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

I'll admit I am maybe disproportionately upset about the Derrick May accusations, but that may just be because this sorta thing has finally come home to roost for me with an artist I really love. I dgaf about Kozelek, Burzum, Chris Brown, etc. I really enjoy the work of Cosby, Sonic Youth, R Kelly, Woody Allen, Gira, etc (not sure Miles Davis fits here, but him too), but I could live without them if I had to. Like if the doctor said "give up Snickers bars or be dead in six months," I'd give up Snickers bars. But I've spent untold hours listening to Derrick May. It'd be more like the doctor saying "give up coffee or be dead in six months." But I guess we all have our thresholds, right? I don't know, maybe because it's so recent, but this one really sucks for me

It may be instructive for people who still aren't getting the SY sitch to note that no one itt has said anything like 'I can't abide the creative work of adulterers!' It's a weirdly myopic truncation of the situation, it isn't being applied as a blanket judgment of artists across the board, and the thread topic is inherently subjective and not meant to be an imposition of values on anyone else itt.

I think people keep going back to Thurston because a) he was the second musician listed by name in the original post, and b) because his is very much a marginal case when put up against people like R Kelly, Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, no matter what your feelings are on the band or his personal life.

I definitely think it's unfair to lump Thurston in with actual abusers and the like, but I also have a bit of a disappointed/instinctive "bleurgh" reaction when my mates go see him or sign to his record label or hang out with him or whatever. I think it's more like when your parents split up and you find out your dad had an affair - no, it's not unpardonable, but you were personally invested in that relationship and dad totally fucked it up, the bastard!

But yeah, I think for people who didn't grow up with Kim & Thurston being Cool Mum & Dad, it's difficult to understand how anyone would care so much.

In a way, the thread topic is implicitly about the disconnect between internal and external manifestations of morality, so it only makes sense that it would veer too far in one direction (having an adverse reaction to an artist who cheated on their partner even though we all likely know and have forgiven someone in that situation) as it would in the other (continuing to enjoy the work of an artist who is an inarguably-monstruous human being).

Answering the thread question: generally I can still enjoy the works of someone that I encountered and enjoyed before I found out they were shitty (in whatever big or small way that rankles me).

The Smiths and the first couple of Morrissey solo singles are still fine (I enjoyed the 2004ish comeback singles a bit at the time, but he started talking more and more given the opportunity). I'd disregarded R Kelly for 15 years after not liking She's Got That Vibe, got drawn in by ILM enthusiasm circa Trapped In The Closet episodes being YSIed off Chicago radio, still find lots his 2005-2007 run of "featuring" singles thrilling if I hear them, but cut off listening completely once I bothered to read up on his court cases and the accounts of people who'd stopped working for him. I could still read and marvel at Brendan McCarthy's 1980s comics with Peter Milligan if I was in the mood, and love Mad Max Fury Road, but will not reread his Doctor Strange comic or Vic Fluro collab.

It's also generally easier to separate the artist when the art isn't a deliberate communication of their attitudes.

Wait, what the fug has Brendan McCarthy done?!

I definitely think it's unfair to lump Thurston in with actual abusers and the like, but I also have a bit of a disappointed/instinctive "bleurgh" reaction when my mates go see him or sign to his record label or hang out with him or whatever. I think it's more like when your parents split up and you find out your dad had an affair - no, it's not unpardonable, but you were personally invested in that relationship and dad totally fucked it up, the bastard!

― emil.y, Friday, September 25, 2020 4:06 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

OL, I assume this is what sic is referring to:

https://mindlessones.com/2013/11/09/flashback-to-fever-brendan-mccarthy-race-and-seeing-whats-in-front-of-your-face/

Hitchcock got weird and creepy toward actresses IRL late in his career, and women get treated weirdly and creepily more and more in his later films. It feels clammier to watch women being strangled in Frenzy than to see two specific characters suffering from the psychological obsession of the lead in Vertigo. But yr also more likely to rewatch the imperial period films because they're better, not just because you know the director was sending murdered toys of his leads to their daughters.

wish I shared this same ability to assign blame in the failed marriages of total strangers, it seems almost like a superpower

the thurston thing makes me think he's kind of a jerk and affects me to the extent that it makes me less interested in checking out any of his solo work, but on the other hand it doesn't really change my feelings about the work he did as a member of SY

successful marriage imo, they had decades together and made loads of great art during their partnership

The one that has hit me recently is Avi Buffalo. I really loved that first album in a way I've loved little else in the past decade and in a way that has pretty much ruled out continued listens, because I bought into the romance of it and now that's utterly sullied.

https://pitchfork.com/news/avi-buffalo-accused-of-rape-by-former-bandmate-music-pulled-by-sub-pop/

Sorry, that makes it sound like I'm the victim, not Rebecca Coleman, but you know what I mean.

