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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)