Entertainment For Lively Minds
Avant Garde or Avant Garde A Clue ?
Call me boring but I don't think you can beat a great pop tune, you know something you hear on the radio that lifts your mood, makes you feel happy or demands you attention.
I have tried with experimental music I really have, I never got past Trout Mask Replicas growl, Ambient music ? it sends me to sleep, is that the intention ? just reading about it,sound is more important than notes apparently,that figures.
My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts now that doesn't sound too bad to these ears but is it as good as Stop Making Sense ? I don't think so.
I have tried with Zappa,but endless fretboard noodling and in jokes never was my thing,I prefer short, sharp and to the point if possible.
Can ? can't more like, as in can't listen to it. musique concrete,music as concrete funny,tape loops worked fine on Tomorrow Never Knows but it still had a tune of sorts and then there was Revolution 9 er right yes moving on.
So I am firmly in the Avant Garde a clue camp with George Harrison I think since he coined the phrase then again he did that Jam for the third side of All Things Must Pass so maybe not,I see experimental music as a mild diversion at best and as highly irritable at others given the amount of seriousness/reverence with which it seems to be treated.
So where do you stand on this vital issue ?
Of course it could be argued that the avant garde informs the mainstream and has led to many thrilling pop moments for example sampling, but personally I just prefer a good old fashioned tune.
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Flippin' heck, Fuzzy
I know Fraser hasn't yet completed his blogging stats for the year, but on behalf of Archie and the rest of us, fainites. We give in.
Honest Will You ?
Do you think Hepworth will give me a job if I carry on ? no but seriously,I have a lot to get off my chest I promise to try and take a back seat soon because I think it's better to often sit back and watch the fireworks,than light them, oh no here comes another blog idea,down boy.
"Do you think Hepworth will give me a job if I carry on?"
Honestly? Not in a million years. Sorry, but I think he's more likely to consider you if you stop altogether.
Thanks Caerys !
Not in a million years, I am actually immortal so that is not too long to wait in my book. I am seriously joking, I couldn't do it, I haven't got the ego or talent for a start,the best thing about this blog is it's anonymity.sorry If I have annoyed you, I often say things I don't necessarily mean just to get a reaction, just trying to make things more interesting.
No harm done
But - how shall I put this? - your quality/quantity ratio might benefit from a little attention. The other day two thirds of the front page of the blog was made up of posts by you, and two of those were devoted to Sufjan Stevens - a topic most of us would struggle even to spell, let alone blog twice in succession about.
I know it's called "My blog", Fuzzy, but it isn't really your blog in the same way that a Blogspot-hosted site would be. If instead you try to think of it as "My bit of everyone's blog" and proceed accordingly, I'm sure you'll get much more positive reactions.
Thanks Archie
The Sufjan Stevens two threads issue was just a coincidence in that Sufjan wrote a very appropriate song I thought was relevent to the credit crunch,you are of course right and I will hold myself back,one of the problems I am finding here is that many subjects get covered more than once and very interesting threads get swamped by other threads.I am finding just looking at the other threads fascinating,as there seem to be some very intelligent and interesting people here, maybe I should start my own blog elsewhere as well, I will look into it.
Happy Christmas when it comes
I agree to a point
but personally I think it's good to have a lot of stuff on the blog. I'd rather have too much than too little. Mr Face, due to your prolifigacy (sp?), I hereby proclaim you the Ryan Adams of the Word Magazine site!
Note, just for the record, I like Ryan Adams.
So do I
just not all of it. Apt.
Thanks For Ryan Adams Comparison
It could have been worse you could have put a B before the R of course and the fact that Ryan seems to have a quality control problems, but I would remind you he does have his moments of brilliance too.
Well
You are clearly a great lover of pop music to the exclusion of most other stuff (posts passim) which is fine as long as you're happy with that. Myself (posts passim) I don't like the trivial poptastic yeah yeah yeah nature of most pop music (though not all) and I have pretty wide tastes, which is the way I like it. Horses for courses.
At the risk of provoking a debate ...
I think you need to work up a definition of experimental or avant garde music.
George Harrison’s ‘Apple Jam’ - sides 5 & 6 of “All Things Must Pass” - is probably about as far away from ‘experimental music’ as you can get surely , consisting largely of the rock aristocracy of the day jamming in a country mansion.