Only similar case for me is Crystal Castles but the fact Alice Glass is the singer makes them not so hard to carry on listening to (not that I do very often).

FWIW, the SY sitch (and people's reactions to it) is a little more complex than simply 'OMG, can you believe a dude in a band cheated on his partner'.

Not by much imo

successful marriage imo, they had decades together and made loads of great art during their partnership

I'm probably a bad person for this thread, though, because I can't think of any instances where I am unable to separate the art from the artist.

Spirit Counsel was really good btw.

Lotta willful obtuseness goin on itt wrt the purview as stated in the thread title.

xposts

More like Marriage Counsel, amirite.

Anyway, I've talked about this so much elsewhere (in relation to metal, primarily) that I'd rather not shit up this thread with my Opinion, but I will say that explicitly white supremacist lyrics are a dealbreaker for me. Otherwise, I find it quite easy to distinguish between the two.

2xp

I responded to the question raised by the thread title!

explicitly white supremacist lyrics are a dealbreaker for me

But lyrics are part of the art, not the artist.

Sure, but they explicitly de-artify the art by using it as a vehicle for heinous propaganda.

Whenever that happens, the implication always seems to be: 'listen to what *I*, enlightened citizen X, have to say about this pressing political matter'.

Which isn't to say that the work of art vanishes in the process, it just becomes more difficult to separate the artist from their art than it might be otherwise.

I agree but what I mean is that being unable to listen to something because of the lyrics does not reflect an inability to separate the art from the artist. It is rejecting the art because of one aspect of the artwork itself.

Unless you mean that it makes you unable to listen to anything else by the artist, even if it is instrumental or has non-racist lyrics.

I don't listen to "One in a Million" but the racist lyrics on that song don't get in the way of listening to "Sweet Child o' Mine".

I see what you're saying, but I suppose I view that aspect of the artwork as the artist's non-artistic message, which is bound up with whoever the artist happens to be (as a public figure, at least).

2xp and no, it doesn't have a bearing on whether I'm able to listen to their other works.

Terrific stuff, Sund4r and pom. This is exactly what I alluded to earlier when I said that *I personally* would understand why anyone would just stop listening to an act if they made the political or agenda into their entire art. Am I able to say, "Hey these lyrics about hating Black people are just words in a song and this has a solid groove, so whatevs"? No, I'm not able to personally do that.

Sorry. Work has been busy today. Just wanted to pop back in with a few more things. . .

It may be instructive for people who still aren't getting the SY sitch to note that no one itt has said anything like 'I can't abide the creative work of adulterers!' It's a weirdly myopic truncation of the situation, it isn't being applied as a blanket judgment of artists across the board, and the thread topic is inherently subjective and not meant to be an imposition of values on anyone else itt.

― OrificeMax (Old Lunch), Friday, September 25, 2020 1:02 PM

Thank you for this. And I'd like to add that my initial post drew the comparison with Thurston and Miles because of the obvious contradiction in my thoughts about those two people. Miles was much more prolific and violent in his abuse than Thurston was (in his relatively harmless by comparison) cheating on his wife. And yet: I give Miles' music the pass — WHY? <-this was my whole thought on starting a topic like this. I don't have the answer, I just wantd to discuss with you fine folks in the hopes that maybe someone could relate. So, thank you all.

(also, idk why "adultery" it's not like that's a favorite vocabulary word or anything; it's just the word I used at that moment, no extra thought behind it)

(and no, I was not raised in an especially strict or religious family — but there was rampant infidelity on both sides with my parents in their various dealings)

And, finally:

Which fulltone is it? ;)

― 📺👁️ (peace, man), Friday, September 25, 2020 11:51 AM

lol the Supa Trem Jr. It's such a killer tremolo and that's an effect I use all the time. I wanted to be all badass when that stuff first came out and smash it with a sledgehammer. . . but dammit, that's a solid trem! Like I said, I know I could get a similar one from somebody else, but I've had it for about two years now and I just vibe with it, so it's hard to think of parting with it. Besides, I had an Earthquaker Devices sticker that was the perfect size to cover it up, so I think that's funny enough to merit its' keeping by itself lol.

Thanks for expanding on that, Austin, and apologies if I came across as aggressive (likewise to OL). I guess you could say that I've always taken 'Kill Yr. Idols' to heart, so I expect nothing from artists other than quality art – I'd almost invariably come out disappointed otherwise.

