Re: Brian Eno about recorded music

[looppool@cruzio.com]

That was an excellent and eye opening post, Tyler.
thanks for taking the time to elucidate your views for us.

I have been firmly in the opposite camp that you are in , but it made me
pause and
really reconsider my own position and, certainly,  soften my own prejudice
against the iPod phenomena.

One thing you said made me pause and want to reply, however.

You said:
"....... more often than
not, they wouldn't have exactly what i was looking for, so i'd end up
blindly buying other stuff with mixed results. so that can be pretty
frustrating. sure, i came upon some great finds, but NOTHING can
compare with highly tuned recommendation algorithms, not even friends
recommendations."

I have to agree to disagree with you on this point and say that some of
the very best (and most surprising) entries to my own musical life
have come , specifically from NOT finding things in record stores and
randomly walking through sections of music.     I've even had luck picking
out CDs by artwork alone or by chance conversations with someone browsing
in the same section as me.    This was almost my entire
method for falling in love with abstract electronic and getting into the
genre.
I did purchase things that I didn't like and had to sell them back but the
return, aesthetically for my chance taking was returned ten fold by what I
stumbled upon that then really influenced my own artistry.

I also have a dear friend, John Connell (who has played the looping
festival twice), who is the buyer for the world music, electronica, metal,
industrial and goth sections at our Streetlight Records who has
contributed incredibly to my musical life.

John's tastes and mine are frequently diametrically opposed.    But he is
a very, very intelligent, sensitive and dedicated fan of music in many
forms and I've discovered that out of 10 recommendations I will return 9
of them (to get 75% of my purchase price back) and then 10th one
frequently will change my life musically.   It'll be something I'd never
try on my own like that shirt someone buys for you for your birthday that
you'd never buy but that becomes your favorite because it lets you see
yourself in a different way.....one that expands you.

What an inexpensive and terrible percentage of connection, eh?      But to
me,  the things he's turned me onto in my life are things I would have
never discovered on my own and wouldn't have been served up to me on a
platter on Pandora.

Part of my beef with the way things are currently,  is exactly that we can
live in micro niche's musically because of the ways that Amazon, Ebay,
Pandor and other entities keep recommending things that are like what we
have liked in the past.  I'm all for resonance, but:

I remember when underground FM radio first started in the hippy days in
Northern California
that you could listen to a DJ play Odetta,  the Doors,   Joni Mitchell and
then Ravi Shankar
on the same program.   There was a sense that you could discover new
worlds, musically at that time.

For this reason,   Bill Graham would specifically book the Duke Ellington
Orchestra and, say, Jimi Hendrix on the same bill because he wanted to
educate the young hippy audiences that he
booked for.     I saw Gordon Lightfoot, Canned Heat and some local SF
psychedelic band at the Fillmore on my 16th birthday.

Lately,  I find that the kids that I teach know only specific genres of
music and frequently , aren't interested in other kinds of music at all.  
  This makes for some shredding
speed metal and punk drummers, I'll have to admit, but there seems to be a
mono fixated quality to their listening and playing habits.

Additionally,  they don't have any concept of longer forms of music.  
They never listen to an artist's albums because they are always purchasing
single songs on iTunes.   I frequently get,
"Jimi Hendrix?    What songs does he do?"    I have to admit that I can't
remember all the song
titles on the wonderful Electric Ladyland double album but try to convince
them that they are missing something if they are only playing his
'greatest hits' and not experience how he, as an artist created this
beautiful long form musical work.     Listen to single tracks out of order
from THE side of Abbey Road by the Beatles and you've missed something
important in my own
opinion.

I guess this is just a bloated paean to diversity and chance in our
musical adventures.

I certainly  don't want to become the embittered old man that I used to
hate as a very young angry man...............you know:   "we had to walk
through snow and broken glass barefoot to school when I was a boy and WE
LIKE IT!!!"

I want to keep an open mind about the way things are going,  but I do miss
a bit of the diversity that the new ways of purchasing music, digitally
seem to be missing.

Educate me, however,  Tyler,   you've got a really good head on your
shoulders!

yours,  Rick