I know it when I hear it

I mentioned in a previous post that I used to dabble in the visual arts. I had a raw, fairly modest talent for drawing and painting that has long since atrophied into insignificance. Most of blame for that lies with my utter lack of anything even vaguely resembling discipline and my total disdain for repetitive tasks, but the decisive factor that killed any interest I had in becoming an artist was the Drawing 101 class I took as a sophomore in college.

The class was taught by an MBA graduate student who had been an undergrad art major. It would have been just another somnabulatory three-credit cakewalk except for two things. One, the instructor had an insane fondness for R.E.M’s Out of Time, and had the CD on repeat for the entire semester. Prior to this I had no opinion of the band one way or another (although I thought “Radio Free Europe” was rather nice), but over the course of the ten week semester I grew to positively loathe Michael Stipe’s voice.

The second problem with the course was that the instructor set aside fifteen minutes per class for critiquing sessions, and every student was required to contribute their opinions about their classmates’ work. Now I fully understand the importance of peer review, having had my writing (and confidence) picked apart in many creative writing and playwriting classes. In those cases, however, the professors were highly experienced in that sort of activity, and were able to guide the proceedings with subtle, skillful hand, making sure that everyone stayed on target.

The woman teaching the drawing class possessed none of those undergrad wrangling skills, and each critiquing session turned into a community theater production of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Because it was an intro level class, there were more than a few non-artistic types who took the class because they thought it would be a fun way to earn graduation credits. The poor saps were mercilessly flayed alive by a vocal minority of asshole art majors with delusions of grandeur: “And what, exactly, is this blobby thing here supposed to be?” It was awful to watch, and because attendance factored into one’s final grade, impossible to avoid.

I ended up skirting the issue of my own participation by saying the same thing about every drawing I was supposed to comment on, “Nice use of shading.” The instructor thought I was being a wiseass, but the truth is I registered for Drawing 101, not Advanced Techniques for Destroying Self-Esteem. In an upper level course, where everyone has a shared commitment to the craft and a sense of the effort involved, an open group critiquing process is an invaluable and frequently humbling learning experience. When conducted by an assortment of arrogant and insecure freshmen and sophomores, it inevitable degenerates into a wilding. There’s an inversely proportional relationship in these things where the folks with the biggest mouths end up having the least substance to offer.

Since I put my contact info in the sidebar, I’ve been getting emails from performers asking me to review their material here. I have to say I’m very flattered by this; it gives me an inflated sense of relevance that I’m not certain I truly deserve. The rub is that anyone familiar with what I’ve been doing here over the past ten months should understand that this is not a music blog per se, but rather an ongoing, rambling exploration of my whims and obsessions, which just happens to feature musical annotations. I’m not comfortable in the role of critic, as it is traditionally understood. It makes me feel like I’m back in the Drawing 101 studio, being asked to deliver a sanctioned ego blow to some poor Organic Chem major who thought it would be fun to take an art class.

I do make the effort to listen to all the music sent my way, and evangelize offsite when I think the sound fits the tastes of friends and other acquaintances, but the nature of this site and of my thought processes precludes reviews in the traditional sense. Should one of the tracks happen to fit into a theme post about Arion, Lord of Atlantis, that’s another matter.

Plushgun – Just Impolite (http://www.myspace.com/plushgun) – This is one of the tracks submitted to me for review, and I’ve developed a real fondness for it. It reminds me a lot of something from the soundtrack to one of the lesser known 80’s teen movies, which is a good thing. (I can’t tell you how many of those old soundtrack LP’s I’ve hunted down for the sake of a single, otherwise unavailable song.) Individual mileage may vary depending on one’s own brand pop sensibility, but I think it holds a good deal of promise and I’m interested in hearing the band’s follow-up efforts.

…and now back to our regular scheduled randomness:

Desperate Bicycles – The Medium Was Tedium (from a 1977 single) – Sloppy early British punk rock recorded on the slimmest of budgets. It’s from a subgenre that would later be termed “DIY” or “messthetics” (taken from Scritti Politti, who pioneered the aesthetic style before morphing into a mainstream pop act).