I’m pretty sure George Harrison’s remark was nothing more than a well aimed jibe at McCartney’s own avant garde pretensions. After all it was George not Lennon that released the first LP on the Beatles experimental Zapple label, serving up two sides of “Electronic Sounds” – a title that brought no complaints from the trades’ descriptions people. I'll grant you that bits of this do turn up in the background on one track on ‘Apple Jam’ in a forlorn attempt to liven up proceedings.
'Electronic Sound'
There was of course some controversy over who actually played on this album.
Bernie Krause (then of Moog) claims that he went to demo a modular Moog to George and, without his knowledge, The Quiet One recorded the demo and released it as Electronic Sound.
Following a legal action, Krause's name was added to the front cover but was later removed at Krause's request - leaving a tell-tale silver stripe where it was obscured
And, trivia fans ...
There are only two tracks, one per side of the original LP. On the CD reissue the names (not the running order) of the tracks were reversed. Another of George's little jokes?
Therein Lies The Debate
Yes what is experimental music or indeed Avant Garde music ? of course George did the Electronic Sounds album.
Avant Garde music seems to cover a multitude of sins and probably includes rock jams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avante_garde#Music
ATMP jams
The All Things Must Pass jams are about as conventionally 'popular music' as you can get.
Avant Garde and/or Musique Concrete styles are really a development of the classical tradition and have little or no relevance to George and his chums banging out 12-bar jams.
The 'Electronic Sound' project - whether credited to George or Bernie Krause - is nearer the mark but is still, essentially, an unstructured noise.
Listenable/Unlistenable Music
A jam is not a song, neither is Avant Garde or Musique Concrete.
Agreed...
...but neither is Opera, Choral, Plainsong, Raga, Qawaali, Gamelan or 75% of other music, including almost all of the Western classical tradition.
What we usually discuss here - let's give it the portmanteau term 'pop' for the sake of a label - only represents a portion of the music out there; little of which can be classified as 'a song'. Doesn't mean it's all the same though.
Therein?
Surely you mean 'Theremin Lies The Debate' - sorry couldn't resist an avant garde joke there!
I'll retire now to my castle in the existential world - just off the M62 nr Elland!
Sorry but ...
although it is essentially a matter of personal taste, Delaney & Bonnie meets Derek & The Dominoes round at George's place circa 1970 does not an avant garde evening make. Unless maybe you're Jess Yates.
Maybe I Avant Garde A Clue
definitions it's all about defintions, I suppose and where rock jams fit, be it Avante Garde music or experimental music it is still to my ears unlistenable music and is best kept hidden away from the public in a locked draw.
Music can very rarely be the perfect mixture of both the experimental and commercial,for example, A Day In The Life which was I think the most perfect example where art and commerce met to devastating effect.
Zappa - short, sharp and to the point
Frankie Zee wasn't ALL about noodling, y'know, Fuzzy. Just off the top of my head, here's a short list of his shorter, snappier songs, and where to find them (though the first is an instrumental, but VERY tightly structured - not a noodle in sight!). Can't do anything about the in-jokes, though; I don't think FZ ever write a song without at least a trace of a sardonic smirk:
Peaches en Regalia (Hot Rats)
Who Needs The Peace Corps? (We're Only In It For The Money)
Camarillo Brillo (Overnite Sensation)
I'm The Slime (Overnite Sensation)
Village Of The Sun (Roxy & Elsewhere)
Cosmik Debris (Apostrophe)
Don't Eat The Yellow Snow (Apostrophe)
Sofa No. 1 (One Size Fits All)
Bobby Brown (Sheik Yerbouti)
Wild Love (Sheik Yerbouti)
Dancing Fool (Sheik Yerbouti)
The frustrating thing about FZ's albums used to be the way short comedy songs would nestle cheek by jowl with long noodling jams, bits of cut-up sound collage, sour tirades against the government, and so forth. Frustrating, but rather wonderful. And no longer frustrating in this era of single-track downloads.
Another good one...
is Ya Hozna, which has a really great riff, but is in fact backwards and has some truly bizarre lyrics. Some of which are in German.
Kinda like Dinah Moe Humm as well, even if it's lyrically a bit seedy.
ONe of the best gigs I ever went to was watch Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa play as Z in Newcastle in the mid 1990's. They played for over two and a half hours and didn't pall. The first twenty minutes was a medley of seventies songs.
A guitarist friend of mine was gutted because his then girlfriend dragged him to see Little Angels at City Hall the same night and he missed it all. Poor lad.
Thanks Paul
I know there are about four musical Zappas thanks for the recommendations
Many of those tracks are available...
