Class Acts and Mass Acts

[<U38373%uicvm.uic.edu@OHSTVMA.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>]

(NOTE:  I originally posted the following to the ecto mailing list last week.
I am reposting it here at the suggestion of Meredith Tarr, in connection with
the recent thread on Kate, Tori, and commercialism.--M.P.)

Late on a recent Saturday night, I was watching a local video show which
happened to run the latest Genesis video, in which Phil Collins figured
prominently.  It occurred to me, for reasons still unexplainable, that
Genesis--including Collins--in its earlier days, particularly when Peter
Gabriel led it, is part of the canon of ecto, gaffa, and like-minded
lists; whereas Collins' solo material, in great measure, is probably
anathema to many of their subscribers.  Later, the station ran videos by
Paula Abdul and Mariah Carey, two artists who have come in for
particular bashing in these pages on various occasions.  I happened to
enjoy these particular videos, and their underlying musical numbers,
however un-PC of me that may have been.  I could not say the same for
many of the other videos, which at times actually seemed to validate the
knee-jerk revulsion toward rock of all types that many in my parents'
generation have expressed almost continuously since 1956.

Early last week, the _Chicago Tribune_ ran an article titled
"Caught in generation pap:  Wilson Philips puts its legacy in a blender
once again."  This was apparently pegged to the release of their second
album that day; as was, presumably, NBC's rerun the night before of a
made-for-TV movie in which Chynna Philips played Roxanne Pulitzer.
The article's bottom line was that while the new album did have a few
moments of real substance, WP's music as a whole could not hold a candle
to that of their parents in terms of innovation or distinctiveness, and
was unlikely to stand the test of time as well.  The music's changing for
the worse is implicitly pinned on an underlying change in the _zeitgeist_:

     The 60's pop sense of adventure and accent on distinctive
     songwriting has given way to an overly conservative, fussy approach
     where every note must be equalized, synthesized, sanitized and
     digitized.  Perfection is the goal, rather than spontaneity or a
     sense of the performer's humanness.

If this rather amorphous essay has a particular underlying theme, it
probably is--to paraphrase the recent closeout sale advert of Round
Records--that "Corporate rock sucks--but all the time?"  We on ecto are
justly proud of our status as a specialty market for specialty artists,
who have so far been able to escape the tentacles of the commercial
machine--albeit at the price of relative obscurity.  (Readers who can
see through the German syntax :-) of the last sentence will be aware
that it refers primarily to our favorite artists, rather than to us as
their consumers--though we should probably be proud to have escaped the
same set of tentacles from the standpoint of its bamboozlement of the
masses.)  Granted that much of the music that comes out of said machine
is driven first and foremost by corporate preconceptions of mass taste,
rather than by the artist's own artistic vision--assuming that the
latter does exist.  At the same time, let us not succumb to a knee-jerk
revulsion against anything promoted before the mass market, however much
merit there may be to that revulsion a lot of the time.  Sight should
not be lost of the fact that the same commercial music establishment
that now brings us Wilson Philips, New Kids on the Block, _et al._ once
brought us the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, Laura Nyro, and
others well-respected in both their time and this.  (The fact that the
business was in a different stage of mutation then does not totally
invalidate this proposition, IMHO WIVH.)  Closer to our own epoch, it
should be remembered that it was the major labels that brought us Tori
Amos, Sophie B. Hawkins, and, for that matter, Kate Bush and Peter
Gabriel.  So as we enter our second year of lending our moral and
financial support to Happy Rhodes and her ilk as they steadfastly follow
their own muses, let us remain open to the possibility that even the
most massified of artists can come up with something good once in a
while.

                                           Mitch Pravatiner
                                           U38373@uicvm.uic.edu