No one responds to my music posts, but that's OK. In that way, they are my forays into "self-indulgence" - I do them because I want to - and I quite enjoy them, especially now as there is so much going on that is, frankly, worrisome.
Among the stupid things music critics throw around as a negative epithet is that this or that musician is "self-indulgent". The phrase, which I honestly profess not to understand in any negative way but, in fact, as a non-judgemental description of the activity of the best musicians, has become so common, musicians themselves use it. On Ken Burns' Jazz, Branford Marsalis calls Cecil Taylor's claim that listeners should practice before coming to one of his concerts "self-indulgent bullshit". In an interview recorded for a video-biography of the progressive rock band Yes, keyboardist Rick Wakeman admits that, during the bands prime years of the early 1970's, they probably did engage in "self-indulgence", and also calls the band "pompous in places". Jazz fusion keyboardist Jan Hammer, in liner notes to a re-issue of The Mahavishnu Orchestra's Birds of Fire LP says that the band members became "self-indulgent". I suppose I agree with Robert Fripp, who in the liner notes to one of the many releases and re-releases King Crimson has had over the past decade or so, wrote that self-indulgence is the cornerstone of creativity. Artists, whether painters, sculptures, writers, architects, or musicians, do what they do to please themselves, not others. The best art is honest art - art that comes from within, without any pretense or concern over acceptability or (God forbid) respectability.*
When you listen to Beethoven's fifth or sixth or ninth symphonies, you are listening to an artist thumbing his nose - or flipping the bird - to critics who, in the language of the day, called Beethoven "self-indulgent" for trying the patience of listeners with these long symphonies. There were conventions, there were rules, there was a structural order of melody, of harmony, of tempo, and of length, that Beethoven violated again and again.
In a different genre, but in a similar vein, when the Beatles produced
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, they broke all the rules - the three minute pop song, the clean break between songs, the four-piece rock band playing a variation of the 12-bar blues. Of course, they had already pushed certain boundaries - the clarinet solo on "When I'm 64" is one tha tpops to mind immediately - but this went beyond all those limits.
Similarly, The Who, with time to spare in recording an album at about the same time, wrote and arranged and recorded a 12-minute song, "A Quick One While He's Away". This stunning violation of all that was holy, combined with the fearlessness that was Pete Townsend, led, eventually, to the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia and the failed avante-garde combination of rock, life, performance, and audience interaction, Lifehouse (the remnants were released as, arguably, one of the ten or twenty best rock albums of all times, Who's Next; even failures can be spectacular. To my mind, there are no wrong notes or bad or slow moments on that entire LP, an achievement Townsend reached only one other time, on his solo album Empty Glass).
The ultimate self-indulgent rock criminals were, of course, the British prog-rockers, most epsecially Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Yes, and King Crimson. ELP, with their arrangements of contemporary art music; Yes, with their arrangements that pulled in everything from TV music to Brahms' concertos to Hindu spirituality; Crimson with their apocalyptic visionary lyrics, their fusion-inspired heavy metal doubling and even tripling, and their long group improvs at concerts were the essence of all that was unholy in prog to critics who yearned for the simplicity (one could argue, especially in light of some of their more, ahem, racially insensitive comments on the blues and early rock and roll, the primitivism) of the two-and-a-half-minute, electrified blues.
Part of this criticism comes from an ignorance of something quite simple - those who think they are gate-keepers in art, any art, usually insist that there are rules. Music has to be in 2, 4, or at most a variation of 3 to be danceable. Songs have to be no longer than 3:00, 4:00 at the maximum; a ten-minute song is just too taxing for the average listenter. The blues is the basis of great American dance music, and must never be deviated from. Unfortunately, none of these are rules or laws, but only conventions that can be observed or not at the whim of the individual artist. One can listen to Tarkus, Tales From Topographic Oceans, and Larks Tongue in Aspic and accept them on their own terms, or reject them because they don't conform to what you perceive "true" rock or rock-n-roll should be. The problem, however, lies in the critic's obstuseness, not in any alleged "sin of self-indulgence" (to qutoe a Procol Harum song) in the musician.
This is not to say that those musicians and groups who are pushing the boundaries are so self-absorbed (which is not the same thing as self-indulgent) that they have no desire to reach people. They do. There is a difference between really good sex and masturbation, even though some of the sensations are the same. In the same vein, there is a difference between practicing and performing; there is also a difference between performing for an eager audience and performing for an audience that does not understand what you are doing. "Entertainment" is the belief that is is encumbent upon the artist to provide something for an audience - not just the music, but all the surrounding context, mood, atmosphere, an understanding of the music itself. Entertainment is what lazy people look for when they go to a nightclub or concert hall. "I want to be entertained" is one of the silliest, most vapid statements I can imagine, and I doubt there are too many musicians our there who believe it is their job to entertain anybody. They are to provide an experience - something to make you laugh, cry, get aroused, be joyful. Hopefully, the experience will be so exhilirating, you will come back for more. And spread the word.
This brings me to my last little contemplation. "Popularity" is something I find it almost impossible to understand. Prince, R Kelly, Usher - these men sell millions of records, sell out concerts, make some of the most interesting, most demanding, most boundary-pushing music around, and are almost totally ignored by the mainstream music press (of course, racism might have something to do with that, you think?). Gwen Stefani, Aaliyah, and Janet Jackson make some of the most derivative, over-produced and under-performed albums and are followed everywhere. Rush, Dream Theater, Pantera, and Tool sell millions of records, sell out concert tours, and are , again, ignored by critics, or treated as pariahs. Sheryl Crowe and Tori Amos write the same album over and over again - and are treated as "original artists". Of course, the one love-affair I have never understood is the critics passion for David Bowie, as big a pretentious, self-absorbed, poser as one could find; one who has admitted, incidentally, that he doesn't give a damn about music, but is only in it for the money.
Those whom critics love, and those whom the fans love, are not always in line. Sometimes it takes decades for a band to be recognized as truly great; it was thirty years before Rolling Stone actually did an in-depth story on Yes, admitting that there might be one or two moments on one or two of their albums worth listening to. On the other hand, the critical lines in the sand seem so rigid, that one doubts whether or not they will ever understand that art is not about boundaries and definitions, and definitely not about being popular. It is about honesty - and the most honest assesment of any artist comes from the reception among those (a) who understand what that artist is up to; and (b) those influenced by that artist to take the next logical step, advancing the conversation, as it were. To my mind, then, Black Sabbath is much bigger, much more important than any single recording Lou Reed ever made.
*This is not to say that musicians do not yearn for an audience. It is the kind of audience that is the question; do they or do they not understand what is being done and take it on something like its own terms.
Virtual Tin Cup
