The Visceral Extends Its Domain: The Rules Of The Game Continues

[koganbot]

Here's the first ever Rules Of The Game Followup Column. Contains metal and morality, romance and longing. Quotes Martin. You're encouraged to comment here, there, everywhere.

EDIT, JUNE 8: Strangely, the link I'd posted in the previous paragraph didn't work after a few days, so I had to track down where the piece was and fix the link.

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

I really am sure I have some interesting thoughts to say on this one but I'm not sure how to articulate them. Am I weird for never seeing class as a factor? TBH, I don't really pay that much attention to what other people are listening to a lot of the time, and my appreciation of, and search for, the music I like, is almost completely a solitary thing other than my writing about it.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

that would make you an outlier or limit-case in my "private community/public community" dance (which frank did not respond to probably bcz it no way makes any effort to address the actual question he was asking) (yay me er er)

(i guess my suggestion was that even solitary appreciation of music operates within some form of imagined or dreamed-of community....)

[koganbot]

May not have even seen your comment until I submitted my copy, but would have held off replying anyway, since I had scads and scads of input - hurray! - which I'll surely be mining over the next weeks and months.

[koganbot]

My friend James R. Paul, who likes classical but doesn't fit into the stereotype of "classical music listener" (unless there's a stereotype for hockey fans who listen to classical music), says "Most of my friends have always had very different musical tastes from mine. And most of those who like some classical music can stand about five minutes of me talking about it before their eyes start to glaze over. What little interaction I have with other classical music fans is mostly over the internet." Of course, THEN he goes on to detail the classes that these people break into: "Serious classical music lovers represent probably less that 3% of the population and they come in all types. Sticking to fairly broad categories, there are: orchestra fanatics, piano nuts, violin fanciers, early music specialists, opera buffs, chamber music fans, lieder aficionados (the most sophisticated of all), organ freaks (god help us), lovers of renaissance polyphony, classicists, romanticists, atonalists, etc. etc. etc. And each of these gets broken down into smaller and smaller subcategories. Some piano nuts think the sun shone out of Glenn Gould's behind. Some that he belonged in a nuthouse. (It's possible both groups are right.) Some love Alfred Brendel and some think he's just a nice man who can't play the piano. (If you think I exaggerrate, you should visit some classical music forums some time. You'd see that I'm putting it very mildly.) Opera lovers are the worst. If you want to start a bloodbath in a room full of opera lovers just say, 'Callas was FAR greater than Tebaldi!' or vice versa. Of course, some of them will abstain from the fray. Those will be mainly the tenor freaks who are sick to death of pointless arguments about sopranos, and the hardcore Wagnerians who think Italian opera is fit only for organ grinders. Oh, and the Mozarteans. And the baroque opera fans (broadly divided into the Monteverdians, the Handelians and the French baroque lovers). And..."

My eyes do something like the opposite of glazing over when Jim talks about classical music, and I wish he'd publish on the subject, though he describes himself as ambitionless.

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

the guy the next dorm room over when i was a freshman was a classical music aficionado and hockey fan. i believe he was from michigan, if that matters. (he became a chemistry professor, i believe.) (no wait, i just looked him up, he is becoming a rhetorician instead!)

i was at a (philosophy) talk recently where the speaker made an offhand remark about some historical figure's apparently silly taste in opera. a number of the audience members CHORTLED at the folly of thinking whoever it was was better than some other composer. CHORTLED.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

As a member of a classical board I'd say its also encouraged by the way its organized - I'd rather everything ws on one page, like on ILX where you can read about Dancehall, R&B, classical, jazz, artist X, etc. In a way that is ILX's strength over most music boards, although it doesn't looks very friendly.

[koganbot]

Well, you don't have to think about what other people listen to for what you hear to nonetheless cluster (somewhat) with what other people listen to. But also, for instance, listening to what's on the Czech top ten in a given week, which is the sort of thing you do, is taking account of what other people listen to. (Compare to selecting ten songs at entirely at random.)

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

I haven't listened to the Czech top 10 in ages. Funny, though, I was going to start blogging about music I hear in my actual life, "in the wild", appreciated by other people, if you get my drift; i.e. write about the world I'm in, rather than the one I merely imagine (to steal dubdobdee's excellent idea from the above post and probably mangle it a bit).

That said, the listening to the Czech top 10 was more curiosity and.. well, thoroughness in the execution of a concept more than what I want to be doing.

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

oh bums, I can NEVER remember how to use LJ tags.

[koganbot]

No hyphen in "lj user."