Indie vs Jam

[zero]

I don't usually like to post back to back but no one else has commented and I have another ass to tear out this time Number 2's.

It has to do with this remark:

whenever I read your material on this board, I find it is missing something. You do have an incredible grasp of the English language, when you pull out obscure words, you do use them in there proper context, so kudos to that. In my opinion, (which I am sure to most counts for very little)--your writing is good, if not excellent, however, you need to learn how to "make love" to the language. Instead of using the voice of arrogance (which equals ignorance as we all know) you should refrain from criticizing other's opinions. You will find it hard to capture an audience if you do not give them the respect they deserve, it kind of goes both ways I think. You undoubtedly know alot about music, but so do most of the people on this board (excluding myself) and an omnipotent voice is not becoming.

I'm taking the constructive criticism part of what you are saying to heart and I'm not really offended but I want to explain how this is an untenable position that you present. First of all it's not very good, thoughtful or practical advice. It pivots about the maxim that humility is best in all things. Humility is not best in all situations. I am sorry but life is not a constantly unravelling sutra. To turn your back and bite your tongue at every slight like scripture says is really not all that practical. Particularly and here's the rub it's not that funny. If I followed your advice my writing would be a neutered, petered out limp dick mess. In short I would be the writer's equivalent of the String Cheese Incident - placid, uncontroversial, undemanding, music and writing by and for philistines (look it up it's a great word). The vitriol in language, the sense of righteous or unrighteous indignation is where things get really interesting. When this comes out non-verbally in for instance an improvisational concert it can be quite interesting. Perhaps you wouldn't know it but an intimate might know that a bass solo had poisin interlaced with the meat do to a particularly daunting gas station sh!t that afternoon. Often in my experience there is a direct parallel between the kind of day an artist had, rest, meal, shower, travel etc. and how they play. Sometimes they have a sh!tty day and play sh!tty and sometimes have they have a good day and play sh!tty or vice versa and so on. There is just a hell of a lot to all of this is what I'm saying in a roundabout way. I don't even know what Friendly's on about. I mean if you paraphrase his remarks they become meaningless: 'This is what I hate about rock writers the way that they actually try and absorb what's going on to them and others in the crowd and relate that back'. If that is the attitude I really am at a loss. This relates back oddly to the initial topic of conversation here which is that the media have their touchstone buzzwords and niches and exploit those in hopes no one will call them on it. Jam music doesn't fit very nicely into the quaint pigeonholes of electroclash or psych-folk (the most overused expression in music writing these days). Trying to find a critical vocabulary with enough tenacity to it is a challenge when dealing with the often meandering and shapeless lines of jam music. Relating back the intensity and credibility of our experience is a challenge at best. Apparently Friendly doesn't think this is a worthwhile endeavour. Just keep crossing your arms and looking cool big guy maybe a thought will pop up in that noggin of yours one day.

[ggrtrhhrtgg]

I don't usually like to post back to back but no one else has commented and I have another ass to tear out this time Number 2's.

It has to do with this remark:

whenever I read your material on this board, I find it is missing something. You do have an incredible grasp of the English language, when you pull out obscure words, you do use them in there proper context, so kudos to that. In my opinion, (which I am sure to most counts for very little)--your writing is good, if not excellent, however, you need to learn how to "make love" to the language. Instead of using the voice of arrogance (which equals ignorance as we all know) you should refrain from criticizing other's opinions. You will find it hard to capture an audience if you do not give them the respect they deserve, it kind of goes both ways I think. You undoubtedly know alot about music, but so do most of the people on this board (excluding myself) and an omnipotent voice is not becoming.

