Eminem v. Pynchon

[Otto]

All your children are poor unfortunate victims of systems beyond their
control.
A plague upon your ignorance & the gray despair of your ugly life. (.)
All your children are poor unfortunate victims of lies you believe.
A plague upon your ignorance that keeps the young from the truth they
deserve.
- Frank Zappa, (What's the Ugliest part of Your Body, from: "We're only in
it for the Money", 1968, who had, according to some record company guy "no
commercial potential".

Eminem, Zappa, Pynchon - good names to think and discuss about arts & money.

>Doug Millison
> The kind of global, multinational, highly integrated and synergistic media
> empires that create and profit from the likes of Eminem did not exist in
the
> 60s or 70s

That's an error. CBS, EMI, Warner and others were there and it was not
always a pleasure "working for MCA" (Lynyrd Skynyrd).

> and thus couldn't benefit Zappa, no matter what his motives or
> desires might have been. When other rock and roll acts were shamelessly
> commercial and used the marketing methods available to them in that era,
> Zappa generally avoided that sort of thing.  Z certainly managed to deploy
a
> career that rewarded him well financially -- I don't know enough about Z
to
> know if he consciously crafted an image as iconoclastic, non-commercial
> artist, or if that image flowed naturally from who he was and what he did.

In the seventies we had it simple, we could tell "commercial" from
"progressive" groups, but this was more a difference in musical style than
in capitalist behaviour -- we knew that the "progressive" groups had to sell
themselves to the company too. Z has always been complaining about not being
played on the radio and "progressive" radio-stations over here in E.
advertised: We play long songs (which was important 'cause the ordinary pop
song was only allowed to be 3 minutes) of Zappa, Chikago Transit Authority,
The Flock etc.

> Eminem, according to one article I read (in the Wall Street Journal or
some
> such) and his corporate backers apparently made a conscious move into the
> kind of epater les bourgeois rap he now purveys after earlier products in
a
> different style failed to sell -- E's fans can fill in the details, I'm
> sure. That Pynchon avoids the sort of calculated commercialism that
promotes
> Eminem and his ilk seems obvious.
>

 I have to admit that I first listened to the Marshall Mathers album after
it had been recommended to me here on p-list, and I still prefer Dr. Dre and
the German rappers Kai mentioned* & I wouldn't try to bring him in one line
with Pynchon. But I consider Rap in general as very important to the kids
who have decided to step beyond the foolery of today's media circus.
Let them decide themselves and don't try to tell them what's art and what's
not. Rap is an important style in the line on development of Black Music in
America and elsewhere: Jazz, Blues, Swing, Rhythm&Blues, Funk, Phillysound,
Break Dance, Hip Hop etc.

I don't see the list of musical styles on pp. 261-265 of M&D as a definite
list, so Rap doesn't have to be included to be in the context.

Pynchon and Zappa are/were successful without being openly commercial due to
their artistic potential.
Eminem, I guess, can do what he likes in the future, can put out as many
records his artistic imagination provides & doesn't have to sell himself to
any record company or MTV or whatever. This is a big obligation and I'm
curious how he will work it out.

Otto

*the song from the German rapper who doesn't want to be in the brains of
"Bild-Zeitung"-readers really is a goody.