Along the same lines as my comment on "gatekeeping"
<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gatekeeping> at vFriAM, I had
an excellent conversation with a bartender on Saturday. When we got around to
discussing the purposes of music, including a debate about moshing/dancing and
how that physical activity, that kata, *interferes* [♯] with one's music
processing, he suggested I try out Sunn O))) <https://sunn.southernlord.com/>
[♭]. Along the same lines as Dave's rendering of mysticism, the rise of
predictive processing, fixed state disorders, and audial illusions in
understanding cognition, our expectations are the overwhelming drivers for how
we listen to music.
In line with Jon, I feel anything that inhibits my access to interestingness as
claustrophobic, including any pressure to "dumb down" or pander to those
outside whatever clique I'm currently in. (E.g. I saw a metal critic poke fun
at my favorite doom with "Are they trying to go as slow as possible?" -- If you
don't grok doom ... don't listen to doom, you moron. Go back to your
speed-growl and leave us alone.)
In line with Marcus, however, connection to the artist is obviously important
to some subset of musical purpose. This bartender has written for 2 bands and
considers himself a full member of 2 others. In promoting his music to me, he
begged off telling me about his earlier work (he's a kid, actually ... like 25
years old pfffft), he said it was im-/pre-mature and not very good. But, in my
mind, the arc of the artist(s) is way more important than the finished product,
much the same way the compositional arc of a single tune is more important than
any one part or voice.
On-demand streaming services debilitate both those fulcrums. On the other hand,
curation can go a long way to both expanding and homogenizing the paths through
the graph. When curation starts sounding/feeling like promotion and marketing,
I inevitably lose interest. But when the curator authentically digs what
they're curating (even if it's only to identify why some thing is so aweful), I
stay hooked.
[♯] By which I mean both reinforcing and inhibiting, transmission to and from,
between the source and the receiver. Maybe "mediates" is a better word ... but
I hate the way "media" is used these days.
[♭] I'm a big fan of interactive/live noise, not so much pre-recorded noise.
On 8/22/21 11:46 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> On 8/22/21 8:28 AM, ⛧ glen wrote:
>> It does both, perhaps counterintuitively. I'd argue it facilitates traffic
>> between demes/cliques, but inhibits the content of demes/cliques.
>
> I am a sucker for local AM radio when traveling... to put my finger on the
> pulse of the locals, as it were. What music they listen to, what their
> news-of-choice leans toward, and what they are buying/selling/trading with
> one another. "If you can hear this station, what you hear *might* be
> relevant to you *right now*"
>
> When internet radio stations started popping up (KTAO in Taos being an early
> adopter), I found myself sampling these local stations around the world...
> one in particular being in Australia (forget the call sign/town) and having a
> strong familiarity to the myriad country AND western stations up and down the
> rockies and out into the plains of the US West, but with an Aussie accented
> DJ of course. Unfortunately it didn't replicate the experience because I
> was patently NOT there... I could NOT plan a detour to catch the local
> farmer's market or check out a local joint (where there burgers would have
> pineapple and plum sauce instead of pickles and ketchup)... But what I was
> most struck by was that they were playing 95% American Mainstream (C&W) music
> and referencing OUR icons of music deeply/exclusively. Only occasionally
> would I catch a "local" artist (Australeonesia?) I felt simultaneously
> expanded and constrained.
>
> When I moved to a small city/big town on the border (DouglasAZ/Agua Prieta
> SA) our first neighbors were a Mexican American family who were one of the
> local bands that played every venue, mostly rock but with their own ranchera
> stylization often. They would sit around evenings playing a wide range of
> music, including the father, a sister and a younger brother (maybe 5? too
> young to participate in the public events). We moved away from that house
> within 6 months but I continued to hear them the whole 8 years I lived in
> that town, they probably played at both of my proms and any other public
> musical event I might have attended. What never crossed my mind (until now)
> was that for the 4 years I was a Disc Jockey, I never heard them play on air,
> nor was I motivated/inclined to seek them out. Why not? Linda Ronstadt (100
> miles away) was hitting it big from similar roots, why not them? I guess
> because they weren't on the Billboard Top 100 charts they sent us every month,
> telling us what was hot and what was not? They had no route to get known
> beyond the local bars and public venues.
