Efren responded to my ranting:
However, as we discussed here some days ago, I don't think mainstream pop music is offering too much these days and I can't think of any musicians in that field who are actively blending art and commerciality as, say, Beatles did 30-something years ago. Some names came up: Radiohead, Björk, Beck and even Sonic Youth, but I think these guys are playing in a totally different league and they're not on the hunt for the "summer song".
I only read the mails in that thread when it had already died down... I think there are a few bands out there who are trying to mix elements they have taken from the avant-garde with pop sensibilities - Mr.Bungle springs to mind as a likely candidate, as well as "Angel Dust"-era Faith No More. Continuing the Broadcast thread, I think they succeed extremely well in marriaging avant elements with pop. They represent the sounds of the sixties better than many bands from the era. I would also like to draw the attention to bands that operate in a similar vein, like Pram and Electrelane who have released albums that get high marks in The Wire while still being digested by London's hippest. I will be laughed at for stating this here, probably, but one of the bands that brought the art world and the commercial world together was the Peter Gabriel-era incarnation of Genesis. While operating entirely in the rock arena, their music was influenced by the likes of the Beach Boys, Stockhausen, and Alejandro Jodorowsky much more than it was by any of their contemporaries (with the exception of King Crimson, whose debut album they supposedly nailed to the wall of their rehearsal space as an icon of what they wanted to achieve for themselves).
The point isn't maybe seeing what others can't see, but getting pointed to new directions through a particular artist. Quentin Tarantino, for example, who's an incredibly popular person, had lots of us looking for blaxploitation, kung-fu or film noir/low-profile gangster movies. It's not necessarily a post-modernist possee. Or maybe it is, but I double-checked some popular genres thanks to him and that I find very enrichening. "Slow" is a great single, but I think Minogue is just entertaining, and I'll probably forget that tune in a couple of months. Or even worse, it will be outdated in three years. In a completely different environment, following Zorn's career or just reading the liner notes to his albums you can get enough information to read, listen and watch for years.
It's great to be pointed in various directions, and it is also true that the best conduit for this are those artists who wear their influences on their sleeves (better still, write about them or tell them to everyone who wants to hear) - Tarantino, Lynch, Zorn, Mr.Bungle, Merzbow, Stereolab... any of these artists could be the basis for a life-long investigation into the art world. It is also true that most artists (or entertainers) operating in the mainstream either do not have such broad ranges of influences (especially when they do not compose their own material), or they are not explicit about them. Maybe you will have forgotten "Slow" in a year, but chances are you will also have forgotten "Filmworks XIV", or the latest Derek Bailey CD. How many experimental CDs are in your collection (or, for that matter, anyone's) that you return to with any regularity? I find that, the more CDs I obtain, the more I restrict myself to a selected few when I return to stuff I bought longer than, say, a year ago. In my case, I will return to Genesis' "Foxtrot", Faith No More's "Angel Dust", or the first Iancu Dumitrescu CD on Edition MN a hundred times before I return to anything else in my collection that I have owned for as many years. Listening to music as much as we do, the thrill is always in getting new stuff, and the old stuff often gets forgotten regardless of whether it belongs to the mainstream or to the avant-garde. Thank God we have eBay these days to get rid of the stuff that is not played!
A very good appreciation here, imho, but I'd rather make a distinction between "truly innovative" and "experimental", and the former is much more difficult to achieve in any field.
That's true, and that's why it also pays off to look for the "truly excellent" in addition to the "truly innovative". These days, I can appreciate a really well-done metal album whereas I denied myself the pleasure of that a few years ago because the music was "not innovative". I think it is as difficult to produce an album that is quintessential in any genre as it is to come up with something entirely new. Regards, Frankco