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Warning: This is long and not altogether loop-based.
John Price wrote:
[Re: Squarepusher]
> I live in Downtwn and all the College Stations ie. Drexel's KDU,
> Princeton's 103.3 and King Britt and Josh Winks dance/trance shops are
> big into what he's layin down. And yes, I too payed like $22 bucks for >
>his latest disc, ouch!! But I dig it a lot.
I see what you mean here. I'd still have to single him out as pretty
obscure by comparison to other artists of that ilk, though. Goldie's
mug has been on half the music magazines released over the last month in
anticipation of his new record (just out today, in fact), and Rupert
Parkes has gotten numerous write-ups in the aftermath of _Modus
Operandi_ being released. By comparison, I've only ever found two print
articles about Tom Jenkinson; everything else has been online at
fan-created web sites.
> So if something is intentionally commercial and meant for mass markets >
>- does that mean that it inherently can't be leading edge or
> pioneering and ultimately flawed ???
No, not necessarily. In recent "pop" terms, one example that comes to
mind is the Beatles' career during the latter part of their existence,
when they were releasing truly groundbreaking and experimental records
like _Sgt. Pepper_ or _The White Album_ to one of the most largest and
most ravenous fan bases in music history. Or look at Miles Davis'
_Bitches Brew_, which was the biggest-selling jazz album in history up
to that point, even as it infuriated countless members of the jazz
establishment and almost single-handedly invented fusion (though to be
fair, one would have to reference the bands of Larry Coryell and Tony
Williams with John McLaughlin, both of which predated _Bitches' Brew_,
in assessing the development of fusion).
But I would also say that more often than not, the things that tend to
reach the mass market are those which are essentially distillations of
work that other people have done the real development on. It's very
rarely the groundbreaking, experimental efforts that crack the public
consciousness; it's more often works that are able to find a more
generally accessible slant that somehow translates into mass appeal.
And this can be a very ephemeral, unexpected thing.
For instance, you can look at the success of Nirvana in 1991, who of
course instigated one of the most radical sea-changes in recent popular
music history. But behind every Nirvana (or Soundgarden, or Pearl Jam)
are dozens of bands like the Pixies, Mother Love Bone, Skin Yard, Green
River, Mudhoney, and the Melvins who were direct inspirations to the
likes of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder. That's not to say that the
bigger-name alternative bands are less musical or less interesting than
their forefathers (though that issue can be and has been debated
endlessly); it simply means that they were able to carry into mass
consciousness a sound that had been pioneered by other people. And I
would personally say that a lot of the success of the "bigger" bands has
to do with elements of accessibility and image which were very real
(though not necessarily fabricated or planned). Kurt Cobain wrote some
very catchy and unique songs, which bridged the gap between what would
come to be termed "grunge" and the mass-market. Chris Cornell and Eddie
Vedder had a rock-star frontman magnetism that translated to a certain
portion of the record-buying populace. (And no, that's not a criticism
of either band).
Industrial music is another good example. The success of Trent Reznor
in the early '90s represented a breakthrough in terms of the mass
acceptance of that music, but Reznor openly ackowledges that his main
contribution to the genre is to put a more song-oriented spin on an
approach developed by the likes of Skinny Puppy and MInistry, who in
turn were themselves taking cues from the likes of Einsturbenze
Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle. You can sing along to the lyrics of
"Closer" while you dance to the disco beat; that's something that can't
be so easilly said about songs from _VIVIsectVI_ or _The Land Of Rape
And Honey_.
You can look at what's happening right now with "electronica" (what an
ugly word!) in the US as another example. The groups that are breaking
through in terms of sales and visibility are either acts like Prodigy
and (to a lesser extent) Chemical Brothers, who have a certain amount of
accessibility to their more well-known work (i.e. singers/rappers, and,
in the case of Prodigy in particular, a very canny sense of image,
controversy, and marketing), or else one of the seemingly dozens of
female-fronted/electronic-backed groups like Hooverphonic, Lamb, Sneaker
Pimps, Morcheeba, Mono, Olive, or Dubstar who have emerged in the wake
of Portishead. Along similar lines, I think you've got to factor
Goldie's photogenic image and penchant for vocal-oriented music into the
equation when you consider why he's the guy most people in the
mainstream associate with jungle.
Again, I'm not saying that any of the above groups are making bad music
whatsoever (personally, I'd rather listen to Liam Howlett's programming
over a lot of the more underground favorites I've heard). But the point
is that a lot of people (myself included, to a certain degree) are
hearing these sorts of acts without ever finding out about people like
Derrick May, Grooverider, Carl Craig, The Orb, Kraftwerk, Can, or other
artists who helped define the vocabulary that the more
mainstream-approved electronic acts are currently speaking in.
> Follow that tag and then ask yourself where & when do u make such
> "distinctions" ???? Can distinctions truly ever be made ??? And based >
>on what criteria & particular consensus of conventional thought and
> criticism would suffice for such a categorization of ground breaking >
>as opposed to something that is perceived to be static ??
Everything I'm saying is, of course, my own opinion, and nothing more or
less than that. I certainly don't presume to think that anyting I'm
talking about is going to be incontrovertible fact.
