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Myspace or, is pop now eating itself?

  
  

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Quantum
15:06 / 06.06.06
Let's keep it real please, people.
 
 
foolish fat finger
16:46 / 06.06.06
Hi Haus, firstly, I described the song by Gnarls Barkely as being real to me- a subjective viewpoint. I made no comment on the band, or ‘realness’ thereof.

I thought that flyboy was comparing me to an old woman because that is a stereotypical comment that an old lady might make ‘I feel it in my waters’ in any case, I experienced the comment as sarcastic. I made a lot of points in my previous post, and the reply by flyboy was one that was not, in my opinion, serious.
Incidently, my reply to him is not sarcastic- I was genuinely amused at the time to be compared to, as I saw it, an old woman. Or even a mystic, as you claim.

All thru this thread I have stated my opinions as opinions, and not as fact, and therefore not objectively true. I am interested in others opinions also.

The flip comment about Gorillaz- I am sorry if I put your nose out of joint, but I felt you had made an assumption about how I categorise bands. I felt a bit patronised. I do know who Gnarls Barkely consists of. For me the concept of ‘realness’ is based around intention. that is my criteria. Is the intention to produce art or free expression, or to copy another band’s style to make money? Even then, the two are not necessarily exclusive, in my opinion. And of course, whatever judgements I or anyone else might make are necessarily subjective.

I think I will leave this thread alone for 17 hours, because it is feeling to me more like an arguament than a discussion. I am feeling I am having to defend each thing I say, when in actuality, most of what I am saying is not, in my opinion, particularly controversial.

To turn full circle, it may be interesting to note that Gnarls Barklay's first live appearance was sponsored by MySpace.com.

Yes, that is interesting. Where was that?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:52 / 06.06.06
firstly, I described the song by Gnarls Barkely as being real to me

You described it as real, and also as honest. Honest how? How do you express things honestly in a song if you don't actually exist? Is it, for example, in a way that Alice Cooper honestly expresses things about Alice Cooper, even though, in a sense, Alice Cooper does not exist?

Incidently, my reply to him is not sarcastic- I was genuinely amused at the time to be compared to, as I saw it, an old woman. Or even a mystic, as you claim.


Dude, please don't lie. It is not helpful, and in a discussion involving so much trade in ideas of "real" and "honest" is particularly ill-advised. You said:

That’s fine. I hope you feel better now; you got in a good insult! Well done!

Sarcastic or just plain rude, you were clearly not expressing amusement, or if you were were doing it astonishingly badly - so badly, in fact, that as your attorney I suggest that you never do it again without first PMing me and running your form of words past me.

I am sorry if I put your nose out of joint,

Did I say that? No. I said your response was flippant. It was also unhelpful. You really ought to stop trying to editorialise about other people's feelings - stopping and correcting you is going to take up a lot of time. Please read what people write, then read it again, and if you feel fairly confident that you understand it respond to what they have written, rather than what you have imagined might be going on in their heads. This will help us all to get along. Alternatively, if you'd like to know what is going on in my head, PM me and ask. Right now I'm imagining a hat that is like a tricorn, but has only two points. I intend to call it a bicorn.

I agree that what you are saying is not controversial - it's perfectly normal for people to have muddled ideas which they think are perfectly clear and inarguable, and then to start insulting people when asked for clarification that they do not feel is necessary. However, this does not mean that people have no right to ask for that clarification. It might be worth spending that 17 hours asking whether you have ever encountered somebody who seemed to expect you to understand and agree with the position they were advancing, even though they had not explained it well, and got pissy when you asked them to try to make better sense? That's what you are doing now.

So, anyway. For those still participating in the thread: I think the interesting thing about the position being advanced is just how metaphysical it actually is. "Realness" - a desirable characteristic in music - is not expressed through any feature of the actual music, but rather by the intention of those creating the music:

Is the intention to produce art or free expression, or to copy another band’s style to make money? Even then, the two are not necessarily exclusive, in my opinion.

