IDM Mailing Archive

From: "Aran M. Parillo" <aran@hyperreal.org>

quoted 3 lines As I never traded with him, the only instance of his misdoings

>As I never traded with him, the only instance of his misdoings >I can attest to was his forwarding a ficticious email conversation >between he and another listmember.

the email was not a fiction, but a FACT - so eat humble pie MF i was the other person, i don't have any handle on gil's business exploits but as one who was at the recieving end of a public witch hunt after i had lost my home, record collection, income, business & nearly my family and couldnt send out a few lousy records i can empathize.. in my 2 1/2 years on this list Gil has been one of the handful of sane minds in an ocean of insular- childish bullshit concerned with such irrelevant peripherals such as limited editions, label worship and one-upmanship IDM is an instutional organization of ignorance IDM is now the home of the passive consumer, more concerned with the cosmetic value of the finished artifact than understanding the *true* price being payed by the artist gifted with a creative mind IDM is dead UNSUBSCRIBE my final words on IDM & to quote minor threat "at least im fucking trying..WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?" sm

Stuart sadly writes:

quoted 5 lines I was the other person, I don't have any handle on Gil's business

> I was the other person, I don't have any handle on Gil's business > exploits but as one who was at the recieving end of a public witch > hunt after I had lost my home, record collection, income, business > & nearly my family and couldn't send out a few lousy records I can > empathize..

Perhaps one shouldn't engage in record trading in the midst of personal crises?

quoted 4 lines In my 2 1/2 years on this list Gil has been one of the handful of

> In my 2 1/2 years on this list Gil has been one of the handful of > sane minds in an ocean of insular-childish bullshit concerned > with such irrelevant peripherals such as limited editions, label > worship and one-upmanship

Oh, and like Gil's rants about Luke Slater & NovaMute and his pathetic "mirror" rant before New Years' weren't "childish bullshit"? The "mirror" rant in particular was all about "label worship and one-upmanship" if you ask me ... "you pathetic IDM'ers are ignorant scum because you still talk about Autechre et al. while you ignore Mego and A-Musik etc." ... spare me ... like someone else said, if IDM'ers suddenly started buying Mego and A-Musik releases then Gil would be back in a while going "You pathetic IDM'ers are ignorant scum because you still talk about Mego and A-Musik while you ignore Plug Research and Schematic etc." or somesuch bullshit ... it's all the fucking same mate

quoted 5 lines IDM is an institutional organization of ignorance

> IDM is an institutional organization of ignorance > > IDM is now the home of the passive consumer, more concerned with > the cosmetic value of the finished artifact than understanding > the *true* price being payed [sic] by the artist gifted with a creative mind

Can you translate that into plain English please? :-) Look, I'll do some ranting myself [warning ... long ... skip now or die ...]: <rant> Anyone that's been on a world-wide mailing list for 2 1/2 years should DAMN well know by now that the list will most often resemble the Least Common Denominator of the experiences of the group. How easy is it for someone living in East Buttfuck Iowa (apologies to Kent (-: ) or South Africa (Iain? Irene?) to get ahold of this stuff in their local shops? "Use mail order!" you cry ... yeah, right. Maybe if CD's and vinyl cost a quid/US $2 a pop I'd use mail order and try out that Mego or this A-Musik ... if I could even find 'em, that is. But in case you haven't noticed, music is *fucking expensive* to buy now and if I go down my nearest Virgin MegaStore and pick up Claude Young's "Soft Thru" and Stacey Pullen's "Kosmic Messenger" comp. and Download's "III" and the "Pacific State" comp and Bjork's "Batchelorette" remix CDS and Curve's "Chinese Burn" CDS and Luke Slater's "Freek Funk" CDS and Reflection's "The Errornormous World", I *really* don't need 2 poncers prattling on about how "ignorant" I am after I've just spent nearly $200 on music (that's half a r/t plane fare from L.A. to ol' Blighty, in case you need some fucking perspective mate) that I happen to LIKE ... even if it isn't fucking on Mego or A-Musik. (Oh, and did I mention that I didn't really like the Reflection, and paid $28 for a fucking single CD? Not going to make *that* mistake ever again ... sure ... "Take a chance on a new label like Mego or A-Musik" ... haha ... ) Another reason Mego and A-Musik et al. don't get discussed - in addition to the easily-sussed "They aren't easily obtainable" - is because I suspect most of their output is 12" vinyl; sorry mate but I just can't be arsed to spend money on the worst value-for-money there is in music, the (usually) imported 12" vinyl record ... US $10.99 (and up!) for 2 or 3 tracks is just not my idea of a useful expenditure ... maybe some people think US $70 for a box set of 5 slabs of Metalheadz vinyl is worth it ... I sure don't ... People like yourself and Gil Gershman need to get out of your virtual Ivory Towers of record-dom and come live amongst the proles who don't have anywhere NEAR the access you two guys - because of your business/label, and because of Gil's reviews writing - have to this kind of music.

quoted 1 line IDM is dead

> IDM is dead

IDM (the mailing list) will be dead when the last post has been posted to it. Sorry Stuart, I'll be sad to see someone with as much knowledge and background in music history as you go, but as the saying goes ... "if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem" ... and if your retort to that is "I have been mate, I've posted scads of reviews on worthy stuff, sinks without a trace, no one talks about it" then fair enough, welcome to a world-wide mailing list, please see above for reasons why your worthy labels/releases don't get discussed so much. And it'll *always* be that way as long as music distribution & CD/LP prices remains the way they are ... nature of the beast. (Do I really need to insert my "Why I think all music should be MP3'ized and put up on the Web" rant here? Is it really *that* hard to understand that people are naturally hesitant to blindly buy music on obscure labels that they haven't heard ahead of time? Especially when it's so costly?) </end rant> - Greg

Gil and SM's rants depend on an assumption that, on its face, is a little silly. Basically, it's that the underground music scene is SO IMPORTANT that to support the scene requires ALL of one's time and material resources. I mean, they all but said every Autechre record I buy is a nail in the coffin of another struggling artist. Can we have just a little perspective PLEASE? This is something we do to pass the time. Nothing more, nothing less. This does not encapsulate the whole future of humankind. This is not the answer to the planet's ills. It's *fun*. When it becomes your whole life, that's when the trouble starts... then you start to see these ridiculous moral imperatives to die of vitamin deficiency eating nothing but ramen noodles so you can save money and buy another couple of Mego records this month (I know, nobody's asked anybody to do that--it's called reductio ad absurdum...). It's only MUSIC. It's part of life, and one way or another, we'll find ways to keep making good noise. J ________ \ / | "Who's Martha Stewart?" H. James Harkins | "She writes picture books about gracious living." jharkins@acpub.duke.edu | \/ | - from _Jeffrey_ "If we keep our attention focused on the present, we can be sure of one thing, namely that whatever we are attending to in this moment will change..." -- Jon Kabat-Zinn