My problem is with acts that are maintained solely by their image, like KISS. Would anyone give a shit about their mediocre hard rock tunes if they weren't glam-ed up kabuki rejects who love explosions? Would Lady Gaga be so "groundbreaking" if she didn't raid the nearest three costume stores for every public excursion? I doubt it.
edited 21st May '11 7:51:20 AM by KitsuneInferno
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt." - Some guy with a snazzy hat.![]()
Aww hell naw, you just edit ninja'd me by adding that bit about Lady Gaga to your post! Damn you sir! *Shakes fist*
But anyway - I like listening to music that I can be absorbed in, and the music I enjoy, I enjoy because it moves me and sends a tingle down my spine.
Now my image is one of being a bit of a hipster, and the image of the artists I like reflect that culture. People can tell me as much as they like that 'I only listen to that stuff because it's obscure', and that 'you only don't like mainstream stuff because it's popular', but I don't do this intentionally. If society has conditioned me to react to music that's obscure in a different way to music that's popular, well I guess that's just how social conditioning works. Just because I'm aware of it, doesn't mean I have to actively change the way my brain is wired in order to avoid being a product of society.
No matter how objective you think your being and how 'aware' you think you are of peer pressure, your taste in music is inevitably defined by your social context, and just because you know enough about social theory to be aware of how the image of an artist, as well as the image of ourselves that we project into society, defines what music we listen to, doesn't mean you can then 'use' this knowledge as a way of defending your taste in music as 'objective' or somehow better informed. You don't actively 'use' knowledge of social conditioning to your advantage. It just is. Deal with it, and like whatever you want.
edited 21st May '11 8:07:59 AM by Saeglopur
Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!^I can't tell if you're agreeing with me, or arguing that I can't possibly be as objective as I say I am. If the latter, I think you're seriously overthinking it. I know nothing about most artists beyond being names and words in the "artist" column of an mp3 folder. There's probably no genre I listen to more than any other, or any era.
edited 21st May '11 8:28:56 AM by scythemantis
bogleech.com for my writing, comics and cartoons.![]()
Yeah, I probably am overthinking it, it's what I do best
I was agreeing that image shouldn't be important. I was however making the point that it is impossible to claim that you do not consider it at all in the name of 'objectivity'. I know that's not what you were saying, but I know people who claim to have that highground, and I felt I had to make the point.
edited 21st May '11 8:56:48 AM by Saeglopur
Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!Gonna start off by saying KISS are fucking awesome and several of my favourite KISS songs were written at a time when the band were paint-free and devoid of their image (though it's true their appearance, performances and other non-musical aspects of the band are what made them big).
Now, image to me is a quality that has nothing to do with music itself but is still an important characteristic of the musicians that make it. For me, how a band looks is a natural factor in judging live performance, music videos and the like, but inconsequential when simply judging the sound of a piece of music. A good example for this would be the fact that I think Emperor (who did at least ditch their goofy armour and spikes) and Behemoth make awesome music but look very silly indeed (this goes for a lot of metal bands tbh, especially folk metal, black metal and power metal).
edited 21st May '11 9:19:30 AM by AsTheAnointed
Image is definitely something that can color my perception of the music. Knowing nothing about the artist is preferable.
This. Pretty much this, really.
"My life is my own" | If you want to contact me privately, please ask first on the forum.I'm probably more likely to check a band out if I like their image, but if I hear music I like I don't really give a shit about the image. I might decide not to listen to a musician who is, say, a neo-Nazi and convicted murderer, but in less extreme circumstances the music is far more important than the people who make it.
BTW, IJBM isn't quite dead
.
Frankly, I can't imagine a Norah Jones-type looking musician making Lady Gaga's music, which is probably why she chose to dress up like that in the first place; the image is a tool to justify making music that's obsessed with dancefloors, being a celebrity, foreign languages, religious symbols, etc.
So, while the music would still be great if she was just a singer/songwriter, I'd have a hard time reconciling a boring image with unboring music.
I don't know, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that for all those who say that Lady Gaga wouldn't be considered so "groundbreaking" if she didn't look weird, but if she didn't look weird then she probably wouldn't bother making that style of music anyway. They go hand-in-hand.
edited 21st May '11 1:25:36 PM by sca_punk
They're off the streets now, and back on the road on the riot trail. http://www.last.fm/user/sca_punkWell it's complicated. On the one hand I don't really care as long as the music is good - I like Bad Religion, who look like a group of our dads decided to form a band. On the other hand, when I'm seeing them live I like them to look "cool". I mean, call me superficial but I was a bit disillusioned when I saw Fear Factory last year and realized they are just a load of fat hairy guys who would probably look right at home drinking real ale and discussing world of warcraft in the corner of a pub somewhere.
True, but that doesn't stop them from being awesome IMO.
The 5 geek social fallacies. Know them well.Unsurprisingly, music is the most important aspect of music, but I don't deny that imagery can complement it quite well. One of the sadder things of the mp3 age is not flipping through the liner notes of an album you're listening to and viewing the artwork. Plus, image was integral to the development of many musical scenes (Mods, punks, goths etc).
Aww, did I hurt your widdle fee-fees?I don't mean "image" in the sense of physical appearance, but the kind of "image" including whatever they supposedly "stand for," the subculture they identify with, the mindset associated with their music, basically everything outside the sound of the songs alone.
edited 23rd May '11 9:43:01 AM by scythemantis
bogleech.com for my writing, comics and cartoons.Huh, difficult to say. The thing with me is that I mostly don't KNOW the image of bands, and I'm not interested, like I don't go and read anything about their backgrounds, I don't check the names of the band members, I don't know what they look like, and so on. When someone tell me that they are assholes who did bad things, I mostly don't care. But it's easy not caring, when one doesn't know.
If I do know and I don't like what I know, I will still listen to the music, but it will be a guilty pleasure, I will want to justify it, like, yeah, yeah I know but I like the music, what do you want me do to, I'm not supporting him by actually buying his stuff, and so on. In fact there lies one significant difference, I guess. Wether I will support them financially or not.
As the question was did you EVER - yes, in the past I did, at least once. I knew very little of music, but I remember being a snob nevertheless. Like saying "Tokio Hotel sucks" to a friend who likes them, although I never really listened to them. Just because of their image, because I knew they were supposed to be bad. Quite shaming and stupid. I don't fell the urge to do this any more.
If everything you try works, you aren't trying hard enoughNo. As long as the music is listenable, I don't care what they do, as long as they aren't criminals. I did stop listening to Chris Brown after he beat up Rihanna, though, just because I felt like I couldn't like the music of an abuser. Also, my mom is serious about celebrity images, so much so that she won't listen to Lady Gaga (too over the top, apparently) and R. Kelly (after he peed in that girl's mouth), so that may be why.

Most people I know have some strong opinions about where their music comes from. They might display an aversion to a song entirely because its artist is some sort of tool, douchebag or corporate puppet in their eyes. They might even recoil in disgust from their religious or societal views and never listen to them again.
For all I care, all music in the known universe could have been pooped out by a robot crab in the Earth's core. To me, music is absolutely nothing more than a product. My judgment of it has never, and cannot possibly, go beyond how enjoyable that particular stream of noises happen to be. I don't care who wrote it or why any more than I think about the politics of Colonel Sanders. I can't be unusual here.
This might be a repeat topic from me, I have almost no memory of anything I ever posted on T Vtropes before I went on an unintentional hiatus. I think my former troper life died with IJBM.
edited 21st May '11 7:38:09 AM by scythemantis
bogleech.com for my writing, comics and cartoons.