Note that it is possible to intend to copy another band's style to make money while also intending to produce art or free expression. This seems to make sense - my opinion of Oasis, for example, might be that their intentions included copying another band, making money, producing art and free expression. Does this make them real, unreal or a perfect blend of the two? I'm not sure. I'm also not sure what that datum feeds into. At the moment, it seems quite monadic - "I think this person's music is real" and "I think this person's music is unreal" cannot meaningfully interact with any other element of or discussion of the music, as it is based on purely subjective opinion, which appears to be decided on a whim or through a metaphysical presentiment in this model, rather than the more usual meaning of being arrived at by a process initiated by a person who is subject to the limitations and emphases of their own perceptions.

However, the dialogue of realness also has a part to play in judgements of quality:

ok, what I felt was real lately- 'crazy' by Gnarls Barkely. that's the biz. it's honest. what I felt was bollocks- 'fill my little world' by the Feeling- complete trite crap...

So, a real song is the biz, an unreal song is "bollocks" and "crap". Is this coincidence, or is there something about realness and unrealness, which cannot be identified by any process other than intuition, and which cannot be explained except by apppeal to a mystical capacity to understand the intention of the song's creator, which may be one or both of two paired sets, which feeds directly into the (subj/obj) quality of the song?

Frankly, I'm confused.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:53 / 06.06.06
Perhaps this perplexity will be easier to understand with an example. I have in mind "Toxic", as performed by Britney Spears. Now, I am pretty sure, inasfar as I can draw conclusions about intention having never met the lady in question, that the intention here was to make money. Whether the intention was to copy another band is harder to identify - to be honest, I doubt that that intention is really an intention so much as a method. If one were to ask la Spears, or the songwriting team, whether the _intention_ of the song is to "produce art or free expression", II feel that one might receive at best polite bewilderment.

Now, it seems to be heavily implied that intention is somehow connected to the quality of a song, but not made clear. So, I'm not sure that it is contradictory to say that, despite my assessment of the song as utterly mercantile in its intentions, I still think that it is an absolutely fantastic song, which succeeds on all sorts of levels. However, this is further complicated because, although I would doubt very much (and, of course, I am guessing), that the motivation of the creation of this song was to create art or free expression, I also believe that there is a sense in which this song can be described as real or true - that is, it makes contact with some sort of deeper understanding of the emotional truth of transcendently rump-shaking sexy. A comparative if perhaps slightly more credible example of a similar "reality" might be Gene Serene's "Sound of the Crowd", with engenders in me very similar feelings. Now, in a sense, these songs are not "real", in the sense that neither I nor the performer is actually the conduit for the pure, unmediated spirit of transcendent snake-hipped danceteria communion. However, as we have established, Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" is not in fact a precise description of the condition of the performer - that is, it is not an accurate representation of a bloke called Gnarls who is going bonkers.

Which perhaps goes back to intention, in fact. If there is no Gnarls Barkley to express his parlous mental state, and no inamorato of Ms Spears to be described accurately as toxic, is there necessarily something on the other end of the scale as abstracted from the process as the love of money? That is, is the intention of "Toxic", or of its creators more precisely, simply to make money? Must we deny even the most artisanal desire to create a good piece of work. It's often said of pop music that quality has no impact on success - but this is usually said by people who don't listen to it. More correctly, quality is one of a number of factors that impact success, which is very different. So, it is in part a successful accomplishment of some purely venal desire to make me feel as if I am receiving direct transmissions from the mutant heart of discotheque sex?

Next up, Gene.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
19:16 / 06.06.06
You were right to mention in the Policy thread that this discussion has been had before on Barbelith, Haus - I'll have to try and dig the thread up. I distinctly remember asking someone how we could ever hope to know the intention behind any given band or artist's music, though.

waggling, I'll be eternally grateful if you can stop using the words "subjective" or "opinion". Yes, the vast majority of what we write in our posts is subjective and our opinion. I think that's taken as a given, it doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to explain your opinions.
 
