there was a point in the past few years where i started listening for different things in music.

back in high school, you know, in my tool and radiohead phase, i looked at music in this self serving way that had me believe that it was an artist's job to entertain me, and make noises and sing words and play riffs and drum fills that were interesting to <i>me</i>. and while i think all those things have their merits and require a certain amount of talent and an investment of a certain amount of time, when put into terms like that, that music is just reduced to being a fucking commodity. no different than anything else designed to appeal to the lowest common denomenator, like i dont know, shit in a lillian vernon catalog.

and then somewhere along the line, i came to the conclusion that any great piece of art has, at its very core, a great story and that any great artist is one that has honed his craft of accurately portraying their own world as they see it.

i think this is a big reason that enjoyed billy corgan's solo album despite that it was total shit. i actually think one of the most autobiographical things he's ever done, especially so considering the autobiography thing he published online for while. it's also part of the reason i've grown to appreciate jimi hendrix in a completely different way. as well as bob dylan, the mountain goats, sufjan, whoever. they are all fantastic fucking storytellers.

thinking about this kind of thing is what makes me secretly wish i'll never make it big in the music business.

i think this all is really obvious stuff, though. oh well. discuss.

it's the other way around for me. a little. i don't look at artists as these supreme beings exisiting for the purpose of entertaining me. artists i like just have ideas i never would have had and for a while i tried to incorporate that into my music. until i realized that everybody i've worked with and who would work with me was not willing to do any of this and so i resorted to treating listening to music as the ultimate bonus to life.

so on what grounds do you think you can say BC's album was complete crap?

i agree wholeheartedly of course hah, but i'm just curious. because the way you explain it, it seems like it would have to be labeled as a great work of art.

It's impossible to tell if an artist is being true to themselves ("autobiographical") or not unless you know them personally. It may just be all a faux. I can only judge music by what I like to listen to.

i really like the way you described the issue, and i have realized over the years that i appreciate more the artists that are great storytellers. dylan is one of the best in that respect because in every single lyric a vivid image forms in your mind and those kind of things get to your heart. there are also anecdotes about various songs, little bits of trivia that i remember and they make me like the songs even more - like the background noise in radiohead's 'how i made my millions'. really...i think that a true artist is someone who feels and naturally expresses himself/herself through their art...not somebody who wants to be in a band and tries to write songs 'about' stuff.

i was actually thinking about art and the creation process in general and i realized that for me at least the only 'decent' stuff has only come out of pain, which is a bit distressing, but not that uncommon, i guess. the first poem(s) i've ever written were just thoughts that flowed out in verses. i've never sat down and decided 'i'm going to write a poem, or a song right now on this particular subject'. everything just came out when it needed to. now, i really don't consider myself an artist, by any means, but i think that i'm allowed to express these views...

did you know the background noise in how i made my millions is his wife fixing meals.?

Rockin' Cherub and I are going to do a concept album inspired by the computer game Fallout.

what are we going to call it? i vote for "IGUANA-ON-A-STICK IS PEOPLE!!!"

i actually rather enjoyed cokemachinglow's objective/subjective articles

did you know the background noise in how i made my millions is his wife fixing meals.?

No I did not know that because it is his girlfriend doing the washing up not fixing meals God get it right :Stupid: :lock: :ancient: :dammit: :dead: :jimmy:

did you know the background noise in how i made my millions is his wife fixing meals.?
she's doing the dishes loser!!!!

edit: fuck

she's putting the groceries away. dumbasses.

No I did not know that because it is his girlfriend doing the washing up not fixing meals God get it right :Stupid: :lock: :ancient: :dammit: :dead: :jimmy:
why did you stop at six smilies. you could have put eight you know.

i'm terribly sorry i confronted you with this stupidity.

Eight would have been ostentatious.

Sometimes I think about how much the person making the song enjoys what they are doing. For some reason, I've been thinking a lot about how AC Newman must have felt when he wrote Bleeding Heart Show