Avoiding Awfulness

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"And I don't think she remotely cuts it compared to the Lorettas and Tammys and Dollys she's harking back to, much less the modern-day MOR Deanas and Martinas and Joe Dees and Jamies and LeAnns and Lee Anns and Natalies. But I think she's got talent and I'll guess that she never does the totally sappy dreck that some of my current loves are quite capable of unleashing."

This quite of Frank K's (about Neko Case, but the subject isn't really the important thing) touches on something quite important and related to that Fluxblog post we were discussing yesterday, i.e.

How important is it to you that the artists you love don't produce dreadful stuff along with the amazing stuff?

And do you think the risk of dreadfulness in some cases stops being something you have to endure and becomes a deeper part of why you like something?

(I think these ideas are kind of related to the 'NPR' idea that Frank writes about in his book, maybe, but if you haven't come across that idea don't let it stop you discussing this) (EDIT: I meant "PBS"! - though NPR and PBS are kind of similar things, no?)

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think potential awfulness makes my likes more interesting -- established (and unbroken) boringness is the disaster, and by boringness i guess i mean "unable any longer to inspire/goad/conjure other than same-old-same-old response in responders, hata or fan" (ie *i* am the judge of the boringess of the response)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I just had to edit a powerpoint chart about acceptance of risk in the product innovation process which makes exactly the wider point - maybe I should scan it!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

in fact i think i distrust consistency more than the opposite!

[(Anonymous)]

It's not as cut-and-dried as that though - it's regularly used as a stick to beat a lot of the haircut indie bands that they only have one or two good songs (usually the big singles). Nobody cares whether or not this is the case with pop acts.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

That was me, btw.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

when a performer only has a small hoover and it only delivers a small quotient of non-tediousness, i guess the assumption is that the energy is already used up and (by definition AND by choice) (ie by "being indie") they don't have much in the way of orthodox chops or resources or other ways to turn/things to try/gimmicks to have foisted on em...

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

When I was younger, this was v.important and I would've said so immediately - give me ten good songs on an album, and you were pretty much guaranteed that I would buy the next album the first week it was out without having heard anything. Do it twice in a row and I identify myself as a fan.

I so rarely listen to (let alone buy) full albums nowadays - to what extent that is cause (ie., since I don't listen to full albums I can't factor them into my judgment) or effect (ie., the consistency factor is less important to me and therefore I am happy to focus on just tracks), I don't know.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

There are songs I love by artists who have also released utter dross - but for me to say I love an act, only a very little dreadfulness is allowed - the odd atrocious song here and there, no more.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Spot on. Although I'd add to that and say that if an artist I like releases new material which is utter dross, I may well stop liking the artist. I might still enjoy the occasional listen to the older material, but I'd no longer consider paying to go and see them perform purely on the basis of old stuff that I liked. For me, prime example of this is Snow Patrol... I loved them back in the day, but have gone off them to the extent that I wouldn't bother shelling out to see them live, even if I knew that they were going to play all of my old favourites, such is my dislike of most of their newer stuff.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Agreed - I feel much the same way about the Manics.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I guess what I'm interested in is:

- If someone seals off a particular direction (i.e. "sappy dreck" in this case), are they also sealing off particular risks, strategies, potentials that might go with that direction?

- Or to put it another way, are the impulses that lead someone to regularly produce rubbish (and I think the question is suggesting that there's specific kinds of rubbish that are being produced, not just 'sub-par versions of the good songs') also opening them to things that make their good stuff better?

I wonder now if this *is* a question that's especially related to country music, though it might apply to ballad-rich genres of all kinds. It might also apply to the urge to 'experiment' you find with some indie and rock acts, I guess.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

It's an update of the "power ballad" question that metal bands faced in the 80s (and few resisted the temptation, I think).

In that case, I don't think there's any question that the decision NOT to seal off those avenues led to richer product by them (at least to the extent you find value in a) hair metal and b) power ballads). The problem there, though, is that those avenues are what opened up financial possibilities, and bands began to limit themselves in other ways as they chased the money. (Aerosmith's promising reunion fairly quickly turned to muck and dreck of the worst kind.)

On the other hand, you have Queen's early refusal to use synthesizers, which arguably pushed them to do quite creative things. And then once they had "exhuasted" those avenues, they started with the synths and found lots of new veins to mine.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I think the assumption with "sappy dreck" / ballads is that going this direction necessarily means that you're being "safe" and so sealing off particular risks and potentials.

