Why are we such bigots? (or are we?)

fuxi wrote: Jim Garten wrote: Absolutely Raff - but I'd always differentiate between Metal & prog metal; to my ears, metal means bands such as Motorhead, Priest, System Of A Down & so on. I remember many many arguments in my youth trying to differentiate between heavy metal, heavy rock & hard rock But that's away from the point... Back to the original quote - I think had Fuxi meant the fans he would have said "they're loved by their fans because THEY are loud, rough and uncouth" as opposed to "they're loved by their fans because they ARE loud, rough and uncouth" A small distinction, I know, but as I say, I could be wrong... I thank you, Jim, and I apologise for my sloppy writing. You were 100% right: I was referring to the music, not to the fans. Like nearly all of us I grew up with rock music, and I love certain albums because they are so loud, e.g. THE WHO LIVE AT LEEDS: part of the appeal is its sheer wildness. I once fell in love with a girl who happened to be a classical flautist. I wanted to turn her on to WHO'S NEXT, which is fairly aggressive (though not as rough as LIVE AT LEEDS) but also, to my ears, incredibly subtle, precise, exciting AND moving. You sometimes read the Who used to play with the precision of chamber musicians, and that's the way I've always felt myself. So I started from the start: "Baby O'Riley" - could she hear it was GLORIOUS? No, she could not. Then I played "My Wife" - wasn't that really exhilerating, just for the drumming? Apparently it was not. Only when I played her "Behind Blue Eyes" she seemed to melt a bit. At least until all hell broke loose towards the end. And this was not because she was a snob or a bigot. She was an incredibly nice person - intelligent, sensitive and spontaneous. But it was her tragedy (?) that she was only accustomed to music that was incredibly suble and refined (without getting sentimental). She had no ears for amplified music. I have a similar problem with metal. It's a dimension I do not move in. I've got no problem with Led Zep, ever since I learnt to live with Robert Plant's wail, and I enjoy, for example, the Mars Volta's early albums (which are pretty wild, but sufficiently varied and intricate) - but metal??? I KNOW its fans like it 'cause it's rough and uncouth, 'cause when I was in the army (oh Glory Days!) my roommate (who was also my best friend there) was an amateur heavy metal guitarist who enjoyed nothing more than playing Venom, Loudness, and early Metallica tapes, jumping up and down wildly in the room while banging his head forcefully against our metal locker! I got on really well with him, 'cause the music he enjoyed had far more character than the rubbish most of the other guys liked (there were two WHAM! freaks in our room) and yes, there were prog-like passages in it. Still, I've never been tempted to explore the collected works of Venom and Metallica. (Or even Iron Maiden, Queensryche and the like.) Life is too short, and I'm busy enough exploring other genres. The same goes for rap. If I wanted to, I'm sure I could become a rap aficionado and learn to appreciate the manifold ways rappers spout their words. But the relentless beat puts me off and if I feel like listening to poetry I'll get some British Library recordings instead! So does all this turn me into a "bigot"? Heaven forbid. It just seems that, as you explore certain alleys (and for me, in the past few decades, those alleys have led mainly to French and Italian baroque music, pre-romantic symphonies and oratorios, Berlioz operas, and post-1970 jazz of European origin) you turn your back to others. It simply cannot be helped. But each to his own!

That's quite funny; it is about the same way Jean and I went too. Add some world music to it, like Rabih Abou-Khalil, Embryo, Roman Bunka or Roland Schaeffer, and that's about our musical taste. We both have some embarrassing skeletons in the closet too which I won't mention here and which only one of us likes.

BaldFriede wrote: That's quite funny; it is about the same way Jean and I went too. Add some world music to it, like Rabih Abou-Khalil, Embryo, Roman Bunka or Roland Schaeffer, and that's about our musical taste.

I'm very glad to hear it! I don't know that much "World Music" but I love Abou-Khalil, Zap Mama and the Nenes (reggae-influenced pop from Okinawa).

I recently bought Tom Moon's 1000 RECORDINGS TO HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE, which is very exciting and truly "catholic" in taste. In my view, there's a sufficient amount of prog in there, even Gong's GAZEUSE; the book's main defect is that no less than 6 (!!!) of those 1000 recordings are by the Beatles while the great Joseph Haydn gets only 1! Anyway, I now realise the time has come to dig much deeper into Brazilian music: Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Tom Ze etc. etc.!

The T wrote: Ivan, could you please not take everything so personal?

P.S. Let's not forget:

Three cheers for Kante Manfila and Ali Farka Toure - superb musicians!

BaldFriede wrote: One should think twice before using the term "commercial". The so-called "commercial" music exists because record companies like to play it d´safe, so following the same old pattern for producing albums is what they do. And they create "trends" in music, the problem of which is that the differences between them are often close to nil. I personally believe record companies underestimate the listeners; the sales-drop of records has not only to do with them being available as pirated online-bootlegs, it certainly has to do with their cautiousness too. I am very certain kids would like to listen to other music than that commercial crap; the problem is they hardly ever get a chance these days, so they don't know anything else.

I think this is one of the best posts I've seen for a long time.

Friede is absolutely right. I despair at the sheer amount of dross which is force fed on mainstream tv and radio. There are very few outlets for anything else, and in that sense, the so called choice agenda of piles of tv & radio channels has absolutely led to LESS choice for consumers, not more.

