From: mlevi@owlnet.rice.edu (Marcel Nolan Levi)
Newsgroups: alt.music.alternative
Subject: Re: Major Label Music is EVIL!
Date: 13 Aug 1992 18:04:02 GMT
Organization: Rice University


In article <Fvb-9F_@engin.umich.edu>, Mr. Q writes:

>why sign to a major and be an exception if you can be the rule on an
>"independent" label?  Majors promise more money and more exposure: are
>these what true artists are looking for?

BINGO!!!

>  Excerpts from the article about Lollapaloozer in Newsweek (Aug. 17,
>1992), by John Leland with Paul Kandell and Vanessa Jones:
> ...
>  [Goes on to "prove" how united Lollapaloozer is by listing the bands:
>six noisy, mostly guitar-oriented bands that mostly appeal to young,
>white males; and a token black rapper.]
>  [Jane's Addiction: psychedelic?  What have _they_ been listening to?]
>  [No superstar headline acts?  The RHCP, for one, have been all over MTV
>for months.]

True...

>     "But as an event, Lollapalooza is eye opening,  A mixture of fantasy
>and pragmatism, arch irony and new sincerity, it documents the arrival of
>the generation born after Woodstock. The concert reflects, as colorfully
>as Woodstock, the demands of a new generation of young Americans: what
>they want in sex, music, drugs, food, recreation, rhetoric, and politics.
>     "But where Woodstock celebrated personal liberation as a tonic
>against the anxieties of a generation being sent to Vietnam, Lollapalooza
>charts the caution and abstinence of a generation that has been
>chronically disengaged."
>  [Followed by stale examples of AIDS, "legal" drugs and alcohol, etc. 
>This article has been done so many times before that it could have been
>written by a computer.]
 
Even though the writing is very older.than.thou and overdone, it's
still true. 

>     "The alternative-music audience has long cherished its small
>numbers.  It affects a benign elitism -- the more obscure or farther from
>the mainstream, the better.  Lollapalooza turns that around, celebrating
>newfound mass appeal.  Surrounding by Mr. Lifto and the rest, a
>(stuff deleted)
>hard to argue with the statement, "The more obscure or farther from the
>mainstream, the better," if those are the choices the mainstream has to
>offer. 

The author is again correct, despite the stupid style.

>(stuff about MTV)

I agree with that -- the hypocrites at MTV are the worst.  I don't watch
MTV ever myself, I stopped several years ago, NOT to be cooler.than.thou,
mind you, but because that damn bobbing-up-and-down-and-sideways-camera
made me sick.  It's a total gimmick to try and make up for the fact that
they have no creativity and directing skill.  The masters (Hitchcock,
Kubrick, Scorsese, Joffe, et al) are fucking GREAT with lighting
and the camera, etc.  (I dabble in filmmaking through classes at school,
but freely admit my inferiority to the Directing Gods aforementioned.)

>course, Right-to-Life as the token right-wingers.  All the old white

I believe the NRA was there, as well.  
(aside: Perot joke: the NAAYP, the National Assoc. for the Advancement
                    of You People)

> (nice Oliver Stone slam.)

He's a fucking moron.

>
>respectfully yours,
>
>   Mr. Q
>
>...  One needs to be at grade level 13.4 to make
>heads or tail out of what I'm saying.  I guess that means all the
>alternateens won't be getting my message, after all.)

Name one 'alternateen' or anyone below grade level 13.4 who would be 
on UseNet!

Marcel,
mlevi@rice.edu
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