response 75 of 194:

Jan 23 17:50 UTC 2001

(btw, John, I don't think the conversation re: your comment qualifies as a
tempest... it's really just been me and MD tweaking each other. I must laud
everyone else for merrily ignoring us. =} )

response 77 of 194:

Jan 23 21:40 UTC 2001

Hm. I think a more telling instantiation of #71 is Borders, which once WAS
an independent store with a knowledgable and helpful staff (not so long ago),
and which rapidly became a discount megastore.

Of course, that ignores the point that most classical music was originally
funded by patrons who were as indifferent to aesthetics as the modern Britney
Spears fan.

And "as long as it's selling" relies on a common (and faulty) assumption that
popular music, almost by definition, is aesthetically worthless and the sort
of music sold by "music lovers", almost by definition, has great aesthetic
worth. This assumes an objective aesthetic, of which the masses are woefully
ignorant...

... which brings us back to my original statement, which is that John's
statements were rooted in social elitism.

response 79 of 194:

Jan 24 00:02 UTC 2001

I would be fun to actually dig up some facts, market research
maybe, where the style of music (classical, jazz, disco, pop rock,
rap, etc.) is compared to the group most likely to purchase within
that genre.

I'd suspect classical would tend to be purchased by someone who has
completed more years of formal education than say rap.  I would expect to
find the classical audience is somewhat older and richer.  The jazz
audience would also be more educated than say the acid rock audience, and
likewise have higher incomes.   Fewer visible tattoos too.

Pop audiences would be younger and poorer and still bitching about
how sucky school is.  But they would tend to be able to stay up
all night long having sex until they run out of condoms.

So it all works out to be quite fair.  And everyone gets to 
feel they are better than everybody else.  Truth.

response 81 of 194:

Jan 24 03:23 UTC 2001

Well, it *is* rather appalling that Ann Arbor can't support a really good
independent record store any more. (While Schoolkids in Exile is still there,
it's not easy to walk into and you have to special order things quite a bit,
in my experience.)  I find the idea of not having the opportunity to actually
examine the things I am buying really annoying --- yes, I know you can listn
to a snippet from amazon.com....

response 83 of 194:

Jan 24 06:12 UTC 2001

I wonder if Ann Arbor's difficulties in sustaining a classical musical
CD store is not as much related to the high cost of retail space, and
inept marketing, as anything else.

response 85 of 194:

Jan 24 15:26 UTC 2001

I think that is the problem, Bruce. Well not a problem for you but a 
problem for folks who would rather have a different retail experience. I 
mean, the folks who like to shop at places like Borders and Walmart 
certainly are getting what they want. Unfortunately, it seems clear that 
the big chains *are* what most people want since they are the stores 
that are still in business and nice little retail outlets with the 
helpful and oddly dedicated staff are going out of business left and 
right. 

The fact is though that for some items, price is the number one concern 
to me. I dont care how charming a record store or book store is, if I 
can get the same book across the street at a big chain, I am going to 
the big chain. Since I work for Borders and get a rather nice discount, 
I havent bought a book or cd anyplace else since I started working here. 
I like charming little stores but I guess I dont value them enough to 
pay the extra money to shop there. 

response 87 of 194:

Jan 24 22:15 UTC 2001

McNally> I would dispute that the diversity of music is diminishing. If you
compared the diversity of music available today to that available 20, then
40, then 60, then 80, then 100 years ago, I doubt you could make that claim
easily. Music styles change. Sometimes we don't happen to like the changes.
That doesn't mean that it's less diverse, it means that the portion of it that
we happen to like is smaller.

As for the elitist thing, why is there anything WRONG about being elitist?
I just want John to admit as much. =} I'm an elitist about things other than
music, and actually, I'm something of a pop music elitist. 

DBratman> It's not splitting hairs to point out that "appalling" carries a
value judgment. It does. Refer to the last paragraph.

If the general claim is, classical music aside, it's sad that the will of the
masses overpowers that of the music lover, fine -- that's an elitist statement
that says that the masses wouldn't know good music if it bit them on the butt.
Given that Backstreet Boys, Dixie Chicks, and Britney Spears all went diamond
last year (and Kid Rock nearly did), it's true. It's still elitist. =}

(And I *like* Kid Rock.)

response 89 of 194:

Jan 25 04:23 UTC 2001

No, that's because everyone who used to listen to classical music in their
car fell asleep at the wheel. ;}

response 91 of 194:

Jan 25 06:05 UTC 2001

The Ann Arbor NPR station switched from classical music to talk a few years
ago.  Last I checked (which has admittedly been at least seven months), there
were still three classical stations that could be gotten in Ann Arbor:  WGTE
in Toledo, WKAR in East Lansing, and CBET in Windsor.  Detroit had only one:
CBET.

response 93 of 194:

Jan 25 16:40 UTC 2001

The elitist thing is a problem.  One side contends that pop music 
appeals to listeners with crappy taste.  People who wear expensive 
understated clothes and live in tastefully decorated houses will listen 
to the musical equivalent of a polyester leisure suit in a trailer 
park.  People who pride themselves on dining on gourmet food will do so 
while listening to the musical equivalent of a Big Mac.  If there's 
good and bad this, why not good and bad that?  As soon as you admit 
that one kind of *anything* is better than another, you've enabled me 
to say the classical music is better than pop music.  If you disagree, 
it's because you literally don't know any better.

