Pterodactyls in Birds' Clothing

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What do you suppose would happen if somebody or some corporation manufactured a pop band, hyped it to the skies with TV/fast-food/action-figure tie-ins, business as usual - except the music sounded like Merzbow or Trout Mask Replica? Would this end up proving that the pop audience will buy anything given enough advertising, or would it be overwhelmingly and violently rejected?
Don't bother with the "Timbaland is producing more genuinely avant-garde music than Stockhausen ever did" argument, because those productions, however 'radical', are still built around discernible rhythmic patterns, and 'rhythym'(manifested as simplistic, repeated figures) is the one element that even rabid anti-essentialist margin walkers balk at losing.

― tarden, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Gut instinct tells me that it would be completely unsuccessful. My assumption has always been that the pop industry seeks to satisfy a *genuine appetite* for simple melodies & rhythms (rather than the reverse - the public's taste for simple pop stemming from it being the only thing they're offered).

― David, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Well, no corporation would ever use Merzbow or Trout Mask Replica to sell products, would they?

― Michael Bourke, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Well, after they used Psychic TV to peddle Volkswagens and Cannibal Corpse made an appearance in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, I initially thought that the advertising and entertainment industries could make anything palatable to the masses. Then I remembered that the P-TV song in question ("Roman P.") was pretty catchy and pop, and Ace Ventura is a comedy anyway so everyone I knew who wasn't keen to death metal just thought that they were a joke anyway (shit, no small # of death metal fans think Cannibal Corpse is a joke).

So I guess the answer to this thread's premise would be "no," a pre- fab group that sounds like Beefheart or Merzbow wouldn't reach Backstreet Boys heights of popularity.

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

At that level of inaccessibility, I can see it happening only as a one-shot never-to-be-reproduced novelty, a kind of look-how-weird-THAT-is fame, kind of like those Gregorian-chant monks from a few years ago. But I can see plenty of less willfully strange but still thought-of-as-too-weird-for-mainstream-exposure artists becoming popular with that kind of promotional push.

I like Tarden's Timbaland-vs-Stockhausen warning - you can be damn sure someone would have brought THAT one up.

― Patrick, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

It would matter HOW they hyped it, obviously: not just throw money, but be SMART (post-Popstars smart). If Zappa had thought to video the sessions to TMR, and maybe somhow to coax an aspect of Big Brotherdom to the extreme in-house tension (Van Vliet = most manipulative non- musical musical genius of all time) — esp. given fact that nothing Beefheart did is THAT out-of-the-box rhythm-wise, at least compared anyway to Xenakis/Karlheinz S./the Darmstadters generally...

And a camera on Stochausen, Cardew et al, as they put together Kontakte or Carré? Fantastic TV: with a one-off chart-smash to follow. Cliche alert: pop is abt personalities as much as music — give or take their impatience with the TV-eye (it'd have to be SECRET filming, obviously), these guys have MORE than enough "personality". Not true of all avant-garders, mind. Insert fave super-marginal bore here.

[Why exactly am I pissing away this brilliant high-concept Channel 4 hit of 2002 on ILM? Where's my filofax... ]

― mark s, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

ALSO:

Radiohead's unacceptable intrusion into the charts — if it gets to number one I shall have to LIKE it, and then where will we be — would in fact be fairly tolerable if (i) explained by, or at minimum (ii) accompanied by TV/fast-food/action-figure tie-ins...

― mark s, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

"pop is abt personalities as much as music" - and, as discussed on another thread recently, it's also abt certain agreed/dominant definitions of 'beauty'. Massive HYPE depends in part on the circulation/reinforcement of images of conventionally beautiful people who are "easy on the eye" - Van Vliet, Stockhausen, etc. only "beautiful on the inside".

― Andrew L, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

MORE BEAUTIFUL "ON THE OUTSIDE" TAKING SIDES:

Don Van Vliet vs Craig from Big Brother

The young Xenakis (complete with glass eye) vs Thom "Now That's What I Call Music 49" Yorke

Convention isn't manufactured [elsewhere], it's manufactured BY [hype]. Mere ordinary prettiness makes rubbish (longterm) TV, compared to vivid personality.

