To what degree will you support musicians who (openly, possibly or jokingly) include racist, sexist, homophobic, or bigoted messages in their music, or who privately hold such beliefs?

I didn't mean the name, I meant that ridiculous comical creature "Geir" known to inhabit this message board

― Tom D (Tom D.), Thursday, 24 March 2011 11:58 (2 years ago) Permalink

Geir if you would only read the thread before making assertions.

lol dude geirbot is not programmed to process information

― Hyper Rescue Troop (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 24 March 2011 16:16 (2 years ago) Permalink

My own conviction is people like ourselves—ordinary people—cannot grasp what is going on in the mind of a titanically complex creator who can create Parsifal and then say absolutely barbaric inhumanities.

Lord, these are the types of statements I was being confused about upthread. Maybe I am insufficiently in touch with the incomprehensible divinity of Wagner's musical output, but it will just never strike me as all that ungraspable or mysterious that someone creates magnificent things while being small-minded and barbaric. It's true of a massive number of people who create magnificent things! I'm seriously tempted to say that it might help some people create something magnificent if they're limited in this way, insofar as they wind up with a very fixed and dramatic view of the world to assert.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, 24 March 2011 16:52 (2 years ago) Permalink

^I agree wholeheartedly with this

― Destroy A. Monsters (Drugs A. Money), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:06 (2 years ago) Permalink

yeah me too

― Hyper Rescue Troop (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:08 (2 years ago) Permalink

I get it coming from Steiner - he's one of the few crits still standing from mid-20th High Seriousness, & that tends to involve giving art some hefty work to do - revelation of truth of ourselves, the human condition, quiddity of being, finding forms answerable to the enormities of the century, language going beyond language, hard lines between high art and mass culture etc; so that involves some serious agonising when someone who is incontestably a master of the music tradition is a piece of shit vile anti-semite - & all magnified because Steiner's Jewish. He came back to the problem in the TLS recently w/r/t Celine & seemed to get stuck again.

Feel pretty far from his position myself; never quite been the High Serious type. I mean this:

I'm seriously tempted to say that it might help some people create something magnificent if they're limited in this way, insofar as they wind up with a very fixed and dramatic view of the world to assert.

Makes literary sense to me - destructive visionary force of the Modernists who flirt with (or marry) fascism is very powerful; Celine's sense of the fuckedness of the world is at the heart of him (BUT along with a kind of tenderness for those being destroyed by life that's harder to reconcile to evil opinions). I dunno.

― portrait of velleity (woof), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:19 (2 years ago) Permalink

It sounds like he's talking about God in the Old Testament.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:20 (2 years ago) Permalink

That's Steuner for you

― Tom D (Tom D.), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:22 (2 years ago) Permalink

Steiner, even

― Tom D (Tom D.), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:22 (2 years ago) Permalink

i can buy that people who succumb to the small-minded assholery of their day are capable of remarkable achievements in a variety of fields, but I think art is an arena where such small-minded assholery is a good indication that your art is infantile, easily-replaceable pedestrian junk as well.

Wagner does seem to be full-on bonkers though, rather than casual douchebag, but I guess being one doesn't preclude being the other.

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:24 (2 years ago) Permalink

It sounds like he's talking about God in the Old Testament.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, 24 March 2011 17:20 (1 hour ago)

Apposite! Both create the world in their respective texts, both were hateful raging assholes who inspired their followers to a religion..

― glumdalclitch, Thursday, 24 March 2011 18:52 (2 years ago) Permalink

The amount of focus and ambition and effort required to achieve those monumental works of art is not necessarily going to come from someone who is well-adjusted. I think that a basic knowledge of human frailties sooner or later was destined to undermine the High Seriousness school of thought.

― Destroy A. Monsters (Drugs A. Money), Friday, 25 March 2011 02:24 (2 years ago) Permalink

ayo old testament god is a bro, he always had the dankest manna

― Bleeqwot the Chef (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 25 March 2011 02:33 (2 years ago) Permalink

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

― System, Sunday, 27 March 2011 00:01 (2 years ago) Permalink

thank fuck we'll finally know how many ilxors enjoy the Macc Lads

― a SB-in' artist that been in the game for a minute (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 27 March 2011 03:10 (2 years ago) Permalink

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

― System, Sunday, 27 March 2011 23:01 (2 years ago) Permalink

now you know, noodle vague

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Monday, 28 March 2011 03:40 (2 years ago) Permalink

wow way to go ilx, you amoral beast

― ilxor you've listened to one odd future album once (ilxor), Monday, 28 March 2011 04:41 (2 years ago) Permalink

OK, let's bite the elephant..

It's understandable how Wagner's 'beliefs' can run alongside his need to create beautiful/masterful works, rather than informing them directly.

Whereas Gary Glitter's works quite often (OK, more than once) have examples of how his predilections form a part of his.

(check the lyrics of this one, for instance)

― Mark G, Monday, 28 March 2011 11:29 (2 years ago) Permalink

Glitter Band >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Gary Glitter anyway

― Tom D (Tom D.), Monday, 28 March 2011 11:32 (2 years ago) Permalink

At least 10 Eric Clapton and/or Elvis Costello fans who voted. Two of the more racist musicians of the rock era.

― Thraft of Cleveland (Bill Magill), Monday, 28 March 2011 13:39 (2 years ago) Permalink

XXX-Post At least he didn't do a cover of "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen"...

― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Monday, 28 March 2011 13:41 (2 years ago) Permalink

I guess I abstractly understand the impulse to not stifle art that led so many people to vote the way they did but really this just reinforces to me the difference between feeling like you have the luxury to overlook or academify beliegs that run counter to your own and feeling like you do not.

One reason why I do my best not to support people whose views I find inimical is because success implies acceptance/approval. I do not want to give racists the mistaken impression that I am okay with their beliefs by giving them money; ditto homophobes and sexists, but there I have the luxury of being able to sometimes abstract my feelings from the sentiments being expressed because I am not their target.

This is also a case where falling into a side career of classical music via performance and connections rather than formal study is awesome/troubling, because while I knew a lot of the shit discussed upthread I'd never really gotten too in depth with it; I would have had much more of a problem doing "Der Meistersaenger" had I known all of this in this detail (although I bagged out of that concert anyway for a paying gig, lol).

― 'lol u stuck with me now watch this ass expand, joeks on u' (DJP), Monday, 28 March 2011 13:51 (2 years ago) Permalink

XXX-Post At least he didn't do a cover of "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen"...

The song involves being in bed with a girl, and waiting until midnight on the eve of her birthday, at which she becomes of legal age, and he enters her.

so.. !

― Mark G, Monday, 28 March 2011 13:53 (2 years ago) Permalink

Confess to being on firmer ground discussing Gary Glitter's oeuvre than Mad Richie Wagner's

― Tom D (Tom D.), Monday, 28 March 2011 13:56 (2 years ago) Permalink