FYI: Truth Attack - All Genres Of Music That Have Ever Existed Contain Awesome Music In Them, And If You Write Off A Whole Genre Of Music You Are Being Closeminded And Dumb

if country music fans of the 1930s heard kenny chesney, they might not think he was country music

Many country fans today do not consider him country.

I have never heard any Kenny Chesney so I have no idea if there's any metal bands with vocalists like him. Chuck might though.

I'm saying that genre is not based in any objective measurement system, so the definition is up for grabs

every piece of music is an assertion

some pieces reassert what is already known, some (purposefully or not) redefine the parameters of what is known

this makes genre a measuring stick with unknown boundries - i.e. a contradiction in terms

xpost to libcrypt

critics play a part in this, but so do audiences, industry types, musicians, others

i think the crucial distinction here is between "not liking" a genre and thinking that, in fact, the genre has no redeeming value. taking the painting example above, it's like people who think, e.g., that all abstract art is actually worthless, that all appreciation of it is the product of people wanting to seem sophisticated, and that the entire structure of criticism built on it is essentially a conspiratorial and deliberate fraud. there are still people who think that, and there are people who think something similar about hip-hop, or free jazz. which is a different thing than saying "i don't like free jazz". "i don't like" is a statement of personal preference; "free jazz is terrible" is a statement about the actual value of the thing. personal preferences are entirely defensible as personal preferences. statements of absolute value are not defensible, which is why it drives people crazy when geir frames his personal preferences as empirical universal truths. (although truth be told, anyone who writes about art is likely to blur those boundaries sometimes. because part of critical appreciation or derogation is often the assertion that something is great or terrible. that's usually understood to mean "i think this thing is good or terrible," but the "i think" part is often left out.)

My position, regardless of my personal subjective opinions on specific performers, is that anyone who is a successful musician has become one because of the three criteria I stated (delete where necessary for people who only sing/rap or people who only play instruments) and that anyone who has a sustained career in music has mastered them.

― Pipe Wrench Fight (HI DERE), Monday, October 20, 2008 5:09 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

so in that case what damage has punk actually done?

also, this is not to say classification systems are of no worth - they are

just realize their inherent limitations before beginning yr personal pop/rock/jazz jihad

continued xpost to libcrypt

i also think "punks couldn't play for shit" is way overstated usually...i mean...steve jones could play, glen matlock could play...the ramones, in their way, were a whup-ass band...then by 78 or 79 most of the punks were doing post punk or had gotten way more polished...even the US hardcore dudes ended up being chopsy and metal-ish after awhile.

(all this is basically art criticism 101, right? but it's also the eternal insoluble conundrum.)

xpost: hell johnny ramone was a great rhythm guitarist. you can only think he sucked if you don't think rhythm guitar is important or worthwhile.

All threads like this suck.

I like how Geir quietly bowed out of this thread when faced with the irreducible truth that his opinion isn't any more correct than, say, ethan's, and couldn't or wouldn't try to explain why it was.

xpost, yeah...

all this is basically art criticism 101, right?

I dunno, most beginning art criticism is still taught "this is the work of the A movement, they did X, here is the work of the B movement, they did Y" without questioning the fundamental assumptions underlying the concept of "movements"

hopefully you would cover the problem of genre somewhere during yr undergrad career however

lol @ at this being a 2008 (not 2001) thread <3 <3 <3

i also think "punks couldn't play for shit" is way overstated usually...

It is more about ideology than about reality, really.

But what the ideology has caused is it paved the way for boy/girl band acts that could neither play nor sing.

Other than that, everything I say on ILM is of course subjective, and there is no way I am pretending otherwise. But so is everything else here too.

i figured he bowed out of the thread to go buy a copy of
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8f/BigDaddyKane-LongLiveTheKane.jpg

All threads like this suck.

