Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (03/19/87)
Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu Sorry you've been waiting with bated breath, Bill, since IED's answer will be somewhat anti-climactic: basically he concedes your points. Yes, he HAS mellowed out lately! Still, so as not to disappoint you completely, he will argue about a couple of your specifics. First, he is happy to make the qualification you ask of him: certainly the "underground" music to which he refers is only that proportion of it with which he is personally familiar. Just as you feel competent to generalize unfavourably about American mainstream music based only on those musicians With whose work you are familiar, IED felt that he had investigated enough of America's current underground music to have an opinion about it. But perhaps he was a bit too hasty, since he only knows the music of a couple of the artists you mention; and he would be very interested in hearing a few samples of each of the ones you mention. In fact, he wonders whether you would be willing to fill a cassette with representative tracks for him, providing he sent you a blank and an SASE. Seriously. IED, although skeptical, still retains an open mind and a healthy curiosity. >...vocal control and range of color of Diamanda Galas show attention to >detail that few people can miss. Since Galas and Sonic Youth are the only ones you mention with whom IED is familiar, he responds to the above remark. You've loaded your description of Galas's music so that anyone who might happen to reject your praise of her talents is branded as one of the benighted, insensitive few. (Sort of an old IED tactic, wouldn't you say?) But that's beside the point. Without disagreeing that her vocal control and "range of color" are impressive, it's not clear to this listener that her vocal expressiveness is a result of any exceptional degree of "attention to detail". Such a term (in IED's view, of course) implies care, thought, reflection, intense planning, and above all a restriction of improvision and spur-of-the-moment creativity, or at least a constant reign on such improvisation. Although there is some planning of certain basic parts of Galas's music, it is by no means all the product of the kind of careful preparation which IED, at least, has in mind. In fact, a great deal of Galas's work strikes him as only very slightly prepared, even to the extent that much of her vocal touches seem to have occurred as much by chance as by real intention. >And when No Trend thrashes in 5/4 time, >Fear rolls into a tight jam in 7/4 time, or D. Boon of the Minutemen >sings his compressed, Burroughsian lyrics over twisted guitar lines, >it's obvious that this music has been carefully thought out and worked >over. Maybe the underground music IED is familiar with is mostly slipshod, >but many of my favorites sure aren't. We must listen to different >undergrounds or something. There is so much underground music that it is very unlikely any two listeners will be familiar with all of the same stuff. IED is confident he could name as many underground musicians with whom you are unfamiliar as vice versa; nevertheless, he would love to hear some of the stuff you hold in high regard. On the other hand, IED isn't impressed by a band's ability to thrash away in unusual time signatures. That's a very easy trick to learn, and doesn't in itself signify any great attention to detail; although he'll admit it's a start. As to your long paragraph about "packaging", this was all a misunderstanding caused by IED's misleading metaphor to "what's under the hood." He didn't mean to refer to packaging at all; only to the production and presentation of the music itself. Sorry, he'll choose his analogies more carefully next time. Anyway, for the record, IED would never have said Sigue Sigue Sputnik had "sophisticated" packaging. Elaborate, maybe, but excessively crass and stupid. >>The other side of the coin -- the mainstream American popular >>music of our time -- tends to be horribly conventional, emotionally >>empty or (worse) false, and enslaved by rigid conventions of genre. >Agreed, but that's not where the most interesting American music is >these days. That sounds like as much of a generalization as IED's remarks about underground music. Personally, he thinks there's still a lot of creative work being done in black dance music, although most of it is unfortunately very banal in most respects other than rhythm and production. >Somehow this is strangely reminiscent of the Mike Krantz affair last >year, which introduced the infamous argument "I've only heard a small >amount of non-mainstream music but I think it sucks so it does". Wait a minute. IED was trying to make it clear that he didn't want to conclude that "it does"; only that he personally hasn't found much to interest him -- yet. Could he amend your statement as follows? "IED has heard quite a lot of 'non-mainstream music', but not very much recent American non-mainstream music. What he has heard of the American stuff doesn't seem to have been done with much care or attention to detail. But he doesn't think it 'sucks'; and he certainly wouldn't say that just because he 'thinks' something, it's an unequivocal fact. And frankly, if he weren't so spaced out right now, he would probably be a little annoyed that people keep ascribing such close-mindedness to him unfairly." >Among the other vendors was one InterGalactic Garage, which I am happy >to report, is far from being a KT-paraphenalia-only shop (think about >it, can anyone (besides Kate herself, that is) really hope to make a >living selling only posters and trinkets? Not that anyone strongly >implied this...) and in fact, seems to carry quite some variety of odds >and ends relating to other, lesser artists (snicker). > >-- dave Right. Actually, IED only said I.G. "specialized" in KT, not that he didn't sell anything else. Actually, Allan and Maura have been sending out catalogues of alot of other stuff, too; but IED resists it. And Kate couldn't make a living off of selling only posters and trinkets, either: at the 1985 convention she paid for the production of all of the posters and shirts on sale herself, and then donated all of the money the fans paid for the merchandise to Band-Aid. At the 1986 convention she again subsidized all of the production costs, and then gave away all of the t-shirts and posters free. All in all she lost more than ten thousand pounds on those two conventions. >The IED's idea of "detail" in music is merely some little English rich brat >leaving pseudo-deep backwards messages in her pretentious, schlocky, synthy >compositions. > >-- Hofmann That's right, Hof. That IS one good example of what IED thinks of as "detail": "pseudo-deep backwards messages in pretentious, schlocky, synthy compositions." You got it. We understand each other! -- Andreellanellan