I don't know if that's true, though. What risks are there to going sappy?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Openness to particular emotions or a particular way of emoting?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

what's interesting also is WHO we decide are played out based on what might (after all) just be a BAD PATCH --- ie the modes and genres which seem (to us) plausibly unable to morph or drift sideways in a beneficial way, compared to those performances styles and shelvings where we give a shift the benefit of the doubt?

(ie why does a manics bad patch means it's just OVER for them -- why is a future move into something assumed to be unprofitable for all concerned): why is rock assumed to be so short of vivid life, so inflexible of renewed address?)

-- ps i *intensely* dislike the phrase a "return to form" (which almost always merely means "luckily artist X is now making the same kind of stuff they always used to"), and that is NOT what i am talkin abt really

Consistency Not An Issue

[koganbot]

"Consistency" not the issue. Celine Dion's albums are remarkably consistent: several Ric Wake-produced dance tracks, usually pretty great; some pop-rock stuff produced by Swedes though maybe with some Kara thrown in, can go from good to not good, oddball to normal; ballads that are mostly mediocre but suddenly one is wonderful. So on every album (discounting a couple of recent theme things) I will like some tracks and dislike others.

R-e-v-e-r-s-e

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

It's rare that an artist will suddenly produce brilliant stuff after a history of awful stuff, but that rarity can work to their advantage publicity-wise.

Obv musicians and songwriters improve with practice at least until they write their first big hit (and you will never hear about the earlier non-hits unless you are a mega-fan/rarities collector/knew them before they were famous etc) and then tend to tail off after a year or two.

Take Indie Band X, for example. Their singer and their guitarist have known each other since school and bashed away in singer's garage for approx 5 years. After hard graft around the toilet circuit with rent-a-drummer and rent-a-bassist, the best song they've come up with in those 7-8 years becomes a minor underground hit for Indie Band X. Spurred on by this confidence boost & feedback about what their fans like, they write a whole bunch of similar hits, fans love it & the hype machine does its job. Major label Y comes along, shoves a load of money and production at Indie Band X and says "actually we like that slow ballad you did for a laugh". Singer and guitarist shrug shoulders and coin in the cash by writing follow-up ballad, ditch all hits similar to earlier underground single and release boring but successful album. Singer develops ego/coke problem, guitarist quits band and goes back to writing old-style underground hits with only mild support from loyal early fanbase. Singer attempts to carry on with ballad writing but they start being BAD ballads because of lack of guitarist input. Indie Band X is dropped by label & laughed at by indie kids in the pub. The end.

Sensibility and Social Class

[koganbot]

From about 1963 to about 1979 "people like me" created some of the most interesting music in the world (and in doing so helped create me as someone "like me"). I'd vaguely define "people like me" as the intellectualized quasi-bohemia that arose out of the beats and "folk" music and jazz and rock and then punk, and that includes Frank Kogan, Greil Marcus, Mark Sinker, Chuck Eddy, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, Pere Ubu, Sonic Youth, the Hold Steady, most music blogs, ilX, Pitchfork, Poptimists etc. (Obviously those are not all creators of music, but music is still the drawing force.)

After "our" type of rock (as opposed to hair metal, for instance) went sour in the early '80s, most of my favorite performers put out albums that almost always included stuff that I disliked. Maybe some of them had creativity that sputtered on and off, but the basic reason for their interspersing music I loved with music I disliked was their not belonging to the category "people like me" - in other words, they had a different sensibility from mine. This means that they would do great stuff that I would never think of doing, or do great stuff that I wouldn't feel right doing or couldn't do convincingly ('cause it isn't me); and they would do terrible stuff that I would know better than to do. ("Know better.")

(Um, I'm not saying most great pre-'80s music was made by "people like me," just that most of what I cared about at the time was.)

I think the reason that Paris's album is so consistently good is that her voice is too sketchy to do a creditable (or credible) job on ballads, so she didn't do any.

