(The following Facebook conversation was likely not intended by its instigators to turn into a discussion of the nature of art, but I think it came out interesting, despite starting with music albums I don’t have opinions about. All participants like each other. No universal truth was proven, though you can tell what side I'm currently on, so you have my invitation to join.)
John: Really pleased to see Run Devil Run (easily the most underrated McCartney solo and maybe solo Beatles album) and Back to the Egg get some love - but come on, Venus and Mars over Band on the Run is pure trolling.
Miles: I enjoy Venus & Mars more than Band on the Run.
Aaron: You're not the only one, but do you really think it's a better record? I mean..I enjoy Wild Life more than I enjoy Imagine. I don't think it's better.
Jeff: The whole "best" vs. "enjoyable" thing is puzzling.
I mean, at some level I get it - there are certainly acts whose music I understand and respect but don't particularly enjoy...and not just when they're, say, "difficult" or dark or something.
But at some point...well let's just say that I do not believe that there's any sort of *objective* criteria out there that makes something better than something else.
Unless "best" just refers to critical consensus. In which case, yes: no way is V&M better than BotR...but only because that's what the critical consensus is. It's entirely possible for someone to enjoy V&M more...and, for that matter, to argue and have reasons for their belief that it's *better than* BotR.
John: No. It's an established, objective fact that BotR is a better album than V&M. It's just that Miles is weird, as already established.
Aaron: It's like the "haggling about the price" joke. Of course some things are better than others. The Beatles are better than Poison. Dylan writes better songs than Jandek. Miles Davis is better than that guy who plays jazz at my local restaurant. The real issue is where you start putting things into categories where the degree is small enough that there's no legitimate answer to that.
Jeff: I disagree, Aaron.
There are plenty of actual humans on this planet who think Poison is better than the Beatles on the quite-logical grounds that they very much enjoy listening to Poison but do not enjoy listening to the Beatles. They may (or may not) be aware of the critical consensus on the matter - but they may simply not give a fuck.
A lot of jazz players, esp. early in Miles's career, said he just wasn't that good at trumpet - and there were and are trumpeters who can, for example, play very fast passages cleaner than Davis typically did. Or even could. Same thing was said re Thelonious Monk. And in that way, that guy playing at the restaurant might be "better" than Davis.
In other words, you're presuming that one set of criteria is the only set of criteria.
The history of artists who were initially regarded as hopelessly inept or worthless is littered with artists who were and are now regarded as geniuses. And the history of "who's the greatest artist?" is littered with names that we've now forgotten, or whose work is now regarded as trite, derivative, etc.
No objective standards. Dylan's better at writing a certain kind of song than Jandek is. But can Dylan write a Jandek-style song better than Jandek can? Roger Daltrey's a better vocalist than Pere Ubu's David Thomas, right? But not if the job is being the vocalist in Pere Ubu. In that case, I suspect Daltrey (even peak Daltrey of the mid-seventies) would fall flat on his face.
Aaron: Sorry--I'm not buying that argument. I've heard it many times and "someone likes it better" does not mean there's a legitimate argument that it *is* better. Neither does "x can do something y can't do so in some way you can argue x is better than y."
Me: I guess the way I tend to think of it is like: Alex Lifeson (of Rush) is a better guitarist than Liz Phair in the sense that he obviously could play like her if he wanted to, and she obviously couldn't play like him. But anyone, including me, is free to treat that as irrelevant since Lifeson has made it manifestly clear that he's not *going* to play like Phair, so she has every right to be considered better. (Not, in this example, that she herself found it convincing. Sadly.)
Aaron: I'm not even talking about technical skill. I think that at some point we have to acknowledge that some art simply is better than others. Again...the argument is harder to make at lesser degrees but I think it's harder to argue that there's no such thing as better or worse than that there is.
Jeff: The "obviously could if he wanted to" is (a) presuming
something for which we have no evidence and (b) clearly does not apply
to, for example, my Dylan/Jandek and Daltrey/Thomas examples - since in
both cases, it's not at all obvious that that's true.
The fallacy
here is that you're arguing that "some art simply is better than other"
art PERIOD - rather than arguing that some art is simply better than
other art *given certain criteria*. Given certain criteria, sure: it's
easy to say that so-and-so is better than such-and-such. But the history
of any art form is, in fact, largely the shifting of standards such
that the ability to do X (where X is a certain set of criteria: what,
for example, the late 19c gallery artist was expected to be able to do)
is no longer the criteria (the Impressionists were so called because art
critics using the older criteria claimed the Impressionists were simply
lousy painters who only had the skill to produce "impressions" of their
subject, rather than representations in the style those critics were
accustomed to).
This is obvious, really: do you put on Bach when
you want a rockin' dance party? Do you put on King Crimson when you
want some light background music?
Is Ty Cobb better than FDR?
