< To: Subject: Re: Well, this should keep the McCartney Thread alive for another Message-ID: I am not familiar at all with this Lefsetz guy at all.The thing that really got to me was the part where he said he only sampled the McCartney cd and that was not only enough for him but for anyone.He hated it so much he completely negates the idea that this album could reveal itself to him in time.That is so insane.All music improves with familiarity.I know,he said it has to be good in the first place.But we all know how good music just grows on you. Way back in the early posts on this album,several people have mentioned how this album hit after several plays.The more they listened the more they liked what they heard.I just find that to be the case with all music.Some of it hits you immediately but then new layers are revealed after further listening.Heck, that was the case with Beatle albums. I know this guy is nothing to get hung about.>> I gotta disagree with you pretty strongly on a couple of points here, Gene. First of all, not all music improves with familiarity. I've heard Morris Albert's "Feelings" and Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" a zillion times since they were released in the '70s, and I don't like either song one bit more now than I did back in the days of flared corduroys and shag carpeting. I think it's safe to say that neither recording will ever improve with more familiarity -- and I could name an endless parade of Top 40 dreck released over my lifetime that burbles within that same "no improvement with more familiarity" cesspool. Second, I don't think that your second generalization, "all good music just grows on you", is necessarily true, either. There are some songs that I love right from the get-go, and they stay that way. For me, that describes *most* of the music that I love. I value immediacy. I think it's the greatest virtue of popular music -- how a song can grab your attention and make you like it the very first time that you hear it. It's essentially the bedrock of what's made the popular music industry work over the past half-century plus, and it's often cited by people who hate popular music as the very reason why they hate it. If a musical work's essential appeal is something that an untrained ear can hear the first time out, their reasoning goes, then it's too shallow to have any intrinsic value. What I, and a whole lot of other popular music lovers, say in response is that being grabbed by something the very first time that you hear it is what's *right* about the music. Say what you will about the disposability of modern consumer society and the short attention span of the consumers it has produced; the fact of the matter is that music touches areas of the human psyche that are innate and not socially formed. Any music that moves people has an intrinsic value to it, and many of us are moved the most by music that triggers our endorphins the very first time that we hear it. Sure, some great popular music has layers that you don't catch (and therefore don't appreciate) the first time out of the gate. But an awful lot of it does -- most of it, in my estimation and in the estimation of many other people. I have yet to hear any new layers to "As Long As I Have You" by Garnet Mimms, "I Want You Around" by the Ramones, "Bad Luck" by Social Distortion, "She's a Girl and I'm a Man" by Lloyd Cole, or "Emily Mazurinsky" by the Adventures of Jet that I didn't hear the first time I heard those songs. And you know what? I don't miss the absent hear-them-somewhere-down-the-road layers at all. The songs didn't need them ... and neither did I as the listener. Eddie Cochran's "Something Else", Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues", the Beach Boys' "Girl, Don't Tell Me", and the Who's "I Can See For Miles" sound exactly the same to me as they did upon my first listen however many years ago that was ... and I love those songs not one bit less for it. I've said it before on Audities, and I'll say it again: What I love about great popular music is its immediacy. If a song doesn't wow me the first time through with a great hook, compelling performance, or a fantastic melody, chances are it that never will. So don't expect me to play McCartney's new album, or anyone else's, five or six times waiting for it to reveal itself. All that'd almost certainly do is frustrate me, because there's too much other stuff I want to hear that stands a much better chance of satisfying my musical sweet tooth the first time that I hear it. Greg Sager