 
Chiropteran
19:19 / 06.06.06
Haus, you just have a lot of fun being Haus, don't you? (Said without sarcasm.)
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
20:33 / 06.06.06
wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

As such, I believe that the intention you are ascribing is as incorrect as your earlier belief that you were being threatened with sensorship.

Am I going crazy or did Haus just spell something incorrectly?!?!?

Agggg....It truly is the day of the anti-christ.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:38 / 06.06.06
Very tired. Typo. I spelled "song" "sing" as well, but picked that one out.
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
20:46 / 06.06.06
I figured. Couldn't help myself, though.

As for Myspace, I have a myspace account that is registered for "promoting" myself as a music maker... I say promoting in quotes, as I mostly am interested in talking to people doing similar types of music and learning from the community, sharing crits, and chatting up common interests as it relates to the music.

Also, great great resource for collaborating with others. Doing a remix for a NYC band at the moment and working with an MC that contacted me and said he liked my music. Great fun there. I've been able to easily strike up a few friendships with musicians I respect, and also connect with others that share my tastes.

Aside from the personal reasons I sort of like Myspace, in general, I think it's quite harmless as far as music goes. It's like a TV. Don't turn it on if you don't like what's on it. Things like Soulseek and Bittorrent worry more in regards to music as a whole, something I've expressed in other threads.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:52 / 06.06.06
Not nearly as often as I'd like, Lepidopteran.

But yes - Gene. If an alien were to encounter Gene, they would conclude that their intention must be to copy the sound of the Smiths. It is possible that they might conclude that their aim in doing so was profit, or perhaps religious reverence, but it would be very hard to assume that such similarity was not a matter not only of intention but of primary intention.

And yet. And yet. I suspect that Martin Rossiter was not intending simply to copy the sound of the Smiths, and that his intention was not in doing so to make profit. He _wanted_ to create art, and it so happened that his idea of art was heavily coloured by his experience of Morrissey. This is pure speculation, of course, but it does sort of suggest that it is at least conceptually possible to imitate another without intending to, which further complicates the identification of intention in what we hear.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
22:18 / 06.06.06
Okay, have been digging around for where this has come up before. In addition to the old Girls Aloud thread (that link goes to the third page, 'cos it's a long thread and the relevant stuff starts there, arguably), these issues are also discussed in this thread about commerical hip hop. I said the following then and would stand by it now:

If you accept that we live in a world where the process of music made and being distributed is sadly very much entangled with capitalism, then on some level all popular music is in part '[Something] For Profit' apart from those unlucky enough not to make any, or who intentionally choose a different process for making and distributing their music (we can more or less discount the latter group from the discussion since the likelihood of more than one person having heard a given artist or group). Even buskers trade music for money. Now, obviously money isn't the primary motivation for making music for many musicians - what I often find myself repeating is that we, the listener, cannot tell of whom this is true and of whom it is not. In spite of this, many people choose to form judgments about which musicians are motivated by money and which are not on the basis of entirely unrelated criteria - eg, genre, level of success achieved by said musician, or simply whether or not they the listener enjoy the music in question. I think this is a mistake, but one that perhaps all of us need to make a conscious effort to avoid.

Because of all this I'd go even further than Haus - I wouldn't assume that Britney Spears and the producers, songwriters and musicians with whom she works are more motivated by money and less motivated by artistic expression than Martin Rossiter and the producers and musicians with whom he works, no matter how intuitive that might seem.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
00:19 / 07.06.06
I'd generally agree, except I'm not sure that "(we can more or less discount the latter group from the discussion since the likelihood of more than one person having heard a given artist or group)" actually makes any sense.
 
 
Professor Silly
03:52 / 07.06.06
well put, flyboy
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
06:58 / 07.06.06
You're right, Stoatie - there should have been a "is minimal" at the end there to close off the bit about "likelihood".
 
 
haus of fraser
11:32 / 07.06.06
Interesting thread- on the subject of false/ real bands surely we're a bit above and beyond that here aren't we? You start sounding like one of the twits on Big Brother but much less watchable.

