RECORDING ARTIST
Herrick Timothy
LONG BEEN RESOLVED
BUT HOLDEN IS PUTZY ELITIST CRITIC WHO HAS PUT DOWN BOB PLENTY OF TIMES. HE
CALLS DYLAN A CULTURAL DIETY, WHATEVER THE HECK THAT MEANS, BUT HE REFUSES TO
CALL HIM A GREAT ARTIST.
HOLDEN'S A DOPE.
They're Recording, but Are They Artists?
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
When Andy Warhol began painting Campbell's Soup cans nearly four decades
ago, it wasn't long before Pop Art became accepted as the Next Big Thing in
the world of fine arts. The newest development in a modernist tradition that
had already absorbed the shocks of Cubism, Dadaism and Abstract Expressionism,
Pop Art was quickly recognized as a movement ready made for museum catalogs,
history books and skyrocketing auction prices.
But if you turn the words Pop Art around and apply them to music, suddenly
you have a debate about cultural values and hierarchy, about entertainment and
art, that has never been fully resolved.
The heart of that debate is a dialogue about the esthetic worth of the
primitive versus the refined, an oral tradition versus a written one,
spontaneity versus craft, populist versus highbrow and European versus
American. Or as the rock critic Robert Christgau, a populist and leftist
intellectual, declared in an essay on Chuck Berry: "Unless we can somehow
recycle the concept of the great artist so that it supports Chuck Berry as
well as it does Marcel Proust, we might as well trash it altogether."
The music that is loosely defined as art-pop -- music as diverse as that of
Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson, Beck, Pavement and Duncan Sheik
-- doesn't have much to do with Berry's raw, euphoric synthesis of blues and
country music. But Berry's role as a founding father of rock-and-roll and a
maker of hybrids certainly paved the way for its development.
Generally speaking, the term art-pop refers to any pop style that
consciously aspires to the formal values of classical music and poetry. At the
same time, most art-pop is underwritten and marketed not by staid cultural
institutions but by commercially voracious record companies who tout even the
silliest, most juvenile acts as "recording artists."
All but the most stubbornly highbrow critics would probably agree that the
mingling of pop and classical has had a genuinely liberating influence on
music. But at what point does the convergence of so many musical streams muddy
the water so thoroughly that distinctions of quality begin to vanish in an
undifferentiated muck?
Many people would date the birth of art-pop to the mid-1960s when the
Beatles first recorded with a string quartet and producers like Phil Spector
and the Beach Boys' leader, Brian Wilson, brought a quasi-symphonic (or
"Wagnerian," as rock critics were fond of calling Spector's Wall of Sound
productions) textures to pop recording.
After the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" established the
so-called concept album as pop music's dominant format in 1967, rock bands of
every stripe churned out albums (and even "operas" like the Who's "Tommy")
that linked songs into suites and aspired to make grand artistic statements.
A bombastic, classically inflected post-Beatles art-rock flourished,
especially in England, whence came the Moody Blues; Pink Floyd; Emerson, Lake
and Palmer; Yes; Genesis; Electric Light Orchestra; Procol Harum, and other
bands.
Because of the influence of Bob Dylan and the Beats, North American art-pop
took a more literary path through folk music in the singer-songwriter movement
that produced Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen and Laura Nyro. Fusing
Beat and confessional poetry with assorted musical hybrids, these artists
chose the long-playing record instead of print as the medium for evoking a
generation's collective experience.
Dylan is today a certified cultural deity, while Ms. Mitchell immodestly
likes to compare her importance to that of Picasso and Van Gogh.
As the generational wars of the late 1960s and 70s cooled, older pop styles
were re-examined and canonized. Frank Sinatra, once viewed as a kitsch pop
crooner, is today exalted as a great American artist who invented "personal"
singing.
Four decades before the Beatles recorded "Yesterday," George Gershwin
aspired to write highbrow music with a populist pulse. Even earlier, Scott
Joplin's ragtime piano balanced a Mozartean order against the raunch of a New
Orleans brothel. Gershwin and Duke Ellington, who emerged from the worlds of
Broadway and jazz, have eclipsed Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein as
American musical patriarchs.
Vintage Broadway scores have been dusted off and "elevated" in recordings
featuring opera singers, and classically trained vocalists from Dawn Upshaw to
Bryn Terfel have applied their talents to albums of popular standards. For her
first solo album, the gifted Broadway mezzo-soprano Audra McDonald chose to
record songs by young composers whose work thoroughly blurs the line between
Broadway pop and classical art song.
To the diehard rock-and-rollers who championed punk rock's surge as a
purifying fire, the upward mobility of non-rock styles is no cause for
celebration, especially at a moment when rock has been commercially eclipsed
by hip-hop and country and eroded by a tentative swing revival.
The same advancing technology that played a crucial role in the birth of
rock with the near-simultaneous development of electric instruments, high
fidelity and the long-playing record has contributed to the music's decline.
By turning promotional materials into product, the music video undermined
rock's integrity, subsuming the music to the values of television.
