Did You Ever Feel Like You've Been Cheated? I'm Asking You, Kiddie Paramore Fans...

...Admittedly there are probably none here, but maybe some who are on the pulse of the young'uns these days, or those who feel like they are on the pulse, or should be.

When that whole Josh Farro Blog Post Call Out thing happened, one of the things that the kid put in the Blog that was supposed to be damming, I guess, was this:

The label and management then decided to build our band up the grass-roots route. They put Hayley on Fueled by Ramen not making it known she was signed to Atlantic as well.

Here the Farro Brothers come out and say that the whole organic growth of a band thing was a manipulation by corporate overlords. The rest of the post also throws some more of the deadly indie sins around - they were constantly under pressure by 'the man' to write hits, the band was just Hayley's solo creation and not really a band at all, blah, blah, blah...

There have been generations that, upon hearing this, would have felt really pissed off about it. They would have felt lied to. And yes, cheated.

I think that this includes mine (42 years old three days ago, yay me) because I think that when I was a kid if I found out that all along Elektra and QPrime put Metallica on Megaforce just to have their success seem so organic and natural and underground, all the while pulling their (and my) strings along the way, I would have felt miserable and cheated and would have started to hate them years before their music started to suck.

I asked my wife (who at 27 years old is a good barometer of kids who don't have to stay off my lawn anymore but used to quite recently) and she agreed with me that she would have been bummed out if such a charge was successfully levelled at a band she loved.

But we both wondered if today's generation (who does need to stay off my lawn) gave a fuck about this kind of integrity.

And now I wonder aloud for those here.

Not to say that such an attitude is noble or stupid (or both) because arguments could be made for both sides (I mean, all that should matter is whether you like the tunes, right?), just wondering if it merely exists anymore.

Whaddya think?

I think there's no way in hell Metallica's rise to arenas could have been engineered were the band not awesome, hard working and deserving. Take into account the sheer number of great metal bands on major labels at the time and I don't think it was a matter of stealth grassroots. Radio didn't play it, people were afraid of it - it had to be grass roots. Back then, when people were listening to REO Speedwagon, it was innately "other" enough that I highly doubt Metallica's choice of issue really mattered to anyone. Though maybe someone older than you/me remembers differently.

Anyway, isn't Fueled By Ramen distributed by Atlantic, anyway? SSDD.

My guess is that the people who truly care deep down about indie/DIY stuff and make that central to their music fandom probably assumed this about Paramore all along, while most of their actual fans probably won't care much. To me, they never seemed like they were taking some kind of Fugazi-like stand.

I could see it pissing off younger female fans who saw Hayley Williams as succeeding on a level playing field, rather than having the way smoothed for her by a management team.

It's standard practice in the UK. A friend's label once put out a limited edition run of 500 'homemade', hand-decorated, 7"s for a new indie-pop group. The band was already signed to a major and the hand-decoration was done by a group of office temps. The label got £10k to spend on putting out their own records and the band, in theory, got a veneer of indie credibility. I haven't actually heard of them since so i can only assume it didn't go well. I'd imagine that most indie fans are pretty well-versed in the tell-tale signs (rapid switch from minor to major label, booking 1000 capacity venues immediately after your first single has dropped, fawning press coverage in unexpected places, etc). It's usually so transparent that there's simply no point in doing it. The idea that 17-year-old indie fans will only buy something that appears 'organic' is the kind of line i can imagine a lot of A&Rs believing. I can't see it being true these days, though. Individually, it's difficult to see it damaging the credibility of any particular bands too greatly. The indie puritan isn't generally the target audience for acts like Paramore or The Vaccines. On a wider level, however, the sheer scale of the manipulation is likely to lead to a greater degree of cynicism and dissatisfaction with 'corporate indie' that might actually filter down to the people they're trying to sell to.

I remember at age 15 being told that Sneaker Pimps, who I p much adored at the time, were a sort of mix-and-match group of people selected by the label to make music together. Industry puppets. I really knew nothing about this band, but I guess before finding this out I had the normal image of them all meeting in school and working their way up to a record deal. I didn't really feel sad when I found out, though. I still liked their music. It was made, I could listen to it, I didn't really care how it came about. Is this really an anomalous feeling?

I'm 27, btw...I find this whole background story funny! It seems like an awful lot of work to court an audience that mostly doesn't even pay for things.

yeah it's not that i think being really invested in extramusical things about a band and being crushed when revelations that make no difference at all to the actual artifacts they release is stupid or deluded, it's just i don't get it at all and it's never occurred to me to think like that.

the first time i remember realizing this was when it was faddish to wonder Who Really Wrote Shakespeare's Plays. someone obviously wrote them so who cares.

btw re: paramore in particular, i don't really trust the two guys who are all outraged that hayley williams wrote a song that went "the truth never set me free".

Anonymous said...
okay i think the Anon that was saying 'douche' was the same person -____-

anyway... i'm not really sure if this is real but if it is then yeah here we go.
yeah i would start off by saying that you and zac are my favorite not hayley not
taylor not jeremy. when i read the news that the two of you were quitting the band
i swear i was devastated and broke down crying, people might say that what i did was
pathetic but paramore is just i can't even explain how much this band means to me.
Anyway i respect and understand your decision now that i've heard your side of the story.
But what i can't understand are the things you said about hayley, you all looked like
you were getting along and you know happy with what you were doing. you made her sound like
an attention whore which now that i think about it she is. If she kept on saying that
you were a band she shouldn't have agreed or at least followed what her manager what saying.
She should have defended you and asked your opinion on what was happening. if you look at it
you were actually the ones that started the band and hayley used you as a stepping stone
to get what she wanted. And the part where you
said about her dad i mean wow that's just sad :|. i felt betrayed and lied to, i can't imagine
that she was that kind of person.

I'm sorry if this came out a little long i mean c'mon i was shocked and i never thought
that this was what was happening behind the smiles and the glamour -sigh-

But watever i still love you josh and zac watever you decide i will totally support you.
continue making music and god bless.

you made her sound like an attention whore which now that i think about it she is.

this single sentence sets off like five separate I Am Fundamentally Philosophically Opposed To The Speaker alarm bells.

I remember at age 15 being told that Sneaker Pimps, who I p much adored at the time, were a sort of mix-and-match group of people selected by the label to make music together. Industry puppets.

I don't think this is actually true btw.

