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From: jtm@syteka.UUCP (Jim T. McCrae)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Classical vs Other
Message-ID: <460@syteka.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Apr-84 13:22:26 EST
Article-I.D.: syteka.460
Posted: Tue Apr 10 13:22:26 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Apr-84 04:55:24 EST
References: uvacs.1228
Lines: 28


I believe there is another level of distinction beyond good and bad.
Many music lovers are drawn to the works of artists who appear very
human through their music, that is, the music itself has the feeling
of human activity and fallibility to it. This is difficult to explain
to those who have never experienced it; those who have probably
already know what I'm talking about. Blues, jazz, and rock in their
purest form (flame away) are less concerned with proficient execution
than with communication of personal experience. A good blues guitarist
knows when to make the notes sloppy or too rushed or slightly offkey
or off tempo. Life's like that. Life's not like a synthesizer line
for most of us, it's more like a searing dirty Freddie King riff.
The job of the artist is to encapsulate and reflect our own experience
in a way we haven't done ourselves.

Any branch of music has examples of those who possess the above-defined
right stuff, and those who don't. Stan Getz has it, David Sanborn
doesn't. The Ramones have it, Black Flag doesn't. Charlie Parker had
probably the quintessential case of it.

In modern music there's a whole arena of music which strives to deny
human emotion by relying on the infallibility of drum machines,
synthesizers, and other electronic perfectors. At the other extreme
is a movement which has taken human emotion to the breaking point,
the hiers to the Sex Pistol's brief moment on the big screen. The
individuals who work in their chosen of the two forms will still
either show through as humans struggling to communicate or as impersonal
loci of activity divorced from the fallibility of their trade.