Re: [microsound] Re: the future of music

[Øivind Idsø <ezueled@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gregory Taylor wrote:

> here's a nice possible future:
>
> no "next."
> no "big."
> no "thing."

This is a very nice and tempting idea, but as long as the world moves
forward, or at least gives us the impression that it does, I guess the
problem of fads and Next Big Things is very hard to morph into something
else.

The idea of the next big thing seems closely linked to man's hopes for a
different/better/whatever future, and if something turns up that is
tempting to many people (tempting as in "that which will change/"save" the
world") a lot of people will jump on it (relatively speaking, of course,
since this kind of jumping can be both Glitchy and Britney). It happened
in Old Greece, it happened in the Reneissance (sp?) and is getting even
'worse' now. Hope I'm wrong, though.

> -which might make some of us very happy, provided that we're
> not unhappy about *no one* having the last word [including us.
> that's the bargain], and unafraid when it comes to continuing to
> listen to things when the audience number rises above some
> arbitrarily chosen "n."

I couldn't agree more. A lot of things can be said about a person like Jim
O'Rourke (I have only good things to say about his music and, from what
I've read in interviews, his general attitude), but when he listed Cheer's
"I Believe" and Stockhausen as highlights in his review of last/a year in
The Wire I thought: These are wonderful times. Limp Bizkit, Nils Økland
and Eric La Casa on the same stereo and during the same day? Indeed.

> gregory

/Øivind/