Th3Mus1cAdd1ct said...
Hello Josh and Zac
I supported Paramore for years,I watched the videos,I bought all the albums (including the special edition of Brand New Eyes), The band changed my life,when I first heard emergency I didn't quite understand because I was around 8, but I loved it instantly.The guitar riffs,The vocals,the bass,drums,everything. This band met more to me then anything,My dad,jokingly,told me you guys were breaking up back during RIOT!(Unknowing you really might) and I freaked, I have so many memories with this band,First concert is the biggest, my parents finally thought I was old enough for a concert during the tour before B.N.E. 7/10/09.That day shaped the rest of my life, the crowd,the sounds,the lights,everything on stage was just perfect,It was what I wanted to do,It was the life style I desperately wanted...NEEDED.Then, the rumors of you guys leaving came up,I just brushed them off,but when it was released on the site I cried,for 30 minutes at least,I instantly thought it was over for Paramore,and with that All I Know Is Falling,but Then I started thinking"Why would they leave one of the most popular rock bands currently?" and "Why did Hayley Post this?" I knew something was weird. Then this came out,this changed everything about my early child hood, I looked up to each and every one of the band equally, but after this I regret it,Hayley over powered the band, and you guys could do nothing about it,but after this point I will never buy another paramore CD until Hayley admits to this.I will not support a lier.
In conclusion, I want to thank you for posting this Josh & Zac and clearing this all up, I hope you don't leave the fans that care for you guys and not just Hayley.So I wish you,Josh and Zac,The best of luck

d3v0n,13

My dad,jokingly,told me you guys were breaking up back during RIOT!(Unknowing you really might) and I freaked,

http://i.imgur.com/tfQHh.png

I wonder how music history would have changed if the Scandal guys had said this about Patty Smyth

(paramore was my #1 in 2009's p&j, full disclosure)

p4r4mus1cr0cks said...
damn... this really changes things..... wow...... hmmm.... crazy...... damn..... I feel horrible.... I dont know what to say..... Josh you seriously were it...... sat when it was announced I was/am completely devastated I couldn't believe you guys would just leave like that without saying anything... i knew something was up but never in a million years would i have believed what you just said... but it all makes sense the label companies are ridiculous... they are all about the $$ and try to treat yall like puppets... this is the real reason why most band break up... I still cant believe about our Hayley ='(.....damnnnnnn thats where it hurts..... thats where you cross the line thats going below the belt... and this is when i start balling out of control as i type... it cant get any worse than this... this band that meant the world to me I have tattooed on me has just ripped my heart out of my ass and stopped on the floor... i am completely devastated my heart is broken </3

baller status: out of control

lolol

tbqh a good parent would never let their 8-year-old child fall in love with such a relentlessly mediocre band

yeah it's best to buy them smiths onesies immediately so that they'll be sure not to embarrass you

shoulda at least started cushioning them for the inevitable blow (I guess maybe the dad joking about a breakup was trying to do this? but he could have tried harder)

"pop music is like sausages" &c &c

I would kill and eat my own child if I ever caught them listening to the smiths

nah just kidding "This Charming Man" is a great song and I bet a lil tyke dancing to it would look adorable

i am weirded out by this story but not really surprised as her engineering as as solo act seemed really transparent and learning that the engineering started with paramore gives it a creepy conspiracy vibe but isn't really any more shocking

more hayley's tits pics, please

musicians who make music people like in trying to find ways of getting paid in 2k11 without pissing off fans with outdated views of "authenticity" shocker.

this def does give me a new view of fueled by ramen tho

what is up with this thread, didn't this news break like 3 weeks ago? we talked about it a little on the o.g. Paramore thread. anyway they at least had enough fans on ILM to win this poll: My Chemical Romance vs. Fall Out Boy vs. Paramore

http://www.hitquarters.com/index.php3?page=intrview/opar/intrview_JeffHanson_Interview_Part2.html

as an adult music fan who doesn't really care how my pop music sausage is made in terms of credibly humble beginnings, the only thing this news really means to me is that Paramore's next record will probably sound pretty different and maybe not as good as their old stuff since their great drummer and the guy who wrote most of the riffs are gone now.

Paramore's next record will probably sound pretty different and maybe not as good as their old stuff since their great drummer and the guy who wrote most of the riffs are gone now.

yeah, see, this i'm upset about. but we'll see.

anyway, to the larger question: i don't think the warped tour fans who buy multiple paramore t-shirts (as distinct from me who bought only one paramore t-shirt) have the same label-wars cosmology as, say, an r.e.m. fan from the irs years, but they do still have all the usual rock hangups about "authenticity" and "earnestness", so it's not hard to imagine this revelation being a big deal to those of them who choose to believe it. more defensibly, i think hayley williams cares a lot about that sort of thing -- i think she really wants to be the singer in a Band that Practiced In A Garage and has now Hit The Big Time, and i think it's probably a little uncomfortable for her that she is inevitably the focus of coverage, the way it's been uncomfortable for a billion frontpeople before her. i think that makes more sense if you're an artist than it does if you're an audience.

Yeah, the question now is all a matter of which session dudes or songwriters they hire. I like product as much as the next guy, but with the spotlight exclusively on her, Hayley now gets to decide what direction she's willing to be pushed in. If she hires the Matrix or the 4 Non Blondes woman, she's doomed. Credibility wise, that is. Doomed all the way to the bank.

they do still have all the usual rock hangups about "authenticity" and "earnestness"

becoming quite tired of the attachment of this POV to rock, specifically, and of its blithe dismissal as a "hangup". an interest in the (perhaps imaginary) authenticity of the artist predates rock and exists in some form or another in the audience for every art form. painting, poetry, jazz, etc. personally, i think it's a good thing even if we don't buy into it. i'm glad that there are people who insist on the importance of individual creativity and human feeling, as they perceive it, in opposition to a corporate culture that treats all things as interchangeable, value-neutral commodities.

In 2011 acting like the "corporate culture" of major labels is actually particularly good at stringpulling versus desparately throwing any number of strategies at the wall to see what sticks seems like the outmoded thing.

It's not a question of whether or not they're doing it well, it's the fact that they're doing it at all that's cause for uproar--provided, of course, that you're the type to get offended by this kind of thing.

"corporate culture"

^ is this a lolsome construction? i suppose it might be, but in what way?

http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/7900000/Hayley-Williams-I-am-Switzerland-twilight-series-7934861-562-450.jpg

contenderizer why does Tim's scarequoting of you saying "corporate culture" weird you out so much the same day you scarequoted my use of "indie artists" on the P&J thread?

I was actually not even scarequoting, just trying to make it clear what post I was responding to.

Having said that I think you're hypostasising these two things ("individual creativity and human feeling" versus "corporate culture") as if they're entirely separate and as if we can reliably know them when we see them.

If a wannabe teen-pop-star rigorously promotes herself without outside help via myspace, youtube and soundcloud, and releases a digital-only single via some internet start-up that ends up being a moderate hit (and sounds like Britney's "If You Seek Amy", say), is she more or less a product of corporate culture than Hayley from Paramore?

I'm not trying to defend corporate culture, I just think we're buying into a mode of clear-cut categorisation that feels like it should exist more than it actually does.

Yeah, the question now is all a matter of which session dudes or songwriters they hire. I like product as much as the next guy, but with the spotlight exclusively on her, Hayley now gets to decide what direction she's willing to be pushed in. If she hires the Matrix or the 4 Non Blondes woman, she's doomed. Credibility wise, that is. Doomed all the way to the bank.