Major exceptions to the rule (the people I love post-1980 always turn out a certain amount of dreck, except for Paris*): L'Trimm's second album; second Stacey Q album; last year's Toby Keith album; last year's secular Alan Jackson album; first Big & Rich album; first Guns N' Roses album, Eminem's second album; both Ashlee Simpson albums; probably a whole bunch of other stuff I'm not thinking of. Eminem and Ashlee and may be Guns N' Roses may be exceptions that prove the rule, in that they probably veer pretty close to being "people like me" in many ways (and certainly were influenced by "people like me") but don't quite end up being in the genres dominated by "people like me." Recent Toby Keith and Alan Jackson albums were devoted to lover's rock; don't know Jackson's oeuvre well enough, but I'll say that nothing on the consistently good Keith album had anything approaching his best material (and nothing on the Keith or the Jackson was nearly as good as the best stuff on the inconsistent Eric Church or Montgomery Gentry albums). The L'Trimm and Stacey Q albums still feel like miracles. I'm not sure how it is that Big & Rich avoided all their dreck impulses on their first album.

Subject for further research: Marit Larsen, Taylor Swift (invention flags in spots on their albums, but nothing is dreck; Marit is probably a "person like me"; Taylor less so).

*I'm even coming to like her version of "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?"

Re: Sensibility and Social Class

[koganbot]

Erm, given what I said about Celine, I shouldn't have said the Eric Church and MG albums were "inconsistent" but rather that they "contain stuff I love and stuff I'm meh about or actually dislike."

Why rock bands that go bad rarely get good again

[koganbot]

Why rock performers who go bad rarely get good again (or, when they do get good again, rarely approach their earlier greatness):

Punks don't grow, they stop. Meaning that when it no longer makes sense for them to act like punks anymore, they don't have anything half as interesting to replace it. By "punk" I probably mean "have punk tendencies" and rarely mean "belong to the genre 'punk rock.'" Dylan and Stones are still my prototype punks, though of course that's not what I called them at the time, and I've never thought "punk" was the right word for what it was trying to describe anyway. Axl and Eminem fit the category, and exemplify the rule, unfortunately.

Re: Why rock bands that go bad rarely get good again

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

This is why I am glad an Offspring reunion (at least, in the sense of new material) seems really quite unlikely. I still nearly claw my face off at the thought of 'Can't Repeat' and not just for the obvious total irony of the fkn title. :( [They did the awesome-rubbish-ok-TERRIBLE thing highly illustratively, with Americana as obvious 'rubbish' bit, 'Conspiracy Of One' and 'Splinter' (OBVIOUS IRONY RE: SMASH ARGH) as slight recovery and 'Can't Repeat' ie: their last single as LITERALLY THE WORST THING EVER.]

/completely irrelevant rant

Re: Why rock bands that go bad rarely get good again

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

you should make a list of predominating reasons for becoming a musician, like

to piss someone off
to make money
to have fun
to get girls
to learn a craft
to give meaning to your miserable existence
everyone else was doing it
was bored
etc.

and see if you think a lot of the musicians you have in mind have anything in common (and if they jointly lack a reason that some other kinds of musicians might have).

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Realised am about as coherent as jelly at the moment so thought would try writing something again.

Right:
Some acts allow me to create an illusion of them as literally the best most infallible thing ever and this is when one bad song can totally screw everything up for me about them, eg: really hate 'Can't Repeat,' which means have not opened case of Offspring CD for years, despite fact were favourite band in the world for many years.
Other acts do not create this illusion and so I can get over bad songs or even bad whole albums, eg: don't like 'Chemistry' at all, still love Girls Aloud.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I am hungover but a minor point for me here is the kind of way in which an act can be bad. Britney's early sappy ballads were no problem, just press the skip button and ignore them - they didn't signify anything, they were just an expected part of the Britney parcel. Same for Destiny's Child ballads and the rubbish cabaret covers on the Pussycat Dolls album. I had more issues with 'Biology' even though I kind of like it, because I didn't like what it said about where Girls Aloud were going.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think the idea of DIRECTION is kind of key -- but it reflects a sort of "auterist" assumption

ie we object more to a bad direction per se when we assume an act is likely to "know where they're heading"; an act we assume not much in control of its own destiny is forgiven a bad direction (though it may be instead despised for being a willing and/or silly "puppet" of forces beyond its control)

i enjoy lex's inversion of rockist auteurism -- ie when he says "why would someone WANT to sound like this?"; viz yes they are in control of their destiny but SO WHAT WHAT IF THEY PUT IT TO SUCH POOR PURPOSE!

(one element of "had to be there" is that now-pervasive templates may not AT THAT TIME have been laid down -- viz we can still strongly remember when something turned out much less than open seemed so at the time; seemed to be promising to go onto a brave future than in the event never arrived... but we can invoke the potential where the weren't-theres haven't a hope