Exclusionsist or Inclusivist?

uduwudu wrote:   It's a new authenticity.

Great observation, maybe it'll turn out to be true.

Atavachron wrote: ExittheLemming wrote:   Here's the plan: the execs thought that if they could foist an engineered brand loyalty onto consumers akin to that experienced by the followers of sports teams then they could sell snow to Eskimos. Artists like Hendrix, the Nice and King Crimson (one of those is not a Brit, rabid sniffer dogs at Ethnocentral Police HQ) exemplified the belief that music was an indivisible whole and that attempts to draw artificial boundaries between its league of nations was the antithesis of any trailblazing pioneering ethos. Once the nascent marketplace realised the leverage to be gained by a demarcation process kicking in, it foisted this engineered 'brand patriotism' onto its consumers which would lead to the 'phony' wars that are still being waged from within the forums of this very website. In short PRE circa 1980 you could hear Jazz, Blues, Rock, Metal, Classical, Folk, Ballad, Avant Garde and formless weird sh*t on the one album. POST circa 1980 you had to buy at least 9 different albums. I'm Scottish, I care deeply about unnecessary expenditure.... As am I, and if it's not Scottish...  well anyway--  good post my subniveal friend, however something I've notice about almost all those genres is that they each have hardcore fans; authenticists who feel, understandably so, that the "folk" Jethro Tull (or even Steeleye Span) play has something important missing.   Same goes for Mahavishnu's "jazz", ELP's "classical", and Zep's "blues".   It sounds artificial to them and I have little doubt it indeed does.

Thanks, I had to look that up (subniveal I mean)

ExittheLemming wrote:   Here's the plan: the execs thought that if they could foist an engineered brand loyalty onto consumers akin to that experienced by the followers of sports teams then they could sell snow to Eskimos. Artists like Hendrix, the Nice and King Crimson (one of those is not a Brit, rabid sniffer dogs at Ethnocentral Police HQ) exemplified the belief that music was an indivisible whole and that attempts to draw artificial boundaries between its league of nations was the antithesis of any trailblazing pioneering ethos. Once the nascent marketplace realised the leverage to be gained by a demarcation process kicking in, it foisted this engineered 'brand patriotism' onto its consumers which would lead to the 'phony' wars that are still being waged from within the forums of this very website. In short PRE circa 1980 you could hear Jazz, Blues, Rock, Metal, Classical, Folk, Ballad, Avant Garde and formless weird sh*t on the one album. POST circa 1980 you had to buy at least 9 different albums. I'm Scottish, I care deeply about unnecessary expenditure....

As am I, and if it's not Scottish...  well anyway--  good post my subniveal friend, however something I've notice about almost all those genres is that they each have hardcore fans; authenticists who feel, understandably so, that the "folk" Jethro Tull (or even Steeleye Span) play has something important missing.   Same goes for Mahavishnu's "jazz", ELP's "classical", and Zep's "blues".   It sounds artificial to them and I have little doubt it indeed does.

ExittheLemming wrote: One of the strongest themes in the entire debate so far is the acknowledged seismic shift in the market place that took place circa 1980. It's no happy accident that MTV emerged and blossomed during this time (I mean ELP might have had a stripper in a till, a gypsy queen in vaseline, seven virgins and a mule but even they couldn't hope to make Karn Evil 9 fit the bite size pop video format). Suddenly the old big shifters of units (album bands with squat singles) were replaced by the new big shifters of units (singles bands with albums with loads of hit singles) I've always thought that such developments were indicative of the game changing when record companies discovered how to exploit branding as a marketing ploy. Here's the plan: the execs thought that if they could foist an engineered brand loyalty onto consumers akin to that experienced by the followers of sports teams then they could sell snow to Eskimos. Artists like Hendrix, the Nice and King Crimson (one of those is not a Brit, rabid sniffer dogs at Ethnocentral Police HQ) exemplified the belief that music was an indivisible whole and that attempts to draw artificial boundaries between its league of nations was the antithesis of any trailblazing pioneering ethos. Once the nascent marketplace realised the leverage to be gained by a demarcation process kicking in, it foisted this engineered 'brand patriotism' onto its consumers which would lead to the 'phony' wars that are still being waged from within the forums of this very website. In short PRE circa 1980 you could hear Jazz, Blues, Rock, Metal, Classical, Folk, Ballad, Avant Garde and formless weird sh*t on the one album. POST circa 1980 you had to buy at least 9 different albums. I'm Scottish, I care deeply about unnecessary expenditure....

That was a test just to see if we could count. Yes,  was informed of the edit. If 8 turned out to be 9.

Anyway, isn't a 9 album experience better than a 1 album of hodge podge of styles which would annoy and divide the reasonable and balanced prog archives views?

But yes, that exploitation existed before prog. It was just applied by playing music's own game - fostering the relationship.It's the only way the execs knew how to market and sell music without a real image. The manipulation went deeper as the music went deeper.

Who knows? Perhaps it was a Scottish exec who thought this up. Tales probably should have been 4 different albums rather than the condensed edited form everyone knows and loves without equivocation for 40 years.

Svetonio wrote: Dean wrote: rogerthat wrote: lol, I saw this coming the moment I wrote it. Maybe I just recall more hit songs of these one hit wonders from the 80s.  Or maybe they have got more sustained airplay on radio/TV.   I think the honest answer is that they were better and thus more memorable. The 1970s singles charts were dire even through rose-tinted spectacles. I disagree.

Slartibartfast wrote: I almost envy people who think prog ended in the '70's.  They have set up a finite universe.  For those of us who haven't stopped there, there is too much out there....

There is however, a whole lot more to my musical universe than just Prog

^^^  Based on the two times I heard the Coast to Coast show on road trips (a local radio station somehow thinks it's a great idea to re run old episodes of that show), I did feel that, yes, 70s top 20 was pretty boring.  

lol, I saw this coming the moment I wrote it. Maybe I just recall more hit songs of these one hit wonders from the 80s.  Or maybe they have got more sustained airplay on radio/TV.  

^^^ I think the idea of strict genre-based demarcation of music products goes back earlier than MTV in USA.  For instance, it seems labels found it hard to convince radio stations to play Minnie Riperton's songs because they couldn't decide if it was rock or R&B (and therefore what would be its target audience).  When you listen to the songs, the idea that they would find it so difficult to slot very accessible, straight up music defies logic!  But, yes, it has gradually spread to other markets.  Punk possibly offered them a great chance to ignite cultural wars and then keep them going.  There was another - and imo very silly - war between so called 'true' metal bands like Metallica and glam metal bands in the 80s.   It's also no coincidence that one hit wonders proliferated in a much bigger way in the 80s.

^ Correct, and like Moon, it's no secret Bonzo had drug and alcohol problems but he was also the consummate pro, probably the tightest of the four.





Edited by Atavachron - April 13 2014 at 21:22