Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 17:32:06 EST
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Flaw in the ointment

I came up with a Masudaoid notion I want to run by you guys.

Proposition: that a relationship exists between the frequency spectrum of
music and the socioeconomic status of its fans.

Background: remember the first Byrds album, with McGuinn's comments in the
liner notes about how the popular music of the previous generation was all the
noises of trains and big machinery, while the 60s were up with jet planes?
If not, go read that first.

Factoids: One of the things that distinguishes the various flavors of heavy
metal is the frequency spectrum: yer Zeppelins, Sabbaths, etc. are all real
boomy-- Zeppelin reinvented rock in part by pitching the singer above all the
guitars, which was unheard of before that. Whereas the "progressive" metal is
skewed toward the high end, and this is the stuff that appeals to list members
as apposed to the proverbial gas station attendant. Taking that to extremes,
we have groups like Yes, who are all high end, and a more elitist band never
drew breath. In rap, they always wanna hear the bass-- which they say they
also wanna do in more sophisticated suburban dance musics, but (a) the real
interesting part is always up in the high end somewhere, some sampled shit--
and (b) the bass becomes a virtual high end instrument through slap technique
and other stuff that exaggerates the treble. What do you think?

From:         crispen <crispen@EIGHT-BALL.BOEING.COM>
Subject:      Re: A cappella, A cappella, A cappella, A cappella, A cappella

> Am I the only one who has this problem with sonic quality?  If so,
> just note this as a foible and pass it by.  If others out there
> share my problem, please speak up!

Charlie of Urban Ambience hates noise reduction. This has nothing to do with
the totally spurious notion that our music is nothing but noise and would,
if run through a Dolby, be reduced to silence :-), he thinks you can hear the
alterations it makes in your signal-- compression, selective alterations of
frequency spectrum, and maybe worse, if the beast isn't calibrated correctly.

Timbre-sensitive electronic music composers shun noise reduction. Michael
Hoenig, composer of _Departure from the Northern Wasteland_ and something
newer with an X in the title (CRAFT syndrome again), says you get all the
fidelity you need by running 30 IPS on a well calibrated deck. This will
not help Gary, however.

From:         The Central Scrutinizer <CV01@SWTEXAS.BITNET>
Subject:      Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things

>    First, thanks to Jeff B. for his extensive reply about jazz vs. rock
> drumming.  I'd still be interested to hear Michael's point of view, but he
> seems to be ignoring me.  :*)

Not intentionally, I'm more trying to decide whether I know enough to have an
opinion. I can kinda buy Beer's idea that the jazz idiom demands more presence
of mind from a drummer than rock; as a generalization, that's pretty good. I
think of the rock drummers I admire: they're either timekeepers by nature,
albeit with an interest in polyrhythms (Bruford, yup-- but also Dave Mattacks,
Simon Phillips, Mickey Hart) or soloists in their own right (Keith Moon, Chris
Cutler, and-- might as well admit it-- Neil Peart). The kind of interplay Beer
wants to hear in a drummer is pretty foreign to rock'n'roll-- often, it's just
too fucking loud! But I suspect that the standing of polyrhythms in prog-rock
doesn't really have a parallel in jazz, being entirely too composed-- kinda
like how, even though nobody can define "swing," everyone agrees that Anthony
Braxton doesn't :-)

>    Without saying specifically "it's all been done before", musical
> expression is prone to returning to elements of previous generations.  Even
> if it is created as an outright rejection of the previous sensibilities,
> there has been an acknowledgement of those influences.

I am reminded of Pete Townshend's famous meeting with Steve Jones and Paul
Cook of the Sex Pistols. Townshend, in his cups as he was so often at that
time, went off on a tirade about how the Who were all washed up and it was
up to the Pistols to smash all that old weak shit. The youngsters said,
"Oi, we kinda like the Who!"

>    Maybe, rather than actually creating a relatively seamless new hybrid,
> the future lies in a different way of combining the genres.  What I look
> forward to is something along the lines of what John Zorn (or even Praxis)
> does.  A "cartoon" (or, to borrow Michael B's word -- "cutup") music that
> extracts elements from many different genres in an almost patchwork fashion
> (juxtaposition rather than synthesis?).

Thanks, but credit for the "cutup" concept belongs to William Burroughs. And
it's not such a panacaea-- after all, they do that on MTV all the time, with
visual images. Is the MTV viewer any smarter or more cosmopolitan as a result?
Not hardly.

There are two notions kind of at odds here. There is the notion that if you
juxtapose two disparate things, a sufficiently insightful observer will see
all sorts of parallels, and assume that you meant him to see them; the end
result of this is people poring over the complete Frank Zappa lyrics to find
every reference of "string beans to Utah" and trying to divine What it All
Means. Dada always makes you look smarter than you are, which is one of its
lingering charms for those of us of an adolescent persuasion :-)

But on the other hand, if you can listen to, I dunno, mbaqanga-- no, too easy,
haw about Vienna waltzes-- and figure out why it works on its own terms, you
may find something about it you can transplant to your own idiom. And this is
what rock'n'roll has always done-- none too conspicuously; notice that the
lambada remained just a novelty act :-), but the tendency is always there.
The garage bands of this era are better than the garage bands of my youth;
Nirvana proves that-- so people are learning something. I don't think they're
paying attention to the most important parts, though.

From:         Sonia Kovitz <skovitz@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject:      "How It Was"

> Bloomdo, thanks for the explication of Grace Slick's family circumstances
(even
> when I look things up in BOOKS I still make ludicrous mistakes...).  So is
Jeff
> Darby her OTHER husband?  So am I to take it that Grace left for the Airplane
> and Darby didn't go with her?  (or did he go too?)

I think it went like this: Jeff was Darby's brother. Grace, nee Wing, married
Darby Slick, but may or may not have been kinda through with him by the time
of the Airplane. During the Airplane's glory days (in chronological order:
_Surrealistic Pillow_, _After Bathing At Baxter's_, _Crown of Creation_, _Bless
Its Pointed Little Head_ recorded live at the Fillmores, and _Volunteers_),
she allegedly was keeping company with Spencer Dryden, the drummer-- but she
eventually hooked up with (and had a child by) rhythm guitarist and distinctly
kozmic songwriter Paul Kantner. Now she's married to somebody who used to do
lights on Starship tours and who helped her kick alcohol. I would recommend
keeping one of the albums mentioned above near to hand when contemplating
Grace Slick and the Great Society-- I think highly of _Baxter's_.

> I liked Bloomdidodoodoo's comment (which I won't be able to reproduce very
> well, I fear) that psychedelic music at its best reached out in all directions
> and used everything it could, followed all paths... well, how DID you say that
> anyway?  But I liked the comment because just yesterday I was wondering, "how
> exactly would I define 'psychedelic'" because I seem to be so obsessed with
the
> stuff recently, yet ... what does the word MEAN (when it comes to music)?

I think the term got applied to the music mostly because it happened at the
same time, and because the music was often used coincident with the chemicals.
I don't even remember any more what the dictionary definition was-- I keep
confusing it with "psychotomimetic"-- but didn't it have something to do with
the notion of "mind expansion?" I dunno if music can do that all by itself,
Hofstader's _Godel, Escher, Bach_ notwithstanding, I think you have to have
some kind of epiphany come along with it.

Also, precious little of the music around at the time was actually all that
good. The Airplane were a breed apart. Most so-called psychedelic music was
more like Blue Cheer, not worthy of the name.

> P.S. Bloomdingdong, are you sure that Prof. Toth at Brown isn't Lazlo?

That sounds right...
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