I think she's made it pretty clear that she'll write with remaining member Taylor. He's had some credits before, and among those songs the two of them are the only ones credited on "All I Wanted" on the latest album, which is a BIG, GREAT TUNE.

why does Tim's scarequoting of you saying "corporate culture" weird you out so much the same day you scarequoted my use of "indie artists" on the P&J thread?

it's not that it weirds me out. i'm legit curious abt where tim is coming from cuz i respect his writing and thinking. maybe that's the same thing, i dunno...

i scarequoted "indie artists" cuz people in the P&J thread were complaining about this strawman who incorrectly votes for albums and tracks by a small pool of indie-identified musicians. the horror. apologies if it came off dickish. i meant nothing personal against you.

big xp --

the reason i attribute it to rock (and i didn't mean to start a genre fight -- "pop music" will do) is that i do think that most artists who get faulted for corporate association are post-50s pop musicians, because A) a lot of people didn't seem to notice corporations existed until after WW2 and B) the major-label apparatus is for some reason the least respected of all the corporate delivery systems, less respected even than hollywood, which people bitch about without forming their entire aesthetic canon around the bitching.

it's of course not absurd to suggest that something about the nature of corporate involvement taints art in all kinds of overt aesthetic ways -- to say that corporations, or those in their pay, often suck at making art. i'd probably agree with this! but you have to take things case-by-case: it's acceptable to hate a song and then find out it was heavily corporate and say "oh that might explain some of the things about the song that made me hate it". it's not acceptable to assume a priori that a band's history and source of funding destroys their songs; there are a million examples everyone knows of terrific work made by humans for humans within a compromising inhuman system. (the sistine chapel springs to mind.) and in the paramore example, it is maybe literally insane to love and devour and be moved by a song and then drop it in disgust upon finding out that some of the people who made it might have signed a contract with some other people earlier than you had thought. like that is profoundly anti-art.

because i think judgement requires engagement, and because broad objections to "corporate rock" are the opposite of engagement, and because said broad objections are made almost constantly about almost everything by almost everyone i know, i can get a little combative about this? which is maybe on me, but it's the side i'd prefer to err on.

and in the paramore example, it is maybe literally insane to love and devour and be moved by a song and then drop it in disgust upon finding out that some of the people who made it might have signed a contract with some other people earlier than you had thought. like that is profoundly anti-art.

Fan outrage is probably based more on a perceived lack of honesty than lack of authenticity. Adolescent enjoyment of music (and I think this is more true of a lot of rock and rap than it is for R&B, say, due to the signifiers involved) is much of the time heavily intermeshed with a personal identification with the creators of the music, and relies on an assumption that the artistic product is simultaneously a kind of truthtelling. A revelation that the musicians have been lying (or deliberately concealing certain truths) to their fans in other ways destabilises that assumption.

In late or post- adolescence, as people start to consider their formerly intense personal connection with particular artists as gauche or immature and start to replace it with more objective seeming explanations of quality based on My First Social Criticism, that insistence on honesty becomes transmuted into an insistence on authenticity.

The fact that this is a fairly predictable trend amongst music listeners doesn't make it any more legitimate though.

http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/7900000/Hayley-Williams-I-am-Switzerland-twilight-series-7934861-562-450.jpg
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/amazing-girl-quits-16.jpg?w=500

(oh and obv we're into abstractions here but as far as paramore goes, even if you do care about this stuff, this band is a bunch of kids from the same area who write and play together and whose most horrific possible crime is that one of them, the spunky big-piped frontwoman in a band of dudes, may have been more interesting to atlantic records than the other ones, and also she's not as orthodox a protestant as her [unfortunately v. good] drummer would prefer. like oh noes.)

I was actually not even scarequoting, just trying to make it clear what post I was responding to.

Having said that I think you're hypostasising these two things ("individual creativity and human feeling" versus "corporate culture") as if they're entirely separate and as if we can reliably know them when we see them.

gotcha. but i wasn't doing that, or wasn't attempting to. i tried to make it clear that i was talking about the audience's perception (perhaps imagined or projected or whatever) of the authentic and individual. imo, it should be uncontroversial to assert that large corporations will encourage the idea that art is a consumable good and there's nothing wrong with hugely popular goods produced by large corporations, nothing superior about niche goods produced by specific individuals and/or small companies. as a general rule, i mean. that meme suits their interests.

because of that, i think there's value in encouraging the counter-meme, the idea that popular things produced by large corporations are inherently suspect. so long as neither of these ideas dominates the discourse, some balance is maintained.

That's Fox News thinking though (in form not content obv). Balance isn't a justification for poorly framed arguments.

In late or post- adolescence, as people start to consider their formerly intense personal connection with particular artists as gauche or immature and start to replace it with more objective seeming explanations of quality based on My First Social Criticism, that insistence on honesty becomes transmuted into an insistence on authenticity.

this is true as far as i can tell, although the reason i put "authenticity" in scarequotes upthread was that i have never understood what on earth the word means in an artistic context. i get "honesty" -- the fear is that paramore lied to their fans about their history. that makes sense, and you're right that it means a lot to (some) kids. but the only definition i can work out for "authenticity" is "the quality of reaching and affecting nonsuperficial parts of the audience's thoughts and emotions by establishing a personal connection", which is the entire point of any kind of art and not necessarily connected to context and thus doesn't really need a whole extra word.

the topic of this thread is a situation where a major label successfully created a band many people here enjoy and nurtured its career!

this piece i wrote a year ago comparing Hayley w/ Demi Lovato keeps feeling more and more prescient: http://www.splicetoday.com/music/the-rock-princess-and-the-pop-rebel

McDonalds doesn't say "okay sure our coffee is less authentic but it doesn't matter because authenticity is a bogus concept", McDonalds says "our coffee is authentic!"

that's true, of course, but i think the way corporate entities use values like "authenticity" is cynical and ultimately destructive to those values. starbucks attempts to link their products to the idea of authenticity, but i believe that the underlying suggestion is that authenticity is itself superficial, a component of brand identity that can be easily adopted, shaped and/or discarded.

The fallacy at the heart of your argument is that "authenticity" is some actually existing property that exists or doesn't exist regardless of what an audience thinks.

Whereas in truth "authenticity" is at best a judgment made about a product or producer by its audience, built out of associations.

well, i haven't said that authenticity exists. i've instead addressed only the value of the perception of authenticity. but i do believe that it does exist. it exists as truth and falsehood exist, independent of our perception of them. if i speak falsely to no audience, i'm still speaking falsely. agree 100% that the perception of authenticity is a basically judgment we make - on our own terms and for our own reasons.

the topic of this thread is a situation where a major label successfully created a band many people here enjoy and nurtured its career!

― trv kvnt (some dude), Sunday, January 23, 2011 5:40 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, but I think that's the exception to the rule and I think this discussion is pretty interesting - especially the stealth marketing aspects of it. I just wanted to chime in and say I agree with Tim about "authenticity" not really being the issue a lot of people have with majors (using myself as an example).

