hendrix's stuff is 'psychedelic'. I've heard electric ladyland and 2CD band of Gypsys live set and there's hooks with improvisation and certain 'effects', and feedack but not just the two as you describe above, which is why I don't get your references to the charts.
The velvets had far more of a 'feedback assault' in them.
― Julio Desouza, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
I wouldn't really call Hendrix's songs "pop hooks" and I don't think he had as much to do with the invention of metal as, say, Black Sabbath. Whereas there are thousands of bands that copied VU--as the cliche goes, they "invented indie" (unfortunately).
― Ben Williams, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Paul, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
For one thing, Sabbath came much later. It seems pretty clear to me that Hendrix paved the way for the invention of heavy metal. It's debatable whether or not he invented it himself, but clearly the seeds are there in the way he structured his songs around highly- amplified, distorted blues-based riffs. This is the vein that later metal groups like Zeppelin and Sabbath would go on to mine.
There are pop hooks in Hendrix's songs, but perhaps they're harder to spot because they are mixed with blues and jazz as well. Songs like "Wind Cries Mary" or "Manic Depression" are catchy pop, among other things.
― o. nate, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― J Blount, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sean Carruthers, Friday, 26 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
(I have never knowingly heard Jimi Hendrix, hah!)
― Tim, Saturday, 27 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
I wish more indie bands (Ha! I almost inadvertently typed "blands".) used violas.
― sundar subramanian, Saturday, 27 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Pretty much the only thing we can debate. Or we get:
"I hate Hendrix"
"I disagree. He's great"
"Nothing to disagree about. I hate him."
No debate possible.
― ArfArf, Saturday, 27 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Juli Desouza, Saturday, 27 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
"I hate Hendrix."
"How can you? It says in this book here that he is the greatest ever! And it has facts 1-5 to prove it."
"Oh, sorry. I guess I must bow down under the weight of this independently verifiable evidence. Hendrix is a god."
(the secret of subjectivity in re ILM is not just allowing people to decide whether an artist is great or not but, more importantly allowing them to debate the criteria by which said greatness is judged. The arguments discussed upthread have little to do with the criteria a person listening might bring to a Hendrix record, and everything to do with what a historian might write down for the public good. This is what I object to)
When I said "taste in the public domain" I meant judgements on quality which seek to gain universal recognition. Which is clearly not what you thought it was - I grant there may be better ways of putting it, but I don't think its a totally incorrect usage of the term.
The notion of debate presupposes that, of two conflicting views, there is at least the potential for one to be more valid than the other.
If the value of art is determined purely subjectively, no sincerely held opinion is less valid than any other. So no meaningful debate is possible.
― ArfArf, Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
If we're going to accept your definition of "meaningful debate" (ie. debate which necessarily arrives at a consensus - though note that you've totally ignored the possibility of changing people's subjectively held opinions via persuasion) I guess I'll just have to sacrifice meaningful debate then. I'm sure that at least a couple of people on the boards will be happy to indulge me by participating in what is clearly pointless and mindless nattering.
― Tim, Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
the existence of ilm answers — indeed, completely dissolves — arf arf's argument
― mark s, Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
I don't think Arf Arf's arguments were defeated there, more that they were lost track of, ignored, etc.
I don't see any way out of his basic argument here. If Mr. Iconoclast says, "I hate Jimi Hendrix" and Mr. Canonical says, "I love Jimi Hendrix," there isn't really the grounds for an argument over whether something is or isn't the case (unless they want to question whether or not the other is telling the truth). There's no disagreement any more than there is if one person says they like chocolate and someone else says they like vanilla. Mr. I's "I hate Jimi Hendrix" and Mr. C's "I love Jimi Hendrix" can both be true assertions.
But if Mr. I says, "Jimi Hendrix, considered overall as an artist, sucks" and Mr. C says, "Jimi Hendrix, considered overall as an artist, is great," there is the basis for an argument. Both assertions can't be true.
I assume this is obvious enough, so where is the weakness is this argument that I am missing?
"True for me" I don't really get. I have read discussions of this way of speaking, pro and con, but it seems to me to turn the concept of truth on its head. (Are you asserting that something is the case or not, damn it?)
Despite basically agreeing, I think, with Arf Arf's argument, I'm also not that concerned about it when it comes to discussing music. I understand his frustration at seeing people constantly appear to be making assertions, but when called on it just saying that it means "true for me."
*
I do agree that Arf Arf seems to underestimate the amount of meaningful discussion that can still take place if I says "I hate" and C says "I love." C. can always say (as someone here has said to Gareth), "But don't you see how similar Hendrix is to this other music you like?" Without asserting that Hendrix really is or isn't good, you can still try to lead someone to hear him more like you hear him.
― DeRayMi, Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
mark s, could you come down from your laconic heights to explain this?
No it isn't.
― Alexander Blair, Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Quite right, which is how Paul's and Ben's further explanations are most worthy. :-) There's a realm for negotiation and deeper understanding, though it need not necessarily mean a situation where 'both assertions can't be true' as you state, DeRayMi -- but that's the difference between us on the 'true for me' part.
