The Logic Off Topic list

> Kool Musick wrote:

 > The first time I went to school in the UK, little nipper that I was and
> having freshly arrived 'from the colonies', my school-teacher -- also
> presumably an intelligent person -- said to me 'Ooooh, you DO speak English
> very well', and she then proceeded to seriously ask me if I had learned my
> 'beautiful English' 'on the plane, on the way over'. I ignored the question
> and presumed that one day I would meet an intelligent Brit.

Well, no arguments from me on that one (except on the all-embracing use of
'Brit', as we are a diverse collection of peoples within some small islands)
I won't apologise for my fellow countrymen/women as that's not my job, but I
spent more than 20 years living in a hugely diverse environment in South
London, with a fantastically wide selection of friends, neighbours and
colleagues from all over the planet and what you encountered was a pretty
sad, atavistic, backwoods outlook.  When I arrived in London from the
Northeast of England I did meet odd people who had never ventured more than
50 miles out of London, but then I also came from an area where people were
proud of never leaving! No meeting of minds there even on different
varieties of Englishness back in the 70s; but not the whole story by any
means.

I feel that the English (and here I consciously exclude the Scots as being
in many ways more internationally oriented in their culture; can't speak for
the Welsh, though Welsh nationalists have some interesting perspectives)
have made a little progress in the area of dealing with other cultures,
particuarly as a result of travel within Europe, settling of immigrant
communities in the UK and so on. It's a fact that many US citizens don't
have passports and never travel outside their own borders, so this will make
a difference. And no, I don't claim that the sheer fact of travelling abroad
will clear all prejudices and ignorance away, as our English football
hooligans will give the lie to that. What I do believe is true is that the
English are (slowly) developing a better sense of their place in the world
as a small, perhaps vulnerable nation amongst other small, perhaps
vulnerable nations, which should help us eventually ditch the last traces of
'imperial' attitudes.

>> As for sociology and the relevance of class to music business success, ...
>> ... for me what counts is personal skill, attitude and motivation,
> 
>> It is inevitable in
>> the music business that you go for the people that you know, as so much
>> relies on personal relationships.
> ... and ... just who would those people be, most likely?
> 
>> The people who have the technical and
>> personal skills _and_ bother to get to know the right people
> ... and ... who would those 'right people' be, most likely?
> 
>> _and_ manage to
>> get the strokes of luck make it,
> ... and ... just who would those people be, most likely?

>> and you can't apply the same procedures as
>> if you were hiring clerical staff for a government department.

> Totally and 100% agreed. And you'll get absolutely no quarrel from anyone
> at all about that.
> 
> But then again ... when you want to hire clerical staff, who would those
> people be, most likely?
> Presumably, they'd be a bunch of people who have the relevant technical and
> personal skills and who have _bothered_ to get to know the right people for
> that kind of a job ... and ... who would those people be, most likely?
> 
> ... and ... when you're looking for some new band members, who would those
> people be, most likely?
> Chances are that they'd not be the kinds of people who've spent their time
> developing skills to work in a clerical department, and chances are they're
> not from backgrounds where working in a governmental clerical department
> was regarded as a right-on life's ambition.

My apologies - I was obviously less than clear here, so let me attempt to
elucidate further. I confess to being baffled by someone bringing
sociological findings into the equation and I just thought it was wildly
irrelevant to anyone finding any degree of success in the music business.

Let's face it, if you want to get into a band, hook up with some dance music
producers, get a job in a studio, get your band's tracks to a DJ or an A & R
man you'll have to get out there and meet some people -call it networking,
chllin' with the right dudes, touting your arse about, whatever you like -
and have some good stuff to talk about and build a reputation on. My point
about the clerical thing was that this is how the right connections happen
and that people can't treat getting into a band or getting a band to a label
as if they were applying for a job with the Department of Social Security
and expect some illusory 'fair treatment' or 'equal opportunities', though
I've heard more than one unsuccessful muso grumble about this. You have to
do it for yourself and not wait for some magic helping hand from mummy and
daddy, the government or anyone else. You have to work on your professional
skills and technique and then you have to work on the technique of selling
yourself, which implies working on self-image and confidence. If you
consciously or unconsciously assign importance to class differences when
you're trying to get on you aren't helping yourself but tripping yourself
up. This isn't necessarily a matter of working-class musicians being daunted
by the establishment - Peter Gabriel apparently spent years being
embarrassed about not fitting in with some image of working class
right-onness he'd burdened himself with, before discarding it as he realised
it didn't matter one bit that he had come from a wealthy background.