The nexus of the crisis and the origin of storms (Sund4r) at 5:56 25 Sep 20

I don't listen to "One in a Million" but the racist lyrics on that song don't get in the way of listening to "Sweet Child o' Mine".

Axl and the band did remove the song from the reissue box set so they agree apparently

I'd almost invariably come out disappointed otherwise.

I think I said something similar on another thread fairly recently in that I consider myself the worst kind of cynic: I'm not surprised by the negative outcome, but nonetheless allow myself to be disappointed by as if I were.

Never said I was smart.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have a bunch of these, on both sides, will write more later, good question and the answer is ultimately subjective IMO

I feel like the Reynolds/Press book "The Sex Revolts" gets into this territory a little bit altho it is primarily concerned w/ lyrical conduct/nattartor posing as opposed to IRL horrible behavior

*narrator

https://medium.com/@leahcallahansings/if-indie-rock-had-been-called-trust-fund-rock-i-never-would-have-been-fooled-into-thinking-b20694bfe045

that looks really good, thanks

No worries, pom! I've just been trying to help keep discussion itt on the road as much as I'm able. And yeah, after the rash of revelations in recent years, I just expect at this point to be disappointed by all public figures in one way or another.

Just to clarify, Sund4r (and others), if I'm reading a manifesto written by some Julius Evola-worshipping trve black metal dude and it contains explicitly antisemitic passages, as a general rule I'm not going to argue that it's hard for me to separate the author from his screed just because I only know (of) the former through the latter. In an artistic context (including a literary one), it's trickier insofar as the artwork is endowed with a life of its own and may thus speak for itself without necessarily pointing back to its 'creator' in the way a signed open letter published in a magazine does. Yet this does not preclude the possibility, for the artist, to embed overt political slogans into their work in order to deliberately muddy the waters.

I usually give artists the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge (more readily than most listeners, I think) that hateful lyrical material can often be attributed to an edgy theatrical persona. But if you're a notorious neo-nazi activist in your day-to-day life, chances are that you're including white supremacist discursive elements in your lyrics because you want your art to stand for your ideological beliefs. Granted, art is such that, even the most explicitly political lyrics are partly transformed by their deployment in an aesthetic context, but that only works up to a point since the artist may self-consciously choose to minimize the aesthetic dimension of their art for the sake of political sloganeering, thus aggressively testing the boundaries of what we conventionally deem to be the realm of 'art'. In such instances, it is the artist who does everything within their power to ensure that the artwork will not be separated from their ideology, in which case, yes, it becomes more difficult (albeit never impossible!) to simply say 'here is the work, on the one hand, and there is the artist, on the other'.

So if I'm listening to Burzum's 'Dunkelheit' (lyrics), it's fairly easy for me to disregard everything I know about the man's politics because neither the music nor the words need that context to make sense – the song can easily stand on its own, as an instance of Dark Neo-Romanticism or whatever. Conversely (and I've used this example in the past), when Peste Noire is literally covering the Action française's chant on an album that features lead singer Famine intoning 'Sieg heil' in addition to praise directed at 'the French race', I certainly don't feel the need to separate the art from the artist, and neither does he, apparently! The message, then, is tantamount to: 'I fucking dare you to distinguish between this music and the values we openly espouse as non-artistic, political agents!' There's no winning in such a scenario if you're exclusively committed to aesthetic autonomy (and I am almost all the time).

I think for me any expression of hate towards a particular group of people is one instance where I would most decidedly get off the bus with a given artist. I don't even care how much they 'mean' it: if they're putting it out in the world, others will rally around it.

Tbc if I'm listening to a metal record and I realize, through garbled shrieks, that explicit white supremacist bullshit is being disseminated, I don't feel the need to double-check whether the band really is made up of 14 worders or not. But if you're raging at Jesus and his followers (also counts as hateful lyrical material, lest we forget), it's safe to assume we're in the presence of a hammy act.

One last thing. When I speak of the importance of giving artists the benefit of the doubt, I'm thinking of cases such as the (now totally stale) controversy surrounding the lyrics to Slayer's 'Angel of Death', which basically boils down to: 'they wrote a song from the perspective of a nazi, ergo they are nazis themselves'.

uhh doesn't sound like u wanna give Crass' "Reality Asylum" the benefit of the doubt there in yr previous post.

one barometer I use with this stuff is the useful punching up vs. punching down distinction. I have lots of time for "fuck Christianity" sentiments, but p much zero tolerance for e.g. anti-semitic "jokes" or sexism in my music.

see also: hell yes to Sun City Girls "Kill The Klansmen"

now that I think abt it, SCG are a good example of an artist where I choose to separate their sometimes pretty explicit anti-semitism from their often amazing music

Nico pretty much gets a pass doesn't she