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 Or even worse, it will be outdated in three years.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
--- francko.lamerikx@philips.com escribió: >
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.
Yes, but I'd only subscribe FNM to the mainstream. Even if "California" is quite accessible, it's not for an Elton John fan.
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 just listened to a couple of Broadcast tracks a moment ago and they're really impressive (in fact I'll buy their latest Cd when I get out of work, so THANKS for the recommendation). Pram was a band that crossed my mind right after I sent my previous e-mail. I think they're fantastic and I still can't understand why they don't get more exposure. "Dark Islands" was really high in my Top 2003. A wonderful pop record with many references to other genres (although well diluted into their own discourse). Their previous works are also incredible.
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.
I'm sure about DB, not so sure about Filmworks. It's quite catchy actually. How many
experimental CDs are in your collection (or, for that matter, anyone's) that you return to with any regularity?
Depending on the obsession of the week. It's a pleasure to go back to old stuff for me. Ikue Mori has been playing for a couple of days now in different settings ("One Hundred Aspects of the Moon", Death Ambient, Hemophiliac,...) And not a single week goes by that I don't play at least four or five Zorn albums. But that's probably an exception, probably as far as "experimental" music is concerned. Maybe it's easier to go back to Sonic Youth or Bob Dylan. 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!
I do that as well, but I'm afraid some day I'll regret it...
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.
Sure. That's why everyone ends up quoting Ellington "There's only good music and bad music". And it's true. Best, Efrén del Valle _______________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Sorteos ¡Ya puedes comprar LoterÃa de Navidad! http://yahoo.ventura24.es/
A guilty pleasure is when you consume something truly without merit -- like eating Twinkies for dinner. If you're gratified by a piece of music -- even if it's Phil Collins -- it has merit. The most basic function of music is to decorate time. If it does that -- no matter if it's Stockhausen or Brittney Spears -- it's doing a big part of its job. If it's not doing that -- even if it's Beethoven or Coltrane (and there are less brilliant examples of both) -- then its merits are probably only technical and of use only to people who study the mechanics of music. If that. Ever since there's been coffeehouse intellectualism, there's been some chucklehead deciding what it is permissable to like, and anything that doesn;t fit into that system theory is a "guilty pleasure". So it is alright to like John Cage but not Brittney Spears. And anyone who admits to liking both probably has some explaining to do. (One member of this list admitted -- apologetically -- a teenage fondness for the Bay City Rollers. I remarked that I don;t understand why anyone would apologize for liking "Saturday Night" or "Dedication", two really well-made pop records.) The idea that someone like Tarantino -- whose movies I've not seen -- somehow "made it cool" to enjoy blaxploitation films or whatever is a little offensive to me. To some of use growing up in the city during a certain period of American life, those movies were our Saturday afternoon. Were the cultural norms my youth a guilty pleasure until some hipster movie director accredited the cultural aspects of it? Was Mickey Spillane a guilty pleasure for me until John Zorn "sponsored" him? skip h
The idea that someone like Tarantino -- whose movies I've not seen -- somehow "made it cool" to enjoy blaxploitation films or whatever is a little offensive to me. To some of use growing up in the city during a certain period of American life, those movies were our Saturday afternoon. Were the cultural norms my youth a guilty pleasure until some hipster movie director accredited the cultural aspects of it? Was Mickey Spillane a guilty pleasure for me until John Zorn "sponsored" him?