Serious, committed musicians, in my experience, are more likely than other
sections of society to be open-minded and are usually keen to talk music to
anyone at the drop of a hat, whoever they are. I've known an awful lot of
diverse collaborations. One that instantly comes to mind is a pianist I
know, often doing very straight classical recitals but occasionally dabbling
in jazz, ever so public school posh, who got involved in a live drum &
bass/jazz venture with some very 'street' DJ type people - they were all
very pleased to be working with each other.

Tony Thompson

John Matthews said ...Tony Thompson also quite rightly ridiculed the class
idea- which is mostly irrelevant now.

Well, to be more precise, I was trying to suggest it is overplayed by _some_
Americans who really don't have a clue how the UK functions currently,
having apparently derived all their 'knowledge' of us from old movies which
were often made by Americans in America.  My brother has been  resident in
the US for more than 20 years, loves it and has raised 2 sons there, but is
still amused by some American perceptions of the UK.  I have been astounded
at some stuff he has passed on  - for instance, he brought the family over
to stay with my parents in the Scottish Borders. drove out with them to a
local castle and took pictures of them in front of it, as one does. My
nephew took the resulting photo of himself in front of the castle to school
and showed it to a teacher (presumably an educated woman) who asked him very
seriously if that was his ancestral home! This is akin to suggesting that
Chicago is full of gangsters in spats and that those fine people who bring
us Logic Audio do it in those few free moments when they're not lying
blitzed in bierhalle in their lederhosen after a good few foaming steins.
And if you think that I'm exaggerating and this attitude doesn't exist, then
all you'd have to do is look for an example at that aparently popular
computer software and TV series, (with educational aspirations)  'Where in
the world is Carmen Something or other' which presented us with exactly that
foggy London full of Beefeaters nonsense. Then go read a few American books
where otherwide perfectly sensible authors make the all the British
characters spout stuff like 'I say! That chap's a deuced blighter, what?' To
be more serious, it is actually quite important not to view the rest of the
world as cartoon characters (let's face it, that's what portraying the US as
'The Great Satan' amounts to - could have come straight from the pages of a
Marvel comic) and all this stuff is quite insidious in subliminal terms.

As for sociology and the relevance of class to music business success, well,
you can count the beans, the heads and the ancestry all you want, but for me
what counts is personal skill, attitude and motivation, which you can
develop in all kinds of family environments. If I was looking for partners
for a project or people to employ for a session I would be thinking 'Can
this guy's playing cut it? How does he handle disagreements? Is he
reliable?' and I wouldn't care one small bag of monkey vomit what per capita
income his father had or the sort of school he went to. It is inevitable in
the music business that you go for the people that you know, as so much
relies on personal relationships. The people who have the technical and
personal skills _and_ bother to get to know the right people _and_ manage to
get the strokes of luck make it, and you can't apply the same procedures as
if you were hiring clerical staff for a government department.


Tony Thompson

Tony Thompdon wrote:

>I have been astounded
>at some stuff he has passed on  - for instance, he brought the family over
>to stay with my parents in the Scottish Borders. drove out with them to a
>local castle and took pictures of them in front of it, as one does. My
>nephew took the resulting photo of himself in front of the castle to school
>and showed it to a teacher (presumably an educated woman) who asked him very
>seriously if that was his ancestral home!

The first time I went to school in the UK, little nipper that I was and 
having freshly arrived 'from the colonies', my school-teacher -- also 
presumably an intelligent person -- said to me 'Ooooh, you DO speak English 
very well', and she then proceeded to seriously ask me if I had learned my 
'beautiful English' 'on the plane, on the way over'. I ignored the question 
and presumed that one day I would meet an intelligent Brit.


