(idm) Mime-Version: 1.0

From Sean Cooper
Sent Tue, Sep 21st 1999, 04:18

hoo-boy, talk about your thread-death! nicely put.

sc

>defensive reminder: "Only Stupid People Call It Intelligent" was a QUOTE
>from Rather Interesting Records- it's a simplistic but funny slogan, but I
>don't want it laid (directly) at my doorstep. I do still stand by the
>position that as a component of a functional "genre" name, the word
>"intelligent" fails to do what genre names are supposed to do, namely,
>define a particular quality of the aesthetic class of objects that the name
>picks out, so that the name is helpfully descriptive. Defining a genre in
>terms of the emotions it produces in the listener can work (try "sadcore"
>and "the blues") but, as many posts have pointed out, intellectual
>(non-physical) response to sound is available as a reaction to ALL forms of
>music. By way of comparison, substitute "pleasure-giving" for "intelligent"
>and you will see the problem I'm trying to point out. I don't reject this
>term out of hostility towards "intelligence" or out of
>anti-intellectualism-  as someone getting a PhD, that would put me in an
>odd position to say the least. Of course, from an "ordinary language" or
>late Wittgenstein perspective, if IDM helps a sizeable community group a
>set of sounds, then the name "works" regardless of what
>contradictions/simplifications come along for the ride.