Re: OT: music biz article

[Douglas Baldwin <coyotelk@optonline.net>]

Interesting article. Before the rise of Beatles-related popular music,
recorded music was seen as a bit of a "loss leader." You made records to
promote your live performances or to promote your career in movies, not to
make a living at recording. Artists were whisked in aod out of recording
studios because it was too expensive to spend days re-recording the same
thing. It could be argued that the technology didn't exist to warrant extra
time in the studio, but then what were Les Paul and Stockhausen doing? The
era of creating "studio masterpieces" may well be seen as a blip in the
history of the performing arts.

Another theme beneath all this is the artist/audience relationship in live
performance. I posit an aesthetic of three broad categories: demonstration,
performance, and concert. Some audiences seek a demonstration from the
artist, often a reassurance that their shared values are at work. Certain
classical performers, and certainly most oldies and classic rock tours fill
this need. Some audiences share in the demonstration, as in punk and metal
concerts where a mosh pit always forms, or the currently accepted place of
the encore in live pop "demonstrations." Occasionally, and more rarely, a
performance is encountered, where the audience is somehow brought beyond
their preconceptions. Sometimes a performance carries the *artist* beyond
their preconceptions. Rarest of all is a concert, where the audience and
performer are brought into a higher realm, and this carries forward far
beyond the time and place of the historical concert.

Recorded music is predisposed towards a demonstration, a freezing of time.
It is also a fetish object in and of itself that the recording industry
seeks to alter on a regular basis. IMHO.
dB, coyote