Quote:
Originally posted by JrKASperov:
*snip*
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Cliff notes version: you're a 19 year old progrock snob, who will hopefully get some sense in him when he gets older with respect to other people's tastes. You're making the wrong assumption that listening to "difficult" music automatically gives you a carte blanche to trash any other genres, while it only turns you into more of an embittered loner who can't relate to 99.9% of the people musically.
Just believe me JrKASperov, that knowledge of instruments, craftmanship and an urge to experiment in progrock, freejazz, modern classical music, minimalism, abstract IDM, whatever, may help to develop music in new and exciting ways and that they're often impressive feats - in that they turn non-conventional ways of composing into actual music that can be enjoyed on some level and is intruiging at the same time - but that does not automatically result in music that's "better" by fact than mere popsongs; just in compositions that are crafted in more complex ways. If I have to choose between the complex yet snoozefest-inducing guitar wankery of Yngwie Malmsteen and, say, an Outkast song, I'll probably go with the latter. Does that say something about my taste? You tell me - my interests range from King Crimson/Albert Ayler/Louis Andriessen/Coil on the one end to (deceivingly?) simple stuff like, well,
see for yourself. Plenty of those latter bands are probably way too simplistic for Your Royal Refinedness, but I really do think there's some real talent involved in the creation of a "lesser" piece of a music that yet manages to capture millions of people and still doesn't grow stale over the years.
Taste is in the eye of the beholder, and so is talent, apparently. If a simple singer/songwriter with just a guitar can evoke a more emotionally involved response to more people (and to me) than a self-indulgent progrock band backed by an entire orchestra and their toothless grandmother on kitchen sink percussion in a 9/8 tone pattern, then I'll very likely prefer the former when it comes to judgments of taste and talent - but you'll probably see that differently. I'm fine with you using specifications like "light" and "shallow", just not that these should apply to entire genres, nor should you see these labels as ways to distinguish "good" from "bad", or at least not in the way that you seem to imply - judge the artist or the song, not the genre. Dare to admit that making an effort to avoid "shallow" music doesn't mean the piece of music will be any good per se (god, you don't even want to know how much of the so often praised "complex" music is mind-numbingly
dull,
especially in the progrock genre), or that a song from a "light" genre shouldn't be dismissed by default by Self-Respecting Music Followers, but should be judged on its own merit.
And you want complex rap music? Try music from the Anticon collective, with affiliations like cLOUDDEAD, Why? and Them. Complex hiphop beats-oriented music? Try Prefuse73, DJ Shadow, Amon Tobin, Madlib. You want quirky, experimental folk music? Try the Animal Collective and its spin-offs. You probably already lost interest when you saw the word "rap", but I'm sure you're seeing the point that I'm trying to make.
I'm probably closer to liking the genres you prefer than most Ironworkers, but I do think your sense of elitism expressed in this thread and others before that (not to forget the not so sophisticated manner in which you sometimes express yourself) is somewhat misplaced, and the sweeping generalizations you make with regards to (theoretically) rather vague genre definitions aren't really providing a strong framework for your argument.
[ 05-03-2005, 08:14 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]