Gaby Roslin vs Graham Norton

― mark s, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

I dont know if the public will buy anything you shove at them, but I do think that many people like a band becuase they are hyped and get good reviews. They want to be "in the scene" so they just go ahead and like the album and band too. In fact, mayb ethe whole reason they like music is because someone told them too.

― Mike Hanley, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

ALSO:

*[Sorry, this is getting a bit DoomPatrol23: discussion of pterodactyls = catnip to mark s]*

John Cage was a TV star in Italy in the 50s, when he won a quiz show (thanks to his knowledge of mushrooms) (This is TRUE!!)

When he won — courtesy nail-biting heart-stopping last-second perfectly-timed final answer, so that the audience ERUPTED into Italian-style acclamation — he was allowed to play a couple of his compositions, "Water Music" and something else.

Of course, Cage WAS quite a looker, somewhat, young or old: but since Italian TV was the pioneer of modern trashy tits-are-it programming, I doubt this is much to the point (in fact, they referred to him as "Mr Frankenstein"). He was hugely entertaining, and that's what counted.

― mark s, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Mark S, yes I know abt Cage and his shrooms, but conditions in 1950s Italy v. different to now (of course.) Localised eccentricity vs. global marketing coordination and the standardisation of product - the commercially agreed use of the word 'aqua' to signify water in bottles, Marathon bars becoming Snickers bars, the general narrowing of body/face images in POP. Of course, there's always been a place for the 'different' on tv - de-sexed 'oddballs' like Patrick Moore, Magnus Pyke, Barbara Woodhouse - and I could possibly imagine Van Vliet presenting 'Watercolour Challenge' - but just can't see Beefheart lining up alongside Myleen and Kym. Or, to put it crudely, why didn't Nigel pick the fat ones?

― Andrew L, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

I think there's an awful lot of selective analysis going on here, and some rather weird leaps.

Nigel didn't pick the fat ones because he makes the SAME assumptions abt mass taste some of you guys seem to like making: that standardisation derives from the passivity of the VIEWER. Though actually of course some of the excitement came from the fact that he DID pick one of the "fat" ones, and she gambled — against his less thought-through gamble — that she cd hard-drive her personality-led popularity against any mere half-baked looks-convention he was appying by rote. One of the reasons "reality" TV = fly-on-the-wall took off in such a MAJOR way with audiences was the unscripted bolshiness of not- pretty joe public on camera. Kym grasped this quicker than Nigel: perhaps an age thing, perhaps a perspective thing (she's been a mere hungry viewer more recently than he has)

(his deal reminds me a bit of the Professional Standards rule which kept pre-Channel 4/MTV television style so static and narrow: he genuinely believes in old-fashioned levels of technical musicianship, and taste, and quality, and whatever... )

At least some of hear'say's pop-motion comes from the fact that they're NOT all cookie-cutter bland AS PEOPLE: we get in among their personal drama, and we root for them, why not? "People like what they like because they're told to": OK, I completely don't believe this, but insofar as it might have a smidge of truth, it's true AT EVERY LEVEL OF ARTISTIC AWARENESS AND SOPHISTICATION, not just K-tel 12-CD level. In fact, the only-faintly interested are less easy to gull than the wannabe-seen-to-be-passionate.

So was Italian TV in the 50s "better" than Brit TV today (or even Italian TV today): I doubt it. I would imagine it was far more bland, gutless, narrow, tedious and feeble than we today can POSSIBLY IMAGINE tolerating. Pop culture (as a whole) today is just NOT "more standardised" than it was in the 80s/70s/60s/50s/40s/30s/20s etc, boybands and Pokémon notwithstanding. I quite accept that Timbaland = Stockhausen won't cut it as an absolute or informed comparison; but to many a 50s Doris Day fan, the dff. wd be nugatory, frankly. Scary horrible noise = NOT POP.

