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From: gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: mainstream avant-garde?
Message-ID: <205@astroatc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Oct-85 15:14:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: astroatc.205
Posted: Fri Oct 18 15:14:59 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Oct-85 00:38:50 EDT
References: <850@decwrl.UUCP> <201@astroatc.UUCP> <116@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Reply-To: gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP (The Baron in the Trees)
Organization: Astronautics ATC, Madison, WI
Lines: 159

nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan) writes:

>You seem to be implying that the "avant-garde" discover all the
>interesting things and that Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush sit around
>waiting for these things to be revealed to them so that they can then go
>and put them into pop music.  I don't think it's like that at all.  I
>think they both do a lot of work at discovering interesting things on
>their own (as well as scouting out other's discoveries) and then put it
>into music that one might want to listen to repeatedly.

What I'm calling into question is your use of the term "avant-garde".
I mean in no way to imply that Pete and Kate sit about playing the
cultural imperialist (although that *is* a potentially defensible
point of view). Probably the best example of a permutator I can think
of might well be Brian Eno, as I might be able to make a point without
pulling your Bush lever using his work as well as anyone. (Besides that
I may well be a more rabid Eno admirer than you are, so there's a self
critical aspect to my pushing this....) In the context of his back-
ground, there's little in Eno's early work that was not in some way
derivative: He owes the notion of systems in music to his teachers
Schmit, Bryars, and the writings of Stafford Beer. He's upfront about
that as well. He ripped off Terry Riley's two-deck tape loop system,
captain Beefheart's lyrical techniques, and so forth. But he did good
work, right? I don't think you can really mount a good case for any
more than the fact that Eno took his sources and mediated them into
the marketplace (how long that took is an interesting point for 
discussion, but it did eventually happen). The "cutting edge" stuff
still goes to all those awful "avant-garde" types, though. If that
doesn't satifsy you, then you could speculate on what Eno's strictly
"formal" contributions might be (performer as engineer? virtual
acoustical space as a given? linear event organization in the "On 
Land" period stuff as structure? On second thought, perhaps his
major contribution to work as a performer and producer might be his
stubborn objection to the "Romantic" notion of "inspiration" and
"genius")
 
>They might not be like some of the "avant-garde" who seem to like to
>develop grandiose theories and then make music designed to show off
>their new theories.  And a lot of the "avant-garde" that isn't like that
>*sounds* like that.  

Whoops, sounds like the blinders are on there. You're making some
pretty heavy generalizations about a lot lof idiosyncratic behaviours
that might not amuse you at all if I'd lumped Our Kate in with those
other bimbos who make popular records and said something similar. Let's
try it this way: I'm not at all certain *what* the relationship 
between theorizing and production seems to be for the "avant-garde":
I could get a Ph.D. and lots of undergraduate girlfriends for writing
that up and getting instant tenure. Further, you've in effect decided 
that you can make some concrete determinations about that shadowy
relationship simply by "listening" (it *sounds* like that). That might
be done in only a *very* general way (we all do it to some extent), but
you've in effect mimicked your pals who run screaming from the room
when Kate shifts into falsetto at every hill. You've stopped early.

>Instead, KB and PG are very experimental, and just
>try lots and lots of different things (the vast majority of which
>disappear forever on the cutting room floor) listening for interesting
>things.  But the point of the music isn't to *show off* the interesting
>things, but to make interesting music.  

Ah, more baggage. The avant-garde is only concerned with a kind of
self-referential ego-tripping. I will be the first to loudly proclaim
that the avant-garde is badly in need of a little editing. Particularly
PostModernists. But there is the notion firmly fixed in the marketplace
that "failed tries" or "alternate takes" or whatever you wish to call
them are in effect the same thing, with the except that people will pay
money for another remix. I bet you even though of running out and 
buying the execrable "Against All Odds" soundtrack just because PG
has "walk through the fire" on it, right? I'd maintain that what appears
to you to be overly "experimental" quality of the AG is different from
the remix only in degree and market value rather than kind. In both cases
there's this interesting little substrata of the specialized market
(Bushmen ----or is that !Kate) (Morton Feldman) (whatever) that will
take interest in the "Experimental" stuff, and use it for its social
and semiotic ends. Adulation, Fandom, and the cult of the "Unknown
Artist" are a kind of social currency with rates of exchange set by
the holders. Money is power, as they say....

