From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V8 #315 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Wednesday, August 18 1999 Volume 08 : Number 315 Today's Subjects: ----------------- rolling stone article [four episode lesbian ] RE: Quail in a Cage ["Partridge, John" ] "What is Art?" (Philip Glass content, 5%) [James Dignan ] sleeping with your angel pool ["Andrew D. Simchik" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 22:41:18 -0400 From: four episode lesbian Subject: rolling stone article Hit Robyn Hitchcock, Flaming Lips, Sebadoh and Cornelius fight brain degeneration Robyn Hitchcock is trying to free your mind. Along with Oklahoma's Flaming Lips, Massachusetts' Sebadoh, Japan's Cornelius and France's Kid Loco, the British singer/songwriter is a charter member of "The 1999 International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue," a travelling circus of modern-day maestros and musical misfits. So far, the adventure has come off without a hitch. "It's quite a feat to get the whole caravan to go around without us all either getting killed or killing each other," Hitchcock said from his Memphis hotel room. "Everyone gets up at an insanely early hour of the morning and then trundles across a patch of America in the baking heat with all this equipment. Considering this is the digital age, it's all amazingly medieval." The caravan's mission: To drive from town to town and rejuvenate our gray matter. Why have our brains degenerated? Bad music, of course. Hitchcock blames capitalism for the current state of music, which he describes as "increasingly pappy." As record companies merge into one another and drop the less commercially viable artists, Hitchcock laments that the lowest common denominator is sinking to new depths. "This thing of trying to please everybody just puts everybody down in the dirt," he said. "Fewer and fewer demands are made on people. You would never get a songwriter like Cole Porter today, or even a musical like High Society. It would all be too literate, too witty." Hitchcock has long suffered for his wittiness, as his songs about balloon men and wasp women are just not the stuff of pop radio. "Sometimes I feel as though I have to translate myself into another language in order to communicate with people," he said. "I like words, and I guess most people don't. It seems the barrel of words is getting drained and there's sort of fewer and fewer to pick out. Sometimes it feels like we're scraping the barrel of words altogether. I realize that this is a really unorthodox attitude for a rock musician, but there I am." Hitchcock's new communication opus is Jewels for Sophia, a rather straight-up batch of melodic pop, featuring guests likes R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, Grant Lee Buffalo's Grant Lee Phillips and the Young Fresh Fellows' Scott McCaughey and Tim Keegan. "These days I'm very keen to base [the albums] around my own voice and guitar and not get lost in too much fiddle faddle," Hitchcock says. Still, despite the album's sparse sound, songs like "Antwoman," "Cheese Alarm" and "Dark Princess" prove there's plenty of lyrical fiddle faddle to go around. The sardonic Seattle tribute "Viva! Sea-Tac"(complete with references to Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and coffee) may be Jewels for Sophia's crowning jewel. "We did a couple of shows called 'Viva! Sea-Tac' in Seattle, the Young Fresh Fellows and I," Hitchcock said of the song's origin. "For the last one Peter Buck and [former Hitchcock/Blue Aeroplanes sideman] Tim Keegan were there. We recorded that song the night before playing at Viva! Sea-Tac. We thought, "Let's do a show and call it 'Viva Sea Tac.' As inevitably happens, once the title's there, the song sort of grows down from it." Then Hitchcock stops translating and reverts back to his own language. "It's rather like as if people's heads existed first and then their bodies grew down from them. It starts off with all these heads wandering around six feet above the ground like gourds gliding slightly unevenly above the pavement. And then the body grows down. I liken songwriting to that." Hitchcock is comfortable with the fact that Jewels for Sophia may be his last outing for Warner Bros., knowing that his limited record sales may no longer fit in the brave new music world. "I'm a 'prestige' artist, rather than something that makes any money. But, on the other hand, I haven't cost them that much either. The promotional machine hasn't whipped itself up into a frenzy over shifting Robyn Hitchcock units; I've been left to sort of hang out my own lines in the water and see if anything bites. A label is a temporary accommodation; it's a hotel. I don't expect to be in a hotel forever, but it's a roof for a while." The remaining 1999 International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue dates are as follows: 8/17: New York, Tramps 8/18: New York, Tramps 8/20: Boston, Roxy 8/21: Philadelphia, Electric Factory 8/22: Cleveland, Agora Theatre BILL CRANDALL (August 16, 1999) [thank you griff!] