I like the Beatles, etc. fine but what I don't like are revivalists or copyists or (and here's where I admit to resorting to something of a strawman) bands who are often described as Beatlesque, Dylanesque, Stones-y, etc. Bands who've got Beatles/Dylan/Stones form down pat yet, thanks to the changes in context, don't or can't accomplish whatever the Beatles/Dylan/Stones did back in the day. Actually, I've never been very hot for the Stones. From the vantage point of over twenty-plus years of music-listening, I'm not sure I can put a finger on exactly why. I don't think I ever perceived them as the enemy or as a threat (the way I definitely did towards punk, Kiss, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin as a kid), and I think I got over the seeming tyranny of their canonization a while ago. I forced myself to listen to whole bunch of their oeuvre for a project I was doing two years ago and found I still thought their pre-1965 stuff completely credible and thoroughly boring, that Between the Buttons (my fave of theirs) and Beggars Banquet and assorted singles were still pretty awesome, and as I was in a shitty mood at the time, to my amazement Exile on Main St. finally spoke to/at me rather at some invisible rock fan several yards away. And I still never play them out of compulsion or pleasure. (No, actually, I find some PUNK ROCKIN' ROCK & ROLL revivalism hideously attractive, received as it is, because it's so fucking butch. But as a nerdy gay man I can only enjoy it at arm's length.)
Argh, forget what I said about music that "calls attention to the difficulty or ease of its construction." I said that because I was temporarily enthralled with a comparison between music and plastic surgery that I don't really want to examine here because it doesn't stand up at all.
Moralists who take aim at themselves aren't to my mind moralizers. The sin of moralizing is the unwarranted confidence in one's rightness; a moralist who takes aim at himself by definition undermines this confidence.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-05-09 02:24 am (UTC)Argh, forget what I said about music that "calls attention to the difficulty or ease of its construction." I said that because I was temporarily enthralled with a comparison between music and plastic surgery that I don't really want to examine here because it doesn't stand up at all.
Moralists who take aim at themselves aren't to my mind moralizers. The sin of moralizing is the unwarranted confidence in one's rightness; a moralist who takes aim at himself by definition undermines this confidence.