Television #3 Vs. Van Halen #73 Vs. Indie Music Cred Conditioning

well, um, i do think that!

Yeahbut, that's a case where there is the social pressure of having people actually present. I think that's a very different experience than reading music criticism. But your example does have some bearing on what would happen when I group of people talk about music together.

After all, there are many ways to enjoy an album. Perhaps the listener learns to substitute a higher-order intellectual pleasure for the more direct pleasures they experienced in their less sophisticated listening period. Gradually they become convinced that those higher-order pleasures are more valuable than the direct ones.

Now this is kind of an interesting idea. Would it really be dishonest though if a person came to value that new "higher-order" pleasure more than the old immediate Top 40 AM radio ones? (I don't think you are saying that, but I think the original poster probably would.)

Couldn't a "higher order" more intellectual pleasure be something like, "Wow, how did they just go from a 13th to like some sort of rare version of the Indonesian slendro scale?" Or, "These guys were the first to use this model of synthesizer in a Norwegian experimental music context!"

Early Wire's great too, btw.

I'm old, though. When those records were coming out, they were like candy. You didn't have to make any intellectual leap of faith to like them.

Good question, but that would be a pretty grim peer group.

And I say TV made #3 because of indie cred posturing and nothing more.

That's not much of a theory, and every time anyone challenges you, you viciously insult them ... gee, can I give you a grant?

I get where you're going with this, but your attempts to psychoanalyze Pitchfork are pretty tossed-off compared to this guy's.

http://www.fasteddiesbullet.com/images/stookie1.jpg

!http://www.his.com/~borgrav/web%20images%201/gber1.jpg

Neither, I would hope! We value them when we feel that there's good music being made that's obscure and complex.

My friend, a film buff (real person, by the way), names Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" as one of his all-time favorite films, even though he's seen it maybe three times. He also likes John Hughes "Sixteen Candles", which he has seen almost twenty times in his life. Both films blew him away when he first saw them, though of course he came to Kurosawa's film much later in life. If you look at his DVD collection, there are many similar classic/art type films that he has seen maybe twice each, at best, but few of the teen romps or action films that he's seen so many times that he can recite the script. Now, if you ask him for his list of favorite films, he puts all the classics at the top and leave the old favorite teen romps and action pics at the bottom, but why? Does he really prefer it this way, when the history of who he is suggests otherwise? My answer was/is that he recognizes that the mature, informed pick is supposed to be the classic over the romp, and since he truly does appreciate the classic and its artistry, and since his tastes have evolved anyway, in that direction, this is the obvious choice.

I'm suggesting that making this choice might also be a lie.

Iris Murdoch is my favorite novelist, but I've only read The Green Knight (my favorite book by her once) once. Do I like it better than some book I read five times when I was a teenager? Of course.

And Peter, I have NEVER felt any social pressure to like some music! Putting on airs about something so that I can participate in some social situation is not something that I've ever felt the need to do.

Does that mean you liked the two times you had sex with the "more your speed these days" art school girl in undergrad than the 50 times you did it with Wild Lucy in high school?

I'm suggesting that making this choice might also be a lie.

-- jsoulja (jsajd...), June 29th, 2004.

nobody REALLY likes art movies. they just say they do. you tell 'em soulja.

Are you suggesting that this can't be so???

no, he wants us to think that we all are just hair metal/low-brow movie freaks and won't let ourselves admit it.

i mean who actually listens to Television, right? Especially when you can rock out with Diamond Dave!

And to all those people who say I'm throwing out insults, um, if you read the thread, I tossed out an idea (perhaps roughly), but I didn't start throwing out anything until it was thrown at me, and I find the whole vicious sarcasm trend on ILM to be far more tiring than an IDEA (even if it's half-cocked in your mind).