...on the 1995 compilation 'Strictly Commercial', an easy introduction to the short, tight and catchy side of FZ.
Vanguard
It's the advance guard isn't it? Those who innovate. So pop-wise that's the likes of Bob Dylan, Beatles, Phil Spector, Donna Summer (I Feel Love), Grandmaster Flash etc. Doesn't have to be tuneless and unlistenable. Velvet Underground may have been avant garde in pop terms but then they got noise and repetition from La Monte Young, modern classical avant garde composer, so I suppose they weren't as avant garde as him but they had idea to mix the influences, which is often all it takes. But then I think if you push it as the be all and end all it's a dead end since you have to abandon all rules, question everything and end up with noise. Or in literature - late Samuel Beckett. I'll go on I can't go on.
But then sometimes what seems unlistenable reveals hidden structure, pattern and beauty, if you persevere. Try again try better. On and on. I will go on. Go on go on.
Good Point
I think some Avant Guarde is good, worthwhile and should be heard Life In The Bush OF Ghosts for example but many other examples should have never seen the light of day.
I could relate this to art I will relate this to art and beauty, compare Damien Hirst's fake Art to Vincent Van Goghs real Art real art requires craft and talent, none of which apply to Mr Hirst whose only ability is to shock and to get rich people to pay him millions, talk about the kings new clothes, Rolf Harris is a better artist than Damien Hirst.
Similarly in music there is so much unnecessary useless crap released, I could do with less of it cluttering up the cultural space.
Your opinion, of course...
Unnecessary
Useless
Crap
...all in your opinion. Others might find LaMonte Young and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen the pinnacle of Western musical achievement in the same way that many might find Van Gogh predictable and conventional when compared to Damien Hirst.
There's room for all opinions, preferences, musics and art in this world; don't wish it away just because you don't like it
I think Fuzzy
clearly is one of those people for whom beauty is a prerequisite for something to be called "Art". Nothing wrong with that, but it helps to recognise that "art=beauty" is an aesthetic, personal choice, and that Art in the wider sense encompasses much that is ugly, too, together with much that is neither beautiful NOR ugly, but interesting in a colder, more intellectual, detached way. Broad church, and all that.
Fuzzy doesn't know much about art...
...but he knows what he likes :-)
Ooops
Fuzzy taking more of a bashing than is usually meted out? Or am I getting soft in my dotage. As Jean Jacques Rousseau said, "Art for arts sake, money for Christs sake" and, whilst I agree that much art is ugly, discordant and messy, and, peversely, that is often the attraction to me, there is nonetheless a strange inverse relationship between the critical acclaim granted to such, inversely reflecting public appreciation thereof. But what did the public ever know about art, eh?
Avant Guarde is just a French term...
..for "progressive" innit?
..and surely some things that were considered thus are now bog standard. Non-linear films were considered the property of Godard etc until Tarantino and Iñárritu sold them to the masses.
We desperately need unconventional art, especially as it seeps into the mainstream.
According to John Lennon it is actually French for...
Bullshit.
Which I thought a bit rich coming from him
Well quite
Wasn't he loveable! Err, no, actually.
Fuzzy I just know I'm going to regret this but ...
casting an eye over your several recent threads (from Panto to Protest Songs) I see that one of your favourite bands is Pink Floyd.
Not known for their thrilling three minute pop songs are Pink Floyd.
'Echoes'? Bit avant garde. 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast'? A not hugely hilarious in-joke surely. 'Interstellar Overdrive'? Really sort of a rock jam at heart. 'On The Run'? Slightly (assumes French accent) concrete perhaps. 'Meddle'? 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond? 'Comfortably Numb'? Generally more fretwork than a GCSE woodwork class.
Correspondence ends.
Not forgetting
that sing-in-the-bathtub favourite, 'Atom Heart Mother'.
Fuzzy logic...
..at work perhaps?
Some Fair Points
But please convince me that a lot of Avante Garde is not crap,just as a lot of the mainstream is crap as for the Pink Floyd argument it doesn't hold water because the point I am trying to make is that yes when Avant Garde or experimental meets the mainstream it can be thrilling,but far too often it is not.because the Avant Garde itself is full of useless tedious crap that nobody is interested in.
You've already decided...
...it's "useless, tedious, crap" so there's no point in trying to convince you it's anything else.
There's nothing more dangerous than a closed mind.
