Exceptions to exceptionalism
May. 26th, 2010 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotJust posted this response to Tom's tumblr post about weak and strong exceptionalism*:
And there's always the classic, "I don't know much about [genre], but I know what I like."
"I don't listen to much [genre] but I really like [artist]" can sometimes be a simple statement of ignorance, not of exceptionalism; e.g., "I don't know much about [artist] in [artist]'s musical neighborhood, but I like [artist] for how [artist] plays in my neighborhood (though if I knew more about [artist]'s neighborhood that could broaden my understanding)." Not knowing much about a genre doesn't necessarily mean taking exception to it.
What if you do know a lot about [good artist]'s genre, even if you don't generally like that genre (admittedly, it's rare to really know a genre one dislikes), but you don't want to make your piece strong exceptionalism, or don't think that [good artist] particularly transcends or exposes the weakness of the genre? "While most indie bands try to turn weaknesses into strengths but fail, [particular good indie band] is one of the few that succeeds." I suppose this maybe exposes the weakness of the indie genre, if it's the case that unlike some other genres, indie doesn't help its second-level and third-level bands sound good; except one could also read this as saying that indie, while mostly producing artistic failures, also creates the conditions for the occasional extraordinary achievement - bands that successfully turn weaknesses into strengths often being genuine originals who sometimes change music through their accomplishments. So this reveals the strength of a genre that mostly produces bad music, the badness walking arm-in-arm with the strength.
*What I wrote in this old LVW column seems relevant ("When the wrong song loves you right"):
But "doing it wrong" is a strategy I'm long familiar with, used by many, including me. When Leslie (my ex-wife) and I were playing music together in '86, she was becoming restless, felt it wasn't working, that she sounded restrained, dead. Her solution was to have us move our guitar strings out of tune. And we immediately got way better. The bad tuning broke our old patterns, so we had to scramble to come up with "wrong" sounds that were right together; but more important was the simple fact that doing it wrong made us feel free to be creative, and Leslie was able to let loose. But it also helped that we did have skills, even if they weren't always the standard ones.
But also:
The White Stripes may be the last band to "do it wrong" creatively — hard to say, with 15 new CDs being released every hour, but the long post-punk indie trudge from about 1980 to the present seems to produce a lot of bands who mistake mediocrity for integrity and who fetishize a kind of shuffling semicompetence, a win-by-losing strategy that often ends up just losing. But the reasons for such a strategy don't go away; so when the wrong becomes right it eventually becomes the wrong right, and you need a new wrong.
And there's always the classic, "I don't know much about [genre], but I know what I like."
"I don't listen to much [genre] but I really like [artist]" can sometimes be a simple statement of ignorance, not of exceptionalism; e.g., "I don't know much about [artist] in [artist]'s musical neighborhood, but I like [artist] for how [artist] plays in my neighborhood (though if I knew more about [artist]'s neighborhood that could broaden my understanding)." Not knowing much about a genre doesn't necessarily mean taking exception to it.
What if you do know a lot about [good artist]'s genre, even if you don't generally like that genre (admittedly, it's rare to really know a genre one dislikes), but you don't want to make your piece strong exceptionalism, or don't think that [good artist] particularly transcends or exposes the weakness of the genre? "While most indie bands try to turn weaknesses into strengths but fail, [particular good indie band] is one of the few that succeeds." I suppose this maybe exposes the weakness of the indie genre, if it's the case that unlike some other genres, indie doesn't help its second-level and third-level bands sound good; except one could also read this as saying that indie, while mostly producing artistic failures, also creates the conditions for the occasional extraordinary achievement - bands that successfully turn weaknesses into strengths often being genuine originals who sometimes change music through their accomplishments. So this reveals the strength of a genre that mostly produces bad music, the badness walking arm-in-arm with the strength.
*What I wrote in this old LVW column seems relevant ("When the wrong song loves you right"):
But "doing it wrong" is a strategy I'm long familiar with, used by many, including me. When Leslie (my ex-wife) and I were playing music together in '86, she was becoming restless, felt it wasn't working, that she sounded restrained, dead. Her solution was to have us move our guitar strings out of tune. And we immediately got way better. The bad tuning broke our old patterns, so we had to scramble to come up with "wrong" sounds that were right together; but more important was the simple fact that doing it wrong made us feel free to be creative, and Leslie was able to let loose. But it also helped that we did have skills, even if they weren't always the standard ones.
But also:
The White Stripes may be the last band to "do it wrong" creatively — hard to say, with 15 new CDs being released every hour, but the long post-punk indie trudge from about 1980 to the present seems to produce a lot of bands who mistake mediocrity for integrity and who fetishize a kind of shuffling semicompetence, a win-by-losing strategy that often ends up just losing. But the reasons for such a strategy don't go away; so when the wrong becomes right it eventually becomes the wrong right, and you need a new wrong.
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Date: 2010-06-09 07:00 pm (UTC)Also, I wanted to say that I like the countdown that appears on the pop-up ads when the reader is proceeding to an entry..."Your content will start in 20 seconds"...
Of course, my discontent is ongoing...