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 19:51:03 -0700 From: "Partridge, John" Subject: RE: Quail in a Cage > >In any event, the main point I was trying to make was that all the > >arts have suffered horribly since WWII and to my surprise, no one > >seems to agree. Ah well, me being a reactionary doesn't necessarily > >mean I'm wrong. > > Well, no, because there is a difference in stating your opinion "I > don't like post-WWII art" and saying "The art after WWII is > degenerate and it sucks, and it's not even art." I mean, most of my > favorite stuff in art and literature comes from the forties and on! > Well I honestly envy people like you. But tell me this, is there *any* category of alleged artistic expression that you would draw the line at and say, "sorry, haircut, that ain't art"? If yes, draw some boundaries for me. If no, then "art" doesn't mean a hell of a lot, does it? > >Whenever I hear that a piece of art works mainly on a > conceptual level > >it says to me that it has failed to work on any other: > > That's slighting the artist's intent, don't you think? I guess but that's beside the point: intent matters not a wit; the result is what matters. I have no idea what Yeats meant to do with the poems he wrote; all I know is what I get out of them and they're magnificent. I have *full* knowledge of what *I* meant to do with the poems *I* wrote but your esthetic response is and ought to be entirely independent of that. We *can* agree on that, can't we? > When Duchamp > did his ready-mades, you really can't say that he was trying for a > Rodin and failed, so labeled it "conceptual?" Don't know this Duchamp fellow but I think Rodin is the bee's knees. > Again, it sounds to me > like you only really like and respect a certain kind of art, which is > fine; but my issue is with the pedestal you've erected below your > feet that gives you a position lofty enough to crap down on what you > don't like. Well some people love pedestals and some people hate them. I love pedestals but not because it gives me a better crapping vantage point. Nothing would please me more than to be living in the Renaissance and reflect with pleasure on how quite good the music, painting, and poetry all are. > Please don't think I am flaming you or getting personal > -- I am just stating the way I feel you express your opinions. > All of your remarks are informative and well-intentioned and I hope I haven't crossed the line either. > >Calling in to question our ideas about art itself is > >*not* art, it's art crit. > > So you are saying that art can criticize everything but itself? Or > are you saying that art can serve no critical function? > Hmm. So can a parody be so well written that it becomes art? I would say no. A satire, possibly, but not a parody. I think an accomplished artist could certainly apply his talents toward the end of artistic criticism and the result would likely be very uh, artful. But I don't believe it would be art. I'm flailing with the hypothetical here - do you have a specific example to ground it? > >And while I believe there's a place in the > >world for art crit (i.e., grad school), let's not confuse it with the > >real deal. > > Oh, my! So art criticism is just a thing that belongs in grad school? > That's a prejudice which I feel may be undermining a clear view. > Well not just grad school. Lots of journalists like to talk about it, preferably by the column-inch. I don't understand what you mean by "undermining a clear view". > >> Look, John Cage -- who, like Byron, Wilde, and Duchamp, may be more > >> important for who they were rather than their work itself > > > >I don't know what to think of a statement like this because my only > >unit of analysis is the work of art, not the artist, not the era, not > >the environment, not the weather that day. > > That's one way of looking at a single work of art, yes. But I choose > to look at the context, I maintain that some artists are *more* > important than their work itself. > > >For me, an artist's > >importance is defined by his art. > > Then that's indeed "for you." To define someone like Oscar Wilde or > Marcel Duchamps merely by his body of works; to rob their *life* of > an importance beyond their work . . . that's a very limited way to > look at things. No question in mind Oscar Wilde was an artist and I don't see how I've robbed his life of anything. The biographers and historians can write to their heart's content about him and if you happen to be someone who has a strong interest in Oscar Wilde, then their writings will hopefully be illuminating. I don't see that an artist's historical significance bears on his art. Is a landscape by Adolf Hitler any more or less a work of art because it's Adolf's handiwork? > I mean, it is certainly a valid school of thought -- > one that was more or less supplanted (or simply *joined*) by other > paradigms decades ago -- but still, I personally find it limiting > when applied universally. > > >Let him explore to his heart's content but don't get all > pretentious-like > >and try to call it art. That's just so smugly self-congratulatory. > > Actually, I think Cage called it his music. You're right; it's his devotees I am annoyed with. > But frankly, I find your > sentence about disquieting . . . almost like you are taking some of > their work *personally.