McDonalds doesn't say "okay sure our coffee is less authentic but it doesn't matter because authenticity is a bogus concept", McDonalds says "our coffee is authentic!"

does anybody else think this is hilarious

I kinda feel like there are 3 types of music listeners:

1) people who only listen to major label music and rarely give much thought to whether they're a good or bad thing or whether viable alternatives even exist
2) people who listen primarily to music from indie labels and are very opinionated about major labels and find it very easy to grandstand about how awful they are
3) people who listen to a lot of music from big and small labels alike and either regard major labels as a necessary evil that they hope will become less necessary in the future, or are comfortable with the idea that different kinds of music often operate on different planes of business, finance, and media exposure

and that people pretty much don't move from one of these groups to another once they're out of their teens, and never really find much common ground in conversations like this.

yes to hoos

that's true, of course, but i think the way corporate entities use values like "authenticity" is cynical and ultimately destructive to those values. starbucks attempts to link their products to the idea of authenticity, but i believe that the underlying suggestion is that authenticity is itself superficial, a component of brand identity that can be easily adopted, shaped and/or discarded.

The only reason that McDonalds can treat "authenticity" cynically is because it's a cynical concept to begin with. The liability of authenticity to be co-opted by branding is itself evidence that authenticity was always already a branding exercise. Pretending this is not the case may make one less nihilist but it doesn't make one more correct.

it exists as truth and falsehood exist, independent of our perception of them. if i speak falsely to no audience, i'm still speaking falsely.

You realise this is your most obviously incorrect claim yet. Authenticity and truth are categorically different concepts.

Look at it this way: in general terms it's impossible to tell a lie without being aware that you're telling a lie. It's possible of course to truthfully say something that is incorrect, but that is different to lying.

Whereas it's entirely possible that someone might consider themselves to be "authentic" while another person might consider that person to be inauthentic. There is no measurable record of authenticity or its lack like there is with a lie detector test.

"the authentic" as a concept is more like "the good", "the just", "the beautiful", "the free" - concepts that exist by collective agreement, and whose content has always and will always be contested.

What we think of as "authenticity" is really a quick-fix bandaid over the unanswered and never-finally-answerable question "what does distinguish art from commodity?"

Pretending that it positively exists is always a cynical move, a desire to enforce a certain perspective of the value of art by fait accompli. And the moment that perspective is ossified and hegemonised it becomes liable to cooption by big business.

And category 1 in some dude's example includes people who don't even know what a label is, which I feel like is a significant # of music listeners.

yeah totally

I agree w/those 3 divisions but think you're finding it a bit too tempting to use indie purist strawmen concepts. I mean, not wanting to buy (new) records on MCA after reading "Hit Men" isn't exactly "grandstanding". I think it would be more fair to say that I have specific reasons for not wanting to buy major label product in a lot of cases. It's just like trying to buy local food - a good idea but not something to get caught up in a bunch of rules about. fwiw I was totally on board with the whole Chumbawamba thing, I liked what they did with the EMI/Universal opportunity.

Something v. interesting to me, which I haven't seen explored very well generally, is how difficult it is to map ideas about branding on to big record companies. Indie labels are very much "brands" as that term is used now, but very few majors are. Was there a time when people had associations with an imprint like Epic? I know they did with Atlantic. But I wonder how far that extended and when it ended and how that changed and why. The history of labels as brands seems like an interesting area for investigation.

some major labels definitely have branding, although it's more often the individual imprints and subsidiaries than the whole big corporate entity they're all under the umbrella of. Geffen/DGC had a lot of cache as a rock label in the 80s and 90s, and these days there's a total hyperawareness of labels among hip hop fans, not just artist-branded imprints like G-Unit or Young Money but a sense of how Def Jam does things and how Interscope does things, etc.

The only reason that McDonalds can treat "authenticity" cynically is because it's a cynical concept to begin with. The liability of authenticity to be co-opted by branding is itself evidence that authenticity was always already a branding exercise. Pretending this is not the case may make one less nihilist but it doesn't make one more correct.

we're probably reaching the point where we'll simply have to agree to disagree, but i don't see any reason to accept any of the above as true. what is specifically cynical about the concept of authenticity in art? whether or not we accept that such a thing exists, the concept of authenticity issues more from a surfeit of earnestness than of cynicism, or so it seems to me. i think i understand what you mean when you call authenticity a "branding exercise," but to my mind, that's a cynical and reductive view of the concept (no offense). we might in that sense describe the assignation of any value judgment as a branding exercise, but this hardly proves that all value judgments are mere marketing, or that they lack deeper validity. i mean, all value judgments are equally liable to co-option by branding: truth, beauty, honor, justice, etc. authenticity is hardly special in this respect.

You realise this is your most obviously incorrect claim yet. Authenticity and truth are categorically different concepts.

Look at it this way: in general terms it's impossible to tell a lie without being aware that you're telling a lie. It's possible of course to truthfully say something that is incorrect, but that is different to lying.

Whereas it's entirely possible that someone might consider themselves to be "authentic" while another person might consider that person to be inauthentic. There is no measurable record of authenticity or its lack like there is with a lie detector test.

unsurprisingly, i disagree with this, too. i'd never suggest that authenticity and truth are equivalent or interchangeable concepts, but i do think that they are closely related to one another. when we speak of the authenticity of a piece of music, we're often suggesting that it communicates a kind of human reality, that it arises from true feeling and real experience. i agree that the perception of this quality is necessarily subjective, but deny that the subjective nature of the perception makes the perceived thing entirely unreal. similarly, the fact that no "authenticity detector" exists hardly proves to my satisfaction that authenticity is chimerical.

"the authentic" as a concept is more like "the good", "the just", "the beautiful", "the free" - concepts that exist by collective agreement, and whose content has always and will always be contested.

What we think of as "authenticity" is really a quick-fix bandaid over the unanswered and never-finally-answerable question "what does distinguish art from commodity?"

Pretending that it positively exists is always a cynical move, a desire to enforce a certain perspective of the value of art by fait accompli. And the moment that perspective is ossified and hegemonised it becomes liable to cooption by big business.

i agree with this to some extent. i would say that our perception of authenticity is somewhat like our perception of beauty, with the caveat that the concept of authenticity is not divorced from that of honesty. when we say that an artist is authentic, we're at least in part saying that the artist seems to be honest (emotionally honest, artistically honest, a host of fuzzy but not meaningless ideas).

while it's true that popular shared perspectives are liable to cooption, i hardly think this makes shard perspectives an undesirable thing. i do think that we should be critical of the hegemony of value-assigning paradigms, but again, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't form value judgments in the first place. i wonder whether you're talking more about shared systems of belief regarding authenticity than the individual perception of it. i'm primarily addressing the latter, though i grant that the two are inseparable.

apologies to one and all for going on at length about this crap. when you start wanting to debate people point-by-point on the internet, it's probably time to tap out and go for a walk.

