Instances where you can't separate the art from the artist. vs. instances where you can.

Brand New. (who, tbh, I still listen to, but only the latter-day albums - the really emo stuff is unbearable for me now)

― get a mop and a bucket for this Well Argued Prose (Simon H.), Saturday, September 26, 2020 6:13 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

what really ruined the whole thing for me was relistening to “jesus”

xp lol

Vikernes no longer describes himself as a nazi, he's just an Odinist now. Phew, crisis averted!

Anyway, I've also said this elsewhere but: I would never purchase Burzum merch, let alone wear any. And while I do still listen to his stuff (including his later albums, which mostly suck), I neither buy nor stream anything by him.

i mean obv jesse lacey’s actions ruined the whole thing for me, but that successfully destroyed the idea i’d be able to return to their music, even the songs i loved the most (“1996”) with any kind of distance

I'm not sure I would be still be mad at Moore for cheating on Gordon even if I were their friend.

I find De Sade interesting because after all the conversations about whether to ban his work had finished, this thread's conversation never really came up. Everyone knows going in that he's a monster and that seems to be fairly consistent with his work.

I would have thought Charles Manson would be similar but I don't know if his music was violent. Of course he is nearer to us in time and some people who should seem to know better had a weird idolization of him.

if I was listening to someone's record and they were outside murdering someone, I'd let the album play until the murder was complete, to give them the chance to stop murdering

now, what about musicians who have actually killed people with their music

I mean, 'Enter Sandman' was repurposed as a torture device at Guantanamo Bay.

I'm not sure I would be still be mad at Moore for cheating on Gordon even if I were their friend.

I think it works the opposite way, no? If you’re someone’s friend, you have something invested in working through the fact that they may have been a jerk, and continuing the (actual) relationship.

If your only relationship with an artist is their music, and you get a negative association whenever you think about listening to it (for whatever reason at all), it’s easy to just put on something else.

When a friend bores me, I put on something else.

But why would an artist's infidelity and breakup give you a negative association if your only relationship with them is with their music? To feel that way, you'd have to have something invested in them as people, even if the relationship is just in your head (which it p much definitely would be).

re: brand new i also found it impossible to go back to them after everything came out about jesse's actions. when there's so much lyrical self-loathing in his work but you find out he's actually done monstrous things that really completely changes the context

i still wouldn't have wanted to go back after those revelations even if that wasn't part of their music but it does just make it feel worse to hear again if that makes any sense

Manson's music sucks ass just private press hippie garbage

But why would an artist's infidelity and breakup give you a negative association if your only relationship with them is with their music?

Old Lunch and others have given some reasons!

Beyond that, I don’t think the reasons really matter. IMO, no one needs to justify listening to Chuck Berry or Phil Spector or whoever (well, I dunno about Charles Manson...); but, also, no one needs to justify saying “Ehhhhh...” when it comes to an artist who once licked a donut, or said something they didn’t like in an interview once, etc.

I feel like an this point I've read at least a book's worth of post about people rationale for listening listening to Burzum or not. remember being pretty blown away when I got curious and was like THIS is what people tie themselves in knots about?

This x1000. Even judged by the standards of black metal, Burzum music is...not good.

Any, uh, Lostprophets (ex-)fans here? I've never heard their music and I sure as hell won't be checking it out now (in part because I don't care for nu metal/emo to begin with), but I do wonder how the fanbase reacted upon finding out.

Even judged by the standards of black metal

Hey, at least you're not camouflaging your bias.

Old Lunch and others have given some reasons!

They are all reasons that involve some kind of projected investment in the artist as a person.

which is fair enough but I think it's equally fair in that case for me to make a comparison of how I imagine I'd feel if I had an actual personal connection to the artist.

I never really got into Burzum's music either but I do love a lot of the music on Transilvanian Hunger, which has some deplorable lyrical messages.

Fenriz and Nocturno Culto have since issued an official apology, which helps (a bit).

Yeah, probably also that the lyrics are screamed unintelligibly in a language I don't speak

That too. Betcha BM lyrics would be significantly less edgy on average if clean singing were the norm.

For all I know, they're actually singing the words to "Don't Stop Believin'" and just writing some shit in the printed 'lyrics'.

I believe it.

Don't stop.

Hold on to that [unintelligible]

I think it's equally fair in that case for me to make a comparison of how I imagine I'd feel if I had an actual personal connection to the artist.

It’s totally fair of you to do that—I apologize if I somehow implied it wasn’t.

I don’t find it at all bizarre that ppl have “investments” in who artists are, as people—it just seems like human nature—but I guess not everyone does this, which is fine, but surely folks who don’t can’t understand why others do.

*can understand

I saw White Riot last night, the documentary on Rock Against Racism. Pretty good--less music than I was hoping for.

One of the things that prompted RAR was Eric Clapton's comments about immigration in '78--I knew about those, if not the Enoch Powell connection. (Not sure if even knew about Powell before last night.) I was never much of a fan of Clapton on his own, so there was nothing there for me to turn my back on. Irrational or not, I remain a big Cream fan; in my mind, there's Cream and there's Clapton, and there's no interference there.