"Quirkiness" = anti-standardisation has ALWAYS been a motor of novelty. And hey, the richer "pop" genres (= rock; = hiphop) first broke through as novelties, despised by established un-pop semi-pop whatever (swing in the 50s; indie in the 80s) as mere hyped rubbish. But the cool think is, the hype bit was true: not an optional add-on, but the heart of the beast. Marginal, weird music BECAME the mainstream: and so — god help us — could Merzbow.

(Serious, non-argumentative question: Marathon is called Snickers worldwide because it saves on chocolate-wrapper costs – what's the equivalent to this in pop-terms?)

― mark s, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

> If Zappa had thought to video the sessions to TMR, and maybe somhow to coax an aspect of Big Brotherdom to the extreme in-house tension (Van Vliet = most manipulative non- musical musical genius of all time) — esp. given fact that nothing Beefheart did is THAT out-of- the-box rhythm-wise, at least compared anyway to Xenakis/Karlheinz S./the Darmstadters generally...

Well, since Zappa's own movie (200 Motels) was pretty bizarre - - and was about commercially successful as selling Italian Ices in Nome, Alaska during a blizzard -- I don't think that this idea would have come to anything.

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Idea = brilliant

Zappa as director = less so

― mark s, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Okay. Think of the question the reverse way -- if Keiji Haino was marketed like Duncan Sheik, how many hipsters would go from praising him to dismissing him as "bubblegum teenybopper skronk" and start decrying his shirtless longhair image as a gimmick for the teenage girls?

― Sterling Clover, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Compare and contrast: reactions to early output of Mogwai vs. Sigur Ros ?

― masonic boom, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Possibly of relevance re. marketing:

How many of the ppl reading this know who Merzbow is?

How many of them could talk about or even name other Japanese noisicians?

― Tom, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Me sir, I know! Well I know the name, is that enough?

― DG, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

I was listening to Merzbow around 1984/5 in my "difficult music" phase, along with the likes of NWW, Attrition, various Third Mind label stuff. I would rather vote Tory than listen to Merzbow now, though.

― Dr. C, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Well, don't expect to enjoy your marathon night of passion with Dave M, then.

― mark s, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

John Peel once challenged Steve Wright to play Extreme Noise Terror on his afternoon Radio One show. Wrighty (did he have a proper nickname a la Hairy Cornflake - I forget) took great joy in following through with this, playing ENT tracks as some kind of novelty item. I think it became something of a regular item. Peel's side of the bargain was to play a Pet Shop Boys track on his show, but the big baby got round it by playing Electronic's 'Getting Away With It' instead.

― Nick, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

How many of the ppl reading this know who Merzbow is?

How many of them could talk about or even name other Japanese noisicians?

HA!! Me and Keith23, me old flatmate, used to listen to japanoise rekkids whilst watching "The Hitman & Her" several years ago. The one I remember was KK Null. We also used to listen to No Trend. The really sad thing is we weren't even stoners! (sigh)

x0x0

― Norman Fay, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

one year passes...

I listen to some of the more famous and easy-to-find noisicians. Otomo Yoshihide, MASONNA, Merzbow, Aube. No noise has ever really made me physically ill like Trout Mask Replica has. That record just destroys me. Could you sell Merzbow? No. This I know for a fact. People can't hum it the wrong way. Most people listen to noise and try to associate it with something physical or something they recognise. Trout Mask could be a novelty thing for about a week. People don't have that much attention when it comes to sound.

― Phylo Brag, Sunday, 16 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

four months pass...

pop is called pop because lots of people like it. its simple, its fun.

and the tunes are great too.

trout mask replica sounds to me like somebody trying a little bit too hard.

― alistair, Friday, 8 November 2002 16:17 (twenty-three years ago)

Alec Empire took a good swing at it. Too military an approach, though.

― matt riedl (veal), Friday, 8 November 2002 21:26 (twenty-three years ago)

nine months pass...

grebt thread title. i have nothing else to add

― kephm, Monday, 25 August 2003 16:49 (twenty-two years ago)

seven months pass...

I wanted to impresario an exactly same project called Britney's Peers

― autovac (autovac), Monday, 19 April 2004 21:34 (twenty-two years ago)

nah, you're talking about Will Oldham aren't you... ;-)

― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 19 April 2004 23:30 (twenty-two years ago)

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