky btw, it's really not intended as such.

I coulda been a contender, if it wasn't for that damned Osborne Exclusion Principle, I'm tellin' ya....

Luck in sport - avoiding injury, not playing for shitty teams...
Luck in music - right place at the right time, not dying too young...

... and the modern stuff the more processed / packaged / contrived product, exactly....

"unless new music was the living stuff, and the old music was the stuff you went to the store and bought because it wasn't available any other way"

Indeed.

I don't care if it's from a mountain stream or out of a bottle: if the water's got semen in it, I don't wanna drink it.

Entire thread reduced from intellectual debate to a series of cheap nob gags: my work here is done, so I'm ready.

and http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200/drp200/p233/p23309zhvt1.jpg

?

Sports analogies and cocks aside, I'd like to get back to that Waits quote, particularly "It's like water stains on wallpaper. You thought it was part of the design, but it's not." The idea that music morphs as it's perceived over time kind of fascinates me. And I'm not referring how we interpret it due to canonical status. Take ILM's Yacht Rock fetish for instance (this may be a bad example since some might argue that the appreciation is due strictly to irony). Do we really appreciate this music for different reasons than we did 25 years ago? If so, why? Is it just nostalgia or something more complicated than that?

let us close our eyes, outside the lies go on much faster!