The other side of this coin is that the vast majority of music out there does fit into some genre or other, even though most genres bleed over into others somehow or other. A lot of it's just convenient shorthand - if I say "experimental" or "hillbilly" in a record review, that's gives my readers a hint as to what I'm talking about. In record stores, I've worked in places that have separate sections for every subgenre they can dream up; even the amazing Amoeba stores in California do it to some degree, separating Rockabilly from Rock (though in a cool taxonomical move, the Rockabilly section is next to Country.) That can be helpful, but it can also be frustrating with stuff that might go in any of several places in the store. Amoeba sticks Zorn in "Unusually Experimental," and Phill Niblock's there, but Seth Josel (playing Niblock, among others) goes in the 20th Century subsection of the Classical room. When I've only got 200 words to tell someone about a new Peter Brotzmann CD, I might resort to the "free jazz" label as a space-saver. At The Candyman in Santa Fe, we'd stick Merzbow and Haino Keiji in Rock/Pop and Glenn Branca in Classical so we could sneak them in under the owner's nose. FWIW, my own collection is organized alphabetically, Bailter Space following Derek Baily following J.S. Bach. NP: The Fall "Hex Enduction Hour" LP NR: Jim Thompson "The Golden Gizmo" At 08:40 AM 7/1/2003 -0500, Mitch Tyo wrote:
It's amazing how sick I am of all labels in general. Whether it's 'creative', 'pop-punk', 'indie-pop', 'post-rock', 'alt-rock', 'post-punk', 'avant-garde', 'sadcore', 'emo', 'grindcore', 'britpop', 'hard-pop', 'nu metal' , 'post-lounge', 'ambient', 'hardcore', 'black metal', 'doom metal', 'death metal', 'dark metal' (yes, apparently there's a difference between all these), 'jam band', 'stoner rock', 'garage', 'easy listening', 'noise', 'jazz', 'classical', 'folk', 'rock', 'pop' and so on. My attitude is that a musician should just make the best music they can. Leave the labeling to the critics, or better still, get rid of them all together. There are better ways to describe music then to sort it into a genre. One of the reasons I like John Zorn so much is that he doesn't fit into any one label, ever (even though his music is commonly in the "jazz" section, for lack of a better place to put it).
The instant you put yourself into a genre is the instant you limit your creativity.
And as a moderately topical aside, I was in a bar the other day talking to a self-proclaimed guitarist. I asked him some basic questions about scales or something (since I aspire to play guitar myself), and his response was "Oh, I don't know anything about music. But it's okay, since we're a 'noise' band."
_________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
_______________________________________________ zorn-list mailing list zorn-list@mailman.xmission.com To UNSUBSCRIBE or Change Your Subscription Options, go to the webpage below http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/zorn-list
Chris Selvig