Before the advent of satellite tv, there was actually a marvellous range of eclectic and diverse music on British television and radio. I speak, by the way, as a fan of modern technology.

Well to me there seems to be a musical cycle that has been going on, well, as long as there's been music, I suppose. It would appear that music starts off as a social sort of thing, something used to dance to, assist in telling stories or making statements, etc. However, after a while musician and listener both get bored of this, and start to crave something more. The music gradually grows in complexity and sophistication, with people experimenting and delighted fans lapping it up. However, many fans aren't very musical, and as a result have less developped ears than their musician counterparts. This usually means that music will reach a certain degree of complexity or experimentation that the fans are just alienated, they are no longer able to relate. As a result, there's a backlash against the deep stuff and music becomes a simple, social concept again.

You see this all over the place: Jazz started out as a way for people to get their groove on in clubs, but overtime it grew and grew and musicians pushed it as far as it would go. Of course, by a certain point most people lost interest with jazz because it had simply become too heady, but then a man named Elvis Presley comes in and suddenly you've got music you can dance to again. That music, in turn, would slowly grow and become increasingly complex until you've got the Beatles and the 70s Prog movement, which enjoys a good amount of success until, again, it just goes too far for most people and suddenly Punk is in demand. Punk slowly gives way to the virtuosity of metal, which in turn gets replaced by the grunge scene of the 90s. I think we're still riding that wave now, I think that currently we're in that evolutionary stage where commercial music is pushing more and more boundaries and spreading its wings a bit. Probably within the next ten years it will have peaked and then been replaced again, but who knows what could happen?

KingCrimson250 wrote: You see this all over the place: Jazz started out as a way for people to get their groove on in clubs, but overtime it grew and grew and musicians pushed it as far as it would go. Of course, by a certain point most people lost interest with jazz because it had simply become too heady, but then a man named Elvis Presley comes in and suddenly you've got music you can dance to again. That music, in turn, would slowly grow and become increasingly complex until you've got the Beatles and the 70s Prog movement, which enjoys a good amount of success until, again, it just goes too far for most people and suddenly Punk is in demand. Punk slowly gives way to the virtuosity of metal, which in turn gets replaced by the grunge scene of the 90s. I think we're still riding that wave now, I think that currently we're in that evolutionary stage where commercial music is pushing more and more boundaries and spreading its wings a bit. Probably within the next ten years it will have peaked and then been replaced again, but who knows what could happen?

I sincerely doubt it, and contrary to you I don't see any signs of this happening. The problem is that music used to be an important topic in school, but today it has been degraded to a minor subject which (at least in Germany) can even be dropped completely once you reach tenth grade. And hardly any kids learn an instrument anymore.
Fortunately this problem has been spotted in North Rhine-Westphalia, the federal state of Germany I live in. There now is an initiative called "For every kid an instrument", whose goal is exactly that, and it has started pretty well. Let's hope it will show some results in the future.

Ivan, I'm sorry if you can't get over the lyrics and message of most mainstream (and non-mainstream) rap, and I completely agree with you that our kids should not be hearing that kind of crap and it should be banned.  For the lyrics.  But frankly thats all i can see that is keeping you from an amazing genre that is different and is one of the only mainstream genres that is dare I say PROGRESSIVE.  I agree with BaldFriede completely that the reason mainstream stuff sucks so much is that the labels and producers and whatnot are trying to imitate what is popular...making the most un-prograssive music popular.  This is very true with mainstream rock, but hip-hop producers/artists have a very different frame of mind and are constantly trying to bring new ideas and new music to the genre.  for the hell of it here are two hiphop artists that come to mind that are good and aren't obscene: TTC, and The Dawnbreaker Collective.  oh and the Gorrilaz for what they have contributed to hiphop.. A very progressive band btw

Edited by hitting_singularity2 - June 26 2009 at 01:41

BaldFriede wrote: I sincerely doubt it, and contrary to you I don't see any signs of this happening. The problem is that music used to be an important topic in school, but today it has been degraded to a minor subject which (at least in Germany) can even be dropped completely once you reach tenth grade. And hardly any kids learn an instrument anymore. Fortunately this problem has been spotted in North Rhine-Westphalia, the federal state of Germany I live in. There now is an initiative called "For every kid an instrument", whose goal is exactly that, and it has started pretty well. Let's hope it will show some results in the future.

Well the results are not perhaps ideal, but what I'm saying is that currently we are seeing more complex bands have a greater appeal as opposed to the 90s. Bands like Between the Buried and Me or Coheed and Cambria are actually rather well-known, and Explosions in the Sky are practically gods in the Indie scene (which isn't saying much, I know, but still...) which is certainly a step up from the grunge and boy-band dominated 90s. I'm coming to realize that with the advent of the internet, what gets played on the radio isn't always an accurate reflection of what people are listening to.

hitting_singularity2 wrote: Ivan, I'm sorry if you can't get over the lyrics and message of most mainstream (and non-mainstream) rap, and I completely agree with you that our kids should not be hearing that kind of crap and it should be banned.  For the lyrics.  But frankly thats all i can see that is keeping you from an amazing genre that is different and is one of the only mainstream genres that is dare I say PROGRESSIVE.