>The results of the "avant-garde"
>may be more interesting academically in some sense, for the purpose of
>studying theories on music, but may perhaps fail as successful art, in
>that it may have been forgotten in the theorizing that successful art
>should be emotionally resonant.  (Is this going to start a debate on
>what art is?) The music of Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel nevers fails to
>be that since that is their primary goal.

There's that old "academic" villain again, tying the heroine "emotionally
resonant" to the tracks. Just for fun, here's a little *NON-SERIOUS*
jibe at Kate in my best NME Marxspeak (tough stuff for a good Anglican
boy like myself, but hey.......). I'll run as roughshod over my 
judgements as I can and try to do it with a similar sort of over-general
izing. FIgure out why you don't like it, and you'll have a good
idea as to why I'm uncomfortable with your redifinition and subsequent
dismissal of the AG:

Kb is the absolutely most perfect product to sell 
to closet "art-rock" rejects from the late
seventies, who may fear that the emotional immediacy of 
punk and hardcore and its communal and visceral nature 
have excluded them from the exercise
of any of the "social tools" that they use to attain social respect
and status. Even the stupid, popular or good looking could, after
all, like X. Not only that...their relative isolation from a real
public (touring. It's even better if there's an emotional or physical
weakness tied to the lack of touring. Y'know, the Proustian recluse
refining their genius in isolation................................) 
and their chosen isolation from political reality
of class struggle mimics the desire of her malcontented fans to be
"special" and isolated from the real world, immersed in the "emotional
resonances" of her art.

Yowzah. What claptrap! But I hope I've sufficiently overexaggerated.

>In any case, the result is that I find the music of Peter Gabriel, Kate
>Bush, Joan Le Barbarbara, John Cage, and the Residents (are they
>"avant-garde" or really commedians?) all quite interesting, but I'd much
>rather listen to Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel repeatedly than either Joan
>LeBarbara, John Cage, or The Residents.
>
The sound of the nail struck solidly on the head. Long as you
maintain that that choice is one of idiosyncratic taste (which
X many other people share with you), I've got no problems. I
also think you needn't try to co-opt the AG to back up your
idiosyncratic tastes...your own jusgement is reason enough for
me.

>There's this guy named Fred Vermorel who wrote what I'm told is a very
>respected biography of the Sex Pistols.  He also wrote a couple of very
>questionable biographies on Kate Bush.  In one of these, he maintains
>that "pop" is the only form of art that really counts today.  Now, I
>certainly can't agree with that, but I do think that "avant-garde pop"
>(or whatever you want to call what KB and PG do when they are in their
>less commercial modes) is the most important area of art today, and that
>Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel are on that cutting edge.

Fred Vermorel ain't alone, and that's not even his Idea. Any good
Post-Structuralist critic would tell you the same thing. By the way,
the only real difference I can see in the SP and KB biogs might
involve the subject being studied rather than the "facts". Vermorel
is in both cases insterested in the way that both persons/aggregates
became "stars", and have manipulated their public personas/had
them manipulated. But the Post_structuralist view says that "pop" is
the only art form of the day because "art" is a function of the number
of people you can reach. They've effectively decided that the real "avant-garde" are the ones who successfully manipulate access and image as a
part of their art in the arena of information/public taste. By that
view, Madonna herself is right out there on the cutting edge, and Kate's
right behind her. I don't think you'd really care much for the whole
unpacked version of that view. I don't care much for Vermorel either.

>P.S. What is Laurie Anderson?

Laurie Anderson is the Kate Bush of the Performance Art World.

-- 
_____________________________________________________________________
die lange nachte ist viel zu heiB/ich traume nur noch in rot/die welt 
da-drausen is swartz-weiss/nur eine farbe tod/oh biko................
Gregory Taylor/ (wherever)!uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor /Madison, Wisconsin