No Subject

Christ is about 2000 years give or take a score or two.  And he can see
this - he is omniscient, ominipotent  and has an inside line with God
(but don't worry about the last part, God is too busy listening to
 Japanese hardcore and other "way-trendy music").

More on the BIG SKY:
	"It's also suggesting the coming of the next flood how perhaps
	 the 'fools on the hills' will be the wise ones."

Well, Europeans have always considered us Yanks fools... but the only
people on the hill in D.C. is the Russian Embassy....

And now for the pasta Ray Zitstance:  From Gtaylor (tape entrepeneur):

>>We can't agree whether or not rock is a fad. 

>That'll be a problem all right. Why not talk about the fact that the
>concept of a fad presupposes a whole culturally elitist apparatus
>that nearly all of us love to manipulate at the drop of the hat.

"the concept of a fad presupposes a whole culturally elitist appartus"...
hmmm .... let me mull THAT one over - well, yeah, "elitist" but the
funny thing is that the Elite are quickly washed away by the neo-Elite
(or perhaps the Retro-Elite?) - the half life of fads varies with the
intensity of the FEELING or COMMITMENT or IDEALS involved, perhaps...
how does that sound?  Rock is a fad and will survive only on vinyl isn't
exactly what I meant to say - afterall my name isn't Nostradamus so I
can't divine these things - let's say it SEEMS like a fad and what's the
beeeeg deeeeeeal, Senor?  Let loose - enjoy it while it lasts.  IT's
life afterall - why bum over a terminal about it?

>>We can't justify putting down
>>"commercial" music and hence cannot give good reasons why people
>>should listen to progressive music instead of top 40 

>I suspect that it's because you've not asked Wicinski and 
>Hofmann about it, and they've had their hands full thinking
>about other stuff. Ditto Krajewski and Ingogly. I'm merely the
>sort of aging and ineffectual boffin who's read enough Frogspeak
>to go about answering that question by asking another one: What
>are we attempting to justify when we "put the stuff down". Or
>perhaps "who" is better than "what." It gives away the answer 
>somewhat, though. If there's one thing that Hofmann has a real
>handle on, it's the notion that the labels and the stances are
>being co-opted and we're just sitting there like chumps the whole
>time. Perhaps the Hof does go in for the critical equivalent of
>"cut and burn" agriculture, but he's got the right idea at heart:
>we're looking for something besides the single crop starvation
>plans that put sugar in the tea of the Big Boys. How about a little
>subsistence ag of our own (as Candide put it...cultivate our own
>gardens)?

The first part of the paragraph I agree with - I'd like to offer
substinence over the next part if you'll permit me:

Well, this seems to be where I'm arriving, I guess - why not, like
a good friend of mine invest yourself in music if you are concerned
about it's continuation outside of business concerns?  I'm still not
sure what is important about reaching the masses except to distract
them while you sneak away with their pocketbook It seems that art has
made a roundabout way of commenting on our society and it's sad and
I'd like to change that (and what's wrong with that?) If you can get one
bastard to sit down and listen to your music and say, gosh, I like
that or gosh, I HATE that WANK (quoting directly from God).  If you
can change or influence one person into some sort of action, the
music has succeeded.  It's always nice though to enrich many people
and obtain various reactions.  (also you yourself are part of this
loop - f'rinstance:  Greg's self-disparagment of his recordings leads
him to the (n+1) level as well as Junior the drummer saying, I'll take
the hard road over the easy road anyday...).  So cultivate our own
gardens, if it means buying the seed or spreading the crop in some
way or even (as Greg says) "cut and burn" (within legal means) which
is a whole opening genre in itself (see the Ciccone Youth and various
industrial bands for more on THAT).

Sid Vicious was really an idealist for all his nihilist pose and perhaps
that's what Kate meant:  one of sid's most cogent quotes was when he
said "in a couple of years, there will be no need for punks" since we
will have arrived at an ideal state DUE to the punks.  How wrong he
was and maybe he saw that before he took his life?

>>(at least without using 
>>quasi-moral arguments "Madonna promotes pathological materialistic values"
>>or vague quasi-elitist statements "Residents are more challenging music
>>because they deconstruct pop :-)"). 

>Here's where I think I'll draw the flames. I don't think you'll have
>any choice BUT to make value-based arguments. If you're deft and lucky,
>you'll be charged with elitism perhaps or dismissed as someone who
>thinks too much. If you're lousy, you'll pretend to make value-neutral
>pronouncements that will succeed only in making you look like a buffoon
>or a bigot-whether you're a Baptist, a Skin, a Trotskyite, or just another
>fan. At the bottom of all this, the question for me is not "What is Art?"
>but "What is GOOD Art?" How is Art good? A nice place to begin is to
>stifle the urge to capitalize the word, perhaps.

Hsut asks later on here "how can we make people listen to ''our'' music" 
and I think this IS a flaw that people bring to bear.  Don't try and get
people to do anything.  It will probably make them
more hostile towards you and yours ANYWAY.  Rather, make it available:
strewn issues of fanzines, OP on coffeetables, assorted tapes in my
bathroom beatbox (and a ripped off radio antenna), or inviting friends
over and slipping in a wrecord or two that you think they might be enriched
by hearing - don't tell them the name or anything until and if they actually
perk up and say .... "Wow" or somthing.  

>>We can't argue against trendiness
>>because if rock is a fad, then we're all guilty of trendiness. 

>This dilemma is a part of what my mother called "Good Trouble." It
>is the kind of semi-insoluble dilemma from which one emerges as
>either an escapist or as a better person. I prefer personally to 
>locate myself solidly in my own time, be suspicious of my urge
>to make all other times look like mine (thanks to old Heidegger,
>but may I never have to read him again!), and puzzle out whether
>there is, after all, something of an "essential core of being"
>(We call it "soul", Aretha and I) in either the net of Greg-In-The
>Present, or any of those other objects out there. Those nasty and
>shifty PostModernists have bandied about the notion that art functions
>as a "system of self-knowledge". Perhaps that's what I am suggesting.

I can dig it.  Self-determination can be rough and rocky and NEVER
(it seems) actually attainable.  So while we leave the others behind
with Freud and Jung we can speed about in our Maslow-tuned auto finding
enjoyment and enrichment at every (other) turn....

			"eh? - maybe not"
					- Karen Weiss
>(If you can't answer those questions, then why are you subscribing to LH?!)

hmmmm....but I'm not subscribing - so there!

> Swans "Time Is Money (Bastard)"

WANT! WANT! WANT!
> allyn
... and I KNOW where you live, fool!