>As for sociology and the relevance of class to music business success, ...
>... for me what counts is personal skill, attitude and motivation,
<snip>
>If I was looking for partners for a project or people to employ for a session
>I would be thinking 'Can this guy's playing cut it? How does he handle 
>disagreements? Is he reliable?' and I wouldn't care one small bag of 
>monkey vomit what per capita income his father had or the sort of school 
>he went to.

Good choice of criteria. Smart moves. Intelligent decision-making.
Neither I nor anyone else is seriously suggesting, not in the least, that 
you adopt any other strategy. Nobody is seriously suggesting that you do 
anything else.

However ... just look at what you say next ...

>It is inevitable in
>the music business that you go for the people that you know, as so much
>relies on personal relationships.
... and ... just who would those people be, most likely?

>The people who have the technical and
>personal skills _and_ bother to get to know the right people
... and ... who would those 'right people' be, most likely?

>  _and_ manage to
>get the strokes of luck make it,
... and ... just who would those people be, most likely?


>and you can't apply the same procedures as
>if you were hiring clerical staff for a government department.

Totally and 100% agreed. And you'll get absolutely no quarrel from anyone 
at all about that.

But then again ... when you want to hire clerical staff, who would those 
people be, most likely?
Presumably, they'd be a bunch of people who have the relevant technical and 
personal skills and who have _bothered_ to get to know the right people for 
that kind of a job ... and ... who would those people be, most likely?

... and ... when you're looking for some new band members, who would those 
people be, most likely?
Chances are that they'd not be the kinds of people who've spent their time 
developing skills to work in a clerical department, and chances are they're 
not from backgrounds where working in a governmental clerical department 
was regarded as a right-on life's ambition.

Kool Musick
Keep Musick Kool


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Tony Thompson wrote:

>I won't apologise for my fellow countrymen/women as that's not my job,
Not your job, agreed; and why should you anyway!!

>... I spent more than 20 years living in a hugely diverse environment in South
>London, with a fantastically wide selection of friends, neighbours and
>colleagues from all over the planet and what you encountered was a pretty
>sad, atavistic, backwoods outlook.
I am well aware that it was a sad atavistic and largely atypical outlook. 
It happened up in Derbyshire where I first lived ... then I moved down 
south aways and, like you did, met all sorts from all over.

>When I arrived in London from the
>Northeast of England I did meet odd people who had never ventured more than
>50 miles out of London,
Yeah. Met some of those too!

>but then I also came from an area where people were
>proud of never leaving!
Nowt like roots, nowt like home, ay!!

>No meeting of minds there even on different
>varieties of Englishness back in the 70s; but not the whole story by any
>means.
Fortunately not.

>I feel that the English (and here I consciously exclude the Scots as being
>in many ways more internationally oriented in their culture; can't speak for
>the Welsh, though Welsh nationalists have some interesting perspectives)
My wife is Scottish.

>have made a little progress in the area of dealing with other cultures,
Yes.

>It's a fact that many US citizens don't
>have passports and never travel outside their own borders, so this will make
>a difference.
Well ... the last time I commented on this I got in BIG trouble so please 
forgive me if I say nothing further!!

>And no, I don't claim that the sheer fact of travelling abroad
>will clear all prejudices and ignorance away,
No, but it helps

>as our English football hooligans will give the lie to that.
Well ... maybe it doesn't help QUITE as much as I thought, actually!!!!!!!!!!

>What I do believe is true is that the
>English are (slowly) developing a better sense of their place in the world
You mean apart from being the 51st state of the Union!! (That was a joke, OK!!)

>as a small, perhaps vulnerable nation amongst other small, perhaps
>vulnerable nations, which should help us eventually ditch the last traces of
>'imperial' attitudes.
Yeah ... lot of those around, still.

Kool wrote:
<snip>
 > > Chances are that they'd not be the kinds of people who've spent their time
> > developing skills to work in a clerical department, and chances are they're
> > not from backgrounds where working in a governmental clerical department
> > was regarded as a right-on life's ambition.

Tony wrote:
>My apologies - I was obviously less than clear here,
No ... you were pretty clear. It's just that we're talking about different 
things and a bit at cross-purposes. You keep rabbiting on about the 
practical day-to-day realities of being a successful working musician, and 
I keep talking general trends which make themselves felt over time and 
across the generations as forces in society work themselves out. That's 
pretty much about it, really.

