Approved-By:  Allmusic Editor <MIKE@WVNVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Wed, 27 Jan 1993 22:59:32 EST
From:         Ilia <CC29@IONA.BITNET>
Subject:      Webber, Andrew Lloyd

> From:         Robert Garret Gruhn <1418@EF.GC.MARICOPA.EDU>
> Subject:      Music diversity
>
> > This is my first post to this list...so be gentle...;)
>
> The proverbial red flag to BULLS-L here :-)
>
> > I like a majority of different styles of music, I find something worthy in
> > every type of music out there.  I mostly listen to what people deem
> > "Alternative" (i.e. Smiths, Concrete Blonde, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys,
> > etc...), but I've been known to like groups and artists diverse such as
> > Amy Grant, Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Pink Floyd, and Metallica.
> >
> > The reason for my post is this.  Do you think that the genre refered to as
> > Alternative is taking over the mainstream?  I know many people who find
> > every group that makes it to mainstream a "sell-out".  I'd just like to
> > hear your opinions as to this.  Thanks.
>
> Obviously the first big question is, whose alternative and which mainstream?
> Are the legions who still cling to their velvet paintings of Elvis gonna rise
> up en masse and get into Morrissey? Not hardly. Neither are they likely to go
> out and buy up gazillions of units of Pink Floyd's forthcoming _An Anticipated
> Taste of Redundancy_. To these guys, heck, Barry Manilow is "alternative."
>
> Now regular list members are tired of my ranting about how the "alternative"
> isn't really, so I'll let Tim speak for me here:
>
> From:         Tim Johnson <ST402711@BROWNVM.BITNET>
> Subject:      Re: Music diversity
>
> >   I've always been amused by the folks who say "I have really broad
> > tastes in music, I like all kinds of rock."
>
> You see? If you go out and educate yourself rather than allowing mass media
> to define your culture for you, you won't be able to avoid finding a whole
> universe of interesting stuff that the couch potatoes will only be able to
> apprehend as an "alternative."
>
> From:         crispen <crispen@EIGHT-BALL.BOEING.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Who Done it..?
>
> > Well, Dick, how about record store personnel, DJs, musicians?
> > Not much cause for flaming, as far as I know.
>
> Sure there is, especially among musicians. These are exactly the people who
> we depend upon for preservation of this aspect of culture. I don't mean to
> say that every musician in the world should leep up with every genre in the
> world-- myself, I reserve the right to ignore most reggae, because I really
> don't like it :-)-- but one should be able to know it's there, identify it,
> be able to supply a few buzz words about it ("Bob Marley" and "ganja" :-),
> and recognize what makes it different from your own stuff.
>
> Thinking about it more, I feel the same way about record store personnel.
> Unless they're convinced their workplace is a supermarket for the Hot 100,
> they should feel a sense of commitment to diversity. It should be a mark of
> pride to get somebody to buy something he's never heard of, and to have him
> come back the next week and say, Wow, you were right, that was amazing!
>
> DJ's in commercial radio can't affect anything; they're just button pushers
> working off printouts prepared by the home office (or some consulting firm).
> DJ's in college radio should be aware that they exist to help fulfill their
> college's mandate to educate people.
>
> > No.  I think the music "marketplace" is fragmenting and there isn't any
> > mainstream any more.  This is partly the fault of radio station formats
> > which are more geared toward demographics than toward an individual
> > Program Director's taste, and partly the result of the wide diversity
> > of popular music.
>
> Could you repeat that last clause? I didn't hear it, I have a formatted
> playlist in my ear.
>
> > However, I find myself incapable of the self-absorption that seems to
> > be necessary to fully appreciate the Cure.  Phony, but highly probable
> > quote from Robert (Bubba) Smith: "Success is quite lovely, you know.
> > It makes me think of death."
>
> Guys who wear black nail polish are so romantic. Not.
>
> From:         Leonard Watkins <ISTS024@UABDPO.BITNET>
> Subject:      Alternative..?
>
> > I think the title alternative is the same as "cult-following" that was
> > used b4 alternative became the "in word"....but who is John Galt...L.W.
>
> Something Robyn Hitchcock (the quintessential cult item, much to his regret)
> once said: "Alternative means, doesn't sell." I think we need more precision
> in our interpretation of music industry code words here: "cult item" probably
> means "sells to his audience, and if we don't think we can make money at that
> level, we should buy out his contract;" whereas "alternative" means "could be
> a big hit with a hot enough video, maybe with some cheerleaders..."
>
> And now I become aware that I haven't even really answered Cubby's question!
> There is a de facto mainstream, and it's defined by the _Billboard_ charts--
> if only because these charts are an important item in radio's calculations,
> and radio is still how our musical culture gets diffused. How do you reach
> that pinnacle of achievement? You could be an overnight manufactured phenom,
> a Milli Vanilli, totally dependent on your handlers (not only the people who
> dub in your vocals and teach you the dance steps, but also on the promoters
> who pay off the radio mafia and tweeze your name into the Carson monologue).
> Or you can do what you do, as strongly and consistently as you know how, and
