Falling in love with the description of the mathematics of chord progressions and 'difficult' rhythms (to steal from Allan Watts here) is like eating the menu and not the meal
You end up Hungry
I like that. It reminds me of those people who believe that poetry can be interpreted purely through scansion, or of my friends who used to say "OOh! Listen to this! It's a bar of 7/8 followed by a bar of 5/4!!"
If I might provide my own mantra here: Complexity only for the sake of complexity is not art. It's masturbation.
No, really. You like jacked into my brain to compose that paragraph, didn't you?
I had no idea anyone else thought Tales was Yes' best work. After all, Rick Wakeman left the band after that record because he was sickened by its pretentiousness. Rick Wakeman! King of the pretentious himself.
But honestly, I've had only a few dozen or so non drug-enduced euphoric music moments (you know them if you've had them), and in all honesty, Tales was behind more than one. It's almost orgasmic when you get into it. In fact, I quoted the intro on my Senior high school yearbook page (every senior gets a whole page where I went to school). I guess that makes me more pretentious than Rick Wakeman.
I couldn't imagine Neil Young inducing anything other than nausea.
No, I didn't say it was their best album . . . just that it, despite its apparent huge-ponderousness, is actually a decent listen, and, still has its roots in rock-and-roll: ie: funky, sexy, energy.
nd Neil is ALL about that energy, (as well as the sentimental side that is about straight-farward emotions, disected in a brutally honest yet precise ways) . . . his rock-and-roll is definitevley NOT about being anything other than Rock-and-roll: chaotic, noisy, jamming . . . from the pelvis . . . and even somewhat dumb (he is actually surprisingly intelligent as a person though)
When he rocks its like a bunch of boys in a garage, doing nothing but . . . . but . . . . rocking . . .
Not rocket science . . . just great RockandRoll
RE: YES -- I surprise myself and listen to alot of YES these days . . . Its funny, but some of the stuff that I liked in High School, but then thoght of as ponderous while going through my Punk phase in the early eighties, I could now imagine some post-punk bands doing as covers . . . in other words (like stuff on Relayer) it is complex and difficult to play but has the energy of Rock . . . it Rocks!!
Ah, a dick joke. That's funny, in a kind of bourgeois way. Sorry. Couldn't resist.
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If we don't buy Britney CD's and download Rush (personally I think that Neil Peart is an amazingly accurate, but consequently an amazingly boring drummer), and we also don't buy any Neil Young, do we still "retard the arts"?
No. It is enough simply to avoid the proliferation of bad art.
And I agree with you about Peart. He's as mathematical in his playing as he is mathematical in his soulfulness. And if someone could keep him from reading any more Ayn Rand or being so bloody sincere in his lyrics, I'd appreciate it.
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I think the person that says full stop, "If you don't like Neil Young [or Jackson Pollock, or Louis XIV furniture, or IM Pei] then you have bad taste" without knowing anything at all about what that person does like, is the one who's retarding the arts.
How can telling people what is good retard the arts?
Cheers
Scott
PS
Off to the airport to pick up relatives who are visiting. I'm not ducking out of this discussion, which I think is fascinating, but I may not respond very quickly.
Stop being so juvenile. I used Opera as an example of a genre that is often disliked. Furthermore, I don't find it necessary to adhere to a philosophy simply because some generally insightful philosopher made a comment somewhere about something, which is certainly a central aspect of this debate.
To scott: I am having a lot of fun with you, because you're so unbelievably synthetic. First off, you lead me to believe that you're from a humble southern upbringing, only to cap off a series of generally elitist arguments with the phrase, "Ah, a dick joke. That's funny, in a kind of bourgeois way." To that I ask: have you done so well for yourself that you are now a wealthy man with time to spend on the whimsies of the elite, or are you merely pretending?
Ultimately, since you find that "wealth is authority," you either have wealth, and thus authority on the issue of taste, or don't have wealth, and thus don't have authority on the issue of taste. I guess the alternate profile, and the worst forecast, is that you could just be one of those unfortunate lackies who listens to NPR and subscribes to their every idiom without falter. I choose not to worship others, but instead to make my own decisions, particularly in matters of personal preference. This would indeed be "democratization," and you may hate it, especially because I may well have more cultural clout that you do.
