Re: Music Scene

[David Gans <david@trufun.com>]

At 6:13 PM +0200 4/19/06, Per Boysen wrote:

>since I was never a fan of Marvin Gaye ;-)

That, sir, is a terrible deficiency  :^)

Get hold of a tape of the TAMI/TNT show and see if he isn't the 
sexiest thing alive.


>I just have this feeling that we may not always discuss the same 
>thing when talking about "art" and "looping". Why are we not talking 
>about "showmanship" and "entertainment" that much? I think those 
>were the dimensions of Lidells show that made me like it even though 
>I wasn't very keen on "the content".

I play a lot of music festivals - in the area of the musical map 
where "Americana," "Bluegrass," and "Jamband" coincide - and I get to 
see a lot of different kinds of music and musicianship.  An awful lot 
of the most crowd-pleasing music is all about flashy technique, 
superhuman speed, etc.  And there's also a disturbing (to me) amount 
of music that is utterly impoverished in terms of songwriting, 
melody, storytelling, and other attributes that I value most highly. 
The vast majority of the hippie jamband music I'm exposed to bores me 
to tears, and makes me think I'm not taking the "right" drugs to 
appreciate it.  It comes across to me as mindless riffing.

But hey, these things are beyond my reach: I am not likely to deliver 
mindblowing cascades of 256th notes, nor 20-minute psychedelic 
excursions into inner space.

I take care not to lose myself in resentment of those who are 
profiting from what I see as a decline in the esthetics of American 
popular culture.  I'm smart enough to know they were saying pretty 
much the same thing about the music I was devoted to when I was a kid.




-- 

David Gans - david@trufun.com or david@gdhour.com
Truth and Fun, Inc., 484 Lake Park Ave. #102, Oakland CA 94610-2730
Blog:  http://playback.trufun.com