I'm taking the constructive criticism part of what you are saying to heart and I'm not really offended but I want to explain how this is an untenable position that you present. First of all it's not very good, thoughtful or practical advice. It pivots about the maxim that humility is best in all things. Humility is not best in all situations. I am sorry but life is not a constantly unravelling sutra. To turn your back and bite your tongue at every slight like scripture says is really not all that practical. Particularly and here's the rub it's not that funny. If I followed your advice my writing would be a neutered, petered out limp dick mess. In short I would be the writer's equivalent of the String Cheese Incident - placid, uncontroversial, undemanding, music and writing by and for philistines (look it up it's a great word). The vitriol in language, the sense of righteous or unrighteous indignation is where things get really interesting. When this comes out non-verbally in for instance an improvisational concert it can be quite interesting. Perhaps you wouldn't know it but an intimate might know that a bass solo had poisin interlaced with the meat do to a particularly daunting gas station sh!t that afternoon. Often in my experience there is a direct parallel between the kind of day an artist had, rest, meal, shower, travel etc. and how they play. Sometimes they have a sh!tty day and play sh!tty and sometimes have they have a good day and play sh!tty or vice versa and so on. There is just a hell of a lot to all of this is what I'm saying in a roundabout way. I don't even know what Friendly's on about. I mean if you paraphrase his remarks they become meaningless: 'This is what I hate about rock writers the way that they actually try and absorb what's going on to them and others in the crowd and relate that back'. If that is the attitude I really am at a loss. This relates back oddly to the initial topic of conversation here which is that the media have their touchstone buzzwords and niches and exploit those in hopes no one will call them on it. Jam music doesn't fit very nicely into the quaint pigeonholes of electroclash or psych-folk (the most overused expression in music writing these days). Trying to find a critical vocabulary with enough tenacity to it is a challenge when dealing with the often meandering and shapeless lines of jam music. Relating back the intensity and credibility of our experience is a challenge at best. Apparently Friendly doesn't think this is a worthwhile endeavour. Just keep crossing your arms and looking cool big guy maybe a thought will pop up in that noggin of yours one day.

Well, Zero, I have to admit I got quite the chuckle out of your remarks. Especially the Philistine = String Cheese fan/band--that was good. I do wonder, since I don't know you on any sort of personal basis, except that I know who you are from shows--are you sincere in your remarks towards others--or are you just a stir-stick? You see, I relish that role from time to time. However, I am concerned about the type of "venom" you attach to your rants. You seem to have sharpened your teeth over the last while, and I wonder what the perception of others is towards some of those remarks. Personally, I liked your argument in "tearing another a$$hole." I understand what you are saying--I would agree with the fact that "Political correctness" has limited value. I won't mix words with you about this music scene, because I can't. I don't have a whole lot of interest in the Indie scene, but I don't attach any sort of derogatory label to it. Just not my bag. I love the jam scene because I connect with the music, and it is a muse for the style of writing I prefer. However, to each their own, and I respect your arguments, I am only concerned with the negative vibe that shadows some of the remarks you use, but freedom of speech superseeds that I suppose.

[zero]

Many cultures would not even ask the question whether a story is true or not. A story is a story. Storytelling is lying.

[shitidiot]

nice to see this really hit home. you are the master of all. i'll never write agian. or should i say dumb you down with my drivel....

[guigsy]

bruce springsteen: the wild the innocent and the e-street shuffle

bruce springsteen: greetings from asbury park

been listening to these all day and i think they're great pictorials of how indiejam music could sound if the 2 genres got all mashed up in a heady goulash. no wonder people were goin ape sh!t about him by the time born to run came around..

[ggrtrhhrtgg]

this situation kind of reminds me of Dorothy at my first viewing of the Wizard of Oz---what is really going on behind that curtain anyhow--oh, and Philistine, or no Philistine, I still love the Cheese!! ::

[ggrtrhhrtgg]

Many cultures would not even ask the question whether a story is true or not. A story is a story. Storytelling is lying.

hmmmmm....."I am speaking of the literature of the past four hundred years--is built on the concept of intellectual honesty, or, if you like to put it that way, on Shakespeare's maxim, "to thine own self be true." The first thing we ask of a writer is that he shall not tell lies, that he shall say what he really thinks, what he really feels." G.O.

[zero]

Well you're a couple hundred years out of date. A guy called Nietzsche came along. Claims to truth are claims to power. Words literally contain malice, deception, dissimulation and drift. After Nietzsche you had Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, Baudrillard, Lyotard and on and on. So I'm saying your 'just say it straight' notion is facile and never was and never will be true. Read the book.

And Eric come on big boy you know and most everyone on here knows that you took a shot and I hit back and hard. Face it if this place was Fight Club I'd be Tyler Durden(S) down here in the basement next to the washer and dryer kicking all of y'alls asses. And I've been taking all comers for years.

[Esau]

If you can talk brilliantly enough about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered...

-Stanley Kubrick

[ggrtrhhrtgg]

that was written by George Orwell circa 1941.