When I mention "worrying about more important things" I am of course refering to sustainability and development. The French aristocrats overlooked these, and their empire crumbled into a pool of their own blood and barrels of fine wine. How much of their art and metrics of good taste were destroyed in the collapse?
So, feel free to cling to your metrics, but tastes and metrics of good taste always change, leaving you with nothing but remnants of the past. If it's change you fear, then I'm afraid you have lost the battle, because change is one of the inevitibilities of the nature. That is why I called you synthetic.
Stop being so juvenile. I used Opera as an example of a genre that is often disliked. Furthermore, I don't find it necessary to adhere to a philosophy simply because some generally insightful philosopher made a comment somewhere about something, which is certainly a central aspect of this debate.
To scott: I am having a lot of fun with you, because you're so unbelievably synthetic. First off, you lead me to believe that you're from a humble southern upbringing, only to cap off a series of generally elitist arguments with the phrase, "Ah, a dick joke. That's funny, in a kind of bourgeois way." To that I ask: have you done so well for yourself that you are now a wealthy man with time to spend on the whimsies of the elite, or are you merely pretending?
Ultimately, since you find that "wealth is authority," you either have wealth, and thus authority on the issue of taste, or don't have wealth, and thus don't have authority on the issue of taste. I guess the alternate profile, and the worst forecast, is that you could just be one of those unfortunate lackies who listens to NPR and subscribes to their every idiom without falter. I choose not to worship others, but instead to make my own decisions, particularly in matters of personal preference. This would indeed be "democratization," and you may hate it, especially because I may well have more cultural clout that you do.
When I mention "worrying about more important things" I am of course refering to sustainability and development. The French aristocrats overlooked these, and their empire crumbled into a pool of their own blood and barrels of fine wine. How much of their art and metrics of good taste were destroyed in the collapse?
So, feel free to cling to your metrics, but tastes and metrics of good taste always change, leaving you with nothing but remnants of the past. If it's change you fear, then I'm afraid you have lost the battle, because change is one of the inevitibilities of the nature. That is why I called you synthetic.
So, according to you the French Aristocracy crashed because of bad art?!?!
Forget all of the deep historical iniquities, economic dysfunctions and etc . . .
Oh yeah . . . and let's not forget Chardin, Fragonard, Greuze, Lebrun, Boucher . . . sure, they might have been teh lackeys of the moneyed . . . but they were great painters
Besides, who's griping about the revolution as if some grand edifice that needed sustaining had fallen into a worse state . . . I seem to think that the Revolution harkened a better form of Government (after some trials) even if it runs counter to my old-family connections . . . .
You may or may not have more 'cultural clout' but your prose is by far more wooden than any other AI poster I've come across in a long time . . .
and as far as 'cultural clout' is concerned . . . . that is a good question: what exactly would confer 'cultural clout' if not actual work in a the 'culture industry' --by which, of course, is meant that complex of interrelated activities that generate the products by which the 'culture' gets to reflect on its own creations, through its creations . . . -why yes, of course!-
And if memory serves me correctly Midwinter is in fact ensconced in a concrete manifestation of such an activity: institutionalized-cultural-self-reflection . . . . I guess that kind of confers some measure of 'cultural clout' . . . . rumor has it that he actualy produces products involved in the activities of culture itself, that he is a cultural producer . . .
So, according to you the French Aristocracy crashed because of bad art?!?!
No. It was because they were too wrapped up in themselves, and in fulfilling their "tastes," to realize that they were in trouble. In the end, a lot of hard work and good art was ruined for this shortsightedness. I'm not sure how you extrapolated what you did.
You don't need to prove to me that you know the names of good artists and contributors of modern philosophy. As impressive as it may be, it's nothing but peripheral, and it hasn't helped your argument for the simple fact that your argument was founded on a misinterpretation.
Quote:
but your prose is by far more wooden than any other AI poster I've come across in a long time . . .
It is true that long sentences and commas have fallen out of favor, but they are useful tools for arguments as they can well separate the questions, points, and lead-ons. It may also be true, though, that "the democratization of taste" has killed the long sentence.
