Too schlocky?

Not even the Maverick had the gumption to post a link to a song by Fabian Forte. Nothing too schlocky for this place, however, so here is Gonna Make You Mine.  (Filed under 'kitsch').

Pinterest

I found this website a bit troublesome.  It's a website, apparently used mostly by women.  It is mostly about cooking, clothes and children.  Why?  Is there some fundamental biological distinction between men and women?  Or is it that patriarchal domination, or the black magic of false consciousness forces women into such things?

Or do they like them at all?  Most women I know don't really like cooking.  My wife doesn't, nor does a friend of mine who goes home and lies on the sofa with a glass of wine while her husband operates in the kitchen.  Clothes are for people under 30, of both sexes.  As for children, these are a biological necessity.

I was more disturbed by the horrible cute kitsch of the whole site.

Bad music: you are on hold

I searched YouTube for examples of the sort of music you hear when you are put 'on hold' but could find nothing much except this spoof.  In any case, well worth it for a laugh and the music is an authentic example of the genre.

Voicemail music is the purest example of music that is essentially and per se bad.  It's not merely indifferent music to which naff words have been set.  Nor is it music which has been made extra bad by a horrible video.  Nor essentially good music which has been contaminated by the setting or arrangement (Barry Manilow's arrangement and setting of Chopin's Prelude XX for example).  No, it is music which is essentially horrible.   If there is a Platonic heaven that contains the uncontaminated essence of the Beautiful, there must also be a Platonic musical hell in which this stuff all goes.

I have no answers, as usual, to the philosophical and musicological question of why voicemail is bad, or even the particular tonal or harmonic features that make it instantly recognisable as being 'on hold'.  Over to the experts.

Bad music: pan pipes

I was passing the charity shop when I noticed a six-pack of CDs, still in their box. Compilations of Elton John, the Bee Gees, The Carpenters and so on.  As if that wasn't enough, these were all covers, on pan pipes.  Pan pipes is a big subject, and there is little time here.  But here is "How deep is your love", unfortunately no description available on YouTube, it is so bad.  But a massive 3,000 plus views, for all that.

Bad music: so boot if at all

Not that bad, actually, but a necessarily preliminary if we are to tackle the difficult subject of jazz rock.  Here is Kahimi Karie singing Good Morning World.  I first heard this in 1995 somewhere over the Atlantic, and was intrigued by the sampling from 1960s Soft Machine.

Friday night is bad music night

Following the unexpected success of my last music post, I investigated the attic and found enough vinyl and shellac to justify a regular weekly slot.  That is, bad music.  Maverick has a slot for good music.  Why discriminate?

Some ground rules.  We should try and avoid the obvious, for too much has been written about that.  E.g. one commenter wrote last week "in my personal view there is no aspect of this song which is not bad", and he (or she) is absolutely right.  But a little too obvious.  Likewise, practically anything from the Eurovision song contest.  Or this, which is infamously bad, but not in a way that is news to anyone.

No.  We must explore music which has seeds of badness, or which is clearly bad, but whose toxic characterisation eludes us.  We must explore the world of Youtube of 200 views or less, or (better) the world of music that has not even reached Youtube. 

We must explore even the fantastically popular, and I want to start with the other one our commenter suggested was much better, namely this. 65 million people watched it.

Is it bad?  If it is bad, why?  I don't know. It is manifest that something is badly wrong with it.  I had forgotten, or never noticed, it was the Black Eyed Peas who made it, and now I think of them differently.  In the way that, when someone years ago suggested that all wine tastes faintly of vinegar, I realised that all wine really does taste faintly of vinegar.

For more vinegar, here is Alanis' version which gets us closer to why it is horrible, but without any precise, definitive answer that would be philosophically satisfying.

Can any music be really bad?

I have a broad musical taste and there is no music that I entirely dislike.  Often I have wondered whether there is any really bad, irredeemably bad music. Particularly when I found myself watching Last Night of the Proms yesterday evening.  But even there, is it irredeemable?

Remember that music exists to create certain thoughts and emotions in us, thoughts and emotions that would not necessarily be there without it.  Just as sexual desire is in some way beyond our control, in the way that Augustine complained about, so is the emotion created by music.  I cannot listen to this, for example, without emotion.  Yet what is it saying?  That God once visited England, and that we should fight both mentally and physically, with a sword, to establish some weird vision of England in this country? The thoughts are strange, but the music conspires with the words to make them temporarily acceptable.  (Also disturbing is the sight of Victoria Beckham struggling with the words, but that is something else).  If we have a problem with this, we have a problem with all music.  And since we don't have a problem with all music, clearly not, we don't have a problem with this.  Ergo, no music is totally problematic.

Last week I was wondering whether Mickey Gilley's version of "It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels" had finally got us there.  It is exceptionally bad, in fact so bad that there is no version of it on YouTube (ponder that for a moment).  But then the original version by Kitty Wells is tolerable, and the version by Patsy Cline brings us close to the sublime.

So forget the words - songs are just bad poetry redeemed by music.  Is there any music that is simply too bad to be saved?

Recognisably kitsch?

I recently finished Thomas Kulka’s interesting book on kitsch, where he takes a philosophical approach to the problem of defining kitsch. More about that later, perhaps. Until then, Vallicella has something about it here, with links.
Right now, I am wondering about Jack Vettriano. John Nicholson is auctioning some of his work next week – expect to pay between £60,000 and £100,000. Is it kitsch? One danger sign is that a significant number of hotels I have visited in the past five years have a Vettriano reproduction sitting somewhere. There is an interesting discussion here, with more danger signs. Practically every popular discussion of kitsch will involve one party asserting that “neither the Metropolitan nor MOMA have sunk so low as to be hanging X”, with the other party strenuously asserting stuff like “publicly funded art galleries [should not be] a pure platform for top-down “elite” education of the Masses” and “why are the elite curators presupposed to have better “prejudices” than the masses?” Another danger sign is “I know what I like”.

I don’t know about Vettriano. The main problem with kitsch is that it is not always obvious, during its period of popularity, that it is kitsch. It’s only, say, thirty or more years later that it becomes obviously and instantaneously recognisable for what it is.