Pretentious music??

Pretentious is usually reserved by critics to explain music they don't like.

Any sign of the musicians acting the least bit important while playing music the critics don't like it labeled as pretentious.

For most of Led Zeppelin's active career, they were panned by critics left and right as pretentious, to the point the band hired their own PR man just to deal with the negativity.
 
Pretentious is usually reserved by critics to explain music they don't like.

Any sign of the musicians acting the least bit important while playing music the critics don't like it labeled as pretentious.

For most of Led Zeppelin's active career, they were panned by critics left and right as pretentious, to the point the band hired their own PR man just to deal with the negativity.

Best definition yet, lol. And I suppose to their expert ears, British rock and roll is totally pretentious because it was heavily inspired from the blues, hmmm. Seems to me that most music evolves from another form, and yes, bands like LZ and the Stones heavily copied alot of blues isms, from vocal passages to guitar riffs. But is that pretentious and any different from Punk, Metal, Shred, Death Metal, and everything that came from rock? And how about modern Techno Pop and dance music that evolved from Disco which evolved from Funk which evolved from Jazz Funk, and originated with Jazz?
 
Best definition yet, lol. And I suppose to their expert ears, British rock and roll is totally pretentious because it was heavily inspired from the blues, hmmm. Seems to me that most music evolves from another form, and yes, bands like LZ and the Stones heavily copied alot of blues isms, from vocal passages to guitar riffs. But is that pretentious and any different from Punk, Metal, Shred, Death Metal, and everything that came from rock? And how about modern Techno Pop and dance music that evolved from Disco which evolved from Funk which evolved from Jazz Funk, and originated with Jazz?

Yes, it does all come from somewhere.

I really had no idea Zep was so hated until I read Danny Goldberg's book. He was hired by Zep to do their PR before he went off and became a record company mogul. By the time I became aware of Zep in school, they were already considered legends.
 
Best definition yet, lol. And I suppose to their expert ears, British rock and roll is totally pretentious because it was heavily inspired from the blues, hmmm. Seems to me that most music evolves from another form, and yes, bands like LZ and the Stones heavily copied alot of blues isms, from vocal passages to guitar riffs. But is that pretentious and any different from Punk, Metal, Shred, Death Metal, and everything that came from rock? And how about modern Techno Pop and dance music that evolved from Disco which evolved from Funk which evolved from Jazz Funk, and originated with Jazz?
You mean to say that American Jazz music is the father of all contemporary music? What a profound statement! I like profound. I couldn't agree more.
Didn't jazz spawn from the "Blues"?
So all contemporary music comes from Blues? Or did Blues and Jazz develop simultaneously?
 
When music is manage in a different and originally way, shape, it will be stigmatized and categorized as pretentious. Is it Rammstein, pretentious? for what they write, play and do.
 
You mean to say that American Jazz music is the father of all contemporary music? What a profound statement! I like profound. I couldn't agree more.
Didn't jazz spawn from the "Blues"?
So all contemporary music comes from Blues? Or did Blues and Jazz develop simultaneously?

And don't forget jazz came from ragtime and dixieland, and if you trace it all back far enough, it goes to a person banging on a hollow log with a stick.

The only question is what gave him(her) the inspiration to pick up the stick and hit log in the first place.
 
Blues came from the slaves who were kidnapped from Africa, and I would say that Blues and Jazz developed concurrently. The earliest known blues songs were in and around the turn of the century, and jazz, about the same time. Jazz was spauned in Nawlins, no? Blues first surfaced in the cotton fields of the Missippi Delta as field hollers, call and response type stuff.
 
Blues came from the slaves who were kidnapped from Africa, and I would say that Blues and Jazz developed concurrently. The earliest known blues songs were in and around the turn of the century, and jazz, about the same time. Jazz was spauned in Nawlins, no? Blues first surfaced in the cotton fields of the Missippi Delta as field hollers, call and response type stuff.
So music is an enigma, a paradox, a riddle?
No wonder why we argue about it so much!
It can't be fully understood of defined.
 
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?
 
So music is an enigma, a paradox, a riddle?
No wonder why we argue about it so much!
It can't be fully understood of defined.

Really, the journey of music has mirrored the journey of man, just by virtue of the sheer amount of music that has been part of the language
 
Blues came from the slaves who were kidnapped from Africa, and I would say that Blues and Jazz developed concurrently. The earliest known blues songs were in and around the turn of the century, and jazz, about the same time. Jazz was spauned in Nawlins, no? Blues first surfaced in the cotton fields of the Missippi Delta as field hollers, call and response type stuff.