― M.V., Monday, October 20, 2008 1:45 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

All Genres Of Threads That Have Ever Existed Contain Awesome Posts In Them, And If You Write Off A Whole Genre Of Threads You Are Being Closeminded And Dumb

geir, these things you said:

But The Beatles were never the one and only dominant influence on most music like they were until the mid 70s.

Some people have gotten way too fixated about dancing and rhythm. And disco started it.

James Brown originally wasn't all that popular.

but boy/girl bands were pretty unthinkable in a time where you had to be a musical wiz way above average to even get a recording contract.

...aren't "subjective", they're wrong. factually wrong.

Well, if you look at James Brown's performance in the UK singles chart (which in Europe is just as important and influential as the Billboard one), it looks like this:
25 James Brown & The Famous Flames Papa's Got A Brand New Bag Sep 1965 Notes
29 James Brown & The Famous Flames I Got You Feb 1966
13 James Brown & The Famous Flames It's A Man's Man's Man's World Jun 1966
32 James Brown Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine Oct 1970
22 James Brown Get Up Offa That Thing Sep 1976
36 James Brown Body Heat Jan 1977
39 James Brown Rapp Payback (Where Iz Moses?) Jan 1981
5 James Brown Living In America Jan 1986
12 James Brown The Payback Mix Apr 1988
31 James Brown featuring Full Force I'm Real Jun 1988
40 James Brown Funk On Ah Roll

Thus, no Top 20 hits until 1986, when he hit #5 with a song written by Dan Hartman, which was probably the most melodic thing he ever recorded.

OK, I overlooked that "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" hit #13 (again, one of his more melodic moments)

who cares about the UK

lol @ at this being a 2008 (not 2001) thread <3 <3 <3

― Jordan, Monday, October 20, 2008 5:51 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like i said i knew it was pretty challopsy to begin with, but jesus last week was a "why is X genre so maligned"-a-thon all week

what is the country song I heard in the last year that sounded like a rap song? (at least the vocal delivery)

an american musician had a top forty presence on the UK charts spanning more than two decades? how unpopular he must have been!

You know what, guys? When this never-changing Geir in which we live in makes you give up and cry -- say live and let die.

lol geir talking like james brown was as popular as swamp dogg or some shit

James Brown being hugely popular in America does not count for shit in Geir's universe, evidently

x-post

i also think "punks couldn't play for shit" is way overstated usually...i mean...steve jones could play, glen matlock could play...the ramones, in their way, were a whup-ass band...then by 78 or 79 most of the punks were doing post punk or had gotten way more polished...even the US hardcore dudes ended up being chopsy and metal-ish after awhile.

If you look at what I wrote, I said that punk made people who thought they couldn't play think they were just as good as the guys who were successful at it, who could play. The problem, IMO, wasn't so much the original bands as it was the less talented people imitating them.

so in that case what damage has punk actually done?

I think punk is partially responsible for the ongoing denigration and devaluation of the singer in popular music.

i also think "punks couldn't play for shit" is way overstated usually

Totally agree with this

but hasn't american idol taken the Cult of the Amateur and completely rewritten it the other way?

(aside from all the kids with biz failures under their belts that turn up as contestants...)

xp

OK missed Dan's post there and there's some validity to that but this is true of almost any genre isn't it? Especially ones that have a certain DIY element to the creation of the music... like grime made on Playstations and Ableton laptop DJ types with no skill for beatmatching are two recent developments that spring to mind

I think punk is partially responsible for the ongoing denigration and devaluation of the singer in popular music.

lol this is some serious serious bullshit

Either say how or fuck off.

I think punk is partially responsible for the ongoing denigration and devaluation of the singer in popular music.

