"Man. Who’d have thought British Sea Power fans could be so dull?"

I would. AMP notwithstanding.

Posted by Robin on May 9th, 2004 at 4:40 pm

I think what you are trying to say is that good art is good art regardless of the subject matter. Yet, you have to fundamentally remember that there are different levels of expectation on different types of media. When I go to look at a work of art I expect to be visually stimulated, I don’t know what the painting is about, I don’t expect to know, but I can speculate. When I listen to a song I expect to be aurally stimulated, I might not be able to make out the words through the singers lisp, or know that the song is anti battery farming, yet I can get that aural stimulation. With a live review you have two layers going on, something which is an artform that is also appraising an artform. When it is done badly by losing its’ focus, being written badly/ becoming self absorbed etc it loses the fundamental enjoyment factor that is expected, it becomes the blank canvas or the broken CD. When I listen to a Fugazi song I don’t have to know what the subject is to enjoy it, yet if it is played badly, or if it is a shitty song then THAT affects the value I place upon the artform. With a piece of critical writing the subject matter is more deeply ingrained in the whole expectation level than it would be with a painting, piece of music or video game. The writing can still be an artform but as it loses focus, it becomes either a bad example of the artform it set out to be, or something else entirely, a different art form. In that case it should be under a different descriptive label (’lig and me’) and people would appraise it in an entirely different way, more importantly they wouldn’t be expected to pay for it.

Posted by Mark on May 9th, 2004 at 7:33 pm

Er…pay for it? Is something going on here at this website that I don’t know about?

Posted by Jerry on May 9th, 2004 at 11:19 pm

Nope, my credit card has not been asked for, I meant the ‘pay’ comment in several ways, i.e.:

-paying money for any media expectation (not necessarily the present article).
-paying in a ‘your valuable time’ sense for any media, free or otherwise i.e: ‘my life is being wasted because every third baked bean tin I spend one minute opening is empty’.
-paying in a money sense for any ‘of type’ articles in a prospective subscription of PLAN B in print form when it hits the shelves.

Posted by Mark on May 10th, 2004 at 12:10 pm

Are all British Sea Power fans like this? Eamon, it’s never too late to revive your solo career, dude…

Posted by Jerry on May 10th, 2004 at 12:16 pm

I expect all BSP fans are intelligent,good looking, with great taste in music..yes. I can bring them all over if you want.

I saw Eamon reading a copy of your book, after he said.. ‘all that Thack said it didn’t mean crap, I bought it from Smiths..F*ck you Jerry I’m taking it back, oo ar oo ar oo ar yeah’

actually the books OK, whatever the Amazon reviews say. I love ‘da bitchin man’.

Posted by Mark on May 10th, 2004 at 12:57 pm

‘To pay’ for a review now means to read it? What a versatile verb. You should be a reviewer, Mark, as you have such clear notions of what IS and what IS NOT a review, and yet such idiosyncratic interpretations of one of the simplest words in the English language.

Good job nobody had the audacity to look at what that crazy dude Picasso did with a paintbrush and call it, er ‘painting’, then? Because it wasn’t like any painting that had gone before, and thus should have been called something else. I don’t know what - head-scraping, nose-triangulating, or maybe canvas-wasting. But not painting.

Posted by Sophie on May 10th, 2004 at 1:04 pm

Let’s take this visual art analogy and run with it:

An abstract expressionist splurge is not the *same* as a Constable haywain. Yet both are still ‘painting’.

A Miss Amp article is not the same as an Alexis Petridis article. Yet both are still ‘music journalism’.

Of course, I’d suggest reading that BSP review would be more like waltzing into Tate Britain to see the pretty Turner landscapes and getting his beautiful, angry, almost abstract seascapes instead. But not as beautiful.

Posted by Jim Cassius on May 10th, 2004 at 4:57 pm