Listening With Context

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Following up from the poll (poor old Incubus)

Do you carry in your head an idea of the "average listener" as any kind of reference point? Did you ever? (whether you defined yrself for or against her/him)

aka - who ARE these "masses", anyway?

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i have a handful of close friends who are entirely not part of "our mob" -- viz don't read the internet, don't read "music-writing", and generally respond to music for their "own" reasons: by which i mean reasons not immediately connected to reader-shaped tribalism

one of them is herself actually a really excellent singer -- x-factor quality singer, who only missed out on a real-actual professional jazzsinger career as a teen for family reasons -- but just not a reader, beyond (non-broadsheet) newspapers... so i'm always interested in their perspective, not cz i think it's "more real" (or "more average" or "more ideal"), but bcz i'm deeply interested in what the relationship between music and writing is, culturally, and the differences between her tastes and mine are instructive