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

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."