i don't like to post large quotes often, but i was reading an interview of the legendary kevin shields and thought this was fantastic:
"I think sometimes music has a strange parallel with the world. I think the world is about to go through a really bad phase. Well, put it this way: people on a political level and big business have been working towards a type of coup. The world has sort of been taken over by big business. It’s not one country it’s in fact big business that rules the world now. And no one has quite grasped that. It hasn’t been quite understood. And all civil liberties will be eaten away at a speed beyond anyone’s comprehension. In the meantime, music’s getting more and more about the spirit of it and the feel of it, so a type of genuine counterculture—which isn’t a marketing thing, but an actual real one—I think it’s just starting up on some level. It’s to sort of balance out the nastiness. The world is never entirely one way; it’s always got a strange balance to it, even if it’s not apparent. So, I suppose what I’m trying to say is: as bad as the world’s going to get in the next five years, I think music is equally going to become quite relevant for good reasons. The soul of music will be the most valuable aspect of it."
2 comments:
This reminds me of a simplistic formula that I often think about: the inverse relationship between culture and civilization. At the high points of civilization (power, economic might...) there's often a dearth of high quality culture (humanities, arts). For example the quality of rock music in the late 60s and 70s was tremendous at a time of suck-ass civilization in America. The 80s and 90s were a reversal of that.
Now obviously this is a crude formula and there are thousands of counterexamples, but Shields' quote reminded me of it.
oyster - you could even go back to the days of slavery, wherefrom soul, jazz, and a plethera of other genres ultimately originated. it would be an interesting study to go back even further to the times of classical music (about which i know nothing).
john "genre" bender, check out midnight movies and plexi
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