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I like U2 about as much

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lopez
Apr 30 2005
10:24 pm

I don’t understand this “two worlds” theory. So we listen to certain music when we’re in the mood for it. What does this prove? Sometimes I decide not to listen to Hendrix because I’m in the mood for classical music. That doesn’t make Hendrix any less great or whatever. I don’t play U2 all the time either. There’s no two worlds. Music affects moods and is desired for its specific moods. But we’re talking more than mood here.

We’re talking about people’s taste. Taste is more than just what you’re in the mood for.

yes, i realize that i probably should have phrased this a little less abstractly. i used space’s quote as a jumping off point and i think that ended up muddying the argument in the long run. what i mean to say, and hopefully this makes more sense to you, is that there is a difference between LIKE and GOOD. most people walk around believeing that just because they like something it automatically makes that thing good. i talk to alot of people about these sorts of subjects so i know this to be true. of course this argument makes perfect sense in the context of a postmodern and therefore relativistic society. “what i like is what i like and good for me and what you like is what you like and good for you”. well i whole-heartedly reject this way of thinking, especially when it comes to music and art and i can’t see how any intelligent person could go along with such hogwash; especially when taken into account the garbage that is, was, and always will be embraced by the masses.

so when i said that i choose to live in a world of discerning. i simply meant that i believe there is great and terrible music that is qualified as such apart from whether anyone, including myself, happens to like it or not.

this being said, i am proposing that on my attemptedly un-biased scale of rock music, which ranges from great to terrible, U2 falls somewhere in the middle. therefore, mediocre.

For me, music is not split up into mood or technical excellence. In fact, if I hear a technically excellent piece of music that sucks, it puts me in a bad mood. A simple piece of music that is true and real is not operating on some technically excellent model, but it is technically excellent according to a different definition of technical excellence.

yes, i hear what your saying and i do agree to a certain extent. what i’m saying is that an artist (or band) who has mastered this more simple model of technical excellence along with a more musically complex model: shouldn’t this person (or band) be held in higher regard than one who is confined to a certain mode? the fact that you admit that there is more than one way to rock the house seems to almost require a ‘yes’.

For example, B.B. King has learned to communicate soulfulness as technique. He knows the proper technique to evoke a certain mood. Technique is not divorced from mood.

this is true, but due to his limits of skill, for whatever reason, he is unable to work with the same size musical pallette as say a jimmy page or an alvin lee. these guys possess the ability to evoke a mood in either a simple mode or crazy guitar hero mode because they not only have soul, but greater technique. that is excellence and that is admirable and i just don’t understand why an artist such as this would not be held in higher regard than another without such abilities.

it would be one thing if i thought U2 could play a complex song such as yes’ “long distance run-around” or anything by ELP (besides ‘lucky man’), but chose not to due to differing artistic views, but i don’t. i feel U2 is limited as to what they can do musically by their levels of technical skill and therefore fall to a lower rung of musical greatness.