From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V10 #99 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Friday, April 9 2004 Volume 10 : Number 099 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Today's your birthday, friend... [Mike Matthews ] Re: L.r.t.t. (was : Ouch!) [Alberto Carrasco ] More thoughts on critics. [Alberto Carrasco ] Completely OT: Scottrade member here? [DanStark <2004.carnivore99@verizon] Re: More thoughts on critics. [andrew fries ] Re: More thoughts on critics. [alan ] Re: More thoughts on critics. [Damon ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 03:00:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Matthews Subject: Today's your birthday, friend... i*i*i*i*i*i i*i*i*i*i*i *************** *****HAPPY********* **************BIRTHDAY********* *************************************************** *************************************************************************** ************************ Heidi Heller (ho@his.com) ************************ *************************************************************************** -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Heidi Heller Mon April 08 1974 Aries Jill Hughes Sat April 09 1955 Aries Klaus Kluge Sun April 10 1960 Unicorn Steve VanDevender Sun April 10 1966 Racer Art Liestman Fri April 10 1953 Repeat Stephen Golden Sat April 10 1971 Jokey Michael Bowman Wed April 11 1962 Aries Wolfgang Ullwer Fri April 11 1969 Widder Janet Kirsch Thu April 11 1974 Aries Jerry Tue April 13 1971 Aries Stuart Myerburg Mon April 14 1969 Aries T-Bone Wed April 15 1992 happy cat Jeff Hanson Sat April 16 1966 Aries Michael Klouda Mon April 17 1967 Aries Harry Foster Sat April 21 1956 NiceGuy Kjetil Torgrim Homme Thu April 23 1970 Taurus Jeff Burka Thu April 24 1969 GoFlyAKite Christine Waite Tue April 25 1972 Taurus Matt Adams Thu April 26 1962 Taurus Brad Hutchinson Tue April 28 1964 What sign? Geoff Parks Sun April 30 1961 Taurus Marty Lash Sat May 01 1948 Taurus Barney Parker Fri May 02 1986 happy cat Gray Abbott Tue May 03 1955 Suprised Tamar Boursalian Tue May 03 1966 Taurus Richard A. Holmes May 07 Taurus Steve Ito Fri May 08 1970 DA Bull... - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 09:41:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Alberto Carrasco Subject: Re: L.r.t.t. (was : Ouch!) Or, as Frank Zappa defined rock journalism in The Real Frank Zappa Book, (I've seen the quote credited to many others): "People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read." - ----------- Greetings, Ectofolk: There have been times when someone suggested that I become a music critic - perhaps that person thought my musical taste would be well-suited to a newspaper job or something similar. But this was in the 1990's, when my personal connections to some of our local musicians (especially Janice Buckner) had intensified to the point when writing about the same musicians I was befriending would have been a conflict of interest. More than a decade later, I discovered another good reason for resisting the temptation to turn critic: it would have resulted in the most shallow and flippant scratchings imaginable. I would have been no better - or different - than the _Boston Globe_ writer who thought his single-paragraph write-up of Vienna Teng was clever... when, in fact, it reads just like my attempts to play critic would have been. Shallow, flippant, and irrelevant. Or, in another word, worthless tripe. And dragging in the Kashi posse was infantile and pointless. Yes, there is a little danger in being over-passionate about a musician or some other "artiste" you admire (Shunji Iwai's 2001 film _All About Lily Chou-Chou_ frames that danger in his story of the life of a troubled rural Japanese adolescent). But to throw various ill-chosen metaphors into some sort of "blender" from which a newspaper "piece" is spawned is an example of culture journalism at its worst. To paraphrase Clifford Irving as interviewed for Orson Wells' film _F for Fake_ (1975), you might say that I've lost (for better) all faith in critical expertise. And I've never regretted not going into print journalism. Not when you're in the Wired. Philip David 2004.04.07 __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 09:45:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Alberto Carrasco Subject: More thoughts on critics. CRITICS When people try to say something about music, sometimes they thinking that their opinion is really TRUE. But the mind of one man it is not the Universe... Universe of Sounds...Universe of Opinions... "The level of writing that passes for music criticism...is depressingly low. There exists no tradition of really informed, vibrant writing in small journals...I regret the fact that composers have given up writing about