From Warren Lapham Sent Fri, Apr 9th 1999, 18:56
From Warren Lapham Sent Fri, Apr 9th 1999, 18:56
On Fri, 9 Apr 1999, R. Lim wrote: > > To me, the whole problem with this commentary is evident from the get-go. > > Am I being naively disconnected from the self-reference that drives a lot > > of modern pop culture when I expect a critique of a style of music to > > focus on the music? > > That critique is sort of implicit in any Reynolds piece (see thesis > above). Indeed. But I am still troubled by his having aimed more at the culture surrounding the music than the music. > Thinking that the music alone is the only thing that controls your > perception of it is pretty naive, depending on how far you take it. That's not what I was getting at, really, but I can see how what I wrote was vague... Discussions of context recur on this list, which is perfectly reasonable. I imagine that it is, for many people, a not-entirely-insignificant part of why they are interested in the music. But to dis a genre of music (remember, in the title of the piece, Reynolds gives the object of his scorn as 'Geektronica,' not the scene(s) surrounding it) based on what he doesn't like about the people who like it and the ways in which they do so reveals what I find to be a distasteful blindness to the apparently not-so-obvious notion that group settings aren't the only way that people should enjoy music. The context in which music is heard and/or experienced is far from unimportant; I'd be fooling no one if I claimed otherwise. However, to argue that there is a single universal, authentic context for a particular style of music is either arrogant, ignorant, or both. But it seems as if no one is denying that this is Mr. Reynolds's angle, so mayhap I've just come full circle. -w. -- Warren Lapham xxxx@xxxx.xxx FAXlabel reviews : http://www.2350.org/