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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "Josh Chasin" <jchasin@nyc.rr.com> |
| Subject | Re: Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire |
| Date | Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:49:00 -0400 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Smith" <sam@lullabypit.com>
> If I take this at face value, there's no real point in ever talking about
> music. We have reduced everything to taste and nothing is articulatable
> about it. So all conversations about music have two possible comments -
> "I like it" and "I don't like it."
I disagree Sam. I think it IS all about taste. If we accept that, for
example, Revolver is a great record, what do we mean? To a great extent we
mean that there seems to be a convergence of opinion about it from both
consumers and critics (whatever "critic" means; I deliberately chose a
loaded word.) But are critics really passing judgment on the objective value
of a thing, uninformed by whether it speaks to them directly? Or is their
critique governed by whether or not they like the thing. If the former, I
have little use for the critic.
There's stuff that I dislike, that I understand to be good. But that
understanding is generally driven by my own (again, subjective) assessment
of the tastes of the people I know who like the music.
Can there really be an absolute objective scale of musical evaluation? How
do you compare Beethoven to the Sex Pistols to Ray Charles? This much I
know: of the three, I like Ray Charles best. Is Ray Charles better than
Beethoven or the Sex Pistols? Someone besides me can say for certain.
(The one exception, of course, remains the Doors.)
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