Video Friday - Always those Star Wars...don't let em in!

It's so wonderful that this exists.

Roxanne Shante is so Smart

She gave a big corporation a taste of their own bad medicine, only she made it good medicine because she's not evil for doing it, but rather she's a frakkin' genius. Thanks to Kelly for letting me know about this, and the Star Wars one as well. She in turn found the Roxanne Shante one here.

People are People

I support National Coming Out Day, and i believe strongly in Human Rights for all. So let this blog entry be my coming out as someone who supports the rights of people to love whomever they wish. And i hope that sooner than later all Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Transexual persons are given the same rights under the law as non-LGBTs.

My 100 Favorite Albums

Listed in alphabetical order by the groups'/artists' names, i only allowed myself to pick one album per artist, except where a particular artist collaborated with someone else, as in my inclusion of an Eno album as well as an Eno/David Byrne album. I left off the artists' names because i thought it might be an interesting game for someone to try and guess them. Some are pretty easy, and i've already given you two hints.

Rocks
Ambrosia
Big Science
The Madcap Laughs
“The White Album”
3rd (Sister Lovers)
Downtime
Low
Pod
Hounds of Love
The Catherine Wheel
Paris, 1919
Mirror Man
The Cars
Ultra-Prophets of Thee Psychick Revolution
Combat Rock
Stealing Fire
Heaven or Las Vegas
Jehovahkill
Armed Forces
Dregs of the Earth
See Ruby Falls
Before and After Science
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Even From Here You Look Big
Live Love Larf & Loaf
Exposure
Gravity
peter gabriel I
What’s Going On?
Selling England by the Pound
The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles, and Fripp
Powaquattsi
Visions of Excess
Kew Rhone
Please Don’t Touch
When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease
Unrest
Globe of Frogs
The Steve Howe Album
Mettle
Zoolook
A Passion Play
Honky Chateau
Discipline
Cowboys and Aliens
Autobahn
Double Fantasy
Big Plans for Everyone
Smell of a Friend
Catch a Fire
You Can Be Low
Like Hollywood
Meat Puppets II
Court and Spark
Moondance
Son of Schmilsson
The Lion and the Cobra
Take Away/The Lure of Salvage
Animals
Junior Citizen
Two Wheels Good
Learning to Crawl
A Secret Wish
Berlin
Fables of the Reconstruction
Country Life
Stronger Than Pride
Black Ship
Caravanserai
The Walking
Tinderbox
Desperate Straights
Underwater Moonlight
The Royal Scam
Mars Audiac Quintet
We Get There When We Do
Crisis? What Crisis?
Burning World
Hm
Remain in Light
The Colour of Spring
Wilder
Songs from the Big Chair
Marquee Moon
The Wishing Chair
Easter Everywhere
Shoot Out the Lights
House Tornado
Against All Flags
Albedo 0.39
Velvet Underground and Nico
Flashlight
The Blind Leading the Naked
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Funky Little Demons
Rock Bottom
English Settlement
Close to the Edge
The Grand Wazoo

The New Model of Music Business

Discipline Global Mobile, or DGM, is the home of King Crimson and assorted KC alumni. It's a label that was formed to support the artistic endeavors of Robert Fripp (and friends) and thereby sidestep the usual Music Industry model of greed and artistic indifference. Fripp was financially jerked around by his former management/label EG Records and was robbed of a lot of money through the years by bad (non-existent) accounting.

DGM was formed, and is informed, by a philosophical analysis of what it is that musicians do, and expect, and how that relates to their audience. It is a forward way of thinking and doing business. It seeks to give credit where credit is due, and to fairly compensate everyone involved in the process of making music. And it is more sensitive to the needs of its audience.

Cutting Out the Man

The greedheads have declared War and the battles have begun. I plan on boycotting all major label releases, and if there are bands that i like who are on those labels, i will try to contact the bands to tell them why i am boycotting them. I will buy used CDs as much as possible, but at all costs will try to avoid giving my money to the greedy exploitative corporations who own the music industry.

All artists who create music need to wake up and realize that the fat cats are just using them to line their (overseas) bank accounts, and that not only do they not care about music, they see musicians as merely naive, easy exploits. Artists need to stay in control of what they create. The Future of Music Coalition is one way that the music community is fighting the Industry, or more acurately trying to change the Industry for the better. Certain Artists are trying other ways.

The internet can make labels obsolete. Any band that wants to make a living playing music can find ways to market themselves to a huge potential audience online. When you sign to a label, you become financially endebted to them. Why not just try for a small business loan and do it yourself. It's long past time for another DIY revolution in music.

