Cultural Cowardice

Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Art is so much more complex than chemicals, and even chemicals interact with different brains so differently. I was saying this to someone recently, how you tend to assume when you've - say - done a pill that everybody else you're with whose done one of the same batch must be feeling exactly the same as you. And on some level they ARE, because we share so much physiologically that it's extremely likely that they are experiencing euphoria, energy, and so on. But their baseline is different, even leaving aside their experiences in the moment.

When a song is as popular for such a long time as DSTYGE, it makes me think there must be SOMETHING about those chords, that melody, that arrangement, that voice, that appeals to a huge range of people as surely as a clear blue sky does.

I can imagine, though, a whole range of "reasons" and rationalisations to persuade somebody to hate it. Too jaunty for their temperamental. Too "effeminate" even. Or maybe it represents something to them - commercialism, mindless hedonism ("Disco Sucks").

And then there's the sensual aspect of taste - a high voice like Michael Jackson's might just be offensive to some people's ears.

It's a common experience of mine to hate something on principle and be grudgingly win over to it by the harmony, the rhythm, the melody - stuff that bypasses the rational mind, or at least seems to.
 
S

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
In other words, if someone hates 'Dont Stop Til you Get enough' is there a moment when they respond to it as someone who loves it would, before they bring down the drawbridge?
Click to expand...

that's definitely true. the drawbridge doesn't actually work in their mind either. they're lying. haunted by the truth of their true love for quincy jones like some edgar allan poe lord of the manor.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
And btw I've hated blue skies too - because I'm depressed, because the blue sky is something beautiful that I can't enjoy, or that I know other people are enjoying it, cloudlessly.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
most of the time we're not open. or at least, not open to an optimal degree. as corpse says, the amount of pleasure we take from the sky for instance, fluctuates. the amount of pleasure we take from music fluctuates. the amount of control we have over that is, not negligible exactly, but certainly, is far from ideal.

so really what you're waiting for is those times when something extraordinary from outside the self converges with a moment of exceptional receptivity. the right song for example, at the right moment.
that's the magic.

the rest of life isn't wallpaper and spam but it can sometimes feel like it's just a kind of preparation for these moments. laying the groundwork.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
COME ON FASTER FASTER. TOO SLOW. STIMULATE ME. WHERE'S MY DOPAMINE REWARD? MORE WORDS MORE IDEAS MORE DIRECTIONS.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
i am not depressed atm i exorcised the demons but i need to receive funny juices and i got no 2c-e. i need to read a funny book. stupid, but good stupid. what do the oliviers of dissensus recommend?
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
And btw I've hated blue skies too - because I'm depressed, because the blue sky is something beautiful that I can't enjoy, or that I know other people are enjoying it, cloudlessly.
Click to expand...

you know there is an Ariel Pink song about that, or at least, he covered a Sixties song by the Rockin' Ramords that was about that - the chorus goes "bright lit blue skies / you're full of lies".

which is a sort of archetypal Los Angeles outsider thing - where you dress in black, cos you feel black inside, and because dressing black is an incredibly impractical thing to do in southern California, 10 months out of 12. but you're making your statement by doing that.

there's a surprisingly large number of Goths and industrial fans here

i seem to remember a lot of death metal came out of Florida, so that would be a similar syndrome
 
Last edited:
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
There are songs where you think it's inconceivable that anyone could dislike it, not love it

But there's always someone given the diversity and perversity of humans

I was shocked the first time I came across people who professed to be indifferent to the Beatles

I was like, "even 'Strawberry Fields Forever'?". Blank looks all around. "What about "Help!"??!". Unimpressed expression, shrugs.

I don't think they were acting up though or taking a stance, it was just genuine ennui.

People are wired differently and it is fascinating how few things actually are incontrovertible when it comes to taste or aesthetic judgement.

But there is a syndrome where people cultivate contrarian or heterodox viewpoints

The most laughable one I came across ever i think was a fanzine-world writer who described the Rolling Stones as merely okay and averred that the Pretty Things were true real-deal Brit R&B band of their era.
 
S

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
i meant it more seriously than that.

they were a rejection of all the innovations that had emerged in the years (decades even) preceding them. they were in stark contrasts (and in interviews antagonistic to) the sonic frontiers of their time. they're ideologically the antithesis of everything you celebrate about post-punk.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
it's before my time so i can't put them in their correct context. i don't have a clear enough idea of what they were responding to and reacting against.

i do remember reading an article he wrote saying they were rejecting health and effeciency ethos of the time (an ethos which has reappeared in our present, redoubled)
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
i often think, wistfully, about how once im famous and successful i will look back on my days as a penniless street poet and dissensus contributor as the happiest time of my life. so much freedom. so little responsibility.
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
sadmanbarty said:
the smiths: cultural cowardice

discuss.
Click to expand...

although that's not what you're getting at, obviously

you know in a larger sense, i think that is a fair verdict

not specifically the Smiths, but the thing they were part of which was a return to guitar-pop, the four man classic line-up rock band, Sixties influences

and i had actually thought earlier of mentioning that mid-Eighties moment of postpostpunk as an example of a retreat

so you have postpunk (engaging with black music's cutting edges, militant politics or existentialist despair, synthesisers, feminism, etc etc)

and then postpunk turns into indie - and it's back to the rock line-up, the politics muted or become defeatist / wistful, the music backward-looking and elegiac

And in fact when I first heard the Smiths i didn't like them - i thought it sounded mundane and foursquare, after things like The Associates and Japan -much more richly textured, overloaded, and simply modern sounding

but then they clicked with me, the magic made itself apparent

i think they are exceptional, because of the uniqueness of Morrissey as an personality, the lyrics, the vocals, his dancing, and also musically the Smiths have a broader base than all the other indie Sixties-ish janglers of then - Johnny Marr loved Chic, the rhythm section had played funk in an earlier band - it's just much richer melodically and texturally than their contemporaries - Marr did some new things with the guitar, or fresh things at any rate

you could say they were a bad influence, for sure, and part of a larger retreat

but for all that an epochal band - it was an era of retreat and defeat
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top