music. Berlioz, Schumann and Wagner were highly educated writers and grappled with aesthetic and historical stylistic issues- they preached and practised." - - Composer/conductor John Adams "Critics - murderers!" - - Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Those who write ill, and they who ne'er durst to write, Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite." - - John Dryden, Conquest of Granada "Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could: they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics." - - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures: Sheakespeare and Milton "Blame where you must, be candid where you can, And be each critic the Good-Natured Man." - - Oliver Goldsmith The Good-Natured Man "Criticism is the are wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the artist's fame." - - George Jean Nathan, House of Satan "They damn what they do nut understand." - - Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria "Really to stop criticism they say one must die." - - Voltaire "The good critic is he who narrates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces." - - Anatole France, La Vie Litteraire "A music critic couldn't get up on stage and do it if he hadto. A music critic nine timesout of ten is a frustrated performer...Music is too precious to me,I do not want to be distractedfrom it by the trashiness of music reviews." - - Soprano Sylvia McNair "'Tis hard to say if greater want of skill Appears in writing or judging ill." - - Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism "A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car." - - Kenneth Tyan Christopher Hampton says asking a working musicians what he thinks about critics is like "asking a lamp-post what it thinks about dogs." Finnish composer Jean Sibelius observes, "pay no attention to what the critics say.No good songs were ever written by a critic..." To paraphrase Edvard Munch, who painted The Scream, "After all his musical effortshad come to nought and he had to wear a hearing aid, he became an art critic..." "A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like." - - H. L. Mencken "I have no responsibility to the critics. It's easy to hate something. A lot of those guys could never, ever say 'I really liked this John Tesh concert' and get back into the newsroom with their skin. The rest of the guys would kill 'em. It's akin to liking Satan." - - John Tesh "Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how its done, they've seen it done everyday, but they're unable to do it themselves." - - Brendan Behan "Man derides what he does not understand." - - Goethe "Any fool can criticize and many of them do." - - Cyril Garbett "Songs are so much more than lyrics, but your normal rock critic can't really dealwith anything more than the lyrics. He can't address the other issues because he doesn't understand them. Most guys who review records don't know anything about tunings, drum beats, notes, measures, all that stuff, so it's just lost on them." - - John Mellencamp __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 16:46:27 -0400 From: DanStark <2004.carnivore99@verizon.net> Subject: Completely OT: Scottrade member here? I'm signing up for Scottrade - would anyone like to provide me with a referral? I could just get one from a stranger in a financial forum but I'd rather give the reward to somebody here. :) E-mail me first, I have a different E-mail addy I'll be using. Dan ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2004 07:01:49 +1000 From: andrew fries Subject: Re: More thoughts on critics. and let's not forget this one: 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture' - - Thelonius Monk (IIRC) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 14:07:01 -0700 (PDT) From: alan Subject: Re: More thoughts on critics. On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, andrew fries wrote: > and let's not forget this one: > > 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture' > - Thelonius Monk (IIRC) I have also seen that quote attributed to Frank Zappa. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 14:20:03 -0700 From: Damon Subject: Re: More thoughts on critics. On 08 Apr, alan wrote: > On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, andrew fries wrote: > > and let's not forget this one: > > > > 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture' > > - Thelonius Monk (IIRC) > > I have also seen that quote attributed to Frank Zappa. and of course it just makes me think of the movie `playing by heart'. heh. quotes through the ages. - -- dl+ecto@usrbin.ca: protecting my real address since 2002 (too late!) > EWS starts here! < ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V10 #99 **************************