Re: Tori--What do you really think?

[jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu (Jeffrey C. Burka)]

Drewcifer responds to me:

>In <9212100522.AA02152@syrinx.umd.edu> jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu writes:

>Well, consider the fact that...okay, the opinion (mine) that LE is a much
>more *perfect* album than anything Kate has ever done.

As you've surely noticed, this is a minority opinion around here.

>Yes, perhaps she
>wrote herself out on this album.  So what?  Quality, *not* quantity, is what
>makes genius.

>Ten good albums do not necessarily surpass two great albums. 

Depending on the level of "goodness", think they _can_ surpass a fewer
number of better albums.  I dunno about you, but I can't listen to the
same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again.  There's
as _reason_ I own close to 300 CDs.  And with the _variety_ in KaTe's work
I'm more likely to be in the mood for any one of her albums at any given 
time than I am to hear LE. I listened to LE more this year than any single
KaTe album.  But I've listened to more KaTe than Tori.  That's why this whole
discussion strikes me as ludicrous at this point in Tori's career.

The way I see it, KaTe is a certified genius.  Tori *may* be the same; she
may have had a flash of brilliance which quickly faded.


>Age makes no difference whatsoever.  Experience does.

Age and experience, for most people, are tightly intertwined. 

>I definitely agree that LE is more impressive than TKI

LE was written with 10 years worth of life experience more than TKI.


>However, I agree that enjoyment of music is entirely subjective...I have
>albums by artists who I find utterly lacking in musical quality, but I still
>enjoy listening to them.

You're buckling under to canonical concepts of musical quality that I find 
outdated.  As an example, many, many people might listen to The Pixies
and call them horrid noise with a leadsinger who can't hold a note.  But
the emotions that they call to mind for *me* make them just as important
as a lot of more commonly accepted artists.  I don't think there's any
universal music that appeals to everyone, no matter how classical perfect it
is.  The world is too big now, with contributions from too many societies
with too many ideas of what music should sound like.

>>I'm always in the mood for Happy Rhodes.  I can listen to her music over
>
>And the more I hear about her, the more I want to listen for myself.  I
>really need to hit the CD store and see what all the fuss is about!

Good luck finding her albums.  They can be hard to find in stores, though
not impossible.


>Again
>we have the quality vs. quantity thing; if you set me down with a Fairlight
>and all the resources at Kate's command, I think I could probably dish out
>some pretty amazing stuff too.

This is pretty arrogant, don't you think?  

>Let's face it; when you're working with
>non-traditional instruments, you can make things sound really inventive.

You can also make things sound really shitty because you don't understand
how to use diverse sounds together to weave that sonic tapestry to which
I've referred.  It's not just a matter of sounding "inventive" because you've
got a sound nobody's heard before; it's a matter of using that sound 
*correctly*.  I shudder to think how many people have used that orchestra
stab now--but "The Dreaming" is, I feel, one of the most *proper* uses of
the sound.

>It's harder to sound original on piano; Tori does it, Kate doesn't.  I
>wonder just what Tori would come up with if she had Kate's set of sounds to
>work with.

I don't know how well it would work for Tori to try KaTe like productions.
It might work exceedingly well, it might not.  While I don't think that
most of the arrangements on LE are original, they are mostly appropriate.  
I do know that a number of people I know didn't care for  Tori until they 
saw her live _without_ the trappings of a full-blown production.  For those 
people, the arrangements on LE _obscured_ Tori to the point of insignifiance.

Jeff


-- 
|Jeffrey C. Burka                | "Show what you are / Be strong, be true  |
|                                |  Time for you to / Be who you are."      |
|jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu            |                         --Happy Rhodes   |