I Have A Totally Open MInd
Not closed at all but with only so much time left in my life I don't want to waste a second of it on useless crap,where can I get to listen to Stockhausen ?
There's plenty of Stockhausen...
...on Amazon. Just dive in and enjoy
Or not
It's the "or not" that makes exploration fun, in music as in anything else. You don't know whether you'll end up clutching a diamond or a turd, but it's fun finding out.
Yeah it's great fun
finding out you're clutching a turd.
No it isn't...
...but the risk of turds makes the discovery of diamonds all the more wonderful!
'Diamonds and Turds'
I think that was the last Prince album I bought.
I'm a great fan of Bowie's
"Diamond Turds".
I think the first Yes album I boiught was...
...Time And A Turd
whisper it quiet...Jean Michel Jarre
Well, the oft derided Gallic keyboard banger did in fact start out composing musique concrète as a student of Pierre Schaeffer at the GRM in Paris in the late 1960's. In fact, some of his early work like La Cage and Erosmachine was very definitely musique concrète.
If you listen to a later Jarre album like Zoolook from 1984 (which I like a lot), you can see the lineage - using human voices to create most of the soundscape. One of the points of MC was to create music from everyday sound; in fact, the idea that it was possible to make music from anything. That's where lots of the impetus for modern sampling came from and also was an influence on some of the BBC radiophonic people like Delia Derbyshire.
To me, it is a little different from the work of those like Stockhausen, who were stretching conventional instruments further and playing with classical conventions. The progressive angle if you like. I'd think that both of them qualify as avant garde.
They do all have their heads wedged up their arses though :)
Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet.
The Wiki description reads 'formed on a loop of an unknown tramp singing a brief stanza'. True enough - but is 'it' actually listenable? - No, not in the slightest. JBNFMY is about as easy on the ear as sandpaper.
Radio 3 loves it, Brian Eno recorded it and Tom Waits has sung it. If grim, glum, crusty midnight mantras and lopsided lullabies are your listening of choice - you're in luck, three flavours are available - the 25 , 60 or 74 minute version.
Otherwise you'd do well to give it the widest of swerves..
Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Jesus' Blood
I haven't heard this in a while but have always found it beautiful, moving and eminently "listenable". I first heard it in LA when KCRW picked up on it in the early '90s - presumably via this Tom Waits version and I was immediately struck by its power and its Englishness. Aside from the vocals, the simple modal shifting of the music is not a world apart from something like Keith Jarrett's "Arbour Zena", which is one of the most atmospheric and beautiful pieces of music I know.
The only stuff I find hard to listen to - not necessarily unlistenable - is extreme metal.
Fuzzy crap
Sorry mate but I dont see the point of your blog. Judging by your earlier blog about Coldplay it seems you are uncomfortable with what you like and are trying to justify why you like it. Relax. It doesnt matter if I or anyone else on this site doesnt like Coldplay and you do - its your choice and its a free world. Avant Garde is such a catch all phrase that it is difficult to even know how to answer it. Not all artists involved in Avant Garde are into Avant Garde at all times. Take Calexico for example - perfectly capable of the perfect 3 minute pop song and equaly adept at 'experimental noodling' as witnessed by many of their website only releases. I well recall buying The Faust Tapes when it was released mainly because it was 49p. Much of it was a mess but equally there were some beautiful passages on there too. Miles Davis? To some it is Avant Garde meandering and meaningless crap - Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain as just 2 examples are some of the most breathtaking music ever made.Each to his own.
I am just posing a question
to lead to greater understanding ,it is called learning, by being honest about my lack of knowledge I am prompting an informed debate that is also what I am doing on the rest of the board.
If you think that just means I am talking crap that is your opinion but don't forget nobody has a monopoly on wisdom.
in just the same way
as it's YOUR opinion that most avant-garde music and modern art is crap.
No But I Do
believe in craft and skill more than improvisation, that is not saying that improvisation is totally without merit see The Films Of Mike Leigh.
Probably only me...
...judging by previous posts on the great chanteuse, but if Camille is avant-garde (and being French surely gets her half way to start with) then count me in. But you can also tell she knows the value of a short, sharp pop song.
"Playing Guitar Solos With This Band is Like Looking For
Watermelons In Easter Hay" is the full title of what I regard as Mr. Z's magnum opus. (It's the penultimate song on "Joe's Garage, Act 3.") Call it avant garde if you like, or avant a clue for that matter, I'd call it avant heard any better guitar piece in my life. Ever. Should be compulsory listening and played on public radio at least twice per day.