>
>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.
But Jon, isn't your example here different than the original comments,
which were directed at alt.country bands playing at SXSW? Seems that
there's a big difference between the bland, middle-of-the-road stuff
marketed by major labels and played on the radio (in which case I think the
villians are the marketers/consultants/et. al perpetrating the mass
audience, least-common-denominator suckage), versus the smaller-label
"insurgents" (the "fringier stuff") that a person would likely hear only if
they're already in-the-know to some degree. If you're talking about these
smaller bands, I don't think their suckage really hurts anyone or
constitutes any threat to the so-called "roots music movement." There are
always going to be lots of bands that suck, in any genre, but the fault
lies not with those bands, but with the labels and marketers who elevate
them over more worthy acts in an effort chase $$...
Of course, as Terry suggests, this discussion would be easier if we knew
what acts are being singled out.