Everyone is probably bored to tears but I always find these debates interesting.

we're probably reaching the point where we'll simply have to agree to disagree, but i don't see any reason to accept any of the above as true. what is specifically cynical about the concept of authenticity in art? whether or not we accept that such a thing exists, the concept of authenticity issues more from a surfeit of earnestness than of cynicism, or so it seems to me.

To use a perhaps unfairly unpleasant analogy (but it's the only one that springs to mind, sorry), belief in authenticity is simultaneously cynical and earnest in the same way that invading a country in the name of the universality of democracy is simultaneously cynical and earnest: it's earnest on the part of those who don't know enough to realise that the thing being invoked (authenticity / universality of democracy) is a fictional ideal, but cynical on the part of those who are smart enough to know this, but who also consider it to be a "necessary lie" that it's better to act as if one believes. (there's a nice depiction of this Franzen's Freedom incidentally)

I'm kinda averse to any attempt to justify intellectual dishonesty but I accept that I don't have the lives of millions in my hands so am free to be pure on my own time. There is a lot less at stake in every sense with respect to music and authenticity, so the cynicism of promoting a fictional concept is lazy rather than evil, but also much more pointless.

(On how this argument plays out w/r/t neo-conservatism I strongly recommend John Gray's Black Mass. More generally see also Zizek's ancient (but still the best thing he's ever done) "Cynicism as a form of ideology" (from "How Did Marx Invent The Symptom") here)

unsurprisingly, i disagree with this, too. i'd never suggest that authenticity and truth are equivalent or interchangeable concepts, but i do think that they are closely related to one another. when we speak of the authenticity of a piece of music, we're often suggesting that it communicates a kind of human reality, that it arises from true feeling and real experience.

Yes, but all you're really saying here is that authenticity includes the claim "this is true" (as do "the good", "the just" etc). But it's the claim to truth that distinguishes authenticity. You can obviously claim "this is true" while speaking falsely. "Truth" isn't like some golden light which illuminates every concept which it invokes it with legitimacy.

similarly, the fact that no "authenticity detector" exists hardly proves to my satisfaction that authenticity is chimerical.

Right, but conversely you cannot simply note a relationship between authenticity and truth and rely on the conceptually undeniable existence of the latter to bolster your argument for the former.

I can neither prove nor disprove authenticity's existence, and it's not logically required in the same way that a concept like truth is.

In this regard the existence of authenticity is basically in the same category as the existence of God, and I'm hoping that you're not going to tell me that I should believe in God because I cannot disprove his existence.

when we say that an artist is authentic, we're at least in part saying that the artist seems to be honest (emotionally honest, artistically honest, a host of fuzzy but not meaningless ideas).

Why don't we just say what we mean then? I have no problem with someone saying "this artist seems to be honest." Again, I consider authenticity in this regard to be a concept hurriedly inserted to fill the void created when we realise that we're not actually involved in a direct individual communication with an artist. "Authenticity" is basically used to suggest a kind of (vague, contentless) honesty irreducible to any actual really existing relationships of communication. But this is precisely what is wrong with it.

I'm more interested in adult music listeners going in the other direction, talking about their relationship with art and with artists in a subjective, personal manner that is also open about the fantastic aspects of that relationship. And I don't actually think there's anything wrong with talking about music in terms of honesty, though it's obv a case by case thing. But then i think Britney's "I Was Born To Make You Happy" is a very honest song.

while it's true that popular shared perspectives are liable to cooption, i hardly think this makes shard perspectives an undesirable thing.

Right, but you'd also want to say that shared perspectives should be open to being criticised, right? That the masses aren't always correct? I just don't think you should fence off notions of authenticity as being exempt from this when they're based on a concept so empty of any real meaning, and when there are other terms and notions and arguments that can fulfil all the functions you want this one to fulfil without being so fuzzy and misleading.

i liked that paramore/lovato piece al! i keep thinking i should make more of an effort to get into paramore because of those reasons but can never seem to quite do it - something about hayley williams' voice is a bit too shrill for me to enjoy the hooks.

i can't really work out what contenderizer thinks "authenticity" is - at some points it almost looks like he's agreeing with tim that it's a fictional ideal - eg i've instead addressed only the value of the perception of authenticity.

the only authenticity that can actually be quantified is that of our listening experience - how we as consumers feel and react when we hear a piece of music. this has nothing to do with the authenticity of the music-making process, which is a pretty meaningless thing to be discussing imo - i don't think you can really delineate between an "authentic" vs "inauthentic" creative process.

and why the conflation of "authentic" with "anti-corporate"? scepticism about corporate practices and influence is v necessary across public life, i agree, but they're not remotely the same thing.

yeah the Pumpkins supposedly already signed to Virgin when they put their first album out on Caroline.

Wasn't Caroline the name of Virgin's "allied" alternate label, back in the early seventies?

Also, wasn't The Cure one of the first bands to do this? Their first single was on "Small Wonder" records, even though they'd already signed to Fiction (back when it was going to be called 18age records or something similar)

yeah, here we go from wiki:

Subsidiary labels:

Caroline Records was a budget label used from 1973 to 1977. The name and logo were later used for some American editions of Virgin records in the 1980s and 1990s.

(ha: I just googled Virgin Caroline, and guess what? No inappropriate for work stuff. Branson's permeation of the internet is total.)

relevant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lys9MQRBzz0

I wanted to post that here all day, but kept chickening out.

i must find these discussions interesting, too, or else i'd have taken my own advice some time ago. honestly (er...), my hedging is more a product of my sense that much of ILX sneers at these sorts of debates than of any personal aversion to them. i love this shit. so:

belief in authenticity is simultaneously cynical and earnest in the same way that invading a country in the name of the universality of democracy is simultaneously cynical and earnest: it's earnest on the part of those who don't know enough to realise that the thing being invoked (authenticity / universality of democracy) is a fictional ideal, but cynical on the part of those who are smart enough to know this, but who also consider it to be a "necessary lie" that it's better to act as if one believes.

makes sense. i agree that the authenticity we're discussing is an ideal. it's enough to say that it's an ideal, i think. we needn't add that it's "fictional" in order to describe it accurately. i say this because all ideals are fictional by nature in a basic sense. that said, not all ideals are equally fictional. when we perceive beauty, we should be aware that the judgment we render in the process reflects not any fact about the material condition of the world but only our own private aesthetic tastes. we might say that beauty is, in this sense, wholly fictional. when we perceive justice, however, this judgment reflects the intersection of what we take to be true about the material condition of the world and our own private sense of morality. this means that the perception of justice is an idealized fiction predicated on and containing a statement about observed fact (with the caveat that the "fact" in question may have been observed or interpreted incorrectly). finally, the perception of artistic authenticity is, in large part, a judgment reflecting an underlying perception of the degree of emotional honesty and depth encoded in artistic endeavor. therefore, i'd say that in this case the the factual component of the fundamentally fictional ideal is dominant (with the same caveat about the often dubious relationship of perception to fact).