* You seem so quick to pass judgment and cast > aspersions. I take it all very personally; it's the way I apprehend all art. I open my senses to it and pray a clear strong signal comes through on my esthetic antenna. When all I hear is a raspberry I take it personally. I don't mean to pass judgment quickly - I've taken a long time to get to this point of view. Sorry about the aspersion casting - I enjoy doing it for fun but I shouldn't when we're talking about art. > > >They might well have wanted me to think about that but I could give > >a shit. All I get is a white canvas or random noise and think "these > >guys have total contempt for me and they just mooned me, > conceptually". > > I don't think Cage wanted you personally to give a shit about > anything. No one is forcing you to be challenged; I am sure you can > catch a Brahms festival easily enough. oof. > But what you consider mooning, > I consider an invitation to consider my own perceptions. > Well you're pretty accommodating then. I read about a year ago of some artist (French? Italian?) who I think had died recently - this is all very hazy - and among the artist's product were individually signed, sealed cans of his shit. The article said they were auctioned. That pretty much lays it out, right? You can view that as an invitation to consider your perceptions about art, but to me it looks like you're being played the fool. And if you say "no, it's both" or "that's the point", I'll just nod agreeably. > >> It was a very important > >> statement that needed to be made at that time. > > > >Important to whom?!? Is there some other value beyond the > artistic merit > >of the piece at hand that I'm missing? Why was that > statement important > >to me, the viewer, the ostensible audience for the created art? > > I really don't want to sound patronizing here, but why don't you > study the evolution of modern music and serialism from the Second > Viennese School to the sixties? Artists like John Cage really did a > lot to point out the sterility and alienation that was entrenching > itself in the world of music and academia. > > And again, to directly answer your strident question, it may not be > important to you, because you have made it quite clear that you don't > wish to be exposed to that sort of challenge. At the risk of trivializing your point, I'll try an analogy: Are you saying that punk music was an important statement that needed to be made at the time to free popular music from the straitjacket of 70's corporate rock? If so, I would say that the historians have lots of hard evidence of what punk succeeded and failed at and who knows, maybe what punk rock did was even important. But it doesn't make the music sound any better. > Perhaps you feel that > it is arrogant to even assume there is something in *need* of a > challenge; that's fine. The public at large will never suffer a > concert of Mozart or Beethoven because of a local John Cage festival, > so why the near-hostility? > > >If they're enjoyable to you then that's the main thing. I can't say > >I find them enjoyable myself and as to testing limits and exploring > >new possibilities, well that's what we in the old days called > >"practicing". Let him practice but he shouldn't try to pass it off > >as art. > > See, there again . . . I can agree with you, and find your opinions > reasonable, until you have to say, "well that's what. . . ." I almost > get the impression you feel the victim of some weird conspiracy . . . > has Denise Sharpe been bugging you, too? Damn, soon we're *all* going > to be as crazy as Commander Lang and myself! > > >Well in that event, I appreciate your indulgence in this discussion > >because if I were in your shoes I'd be thinking, "this mutant has > >no nose so no wonder the flowers bore him." > > Well, again, I appreciate discussions like this, and I am enjoying > it. (Though I think it's just me, you, Capuchin and Eb now!) > > >Thanks for correcting me. Perhaps I attribute too much weight to > >Adams because I read he teamed up with Peter Sellars (and > you can guess > >how much I like *his* stuff). > > Heh heh . . . > > >Are there specific pieces you would recommend > >to someone like me who has no affinity for atonal music? > > Well, it depends on what you *do* like, musically. I mean, Philip > Glas sis the opposite of atonalism, but the enemy of your enemy may > not be your friend. > > >You don't find Glass stagnant? I do. Good mood music though. > > No, I find Glass beautiful and haunting. No other composer besides my > beloved Beethoven and Wagner can affect me the way Glass does. But > some people do find him stagnant or boring. It really is just a > matter of taste. > "My beloved Beethoven and Wagner." I couldn't have said it better. LVB's as good as it got, for me. I miss him. > >I don't > >know Steve Reich at all or Elliott Carter for that matter or Roger > >Sessions. Any recommendations on specific compositions? > > I don't think you would like any of them. Reich can be more "boring" > to most people than Glass. His is a music in constant motion, motion > that paradoxically resolves into perfect stillness, like watching the > spokes of a bicycle wheel turn into a shimmering pattern. "Music for > 18 Musicians" is a common and well-known piece to try. A rock analogy > might be The Orb, or Aphex Twin. Carter is *insanely* complex, often > dissonant, manically energetic, and very "intellectual." More like > Bartok in that regard, but even more complex. A rock analogy would be > late period King Crimson. And Sessions -- serialism with emotion, his > best work (IMO) based on the Viet Nam war. If you don't like > atonalism, avoid him. > > Really if you tell me what you do like, I would be happy to send you > some suggestions offlist. > > >Critical thinking about > >the arts has been suspended and the vocabulary for thoughtful > >discussion is missing. > > Well, I disagree. But the barbarians are indeed at the gates, if you > look at it that way -- I would say, rather discourse and criticism > have been broadened, and there are more voices at the table now. There are more voices at the table but they aren't speaking the same language. > > >Pop > >music, street dancing, comic books, these all seem as vibrant and > >as strong as ever. Some are even art I'd say. > > I'll end there -- in complete agreement! > You didn't end there, did you? > --Quail > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > The Great Quail, Keeper of the Libyrinth: > http://www.libyrinth.com > > The places I took him! > I tried hard to tell > Young Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell > A few brand-new wonderful words he might spell. > I led him around and I tried hard to show > There are things beyond Z that most people don't know. > I took him past Zebra. As far as I could. > And I think, perhaps, maybe I did him some good... > Because finally he said: > "This is really great stuff! > And I guess the old alphabet ISN'T enough!" > --Dr. Seuss, "On Beyond Zebra" > *Now* you've ended. Past zebra indeed. The Fisherman ALTHOUGH I can see him still. The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, It's long since I began To call up to the eyes This wise and simple man. All day I'd looked in the face What I had hoped 'twould be To write for my own race And the reality; The living men that I hate, The dead man that I loved, The craven man in his seat, The insolent unreproved, And no knave brought to book Who has won a drunken cheer, The witty man and his joke Aimed at the commonest ear, The clever man who cries The catch-cries of the clown, The beating down of the wise And great Art beaten down. Maybe a twelvemonth since Suddenly I began, In scorn of this audience, Imagining a man, And his sun-freckled face, And grey Connemara cloth, Climbing up to a place Where stone is dark under froth, And the down-turn of his wrist When the flies drop in the stream; A man who does not exist, A man who is but a dream; And cried, "Before I am old I shall have written him one poem maybe as cold And passionate as the dawn." - William Butler Yeats ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 15:05:42 +1200 From: James Dignan Subject: "What is Art?" (Philip Glass content, 5%) >>You don't find Glass stagnant? I do. Good mood music though. > >No, I find Glass beautiful and haunting. No other composer besides my >beloved Beethoven and Wagner can affect me the way Glass does. But >some people do find him stagnant or boring. It really is just a >matter of taste. Anyone who finds Philip Glass's music unaffecting and stagnant should listen to "Anthem" from Powwaqqatsi (hmmm. too many 'w's?). Grand and stirring in a way that would surprise many who think smiley Phil's a cold fish. ><< Someone has to find it appealling? Woah. >> > > Well, art that is passable or better has to be appealing. Bad art has >to at least be an attempt at making something that's appealing, even if the >artist doesn't make the mark. what aboiut art deliberately aimed at being *un*appealing? Are