From Chris.Hilker Sent Tue, Aug 24th 1999, 21:01
From Chris.Hilker Sent Tue, Aug 24th 1999, 21:01
>i'm sorry, i missed the part where we assumed that widening the audience >is an automatic improvement. can anybody provide any examples of art (or >music, say, to keep it relatively ontopic) scenes that became more vital >and creative once the general public started paying attention? IMO, "scenes" are almost definitionally not very vital and creative to begin with. Widespread exposure only puts that lack of creativity under a microscope. (The post-Nirvana feeding frenzy of six or seven years ago didn't ruin grunge, it just made it obvious how little of it had any merit to begin with.) That said, I can certainly name many musicians who've used the economic advantages inherent in mass appeal to benefit their art, the best example probably being Duke Ellington, who went from playing relativly simplistic dance music at the Cotton Club to creating longform thematic works for a worldwide audience. Come to think of it, big-band swing in general flourished creatively in the '30's and '40's, when its mass appeal was at its peak, and actually declined as a "scene" only when it became economically unfeasible to support so many touring musicians due to declining public interest. I don't know if Motown Records fits your definition of a "scene," but the creativity of their records increased by leaps and bounds as their popularity increased, peaking with records like "I Can't Give Back the Love I Feel for You," "I Heard it Through the Grapevine," and "I Wish it Would Rain" (compare these to early cuts like "Beechwood 4-5789" or "Shop Around") - not to mention What's Going On! C.