Taking that more thoroughly -- I know that it's very VERY true for me that MBV are my favorite ever band and that "Soon" my favorite ever song. Nothing has made me feel like that before or since that first cataclysmic listen, and it still connects with something deep in my heart whenever I hear it since. But I can't force anyone to *agree* with me on that point, and I can't necessarily argue in depth to the point where someone will then agree with me by my arguments alone. They're going to have to hear the song and decide, and indeed, maybe my talking about the song will have given them a different perspective on it. But they could still disagree and not think much of the song -- and I'm not going to be wounded or annoyed with that assertion, because they'll have heard the song and decided, same way that I could hear something -- Belle and Sebastian, say, specifically one of the songs that nearly every fan really loves -- and still consider it to be bleah even though there are many, many passionate believers in said song's worth.
On the other hand, I am not convinced that there are objective aesthetic values, and Arf Arf's attempts (elsewhere) to account for this, isn't entirely convincing; though I think he takes it in the most plausible direction possible (an appeal to some sort of community consensus--but can "intersubjective" ever translate into "objective"?--rather than, say, an appeal to some sort of Fort Knox of Platonic ideals to back up the currency of our judgments!). Arf Arf's argument paraphrased above is an argument about the implications of language, assertion, etc. It doesn't prove that values are objective.
I'm not sure where that leaves me. As I've said before, I am a subjectivist, but am not particularly comfortable about that, partly because it sometimes seems that when we have these discussions we are arguing about the real properties of particular works of art, artists, etc.
I wonder if it's worth starting another new thread.
"purely subjective" = failing to understand meaning either of word "purely" or of "subjective" (or of "meaning", come to that) (or "value", since that's the word arfarf actually did use)
objectivity = kill the people and the meaning will remain? this is what dayremi sneakily means by "overall" eg considered beyond time and history => but hendrix's "greatness as an artist" has no meaning beyond time and history (at which point, being meaningless, the statements stop being contradictory)
in the real, non-mystical, temporal-historical world, "jimi hendrix is shit" requires a socius to provide meaning and/ or usage (if these are different) for the four words between the quotemarks = byebye "objectivity vs subjectivity"
arguments are not won by "demonstration of validity" (eg reduction to purely logical form) they're won when you have something pointed out to you that matters to you that you hadn't thought of, probably a relationship to an aspect of the world that you'd allowed yrself to get dissociated from the question under discussion (pure logic can't even ground arithmetic, the much-cited exemplar of so-called "objective knowledge") (haha kurt gödel co-owns those threads)
I'm not underestimating the amount of meaningful discussion you can have about music even if you are - for want of a better word - a "subjectivist". The example you give is a perfect illustration.
But I was focussing explictly upon the idea of debate about value. It is only meaningful if you believe that subjective judgements can be validated to some extent by non-subjective criteria. And here, non-subjective criteria can only be the opinion of other people, either in the mass (in which case great art and popular art is the same thing) or a subset of the population agreed by consensus to have "good taste". Which is why I objected to the notion of debate being reduced in value if it has reference to "taste in the public domain": in fact it can only have any meaning at all if it has reference to "taste in the public domain".
I still don't understand your point.
objectivity = kill the people and the meaning will remain? this is what dayremi sneakily means by "overall" eg considered beyond time and history =>
I appreciate being credited with sneakiness, but I don't think I was being sneaky. I was trying to find some way to make sure that no one could say both statements could in fact be true. Even Aristotle qualifies saying that the same statement can't be both true and false, by adding "in the same respect," or something of that sort. That's what I had in mind. (Hendrix could rule technically, but suck in terms of expressiveness or creativity, or something of that sort. That's what I had in mind.)
Logic is not the only consideration in philosophical debates, but it should be given some credit. It may not win the war, but philosophical debaters generally agree to acknowledge that it can win specific battles. To jetisson the importance of logic is, in my view, to no longer be doing philosophy*. But again, that's not to say that everything that matters in philosophical argument is reducible to logic, something I definitely don't belive.
Your remaining points I need to think over. I don't think Arf Arf is appealing to anything atemporal or mystical, though.
*--I suppose you could reply: who said anything about doing philosophy?
mark s, if it makes you feel any better, I have a headache as well.
― DeReyMi, Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
i have no plan to jettison logic, but 'in the same respect" is a weasel phrase, but it just hides the thing you actually want to discuss inside "same" or "respect" (or possibly "in" but NOT "the", phew): when you translate ordinary language into logical form, you're always sedimenting assumptions along the way, and contrasting versions of this translations are a great of flushing out said assumptions, but the conclusion (the "victory") comes with the production of the forgotten-suppressed-overlooked stuff, not the logical contradiction itself. That's just a tool (I mean, it's a great one): for example, the proof by non-contradiction of the converse of the parallelism postulate in Euclid of the existence of geometries in which said postulate didn't obtain wasn't considered interesting or convincing until Lobachevsky and the Bolyais and Gauss and Reimann had all come up with their different maps (and with them, uses/meanings, mathematically speaking) of hyperbolic and parabolic geometry. The logical argument was the start. The arguments against Cantor's endless nested infinities didn't really bite, because despite the apparent contradictions (what does it mean to say one infinity is "bigger" than another), there were already practical uses/meanings for the distinction ahd the gradation. Brouwer's painstaking grounding of calculus on a method which DIDN'T involve "arithmetic" of infinitesimals was considered an irrelevant sideshow.