>I confess to being baffled by someone bringing
>sociological findings into the equation and I just thought it was wildly
>irrelevant to anyone finding any degree of success in the music business.
As above, there's a big difference between talking general trends in 
society (which I was doing), and talking about the 'on the ground 
experiences'. Put it this way ... when you're in a spy plane up in the sky 
you can see the woods, you can see the fields, and you can see the one 
gradually turning into the other. When you're down on the ground walking 
the dales and downs and doing what needs to be done to make a life, it's a 
bit harder to spot those trends and to see that the proportion of wild 
flowers present in each square foot of territory is gradually changing as 
the terrain is changing. The 'down on the ground' bloke can just keep 
gathering beautiful flowers. There's probably no shortage. And it really 
doesn't matter that much that the flowers around are gradually shifting in 
their relative densities per acre.

_I_ keep talking relative densities of blooms per acre distributed across 
the terrain while YOU keep talking the practical nitty gritty of what it 
takes to make and gather good pickable flowers. Don't see how one set of 
truths at these different scales in any way contradicts the other set. Does 
that make any better sense?!!

All I'm saying is that as a general trend, there tended to be, particularly 
25 years ago, a slightly lesser number of middle- and upper-middle class 
etc people in the biz. This means that, working on the ground as a 
professional muso, although the sane thing to do is ALWAYS always to pick 
the best muso for the job, the chances are very high indeed that their 
names are NOT like Jolyon Ponsonby-Smythe; and the chances are that you're 
never going to be invited round for tea, crumpets and claret. There are 
genuinely people who have tea and crumpets and drink claret and I've met 
some of them so please don't try to tell me that I'm exaggerating or making 
sweeping generalizations about Britains. Last time I checked sales of 
claret and crumpets were still pretty healthy, and I don't see tea going 
out of fashion either, OK?!

>Let's face it, if you want to get into a band, hook up with some dance music
>producers, get a job in a studio, get your band's tracks to a DJ or an A & R
>man you'll have to get out there and meet some people -call it networking,
>chllin' with the right dudes, touting your arse about, whatever you like -
>and have some good stuff to talk about and build a reputation on.
Absolutely, absolutely.

>My point about the clerical thing was that this is how the right 
>connections happen
Agreed.

>and that people can't treat getting into a band or getting a band to a label
>as if they were applying for a job with the Department of Social Security
>and expect some illusory 'fair treatment' or 'equal opportunities', though
>I've heard more than one unsuccessful muso grumble about this.
I didn't for one moment think you'd said that, and it's also not what I 
said. It's just a question of, when you're on that plane looking down and 
counting, what kinds of people are in the music biz and therefore what kind 
of person, without denying that they are very talented and work hard, 
you're likely to meet. Disproportionately greater number of people from the 
'lower' or economically challenged strata of society enter the music biz, 
and so chances are that when you meet a producer that's where he or she has 
come from, and that that's where their major contacts have come from too. 
On the ground, though, they're probably nothing but professional people 
interested in doing a good job.

>You have to
>do it for yourself and not wait for some magic helping hand from mummy and
>daddy, the government or anyone else.
I never said that, and I never for one moment though that's what you said 
either.

>You have to work on your professional
>skills and technique and then you have to work on the technique of selling
>yourself, which implies working on self-image and confidence.
True.

>If you
>consciously or unconsciously assign importance to class differences when
>you're trying to get on you aren't helping yourself but tripping yourself
>up.
Totally agreed.

>This isn't necessarily a matter of working-class musicians being daunted
>by the establishment -
Not many around in the music biz to daunt anybody.

>Peter Gabriel apparently spent years being
>embarrassed about not fitting in with some image of working class
>right-onness he'd burdened himself with, before discarding it as he realised
>it didn't matter one bit that he had come from a wealthy background.
And ... here's the point. WHY should he have regarded his posh background 
as some inherent kind of disadvantage to him unless he'd noticed that there 
weren't very many people like him and with his background in his business? 
The music business was a haven for those struggling to do better and end up 
better than they'd started, and music was to them a viable way to do this. 
I'm not saying they were consciously trying to climb the social scale ... 
I'm just saying that they were prepared to work very hard in the music 
business to achieve results and get a viable career.

