Mario:
"You'll be surprised to hear that I do appreciate primitive
rock'n'roll, though rock (in all its forms) is for me a
distant second to jazz, the blues and classical music
(Western and Indian)."
Actually, I am a bit surprised. And wouldn't that make it a
distant fourth?
"In all these forms, being a "pretty good" musician doesn't
even get you in the door, and perhaps I'm wrong in applying
the criterion of "at least a very good musician" to a
different phenomenon like rock and pop."
But "pretty good" is defined differently within those
different types of music. For instance, many classical
players would regard many jazz players as musically immature
(buying into the myth that, especially black, jazz musicians
are raw and primitive) -- it even happens within jazz, just
look at Wynton Marsalis's disdain for most jazz forms after a
certain date -- and some of both would say the same of many
blues artists. And when defined by the other form's
standards, they are.
"If I play The Beatles after, say, Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar
Khan, or Coleman Hawkins, the effect is one of
ridiculousness. I'm either spoiled or spoilt, or just out of
it."
Probably just taste. Although I like all of the artists you
name (as long as the tablas aren't too prominent in the
ragas), my default music is probably still rock. When I play
some of the above after the Stooges, they sound effete.
I'll even agree that Revolution #9, say, does not compare to
its models in the musique concrete of people like Pierres
Schaeffer or Henry. And the same can be said of a number of
their experiments with other music outside rock. But I liked
that they were adventurous in their taste and did not simply
regurgitate their earlier, very successful sounds. Still, I
think they were at their best when they focused on songs, not
concepts.
"I don't feel any 'slumming down" when I read Goodis,
Thompson, Prather or Lionel White (technically very strong, I
don't know what Westlake is talking about...)."
Oh, I know you don't. My crack about slumming was aimed at
self-proclaimed serious writers who choose to cash in on some
of the
"easy money" of writing genre fiction. However, it takes a
different set of skills. One more musical analogy -- Harry
Connick Jr used to insist that he could write a top ten
pop/rock hit at any time, since they are so formulaic, but he
wouldn't lower himself to it. I'm sure he couldn't. Contempt
for a genre is very offputting to fans and easy to
spot.
So knowing you appreciate genre fiction as well as literary
fiction, see them as equal but different, I found it a bit
exasperating that you were applying jazz aesthetics to rock
playing.
"I consider them serious and highly skilled writers. I'm sure
that, if England had had a Prather, the English would be
proud of him. The US has been hard on humorists."
I'm not the Prather fan you are, but I agree with your
point.
"I started thinking of how many novels published in 1950 I
would like to read today. I bet almost all of them would be
"genre" novels."
I agree. And that's kind of interesting. Many critics say the
only thing that sustains interest in crime fiction is
whodunnit are whatbeendun, once you know the answer to that
question, there is nothing left. However, I find myself
rereading crime novels far more often than I do literary
ones. I guess Chandler was right that a good mystery should
satisfy even if the final chapter were missing.
"So I don't make any distinction between mainstream and genre
fiction. In fact, I reject such distinctions. That is one of
the main reasons why I joined Bill's list in the old days of
1997 (can it be that long ago?)."
I'm assuming you're talking about hierarchical distinctions
here, not classificatory, since choosing the books to be
discussed on this list is a manner of distinguishing a
certain type of book from others -- even if we incessantly
argue about how that distinction is defined.
Mark
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