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From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Jethro Tull, Kate Bush, and jcp losingness
Message-ID: <4242@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12-May-85 03:34:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4242
Posted: Sun May 12 03:34:57 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 13-May-85 02:29:45 EDT
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Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
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> From Rich Yampell:

> You make a very interesting analogy between food and music.  With
> food, however, we can judge between broccoli and cardboard based on
> extremely obvious, objective, and universal agreed concepts of
> nutrition and health and so forth.  Just what are you going to use as
> criterion for doing so in music?  You mention various things, such as
> complexity, emotion, etc. but that is a long, varied, and in some
> cases contradictory list?  Exactly what is on it, and moreover, how do
> you claim that these things are objectively and obviously proper
> criterion?

It's not so clear to me that there is any such thing as an objective
criterion for anything.  Most people accept that 1+1=2, but is this
really true?  It's really just an assumption that most of us make.  If
someone says, no 1+1=3, then there isn't much you can say to them,
except to call them names and refuse to argue with them.

I assume that music that is unoriginal and formula is bad.  Maybe
someday I'll try to prove that listening to pop, commercial, formula
trash atrophies the brain, but until then if someone claims to me that
unoriginality and formula in music are good things, I can no more prove
them wrong than if they claim that 1+1=3.  I can vomit on them, though!

I know I'm right, but there isn't any way I can prove it.  And this is
just one of the many fustrating facts one has to learn to deal with.

> What it all boils down to is that unless some way is found to define
> objective proper musical criteria, we are forced to accept the
> position that cardboard is, in fact, just as good as broccoli, and,
> moreover, just as good as Hunan Crispy Whole Fish [or substitute your
> favourite food here].

No we don't!  We can assert as an axiom that Swa La Chow Chow is better
than cardboard, and blow away anyone that refuses to accept our axiom!
We've already done that for 1+1=2.

			"I hold a cup of wisdom
			 but there is nothing within"

			 Doug Alan
			  mit-eddie!nessus
			  Nessus@MIT-MC.ARPA