Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!think!mit-eddie!nessus From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan) Newsgroups: net.music Subject: Re: Musical asparagus vs. musical twinkies Message-ID: <287@mit-eddie.UUCP> Date: Sat, 2-Nov-85 01:48:04 EST Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.287 Posted: Sat Nov 2 01:48:04 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 5-Nov-85 04:49:13 EST References: <1179@decwrl.UUCP> <273@mit-eddie.UUCP> <470@harvard.ARPA> Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA Lines: 38 > From: lo@harvard.ARPA (Bert S.F. Lo) > Your analogy isn't quite correct. Consider this situation: you and I > both eat balanced meals. After dinner, you have a vitamin supplement > while I eat my dessert. Well for desert you could go eat some Ben & Jerry's icecream and listen to the B-52s, instead of eating a twinkie and listening to Lionel Richie. In that a twinkie has no nutritional value, it scarcely deserves to be called food. And in that Lionel Richie has no artistic value, what he produces scarcely deserves to be called music. If you're listening to bad music had no effect on me and others -- if it just resulted in the destruction of your own mind -- I wouldn't care much. But listening to Lionel Richie is much more analogous to smoking in a restaurant. Not only do you destroy your lungs by smoking, but you hurt mine too by making me breath your smoke. By listening to Lionel Richie, you raise him higher in the charts, forcing me to have to listen to his crud wherever I go. The music big business machine sees that people want crud and tries to force all other musicians into the mold of mediocrity so they will have a guaranteed steady income. And in the end real artists often either get forced to conform to the rest of the crud or end up in obscurity trying desperately to make enough money so they can continue their art. And no one is the winner. Every now and then, the forces of mediocrity fail to oppress creativity, and a real artist gets a chance at success. And in these cases, one should encourage them loudly, lest the forces of mediocrity always win. With food this isn't such a problem. Nutritional food will always be available because no one can live without his body. But for better or for worse, modern society has made it perfectly viable -- probably even easier -- for someone to live without a mind. "A mind is a terrible thing" :-) Doug Alan nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (or ARPA)