Dear Dimo

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You know what I'm doing, right now?

Reading this instead of finishing my homework which is right next to me. 

You should do your homework.

If you do, I'll rant about music tomorrow.  At least two pages.

I can feel it gurgling in my bits.

[Don Coyote]

You know what I'm doing, right now?

Reading this instead of finishing my homework which is right next to me. 

You should do your homework.

If you do, I'll rant about music tomorrow.  At least two pages.

I can feel it gurgling in my bits.

When you put it like that, I am going to read Beowulf so hard I head butt Grendel, or the book combust. whichever.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I done did my homeworks!

[Richter]

MSI? are you referring to Mindless Self Indulgence?  I'm pretty out of the loop on punk, so just asking for clarification.  I've heard one song by them and I absolutely loved it - I think it was called "tight" but I'm not sure.

Yes.  You need to listen to Shut Me Up.

the man three seats away is tapping his feet in time with this, despite the headphones.  My life is improved.

You know what killed punk?  People trying to be into it TOO hard.  Mainly anyone who took relationship advice from "johnny hit and run pauline"

[LMNO]

I didn't know people were even still trying to pretend to make punk! Even the last most hardcore punk I know, a former Nervous Xtians bandmember who is also one of THE most delightfully eccentric people I know, has transitioned to more of a folkpop band lately. It's a really good band, too.

This is related to the idea of 'genre-infusion.' Which, of course, is absolutely meaningless if you don't distinguish hard lines between genre, which is why I typically stay away from bands that try to fuse X and Y. I Feel that, as creative people, they're missing the point.  Not to say that your friends band is like this, it just made me think is all.

Yeah, I can see that.  Why be creative, when you can grab a bit of A and mix it with B and call it new?

That's what killed classic rock, that's what killed rap, and that's more or less what killed country.

I disagree.  It's a good start, if you can't come up with something right away, but it fails when you can't join it together smoothly.  It's a substitute for what happens when you get four different people in a room with four different ideas.

If each person takes their personal influences and tries to write a song, when it works you end up with something that doesn't really sound like anything they started with.  Like if you take a Smiths guitar riff and lay it over Fugazi bass, then fit that over a New Orleans funk beat and season it with a Ventures surf lead, you end up with something that doesn't sound like the Smiths, Fugazi, the Meters or the Ventures, but something else.*

What doesn't work is when you take four people who only listen to the same stuff, and only want to play the stuff they listen to.  And when they want to be "different", they grab some flavor-of-the-moment element and throw it into the mix without really understanding what that element is all about.  That when you get both the redundant shit and the clumsy genre mixing.


*and that something is called the new Frost Heaves EP

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I done did my homeworks!

Working on it now.

From home.

Playing hooky.

[rong]

MSI? are you referring to Mindless Self Indulgence?  I'm pretty out of the loop on punk, so just asking for clarification.  I've heard one song by them and I absolutely loved it - I think it was called "tight" but I'm not sure.

Yes.  You need to listen to Shut Me Up.

Not too Shabby - has a little more "pop sensibility" than I usually go for.  More time than I'd like to admit spent combing through YouTube videos has taught me that the MSI song I have come to know and love is called Dickface

One thing is for sure - the man uses falsetto in ways that were never intended by the manufacturer.

[Cuddlefish]

I didn't know people were even still trying to pretend to make punk! Even the last most hardcore punk I know, a former Nervous Xtians bandmember who is also one of THE most delightfully eccentric people I know, has transitioned to more of a folkpop band lately. It's a really good band, too.

This is related to the idea of 'genre-infusion.' Which, of course, is absolutely meaningless if you don't distinguish hard lines between genre, which is why I typically stay away from bands that try to fuse X and Y. I Feel that, as creative people, they're missing the point.  Not to say that your friends band is like this, it just made me think is all.

Yeah, I can see that.  Why be creative, when you can grab a bit of A and mix it with B and call it new?

That's what killed classic rock, that's what killed rap, and that's more or less what killed country.

I disagree.  It's a good start, if you can't come up with something right away, but it fails when you can't join it together smoothly.  It's a substitute for what happens when you get four different people in a room with four different ideas.

If each person takes their personal influences and tries to write a song, when it works you end up with something that doesn't really sound like anything they started with.  Like if you take a Smiths guitar riff and lay it over Fugazi bass, then fit that over a New Orleans funk beat and season it with a Ventures surf lead, you end up with something that doesn't sound like the Smiths, Fugazi, the Meters or the Ventures, but something else.*

What doesn't work is when you take four people who only listen to the same stuff, and only want to play the stuff they listen to.  And when they want to be "different", they grab some flavor-of-the-moment element and throw it into the mix without really understanding what that element is all about.  That when you get both the redundant shit and the clumsy genre mixing.


*and that something is called the new Frost Heaves EP

'Fusion' should be a word that's used, a posteriori, in a critical evaluation of new music, not a word that's inked in, a priori, on the bands mission statement.

EDIT: Even if it is the artists original intention.

The bolded bit is relevant, I think. As an 'artist,' I just see it as sort of a dick move to tell someone ahead of time how to interpret your music. Even if your intentions are to fuse x and y, wouldn't you say that a much better indicator of success of that fusion would be if your audience came to that conclusion on their own? It's sort of like viewing a painting with the artist over your shoulder telling you exactly what every image represents. You may have a clearer view of the artists intentions, and the context in which the art work was created, but it gets in the way of the art, and, if you do end up liking the painting, isn't it more fun digging up these tangential asides about the work and the artist after your initial experience? I guess it's like someone spoiling the plot of a story. You could do it, it just makes you kind of a dick.