Re: 1967 the greatest year for rock music

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Re: 1967 the greatest year for rock music

Group: rec.music.progressive · Group Profile
Author: tension_on_the_wire
Date: Apr 27, 2008 15:09

On Apr 27, 7:51 am, "RichL" yahoo.com> wrote:

> tension_on_the_wire yahoo.com> wrote:

>> On Apr 26, 12:53 pm, poisoned rose rmb.com> wrote:

>>> I always have a difficult time with this question, because of the
>>> quality vs. quantity issue. I could pull a Raja, and simply base my
>>> view on "counting" how many albums I like from given years. But that
>>> would duplicate Raja's usual problem of not measuring internal
>>> quality. But which is better, a year with 15 great albums and 60
>>> good ones, or a year with 30 great albums and 30 good ones? Beats
>>> me. That's the relevant sort of question for me.

>>> One thing's for sure: My interests really explode in 1986, which I
>>> believe is coincident with the alt-rock world breaking out as a
>>> flourishing movement and giving far more acts the chance to record.
>>> That's the point where I abruptly jump from being interested in 60
>>> or so albums a year to well over a hundred. So, it's especially hard
>>> for me to compare 1986-??? with ???-1985.

>> How about the idea that maybe it's neither quantifiable nor
>> qualifiable because at the end of the day, your personal assessment of
>> great and good albums is so entirely subjective it would be like
>> trying to read your fingerprints. Everybody might actually be
>> defining the greatest year of music as the year in which the available
>> music played an important role as the soundrack of your life. It's as
>> personal as the story of your life. Don't you remember what the
>> dominant music was for most of the momentous milestones in your life?
>> When you hear that music again, after a long time, you can have an
>> instant flashback of total recall sometimes, if the experiences were
>> significant. When and where they are may have a lot to do with the
>> time and place of the music that you were most receptive to, even.

>
> I think that's true of most people.

>> But perhaps you perceive music more intellectually, and not so
>> personally? In which case you may be impervious to it's influence on
>> your vantage point.

>
> I think that's what he'd like to believe

I'm not quite sure why anyone would want to be emotionally impervious
to music. It seems to me that would be a lot like wishing to be color
blind.
There isn't an art form I can think of which would be improved by
removing the emotional component since that is often the point of art,
to stimulate a certain emotional response in people, though not always
the same response in each on account of the influences I mentioned in
my first post which color a person's perceptions of just about every
art form. The responses may be very negative, yet it is still said to
be art, and can certainly still be most influential. I give you
Robert Mapplethorpe. A current extreme example of this phenomenon
would be the general response to the Yale student who is right now the
center of controversy over her "abortion art".

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351608,00.html

There would have been no market for her idea, and no possibility of
public response, without the heavy emotional component driving it. It
seems to have been, in fact, her whole point...to evoke a programmed,
predictable response from a very large number of people by doing what
she did (or didn't do, as Yale claims) though regardless of how one
feels about the issue, her choice was certainly in poor taste which
tells alot about her intrinsic artistic potential. But people won't
discuss whether or not it is in poor taste. The response will almost
universally be about the morality of the abortion issue, and
specifically the morality of using it for "artistic" purposes because
most people cannot refrain from responding when their "buttons" are
pushed. They will make very emotional and personal epithets about the
morality of the "artist" and is that not an age-old dispute? That the
"quality" of someone's art is dependent upon their moral integrity?
Tchaikovsky still hasn't been forgiven for being gay by many
classicists, as if he had somehow sullied the beauty of his work.
Neither has Rob Halford from Judas Priest. Well, I suppose the
classicists do not comment on the beauty of Judas Priest's work, but
you take my meaning, I think.

--tension

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