Myspace has its ups and downs waggling finger you say how its fake then behold Belle and Sebastian- one of the few bands who seem to have built on their fanbase and actively used blogs to their advantage over the past 10 years or so.

Surely Myspace is just another tool- we'll probably see several clones of it over the next couple of years but if a band uses it what is the problem- do you berate a band for putting music onto a CD? Making a video? Flyposting and advertising? jeesh your just being fickle wag.

On the subject of bands being styled you sound like a bit of a twat- where to start- the Beatles with Astrid Kirchnerr? David with Angie Bowie? Elvis and Colonel Tom Parker? The Sex Pistols with Vivian Westwood.

Most bands making a video/ having photos done work with a stylist- even if its just getting a cool pair of jeans on em or brushing the dandruff from their shoulders. You are naive in the extreme if you believe what you have been sold and packaged as real .
 
 
Professor Silly
15:39 / 07.06.06
Stylists may be a necessary evil in the music business, but once again I think it's important to point out the importance of talent. Some people drip confidence no matter what they are wearing, and I think it's easier for people to give such artists a chance. Others seem uncomfortable no matter what they put on, and it's harder to take these artists seriously. The Beatles looked great in the leather they preferred, as well as the suits they wore later, and the psychedelic clothes that came even later. However, I think another factor being ignored so far is this: jealousy. Kip Winger, despite his studio-musician credentials, could not be taken seriously by most metalheads (or by me, for that matter)...because he was TOO good looking. I think most people don't want their idols to be so good looking as to be unapproachable. Instead they want to hold onto the dream of eventually replacing their idol, which is only possible if said idol seems "normal"(whatever that is).
Perhaps we simply hold the pretty people to a higher standard than the rest of us nerdy-types. I know I generally assume that the ugliest person in any particualar band has most of the talent...which isn't even close to being true most of the time.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
16:45 / 07.06.06
All musical entities use stylists, especially the ones who make a point of appearing abstractly "real" or "authentic". Arguably the stylists who work to make a band like Razorlight look like grungy teenage boys are engaging in something much more pernicious than those working on making Kylie or Gwen into theatrical sex godesses- except I would go one further and discount any pernicousness on the part of the latter, as the fantasy there is outspoken and joyful, whereas the fantasy of (just to use them as an example) Razorlight is closely guarded and their stylists are bound to silence by their contracts (or so a relative who works for Rough Trade tells me).
 
 
Professor Silly
16:33 / 08.06.06
Perhaps that should read "all published musical entities" as my band cannot afford a stylist at this point.
 
 
Char Aina
17:07 / 08.06.06
do they work for sex?
i must have missed that.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:32 / 09.06.06
Don't be silly, Toksik. Those gays will do ANYTHING for sex.

Because of all this I'd go even further than Haus - I wouldn't assume that Britney Spears and the producers, songwriters and musicians with whom she works are more motivated by money and less motivated by artistic expression than Martin Rossiter and the producers and musicians with whom he works, no matter how intuitive that might seem.

Yes, to a degree - possibly it's more that the main criteria for "a good Britney song" involve mass sales, ringtones, etc, whereas Gene didn't have access to that metric of success. A successful glamourpop diva makes more money than a morose Morrissey impersonator, but Martin Rossiter never really had the option of a career as the former, so that is somewhat academic. The aim in both cases is presumably to make a piece of work that is successful in achieving the aims set out for it - be that a glittering cathedral of sound or the sale of 10 million ringtones. The writers, producers and performers of "Toxic", I would imagine, wanted to make a belting pop song that would sell a load of records, enhance the Britney brand and so on, and one way to improve one's chance of doing that is to create a genius song.