As you say, once Peter Gabriel realized that people were judging him by 
solely by skills and his results and the number of albums he could shift, 
and that that was also the best way to judge others, then he and everyone 
around him was home free.

But ... Peter Gabriel wouldn't have felt initially crippled by his 
realization -- would he -- unless he'd noticed the very unusualness of his 
position ... which was that very very few people from his native social 
stratum in the fair isles actually bothered to enter the music business.

Please, Tony, that's really ALL I've ever said ... that very few 
toffy-nosed gits bother to look on the music business as a serious career. 
Comparatively speaking, there are greater numbers of people trying to make 
it in the music business who've come from the more economically deprived 
sectors of Britain. This is because given where they start from the music 
business is a genuine and realistic way to get somewhere in life when you 
look at the hard work that's required to achieve it. Being a fireman or a 
Cowley car factory worker's hard work too, and compared to that the music 
business is definitely attractive to some given those particular 
alternatives. I have never denied, not for one second, that without total 
dedication and professionalism, and without making the right contacts, you 
won't get anywhere in the business. But ... if you've got a genuine 
opportunity to be a High Court Circuit judge then the chances of making 
some serious money are greater if you follow that route because the music 
business, compared to that, is considerably more capricious and therefore 
the chances of earning serious money -- to that person -- are lower. Takes 
dedication and professionalism, of course, to be a High Court Circuit judge 
but it's pretty much a career choice that's not a serious option for the 
average person who enters the music business. I really can't for the life 
of me understand what's not blindingly obvious about that to tell you the 
truth, Tony.

I.m seriously beginning to think that perhaps at the bottom of this little 
exchange between us -- which is surely now getting rather pointless -- is 
maybe the fact that you've got me pegged as some ignorant American who 
desperately needs to be educated about the ways of the British. Well ... 
the Americans on this list are pretty clear by now that I ain't no American.

>Serious, committed musicians, in my experience, are more likely than other
>sections of society to be open-minded and are usually keen to talk music to
>anyone at the drop of a hat, whoever they are.
You got NO QUARREL from me there. People who are dedicated to music and 
choose to make it their career are dedicated to music and that's what they 
all have in common irrespective of class, background, religion and anything 
else.

>One that instantly comes to mind is a pianist I
>know, often doing very straight classical recitals but occasionally dabbling
>in jazz, ever so public school posh, who got involved in a live drum &
>bass/jazz venture with some very 'street' DJ type people - they were all
>very pleased to be working with each other.
And ... hopefully tomorrow there'll be a LOT more like that.
Life' and music's a lot better that way, I think you'll agree.

Kool Musick
Keep Musick Kool


_________________________________________________________
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>As for sociology and the relevance of class to music business success, well,
>you can count the beans, the heads and the ancestry all you want, but for me
>what counts is personal skill, attitude and motivation, which you can
>develop in all kinds of family environments. If I was looking for partners
>for a project or people to employ for a session I would be thinking 'Can
>this guy's playing cut it? How does he handle disagreements? Is he
>reliable?' and I wouldn't care one small bag of monkey vomit what per capita
>income his father had or the sort of school he went to. It is inevitable in
>the music business that you go for the people that you know, as so much
>relies on personal relationships. The people who have the technical and
>personal skills _and_ bother to get to know the right people _and_ manage to
>get the strokes of luck make it, and you can't apply the same procedures as
>if you were hiring clerical staff for a government department.

Yes sure but it is a fact that it is easier to communicate with 
people from your own cultural background.  By choice I mainly work 
with Japanese artists because I don't want to relegate myself to one 
of the cliques of the much too ghettoized foreign community here in 
Tokyo.  I get along just great with most of the Japanese people I 
work with and members of the various groups in the foreign community 
as well but it is always interesting for me when occasionally I do 
work with an American like myself and suddenly am reminded about all 
the unspoken understandings you have when you are dealing with 
someone from your own background.