In answer to your above query with regards to what sorts of criteria to
use in determining whether or not something is "ground-breaking": I
personally make that judgement in terms of what I hear in some bit of
music that seems to have some genuine innovation or experimentation to
it, and I make *that* judgement based upon what I know of the history
behind that particular area of music.
Let's take your Puff Daddy example. In my opinion, there's nothing he's
doing that hasn't been done before at least as well as he does it. What
do I base this judgement on?
>From a strictly musical perspective, he takes a very straightforward
approach to using samples: a few very long fragments from (often
well-known) sources which are sampled and looped into a new composite
creation. If you look at the history of hip-hop sampling, and more
specifically at records like _Paul's Boutique_ (the Dust Brothers) or
_It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back_ and _Fear Of A Black
Planet_ (The Bomb Squad), what Sean Combs is doing is very, very
rudimentary and simplistic by comparison. And the most recent of the
three records I mentioned above came out in 1989.
You could make the argument that his wholesale mutation of lines from
other pop songs ("Every Breath You Take" or "Been Around The World," for
example) is an innovation, but this sort of appropriation actually
predates sampling. Before scratching and sampling was so widespread,
embryonic hip-hop artists would simply put together a live band which
would play someone else's groove as if it were their own!
>From a more personal perspective, I personally don't hear anything in
his music that's liable to last any longer than the various hip-hop pop
sensations that have come before him: MC Hammer, Arrested Development,
Young MC, Tone Loc, Vanilla Ice, Digable Planets, etc. I've also
noticed that, in the case of acts like Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, the records
that sent them into the highest level of prominence and mass appeal
tended to be the ones that I personally found the least musically and
artistically inventive and satisfying.
I basically stopped listening to hip-hop (or at least new hip-hop)
around 1993 or 1994, simply because the slant that the music was taking
didn't grab me as much; more specifically, I felt that the rhythms were
slowing down and becoming less complex and compelling, the use of
samples was getting less imaginative and kalliadescopic, and the lyrical
style was becoming less animated and adventurous overall. That was the
same time that records like _The Chronic_, _Cypress Hill_, and _The
Predator_ started making serious inroads into the mass consciousness.
But again, this is all my own strictly personal opinion, which I have no
empirical evidence to substantiate factually.
> And true just because someone is selling a lot of "product" doesn't
> make them an authority or a lightning rod with their pulse on trigger
> of what people want or need. Big Acts sell "product" because someone
> decided they would happen and secondly, someone spent a heck of a lot
> of dough on making sure they did happen and happen big.
I have to disagree with this. Look again at the example of Nirvana. In
late 1991, it would have been *unthinkable* that a band that sounded and
looked like they did would upset Michael Jackson from the #1 spot on the
Billboard album charts. In September of 1991, _Rolling Stone_ magazine
ran a cover story called "Heavy Metal Nation," an in-depth examination
of the then-reigning hair-metal movement; the issue featured a
shirtless, gold-lame-pants-wearing Sebastian Bach (of metal band Skid
Row) striking a serpentine pose across the front of the publication.
This was within one month of _Nevermind_'s release -- right before the
walls fell. While heavy metal ruled the roost, DGC expected the Nirvana
album sales to peak out around 200,000 at most.
Likewise, simply "deciding" that something will be a big deal and
pushing massive amounts of cash into it don't always add up to sales.
Look at Raddish, a sort of alternative-rock slant on Hanson (for lack of
a better description), made up of three teenage guys and fronted by a
young songwriter hailed by many to be the next Kurt Cobain. A massive
major label bidding war ensued, which resulted in a highly lucrative
deal for the band. Total number of copies of Raddish's debut album sold
to date: Approximately 12,000. .
A recent _Entertainment Weekly_ issue held similarly strange sales
figures. Try these on for size: 867,000 for the Rolling Stones'
_Bridges To Babylon_; 548,000 for Elton John's _The Big Picture_;
180,000 for Michael Jackson's _Blood On The Dance Floor_; 53,000 for
Bobby Brown's _Forever_.
On the other hand, who on earth would have predicted in 1997 that a
15-year-old band of British Anarchist squatters with a goofy name and
overt political agendas would move 2 million copies in three months?
So my long-coming point here is that, in spite of the big-budget push
that world-famous acts can get from major labels, people will often wind
up making up their own mind about what to listen to. So if someone does
in fact sell massive amounts of product, there can be made an assumption
that there is, in fact, a certain tangible connection being made with
where the "pulse" of the general populace is at that moment -- which
would seem to be further corroborated by the rather dismal sales figures
of the aforementioned once-huge sellers listed above.
> So, does the ground have to really break for something to be
> considered a "right on time release" ???
No. What I'm trying to say, in fact, is that innovation in an area
generally happens significantly earlier than the ensuing widespread mass
success.
> And if your looking for the ground to open up does it necessarily have >
>to crack open on its surface ?
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here, but as a resident of Los
Angeles, I have a rather different take on the notion of the ground
"opening up," as it were...
> Don't we need all of it - good and bad - liked and disliked - to
> define the rest of whats to come ??
In spite of my aforementioned, grotesquely lengthy, analytical espousal,
I'd like to think that we don't need to worry about defining what's to
come (or what's already here, for that matter). The music, when it does
come, generally speaks for itself -- and often may have something
altogether unexpected to say when it does in fact show up.
--Andre