No. It was because they were too wrapped up in themselves, and in fulfilling their "tastes," to realize that they were in trouble. In the end, a lot of hard work and good art was ruined for this shortsightedness. I'm not sure how you extrapolated what you did.
You don't need to prove to me that you know the names of good artists and contributors of modern philosophy. As impressive as it may be, it's nothing but peripheral, and it hasn't helped your argument for the simple fact that your argument was founded on a misinterpretation.
It is true that long sentences and commas have fallen out of favor, but they are useful tools for arguments as they can well separate the questions, points, and lead-ons. It may also be true, though, that "the democratization of taste" has killed the long sentence.
Long sentences and wooden prose are not the same thing. Just as good music and theories about good music are not the same thing.
To scott: I am having a lot of fun with you, because you're so unbelievably synthetic.
I have no idea what that means.
Quote:
First off, you lead me to believe that you're from a humble southern upbringing
Indeed I am. Plantersville, Mississippi. Around 1,000 people. One Baptist church. One Methodist. When they don't have enough people to make a congregation at one, the all have church at the other. I can show you pictures if you don't believe me.
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only to cap off a series of generally elitist arguments with the phrase, "Ah, a dick joke. That's funny, in a kind of bourgeois way."
You have to admit that a dick joke in reference to my nick, which is taken from the main character of a delightful piece of sensation fiction by Wilkie Collins from the 1860s, is an awfully bourgeois thing to do.
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To that I ask: have you done so well for yourself that you are now a wealthy man with time to spend on the whimsies of the elite, or are you merely pretending?
I'm doing pretty well, thanks. The wife and I are comfortable. We like our 70 year-old house. We like our jobs. The more troubling thing for you ought to be your assumption that people from humble Southern origins cannot go on to become elitists about art.
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Ultimately, since you find that "wealth is authority," you either have wealth, and thus authority on the issue of taste, or don't have wealth, and thus don't have authority on the issue of taste.
In America, yes, wealth = authority. Just look at Paris Hilton. But my remark was flippant and written in haste, and it wasn't clear enough that I was noting that in a capitalist system like ours, wealth does, in fact, equal authority. Even in art.
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I guess the alternate profile, and the worst forecast, is that you could just be one of those unfortunate lackies who listens to NPR and subscribes to their every idiom without falter.
Why can you not stay on topic? This isn't about me listening to NPR. This is about me saying that there is art that is good and there is art that is bad and not being namby-pamby about it or my elitism.
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I choose not to worship others, but instead to make my own decisions, particularly in matters of personal preference.
Um. Great?
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This would indeed be "democratization," and you may hate it, especially because I may well have more cultural clout that you do.
I seriously doubt that.
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So, feel free to cling to your metrics,
Thanks. I'll be hanging out with Matthew Arnold in the back room.
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but tastes and metrics of good taste always change, leaving you with nothing but remnants of the past.
Like good art?
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If it's change you fear, then I'm afraid you have lost the battle, because change is one of the inevitibilities of the nature. That is why I called you synthetic. [/B]
Ah. No. I don't fear change. I fear that we have a culture where no one much cares about what is good art anymore, and where, for instance, no one flinches if I say "It is bad taste to dress yourself in a Hello Kitty leisure suit" but people get all bent out of shape when I say that "It's bad taste to listen to X."
I say again: I am an elitist about this, and I am unapologetic about it. Some art is better than other art, and apparently people need to be told this.
I'd have him dying after 'Rust Never Sleeps'. It seems that after that he's done too much looking back. I think when 'Harvest Moon' came out I quit paying attention.
The soul album and 'Greendale' peaked my interest so maybe he's coming out of it.
I'd have him dying after 'Rust Never Sleeps'. It seems that after that he's done too much looking back. I think when 'Harvest Moon' came out I quit paying attention.
The soul album and 'Greendale' peaked my interest so maybe he's coming out of it.
You have to admit that Paris Hilton has decent taste in clothes.
She wears clothes? I really just want to know what the hell is wrong with her NECK. In every picture of her, she looks like her neck broke and her head flopped over.