In supplanting the LP, the compact disk, with its increased length, hastened
the demise of the concept album, which couldn't comfortably support a song
cycle longer than about 45 minutes. And as the world became more of a global
village, music with few ties to Europe or the United States further called
into question musical hierarchies both here and abroad.
Meanwhile, a younger generation, turning its back on its parents, chose
computers instead of music as its preferred mode of conversation.
Where a generation ago, rock critics and record companies announced the
arrival of a new "masterpiece" every month or two, mainstream pop has reverted
to the detached consumerist ethic of the pre-Beatles era. Britney Spears and
the Backstreet Boys rule, and audience loyalty to a new act rarely extends
beyond one or two records.
As for art-pop, the radio formats that sell records leave little room for
sounds that don't conform to strict niche-market formulas.
But each year, great claims are still made for one or another promising
performer. This year's recipient of hype is the talented pop-hip-hopper Lauryn
Hill, who has been described as having Roberta Flack's voice and Joni
Mitchell's songwriting gift. As enticing as that may sound, it's simply not
true in either department. Not yet, at least.
As for the anti-establishment cultural war led by rock-and-roll, it was won
hands down by rock in the mid-1970s. Beethoven and Proust have since rolled
over in their graves many times and told Tchaikovsky the news in several
languages.
But that victory is not without a certain irony. Yes, we now have a Rock-
and-Roll Hall of Fame and an entire cable television channel (VH1) devoted to
promoting the pantheon. But our musical cultural values have become so
relative that the Beatles, Dylan, Gershwin, Ellington, and Sinatra now rank
side by side in public esteem with the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Yanni,
Celine Dion, Neil Diamond and Garth Brooks.
For in today's musical climate, whatever you declare to be art must be art,
and forget persnickety snobs who think differently. Come to think of it, maybe
it is time to trash the concept of the great artist.
TBoneFrank
>ago, it wasn't long before Pop Art became accepted as the Next Big Thing in
>the world of fine arts.
Has anyone ever seen or heard any specifics about the painting Dylan got from
Andy Worhol's pad back in the 60's? I wonder if it's still hanging somewhere
in one of his houses.
TbF
Shiphour
>From: tbone...@aol.com (TBoneFrank)
>Date: 2/28/99 8:55 AM Eastern Standard Time
>Message-id: <19990228085541...@ng12.aol.com>
Turned out to be one of those "Gift of the Magi" things. He wanted to hang it
over his sofa, but he didn't have a sofa. So he traded the painting for one.
Then came the dawn....
Jack Regan
>THIS ARTICLE MAKES SOME GOOD POINTS, BUT IT'S AN OLD TOPIC AND I THINK IT HAS
>LONG BEEN RESOLVED
>
>BUT HOLDEN IS PUTZY ELITIST CRITIC WHO HAS PUT DOWN BOB PLENTY OF TIMES. HE
>CALLS DYLAN A CULTURAL DIETY, WHATEVER THE HECK THAT MEANS, BUT HE REFUSES TO
>CALL HIM A GREAT ARTIST.
>
>HOLDEN'S A DOPE.
>
Is there anybody currently writing about pop music for a major
newspaper or magazine for whom you have any respect?
stuart levitan
his death in 1986.
According to The Mansion on the Hill (Fred Goodman's excellent history of
the collision of rock and commerce), Warhol in 1965 pestered Dylan to appear
in a flick; Bob consented to a screen test, demanding demanded some kind of
payment. Warhol grudgingly let Bob and Bobby Neuwirth leave the Factory with
a lithograph -- a multiple image of Elvis Presley now known as Double Elvis.
But Bob didn't like it, and traded it to Grossman for his sofa. The print
was later assessed at Grossman's death at 250-400K.
TBoneFrank <tbone...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19990228085541...@ng12.aol.com...
>> When Andy Warhol began painting Campbell's Soup cans nearly four decades
>>ago, it wasn't long before Pop Art became accepted as the Next Big Thing
in
>>the world of fine arts.
>
>Has anyone ever seen or heard any specifics about the painting Dylan got
from
>Andy Worhol's pad back in the 60's? I wonder if it's still hanging
somewhere
>in one of his houses.
>
>TbF
jcClark or pvaAdamian
> Is there anybody currently writing about pop music for a major
> newspaper or magazine for whom you have any respect?
It used to be you could point to Robert Palmer (Deep Blues,
NY Times)... until he passed away.
Peter Guralnick doesn't work continuously for a particular
major newspaper/magazine.
Hard to think of anyone else. I would have liked to hear
Palmer's take on Holden's article. Perhaps he would have
turned the spotlight around and examined the origins,
elitism, and Euro-centrism of high art.
In the realm of music...
I love classical music, but... it has not embraced the
rhythmic (worldwide) evolution of this century.
IMO classical music needs to grow out of the 19th
century rhythmically the way jazz is starting to grow out of the
19th century harmonically.
On the other hand, outgrowing the cult of the Great Artist might
not be a bad idea... Unless we somehow need the aura
of Greatness in our lives. - Jay Clark
paul williams
Grossman for a couch that he admired, and that Grossman wound up selling the
painting for half a million bucks or something like that.