Yes, jazz came from the Creole population in N'Awlins in a ward or burrough known as Storyville, in the late 1800s. Creoles were not the ex-slaves like the African Americans in Mississippi that started the Blues. Creoles were middle class citizens of New Orleans who arrived there via Haiti courtesy of the French, before Louisiana belonged to the United States and were never slaves at all. Many of the Creole musicians were trained in Paris with classical instruments, which is why jazz is so associated with wind instruments and the acoustic Bass (Cello). So some could argue I suppose that jazz is pretentious - a corrupted offshoot of classical music. I personally like it much better than classical, though.
 
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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!
 
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!

Thats a pretty good observation Polly, we're all being haters for no reason! I suppose i would'nt mind having some people like that in an audience who thought everything you played was great.......but i'd say as the years go by and I get better ( i hope) I would probably only want guys at a jazz gig who appreciated what was being played. But for some reason in any other kind of music i would'nt mind it really!
 
Thats a pretty good observation Polly, we're all being haters for no reason! I suppose i would'nt mind having some people like that in an audience who thought everything you played was great.......but i'd say as the years go by and I get better ( i hope) I would probably only want guys at a jazz gig who appreciated what was being played. But for some reason in any other kind of music i would'nt mind it really!

I wouldn't bet on them saying you sounded great. When a pretend-connoisseur isn't listening to the music he doesn't dare say the band is great, just in case they're not. Safer to say, "Oh, I suppose they're ok ... but nothing compared with [name artist who's better than almost everyone]".

Still, as I say, they're harmless, buy drinks and they make the room look more full :)

Hey - I just thought of a pretentious musician! There was this guy in my local area around 1980 who fancied himself as a kind of Svengali character and would gather all these amateur players with nothing better to do to play in his band. He thought he was the ant's pants, but he was such an atrocious guitarist that I actually saw guys in the audience laughing when he played a solo.

Everyone in the band was a far more accomplished than he was but he called the shots and ruled with an iron fist. There was a very solid bassist and a female singer who'd been getting lessons at the Con. Jones, the band leader, fancied himself as a ladies man and kept on trying to crack on to her. A guitarist I'd played with in a previous band had taken up percussion lessons and was playing in this guy's band to get some experience.

Finally my friend got sick of Jones's idiocy and poached the singer and bassist, and I left the band I was in to join them in starting up a new group. We even played a song that our singer wrote about him ... :"Jones walks the streets, with that look in his eye" (to a sinister melody). It was hilarious but sadly I never got a recording of it :(
 
Dragonforce?

I think they'd be pretty good if every song wasn't exactly the same with machine gun double kick and cheesy lyrics.

All subjective though.
 
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!


!

You picked out the most pretension parts of even the latter Crimson, :)
and yes coming to mind that Easy Money percussion interlude is fun. That band had something with Jamie Muir that they were unfortunately never able to fully realize. I think it came to pass in the 80s Crimson though that was more percussive and rhythmic.

Emerson's Tarkus was actually the subject of a concert in Japan where is was re-orchestrated for full orchestra.

The esteemed Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Keith Emerson's progressive rock composition "TARKUS" newly arranged to an orchestral piece by composer/arranger, Takashi Yoshimitsu.

Here is Keith's comment on this inaugural performance.

"This is a great honour for me to have my music played and presented with such esteemed players!!! Arranger Takashi Yoshimatsu and orchestra play my work in a land I have grown to love since I first visited Japan in 1972 with my band.

I wrote the ‘Tarkus Suite” 1971 in England. Artist WIliam Neal originally provided the imagery after I came up with a fictitious name for the music I was writing. It was a unique time frame of musical composition and experimentation for me as the changing times and the time changes for England became out of time. I left England as we all had to deal with political issues in subtle ways and it all played its part in the way of things until it grew to define a historic mark as to what is now known as progressive rock music that now falls into contemporary classical.” -- Keith Emerson

Emerson recognizes that what transpired in English popular music during the late 1960s and 70s was a little more influential than some critics would have thought. In the hands of a great arranger, some of that stuff could be quite good, and the height of pretension.

also interesting
Takashi Yoshimatsu was born in Tokyo in 1953, and studied at Keio University (Department of Technology). He taught himself composition, joining a jazz and rock group, although he has studied under Teizo Matsumura for a short while. He became disenchanted with atonal music, and began to compose in a free neo-romantic style with strong influences from jazz, rock and Japanese classical music, underscoring his reputation with his 1985 guitar concerto.He argues for a "new liricism" and objects to unmusical "modern music". Yoshimatsu's supporters enjoy his easy, tuneful style and sense of the capacities of different instruments, although critics complain that his work is simply a post-modern jumble with little coherent theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GueQJgYgcqk
 
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You picked out the most pretension parts of even the latter Crimson, :)

hehehe ... maybe I have a nose for it?


and yes coming to mind that Easy Money percussion interlude is fun. That band had something with Jamie Muir that they were unfortunately never able to fully realize. I think it came to pass in the 80s Crimson though that was more percussive and rhythmic.

