Is There Even A Middle Ground Anymore
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The Man Man cover band, Fan Fan. (via)
First, this somewhat batshit, totally unexpected ending to an otherwise pretty basic Radiohead/NIN thing (emphasis mine):
But more troubling even than the hypocrisy of a few rock stars is the narcissism at the heart of the phenomenon of home remixing–the notion that to take a work of creative expression and make it “ours” is to improve it. It is a colossal mistake to coerce an expression of others into an expression of ourselves. The premise of open-source remixing is that finally we can admire nobody so much as ourselves. But in music, as in all art and love and politics, there is usually more to gain in trying to understand what belongs, uniquely and idiosyncratically and serendipitously, to somebody else.
Thing is, up until this last paragraph, this guy was on-point re: Radiohead keeping full rights to all the submitted remixes of “Nude,” catching something a lot of other people missed. He was off on a lot of other stuff, though, but I was willing to accept that in the New Republic, I guess. Then he drops this paragraph on us like a pillowcase full of doorknobs, erasing my goodwill toward his above appraisal and making me wonder if he even wrote it, or if an editor with a stick up his butt did it for him.
Then
this completely unproveable (though convenient) claim (emphasis mine) and similar baby/bathwater solution, on the other end of the participatory culture spectrum:
Music videos aren’t dead, they’re just dying, and they’re dying because of bloated videos like “Everybody Hurts.” When fans can use their favorite songs to make their amateur films without fear of losing their comparatively miniscule cookie jars, then the new age of promotional video will be here at last.
Yeah, bloated music videos are what ended music videos, not like you know, the fact that music videos large or small aren’t being played on TV anymore, regardless of bloatation-level (and, if anything, it was the bigger videos keeping the fledgling network afloat). It’s the venue, then, not the aesthetic choices, which I think this guy secretly knows. And! There’s 100 times more unwatchable fan-created garbage out there than good stuff, and even the great stuff looks like garbage on Youtube. I don’t want fan-created videos to redefine music promotion. I don’t ever want to see a homemade light-saber battle again, either. I want talented artists with video-making talent to make videos and put them on TV again. There’s a reason why the majority of people who make music videos do it professionally. It’s hard, and it takes more than a torrented version of Final Cut to do it well. Access to technology ? access to actual creative skill that people want to watch, not which is just dumb enough to drive people to iTunes.
Is There Even A Middle Ground Anymore
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The Man Man cover band, Fan Fan. (via)
First, this somewhat batshit, totally unexpected ending to an otherwise pretty basic Radiohead/NIN thing (emphasis mine):
But more troubling even than the hypocrisy of a few rock stars is the narcissism at the heart of the phenomenon of home remixing–the notion that to take a work of creative expression and make it “ours” is to improve it. It is a colossal mistake to coerce an expression of others into an expression of ourselves. The premise of open-source remixing is that finally we can admire nobody so much as ourselves. But in music, as in all art and love and politics, there is usually more to gain in trying to understand what belongs, uniquely and idiosyncratically and serendipitously, to somebody else.
Thing is, up until this last paragraph, this guy was on-point re: Radiohead keeping full rights to all the submitted remixes of “Nude,” catching something a lot of other people missed. He was off on a lot of other stuff, though, but I was willing to accept that in the New Republic, I guess. Then he drops this paragraph on us like a pillowcase full of doorknobs, erasing my goodwill toward his above appraisal and making me wonder if he even wrote it, or if an editor with a stick up his butt did it for him.
Then
this completely unproveable (though convenient) claim (emphasis mine) and similar baby/bathwater solution, on the other end of the participatory culture spectrum:
Music videos aren’t dead, they’re just dying, and they’re dying because of bloated videos like “Everybody Hurts.” When fans can use their favorite songs to make their amateur films without fear of losing their comparatively miniscule cookie jars, then the new age of promotional video will be here at last.
Yeah, bloated music videos are what ended music videos, not like you know, the fact that music videos large or small aren’t being played on TV anymore, regardless of bloatation-level (and, if anything, it was the bigger videos keeping the fledgling network afloat). It’s the venue, then, not the aesthetic choices, which I think this guy secretly knows. And! There’s 100 times more unwatchable fan-created garbage out there than good stuff, and even the great stuff looks like garbage on Youtube. I don’t want fan-created videos to redefine music promotion. I don’t ever want to see a homemade light-saber battle again, either. I want talented artists with video-making talent to make videos and put them on TV again. There’s a reason why the majority of people who make music videos do it professionally. It’s hard, and it takes more than a torrented version of Final Cut to do it well. Access to technology ? access to actual creative skill that people want to watch, not which is just dumb enough to drive people to iTunes.
