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Originally Posted by Everyneurotic
i was going to steer clear from this discussion from this thread but this really caught my eye.
by your logic, britney spears is a far better musician than sonic youth if your criteria is record selling.
why is merzbow the best selling noise artist? he has been doing it for twice as long as pretty much anyone active in the scene, tours like crazy, has a very defined and engaged self image, has been marketed to arty types, metalheads, goth/industrial fans, indie kids and punks the world over.
you can't compare someone who has been doing this since like the mid-70's with bands that started in the mid-90's or the 00's even.
is there a criteria to know if some noise music is better than other noise music? yes, it's whether it sounds good to people or not.
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Excellent. Fair points all. Except - I was suggesting that Merzbow's success invokes the notion of there being such a thing as 'good' and 'bad' noise; it does not suggest a corellation between record sales and quality of music. This is a miscegenation of dialogues. The difference is that noise has risen from being a marginal experimental concern to something that is fairly well known now (especially if Wolf Eyes and the like are garnering much more attention. I was talking about Merzbow's commercial success as being indicative of qualitative values within the noise audience's appreciation; I was not suggesting that Merzbow is inferior to Britney Spears. The criteria for discussing Spears are entirely removed from those with which we may discuss Merzbow.
I can compare Merzbow to Whitehouse, who have been going longer. Both are well known; one sells a hell of a lot more than the other.
There are more criteria than just 'whether it sounds good to people'. That is a total non-sequiter (sp?). Noise rejects harmony and melody in favour of volume dynamics and all that gash which I've already said.
[All that gash that I've already said... I'm actually telling myself to stop writing. Good work near-conscious]
*Edit - Truncated, please, go ahead. I've said a lot already, I wouldn't want to deprive someone else of the non-pleasure of re-stating things that have already been said in an increasingly frustrated manner.