True. Still, we have some great Jamie/Bill moments - Easy Money (the live version on USA didn't have the studio version's quirky charm), the start of Exiles, the middle section of LTIA Pt 1. As a naive young thing I was amazed at the range of strange sounds; it never occurred to me that they had a berserka improvising percussionist. It seemd like magic to me :)

I felt SABB was nowhere near as good. If not for Starless I'd say the same about Red, although it seems most critics and pundits think that was a highlight for them, I guess 'cos it was more RAWK N RAWWWWWL *sigh*

Emerson's Tarkus was actually the subject of a concert in Japan where is was re-orchestrated for full orchestra.

The esteemed Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Keith Emerson's progressive rock composition "TARKUS" newly arranged to an orchestral piece by composer/arranger, Takashi Yoshimitsu....

his easy, tuneful style and sense of the capacities of different instruments, although critics complain that his work is simply a post-modern jumble with little coherent theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GueQJgYgcqk

Interesting info re: Keith. A nicely pretentious commentary from him too :) I mean, wot da hell does he fink he is?? An artist or sumpin? Stuff that for a joke ... DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP! OI! OI! OI!

Post modern jumble? Idjuts. It was a flexible ooze of lovely timbres. Perfect chill music. What's the problem? ... the key phrase in your post is "critics complain". Yes, they do. They listen to so much music that they have chronic indigestion, so they find any musical morsel that's richer than a dry cracker "overblown".

Their attitudes remind me of Mr Creosote at 5 minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Bs1ZZ-7b8 ... BTW, love the Noel Coward takeoff at the start :)
 
Interesting how much King Crimson (and ELP) comes up in this discussion of pretence....

I thought KC really had something on ITCOTCK (21st century.... and Epitaph in particular) they recaptured that bit of magic in Lark's Tongues (agree about Jamie Muir) - Fripp seems to have this ability to create very colourful music.

Does anyone else lament that Mr Giles gave away drumming? I loved his intricate playing on ITCOTCK.....
 
Hercules yes, KC were (and are) the most self-consciously arty of prog bands. Bob Fripp's interviews are compulsory listening for fans of self-appointed visionaries :)

Mike Giles didn't quit drumming, he's just locked in a time warp and playing in the 21st Century Schizoid Band with his brother on bass. Check them out on YouTube. He plays the snare a lot and when the recording sound isn't good his playing clatters too much for my ear. When the sound is good, as per those studio albums ... brilliant.

Loved his playing on thos first two KC albums. His playing on Cat Food (a wonderfully pretentious track :) has some of my fave drumming sounds and dynamics ever.
 
We should start a Michael Giles fan club. From my understanding, he just does not like the road. That is why he quit Crimson and that is why we rarely see him perform live.

Cat Food was a good one. As silly as though songs were, there was some nice playing on many of those tracks. Who was the keyboardist on that one?

People say Fripp is quite a reclusive nut these days; but even those who are not a fan of avant-garde rock can find his extreme sense of detached obscurity quite refreshing in a world of overblown celebrity.

I think that the Brits had a greater sense of the dramatic role in popular music due to the long theatrical history and that Shakespeare dude. You didn't have that as much in the states except maybe for Morrison who had a BA in film through the theater department of UCLA.. Then you see it in the Alice and the LA scene of the late 1970s and 1980s. I don't know though. I don't really take the theatrics of Alice, Kiss or performance artists like Madonna that seriously. It's less pretense and more shock value.

It's also the case that in Britain the music itself was more dramatic and American rock really did not have anything in comparison to Webber, Townsend or Waters. We had Grease, and Hair. many people argue rock music destroyed American musical theater. I think a big part of that has to do with rocks demagoguery. The free-ness of a band like Henry Cow really worked against that authoritarianism stance, which of course has a gender if not also a racial undercurrent. it is no mystery that The Ramones reacted specifically against r and b of the mid 1970s, not against prog rock, and wanted to create white music, you know stuff with no rhythm, no blue notes and only three chords.
 
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