Re: [ARSCLIST] CD versus Download was "All hail the analogue revolution..."

[Steven Barr <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Louis Armstrong was a steady smoker of marijuana. I think it makes
> little difference except when a jail sentence spoils a person's career.
> 
First, a comment on this...

Because drugs (even alcohol) affect the way one's mind percieves outside
stimuli (as near as I can recall and thus testify, anyway...!), music
which is played (and often created) under the influence of given drugs
is often intended for (and comprehensible to?) listeners in the same
condition. I can think of any number of examples from "the sixties,"
for example. This also has differing effects on different players
(and probably listeners)...for example, I have never noticed, even
in taped performances, any effect from alcohol until I'm near the
point of incoherence...but marijuana usually causes me to become
noticeably less competent (I often start involved strains which
quickly collapse musically when I can no longer recall exactly
what I had in mind!). OTOH, I have worked with a guitarist who
was not audibly affected by cannabis, but could be rendered
musically hopeless after a couple too many beers!

Second, I suspect there are any number of music lovers who
simply choose a genre and then feel obligated to like any
and everything that is nominally part of that genre...?!

Finally, I wonder if "western" music is finally reaching a
"point of no return," where virtually everything that can be
played (accepting the standard "givens" of such music) has
already BEEN played! I'm waiting for some new musical form,
as different as rock'n'roll was to bland fifties pop, or
swung to the sweet, Lombardo-ish dance sound of the early
thirties, or ragtime to the sentimental ballads of the
Victorian era...to anything that has gone before. So far,
all I have heard are old ideas relentlessly recycled.
But...IS there anything left that won't repeat what has
already been done?!

Steven C. Barr