When
the criteria are different enough, comparisons become impossible. And
so, too, does arguing about "best" - I guess I'm saying, the criteria by
which we judge "rock" (in the broadest possible definition) is so
different from the criteria that we judge "jazz" by that it's sort of
absurd to rank a jazz artist against a rock artist: what they're trying
to do is radically different.
I'm just arguing that when
arguments about better/best occur, quite often what's really going on is
people holding entirely different criteria w/o acknowledging it. That
Poison fan, for example: maybe the things he ranks highest in evaluating
music simply are not things the Beatles ever even tried to do, or vice
versa. Why should we presume that the standards by which we evaluate the
Beatles necessarily apply to Poison?
Me: I was saying Lifeson *isn't* objectively better at guitar than Phair. We're agreeing on that.
I think there's good and bad storytelling, and I think people can be wrong: can enjoy terrible stories like Left Behind and Atlas Shrugged that make them worse people. (Which also means I believe there can be good and bad people.) Music, though ... Its complete lack of literal content does not, to me, open it to that sort of measurement. If music can be objectively bad, the Shaggs' debut -- out-of-tune songs by isolated home-schooled sisters with no understanding of pop music or puberty -- is obviously awful. Even its fans think it's oblivious and incompetent. Except right there: it has fans. Smart, thoughtful fans. I sort of like it myself, especially "My Pal Foot Foot".
Jeff: Interesting example...because, I dunno, to *me*, it's hard to imagine people enjoying the Shaggs on the music's own terms...instead, it's a sort of perverse "oh my god this is astonishingly wrong!" sort of thing. But then, I'm sure there are plenty of people who say the same thing about my enjoying (say) Pere Ubu...but they're wrong. So, even though I can't really understand how someone could really, non-satirically enjoy the Shaggs, I acknowledge that probably, they do. And that, also presumably, if those people find other acts that they think were sort of in the same ballpark as the Shaggs, they might think the Shaggs were better than that other act (or vice versa). I can't evaluate it - barely more than I could tell which Chinese opera is superior to another - because I don't understand the criteria.
But I acknowledge the criteria exist. Whereas arguing that something's "the best" sort of presumes that (a) you yourself know and understand the criteria and (b) it's the only criteria relevant to whichever act/etc. you're ranking the "best."
I mean, the "best" what? Are the Beatles better than (say) the Peanut Butter Conspiracy? Our likely first answer is "yes, of course"...but shouldn't we take at least a moment to wonder what criteria we're using? And to acknowledge that, insofar as we can (for example) tell when something's a Beatles record and when something's a Peanut Butter Conspiracy record, that means each band is doing something different, to some degree...and therefore, that there isn't some sort of universal, overarching set of criteria to judge them with?
Me: Yes, I do mean that "My Pal Foot Foot" is an enjoyable-to-me song, and I believe our friend Andy (for example) when he claims to find it utterly wonderful.
The other thing is ... Ok. Aaron wants to talk about extremes? My
10-year-old's first stumbling attempt to play "Erie Canal" on the piano
last week is (1) objectively worse than his practice an hour ago, and
(2) objectively worse than his teacher playing it. We might as well call
it objective, because no one who hears them, including my 10-year-old,
would disagree.
But *if* a thoughtful listener to both *did*
disagree, and was sincere instead of trolling, and offered reasons ...
Then I wouldn't be prepared to say she was wrong. Now, it won't happen.
But with Poison vs the Beatles, it can happen and has happened, and
music is sufficiently inexplicable and mysterious in its effect that I
don't think there's any logical problem.
(A good reason for me to discount the Poison fan's taste for my personal use? Yes.)
Jeff: The 10yo example: because in that case, you have a specific set of criteria to compare to - the notes on the page that make up the piano part for "Erie Canal."
And while I'm sure we could hire, say, Daniel Barenboim to play a flawless and expressive version of "Erie Canal," such a version would not do well if, say, the criteria we were using was "okay, for this scene in the movie, the soundtrack needs to be a 10-year-old learning to play piano and trying to play 'Erie Canal.'" Mr. Barenboim's performance would work quite poorly there.
Or, say, "in this scene, we want a jazz version of 'Erie Canal'...": again, Barenboim's flawless playing of the score (and the score only) would work poorly. Because jazz has different criteria. Etc.
These examples are fairly extreme, and somewhat obvious...but my point is: one reason, for example, that some folks insist "there's no good music since 1980" (or any other year) is they're using (in this case) pre-1980 criteria...and the post-1980 musicians are using different criteria.
To be more obvious: post-punk rules are dif. from classic-rock rules. Saying "but there's no blues feel here!" as criticism of a Kraftwerk record rather obviously misses the point. Yet quite often, when "objectively best" folks are asked to explain WHY Band X is objectively better than Band Y, they fall back upon such (limited) criteria...
Me: Yes, thanks. Although the other thing that frustrates me about "There's no good music since...." is that even if the year somebody fills in is “1250!”, there are talented and creative people still working in those old idioms. Even if one doesn't feel like updating their criteria, "there's no good music since...." is blaming the world for one's own lack of search effort.
No comments:
Post a Comment