Hmmm. Next challenge is to connect back to MySpace, I guess - WNF originally posited that it was easy to like obscure bands now - in the sense of bands that few other people knew about - simply by selecting a band on myspace with few friends and claiming to like them. However, doesn't that also devalue the institution of the obscure band? Without some mechanism of review, how does an obscure band become cool, rather than simply obscure.

To put it another way, Half Man Half Biscuit sell, I suspect, more albums in the UK than did failed boyband Upside Down. However, unless one counts kitsch, being a fan of Upside Down is not proportonately cooler.

What myspace - or any other technology allowing the download of music to PCs - might do is help people to discover music that, whether or not it is cool, is music that they might like. For example, I regularly visit Fluxblog, because Matthew Perpetua does a lot of the legwork that I no longer have the timne to do, and our tastes are common enough that I'll often find things I like but distant enough that I will often find things that I would not otherwise have encountered. So, being able to hear music on the Internet possibly encourages eclecticism and experimentation - in some cases, at least - although one might say with justice that it broadens the number of songs that sound like other songs peoople like without actually encouraging risk-taking, as even free music consumes another finite resource, that is time. I don't know if this thread is the place for it, but maybe there's something interesting about services like pandora.com and lastFM here, with their offering of music that is stylistically connected to music that you like...
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
13:40 / 09.06.06
pandora.com's kind of fun, though it took me ages to figure out that the "challenging instrumental passage" in Black Sabbath's War Pigs was actually the guitar solo.
 
 
foolish fat finger
21:16 / 09.06.06
and so we revisit the thread...

finger- I am sorry if I put your nose out of joint,

haus- Did I say that? No. I said your response was flippant.

that was why I put the word 'if' into the sentence. it is a small word but it is quite important in this sentence. (non-sarcasm) yes, my response was flippant- it's a way I have of dealing with stuff sometimes that doesn't seem to come across very well on the net, I am learning. anyway, I re-iterate, I get the feeling I have may have irked you at some point in the discussion, and if so I apologise; it was not my intention.

my sense of humour can be cheeky- I am working on ways of translating it onto the net so as to retain the humour but not cause offence. (retain what humour exactly, a nation cries...)

flyboy, I totally agree with what you wrote (posted originally in the thread about commercial hip-hop). that describes my opinions very well, and I might have wrote a similar thing myself if I had the artikul... articulate... articulate-ness...

anyway, I have learned a lot about myspace, which is cool, in fact I am off there now to find a bit of stuff to grok...
 
 
foolish fat finger
21:27 / 09.06.06
apologies also to flyboy, who I snarked on page one. it was not my intention to cause offence; I just like playing dumb sometimes. it is fine with friends, but it doesn't seem to come across very well in written conversation. I am working on being 'straight' in response to posts.
 
 
Professor Silly
01:48 / 10.06.06
group hug!
 
 
Char Aina
03:23 / 12.06.06
i'm not sure...
is it supposed to be payment for something?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:40 / 12.06.06
Reach me around and I'll tell you what's wrong with _those_ trousers.
 
 
foolish fat finger
11:41 / 12.06.06
I think it is a shame you have chosen not to accept, or acknowledge my apology haus. it is genuine.

all the best, wnf
 
 
All Acting Regiment
12:31 / 12.06.06
I reckon we've avoided any serious nastiness, but this does show the danger starting a thread with wavery vague ideas. I mean, I do it all the time and I guess it must be frustrating.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:50 / 12.06.06
I think it is a shame you have chosen not to accept, or acknowledge my apology haus. it is genuine.

Well, wnf - you apologised conditional on having irked me. I have not felt irked, therefore I did not feel it was particularly relevant to accept or acknowledge your apology. If you want to apologise for rotting the thread, say, that's fine, but it might be best to do that with reference to your actions rather than any possible impact they might have had on others, eh?


Personally, I don't think it's necessary. In fact, I think the best way to demonstrate a desire to be a good and valuable member of Barbelith is to stop making us talk about you and to engage with some of the work that's been done trying to tease a discussion out of your original post or, if you don't want to do that, leaving others to get on with the discussion within the thread.
 