Maybe that has something to do with Cream pre-dating his comments by years, because what I didn't know was that Rod Stewart said almost exactly the same thing. It turns up in the film briefly, and took me a couple of minutes to confirm on the internet, to find the quote independent of the film--there's not a lot out there, the comment seems to have mostly been lost to history.

"I think Enoch Powell is the man", proclaimed Rod Stewart. "I’m all for him. This country is overcrowded. The immigrants should be sent home."

That's going to be a lot trickier for me. I hold the Rod Stewart of his first four albums (up to '72) in such high regard; I almost view early Rod Stewart as some world that belongs solely to me. His comment dates to 1970. I'll leave my reaction for the next time I hear "You Wear It Well" or "Gasoline Alley" on the radio. The experience will be the same as ever, or it'll be different. I'll know when it happens.

The film also reminded me of Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious's penchant for swastikas (contrasted with some inspiring words from Lydon/Rotten in support of RAR). Vicious--there's a real person in there somewhere, the guy who was Lydon's friend--has probably been abstracted right out the picture for a lot of people with regards to the Sex Pistols' music, a strange footnote after-the-fact, so I don't know that he's a big problem. Siouxsie Sioux seems to have a dedicated fanbase on ILM, and I recently listed "Hong Kong Garden" on a list of my favourite movie-music moments (Marie Antoinette). Does she get a situational pass (young, shock value)? I'm not saying she should, I'm legitimately asking.

there was a lot of discussion abt early punks and swastikas on the Joy Division thread at some point, I'm pretty sure Siouxsie came up as well. iirc the general consensus was that it was stupid but since she never doubled down or anything it was mostly written off as a dumb kid thing.

so often, it's how somebody reacts to an initial accusation that influences how I feel about this stuff. Like the way Michael Gira reacted to Larkin Grimm was so awful that I haven't listened to any Swans music since, and sold all the more recent stuff.

I can't listen to Gira any more. The punk stuff including Siouxsie is also massively disingenuous and a lie

The two musical highlights of the film were a minute of X-Ray Spex opening up the climactic RAR festival with "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!"--god, that voice--and Jimmy Pursey joining the Clash for "White Riot." The Clash wanted him up there; Sham 69's fanatical fanbase was, to put it mildly, not in sync with RAR and the parallel anti-Nazi movement. I don't know if he explicitly disowned such fans--I would hope--but joining in there was a clear message (and the performance was great).

Siouxsie has since expressed serious regret about the swastikas, it was just a provocative thing and not reflecting any actual support for nazis.

Syd of course didn't get a chance to do the same, Johnny Rotten always speaks very fondly of him as a fucked up kid who was used by everyone, feel like that really isn't the whole story though

The film also reminded me of Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious's penchant for swastikas (contrasted with some inspiring words from Lydon/Rotten in support of RAR). Vicious--there's a real person in there somewhere, the guy who was Lydon's friend--has probably been abstracted right out the picture for a lot of people with regards to the Sex Pistols' music, a strange footnote after-the-fact, so I don't know that he's a big problem

Rotten wore a swastika as well.

There you go.

Johnny Rotten, 1978 (quoted in the film): “I despise them,” the singer said then of Powell and his National Front. “No one should have the right to tell anyone they can't live here because of the color of their skin or their religion...How could anyone vote for something so ridiculously inhumane?”

John Lydon, 2016: “The working class have spoke and I’m one of them and I’m with them,” Rotten said, adding of Trump: “There’s many, many problems with him as a human being but he’s not (racist) and there just might be a chance something good will come out of this situation because he terrifies politicians...This is joy to behold...Dare I say (Trump could be) a possible friend.” Rotten went on to say that the “left-wing media in America are trying to smear (Trump) as a racist, and that’s not true.”

http://theoutline.com/post/1315/johnny-rotten-would-hate-john-lydon?zd=1&zi=gzwueypo

Exhausting.

whatever was good about Lydon in the 70s had completely curdled by the end of the 90s, no point asking him about anything now.

Yeah--he's been such a cartoon for such a long time that the forcefulness and clarity of the quote from '78 caught me off guard last night.

If Miles music had lyrics, and they were about how much he respects women and would never beat them up it might be tougher to listen to him in 2020.

He did make an album called Bitches Brew (Betty's idea, apparently).

The bitches, they’re brewing.

I'm surprised that quote of Rod Stewart's never got the traction the Clapton statements did. I'd never once heard about that.

I didn’t know this stuff about Miles... don’t think it was mentioned in his autobiography (lol).

The artists I come back to the most---Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Bowie, Prince, for instance---don't inhabit any singular persona as artists, and *that's* what I can't separate from those artists.

Re Rotten: https://youtu.be/CwpyZ48MawQ?t=66

I didn't know that about Stewart either btw.

i haven't listened to gira or swans since it came out, despite really loving the two shows i got to see before i found out. gira's singing and subject matter is already very dark and psychologically aggressive and vulnerable and needy in some ways - to have all that wrapped up in grimm's story is just too much to handle. also, the fact that from her description, it sounds like she wasn't the only one.

any nico listeners here? i used to be, but fuck her

He probably wishes he knew all he knows now
When he was younger.

xp

The only place I’ve heard the bad Prince stuff is here on ILM. I don’t think it’s been broadly discussed at large?