I don't think punk took the focus off singing talent. punk just codified and made explicit an attitude that was already there. punk was never popular enough to force a seachange in the mass audience's attitude about singers. it was just another symptom of a preexisting trend in popular music.

let's talk about hank williams, billie holiday, elvis, bob dylan, neil young; artists who technically should not have been popular but due to their force of talent redefined what "a good singer" does. every superstar who changed the game without adhering to the rulebook took a chink out of the "first, you need talent" argument.

how about ASCAP? when they doubled the performance royalties on "popular" music in 1940, radio broadcasters balked, banned ASCAP music, and turned to regional music styles like "race" and "hillbilly" music that ASCAP hadn't bothered to represent. and america found out, hey, that stuff is pretty good! and you don't have to be super-talented to make it work.

american democratization of the form? all music as folk music? that's the larger backdrop here, with punk being one obvious byproduct.

* almost every single punk band was centered around a lead singer who served as the de facto focus and frontperson of the band
* i'm assuming your problem with punk is that it made it ok for singers to not sing pretty, which isn't even true because folk had already done that in the '60s and rock music had already done that in the '50s and jazz had already done that in the '40s etc etc which leads me to:
* you're basically spouting the same historical revisionist bullshit that every generation cites for the music of the generation before it except for some reason you're using against something that happened 30 years ago
* even if it was true that "punk is partially responsible for the ongoing denigration and devaluation of the singer in popular music" (which it isn't), how would this be a bad thing?

let's talk about hank williams, billie holiday, elvis, bob dylan, neil young; artists who technically should not have been popular but due to their force of talent redefined what "a good singer" does. every superstar who changed the game without adhering to the rulebook took a chink out of the "first, you need talent" argument.

racist

"chinese person" is the preferred term

Not totally sure where all this popular music that devalues the singer is at.

if anything, the prog music that came before punk was responsible for the ongoing denigration and devaluation of the singer in popular music, because the emphasis was on long instrumental sections over vocals

yay ilx

poor greg lake

lol xp

punk's easy to blame because "I don't need no fookin' talent!" is built into the confrontational stance

however this statement is poor logic: punk doesn't require talent, ergo, all punks are talentless

I agree with this statement: "punk explicitly devalued singing talent"

not so much this one: "punk caused singing talent to be devalued among the general population"

Other than the R&B chart (which doesn't count), James Brown didn't top the Billboard list until "Living In America" either. "Living In America" is actually a song I like, but it is obviously not representative of his style.

maybe agree with this one: "punk caused singing talent to be devalued among rock critics"

why doesn't the R&B chart count, geir

Other than the R&B chart (which doesn't count)
Other than the R&B chart (which doesn't count)
Other than the R&B chart (which doesn't count)
Other than the R&B chart (which doesn't count)
Other than the R&B chart (which doesn't count)
Other than the R&B chart (which doesn't count)
Other than the R&B chart (which doesn't count)

You should all learn to read and infer.

There has been an ongoing devaluation of the role of the singer as a musician in most forms of popular music for the past 50 years; punk is one part of a larger picture. It's not just about "singing pretty" and it's not the only reason; it's about the escalation of image and marketing as primary components of the musical landscape.

You run across people who are massively talented in traditional or non-traditional ways who don't make it all the time, and most of the reason why is because they either didn't catch the right break or they didn't have the right look. Add into this the ongoing culture of instrumentalists who consider themselves to be "real" musicians as opposed to singers, something that is prevalent across genres, and also the entire cult of the songwriter (aka the non-teenpop sections of ILM for a good example), and you'll see strong pattern suggesting that in modern society the singer's main function is to be the figurehead and when you have a band where the singer can't play that part, the band's frontman suddenly becomes someone else entirely (hi dere Fall Out Boy).

why doesn't the R&B chart count, geir

Because it is a specialist chart. No wonder James Brown had no competition from The Beatles on the R&B chart, eh?

so R&B charts do not reflect popularity?

Some good chin-scratching here, but no-one has yet said what awesome music was spawned by the following genres:
* crusty
* grebo
* funk-rock
* that early 90s fad for soulless covers, reasonably faithful to the original but with added drum machine
* McCartney-esque melodic pop