I had to read this thread because I'm a moderator and I have to make sure everyone is playing by the rules and I have to say I want to punch you all until you fall down and then urinate on your faces.
This is the dumbest goddam thread in the history of mankind and I hate you all.
Mastery? perhaps, but not of such easily definable things as mere technique . . . there are innumerable other qualities that make art great art . . . and mastery of technique is most definitely NOT one of them . . . . fluidity and mobility in technique is good, but that alone does not make a great artist.
That is why people like Al Dimeola, Neil Peart etc etc will never be great artists . . . they are merely technitions.
What needs to be mastered is the fit of craft to voice (meaning - expression) and have that matched with insight and reflection
. . . a natural unforced understanding of their own medium in its relation to the artist's manner of reflective being in the world.
That doesn't mean to say that the artist needs to self-consciously understand how they do what they do, but that what they do has a deep measure of reflectivity on the world, and the deep form of a culture
High art/low art
-- great art does NOT need to be high fallutin - Folk arts can best manifest a form that reveals a culture to itself or to time and others . .. sometimes better than the products of the so-called High Institutional traditions of art . . .
even Pop forms can best the supposed sophisticates at the game of High Art . . . however, usually Popular forms result merely in mimicking the shape of a culture at any given time and don't accede to the level of reflexion
But High Art that uses Pop as a tool in its game is often far more sophisticated and 'high' than supposedly 'pure' forms of High traditional art . . like 'High Modernist' Painting, or music.
ALSO --this hardly needs to be said, but I'll say it anyway, a strong work of art need not be 'tasteful' . . . . . the 'Tasteful' is teh realm of bourgeois pablum . . . the 'beautiful' -as in teh daily usage of the term, as in 'boy that sure looks great' is antithetical to the work of high art -- it usually means the merely pretty and devolves into ordinary and mainstream sentimentality and emotionalism . . . in other words Kitsch
Not to sell Kitsch as crap . . . but kitsch doesn't go down the long road . . . it just doesn't get there
Not to say that Kitsch can't be used as a tool . . . as with Pop . . . .
I had to read this thread because I'm a moderator and I have to make sure everyone is playing by the rules and I have to say I want to punch you all until you fall down and then urinate on your faces.
This is the dumbest goddam thread in the history of mankind and I hate you all.
Thank you.
Saying Rush is preferable to or better than Neil Young and not admitting Neil's talent and great work is simply asinine and pathetic.
. . . they may be willfully complex in song writing, they may even have moments of pretentiousness . . . but they don't confuse the math for the music . . . their most ponderous works (Tales of Topographic Oceans) still are motivated by a love of Rock and Roll --meaning: enthusiasm (in-theos) and movement and energy. . . . they also imbue their gigantic constructions with the spirit of experimentation . . . and even the most weighted pieces still have a bit of the funky in them . . . (all of this dissapeared, however, when Steve Howe left and 90621 happened, then they just became lame)
and
what's best about Yes: an absurd Optimism . . . even if they are really just Crypto-Christians . . . . their spirit is positive and moves with joy
No mention of Close to the Edge?
DOUBLE BLASPHEMER!!
....and that's 90215......Rabin's intentions were like communisum...a good idea that didn't work. Although, if you can find 9021LIVE the B side has a great [technically] great guitar solo by Ravin, not bad, (for a South African)
I can't really do too much with Anderson's lyrics, I think he's too busy mixing metaphors to say much of anything, although, on tab of Airplane it makes alot more sense -- (and almost too intense.) Setting aside the lyrics, their musicality is really in a class by itself, Squire bringing the Bass in front....Wakeman, and the rest grooving on the title track of Close to the edge....for a mass-produced band, they raised the bar to a point that probably hasn't been reached since in that genere. I think you're being too hard on Rush, especailly from a technical standpoint. They pretty much lost whatever they had going for them after Hold Your Fire but I thought Grace under pressure and Signals bordered on the pertinent.
Comments
Originally posted by tonton
Sure as hell sounds like you're assuming we who don't like Neil Young are busy buying Britney and Rush (sorry, Spline).
Sorry if I was unclear. "You" in that sentence is second-person plural. The generic "you." "People." "Barbarians."
However you like.
