Sinister: why this is important

[Hopkins T]

re:

2 Questions:

And some responses:


>i) What is a homogenised cultural muscle? Is there a less pretentious
term
for this part of the anatomy?

(a) I shall take the word pretentious as a compliment, for reasons which
might not eb so complimentary.

(b) I used the phrase homogenising cultural muscle to mean the power
which the culture industries (and in this case music) seem to exercise
to squeeze the best ideas out of the most interesting music and replace
them with hackneyed, lowest-common-denominator ideas of what will
_sell_,(meaning what has sold already). Not an absolute rule, but a
general one.


>ii) Isn't this being-let-down-by-bands-and-populism thing (something
that
miraculously ceases to bother you when you give up reading the music
press,
by the by),

Thanks dad. I did stop reading the music press for a period of about
five years, not that you were to know that, of course) and it didn't
prevent my mistrust of the music business. Neither did it diminish my
interest in the business's machinations.

> if it has happened with what seem to be some of the bands you
most like, as central a part of your enjoyment of pop as any other?

No, not as central as any other. Interested as I am in what pop means
and how it works, the central part of my enjoyment remains the things
the noise  does to me. Long may it remain so. Otherwise, I might as well
be thinking about milk cartons. or whatever.
But I think I see what you're getting at and yes, a pop group having a
position of potential importance necessarily carries with it the risk of
letting folks down (even when those folks have aspirations for the group
which the group themselves never held or agreed with, ahem...). This
risk certainly does bring with it something of a thrill and generates a
feeling of trust which (were violation impossible) wouldn't be there.

The Sex Pistols didn't rip the music industry apart (which they said
they would) and thoroughly and consistently let their followers down.
BUT, something of the energy and strangeness in that band inspired a
generation to look for new ways to do things.
Belle and Sebastian have already inspired that feeling in some people I
know. I want that potential to have as wide and as large an effect as
possible. That's all.

Oh dear, I've probably bored you all stupid. Bad habit of mine.

Chin Chin

TimH
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