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Wow, an actual philosophical thread on LD. This is like the old days! future perfect wrote: > > I appreciated the honesty that Gary showed- I wish more reviews were that > honest. I don't think it is necessary to have a background on the artist >to > critique them, the critic (or looping fan, in this case) knows what >he/she > likes based on their own musical experience. I know I (and most other > people) can listen to a CD/live music by an unfamiliar group and give an > opinion. He just happened to type his out. Dave (and Gary... and others), I don't have any problem with people expressing their opinions, favorable or otherwise. I do have a couple of comments to add, however: 1) It's one thing to say, "I didn't like that." It's another thing to say, "That was fundamentally bad music." It's yet another thing to say (or imply), "I didn't like that, therefore it was fundamentally bad music." I don't know if this last statement was what Gary intended, but his review did carry with it that implication (to my mind, anyway). 2) A lot of the most accomplished and respected musicians in the "new music" realm, whether Ornette Colemean, Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, Glen Branca, Nels Cline, or whoever, tend to get written off as unmusical noisemongers by people who aren't into that realm. Gary doesn't have to like this sort of music in order to voice his opinion, of course. But an uninformed opinion, in ANY type of music, doesn't offer much of a dialogue to latch onto. As you say, it may not be necessary to know an artist or their context in order to critique them. But what's the purpose of the critique if it exists without any sort of context? What does it accomplish? OK, so we know one guy didn't dig a show. I'd be more interested in knowing what Gary's background in that music is, and how his reaction to Steuart's gig figures into that, BECAUSE it will lend some context to what he's saying. And again, Gary's post wasn't just, "I didn't like this." It was, "I didn't like this, these people were charlatans, the music was fundamentally bad, they ripped me off with self-congratulatory posturing." If someone's going to make judgement calls like that, then I want to know where they're coming from. > Personally, I am not a fan of > the 'I am so avant and out there' music, This comment reminds me of something Charlie Haden said with regards to his time with Ornette Coleman. Charlie's comment was (this is a paraphrase): "We weren't trying to play stuff that was deliberately of calculatedly out there. We were just playing what we heard, what we wanted to play." And finally: I noticed in Gary's review that he bemoaned the absence of time and melody. Seems to me that this is the sort of thing a lot of people would say about a performance of looping music... Anyway. Respect to all, --Andre LaFosse http://www.altruistmusic.com P.S. -- You just don't get it, man! ;-}