Originally posted by pfflam
Falling in love with the description of the mathematics of chord progressions and 'difficult' rhythms (to steal from Allan Watts here) is like eating the menu and not the meal
You end up Hungry
I like that. It reminds me of those people who believe that poetry can be interpreted purely through scansion, or of my friends who used to say "OOh! Listen to this! It's a bar of 7/8 followed by a bar of 5/4!!"
If I might provide my own mantra here: Complexity only for the sake of complexity is not art. It's masturbation.
Originally posted by tonton
Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?
No, really. You like jacked into my brain to compose that paragraph, didn't you?
I had no idea anyone else thought Tales was Yes' best work. After all, Rick Wakeman left the band after that record because he was sickened by its pretentiousness. Rick Wakeman! King of the pretentious himself.
But honestly, I've had only a few dozen or so non drug-enduced euphoric music moments (you know them if you've had them), and in all honesty, Tales was behind more than one. It's almost orgasmic when you get into it. In fact, I quoted the intro on my Senior high school yearbook page (every senior gets a whole page where I went to school). I guess that makes me more pretentious than Rick Wakeman.
I couldn't imagine Neil Young inducing anything other than nausea.
No, I didn't say it was their best album . . . just that it, despite its apparent huge-ponderousness, is actually a decent listen, and, still has its roots in rock-and-roll: ie: funky, sexy, energy.
nd Neil is ALL about that energy, (as well as the sentimental side that is about straight-farward emotions, disected in a brutally honest yet precise ways) . . . his rock-and-roll is definitevley NOT about being anything other than Rock-and-roll: chaotic, noisy, jamming . . . from the pelvis . . . and even somewhat dumb (he is actually surprisingly intelligent as a person though)
When he rocks its like a bunch of boys in a garage, doing nothing but . . . . but . . . . rocking . . .
Not rocket science . . . just great RockandRoll
RE: YES -- I surprise myself and listen to alot of YES these days . . . Its funny, but some of the stuff that I liked in High School, but then thoght of as ponderous while going through my Punk phase in the early eighties, I could now imagine some post-punk bands doing as covers . . . in other words (like stuff on Relayer) it is complex and difficult to play but has the energy of Rock . . . it Rocks!!
ANd their first two albums are also really great.
Originally posted by tonton
Question for Midwanker (sorry, couldn't resist):
Ah, a dick joke. That's funny, in a kind of bourgeois way. Sorry. Couldn't resist.
If we don't buy Britney CD's and download Rush (personally I think that Neil Peart is an amazingly accurate, but consequently an amazingly boring drummer), and we also don't buy any Neil Young, do we still "retard the arts"?
No. It is enough simply to avoid the proliferation of bad art.
And I agree with you about Peart. He's as mathematical in his playing as he is mathematical in his soulfulness. And if someone could keep him from reading any more Ayn Rand or being so bloody sincere in his lyrics, I'd appreciate it.
I think the person that says full stop, "If you don't like Neil Young [or Jackson Pollock, or Louis XIV furniture, or IM Pei] then you have bad taste" without knowing anything at all about what that person does like, is the one who's retarding the arts.
How can telling people what is good retard the arts?
Cheers
Scott
PS
Off to the airport to pick up relatives who are visiting. I'm not ducking out of this discussion, which I think is fascinating, but I may not respond very quickly.
Originally posted by pfflam
. . .
Stop being so juvenile. I used Opera as an example of a genre that is often disliked. Furthermore, I don't find it necessary to adhere to a philosophy simply because some generally insightful philosopher made a comment somewhere about something, which is certainly a central aspect of this debate.
To scott: I am having a lot of fun with you, because you're so unbelievably synthetic. First off, you lead me to believe that you're from a humble southern upbringing, only to cap off a series of generally elitist arguments with the phrase, "Ah, a dick joke. That's funny, in a kind of bourgeois way." To that I ask: have you done so well for yourself that you are now a wealthy man with time to spend on the whimsies of the elite, or are you merely pretending?
