As for the other point of contention: I feel that, perhaps, there’s been a little misunderstanding. I don’t mind people copying, imitating, rehashing, playing it safe and obeying the rules of the game — who am I, an avid pasticheïonado on several days of the week, to mind anyway? — nor do I object to people dismissing popular music on the basis of its banality, its superficiality or its whateverity (not that I agree: I believe there’s a rightful place for banality and superficiality in even the greatest of art). What I do have a bit of a problem with though, is the combination of the two: when musical suburbia — which is what, in my opinion, V.I.-C by and large is — feels itself entitled to look with a superior and condescending eye at manifestations of music which happen outside its chosen musical ken and which it perceives, for reasons best known to itself, as musically inferior. And usually, it’s pop music that has to take a beating.
Sometime ago, there was a thread here that mocked the fact that the I-VI-IV-V chord progression is used in god-knows-how-many pop songs. Ha-ha-ha, these pop musicians, what a silly, primitive bunch, aren’t they? That’s the sort of snotty idiocy which you can see surfacing here on the forum and which I hate. That’s so stupid and pretentious — especially given the questionable quality of much of the music that usually walks away here with all the idolatry and applause —, on every imagineable level, that I don’t know where to begin to express my loathing for it.
The opposite, which annoys me just as much, occurs as well: the time before last we discussed some of the more arcane expressions of 20th century music, there were several voices who felt it necessary to label Schönberg and his students as sick, childish, incompetent frauds. And the next day, some of those same people posted another dire slice of ‘epic’ muzak of course.
Musical suburbia, you know.
It’s that all-too-widespread, extremely myopic view on music which I never could comprehend among musicians and which often stirs the less kindly side of my personality, I’m afraid. That bafflingly narrow-minded attitude — often very conservative, conformist and surprisingly ignorant as well — with which people judge, consume, make and talk about music, which never ceases to astound me (in a deeply saddening way).
There’s many here who still think about orchestral music as if three quarters of the 20th century never happened. And, preferably, shouldn’t have happened. In fact, they’re only prepared to take that century into consideration to the extent in which its musical innovations and accomplishments can be reduced and cliché-ified to fit the format and requirements of film and/or media music. I find that truly, truly depressing.
(Depressed is, by the way, also how I feel when I observe with how little imagination, curiosity and sense of adventure the majority of people here think about, and work with samples and computers. But that’s a different topic, I suppose.)
Sure, you can’t lump the entire community together in that one bag of beige blandness and inert uniformity, I know. There are very exciting and inspiring exceptions, there’s some terrific music and music-making being posted too, absolutely, but the previous pages of this thread sadly also contained, once again, just a fraction too much of that chronic, thinly-veiled disdain and snobbery, ever-present just under the surface of this and many related discussions, which is why I felt triggered to write what I wrote.