From: sfwhite@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Stephen F. White)
Subject: Re: Q
Organization: The Justified Ancients of MuMu
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 19:54:38 GMT

In article <1993Jan20.125237.14251@gssec.bt.co.uk> squigg@gssec.bt.co.uk
(Stephen Quigg) writes:

> Take , for instance , funk . Now , I was but a toddler when this stuff
> was at it's best (which I consider to be about '71 - '74) , but nowadays I
> really like it

yeah, you and half the rest of the western hemisphere.  :)  "gee, i just
'discovered' funk along with all these other house and rap types, it's
greeeat."  i imagine there's some quigg-like funk fan somewhere going
"BUT I ALWAYS THOUGHT FUNK WAS GREAT AND YOU'RE ALL JUST WANKERS AND
BANDWAGON-JUMPERS AND I WAS HERE FIRST SO BUGGER OFF".

> What I meant was that popular music is usually written to be just that,
> ie. popular , and by this defintion , it immediatley falls down because it was
> not written from the soul of the writer to appeal to like minded people.

a lot of people write music with the intent of getting on the charts (eg.,
richard marx, rick astley, kylie, etc).  a lot of people don't (eg., VU, MBM,
PE, etc).  a lot of people write music with the intent of getting on the
charts, and don't.  some people write music for themselves which gets on the
charts, much to their abject horror (eg., nirvana).

[ whether bands like, say, def leppard are actually writing their puerile
and adolescent songs "from the heart", i don't know whether you or I can
actually say.  personally, i have absolutely no desire to know what's in their
hearts. it must be awfully strange and somewhat embarassing to be pushing 40
and find your songs are STILL appealing to the same sort of 16-year-old
adolescent male morons that it appealed to when you started. ]

> Popular music can indeed be good , but it's the exception , not the rule.

i agree with ya here.

> The sort of music
> (generally) that I've went through was mostly anti-popular music (for example
> mostly independant recording artists , such as (from years ago) My Bloody
> Valentine ,Primal Scream ,Sonic Youth , The Jesus and Mary Chain, Spacemen 3),
> all of which was as far from the mainstream as I could get

that's not particularly far from the mainstream.  (i own records by all of the
above, so it can't be that far :)  i would consider non, or the hafler trio
pretty far from the mainstream.  the abandonment of recognizable melody, tempo
or chord structure, now *that's* pretty far out there.  not that i can
stand to listen to them for very long :)

as far as i'm concerned, NOT listening to music because it's popular is as
bad as ONLY listening to music BECAUSE it's popular.

if a primal scream or MBV song gets on the charts, will you still listen to
them?  i will.  "shadow of a doubt" and "slow" and "higher than the sun" will
continue to be thunderously incredible tracks no matter who is playing what on
the radio. (i couldn't care less; i rarely listen to the radio).

despite the fact that, in some ways, techno *is* the new alternative (most
so-called "alternative" clubs in this town won't even play it), i must say
that i also empathize a bit with mr. quigg.  i hit my limits sometimes
with techno.  sometimes all the hyped up speed and in-your-face samples leave
me cold.  i find that the songs that really continue to move me are lower
bpm's, have lyrics, etc: primal scream, curve, the orb, etc.  however, just to
prove that i'm NOT becoming an old and crusty house purist, i will state that
when i hear "digeridoo" and "the horn track" and "papua new guinea" kick, they
continue to blow my mind.  :)

-- sfw