Kristen Hersh - Forward Thinker

Coalition of Artists & Stake Holders, or the "CASH Music Project"

Check out what the Throwing Muses/50 Ft. Wave member and solo artist is planning next. Kristen Hersh has long been thinking ahead to what is to come for music in the the future. She knows that labels are fast becoming obsolete. With the internet there's no need for the "middle man". In fact there's no need for the Man at all. Has there ever been? Music now has the potential to go from artists directly to fans, or perhaps they should be called patrons. Bye-bye Major Labels, you better find a new medium to exploit!

People are Weird

Why did they name this kids playground structure Tot-tanic, after a ship that sank leaving around 1,500 people dead? And besides, this looks more like a pirate ship than an ocean liner. I especially like the nice Christian Cross where the kids can practice crucifying each other. A tool that will no doubt come in handy in High School. What? Oh that's a mast, huh? Aye Aye Cap'n!

Family Bonds

My niece Micaela lives in Northern Arizona. Isn't she adorable? She's smart as a whip too. She just turned 12, and she plays the flute, and is a voracious reader. My brother Chris and his wife Becky like being near Becky's mother and other family so that Micaela grows up with cousins and grandparents in her life. I hope that our family can visit them next year. Thea is always saying how much she misses them. She's never actually met them, but in her almost 4 year old mind the love is just as strong as if she had.

Are Musical Opinions Objective? - part 2

The following are selections from my side of an email discussion with an online acquaintance, which were subsequently edited:

I absolutely think that anyone who claims that "greatness" is inherent in certain music and that "crapola" is inherent in other music is wrong. This is not to say that I think these judgments don't exist, because I make them all the time. But I don't think the judgments have objective reality.

The Barney Theme Song and serious music
I think the guy (sic) that wrote the Barney theme didn't intend it to be in any way "serious music", however it may appeal to someone who doesn't even think Classical music is worth a listen. And sure I'd think they were a bit weird, but can I say they are objectively wrong to like it? Compare instead Strauss' “Also Sprach Zarathustra” and Beethoven's Ninth. Strauss was considered a second rate composer, even by his own admission. But that has to do mostly with analyzing musical content held to defined academic standards, and not to do much with what listeners get out of the pieces. The strictly mathematical musical content has objective reality (the use of well defined musical structure etc). But can we really say Zarathustra is objectively better/worse than Beethoven's Ninth. I don't see that as being an objective issue. Who is to decide? Do a bunch of music critics know better than I do which music is good? Do they know better than anyone else? Do they even agree? Is there anyone who could be held up as having the final word on what music is great and what is worthless? I say no. If the evaluation of music was objective, then everyone would just know which was better in the same way that I know that there's a desk under my hands, or I am drinking water out of a blue cup.

Basically, I think there are objective aspects of music (written notes, sound waves, instruments, and recordings...i.e. the things of music). But the experience of music that we have, the range of emotions it can produce (in us), can't be objectified. It's potentially different for anyone who listens to it. And so, judgments based on those experiences are subjective. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

(In response to an email regarding semantics) I think your argument necessarily has to be partly about semantics. By saying that quality judgments are objective, one is redefining the term objective, because there is no physical reality to a quality judgment. There are objects, and there are quality judgments in relation to the objects, which necessarily must be subjective since they have no material existence. If the judgments were material, they could not relate in the same way to the object in question.

To touch on one of your (earlier) points, I agree with you that not everyone is equally qualified to perceive beauty. It goes without saying, as judgments regarding beauty must sometimes include sight and smell and hearing, and those things are denied to some people. But that still doesn't speak to the objectivity issue. My whole point is that subjective and objective realities both exist, but that things are either one or the other (as long as one agrees with the distinction). There are objects that are beautiful, but positing an objects’ physical existence is an objective issue, and positing its beauty is a subjective issue.

So applied to music, the written notes, and the sounds coming to our ears, and the vibration of strings, et al, all exist objectively, in as much as one agrees that these physical properties have a reality apart from our judgment (i.e. a tree in the forest would still make a sound if no one was there etc, you know, materialist dogma!) But if we are to have a distinction from that of a subjective reality full of beauty, poetic notions, opinions regarding a variety of issues, including the most subjective issue of all, the idea of a Creator Being, then we have to (should) use the distinction.

I'm not saying that the line is black and white, and obviously there are times when one has to think it through to figure out what counts as objective and subjective. But I think opinions about the greatness or non-greatness of music (belonging as those opinions do to the wider issue of beauty) are a fairly easy subjective case. I'd like to say more about your point regarding originality, among those other characteristics, being objectively valid measures, but I'll have to attack that one later.