to the extent that i defend the concept of artistic authenticity, i'm simply saying that one can emotionally "speak" more or less honestly about oneself and the world through the intermediary of art. i take this statement to be self-evidently true and don't believe that it requires any further elaboration or justification. therefore, what should be at issue in any discussion of artistic authenticity is whether or not we, as the audience for art, can claim the ability to accurately perceive the degree of emotional honesty and depth encoded into any given work. it's a difficult question. it's simple enough to issue a blanket "no." i would agree that we can never know for certain whether our perceptions of such qualities are accurate. but it's equally valid to issue a blanket "yes." while certainty may forever elude us, a reasonable and intelligent person can still come to conclusions regarding the honesty and depth of another's emotional expressions. some people are more honest than others about the nature of their true feelings. some people invest their emotional expressions with a greater degree of passionate intensity. and some people simply seem to feel more deeply than others.

i can't prove any of those assertions to anyone else's satisfaction, but that failure troubles me not at all. i wouldn't be able to make sense of my life and relationships if i couldn't render subjective (and doubtless often incorrect) judgments about such things. some art strikes me as emotionally truer and deeper than other art, just as some art strikes me as more intelligent, or more lovely. i can interrogate these perceptions and judgments, and this interrogation may lead me to change my mind about what i initially thought i perceived. i can even come to understand that what i think i perceive is largely fictional or projective. but i would not be able to make emotional sense of my relationship to any given work of art absent this conceptual webwork. just as a wouldn't be able to make sense of my human relationships absent something similar. this isn't an attempt to justify intellectual dishonesty. it is instead an acceptance of the value of the intuitive, of emotional cognition.

In this regard the existence of authenticity is basically in the same category as the existence of God, and I'm hoping that you're not going to tell me that I should believe in God because I cannot disprove his existence.

i might agree with this. i'm certainly not telling you that you should believe either in artistic authenticity or in our ability to accurately perceive it. i'm merely suggesting that it might be foolish to categorically reject these concepts simply because they remain difficult to quantify or prove.

Why don't we just say what we mean then? I have no problem with someone saying "this artist seems to be honest." Again, I consider authenticity in this regard to be a concept hurriedly inserted to fill the void created when we realise that we're not actually involved in a direct individual communication with an artist. "Authenticity" is basically used to suggest a kind of (vague, contentless) honesty irreducible to any actual really existing relationships of communication. But this is precisely what is wrong with it.

well, to my mind, the statement that "this artist seems to be honest" is not precisely but is largely synonymous with the statement that "this work of art seems to be an authentic expression of human feeling and experience." the difference is that claims regarding artistic authenticity usually come freighted with additional claims about both the depth of feeling expressed and its general value. we can be honest, after all, about our more trivial emotional truths, or about an inner reality that others will find off-putting. the claim to artistic authenticity is a claim not just to honesty, but to profundity.

therefore, we are saying very precisely what we mean when we claim that a work is "artistically authentic." i would agree that this perceived quality is frustratingly resistant to dissective intellectual analysis, but disagree that this resistance tells us anything about its fundamental validity or utility.

I just don't think you should fence off notions of authenticity as being exempt from this when they're based on a concept so empty of any real meaning, and when there are other terms and notions and arguments that can fulfil all the functions you want this one to fulfil without being so fuzzy and misleading.

for whatever it's worth, i'm not trying to fence off notions of authenticity or exempt them from critique. though it may be difficult to do so, i think we should interrogate our perceptions of and ideas regarding artistic authenticity. but i strongly disagree that the concept itself is so completely devoid of real meaning. this is a common accusation, but it strikes me as a radical and somewhat absurd overstatement of a basic truth: that artistic authenticity is a vague and a loaded concept, difficult to define and defend.

i can't really work out what contenderizer thinks "authenticity" is - at some points it almost looks like he's agreeing with tim that it's a fictional ideal - eg i've instead addressed only the value of the perception of authenticity.

the only authenticity that can actually be quantified is that of our listening experience - how we as consumers feel and react when we hear a piece of music. this has nothing to do with the authenticity of the music-making process, which is a pretty meaningless thing to be discussing imo - i don't think you can really delineate between an "authentic" vs "inauthentic" creative process.

and why the conflation of "authentic" with "anti-corporate"? scepticism about corporate practices and influence is v necessary across public life, i agree, but they're not remotely the same thing.

― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Monday, January 24, 2011 1:27 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

lex OTM. to the very limited extent that i have any personal use for the idea of artistic authenticity, i might use it as a way to talk about the feelings that a work of seems to capture, and/or what it triggers in me. i'd agree that all creative processes are equally valid. on the other hand, not all emotional expressions (or expressions regarding emotion) are, as i perceive them, equally honest, subtle, insightful, profound, etc. i'm perfectly cognizant that what i perceive in this regard says more about me than about the thing i'm responding to.

as to the conflation of the authentic with the anti-corporate: good question. i believe that it suits corporate interests to insist that value judgments of this sort are little more than "brands" arbitrarily assigned to things (to borrow tim's language). such a point of view increases the fungibility and plasticity of marketed commodities, and trivializes any objection to commodification itself. if all things are commodities and all value judgments regarding those commodities are fictions, then art has no special or unique value. it is simply another category of luxury goods. art cannot communicate or embody anything valuable or real. it merely suits our tastes or does not.

now, i'd never say that an idea that suits corporate interests is therefore necessarily false or pernicious. in fact, i think that the "corporate ideas" i'm describing are both logical and, in some sense, true. but i nevertheless see a real social value in giving voice to other points of view, even to viewpoints that are less firmly grounded in pure logic.

i believe that it suits corporate interests to insist that value judgments of this sort are little more than "brands" arbitrarily assigned to things (to borrow tim's language). such a point of view increases the fungibility and plasticity of marketed commodities, and trivializes any objection to commodification itself.

You're acting like corporate culture is actually worried about people seeking to overthrow the tyranny of branding. This is not really the way corporate culture works: it is worried, more than anything, that people will see it as just branding, that they will stop believing that the authentic magical X exists behind the product. If music is fungible and plastic, we'll just download it for free. Only something which we believe is giving us more than the song, more than the brand, is worth spending money on. This whole story is not proof that major record labels are anti-authenticity, it's proof that they're desperately for it, that all around us authenticity is being "manufactured".

if all things are commodities and all value judgments regarding those commodities are fictions, then art has no special or unique value. it is simply another category of luxury goods. art cannot communicate or embody anything valuable or real. it merely suits our tastes or does not.

This is a massive argumentative leap. When I say that "authenticity" is a fictional ideal, this does not mean that all ideals are fictional. It just means that "authenticity" as a really existing thing is fictional. Art can communicate or embody all sorts of valuable things, but I think it's a conceptual error to think of art as "authentically" embodying something in this actual (rather than subjectively perceived) sense. This is why Lex is 100% right when he says:

the only authenticity that can actually be quantified is that of our listening experience - how we as consumers feel and react when we hear a piece of music. this has nothing to do with the authenticity of the music-making process, which is a pretty meaningless thing to be discussing imo - i don't think you can really delineate between an "authentic" vs "inauthentic" creative process.

