responses etc.

[hsu%uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU@a.cs.uiuc.edu (William Tsun-Yuk Hsu)]

< Grady Toss drops Alan Moore line in signature >
(be thankful I resisted the temptation to pun there; "tossing off a line" etc)
:-)
Another Alan Moore fan! How many of them are their on this list anyway?
Is there a correlation between liking great comics and good music?

>Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu

>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. 
Thanks to Hof for the rebuttal there. Quick anecdote: a group of musicially 
aware people had a birthday party at a bar two weeks ago. The range of
musical tastes was wide, noise, reggae, country, you name it. We could
only find about 2 songs to play on the whole jukebox, and had to put up
with the mersh the other customers put on. Sheeeesh.

>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.
I'm in the middle of making a stack of different samplers (not to mention
weekly sets for the radio) and right now it's driving me bananas trying
to keep everything straight. Any volunteers to help IED out? 

>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?) 
Huh? I'd be one of the first to say that Diamanda Galas is not for
everyone. It's very easy to find her music and lyrics rather objectionable.
But we're discussing technical proficiency (I think) here.

>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.

Several points: 1) it's often difficult to tell how much is improvised
and how much is composed beforehand. From interviews, I would suspect
that much more of Galas' stuff is prepared than is apparent. Also,
she does most of her background vocals/noise; the background loops
seem pretty tightly controlled to me. 2) Improvisation does not
imply lack of planning, or lesser attention to detail. It's just
that you're handling the details while the music chugs along. But
if you like pre-planned, relatively deterministic music, there's plenty
in non-mainstream music too.

< Somebody complains that John Zorn is not underground because his stuff
  is on CD >
Weeeell, Sonic Youth and Foetus have CD releases too. I don't know
if you'd consider them underground (non-mainstream tho). Let's not get into
definitions here, this is not rec.music.misc :-). Most of the artists
Zorn plays with on the Big Gundown are pretty obscure tho. There's Fred
Frith, Diamanda Galas, etc.

Actually Diamanda Galas may be on her way to trendy-land, with recent
interviews in Rockpool and some slick Chicago yuppie arts magazine. Can
trendies love somebody who claims to be the Anti-Christ and the "shit
of God" (not in English tho)?

Bill