At 6.14 -0400 8/17/02, Thomas Millar wrote:
quoted 3 lines Wow. If I had ever imagined I'd meet such an asshole, someone who would
>Wow. If I had ever imagined I'd meet such an asshole, someone who would
>compare musicians to plumbers, I'd never have joined this list in the first
>place, five years ago.
You know, this comment helps confirm my suspicion that a lot of
"avant-garde" or "intelligent" musicians are in it, to a degree, to
feel important about themselves :) It's also like saying the digital
sweatshop workers halfway around the world who built the computer you
compose on are less important than the musicians who use those
computers. Mine was made in Taiwan. How about yours?
More to the point, you couldn't do your work without the working
class, whom we dare not compare to musicians. Hm.
Or, as WC Fields put it, "The arguments are so petty because the
stakes are so low."
quoted 3 lines Your concepts of music and performance vs. mine obviously don't mesh very
>Your concepts of music and performance vs. mine obviously don't mesh very
>well. I'm going to put mine aside, assume that our differences are
>subjective, and leave it at that.
Well, it *is* subjective. It also has to do with the expectations you
bring to a performance -- the same reason why John Cage was so
controversial. People expected music to be something other than what
he was doing.
Saying "That isn't a performance" ends the discussion right there.
Saying "That isn't what I pay to see in a performance" is at least
more truthful. To me, a more interesting approach would be to examine
how the social space of a laptop performance differs from the social
space of a rock show -- preferably without value judgments, but if
you must evaluate, then evaluate on the basis of what is gained or
lost in each venue. Interesting work has been done, for instance, on
the sociology of the rave scene.
James
--
______ | "To be thoroughly lazy is a tough
\ / H. James Harkins | job, but somebody has to do it.
\ / jamshark70@yahoo.com | Industrious people build industry.
\/ | Lazy people build civilization."
| -- Kazuaki Tanahashi
http://www.duke.edu/~jharkins
"Never does hatred cease by hating in return; only through love
can hatred come to an end. Victory breeds hatred; the conquered
dwell in sorrow and resentment. They who give up all thought of
victory or defeat may be calm and live happily at peace."
-- Dhammapada
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