In agreeing with Lex you actually stumble upon the truth here contenderizer:

to the very limited extent that i have any personal use for the idea of artistic authenticity, i might use it as a way to talk about the feelings that a work of seems to capture, and/or what it triggers in me.

My question is: why does what art triggers in you have to be something that exists outside of you to be real and valuable? Can't it be real and valuable as an experience you have? The problem with "authenticity" is that central to its meaning is the claim that your experience isn't important, that the performer's work would have the same "truth" regardless of who was in the room, or if nobody was in the room.

These kinds of self-abegnating celebrations of objectivity would bother me less if the people who advocated them would say stuff like "you know, the music that speaks to me in the most truthful and moving and world-changing ways is actually not authentic according to some objective consensus, so never mind me, my taste is wrong" - but no-one really says this, they always at root believe that their notion of what is authentic is correct and deserves to be listened to.

I think what i think about music is important precisely because there is no guarantee or even way of knowing that I am right at all. The very fact that the argument is up for grabs, that there is no final arbiter, makes the argument much more meaningful, because if I "win" (translation: if I can get another person to enjoy a piece of music in the way that I do) then I have helped create the reality of another person's listening experience. The argument for caring about music as something more than just a commodity is the chance to create listening realities that add joy and meaning to other people's experiences. What (within the field of talking about music) can be nobler than that?

So IMO the distinction between art and commodity is not exact but tendential: commodities all can aspire towards art by facilitating receptive realities that expand the receiver's consciousness (that sounds vaguely mystical but ya get me). But they need the help and cooperation of audiences to get there. Similarly art can lapse back into commodities in the hands of an audience disinterested in interrogating their own enjoyment. In each case it's what the audience does with the product that expresses its "artistic potential".

on a marketing level, it's shitty when corps emulate grass roots shit well, whether it's street art stencils or indie act breaking thru myspace or whatever, kind of takes over these paths and increases homogeneity. and if u wanna get mystical, acts involved in these things might have ugly souls and therefore ugly music

on a marketing level, it's shitty when corps emulate grass roots shit well, whether it's street art stencils or indie act breaking thru myspace or whatever, kind of takes over these paths and increases homogeneity.

Agree with this.

not with the hollowed out shysters w/ dishonest relationships with their craft might not rock shot part, yeah i was kind of reaching there in truth

on a marketing level, it's shitty when corps emulate grass roots shit well, whether it's street art stencils or indie act breaking thru myspace or whatever, kind of takes over these paths and increases homogeneity. and if u wanna get mystical, acts involved in these things might have ugly souls and therefore ugly music

― zvookster, Monday, 24 January 2011 13:19 (8 minutes ago)

Been thinking of how to put my objection/s to this kind of thing & failing, zv nailed it v v concisely though I think.

cosine zvookster (and this applies to the corporate-twee insufferability of innocent smoothies et al as well) (but then i suspect i'd hate that aesthetic even if it was non-corporate, so)

"innocent smoothies"

As in fruit shakes?

i believe that it suits corporate interests to insist that value judgments of this sort are little more than "brands" arbitrarily assigned to things (to borrow tim's language).

idk this comes off like the kind of thing people who've had no interaction with the corporate world might say - i don't know how close you've been to it contenderizer but a) as tim says, corporate culture, especially right now, can basically be summed up as a quest for authenticity (frequently embarrassing and without success), and that a lot of corporations genuinely believe their own BS in this regard; b) "corporate interests" aren't nearly as monolithic or homogeneous as you assume.

i'd agree that all creative processes are equally valid. on the other hand, not all emotional expressions (or expressions regarding emotion) are, as i perceive them, equally honest, subtle, insightful, profound, etc.

well, there's no "other hand" there - i agree with both of those statements, neither of which negate the other. one of the things that i love best about listening to music across the major-label/indie-label/no-label spectrum is that you swiftly realise there's no set way of making music that's honest/insightful/profound etc - and that my authentic reaction in feeling that way about music has almost nothing to do with the process by which that music's been made.

and that's not just within the false binary of major label vs. indie - i'm sure everyone here has had that experience whereby a favourite artist dismisses a song of theirs that we love, or claims they half-assed an album, or just says that a song was about something trivial and jokey rather than the ~raw honest truth~ we thought it was. and vice versa, an artist can genuinely and authentically pour their heart & soul into a song only for it to leave me cold. i think knowing the artist's perspective can often be interesting and useful, but ultimately their authenticity (of creating) has no effect on my authenticity (of listening).

xp yes :( Does the entire Innocent Smoothies aesthetic strike you as deeply fucking irritating?

Oh innocent smoothies is a brand. I think I know the kind of thing you mean. All those carefully marketed organic fruit juices, it is very indie isn't it.

I thought you were damning all smoothies, which seemed a bit, IDK, sweeping.

Your post above that is aggressively OTM.

All those carefully marketed organic fruit juices, it is very indie isn't it.

the way they make even the fucking ingredients list all cutesily conversational - it comes off like they're talking to a six-year-old.

http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2008/06/21/va1237315001044/Nudie-fruit-juice-drinks-6104455.jpg

$5 each or something insane like that. And they're tiny!

:o

surely the same people are behind that? everything from font to bottle shape is too similar to the innocent ones. what does it say that they used the word "nudie" instead of "innocent" in australia.

Yeah even our approximations of indie are kinda blunt and unrefined.

no-one is innocent?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_wU8Yh3yBlZc/TOjzVi2FERI/AAAAAAAAAEs/CA268nkslCE/s1600/P1000961.jpg

Wait for the next photo though.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wU8Yh3yBlZc/TOjzd544qvI/AAAAAAAAAEw/q5-k7gN3gLk/s1600/P1000963.jpg

Highly relevant to this thread really.

"by joves"???? plural?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3271/2945541638_6508be4589.jpg

KILL KILL DIE

83: STICK IT ON YOUR HEAD AND GET SOME PERSPECTIVE

You're acting like corporate culture is actually worried about people seeking to overthrow the tyranny of branding. This is not really the way corporate culture works: it is worried, more than anything, that people will see it as just branding, that they will stop believing that the authentic magical X exists behind the product. If music is fungible and plastic, we'll just download it for free. Only something which we believe is giving us more than the song, more than the brand, is worth spending money on. This whole story is not proof that major record labels are anti-authenticity, it's proof that they're desperately for it, that all around us authenticity is being "manufactured".

agree with all that. this is precisely what i mean when i talk about corporate interests being hostile to the concept of innate meaning. they substitute branding for meaning and hope against hope that no one will notice the difference. but in the end, the substitution is fundamentally hostile to meaning, subverts and devalues meaning, and in the process devalues branding, too. perhaps this does make the meaning-hostile memes encoded in corporate culture and marketing behavior a slow form of long-term self destruction. but in the short term, as profit-generating devices, they seem to be working fine.