Of course we don't need to remind you that not everyone lives in the United States (America is very big and the term should be used accordingly, by the way). For many of us, blaxploitation didn't even exist before that (it's an exaggeration, of course, we did but perhaps he made us note that there were some interesting movies to watch; before that it was a rumor, so to speak). I wouldn't feel offended if you checked a Luis Buñuel film after seeing the "Madness, Love and Mysticism" cover. That would be ridiculous. Don't compare your tradition or daily life exposure to certain "products" to those of someone in another country. Mike Hammer was an incredibly successful TV series that 99% people remember in Spain (at least in Catalonia), but I bet only 1% of them would even know Spillane's name vaguely. If I were you, I'd feel satisfied if a guy, after listening to one of my albums, wanted to check where all that music came from. It's how things work, so don't feel insulted so quickly. Efrén del Valle JZ: Morricone Tribute (bootleg) _______________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Sorteos ¡Ya puedes comprar LoterÃa de Navidad! http://yahoo.ventura24.es/
I wasn;t talking about Europe at all. Mickey Spillane, for instance, is one of the best-selling authors of the 20th century. The guy was absolutely huge and is by no means obscure. But -- The success of the Hammer TV show and Spillane's own stardom (he's been in movies and TV shows) only helped him be dismissed by the literati. The American tendancy is so largely to dismiss certain things until the "right" film director references them (anyone else remember the great Chet Baker scare of 1989?) and promotes that thing just so. The Europeans (and japanese) have long proven a more astute eye about our culture. It wasn;t until the French reprints of Goodis and Thompson that film noir -- arguably our greatest original form of popular literature -- was rediscovered in this country. Why? because someone accredited said it was okay to like it. The thing I find insulting isn;t when obscure things are brought to light ie the Sonny Clark memorial Society or that Herbie Nichols group. It's when things that are in the cultual mainstream -- Burt Bacharach, Mickey Spillane, Johnny cash -- are suddenly admitted to the exclusive fraternity of what is cool because some media-appointed hipster says it's cool and suddenly a lot of people approve. BTW -- Bunuel is referred to in just about every film text in this country, so people shouldn't need an album cover to know they should check him out. They should just be curious about something with such a longstanding reputation as being great. Believe it or not, Fellini's movies are fairly known in this country -- "Amarcord" will occasionally even pop up in a crossword puzzle. sh on 12/16/03 10:01 AM, Efrén del Valle at efrendv@yahoo.es wrote:
The idea that someone like Tarantino -- whose movies I've not seen -- somehow "made it cool" to enjoy blaxploitation films or whatever is a little offensive to me. To some of use growing up in the city during a certain period of American life, those movies were our Saturday afternoon. Were the cultural norms my youth a guilty pleasure until some hipster movie director accredited the cultural aspects of it? Was Mickey Spillane a guilty pleasure for me until John Zorn "sponsored" him?
Of course we don't need to remind you that not everyone lives in the United States (America is very big and the term should be used accordingly, by the way). For many of us, blaxploitation didn't even exist before that (it's an exaggeration, of course, we did but perhaps he made us note that there were some interesting movies to watch; before that it was a rumor, so to speak). I wouldn't feel offended if you checked a Luis Buñuel film after seeing the "Madness, Love and Mysticism" cover. That would be ridiculous. Don't compare your tradition or daily life exposure to certain "products" to those of someone in another country. Mike Hammer was an incredibly successful TV series that 99% people remember in Spain (at least in Catalonia), but I bet only 1% of them would even know Spillane's name vaguely. If I were you, I'd feel satisfied if a guy, after listening to one of my albums, wanted to check where all that music came from. It's how things work, so don't feel insulted so quickly.
Efrén del Valle JZ: Morricone Tribute (bootleg)
_______________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Sorteos ¡Ya puedes comprar Lotería de Navidad! http://yahoo.ventura24.es/
On Tue, 2003-12-16 at 10:49, skip heller wrote:
The American tendancy is so largely to dismiss certain things until the "right" film director references them (anyone else remember the great Chet Baker scare of 1989?) and promotes that thing just so.
Eek, yeah. We've been rediscovering some Chet Baker at work lately. Most of us who had heard of him had only been exposed to his unfortunate singing. When we put on some of his instrumental stuff, we found it hard to believe that that exciting trumpet and ensemble work came from the same guy. I wish we had a strictly instrumental album of his in playstock, maybe the imaginary "Chet Baker *doesn't* Sing Music for Sleepwalking Lovers!".
The guy made too many albums entirely -- cash for drugs -- and probably has as many titles in print as Sun Ra. There are about five really great albums in there (the duet record with Paul Bley is shocking good), but mostly it's a guy on heroin trying to get out of the studio early. BROKEN WING, if you can find it (it was on Inner City), is about my favorite post Russ Freeman record of his. BTW -- when LET'S GET LOST was being filmed, Chet was in a room with jack heldon for the first time in over two decades. He asked Frank Strazzeri "What happened to Chetty's face?" "Those are laugh lines, Jack." "Shit -- nothing's THAT funny." And for West Coast trumpet -- or inprovising in general -- Jack is about as great as it gets. skip h on 12/17/03 1:18 AM, Joseph Zitt at jzitt@metatronpress.com wrote:
On Tue, 2003-12-16 at 10:49, skip heller wrote:
The American tendancy is so largely to dismiss certain things until the "right" film director references them (anyone else remember the great Chet Baker scare of 1989?) and promotes that thing just so.
Eek, yeah. We've been rediscovering some Chet Baker at work lately. Most of us who had heard of him had only been exposed to his unfortunate singing. When we put on some of his instrumental stuff, we found it hard to believe that that exciting trumpet and ensemble work came from the same guy. I wish we had a strictly instrumental album of his in playstock, maybe the imaginary "Chet Baker *doesn't* Sing Music for Sleepwalking Lovers!".
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participants (4)
-
Efrén del Valle -
francko.lamerikx＠philips.com -
Joseph Zitt -
skip heller