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Post by stuartmilgram on Jun 7, 2005 13:07:22 GMT
some good points there. I guess all bands do produce art, in the same way that a bad painter is still producing art, and a 'commercial' artist is too.
I spose the art band puts more emphasis on the ART than a 'normal band'. There is of course a distinction between "The Arts" which encompasses theatre, opera, literature, music, etc; and 'Art' by which people are normally either refering to Fine Art of 'Visual Arts'.
I think that what I would be most comfortable labelling as Art Band today would be a band who's Intentionality (Philosophy warning!) is all about being a Fine Art performance of a band. Which can be very difficult to distinguish from a 'real' band... just like Duchamp's Fountain is hard to distinguish from a urinal, but is different intentionally.
sorry about all the technical words.
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Post by DrFurry on Jun 7, 2005 23:04:37 GMT
An art band labelling is like all labels: generally fucking worthless except to a record label boss with no imagination. Take one of my favourite bands of all time, the Olivia Tremor Control: they'd be labelled as psychedelic or 60's fixated experimentalists but never have I seen anyone label them as an art band. Why not? It beats me, they produced their own albums, did their own artwork, I believe took control of their album rights now after one label went down, live performances were very performance orientated, sometimes with themes... what's the difference between them and, say, Talking Heads in terms of 'being an art band'? It's also possible to lose the art band tag, I remember NME when I was a teenager describing the Velvet Underground as an art band and now they're the grandaddy of garage rock. These tags come, they slip away and get washed off.
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Post by stuartmilgram on Jun 8, 2005 7:38:47 GMT
Yeah, that's true of course. Very post-structuralist of you. All categorisation is purely provisional. Everything is change boundaries between classifications are always permeable. We just need to remember that definitions are useful only as a starting point for a discussion so everyone knows that we are talking about the same thing, then we destroy the definitions as essentially meaningless in themselves. Several interesting areas of study for this kind of thinking you might enjoy are anything by Delueuze and Guattari, Zen Buddhism, and the chinese philosophy of Taoism. There's probably others I could mention, but that's a start. Much healthier and more realistic as a philosophy for life than straight Nihilism.
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Post by DrFurry on Jun 8, 2005 13:46:07 GMT
Post-structuralist? Nah, not me, it's always seemed more logical to not have any boundaries on anything. I understand what you say about having a definition to begin with and then breaking down that definition as the discussion progresses but I much prefer the idea of no definition to begin with and perhaps almost forming a definition of multitude of definitions as the discussion progresses. I believe that greater depth of thought and idea comes to a discussion by installing no definition at the beginning. Certainly I don't follow any nihilistic path, as I do believe life has a meaning, it is simply up to the individual to interpret what they believe to be their meaning. Currently this week I believe my life has a meaning to get fit, hence me deciding to take two weeks away from my awful temporary working cmmitment (ho ho) within the branch of an accounting office and go to the gym instead and play my guitars.
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Raanraals
Lieutenant
Attorney General
Posts: 256
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Post by Raanraals on Jun 8, 2005 21:23:43 GMT
You're working temporarily as a ho? Whoring yourself to accountants? You make me sick.
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Post by DrFurry on Jun 8, 2005 21:39:04 GMT
Some of their demands make me sick. Deep throating someone whilst they're frantically fantasising about quarterly reports isn't fun y'know.
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Post by stuartmilgram on Jun 14, 2005 13:22:24 GMT
I much prefer the idea of no definition to begin with and perhaps almost forming a definition of multitude of definitions as the discussion progresses. unfortunately that leads to people stringing loads of random words together in a total lack of meaning, or on misunderstandings about what an egg is (for example). It's difficult to talk about a band without reference to any definitions... try it.
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Post by stuartmilgram on Jun 14, 2005 13:27:41 GMT
I much prefer the idea of no definition to begin with and perhaps almost forming a definition of multitude of definitions as the discussion progresses. It is difficult to avoid definitions entirely, try talking about a band without using any defining terms
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Post by DrFurry on Jun 15, 2005 11:22:05 GMT
No, it's easy. I had this discussion with a computer lecturer yesterday, she asked me if I like d'guitar music'. How to describe a band? Why not just describe the music without resorting to cliche? You don't have to use random words, you can say for someone like the Flaming Lips 'The last album had a bedrock acoustic guitar element with synthesised sounds based around that that give a very techno-organic feel to the music'. I personally think that's far more descriptive than saying 'It's psychedelic indie music'. It's more the classic genre definitions that I reject, for instance what the fuck is indie? Does indie mean that awful shuffling drumb beat that sounds like the drums from Blur's Bang crossed with some lame arse singer? Of course not but the definition says nothing. What is electronica? People don't like being describing details so they stick with the poor elements instead.
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Post by stuartmilgram on Jun 21, 2005 10:53:43 GMT
I get what you're saying, but 'The last album had a bedrock acoustic guitar element with synthesised sounds based around that that give a very techno-organic feel to the music'? That is a description that is crystal clear to someone who understands music, but for someone who just likes listening to music without any specialist knowledge I think they might have trouble "visualising" (What's the audio equiv?) what that might sound like. What does "techno-organic" mean?
Language relies on shared agreement on meaning. Some need "techno-organic feel", some need "psychedelic rock"
I have a tendency to think poorly of people who use different codes in their language, but they are just as meaningful to some other people as what i would have said. I judge others like crazy.... bad stuart bad stuart
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Post by John Brainlove on Aug 23, 2005 10:26:45 GMT
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