Greg says:
> Elena (?) wrote:
> > > Lousy music is a drag, but since when has sucky music stopped talented
> > > musicians from making great music?
>
> And Jon W replied:
> > It hasn't, but it can make it harder for them to get heard, both because
> of
> > the turn-off factor already mentioned - "Yeesh, those guys
> couldn't carry
> a
> > tune in a paper bag. If that's what bluegrass/alt.country/blues is, I
> don't
> > like it."
>
> Jon, isn't your turn-off factor above applicable to any genre?
> Seems to me that there are a lot more 'musicians who suck' than
> 'musicians who rule' in every realm, including rock, country, blues,
> oldtime, jazz, cajun, new age, native american drumming, and Tuvan throat
> singing. Or are you making a different kind of claim?
>
> Just searching for some clarification here.
The thread started out from Mr. Anonymous's point that sucky music is
hurting "the roots music movement," which would probably <g> include some of
the stuff Greg's listed. Think for a minute about how different kinds of
music get exposure. Rock, pop, country - these are mass genres, and anyone
with even a mild interest (or even no interest at all) gets exposed to a
fair amount of their stuff willy-nilly or with the most minimal kinds of
effort, like turning on the radio and dialing around for about 30 seconds;
fringier stuff gets corresponding less exposure, meaning that a sucky
performance almost certainly forms a higher percentage of a newbie's total
exposure to the style. Leaving aside for the moment the important question
of what constitutes quality in a given style, even if the percentage of
sucksters is the same across the board, the likelihood is that it will form
a higher percentage of the total exposure someone new gets to a style in the
crucial first contact stages, when s/he's least able to evaluate its place
in that style. Plus which, all of the mechanisms that function, in part, to
screen out incompetent (an important subset of sucky) stuff, don't operate
nearly as well in the fringier worlds; some of that might be by design, but
some of it's just a function of fringiness per se.
Jon Weisberger, Kenton County, KY [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://home.fuse.net/jonweisberger