Ultimately, since you find that "wealth is authority," you either have wealth, and thus authority on the issue of taste, or don't have wealth, and thus don't have authority on the issue of taste. I guess the alternate profile, and the worst forecast, is that you could just be one of those unfortunate lackies who listens to NPR and subscribes to their every idiom without falter. I choose not to worship others, but instead to make my own decisions, particularly in matters of personal preference. This would indeed be "democratization," and you may hate it, especially because I may well have more cultural clout that you do.
When I mention "worrying about more important things" I am of course refering to sustainability and development. The French aristocrats overlooked these, and their empire crumbled into a pool of their own blood and barrels of fine wine. How much of their art and metrics of good taste were destroyed in the collapse?
So, feel free to cling to your metrics, but tastes and metrics of good taste always change, leaving you with nothing but remnants of the past. If it's change you fear, then I'm afraid you have lost the battle, because change is one of the inevitibilities of the nature. That is why I called you synthetic.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
Stop being so juvenile. I used Opera as an example of a genre that is often disliked. Furthermore, I don't find it necessary to adhere to a philosophy simply because some generally insightful philosopher made a comment somewhere about something, which is certainly a central aspect of this debate.
To scott: I am having a lot of fun with you, because you're so unbelievably synthetic. First off, you lead me to believe that you're from a humble southern upbringing, only to cap off a series of generally elitist arguments with the phrase, "Ah, a dick joke. That's funny, in a kind of bourgeois way." To that I ask: have you done so well for yourself that you are now a wealthy man with time to spend on the whimsies of the elite, or are you merely pretending?
Ultimately, since you find that "wealth is authority," you either have wealth, and thus authority on the issue of taste, or don't have wealth, and thus don't have authority on the issue of taste. I guess the alternate profile, and the worst forecast, is that you could just be one of those unfortunate lackies who listens to NPR and subscribes to their every idiom without falter. I choose not to worship others, but instead to make my own decisions, particularly in matters of personal preference. This would indeed be "democratization," and you may hate it, especially because I may well have more cultural clout that you do.
When I mention "worrying about more important things" I am of course refering to sustainability and development. The French aristocrats overlooked these, and their empire crumbled into a pool of their own blood and barrels of fine wine. How much of their art and metrics of good taste were destroyed in the collapse?
So, feel free to cling to your metrics, but tastes and metrics of good taste always change, leaving you with nothing but remnants of the past. If it's change you fear, then I'm afraid you have lost the battle, because change is one of the inevitibilities of the nature. That is why I called you synthetic.
So, according to you the French Aristocracy crashed because of bad art?!?!
Forget all of the deep historical iniquities, economic dysfunctions and etc . . .
Oh yeah . . . and let's not forget Chardin, Fragonard, Greuze, Lebrun, Boucher . . . sure, they might have been teh lackeys of the moneyed . . . but they were great painters
Besides, who's griping about the revolution as if some grand edifice that needed sustaining had fallen into a worse state . . . I seem to think that the Revolution harkened a better form of Government (after some trials) even if it runs counter to my old-family connections . . . .
You may or may not have more 'cultural clout' but your prose is by far more wooden than any other AI poster I've come across in a long time . . .
and as far as 'cultural clout' is concerned . . . . that is a good question: what exactly would confer 'cultural clout' if not actual work in a the 'culture industry' --by which, of course, is meant that complex of interrelated activities that generate the products by which the 'culture' gets to reflect on its own creations, through its creations . . . -why yes, of course!-
And if memory serves me correctly Midwinter is in fact ensconced in a concrete manifestation of such an activity: institutionalized-cultural-self-reflection . . . . I guess that kind of confers some measure of 'cultural clout' . . . . rumor has it that he actualy produces products involved in the activities of culture itself, that he is a cultural producer . . .
Hmm . . . whoda thunk>
Originally posted by pfflam
So, according to you the French Aristocracy crashed because of bad art?!?!
No. It was because they were too wrapped up in themselves, and in fulfilling their "tastes," to realize that they were in trouble. In the end, a lot of hard work and good art was ruined for this shortsightedness. I'm not sure how you extrapolated what you did.
You don't need to prove to me that you know the names of good artists and contributors of modern philosophy. As impressive as it may be, it's nothing but peripheral, and it hasn't helped your argument for the simple fact that your argument was founded on a misinterpretation.
but your prose is by far more wooden than any other AI poster I've come across in a long time . . .