 
Quantum
14:18 / 12.06.06
the importance of talent. Professor Silly

Care to define talent for me? I'm not sure what you mean there, a talent for wearing jeans or playing music or being confident? And would you be offended if I Barbequoted I often tell my band that we need a gay manager like the Beatles had. because it really is a classic bit of unexamined homophobia.

I'm still not sure about myspace. It is a bit like getting flyers for every local band in the country, and there's just so many rubbish ones, but on the other hand it's free hosting space for publicity and demos, it makes it much easier to hear a band you've had recommended. I think I mostly object to having to register and set up your own space before you can use it.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:32 / 12.06.06
Does it? I mean, I know you have to have a myspace account to communicate with people, and that sort of thing, and no doubt there are all sorts of bonuses, but not all the content is locked, is it?

If we're back on myspace, I've got an example which might help to illustrate at least how one not very savvy person has used it.

I went to a gig, and among the bands playing were Shimura Curves. I liked their sound, but felt that the PA was not dooing them any favours, and wanted to har what there recorded work. As luck would have it, they had a myspace account, where I was able to download three of their tracks and listen to a fourth, and also chheck their release schedule and see where they were playing next. That didn't give me anything, really, that a band website would not have, but then a band as small as Shimura Curves might not have found a website cost-efficient to build and maintain, whereas the myspace has a CMS, presumably, that makes it pretty easy to set up and manage. On the downside, it might make a band seem "unprofessional", but at the level of a band that might attract fifty people to a gig, that might be a positive boon...

If I hadn't seem Shimura Curves, I would probably never have found their myspace, but I might theoretically have encountered them on Last.fm or Pandora and then looked for them on t'Interweb. So, it was what you might call a non-obtrusive resource. On the other hand, if I had a myspace account, I might find the existence of small bands annoying if, say, they kept trying to friend me. But you'd have to ask someone with an account how that works...
 
 
Professor Silly
18:17 / 12.06.06
talent, n. 1. a special, often creative natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing. 2. a person or persons with special ability, esp. in a particular field: the theater's major talent. 3. a power of mind or body considered as given to a person for use and improvement: so called from the parable in Matt. 25:14-30

--Random House Webster's College Dictionary (1997e.v.)

pretty straight forward, no?
 
 
Quantum
18:48 / 12.06.06
Uh-oh.
Well, having read the definition of talent (thanks!) I find myself still confused. You wrote;
Stylists may be a necessary evil in the music business, but once again I think it's important to point out the importance of talent. Some people drip confidence no matter what they are wearing, and I think it's easier for people to give such artists a chance. Others seem uncomfortable no matter what they put on, and it's harder to take these artists seriously.
and that makes me think that you think that if a band is talented ( n. 1. a special, often creative natural ability or aptitude) that makes them look good. Is that what you meant? That a talented guitarist looks cooler than a talentless guitarist, given the same stylist say?

On the whole Epstein thing- I'm just not sure how his creed or sexuality has anything to do with his professional success, don't you think it's irrelevent? Don't you think defining people by their sexuality or creed is a bit of a mistake? Aren't you implying that gay people are better stylists?
 
 
foolish fat finger
18:53 / 12.06.06
well, the makers, and indeed the viewers of 'queer eye for the straight guy' would certainly seem to think so...
 
 
Quantum
18:55 / 12.06.06
Sorry, I was replying with myt low-snark hat on. What I meant to say was that posting my band could use a gay Jew for a manager. is asking for a good hard virtual kicking here on Barbelith. Disclaimers like Really, when I say things like that it's not because I hate. really aren't going to cut it. I don't care if you hate or not, don't say offensive things like that.
I hope you don't think I'm being mean or attacking you personally Prof Silly, but you might suddenly find people are a lot less friendly here if you use phrases like 'gay jew' when talking about stylists. Just sayin'.
 
  

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