"What is a word? The expression of a nerve-stimulus in sounds. But to infer a cause OUTSIDE US from the nerve-stimulus is already a result of a wrong and unjustifiable application of the proposition of casuality. How should we dare, if truth with the genius of language, if the point of view of certainty with the designantions had alone been decisive; how indeed should we dare say: the stone is hard; as if hard was known to us otherwise." FN

"There is a notion of spirit, which enables us to establish between the simultaneous or successive phenomena of a given period a community of meanings, symbolic links, an interplay of resemblance and reflexion, or which allows the sovereignty of collective consciousness to emerge as the principle of unity and explanation. We must question those ready-made sytheses, those groupings that we normally accept BEFORE EXAMINATION, those links whose by which we usually link the discourse of ONE MAN WITH THAT OF ANOTHER; they must be driven out from the darkness in which they reign. AND INSTEAD OF ACCORDING THEM UNQUALIFIED, SPONTANEOUS VALUE, WE MUST ACCEPT, in the name of methodolgical rigor, that, in the first instance, they concern only a population of dispersed events." MF

Now, it depends on whether or not you are discussing universal truth, because, yes, you are correct that there is no such thing as universal truth, objectivity does not exist. However, truth is subjective, and your truth can only be questioned by one who understands the development of your thesis. I don't think that either philosopher supports your argument, but that is just "my perception."

[MarcO]

I really like bacon.

[SolarGarlic]

I really like bacon.

Listen, a-hole, just because you find edible salty meats enjoyable enough to speak about, doesn't mean I have to sit hear and soak it up. Its like back when sushi was fashionable and all the mid-town spinsters were cruising around pontificating the glorious abstractions one can generate through inhaling the "air" that surrounds a piece of raw tuna..its useless sh!t and nobody needs to read your so-called "facts". Get a grip man, pork products are not the end-all/be-all of the "scene". I think you need to check yourself and realize you just can't go around making new definitions and meaning towards ideas the rest of us hold so close to our hearts.

[SolarGarlic]

Im gonna puke.

::

[Mr. Musicface]

bruce springsteen: the wild the innocent and the e-street shuffle

bruce springsteen: greetings from asbury park

been listening to these all day and i think they're great pictorials of how indiejam music could sound if the 2 genres got all mashed up in a heady goulash. no wonder people were goin ape sh!t about him by the time born to run came around..

Okay, NOW you're talking! Bald Guy in A Blanket lent me this tape from I think about '74 of the E-Street Band. I'm sorry, no indie band, jam band, hell nearly any rock band in history could beat these guys when they were on their game for killer songs AND killer jams. The energy level they had was just unreal, and you totally get that just from listening to a crappy old cassette.

I know Bald Guy was making an arguement a little while back in another thread that I'll try to pick up on (he's back being teacher-boy now so is unlikely to be around much to pick this up himself). Anyway, the essential quote was "if your audience is bored, be less boring." Jam audiences (to make an unfair generalization) like hot playing, lots of interaction between the musicians and audience, so that's what they are going to respond to. Indie audiences (to make perhaps any even more unfair generalization) like great songs delivered with lots of energy. Can these things be mixed? Absolutely! Dig up some of those old Springsteen shows for proof.

- M.

[Mr. Musicface]

OH! I don't think anyone acknowledged 'ersh's post about hanging with The Constantines who are another terrific band, indie or otherwise. I think the idea of bands like that doing shows together is absolutely fantastic. Frankly I'd say BNB have at least as much in common with The Constantines as they do with say nero, other than that all 3 are great bands.

Anyway great stuff 'ersh, I'll certainly try to make some of these shows myself.

- M.

[MarcO]

You can't go wrong with The Boss!

I'm going to put some Springsteen on after I wake up from the monotous haze that is this Benevento/Russo/Gordon show from moedown. Thought it was time to give it a listen. Now I can't wait for it to be over.

[Mr. Musicface]

Yeh I just cued up "Lost In The Flood" from Live in NYC, fantastic later-day E-Street BTW, I recommend it highly.

SO glad I'm heading with Jef down to Ohio and Michigan to see him with John Fogerty (who will also be backed up by the E Steet band, THAT should be pretty amazing) and R.E.M. in October. Gotta love those swing states!

- M.