rlr (05/09/82)
IN RESPONSE TO MHTSA!BSO'S RESPONSE: You will find that I included Close to the Edge as #5 on my fave album list. Yes, I still listen to it, though given my newfound musical direction, it often takes a great deal of outside urging before I'll put it on. But C to the E was indeed progressive in 1972, and still stands up as such. In my ongoing discussion w/stolaf!knight, I explain that musical genres often go through phases, something like early experimentation, development, apex, redundancy/downfall/whatever ... Close to the Edge was really the apex of this sort of music (technoflash with an emphasis, in this case, on flashy uses of sound color as well as showing off). I tend to enjoy the period in a genre from the late early exper/dev (?) up to the apex. By the time the apex has arrived, it is all too easy (electropop has arrived at this point by now, and only a few weeks ago I said it was still developing----that's progress). Virtually everything this genre has produced since 1975 (I give a little leeway) has been pure REHASH!!! When that happens, it's time to blaze new trails somewhere else. Stravinsky changed styles every ten years, not for its own sake, but because when all your energy and innovation has been spent in one area, you move on to another less familiar one and start again, experimenting and developing. Really great music comes out of such experimental/developmental periods. Eno, Bowie, the Beatles, all have grown and changed their styles drastically, unafraid of venturing into unfamiliar territory. Plodding about like a hippo on well-worn familiar ground only leads to redundant boring work. Rich Rosen pyuxjj!rlr (Yep, you heard it here first. Electropop, proclaimed here only weeks ago as the savior of modern music, has reached a pinnacle and begun its descent into mediocrity. In these modern times, the length of time between early experimentation and redundancy is much shorter, thanx to modern inventions like the video game, the home computer, and the cuisinart. A review of a concert by the Human (?-not to me) League when I return will shed light on my new insight. NOTE: This does not make me a born-again ELP fan.)
rlr (05/09/82)
After listening to Asia and others of the new breed, I wonder what THEY know about rock n' roll themselves!!!!! But you are wrong about it not having a chance a the marketplace: Asia has been in the top ten album list for weeks now. Which only goes to show something about the American public. (Another thing about the American public---now that electropop is well on its way to entering the "it's all too easy" downfall period of its development, NOW the American public is really catching on----only to the crap, and always too late---jeeez!)