Going it alone

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
padraig (u.s.) said:
see, this is exactly what I can't countenance in re Bowie's actual music

when someone says he has really good hooks or melodies or whatever, I don't agree, but that's just down to taste so it's whatever

but this - he was the opposite of an innovator. his entire career was finding innovative things and making them palatable for a broad pop audience.

not that there's anything wrong with being a popularizer. just with getting undeserved credit for innovation.

what's the famous Jagger line? "Make sure you don't wear a new pair of shoes around David" (or he'll steal them) or whatever
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This is true - maybe you could argue that recontextualising stuff for a pop audience is an innovation of some kind. Though not sure I would.
I think I've said before that my taste is towards the bit where the slightly more out there meets pop which might explain why Bowie resonates.
 
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Leo

Leo

Well-known member
padraig (u.s.) said:
see, this is exactly what I can't countenance in re Bowie's actual music

when someone says he has really good hooks or melodies or whatever, I don't agree, but that's just down to taste so it's whatever

but this - he was the opposite of an innovator. his entire career was finding innovative things and making them palatable for a broad pop audience.

not that there's anything wrong with being a popularizer. just with getting undeserved credit for innovation.

what's the famous Jagger line? "Make sure you don't wear a new pair of shoes around David" (or he'll steal them) or whatever
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I think we all agree with that, I guess the thing is that the average bowie fan probably isn't a music obsessive like us and largely oblivious to the actual innovators who bowie popularized.

and I posted that jagger quote a few pages back, a good one for sure.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
and again, this is the weird modernist/avant inclination, where the only worthwhile step is inventing something new, and talent-scouting/integration/deployment of innovations can only be interpreted as "appropriation" or "theft"

this is a strange way of thinking, seeing as almost all enduring "Great" works are syntheses of existing innovations and styles, be it Shakespeare or the Parthenon or Michael Jordan's playstyle or Beatles' Revolver. the "mere" innovations, meanwhile, tend to fade from memory because "doing work" in a sheer, human-friendly way—i.e., putting innovation to use—is just as important a step as the technical or formal innovation itself.

It's strange—what use is innovations if no one uses them? Why is the use of innovations "theft" instead of "tribute"? Isn't the entire point of innovations to expand the toolkit?
 
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sus

sus

Moderator
I don't see any problem in batting for the Innovators team; lord knows there are obscure names who deserve the recognition, and it gets you cratedigger cred to boot. but it shouldn't be some "gotcha" or zinger to point out that respected greats picked up licks from those who came before them
blissblogger said:
Bowie actually was very good at picking people to create an ersatz band energy / sound-identity, he had a run of successful quasi-groups (the best being the one with Carlos Alomar in)
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We can tie this in with blissblogger's points: this forum fancies itself sophisticated for eschewing the genius cult in favor of "scenius" formulations, but lets not forget that part of Eno's formulation is that there are singular figures who figure out who to combine and channel the different strands of a cultural moment into some synthetic work—and that these are the figures who typically are remembered and celebrated as "geniuses"

regarding the points about the Parthenon's "integrative" qualities, from the post above:
The curvature can be already observed at the Temple of Apollon in Corinth from 540 BCE, the floor plan has obvious similarities to that of Parthenon II, and the combination of Doric and Ionic decorative elements was, as previously noted, already realized in the Old Temple. It is in the combination of all these features within one single monument together with the level of perfection and sophistication that the architect(s) reached that make the Parthenon such a stupendous example of Greek architecture.
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luka

luka

Well-known member
suspendedreason said:
and again, this is the weird modernist/avant inclination, where the only worthwhile step is inventing something new, and talent-scouting/integration/deployment of innovations can only be interpreted as "appropriation" or "theft"

this is a strange way of thinking, seeing as almost all enduring "Great" works are syntheses of existing innovations and styles, be it Shakespeare or the Parthenon or Michael Jordan's playstyle or Beatles' Revolver. the "mere" innovations, meanwhile, tend to fade from memory because "doing work" in a sheer, human-friendly way—i.e., putting innovation to use—is just as important a step as the innovation itself.

It's strange—what use is innovations if no one uses them? Why is the use of innovations "theft" instead of "tribute"? Isn't the entire point of innovations to expand the toolkit?
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i actujally agree with this. i feel this deserves a formal announcement cos usually Suspendedreason is notable for saying all sorts of things i definitely dont agree with.
 
Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
luka said:
this is the defnition of english music to me. totally inadequate and offensive.

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it is hateful yes - but it does transport me back to a time in my childhood. tape recording the entire bandaid (i did this - it's true) NOW cassettes. TOTP. lots of snogging. lots of looking wistfully in the mirror. all that jazz.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
luka said:
i actujally agree with this. i feel this deserves a formal announcement cos usually Suspendedreason is notable for saying all sorts of things i definitely dont agree with.
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And people say "progress" is a myth
 
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Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Dunno where I read this but I read quite recently about Bowie making Iggy Pop's album in Berlin and being unable to eat anything cos he was so strung out. And I believe it climaxed with Bowie dribbling an egg into his mouth from a spoon and passing out on the floor.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
There are two commonplace ‘pictures’ of what art is that we use to justify the pursuit of art. One pictures says that great art describes the human condition, or expresses our innermosts experiences, or connects us to our unattended thoughts and feelings, or allows us to reflect on our life and memories and circumstances, or to empathize with others or to commune with the cosmos or to understand material conditions of life or whatever. Apart from being kind of old and uncool, this picture’s inconsistent with how crucial ‘gaming’ the cultural moment is for making good art… the second picture says that there’s a thing called ‘culture,’ which is a sort of social structure that’s formed out of the interaction of everyone’s world-views and desires and beliefs and in turn structures the evolution of everyone’s world-views and desires and beliefs, and making art is a way of intervening in that structure. So on this picture art is a form of politics, in the sense that making art is making a historical intervention in a collective structure.
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sus

sus

Moderator
Corpsey said:
Dunno where I read this but I read quite recently about Bowie making Iggy Pop's album in Berlin and being unable to eat anything cos he was so strung out. And I believe it climaxed with Bowie dribbling an egg into his mouth from a spoon and passing out on the floor.
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this dopaminergic anthem suddenly makes sense

(dopamine is the chemical that gives you that "I did it"/clicking into place feeling upon task completion; serotonin modulates social belonging, status, and the feeling of infinite possibility. speed boosts the former dramatically I believe)
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
"Eno also offered an insight on Bowie's habits. “He gets into a very peculiar state when he's working. He doesn't eat... he'd break a raw egg into his mouth and that was his food for the day, virtually.”
 
sus

sus

Moderator
It's an interesting irony: The entire purpose of the avant-garde is bound up in influence, and yet the avant-garde and its followers have nothing but contempt for those they do, in fact, influence.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
having said that you reach a point where you need a sugar injection or your concentration levels start to suffer.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
On the video for Dancing in the Street there was a catering van that was constantly supplying Bowie with sausage rolls and Twix bars.
 
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