Oh, no! Not another IED argument! Arggghhh!!!

[IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu]

Sorry you've been waiting with bated breath, Bill, since IED's answer
will be somewhat anti-climactic: basically he concedes your points.
Yes, he HAS mellowed out lately! Still, so as not to disappoint
you completely, he will argue about a couple of your specifics.

First, he is happy to make the qualification you ask of him:
certainly the "underground" music to which he refers is only
that proportion of it with which he is personally familiar.
Just as you feel competent to generalize unfavourably about
American mainstream music based only on those musicians
With whose work you are familiar, IED felt that he had investigated
enough of America's current underground music to have an opinion about
it. But perhaps he was a bit too hasty,
since he only knows the music of a couple of the artists
you mention; and
he would be very interested in hearing a few samples of each of
the ones you mention. In fact, he wonders whether you would be willing
to fill a cassette with representative tracks for him, providing
he sent you a blank and an SASE. Seriously. IED, although skeptical,
still retains an open mind and a healthy curiosity.

>...vocal control and range of color of Diamanda Galas show attention to
>detail that few people can miss.

Since Galas and Sonic Youth are the only ones you mention with
whom IED is familiar, he responds to the above remark. You've
loaded your description of Galas's music so that anyone who might
happen to reject your praise of her talents is branded as one of the
benighted, insensitive few. (Sort of an old IED tactic, wouldn't
you say?) But that's beside the point. Without disagreeing that
her vocal control and "range of color" are impressive, it's not
clear to this listener that her vocal expressiveness is a result
of any exceptional degree of "attention to detail". Such a term
(in IED's view, of course) implies care, thought, reflection,
intense planning, and above all a restriction of improvision and
spur-of-the-moment creativity, or at least a constant reign on such
improvisation. Although there is some planning of certain basic
parts of Galas's music, it is by no means all the product of
the kind of careful preparation which IED, at least, has in mind.
In fact, a great deal of Galas's work strikes him as only very
slightly prepared, even to the extent that much of her vocal
touches seem to have occurred as much by chance as by real intention.

>And when No Trend thrashes in 5/4 time,
>Fear rolls into a tight jam in 7/4 time, or D. Boon of the Minutemen
>sings his compressed, Burroughsian lyrics over twisted guitar lines,
>it's obvious that this music has been carefully thought out and worked
>over. Maybe the underground music IED is familiar with is mostly slipshod,
>but many of my favorites sure aren't. We must listen to different
>undergrounds or something.

There is so much underground music that it is very unlikely
any two listeners will be familiar with all of the same stuff. IED is
confident he could name as many underground musicians with whom you are
unfamiliar as vice versa; nevertheless, he would love to hear
some of the stuff you hold in high regard. On the other hand, IED isn't
impressed by a band's ability to thrash away in unusual time
signatures. That's a very easy trick to learn, and doesn't in
itself signify any great attention to detail; although he'll
admit it's a start.

As to your long paragraph about "packaging", this was all
a misunderstanding caused by IED's misleading metaphor to
"what's under the hood." He didn't mean to refer to packaging
at all; only to the production and presentation of the music itself.
Sorry, he'll choose his analogies more carefully next time.
Anyway, for the record, IED would never have said Sigue Sigue Sputnik
had "sophisticated" packaging. Elaborate, maybe, but excessively
crass and stupid.

>>The other side of the coin -- the mainstream American popular
>>music of our time -- tends to be horribly conventional, emotionally
>>empty or (worse) false, and enslaved by rigid conventions of genre.

>Agreed, but that's not where the most interesting American music is
>these days.

That sounds like as much of a generalization as IED's remarks about
underground music. Personally, he thinks there's still a lot of creative
work being done in black dance music, although most of it is
unfortunately very banal in most respects other than rhythm and
production.

>Somehow this is strangely reminiscent of the Mike Krantz affair last
>year, which introduced the infamous argument "I've only heard a small
>amount of non-mainstream music but I think it sucks so it does".

Wait a minute. IED was trying to make it clear that he didn't want
to conclude that "it does"; only that he personally hasn't found much to
interest him -- yet. Could he amend your statement as follows? "IED has
heard quite a lot of 'non-mainstream music', but not very much recent
American non-mainstream music. What he has heard of the American stuff
doesn't seem to have been done with much care or attention to detail.
But he doesn't think it 'sucks'; and he certainly wouldn't say
that just because he 'thinks' something, it's an unequivocal fact.
And frankly, if he weren't so spaced out right now, he would probably
be a little annoyed that people keep ascribing such
close-mindedness to him unfairly."

>Among the other vendors was one InterGalactic Garage, which I am happy
>to report, is far from being a KT-paraphenalia-only shop (think about
>it, can anyone (besides Kate herself, that is) really hope to make a
>living selling only posters and trinkets?  Not that anyone strongly
>implied this...) and in fact, seems to carry quite some variety of odds
>and ends relating to other, lesser artists (snicker).
>
>-- dave

Right. Actually, IED only said I.G. "specialized" in KT, not that he
didn't sell anything else. Actually, Allan and Maura have been
sending out catalogues of alot of other stuff, too; but IED
resists it. And Kate couldn't make a living off of selling only
posters and trinkets, either: at the 1985 convention she paid for
the production of all of the posters and shirts on sale herself,
and then donated all of the money the fans paid for the merchandise
to Band-Aid. At the 1986 convention she again subsidized all of the
production costs, and then gave away all of the t-shirts and
posters free. All in all she lost more than ten thousand pounds on
those two conventions.

>The IED's idea of "detail" in music is merely some little English rich brat
>leaving pseudo-deep backwards messages in her pretentious, schlocky, synthy
>compositions.
>
>-- Hofmann

That's right, Hof. That IS one good example of what IED thinks of
as "detail": "pseudo-deep backwards messages in pretentious, schlocky,
synthy compositions." You got it. We understand each other!

-- Andrew Marvick