Good one. We tend to think of it in that way, don't we? There is a notion of sincerity tied into the question.
Polly, I bet you wouldn't be surprised to find that your question could be construed as gendered. Pretense-female, objectivity - male.
Sincerity is an ideal but not too many of us play entirely "unmasked". Drumming is ok at expressing base emotions like anger but not so good at expressing, say, tenderness. The best we can manage there would be to support a band's lead voice in expressing tenderness.
Interesting observation re: male/female. It could just as easily be said, Relationship focus = feminine, object focus = masculine. Many a marriage has crashed on the rocks of that schism
although it's a broad brush stroke.
Zappa actually belongs to the objectivist camp. It is an interesting question to ask; but he saw his avant-garde works as the real deal and songs even as great as Yellow Snow were just stuff he had to do. That may be an extreme but certainly Valley Girl would fall in that commercializing mold.
There was a point with prog where I came about the same realization, it is the pretension that makes it fun. It was the earlier silly Crimson that I always liked more than the later stuff with Wetton. When they start to take themselves too seriously it gets lost.(That was that generation though. They were a very serious bunch.)
Agree. There is a fairly straightforward hedonistic pleasure I get from a lot of prog - all those wonderful sounds, textures and forms. It's nearly always at an arm's length, of course. A lot of critics seem to be offended when a band doesn't try to "talk" to people. Dumb extroverts - they just don't understand
Re: KC ... to be fair, yep, LTIA --> Red didn't have the lush gorgeousness of, say, the buildups in Epitaph and ITCOTKC, there were some special moments like that wonderful spooky noodling with all the cool percussives in the middle of
Easy Money, the wonderful spikiness of
LTIA (esp Pt 1) and the grandiosity of
Starless. Even my mum liked the first section of
Starless ... or should I say "movement"? hehehe
Masses and masses of glorious pretension!
Pretense = pretending to be something that you're not (IMO). It can be applied across the board......
Pollyanna - the box set of Henry Cow? that's news - I have quite a few of their albums on vinyl.... was Desperate Straights (Slapp Happy and Henry Cow) included in the box set?
Hercules, I stuffed up with my order. I meant to buy the whole lot but the ReR site wasn't very clear and I ended up just getting the first of three boxes. The second volume - the one with live footage and the one I really wanted - is now on order.
I still haven't worked out what music is included in what volume. I read somewhere that the third box includes all the studio albums but I've looked at other lists and it doesn't mention them. Confused!
Yes, I actually did'nt say what I really meant, like always!
I meant jazz listeners who don't actually play it. I don't know why but if you play it, you seem to be humbled by it, but sitting around in jazz clubs sipping wine at 20years old or so....well a lot of those people sem like posers to me. Kind of like teenagers who try and act all chilled because hendrix did it, you know?..but then again, I'm just lumping people in with each other.
I know the ones ... they barely pay attention to the music and talk through the gigs, yet they aren't simply going through mating rituals or having a social dinner and treating the music as background. They are there to be seen and to pontificate.
On the plus side, they buy drinks (always helps the band's cause), they aren't violent and they don't scream PLAY SOME RAWK AND RAWWWWL!!! I reckon there are plenty of worse things a person can be than a wanker, and there are plenty worse things for a band than to have poseurs at their gigs - like having diddly squat people there!