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Re: (TV) Matter of Taste / Wrong / Can't Dance / Non-Musician-Angle
At 3:23 PM -0400 5/12/04, Casey, Leo J wrote:
I never realized how many of you are Eno fans.
Count me among them, as well, peak achievements being _Another Green
World_ and _Discreet Music_, as well as the work with Bowie.
do their best work when playing on Bowie's records. By the way, Eno's
playing on "Low", "Heroes" and "The Lodger" is fantastic, so how can he
have it both ways and call himself a "non-musician"?
I think it has to do more with not seeing technical facility as a
necessary part of what he does. If there's a fast or difficult part
to play, he'll probably do it as overdubs rather than live, and he's
not interested in what most people call "music theory." (He's said
something like "I know many theories about music, but I'm not
interested in that one.")
But the primary reason for being under-whelmed by the Roxy-Eno is that
I do not belong to the School of Thought that believes that if someone
can't play their instrument then that excuses them, or even more stupidly,
their very amateurism is a badge of honor that makes them purer, superior,
cool, etc. [cf. early-R.Hell fans].
I don't necessarily see it as a badge of honor, but rather as
something that opens possibilities. Does music "progress" only when
people play an increased number of notes per unit of time? Of course
not. What I appreciate are the *right* notes. If there are only a
few of them per unit time, then someone with a particular artistic
"vision" or sensibility could possibly play those notes at the right
time without much technique. Technique and mastery are certainly
important for doing some things--doing more difficult things, doing
things more reliably, doing them with authority--but I'll take vision
over mastery, if I had to choose one. (And happily for us all, there
are examples of people with both.)
Do people on this List honestly buy or listen to cds on which non-musicians
'perform'?
Well, sure. http://tisue.net/jandek/
Sometimes there's an element of drama that comes out of hearing
people struggle to realize their sensibilities, and when they hit it,
the hard-won-ness of it all can be quite thrilling.
--
Maurice Rickard
http://mauricerickard.com/ | http://onezeromusic.com/
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