The other side contends that it's all just a matter of taste, and that 
one kind of music can't possibly be intrinsically better than another.  
How can it?  It's all just notes on a page.  Are you seriously saying 
that the notes on a page of classical music are somehow more moral or 
more politically correct than the notes on a page of pop music?  That 
sitting through a Bach cantata makes me a better person that listening 
to a Beatles song?

The flaw in the first ("absolutist") position is that if you can say 
classical is better than pop, then I can say that pop is better than 
classical.  I assure you, my reasons for believing so are every bit as 
valid as yours.  Try me and see.  The flaw in the relativist position 
is that no one is really a relativist when it comes to their own likes 
and dislikes.  The same people who say that classical music is no 
better than pop music because no one kind of music can be intrinsically 
superior to another will also say, often in the next breath, that (for 
example) Britney Spears' music is inferior to Tori Amos' music.  
Sometimes they'll even react like, "Oh please.  This is a completely 
different matter."  In other words, the relativists tend to be flaming 
hypocrites.

response 95 of 194:

Jan 25 17:07 UTC 2001

There are non-aesthetic grounds for classifying neurological stimuli,
actually, so there's an objective scale for qualifying music, but (a) that's
very rarely what anyone means when they say "this music is good"; (b)
neurological stimuli effects are most likely fairly minor when compared to
environmentally-learned effects; and (c) I'm not aware of many studies on the
innate human neurological effects of music. Oh yeah, and (d), such effects
would mostly likely apply more to performance (tempo, type of instruments,
agressiveness of play) than to composition. [most>most] I do recall reading
of one study where various genres of music were played to groups to see what
the effects would be, and C&W yieled more aggressive behavior than any other
genre, but I rather suspect that's environemtally learned behavior.

Beyond that, aesthetics ARE socially determined. What's interesting about
aesthetic sensibilities, though, is that they rarely match what the masses
enjoy. Is it the case that the masses eat Big Macs instead of filet mignon
because they can't afford the latter, or because they honestly prefer the
former (on a hedonist, is not aesthetic, level)? Surely much of it is expense,
butI daresay many McDonald's haunters would stick with their Big Macs, even
if given a choice. If this is so -- and if Britney Spears sells more albums
than [insert folk/classical musician here] -- then why do the BRITNEY SPEARS
fans, by and large, think of classical music as being "higher" in intrinisic
quality than what they listen to (and many of them do)? That's what I see as
an interesting social effect, and one that's been around for a long while
(centuries, if not longer) -- it's not surprising that DSO fans would see
Spears as being poor quality, but it's surprising (to me) that many Spears
fans would rank Spears as low quality, aesthetically...

"... oh yeah, it's ham, but she means every word in a ten minute ballad of
despair ... " (Soft Cell, L'Esqualita) 

If you THINK it's crap, why consume it? Either you don't think you yourself
deserve any better (which explains the popularity of the Dummies and Complete
Idiots books), or you don't really think it's crap but you don't have the
verbal concepts to debate with someone who does, and you're learned not to
even bother. After all, the aesthetes have a lengthy dialogue about what makes
art good or bad; how can you, the lowly pubescent who still interjects "like"
five times in every sentence, hope to compete with that?

response 97 of 194:

Jan 25 23:43 UTC 2001

I like both kinds of music...country *and* western!

response 99 of 194:

Jan 26 06:13 UTC 2001

People are capable of recognizing more than one kind of "better".  Lots of
people who personally enjoy listening to Britney Spears (and generally bathing
in her aura and associating with other fans) may still recognize that in terms
of impressing people in society in general presenting yourself as a Britney
Spears fan is not going to win you as much prestige as presenting yourself
as a classical fan, or afficiado of Neo-Sino-Jamacian Elbow Jazz Septets. And
awful lot of "better" is "more prestigious" and I think that that is much more
strongly culturally determined than "it makes me happy when I hear it" and
much more widely agreed upon.  Music assoicated with disadvantaged social
groups (teenagers and hicks, for two) is broadly disdained.  (On the other
hand, its fashionable for the elite to like black music, so jazz has been
co-opted and blacks had to invent a whole new kind of music (rap) to make sure
they wouldn't be mistaken for rich white socialites.)