Frank Zappa would be ashamed

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SquishypuffDave



Gender: Male
Age: 33
Australia

  • #1
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 09:52
  • Post subject: Frank Zappa would be ashamed
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that writing about music is a ridiculous enterprise and can only end in madness. Why then do we persist in this delusion? A week ago the heart of this forum was ripped from its chest, leaving us only with the unholy dregs of music discussion. Unique and substantive dialogues are but needles in this haystack of drivel. We are fools dancing about architecture.
Seriously though, I've rarely ever posted in this subforum. The lounge was pretty much the only reason I've been frequenting the site for the last few years. Not sure whether I should wait for it to come back or just leave.

What are your thoughts on the futility of music discussion?
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Norman Bates



Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Paris, France
France

  • #2
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 10:06
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What about recs and advice?
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drakonium
coucou



Location: More than one
France

  • #3
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 10:17
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What about the first 30 songs to come up on your mp3 on random?
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Guest





  • #4
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 11:08
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Eh, the Lounge was regularly the most interesting subforum on BEA, the place where everybody could get creative and be themselves. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a thread as much and as consistently as the 'BEA users as characters from ________' thread, and it gave everybody a (much needed) place to talk about life outside of what album we're listening to right now. That said, the Music forum was still always my favourite. I understand why some may think writing about music is a futile exercise, especially when compared to actually listening to it, but I still think such a huge part of our lives is ripe for discussion. We all have our own opinions on pretty much everything, even music we've never heard, and to see people write passionately about their favourite (or least favourite) musical subjects still lights up my day. Maybe I'm just a boring bastard, but I genuinely love reading about music. If I were forced to list my favourite books of all-time, a very (un)healthy proportion of them would be books about music, and I don't mean biographies and autobiographies. I mean books about music scenes, books full of music criticism, books in which I can read (probably unnecessarily) elaborate recommendations and put-downs. I do think this forum can be a bit of dirge at times, especially when you have people like [name redacted for legal reasons] whose ability (or, god forbid, willingness) to talk about music extends no further than, "this part was good, that part was not so good", or people who just shout at walls ("look at my chart, it has two new albums"; "my top ten favourite songs ever are..."; "Best Track: Impression of J Temperance" (props to anybody who knew which album I was talking about without having to Google it)), but when it springs into life it is still the best source for impassioned and informed musical discussion I've found anywhere on the internet. I get more recommendations from this website than from anywhere else, and it isn't from looking at people's charts - it's from seeing what people have to say about those albums on the forums. Sure, the scope of discussion here can be limited (in a way that it never really was in the Lounge), but it still remains a place where I learn something new every time I log on. So yeah, music discussion probably is pretty futile, but then so is small-scale political discussion if you don't intend to act on it. You get out of it what you want to, if you're willing to. And yes, for every decent post there three pages of selfish, largely ignored lists and one-sentence summaries of albums that really deserve more (I'm as guilty of this as anybody), but that one decent post makes it all worth it (for me, anyway). I'm a music geek, and I enjoy reading about music. In real life I spend a lot of time discussing and listening to music, and many of those recommendations are taken from this forum. I mean, I'd rather have the Lounge back than have it not there. Much rather. But to dismiss the Music forum as a ridiculous exercise in futility is to belie the point of even being here. And, don't forget, the Lounge had its share of drivel too. So mourn for the Lounge, but don't drag the Music forum through the mud in the process. It's still the best of its kind that I've come across, and I'm glad it exists (even if that is the definition of damning with faint praise).
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drakonium
coucou



Location: More than one
France

  • #5
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 11:57
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I agree with pretty much everything of this ^ (except the BEA users as... has never been a favorite, though I do enjoy it too), whether I can relate to it or not. That said, I had once signed up on a forum which subject stopped interesting me a few months later, yet I kept coming back to it just for its lounge, so I can definitely see where Squishy is coming from. I'm not sure how music could stop interesting you, though, so I guess I don't totally get it either.

I just wanted to talk about the writing ability nezzle mentioned. I don't know who I'm speaking for, possibly just me, but as a non-English speaker, I find writing a simple sentence here very demanding intellectually. Writing in your native language is not something easy, especially about arts, but doing it in a foreign one is really like being at school. I mean, typing this post is like taking a test. It's fucking hard. This often keeps me from posting as much or as often as I'd like to, as sometimes I'm just too tired to concentrate myself and write entire paragraphs in English. And even then the small amount of vocabulary I know makes it nearly impossible for me not to sound redundant (though luckily, French and English share many words, so I can't complain that much). So even if I'm certainly partial to that, I think blaming people's writing ability is a bit unfair, though I understand it wasn't a huge part of you post at all.

...I still never read NickVolos' Allmusic and Progarchives quotes, though Laughing I much prefer when he's talking about the albums in his own words.
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Guest





  • #6
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 12:12
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drakonium wrote:
blaming people's writing ability is a bit unfair


Yeah, true. And I would certainly never, ever think badly of somebody struggling to articulate what they mean in a language that isn't their first. But I think we're all capable of more than "this is good" (the native English speakers among us, at least). Like, just write how it makes you feel. Tell people what sort of vibe you get from the album. You can't expect everybody to know a host of musical vocabulary, or a catalogue of specific techniques used to achieve certain sounds, or a seemingly endless selection of obscure adjectives, or an entire library of other albums and artists which you can use to compare and contrast with whatever you happen to be talking about. But anything is better than "this is good". If you're a native English speaker, there really is no excuse for not coming up with something above and beyond "this is good".
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Mercury
Turn your back on the pay-you-back last call


Gender: Male
Location: St. Louis
United States

  • #7
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 12:44
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This thread is really good.
_________________
-Ryan

ONLY 4% of people can understand this chart! Come try!

My Fave Metal - you won't believe #5!!!
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rainingblood





  • #8
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 12:48
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Why is the lounge gone
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Defago
Your Most Favorite User


Gender: Male
Age: 31
Location: Lima
Peru

  • #9
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 13:09
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Talking about music is like talking about bugs in boxes.
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Saoirse





  • #10
  • Posted: 04/24/2014 13:18
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off-topic



anyways while this thread and any other lounge-lamenting thread will probably keep the lounge in solitary confinement for a little while longer, I do think it is interesting that the site's great "distraction" of sorts is starting to expose personal views on what's missing in the music discussion, so hopefully something fruitful comes out of it all though keeping the lounge closed until we, I guess, learn to "fix the problem" is a bit of an impossibility because whether or not the music forum is doing well (which mostly it is, even if discussion is a bit bare and trite at times) or not so well is entirely a subjective, personal observation; keeping it away so we can "focus on the music" is logically perfect because now all we have available is music discussion, but I don't think that's changed the course of discussion in the music forum too much but rather swept the problems of over-sharing and supposed user-hostility under the rug rather than really facing them head-on, though that approach of course didn't seem to solve any issues either
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