Beckmann's paintings appealing? I'll stick my oar into the great 'what is art' debate: one facet of the definition (there is no one pure definition) for me is 'anything that has been created for the deliberate purpose of creating an emotional reaction through non-functional means". That is, if it provokes a reaction in you - even if that reaction is disgust - and that is what the creator intended, and if that reaction is not caused by its functionality (let's face it, instruments of torture might provoke an emotional reaction, but not for their artistic merits), then I wouldat least consider its artistic merits. James ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 22:23:07 -0500 From: tanter Subject: art? As a college professor, I'm not sure how qualified I really am to step into this discussion since none of us really has a definition, but my students often ask this sort of question. Art cannot be defined in any kind of easy way--it can be anything. Art is something created by a person who has a specific intention for the person s/he intends to view the creation. For example, I could splat some red paint on a blue canvas especially for Eb and title it "Frustration." How he sees it and whether or not he likes it is immaterial--it's my intention that matters and it doesn't matter if he understands my intention or not. It's the lack of understanding that keeps art alive because, mostly, no 2 people agree on what a work of art is or stands for or means, so works of art are kept in people's minds. Works created for sheer entertainment are not usually considered art because the viewer is not invited to interact with the piece. (By the way, saw _Shakespeare in Love_ last nite and have no idea what all the fuss was about.) People differ about good art and bad art. Harlequin romances are not recognized as good literature (art) because they are formulaic and their only purpose is to entertain, not to communicate with the mind of their reader or anything. Dickens is good art because not only does he entertain but he evokes a range of emotions and images in his readers and he is as fun today as he was 120 yrs ago. So, Art is created with intention and invites reaction in the viewer. Make sense? Marcy ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 23:26:20 -0400 From: "Andrew D. Simchik" Subject: sleeping with your angel pool I'm working my way through The Kershaw Sessions. Well, it's not work, really, but I haven't had the chance to finish it yet (it's been that kind of day). So far I'm kind of disappointed, though I did like this version of "Sleeping With Your Devil Mask," and I couldn't have lived without this version of "52 Stations." The latter is a delight. >From: "JH3" > >>This threadlet unravelled from six named individuals: >>Shakespeare, Byron, Yeats, Ashbery, Plath, and Heaney. >>It seems fair to continue that line. > >Aaah. That's the problem, I don't see it that way. It's true >those six people were named, but then everyone insisted >that was an unfair sample because of the disparity in the >number of years involved; I was just trying to say that if >you look at the number of people involved, and the degree >of access to the means of publication, the disparity isn't so >great. Well, we can only guess as to what might have happened if everyone from Shakespeare's time forward had been able to do desktop publishing, or HTML. One might speculate that those destined to be literary geniuses almost all found their way to being published anyway, and that the only difference an earlier Gutenberg would have made would have been more mediocre literature. That's probably not true, but it's as plausible as the idea that art was fresher Way Back When and the night air bred poets along with malaria-carrying mosquitoes. All this of course assumes that we can distinguish Geniuses from Ordinary Humans, and I think we've seen a lot of ASCII over the past week or so proving that none of us can authoritatively do so. :) >>How would we know they were geniuses if we hadn't read >>any genius work that they've done? This is hypothetical >>in the same way that our Islamic comedians are >>hypothetical. > >If it wasn't hypothetical, we wouldn't be having this discussion, >would we? I just think it's perfectly fair to say that (1) people in >the West have no biological monopoly on the ability to make up >funny jokes, and (2) people born in one era have no greater >chance, *biologically*, of being geniuses than people born in >some other era. But who knows, maybe it *isn't* fair to say >that? Maybe we, the Modern Educated Westerners, really >*are* God's Chosen, the Ubermenschen, the Funniest >Goddamn Clowns Who Ever Existed... I guess I shouldn't have said "our," actually. All I meant was that you can't make any supportable statements about Schrodinger's Poets while they're enclosed in the box of unpublishedness, possibly