> in the classic _Field of Dreams_ fairy tale, your audience will eventually
> catch up to you. Marco's basically correct that this is what has happened to
> REM, as soon as Stipe stopped mumbling. And Marco, I don't despise you for
> this. Some of my best friends buy REM records!
>
> From:         a memory engraved upon your soul <REWOICC@ERENJ.BITNET>
> Subject:      Re: Alternative..?
>
> > it's just another label. misapplied, perhaps, but a label nonetheless. on
> > the average, everyone knows what people mean by it, so why argue whether
> > or not it really means something?
>
> Once more with feeling:
>
> I dunno, woj, I still think the semantics of it are important and ultimately
> extremely harmful. The idea is that if you don't like "pop," then we'll sell
> you this "alternative," and if you don't like that, well then, you have no
> other alternative, maybe you just don't like music! Well, I *do* like music,
> and I resent having my tastes rendered invisible!
>
> From:         Goody <JAG164@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "CUBBY"
>
> >    First of all, you shouldn't harsh on Chubby for using the word
> "Alternative"
> > It's just a label. Our lives are full of them. What the hell do
> "Rap","Reggae",
> > "Heavy Metal","Thrash Metal", or "New Age" mean. All I know is that they hel
> > me recognize and catagorize types of music.  If you're having trouble with
> > other words, maybe you should consult Noah Webster. In the mean time try to
> > lose the negative tone you show in your articles buddy.
>
> You're fulla shit. "Rap" means something: it means "talk." And that describes
> what you're hearing. "Thrash metal" doesn't mean anything precisely, but it
> sure does a decent job of preparing you psychologically for the actual event!
> "Alternative" just means "something different," and it in no way tells you
> what the difference is-- even assuming there is one, which I doubt. And you
> could stand to keep a civil tongue in your head too, dude.
>
> From:         TBUCK@KNOX.BITNET
> Subject:      The Prisoner (Herbie Hancock)
>
> > My question is this: Has anybody encountered a record label that they feel i
> > nearly perfect in their artistic output? I know that somebody on this list
> > feels this way about Enigma. (At least I think it was Enigma.) Does anybody
> > (hey Beer!) feel the same way about Bluenote in the 50's and 60's?
>
> I think Dero was the Enigma fan. Enigma did great stuff in their reissue
> program-- Can, Beefheart, Tim Buckley. Their own artists were amusing but
> not stellar-- other than Holdsworth, of course.
>
> > Maybe the question might best be put this way: If you were stranded alone on
> > an island, and you could have the complete catalog of only one record compan
> > which one would it be and why?  :-)
>
> Cuneiform. Haven't you guys bought that Curlew record yet?!
>
> From:         DMetcalf%IC-LOG@WALKER-LTT.ARMY.MIL
> Subject:      VARIOUS PITS & BEICES
>
> > BLOOMIDO SED:
> >
> > >OUAC: Urban Ambience will be playing live on the Brandeis U. radio station,
> > >WBRS, 100.3 MHz or so, Friday night from 9:30 until we break all our string
> >
> > ?WILL? there be a TAPE produced?  I'd LIKE to review it, if there is!
>
> Well, we will certainly be recording this-- actually the station will; that's
> our payoff for doing this, a high quality DAT master! It is not our intention
> to release this as a product. We've played Brandeis radio before, and we view
> it as a laboratory-- we go in and improvise, and we hope to come out with some
> events on the tape that we can go back and work up into tunes! On the tape you
> already have, "Grand Canyon Shuffle" and "Galactic Evening Prayer" are example
> of that kind of thing-- spontaneous riffs from improv events that we developed
> into performance pieces. Also, "Catafalques of Thoth" is bits of two previous
> Brandeis broadcasts, taken out of context :-), and spliced together!
>
> But yeah, if the tape is at all interesting, I could send you a dub.
>
> > HEAR! HEAR!  Glad SOMEONE knows who Henry Kaiser is... just a SUPER player!
>
> Yeah, he's magnificent. Curious how "alternative" media seem to have never
> heard of him :-(
>
> From:         cinnamon girl <watson@HG.ULETH.CA>
> Subject:      RE: VARIOUS PITS & BEICES
>
> > yes... as compared to new-age music which would relate to 'bologna of the
> > mind' :*)
>
> Ahhhhh ha ha haaaaaaaaa! I believe you've hit upon a great truth here!
>
> > OMC:  I wanna get a Can CD... which of these would you people suggest?
> >   cannibalism
> >   delay 1968
> >   future days
> >   monster movie
> >   tago mago
>
> _Cannibalism_ is a best of type collection, quite a good one IMHO. It happens
> to contain all but one song off _Monster Movie_, and I judge you could live
> without that song unless you get really deep into this stuff (and somebody
> could always dub it for you-- I'd be happy to, and I bet McIntyre would too),
> so you can drop that from the list. _Tago Mago_ is cost effective, being a
> double album on a single CD, but it's pretty far out there-- there's a tune
> that took up an entire album side when it came out in that old technology,
> where the keyboard player is tripping his brains out, and a dog that happened
> to wander through the studio starts barking along, and they left all that on
> the tape. I love _Future Days_ myself, I think it's a terrific album to just
> drift away on-- I think of it as the angelic answer to King Crimson circa
> _Islands_. Save _Delay 68_ for last, if then-- it's tapes out of obscure
> closets, for collectors only. Um, you might also like _Landed_.
MMORSE (outraged) sez:

