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Is the Barbelith Music Forum in a coma?

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All Acting Regiment

09:21 / 15.06.07

I'm going to start a bunch of threads. Nice threads, hopefully. The problem for me is, I often enjoy a band or artist but don't actually know why until somebody else puts into words something I either relate to or disagree with. For that reason I like to put a brief introduction, a link to a website or wikipedia page and then comes back later when other people have had their two-penn'orth. Is that cool or not?

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:28 / 15.06.07

It certainly is, although I'm starting to become a little wary of Wikipedia - will being able to summarise things in our own words soon become a lost art?!eLeven?

I actually think the Music forum's health has looked pretty good this week.

All Acting Regiment

09:58 / 15.06.07

Have we got a thread about music magazines/media?

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:10 / 15.06.07

There's been a few over the years but nothing recent or exhaustive enough to stop you starting a new one, although it does tend to be problematic subject, by which I mean it often inspires people to moan in a somewhat unoriginal fashion - but there are ways to make that less likely, such as specifically asking people to talk about music writing they do like...

Closed for Business Time

10:28 / 15.06.07

Could a thread on music media/mags incorporate discussions on the worthwhileness of writing about music? I had a moan a while back about how I find music criticism unable to convey what -I- feel are the essential ingredients in music - namely its nontextual, tactile and aural dimensions. I would like to explore this more, and I'm reasonably certain I wouldn't just say "IT ALL SUCKS 18TH C DONKEY BALLS" and go sulk.

All Acting Regiment

10:41 / 15.06.07

Point adressed! Go to thread and add! Cheers!

All Acting Regiment

00:17 / 05.07.07

Just to bump - if I want to start a thread where people rhapsodise about their favourite club nights, would it go in R&M?

Regrettable Juvenilia

05:57 / 05.07.07

I think so!

09:31 / 05.07.07

Yes, start that thread.

All Acting Regiment

02:58 / 11.07.07

What do you all think of the "Classic or Dud" formula as a way of discussing music?

11:59 / 11.07.07

The same way I feel about the *good* and *evil* formula for discussing people.

13:36 / 11.07.07

I'm not sure what sort of approach you're advocating, Allecto; I've got to say, it sounds like the kind of thing that would encourage one-word answers and hard-binary thinking. Could you sell me on it a little? Is there more to it than "it sucks" / "it rocks" ?

13:51 / 11.07.07

oh, seth! you are evil!

While it is a limited mode of categorisation, I do think it can be a jump off point for proper discussion. I've no real time for television shows that inform the viwers what the best 50 songs, worst 50 songs or 50 songs least worth televising are meant to be. Whenever I have been unfortunate enough to catch one, however, I have ended up talking about music with my fellow viewers.

If some people want to have a 'dud' or 'classic' back and forth, and are happy for their thread to be used by other people to talk around them, I can't see why it would be an entirely bad thing.
There's an argument for effort expended in a first post setting the expectations of a thread, but i'm not sure it's all that solid. Lengthy posts about artists, songs or albums don't always kick off discussion, and sometimes throwaway stuff can become in depth. I think with as few threads as we have active it might be better to have quality discussion however we find it.

As an example, the kylie thread is still one of my favourite in the music, despite it's flaws. I think such a simple (and contentious) starting point can often produce great discussions. As long as the flaws (the personal attacks and ego-appendage stuff) are less evident than the floss, I reckon it could be good.

All Acting Regiment

14:20 / 11.07.07

I suggest the C/D formula just because on ILM it seems to lead to snappy, back and forth discussions that can often be quite entertaining. There's also Search/Destroy, which might be more useful here - where you decided whether to search for or destroy a given artist or works.

These things might also be very wrong, however.

14:23 / 11.07.07

Perhaps the larger question: Do we really want to remake ourselves into a knockoff of ILM?

14:33 / 11.07.07

And perhaps a slightly smaller one: Will borrowing one idea make us a cheap knockoff of ILM? Who didn't even originate the concept of simple good/bad music analysis?

I don't think it will, but I'm willing to be convinced.

14:35 / 11.07.07

I'd suggest that you start the thread, Allmacto. If the idea sucks, we'll soon find out.

06:42 / 14.07.07

Fortune favors the bold!

23:32 / 14.07.07

Do we really want to remake ourselves into a knockoff of ILM?

I think it'd be good if Momus posted on here, in any case. At least, I'd like to see some of Barbelith's big beasts in a square go with Nick Currie's Robo-Godzilla, over the head of why so-called intellectuals in Britain are so incredibly repressed, censorious, and behind the times.

13:12 / 01.08.07

No posts to the forum for nearly twenty-four hours? Things have seemed particularly quiet of late.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:34 / 01.08.07

Yeah, my comment on its health a month and a half ago seems like hubris now.

The basic problem is much like several other fora: there are too few regular posters, so it only takes a handful of people to go quiet in order for the whole place to seem dead.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:39 / 01.08.07

I mean, at this point ILM is arguably past its best, but if you go there right now, there's a bunch of people enthusing about the new MIA album which has apparently leaked. Getting precious about the individuality or standard of discussion on Barbelith seems totally fucking insane to me right now. Do we want to be a knock-off of another discussion forum? What, one that has some actual discussion happening on it? Fucking YES.