It is true that long sentences and commas have fallen out of favor, but they are useful tools for arguments as they can well separate the questions, points, and lead-ons. It may also be true, though, that "the democratization of taste" has killed the long sentence.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
No. It was because they were too wrapped up in themselves, and in fulfilling their "tastes," to realize that they were in trouble. In the end, a lot of hard work and good art was ruined for this shortsightedness. I'm not sure how you extrapolated what you did.
You don't need to prove to me that you know the names of good artists and contributors of modern philosophy. As impressive as it may be, it's nothing but peripheral, and it hasn't helped your argument for the simple fact that your argument was founded on a misinterpretation.
It is true that long sentences and commas have fallen out of favor, but they are useful tools for arguments as they can well separate the questions, points, and lead-ons. It may also be true, though, that "the democratization of taste" has killed the long sentence.
Long sentences and wooden prose are not the same thing. Just as good music and theories about good music are not the same thing.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
To scott: I am having a lot of fun with you, because you're so unbelievably synthetic.
I have no idea what that means.
First off, you lead me to believe that you're from a humble southern upbringing
Indeed I am. Plantersville, Mississippi. Around 1,000 people. One Baptist church. One Methodist. When they don't have enough people to make a congregation at one, the all have church at the other. I can show you pictures if you don't believe me.
only to cap off a series of generally elitist arguments with the phrase, "Ah, a dick joke. That's funny, in a kind of bourgeois way."
You have to admit that a dick joke in reference to my nick, which is taken from the main character of a delightful piece of sensation fiction by Wilkie Collins from the 1860s, is an awfully bourgeois thing to do.
To that I ask: have you done so well for yourself that you are now a wealthy man with time to spend on the whimsies of the elite, or are you merely pretending?
I'm doing pretty well, thanks. The wife and I are comfortable. We like our 70 year-old house. We like our jobs. The more troubling thing for you ought to be your assumption that people from humble Southern origins cannot go on to become elitists about art.
Ultimately, since you find that "wealth is authority," you either have wealth, and thus authority on the issue of taste, or don't have wealth, and thus don't have authority on the issue of taste.
In America, yes, wealth = authority. Just look at Paris Hilton. But my remark was flippant and written in haste, and it wasn't clear enough that I was noting that in a capitalist system like ours, wealth does, in fact, equal authority. Even in art.
I guess the alternate profile, and the worst forecast, is that you could just be one of those unfortunate lackies who listens to NPR and subscribes to their every idiom without falter.
Why can you not stay on topic? This isn't about me listening to NPR. This is about me saying that there is art that is good and there is art that is bad and not being namby-pamby about it or my elitism.
I choose not to worship others, but instead to make my own decisions, particularly in matters of personal preference.
Um. Great?
This would indeed be "democratization," and you may hate it, especially because I may well have more cultural clout that you do.
I seriously doubt that.
So, feel free to cling to your metrics,
Thanks. I'll be hanging out with Matthew Arnold in the back room.
but tastes and metrics of good taste always change, leaving you with nothing but remnants of the past.
Like good art?
If it's change you fear, then I'm afraid you have lost the battle, because change is one of the inevitibilities of the nature. That is why I called you synthetic. [/B]
Ah. No. I don't fear change. I fear that we have a culture where no one much cares about what is good art anymore, and where, for instance, no one flinches if I say "It is bad taste to dress yourself in a Hello Kitty leisure suit" but people get all bent out of shape when I say that "It's bad taste to listen to X."
I say again: I am an elitist about this, and I am unapologetic about it. Some art is better than other art, and apparently people need to be told this.
Cheers
Scott
The soul album and 'Greendale' peaked my interest so maybe he's coming out of it.
Originally posted by tonton
You have to admit that Paris Hilton has decent taste in clothes.
She should keep her clothes on. She's ugly and way to skinny.
Originally posted by superkarate monkeydeathcar
I'd have him dying after 'Rust Never Sleeps'. It seems that after that he's done too much looking back. I think when 'Harvest Moon' came out I quit paying attention.
