Sinister: On the count of three, everybody smile and say 'clone'.

[Peter Carter]

>Mediocrity = popularity.  To buttress this assertion by way of example:
Gray
>David, Toploader, Starsailor, Bridgett Jones' Diary [film and book],Captain
>Correlli's Mandolin, Stereophonics.  The fact that "Mediocrity =
popularity"
>has a little to do with the concept "lowest common denominator".  Take the
>recent example at Glasgow University where a distinguished intellectual
>[some might say Scotland's leading author; I wouldn't] was beaten by a
>two-bit comic with the catchphrase "Gonnae no' dae that".  The case for the
>prosecution rests.

Erk, Starsailor should always be referred to as Shitsailor, even though that
term is hopelessly tacky. If anyone has a better subversive name I'd like to
know.

Anyway, I have a belief that taste does not exist for any form of art. Taste
is limited to food, where it can be explained but the biology of people's
tongues and the inability to taste certain flavours. Music, however, as well
as book and music is explained by something else. The main thrust of the
argument is

1. Ease. If something doesn't break any boundaries or do anything new at
all,
it's easy to listen to. There is nothing unexpected to get your head round,
nothing interesting that you need to dissect. People who have no real
interest in art (the majority or the work/money/sex population) just go with
anything they can enjoy after listening to it only once, ipso facto Mediocre
Music (tm). The only things which usually break through this are
bands/books/films/art which can follow all the surface rules, while doing
something intelligent through subtexts or complexities or whatever. I use
the majority of surviving 60's music as an example here as well as some
classic books, like 1984 and such.

However there are also other things that seem to make up 'taste',

2. Mood. This is very important as far as I see, and goes someway to
accounting for the difference in taste between 'serious' music fans.
However, this can usually be bypassed continued listening, and, to some
extent, by guessing which mood you'd have to be in to enjoy something.
Listening to Nick Cave or Sleater Kinney when you've just fallen in love
isn't necessarily the best thing, and everyone knows The Stone Roses are
best enjoyed in a field on a hot summers day.

3. Music experience. This seems to be both enlightening and limiting, though
more of the former than the latter. You can often listen to something and
here it sounds a little like something else you've heard and dismiss it, but
I guess this ties into '1', if you put enough effort in, and it is genuinely
good, you can usually understand why it's good, and minor differences are
the things which shape music anyway. Most music has basically the same
formula, but I think that the more music you listen to (properly, not just
let it plink away in the background), the more you can understand
subtleties, and the more you realise quality over easy hooks and gimmicks.

4. Image. This really is important to bands other than the S Club brigade.
Image is a way of making your music say something, and, as that's pretty
much all music does, I'd say it was pretty important. While individual songs
should not be valued according to the bands assumed persona, I'd say that
bands as a whole should, nay, have to be. A faceless band, saying nothing,
but doing it with good tunes, is still a faceless band. Having said that, I
don't have that much of a problem with bands not writing their own material.
If someone can write and someone can sing, why not let them specialise? It's
only the 1 writer = 20 bands ratio and the number of devaluing covers of
great songs which is currently adding to the hermoginisation (sp) of our pop
scene. I also find the contast stream of bands who 'can dance', to be
bizaree in the extreme. When the hell was it decided that dancing ability
helps to make a good record? No matter how hard a strain, I can never quite
make out the footsteps of dancing barbie clones on 'Reach for the Sky'.

The pop scene also seems to have a heel of a lot to do with promotion.
Seeing as I've introduced bands like Looper and Kings of Conveniace to
friends with resonable degrees of success, I think some of the problem with
mediocrity is that people don't both filtering. As lot of people just like
anything and don't bother to think about it. It's there, it's in our
culture... why question it? This seems VERY dangerous to me, and, without
being melodramatic, I'd say it's the kind of attitude that made the
holocaust possible.

Having said all that, I recently saw 'Rock Action' by Mogwai at number 12 in
the album charts in HMV. Needless to say I bought it immediately (I've been
meaning to buy some Mogwai for ages), and it's great. I'm wondering if this
is leading up to a revolution... what with Gorrillaz (sp?) in there too and
number 9 or some such. Nah, they probably just put it in the wrong slot,
either that or I was dreaming. I didn't pinch myself, and the CD a couple of
times though...

Anyway, this rant was a roundabout way of getting out of doing an essay...
please forgive me.

> On a scale of 1 to pish-poor-awful.  1 being the least pish-poor-awful and
> pish-poor-awful being the most pish-poor-awful.  I reckon I'd have to say
> Feeder are about 9.  Y'know.  Pretty high.

"I got a brand new car... *muffled screams*"

> PS Just a little note on Disco; it's an unfairly maligned genre of music,
> y'know.  Donna Summer's I Feel Love.  Ah mean, c'mon.  "It was
> unprecedented.  No verse, no chorus, just Summer's purring mantra set over
 > endless, oscillating, undulating, repetitive sequencer-driven beats."

Wow, Kid A ripped of Donna Summer! Who would have thought it. Actually, I
love that album, I was just being silly.
Many times I've laughed when people said "I don't like it, it's got no
guitars", actually it was more crying that laughing, but there you go.

>PPS That's my fifteen minutes.  Anybody care to debate?  Go on, you know
you
>want to.  I've never actually had an argument/convo with anyone on
Sinister.
>I always shy away from real discussion.

Do I qualify?

PEter


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