Who needs Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, they're not our music, they're out of date

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Jaysis I'm ruined.

The pop quiz was somewhat of a triumph - £330 in the kitty for charity, pretty good result, bigger things expected of the auction on Friday tho. Nobody got the Bradford fire question; nobody got Chernenko; I think one team got Chumbawamba; nobody got I'd Rather Jack; almost nobody got ABBA; EVERYBODY got Busted, hurrah.

Does anyone want more bits and pieces questions?

Here is a question that's been floating around my brain a bit: is pop music a good medium for self-expression? When I think of records which have some kind of confessional or soul-baring component to them I tend to be thinking of records I think are a BIG BAG OF SH1TE. "Self-expression" isn't exactly the right words here, maybe with conversation I can work towards a better way of phrasing this...

Comments

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this becomes clearer if you rephrase it: pop music is rubbish when it is ONLY self-expression; pop music can be (but need not be) a powerful vehicle for self-expression (actually is that really the right word? But I think I know what you mean), but is only also effective as pop music when it the self-expression is mediated by e.g. tradition, genre, consideration for audience, commercial impositions -- i.e. all the other stuff. I think an aesthetic theory needs to have a place for expression in it (I didn't think this a few years ago) because it is an undeniable fact that some / many artists do see what they are doing in those terms. But, to draw a parallel, the people who are encouraged to write doggerel by their psychologists as a way of dealing with their emotional problems are not making art, because all the other factors are missing.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah I like the insertion of 'only'.

It's one of the big things I just don't GET about the way some people enjoy music - something like John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band just seems so awful to me because it really REQUIRES you to take some kind of interest in JL's inner life, it feels boring and intrusive somehow.