The soul album and 'Greendale' peaked my interest so maybe he's coming out of it.
FYI: it's "piqued my interest."
Originally posted by tonton
You have to admit that Paris Hilton has decent taste in clothes.
She wears clothes? I really just want to know what the hell is wrong with her NECK. In every picture of her, she looks like her neck broke and her head flopped over.
Originally posted by midwinter
FYI: it's "piqued my interest."
d'oh! spell check doesn't work when you use the wrong word but spelled properly.
This is the dumbest goddam thread in the history of mankind and I hate you all.
That is why people like Al Dimeola, Neil Peart etc etc will never be great artists . . . they are merely technitions.
What needs to be mastered is the fit of craft to voice (meaning - expression) and have that matched with insight and reflection
. . . a natural unforced understanding of their own medium in its relation to the artist's manner of reflective being in the world.
That doesn't mean to say that the artist needs to self-consciously understand how they do what they do, but that what they do has a deep measure of reflectivity on the world, and the deep form of a culture
High art/low art
-- great art does NOT need to be high fallutin - Folk arts can best manifest a form that reveals a culture to itself or to time and others . .. sometimes better than the products of the so-called High Institutional traditions of art . . .
even Pop forms can best the supposed sophisticates at the game of High Art . . . however, usually Popular forms result merely in mimicking the shape of a culture at any given time and don't accede to the level of reflexion
But High Art that uses Pop as a tool in its game is often far more sophisticated and 'high' than supposedly 'pure' forms of High traditional art . . like 'High Modernist' Painting, or music.
ALSO --this hardly needs to be said, but I'll say it anyway, a strong work of art need not be 'tasteful' . . . . . the 'Tasteful' is teh realm of bourgeois pablum . . . the 'beautiful' -as in teh daily usage of the term, as in 'boy that sure looks great' is antithetical to the work of high art -- it usually means the merely pretty and devolves into ordinary and mainstream sentimentality and emotionalism . . . in other words Kitsch
Not to sell Kitsch as crap . . . but kitsch doesn't go down the long road . . . it just doesn't get there
Not to say that Kitsch can't be used as a tool . . . as with Pop . . . .
anyway . . . enough for now
Originally posted by groverat
I had to read this thread because I'm a moderator and I have to make sure everyone is playing by the rules and I have to say I want to punch you all until you fall down and then urinate on your faces.
This is the dumbest goddam thread in the history of mankind and I hate you all.
Thank you.
Saying Rush is preferable to or better than Neil Young and not admitting Neil's talent and great work is simply asinine and pathetic.
[groverat edited this post for obvious reasons.]
Originally posted by pfflam
. . . they may be willfully complex in song writing, they may even have moments of pretentiousness . . . but they don't confuse the math for the music . . . their most ponderous works (Tales of Topographic Oceans) still are motivated by a love of Rock and Roll --meaning: enthusiasm (in-theos) and movement and energy. . . . they also imbue their gigantic constructions with the spirit of experimentation . . . and even the most weighted pieces still have a bit of the funky in them . . . (all of this dissapeared, however, when Steve Howe left and 90621 happened, then they just became lame)
and
what's best about Yes: an absurd Optimism . . . even if they are really just Crypto-Christians . . . . their spirit is positive and moves with joy
No mention of Close to the Edge?
DOUBLE BLASPHEMER!!
....and that's 90215......Rabin's intentions were like communisum...a good idea that didn't work. Although, if you can find 9021LIVE the B side has a great [technically] great guitar solo by Ravin, not bad, (for a South African)
I can't really do too much with Anderson's lyrics, I think he's too busy mixing metaphors to say much of anything, although, on tab of Airplane it makes alot more sense -- (and almost too intense.) Setting aside the lyrics, their musicality is really in a class by itself, Squire bringing the Bass in front....Wakeman, and the rest grooving on the title track of Close to the edge....for a mass-produced band, they raised the bar to a point that probably hasn't been reached since in that genere. I think you're being too hard on Rush, especailly from a technical standpoint. They pretty much lost whatever they had going for them after Hold Your Fire but I thought Grace under pressure and Signals bordered on the pertinent.
much of tales from topographic oceans is written in haiku.