inhaling the poison gas of market-mandated mediocrity. (So much for any claim I might have to be a woefully thwarted writer!) I don't disagree with either (1) or (2) above. In fact, all I really disagree with is the notion that postmodernism or confessional poetry have killed art and literature in the twentieth century. Maybe you disagree with it too and we're just exercising our fingers and other fegmaniax' patience. Perhaps I would like a glass of whisky. Yes, that seems more likely. >Okay, so I'll amend that to say "the opportunity *and desire* >to pursue their genius." But that still doesn't make the people >of either era biologically superior, does it? Gosh, no, and I can't imagine where I made that claim. Did I? >From: Mark_Gloster@3com.com >(I just listened to _Tubthumper_, by Chumbawumba after >setting it aside for nearly 2 years. Wow, I didn't know >how good the whole album is.) Hellyeah! >From: The Great Quail >I don't think you would like any of them. Reich can be more "boring" >to most people than Glass. His is a music in constant motion, motion >that paradoxically resolves into perfect stillness, like watching the >spokes of a bicycle wheel turn into a shimmering pattern. "Music for >18 Musicians" is a common and well-known piece to try. Oh, yes, that was one of the pieces I heard. That's an incredibly wonderful and accurate description of it, by the way. I could only Me Too it. >From: Capuchin >First, I can stand as close or far from a Jackson Pollock (or Pollack... >which is it? I have sources that read both ways. I was using Pollack >before for no real reason except that it was the first that jumped to >mind.) painting as you please and not be moved to feel anything at all. Jackson Pollock caused me to leave a class right in the middle of it for the only time in my life, ever. Our Brit Lit prof mentioned his name, and my friend spontaneously cried "yes!" more loudly than she'd intended to. This was our unexpected cue that maybe a classroom wasn't the place to be, that day, so we slipped out the door in the back and went to climb trees. I'm skeptical of Pollock and his ilk as well, but I have to say that his stuff just leaps off the page of the guide to the Met I bought this past weekend. He might have been driving a paint-laden tricycle over a canvas, but it could have been Bo Duke (swoon) driving, given the results. Damn! You might not like Pollock's painting, but it's definitely art. And it makes you want to go climb a tree. But then so do beehives, if you're a bear. Drew - -- Andrew D. Simchik, wyrd@rochester.rr.com http://home.rochester.rr.com/wyrd/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 02:53:49 PDT From: "Capitalism Blows" Subject: eb all over the world now, see here, young russell. (my maternal grandfather was called "russell", by the way.) a friend recently scolded me that, "we don't adhere to accepted forms in surrealist theatre". i'd imagine we can say the same thing about dreams. and here i'm coming to the "point" of this "post": it's the only way this dream could work. the only person i can think of that even played to the age of 46 was nolan ryan, and he was a fucking freak. oh, satchel paige, too, of course. not only that, but alex rodriguez is yet several years away from playing in his 1,000th game. so probably the dream would have to have taken place sometime in the future, making robyn older still. as to your other questions, i'm afraid the answers were not revealed to me. although i can say that, i had the pleasure of attending a series at dodger stadium in the summer of '93, and continually marveled at how shallow grissom was playing in center. but he never had a ball hit over his head, so i guess he knew what he was doing. i don't know about "inspring and makes you feel good". but i can readily agree that terry was impressed with leo's gunning. alas, i still can't figure what leo was supposed to have been "expressing". that he doesn't take kindly to thugs attempting to burn him alive? bite your tongue! unfortunately, i'm afraid my own personal opinion is that it's something of a pointless aexercise. i mean, if i enjoy eating a boloney sandwich from time to time, who cares if it's "art" or not? let's just call it a "baloney sandwich", and we can discuss its merits or lack of if we choose, but it's still a baloney sandwich all the same. or a steaming pile of dogshit. does it lessen my appreciation of the mr. t experience (the dr. frank solo album is largeley the bunk, by the way) knowing that john p. doesn't consider punk rock "art"? if it can be objectively shown that it *isn't* "art"? but i'm *thoroughly* enjoying this "clash of the titans", and hope y'all will keep it onlist as long as possible. KEN "Height/weight proportional" THE KENSTER _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V8 #315 *******************************