tatarsky said:
I totally disagree with this.
For a kick off, it supposes the existence of some predetermined configuration of music which makes for inherently 'good songs'. The evidence stacks to the contrary though. Take for example, The Beach Boys, in particular Pet Sounds. Undoubtedly, 'Good Songs', and respected for the steps forward they made (pop song with force of orchestra, etc.), but were the same songs to be replicated today, they would not be anything like as well regarded.
Inherent in any seasoned listener will be an ability to effectively carbon-date whatever they are hearing, so that we can sit back and enjoy Pet Sounds and its innovations, recognising it as the Event that it was. The same goes for sonic (Eno, say) and rhythmical (eg Can) innovations.
I do think there is such a thing as a 'good song', but its parameters are defined by its era. A piece of music with a good song in it can be enjoyed for what it is, and concerns about innovations in other aspects (sonics, textures, rhythms, etc.) can be put to oneside, but what determines whether a song is any good or not is bound to the fashions of the times. In fact, beyond that, a good song will be an innovation in itself, in that it will take the parameters of the current fashions and push them in a particular direction, recontextualising the very definition of our mythical 'good song'.
Which ties in precisely to Ned's comment.
Secondly, this interpretation of music ranks one single aspect of music above all others, declaring it 'spiritual' and 'religious', and therefore better. This is ludicrous, particularly when you remember that RHYTHM quite obviously predates the song, and could be said to equally 'spiritual', if not more so.
Music is a dynamic process. Therefore music dates.
This would suggest that any response to music "out of its time" could only be based in a) some sort of historical interest in the song-as-artefact; b) whatever qualities it contributed to the "progress" of (popular) music; or in c) nostalgia, that most-despised bane of modernism. I'll concede that those
can be points of interest when listening to a recording. However, if they are the only points, then almost no one would listen to "old" music (which most people who listen to pop music at all do, outside of that burst of intense need to be in "the now" between ages 14-22 or so through which many people seem to go). Certainly in my own case, even as a person who admittedly does plenty of "thinking" about music/context, there is still a gut-punch to any music that really means anything to me, be it "old" or "new".
To admit my biases, I'm highly sceptical of anything the appeal of which depends to any great extent on "newness," as that quality is obviously innately unsustainable; and the art (whether music or architecture) is likely to depreciate (and in the case of architecture, dissentigrate) rather quickly. As one who was the better part of a decade away from being born when Can released 'Ege Bamyasi,' how is it that I judge (more importantly feel) it to be good despite my total dislocation from "the time" (and certainly from its fashions)? My impetus for spending a year putting together a 500+ track box set of "out-of-time" music was not historical, nor was it nostalgic (I was barely there in 1981), nor was it revivalist. I just thought the music sounds really good and I was tired of revivalists name-checking a tired few. I think most people, especially those as young as me, who heard the box set heard it on its own terms, felt the "gut-punch" of a lot of the music.
Pop music, and especially its sub-fields of electronic/sample/techno-oriented sounds, do rely to some degree on technology. And technology has arguably done nothing but "improve," as refinement is innate to its purpose. But surely even techno/dance music isn't simply a product of the available technology? Do I enjoy Raymond Scott or Giorgio Moroder out of some tech-geek appreciation of the technology they employed/advanced? It's something I've never understood about the apparently lineal approach many people seem to take toward dance music--one ostensibly either jumps on to the new thing every 2-3 years almost ashamed of having invested so much in what is now "outmoded;" or one nostalgically, probably partially ironically revives some temporally fixed technology/sound ("rave revival," neo-electro, etc.). Is techno inherently futurist, inherently shelf-life-limited?
I guess in a way I'm sidestepping of the direct question of this thread--if pressed I'd say, sure, pop music dates, in that one can percieve it (via stylistic or production qualities) as being not from the current moment. But I'd ask: so what? Does being "dated" inherently reduce the appeal of art? I reject that sort of modernist/futurist mentality as extreme and impractical, the force behind a great deal of destruction in the last century. When I hear most new music, it sounds at least as "dated" as any music, imbued as it often is with a self-conscious post-modern concern with nowness/newness and its temporal location in the "process" of pop music. The idea that the process is some sort of zero-sum "progress," with the moment at some sort of zenith, is one that I don't think too many people would actually defend when assessing the current milieu, but it's implied in some of the arguments I'm reading in this thread.
"Carbon-dating" a piece is an intellectual process. Don't you think part of the appeal of "the rhythm" is non-intellectual, physical, emotional? Do you listen only with your brain? I understand the desire to resist "anecdotal" response to music, the notion that some music is more "authentic" than others because of some (oh boy "rockist") emphasis on emotionality/spirituality. But does that mean we have to throw out the baby with the bathwater--that we must reject *all* emotional/physical response as dangerous and rockist and far to vague to have any meaning? Music isn't maths, there's no equation to determine what people find "good". Isn't it a bit unrealistic, at least, to dismiss this entire element of the enjoyment of/investment in "good" art--given that "spiritual" value, whether overtly expressed or implied, certainly played/plays a formative role in so much music made throughout human history? Wouldn't it be better to account for it directly, rather than try to write it out of existence? If we're actually interested in what anyone else thinks/feels about music (which would seem to be the motivation for ever talking/posting about/sharing/participating in it, rather than just sitting back and enjoying our own private libraries in solitude) then doesn't it make sense not to essentially accuse vast portions of the human population of false/sub-consciousness in their approach to music?