This is a massive argumentative leap. When I say that "authenticity" is a fictional ideal, this does not mean that all ideals are fictional. It just means that "authenticity" as a really existing thing is fictional. Art can communicate or embody all sorts of valuable things, but I think it's a conceptual error to think of art as "authentically" embodying something in this actual (rather than subjectively perceived) sense.

i want to get something clear here, because i'm a bit confused in the wake of this statement by your ongoing insistence that authenticity is fictional. i might agree that all value judgments reflecting ideals are fictional in some sense. we can never find a completely non-fictional and absolute-slash-universal "true beauty", "true authenticity" or "true justice". i don't think we can even find the absolute truth (outside abstract created systems like pure logic and mathematics). the best we can do is to satisfy ourselves that our criteria for these things have been met. this makes such ideals unattainable. they are imaginary constructs we can describe and reach towards but never fully grasp. i.e., fictions.

okay, that's thing one. thing two is my insistence that what i'm calling "artistic authenticity" really does exist outside our flawed perception of it. some art is the product of intense feeling, of extreme emotional states. some art documents or attempts to document subjective experiences of a deep and profound sort. other art, meanwhile, is the product of other things. i wouldn't say that either sort is inherently superior. i wouldn't even insist that ostensibly "authentic" art is necessarily distinguishable in any real way from art made under other conditions or documenting other things. but i'm willing to allow that it might be, at least occasionally.

the example i mentally jump to is the spiritual free jazz of the 60s and 70s. this form of music explicitly attempts to capture intense emotional states, makes a virtue of the agonized search for a means to express internal struggles that resist articulation, resist easy comprehension. the genre places great emphasis both on the authenticity of the underlying emotional expression and the authenticity of its physical expression. do we know with complete certainty that albert ayler was really "feeling it" during the recording of spiritual unity? no, of course not. he may simply have been using an instrumental language to paint a dispassionate portrait of the signifiers of passion. but in listening to the music, it's hard not to be convinced of the honesty of his emotion. accepting the inherently dubious nature of such judgments, i wouldn't object to someone describing the "authenticity" of his emotional outpourings.

another example that springs to mind are a set of live acoustic radio recordings by roky erickson that i downloaded a few years ago. i approach roky burdened with is the idea that he is "insane," or at least troubled. this mythology doubtless colors my perception of his music, but the recordings in question burn with an almost terrifying urgency that would, i think, be striking even if one knew nothing about the artist. we hear him struggle to make sense of his own music, hear him struggle to keep control of it in the midst of what seems to be a all-consuming fury. and he does. there's something almost indescribably thrilling in hearing him barely master a howling engine of incomprehensible emotion and channel it into his art. the intensity of his devotion to the musical moment seems incommensurate with mere "performance." this gives the recordings the riveting and disturbing quality of a religious ecstasy.

these are extreme examples, and in both cases it's impossible to completely shake the extra-musical narrative trappings that enhance the aura of emotional authenticity. i grant that, but they still strike me as good examples of music that likely results from a struggle with profound emotion and also makes the profundity of that emotional experience palpable to the listener. for better and for worse.

why does what art triggers in you have to be something that exists outside of you to be real and valuable? Can't it be real and valuable as an experience you have? The problem with "authenticity" is that central to its meaning is the claim that your experience isn't important, that the performer's work would have the same "truth" regardless of who was in the room, or if nobody was in the room.

i would never claim that that which which triggers a response must correspond with something external in order to be valuable. i merely accept that such correspondences can exist, and i suggest that it's at least possible that we can sometimes accurately perceive them. my own emotional responses are equally valuable to me whether or not they result from music that strikes me as emotionally authentic in and of itself. it's likewise possible to produce emotionally authentic music that triggers no feeling, or that triggers something unrelated to what the artist intended. and jeez, i'd never use the phrase "emotionally authentic" in the first place if we weren't having this discussion. it's too loaded and controversial a construction, too liable to result in endless, irresolvable debates like this one. i'd probably just say that the music in question has certain identifiable characteristics that suggest a corresponding level of emotional involvement on the part of the artist. or something like that, i dunno. all i meant to do originally was to object to the casual, knee-jerk dismissal of any notion of artistic authenticity. i hear that too much these days, and wonder whether we might have thrown out a somewhat valuable baby with rockism's dirty bathwater.

These kinds of self-abegnating celebrations of objectivity would bother me less if the people who advocated them would say stuff like "you know, the music that speaks to me in the most truthful and moving and world-changing ways is actually not authentic according to some objective consensus, so never mind me, my taste is wrong" - but no-one really says this, they always at root believe that their notion of what is authentic is correct and deserves to be listened to.

oh, i don't know. i believe my perception of the authenticity of albert and rocky's emotional expressions are accurate, but i wouldn't insist on it. i understand that human perception is prone to error, and that we are all different worlds. i don't think that other people should listen to these artists or that they would benefit from their music as i have. i don't believe that they would necessarily get anything from the experience at all. likewise, i believe that emotionally inauthentic art can trigger equally profound emotional responses in us. i might even argue that the inauthentic is better able to trigger emotional responses because it is dispassionate and therefore can be strategic about its aims and effects. for instance, lars von trier's breaking the waves had a profound and devastating emotional effect on me, but i view it as a blatantly, explicitly cynical game played with the conventions and emotional effects of cinematic drama.

I think what i think about music is important precisely because there is no guarantee or even way of knowing that I am right at all. The very fact that the argument is up for grabs, that there is no final arbiter, makes the argument much more meaningful, because if I "win" (translation: if I can get another person to enjoy a piece of music in the way that I do) then I have helped create the reality of another person's listening experience. The argument for caring about music as something more than just a commodity is the chance to create listening realities that add joy and meaning to other people's experiences. What (within the field of talking about music) can be nobler than that?

OTM & well said.

So IMO the distinction between art and commodity is not exact but tendential: commodities all can aspire towards art by facilitating receptive realities that expand the receiver's consciousness (that sounds vaguely mystical but ya get me). But they need the help and cooperation of audiences to get there. Similarly art can lapse back into commodities in the hands of an audience disinterested in interrogating their own enjoyment. In each case it's what the audience does with the product that expresses its "artistic potential".

agree in general, but i believe that both the artist, the work, and the circumstances of the work's creation collaborate with the audience in the making of artistic meaning. false mythologies, delusions and misperceptions collaborate, too, but i'm not willing to grant that the audience's experience of a work of art is not shaped in at least in part by authorial intent and circumstance.

^ pretend improved subject-verb agreement when reading

in my defense, i went to bed at 10:00 or so, but woke up around two and was never able to get back to sleep.

okay, its official, sneaker pimps post best loss of innocence story ever!

"and on that fateful day, i was the one who had fallen...6 feet underground..."