> Rarely has a harvest on allmusic offered so many invitations to serious
> wrong-talking.. and someone actually had the 180-proof taste to encourage
> me to dump on ALW? Okay, sports fans:
>   Ladies and gentlemen of the list (strike out where not applicable), the
> 80s, like its spiritual parent the third reich, is OVER. Potato-witted
> defenses of moral and artistic relativism--in the name of justifying
> vast wealth for tone-deaf scuzzbags--won't cut it anymore. Andrew Lloyd
> Webber a *popularizer*? An EDUCATOR? That's like calling John Dillinger
> a financier or Oliver North a Christian. What the hell kind of backhanded
> compliment is to say that you walk out of his shows whistling the set?
> Webber is completely incapable of sustaining musical thought for more than
> His "fans," the present-day public, is so freaked out and fucked up that they
> can't concentrate for more than a few seconds. In consequence, they are
> completely incapable of pleasure.                                     ect

         Wow! Well, I guess I have to mention the specific nature of my
encounters with ALW's music, and maybe I will be excused... First, the
only work of his I really got to listen to was _Jesus Christ Superstar_.
Well, I saw _Hair_ once, but it was a disappointment in both musical
and imagery parts. Second, last time I heard or thought of the music
of ALW was in the country of my birth, so that's where my perception
of him was formed. This makes things kinda different, doesn't it?
Well, let's see:
in the sixties, and early seventies rock music in the Former Soviet
Union (FSU) was completely ignored by the communist-controlled media.
It was (and for most part still is) impossible to go to a music store
and buy a record of a quartet from the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland (UKGBNI) pretentiously called "The Beatles". The
only way rock music would be mentioned in press would be as a "perverse
pseudo-culture of spoiled bourgeois youth". While the world was
celebrating the liberation of democratic spirit, russian tanks were
making their way through barricades in Prague........................
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shit, I started this pathetic letter, but had to retreat, bombarded by
the 'mailbox full' stuff. Okay, now I will just briefly summarize my
point:

    1. Rock music in the Soviet Union in the early seventies was labeled
as non-serious genre. This was always a burden on the hearts of people
who tried to play rock'n'roll, and surely was a prevailing point of view
among their parents.

    2. When _Jesus Christ Superstar_ came out, it helped many musicians
(again, in the Soviet Union) to realize that rock has equal abilities
of expression with other genres, and that they shouldn't be ashamed of
what they were trying to do.

    3. Musical education in the land of working class brotherhood was
(is) extremely rigid and conservative. While extraordinary performers
in classical genres were always cultivated as the pride of the nation,
any experiments were discouraged. The tastes of young musicians studying
in Soviet conservatories were generally formed by clear directives
produced in rooms with large portraits of the leaders of the world
revolution (tm).

    4. When _Jesus Christ Superstar_ came out, many classically trained
musicians got their first exposure to rock music.

    5. I resent the remark about flat emotional experience. Some
Mozart's operas strike me as completely dull and empty in much higher
degree than JCS. The former at least had a plot which was almost
ambiguous. :)

And finally,

    6. _Jesus Christ Superstar_ had several great vocal parts and
some of its melodies were more sophisticated, as well as more beautiful
than anything produced by numerous prominent 'real rock' musicians.



         Alright now, time to type my chemistry lab report. Anybody
knows the name of that liquid: it's transparent, colorless, doesn't
smell, and I was told not to taste it. Well, let me try anyway. hmmmm...
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