No Subject

[hsut@ec.purdue.edu (Bill Hsu)]

>Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU


>There are two issues here. First is the distinction which you
>rightly make between a work of art's "importance" and its "quality".

For interesting comments on artistic influence and posterity, and the
difficulty of making "unbiased" judgement, see, of course, the Doug
Alan/Greg Taylor debates in net.music. A good reference is the annual
serious literature vs. popular literature debates in net.sf-lovers.
(It's mostly poor Bill Ingogly vs. the masses in the latter. :-))

>Second, if, as you say, Hounds of Love is "mostly a refinement and
>mixture" of The Dreaming's "innovations", then it is far more likely
>that Hounds of Love will prove the more "important", since
>its influence is likely to be broader...
>You offer no specific reason for ascribing a label of superior
>quality to The Dreaming, only reasons for according it the
>quite different distinction of greater "importance".

Here's why I think HoL is inferior to the Dreaming (with the standard
disclaimer that this is my PERSONAL blah blah blah undoubtedly 
influenced by my morbid childhood, bourgeois upbringing, unbourgeois
college (un)life, half-assed attempt to understand frogspeak, etc.:-) ).
HoL takes fewer chances than the Dreaming. I enjoy things that try
to explore and burst the bounds of their medium, and I think the 
Dreaming does this better than HoL. Also, I feel that the Dreaming
is a more "consistent" (whatever that means) album than HoL. If I
were to tape HoL, I could live without the first 3 songs on side A
(oops, I can see Doug driving down to Indiana with a shotgun :-)).
But if I were to tape the Dreaming, there is no song that I can bear
to cut. 

Bill Hsu