>
> Both of my daughters partnered with aspiring musicians as they came of age.
> There have been several bands involved and those partners even occasionally
> found time to make music together (though never recorded together). These
> bands never made it beyond local recognition... "Billy and the Belmonts",
> "Oktober People", "Weapons of Mass Destruction" all come to mind. And yet
> one of them was going on a self-promoted tour of the west when we were in
> Berkeley, CA for a year and in fact, totally by coincidence, had gotten
> booked at an Irish Pub ("Starry Plough") just a short walk from our apartment
> (actually probably the closest watering hole to our apartment). It was just
> off Telegraph, right on the Oakland border (as was our back fence)... in
> what other world (pre/sans Internet) could a band like that find a pub like
> that? While Terry (daughter's now husband) had the resources (as a
> Technical College instructor) to own a van, mix their own music on Garage
> Band, cut
> their own CDs and print their own T-shirts (aka Merch)... They would have
> been sleeping in his van the whole way (instead of being gifted couch-stays
> by their nascent mySpace fan base) and would have had to make a LOT of phone
> calls and snail-mail inquiries to secure the venues they were able to do
> online through the digital social networks circa 2005. Their music was out
> there for sampling on MySpace and while all that (the bands as well as
> MySpace) are all defunct and rotting away in digital history, it made it a
> lot further than I think it could have in the days of vinyl or cassette tape.
> I do still have CDs of their music and it is ripped to my hard drive as
> well... but can't find any of it to speak of online 8 years after
> dissolution. My t-shirts are all rags now, they were made on budget blanks
> I'm sure.
>
> Terry (of WMD/Belmont fame) is now the bass player for Queen Chief in
> Portland OR. Their preferred streaming platform seems to be bandcamp.com
> which seems to be *trying* to provide a direct route from artist to audience,
> but unspurprisingly Alexa doesn't support Bandcamp and while they also stream
> on Spotify, my understanding of that service is that they won't see any
> significant income from that stream. I don't believe any of the band
> members depends on the band for a significant source of income, Terry
> certainly doesn't, though it may support his recording/instrument collecting
> habits somewhat.
>
> They just released a couple of singles this year. A stoner rock rendition of
> Hank William's classic "Kaw-Liga
> <https://open.spotify.com/album/2U88jwoi9ZKRHjTgG1YIDu>" and their own In my
> Eyes <https://open.spotify.com/album/1oaVT5IS8jIm6xpJ2RlH2o>.
>
> Spotify refers me right away to bands (I presume equally struggling/indie)
> like King Black Acid, Royal Fuz, RZRS, and Hurriah. While I like QC's
> lyrics and musical "style" it is all too high energy for my old ears/soul, so
> I tend to listen to a new track or album a few times when it comes out, but
> don't have it ripped to my car sound system nor pull it up regularly (though
> In my Eyes is thumping/chanting away in the background as I type this)...
>
> Mary's son (who edits bills for the TX legislature by day) is also a drummer
> in an indie band in Austin and they eschew streaming in favor of the (semi)
> classic medium of CDs and live-shows. They gently dissolved last year after
> a 10 year run... the quarterly live-shows in various dive-bars were what was
> keeping them going (emotionally/creatively?)... and they also have all hit
> middle age.
>
> Digital/Online/Streaming has definitely changed the fitness landscape for
> aspiring independent artists and for music buffs. Mary's son is a total
> movie/music buff and shares his listening time between classic vinyl and the
> flood of new music coming to him over his own social networks from friends of
> friends of friends who are independent singer-songwriters/bands.
>
> I like Glen's gesture toward analyzing this in terms of network/graph
> models... I think the data is out there for anyone to gather/study up to a
> point. Josh's (Mary's son) collection of vinyl and hand-cut CDs probably is
> hidden for the most part from any database, though he *might* not be astute
> enough to turn off Google/Android's "what music is playing right now"
> service... maybe what he listens to is being analyzed on some Google Brat's
> Friday Project right now? He *hates* Alexa, Amazon, and especially Amazon
> Music.
>
> It's a wild new world, even though everything feels pretty much the same
> (only different).
--
☤>$ uǝlƃ
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