Re: OT: Keller Williams / jam bands/ rc50

["Travis Hartnett" <travishartnett@gmail.com>]

The mainstream pop audience looks at experimental music and says "The emperor has no clothes...my five year old could do this, this stuff is crap".  Imagine trying to explain that, say,  Derek Bailey is one of the most important musicians of the last fifty years to someone just by playing one of his albums, without the twenty pounds of glowing "Wire" mentions he accumulated every year.  That's marketing too.

The avant garde audience looks at the mainstream pop success (or even cult favorite Keller Williams) and says "The emperor has no clothes...anyone could do this, this stuff is crap".  

Both sides are missing out on something valuable from the other side of the fence.

But to me, if I look at a cooking Keller Williams show, I see a performer and an audience who are experiencing a joy at the event which greatly exceeds the joy factor of any Derek Bailey show I could imagine.  If the combination of "joy" and "music" are important to you in assessing musical events, then KW wins out.  If there's something more important than "joy", then he may not rate so highly.

For me, there is no "wrong sort" of joy generated by a musical experience--the purpose of the musical event is to use whatever tricks and techniques the performer has available to transport him or her and as much of the audience as possible into a glimpse of the divine.  That is my standard for a successful musical performance--not whether I played anything new or challenging (while not excluding those possibilities either).

TravisH

On 11/29/06, Krispen Hartung <khartung@cableone.net> wrote:

Okay, I admit this is getting a bit off topic now....

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miko Biffle" <biffoz@arczip.com>
>
> So yeah, maybe thousands could pull it off, but what would be the point?
> It
> would be insincere, and most audiences can smell that a mile away-so while

Do you think this is a true statement? Hmmmm.  I guess I'm skeptical. Given
how well marketing, even the most blatant and superficial, works with the
masses, I've always been inclined to think that the "herd" falls for just
about anything if it is pitched right. How many pop stars can you think of
that are completely contrived in their show and act, but the crowd just eats
them up. The herd loves in insincere. Since when was honesty in the
entertainment business a plus for the hoi polloi? This is why people
looooove Vegas so much...it's pure cheese and superficially. Now maybe
Keller has a unique following of special people who managed to weed out the
herd instinct, but  that would be surprising. I would take the newer dead or
phish head scene (even with the neo-hippie punks who drive to concerns in
their parents BMWs, but haven't showered for weeks and are wearing dirty,
filthy dreds) as an example of a crowd that flocks to the contrived, but
that would be a thread on its own. :)  Again, this does not reflect
negatively on Keller. I think he knows what he is doing. All people with a
good business mind and an understanding of the mass mentality do know what
they are doing.  The herd is a massive potential of untapped financial
potential. And if I was comfortable with playing mediocre music and dancing
around like a white-boy clown, I'd be doing the same thing!  Heh
heh....sorry, I haven't had my coffee and I'm sleep deprived from staying up
with a sick kids...