I am striving to render our headache objective.
objectivity = postponed until the conclusion of all arguments and plus the total course of this sorry veil of tears
The imprecision of language may be a problem (and I can see the difficulty with non subjective criteria since some metaphysicists would of course argue there is no such thing). But that doesn't mean that debate about aesthetic value doesn't have its own peculiar difficulties.
Taking the statement
"The Beatles music is better than the Beach Boys music"
The question I'm addressing is not "is this statement capable of proof" (I agree it is not, and assume that is common ground); but "does this statement have any meaning whatsoever".
The logical conclusion of a purely subjectivist position (and I don't like the language either but nevertheless I think the meaning is clear enough) is "no".
Which is fine, I don't have any problem with a subjectivist position sincerely believed, with all the implications that has for what can be validly discussed, and proper respect for other opinions.
What I object to is people hypocritically adopting a dogmatically subjectivist position when it suits them (usually to reject the notion that some other point of view - the Canon, music magazines - may be more authoritative than theirs); but feeling perfectly free most of the parade their "good taste" and disrespect the taste of others.
Some kind of evaluation must precede argument or there would be no basis for it. Admittedly argument can alter valuation, but only if you believe the argument has meaning (and the concept of aesthetic value has meaning). The logical conclusion of a subjectivist position is that you believe neither of these things.
― Jack Cole, Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
ned to thread i suppose, and NO PRIVATE LANGUAGES mr raggett!!
― david h(0wie), Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Its not that you are 'wrong', its just that being (more) right isn't particualrly useful when being (slightly) wrong gets a much easier free exchange of views in a discourse of peers.
Its a logical fallacy of 'composition' you repeat in different guises. In the marketing thread it went roughly like "Everything is Marketing, Some things are not bad... thus marketing is not bad".
I think most grown-ups understand that they have falable viewpoints, I even played about with Habermas's "knowledge constitutive" (esp. Emancipatory) in the thread about Arthur Lee by claiming he was so good that it must have been doing so to annoy French Cultural commentators.
So can we all agree that you are right - there is no such thing as subjective and objective and its all just an illusion. However its a pleasing and helpful illusion.
I've no idea how subjective/objective I am being when I say Hendrix doesn't suck - and I don't care because its not an important part of the discourse and the interaction of the discourse community (ie the pleasing and or useful element of the discussion).
I don't think Hendrix sucks, its pretty good odds that if someone else think Hendrix sucks then I don't share enough od their value systems to engage in a pleasing discussion with them. I can't be sure about that, but I certainly wouldn't send that person blind record shopping with my own money - 'oh just get me anything, I'm sure I'll like it'.
Skribble dwefflenurbs. QUO? Zalnage.
In terms of my own statements, I'll agree I'll have made some flip statements here on ILX, but generally speaking they are that, flip. Thus on the Prince thread just now, when I was zinging Sean C. a bit over His Purpleness, and intentionally being very over-the-top about it -- the fact that he doesn't think much of the man actually doesn't bother me at all. At most, if serious answers were all that is asked for on that thread in particular, I would think, "Gosh, these songs really do move me a hell of a lot, so it's initially hard to imagine otherwise -- but such is the case, and that is life, so hey."
I think there's a general question of tone here that is important.
Not so, I would say. At least, it seems to me that you're fixing 'aesthetic value' in particular as, if not an objective standpoint, then a generally universally agreed upon construction. But is that the case? Seems said value is as slippery and up for negotiation as many other things. So I might believe in certain aesthetic values for myself, but others might not think much of said values at all. Am I right and they wrong? The concept can be considered generally valid but its interpretation and application radically differing from person to person.
In keeping with Mark S, I'm also confused as to what your meaning of 'evaluation' is...
Doubtless, but does this happen much anyway? Instead we rely on recommendations and discussions, and this need not -- especially the time of mp3s -- mean extra expenditures or 'blind shopping.'
Well, his music makes you happy, yes? And the rest of the world could say otherwise and you wouldn't care? Sounds pretty subjective to me -- I'm *very* much not trying to be flip here, I'm just trying to guess at how this wouldn't be seen as subjective.
You know ML right? His huge parcels of stuff would be full of complete gems. So actually the 'would I send 'em shopping for me' is my main criteria for valuing someone's opinions. (I'd probably want a wee bit more information than their opinion on one artist, but it would have ruined the point of my previous message if I said that).
And yeah, saying "I don't think Hendrix sucks" is almost certainly 'pretty subjective', and I may or may not be self aware of that, but the point is, its not important. If we all image that every message ends in "IMHO" we can get on sharing information and attempting to assimilate each others views. The converse of this, is that overstating that each message here is just one person's opinion gets kinda weak.
I got the new Rothko album today, its great. Thats just my opinion though.