Re: [microsound] microsound as pop music

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrei" <andrei@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "microsound" <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2002 6:39 PM
Subject: Re: [microsound] microsound as pop music


> On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Beni Borja wrote:


> > When you're talking of pop music , you're  completely ignoring artists
like
> > Frank Zappa, Pere Ubu, Sonic Youth   and scores of others that were able
to
> > create music that due to "the non-instant gratification musical content
> > their of work" "did not appeal to your sort of average cd buying Joe".
>
> Personally I'd say those artists are quite easy to digest, mainly because
> there's a lot of visceral appeal to their music, which to me is a defining
> quality of pop music.

i'd say that's a pretty clear, non judgmental distiction between *pop* and
*art*. and andrei seems to be often be misunderstood as the curmudgeon here.
i don't know why this is. when he's referring to the visceral quality, that
covers an enormous spectrum of sound and says nothing about it's legitimacy
or value as *music*. visceral is clearly different than intellectual. but
nobody said the body is less than, or even in opposition to the brain. it
just depends on what you're looking for. and they don't necessarily need to
be separate either.

but it does raise a question: if you turn webern up loud enough, does he
become *pop*?

anyhow, the way this discussion at one point got labelled as "pop vs. art"
is a pretty interesting thing in itself, that somebody felt compelled to
draw battle lines in the subject header!


> > This not mentioning the realm of jazz/improvised music , where
> > for sure you would find artists from Cecil Taylor to Anthony Braxton,
> > that are anything but "instant gratifying".

the first free jazz musician i ever got into was cecil taylor. i was 13 and
i had no concept of what it *meant*. why was i initially attracted?

1. because he beat the hell out of his piano. you can't deny that this is
instantly gratifying.
2. because he had cool glasses and a handlebar moustache. you can't deny he
has pop appeal.

after a few years of listening and trying to absorb, i admittedly felt
alienated, gave up, and moved on. now, i'm not passing judgement on cecil
here, but his supposed anything-but-instant-gratification appeal is
precisely what lured this average 13 year old boy into buying his records.
and i was raised on pop music. the fact that he had somehow interesting
traits as a performer, or a *shtick*, (no matter how far from the mainstream
it was), just as xenakis, stockhausen, varese, braxton, etc, all have, is
noteworthy. *shtick*, no matter how subtle or thinly veiled, is present in
even the most difficult music circles. and *shtick*, even though the word is
crude and conjures up the idea of vacuousness, is not limited to face paint
and snake boots. varese had crazy hair! you think the record company didn't
fully understand that, from a marketing standpoint, (which was already in
full force by then) that part of what separated him from the mainstream was
his menacing looks, and that was partially what would help to sell his
records? they needed all the help they could get, and just because a group
of people are into difficult/challenging music, doesn't mean they're not
susceptible to the same attention grabbing methods as those below them on
the intellectual food chain. anybody who has any doubts, just think of The
Wire. so, varese becomes part of pop history!  and going back even further,
the premiere of the rite of spring is pure *pop*. riots are so pop!

i'll even bet a lot of the *hardcores* would be embarassed to admit that
their initial interest in braxton may have arose from the fact that he's
seen/portrayed as this math nut who transforms geometric shapes into music.
that's panty wetting information for math nuts and those of us with romantic
attachments to numbers and knowledge. and if this information about braxton
came from a book about jazz, or a magazine, then you were coerced by the
same methods used by the people who write for rolling stone. it's much more
subtle of course, but the same no less. POP! it's in human nature to sell
every conceivable facet of a performer to an audience, and it's been done
with anybody and everybody with a shred of *character*. even the
anti-personality is pure personality. so, this idea of a guy with a laptop
being boring while at the same time transcending the *pop* performance
cliches is crap, cause that can still be a very attractive/romantic/pop
trait for many people. it depends on what excites you and what you relate
to.

another example, though people might think this is a stretch, but i think
not : the word *xenakis*, by itself, is a huge selling point. it screams
arcane, obtuse, angular, difficult. and there are people, perhaps, looking
to experience this sensation, who are very likely to see this name and,
having maybe never heard his music before, become enraptured by the
possibilities that their own imaginations cook up. this is unavoidably
*pop*. same thing with stockhausen. what a word! it's become synonymous with
challenging electronics (even though some of his music is incredibly
visceral ie: POP! :) and he is now as *pop* as anybody, simply by being a
public figure. and scale has nothing to do with it. billboard top 40 is not
*pop* for any reason other than that there is money and advertising poured
into it. it's not necessarily "what the people want". as soon as music
became a commodity, it automatically became *pop*.


> > As for your claim that there's no way in hell that Xenakis or
Stockhausen
> > would have a chance of making the pop charts any time soon. You should
> > probably take a deeper look at the charts, there's stuff on the rap
records
> > of the  Billboard top 200 that sonically  would make even the hardcore
> > avan-guardist cringe.

highly doubtful i think. you can't put any sound onto a hip hop record that
will make a hardcore avan-gurdian cringe, unless it fucks with the actual
form. once it's over a beat, the context is completely different. somebody
made a good point a while back about this : people exchanging the hi hats in
techno with a *glitch* sound. it's still just a hi hat.

pop!