14:51 / 01.08.07

I'll put my thinking cap on.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:49 / 01.08.07

I hate to to say it, but the last really active thread in Music and Radio was probably "The High Society" - so, dodgy racial politics? I could bump the thread on Cliupse, possibly...

All Acting Regiment

12:43 / 02.08.07

I tend to do R&M posting in a kind of blitz every now and then when I get enthusiastic about lots of stuff all at once. Will aim to start several new posts there as soon as (although ideally I'll need to get my home internet up and running again, I like to have itunes on to reference).

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:34 / 18.12.07

And of course at this point I've wondered to what I extent I have to take responsibility. Those early libellous claims that only music I or some clique liked was up for discussion = obviously untrue, I never cared for Gogol Bordello but was happy to see the thread prosper, for example... But yes, yes I wonder. Yes, I ask those questions.

All Acting Regiment

11:55 / 18.12.07

Oh, bugger, I've let it slide too. I'll try and be up there slinging some stuff around shortly. I only wish I'd kept up my piano stuff as it would have let me talk about the technical side of the music properly, not just whether or not and why I like it.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:00 / 18.12.07

I really would not worry all that much about that.

12:07 / 18.12.07

I'm not sure what exactly you're saying, Petey, in terms of "responsibility". It's not "your fault" in any way - the lack of traffic in the music forum is a product of the general death of the board, lack of new members etc. I don't really see how this can be laid at your door.

I think it's true in every forum, but perhaps more noticeable in the Music particularly, because the subject matter tends to be so of the moment and immediate, especially with the facilities for file-sharing that are available to us now. If you can't get excited enough to post about Music, what are you ging to write about? In a lot of ways it seems to me the essence of a bulletin board as an exciting and worthwhile place to be.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:20 / 18.12.07

I guess I was partly just skipping ahead one in my thought processes, Rex - going from "and so this is [the Music forum at] Christmas" to "and what have you done?" - both in terms of whether I've posted enough recently, and the extra nebulous responsbility a moderator is supposed to have for a forum.

If you can't get excited enough to post about Music, what are you ging to write about?

It's specifically on my mind because of the time of year, too - this is when every website, music or not, talks about the music of the year for them, right? I'm going to keep plugging away at the Top Songs of 2007 thread, but it would be nice to see it have a more lively turnover.

All Acting Regiment

12:22 / 18.12.07

I think you were always putting new stuff up, Fly, aiming to start discussions in good faith, and pushing discussion forward with those controversial topics about racism in people's approach to hip hop and so on - if anything, any control you had over the place was quite good.

ILM was mentioned upthread as better place to talk about music than Barbelith, and was quite rightly reprimanded - because a whole lot of bullshit goes on over at ILM between decent posts that none of us need to see here. Yet they do have a massively higher volume - threads go on beyond the 1000s - and just by force of numbers that means that more people there are having good talk about music.

And yet they're a lot more tolerant of things like pointless threads, abuse, stupid internet jokes, 'shock' racism and so on (and an open membership). Is it perhaps true that you need that garbage-drift in order to bring in people who talk about music? I mean it shouldn't be, but a lot of people involved in whatever genre of music are far from being intellectuals and, as has been said before, a lot of the people we enjoy listening to, and the other people who enjoy listening to them, are probably complete arsehats.

If we could do a Venn diagram I think one sphere would have 'Most music people, promoters, DJs, band members, music bloggers, music critics', and the other would be 'Left-wing intellectuals interested in having proper discussions', and there might be some cross-over but not much.

Or I might be completely and utterly wrong. I am thinking from anecdote, here - the people whose bands I go to watch and the people who I go to the disco with often do not behave or think in a way I agree with - it's really only music that we have in common. Whereas there are people who, politically and philosophically, I get on with like a house on fire but who have the musical ear of an oven glove.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:30 / 18.12.07

Well, ILM in late 2007 is not ILM as always was! It has its own history and has been through various phases. I'm acquainted with a reasonable number of ILM/ILX refugees (IL-exors, if you will... perhaps you won't?), and I think a lot of them would say that the level of unpleasantness there now outweighs the amount of good discussion. They would probably have as many theories about when it tipped and what went wrong as people do about Barbelith, but I would argue, and I don't think I'm alone, that it shows the problem with such a laissez-faire approach - that in the end the people with the thickest skin dominate, and it's always easier to have thick skin if you're an obnoxious privileged bloke. Cockroach theory.

(But this is a digression...)

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:31 / 18.12.07

If we could do a Venn diagram I think one sphere would have 'Most music people, promoters, DJs, band members, music bloggers, music critics', and the other would be 'Left-wing intellectuals interested in having proper discussions', and there might be some cross-over but not much.

It is worth adding that the the overlap between the second group and the set of "people on Barbelith" would also be pretty tiny.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:32 / 18.12.07

PS:

If we could do a Venn diagram I think one sphere would have 'Most music people, promoters, DJs, band members, music bloggers, music critics', and the other would be 'Left-wing intellectuals interested in having proper discussions', and there might be some cross-over but not much.

I think these are HUGELY problematic ways to describe what I assume are supposed to be idealised sets of people to converse with!

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:33 / 18.12.07

Jinx, private jinx, Haus jinx.

I really feel like spraypainting on the Music forum in six-foot tall letters 'YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A BLOGGER OR A DJ OR A CRITIC OR WHATEVER TO POST HERE', now.

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