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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Moon Cat
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Edited Sep 28, 2008, 18:09
Re: Generic Self-indulgence
Sep 28, 2008, 18:06
IanB wrote:
Lawrence wrote:
Or are musos really just hacks who just doodle around and can't write a decent song if their life depended on it? There are lots of good musicians that do really amazing things (Vini Reilly for one!) I think it more depends on what you do with that talent once you have it...


Indeed. Which makes it a wholly subjective critical term and not a descrition of what someone is or does. We might as well say "boring" or "self indulgent". Except "muso" sounds like it might vaguely technical and possibly even objective. Vini Reilly is not a muso but he is an inveterate doodler. Coltrane was a doodler but hardly a muso. Blah blah.

It's all personal critical bias in the end. One man or woman's waste of space and is someone else's genius. One listener's drug addled waster is another's visionary. Either way music is a lot enjoyable when all notions of cool are dispensed with. Which is why those blind tests they used to run (may still run) in The Wire were so interesting.


For my bit, the phrase self-indulgent is always the sound of cop-out to me anyway.
I've always found the term "self indulgent" to be one of the most pointlessy divisive, self-defeating and appallingly, uselessly, dullard of terms applied in culture, let alone fuckin' pop-music. Yes, I understand that in a rock n'roll context there is a tendency to gravitate to easy targets like prog and concept albums et al.

But all performance, recording, music, writing, poetry and fuck knows whatever medium that you, the "artist", communicate your "art", "ideas" and so on is, by its very nature 'self-indulgent'. I don't give a rats cock whether it's an 18 hour guitar solo, a 2 minute polemic lo-fi-thrash, an installation or a funny picture you've done on a beer mat to amuse your mates in the pub - If you put it 'out there' then you are ultimately asking people to look at, listen to, maybe at the same time, consider, judge, think about, even if it's for milliseconds, an act, a thing of some sort that YOU have created, or introduced into the world. It seeks attention. And, once you've got the attention then hopefully , someone, somewhere will give you a hint of approval. Or rejection. But, you are asking people to look and listen and beyond.

This post is self indulgent.

Self -indulgence is always gonna be "yeah, ok" or "fuckin GREAT!" if you like the thing before you. If not, then it'll be crap.... and maybe self-indulgent crap at that.
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Re: Generic Supersessions (IanB)
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