Simple can be great.

That's the main complaint I'm getting in the second round of feedback, that there's not enough there, the track employs auto-tune, a much more complicated record is superior and deserves attention!

Does this mean "Louie Louie" sucks, or "Satisfaction"?

Separate the art from the artisan.

Frank Stella couldn't draw but became a legendary abstract painter with his protractor series.

Art is about the conception.

Yeah, you could make a Jackson Pollock (who did know how to draw), but you never came up with the idea until AFTER the fact.

We lionize the innovator, the progenitor, not the imitator.

Furthermore, our educational system does not focus on blue sky/test the limits innovation, it teaches rules, to the book. This will teach you how to do it, but not how to COME UP WITH IT!

All you've got to know about "Move" is people hear it and have to play it again. Ask yourself why.

But that's too difficult for many, they need to analyze why it sucks. Which cracks me up completely. Just because it isn't done your way according to your precepts that means it can't possibly have any redeeming factors?

The people I hear most from are the musicians. They've slaved their lives away and they've never had a hit, so this simple song doesn't deserve success, furthermore, THEIRS DOES!

The idea...

It's much easier to listen to hit songs and try to imitate them.

As for the ability to play... Sure, there are virtuosos, but do you need to be a virtuoso to write a hit tune? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

It's hysterical. You've been practicing your instrument for decades, you've got a studio in your home, you've labored over your productions for days, if not weeks, and then these punks who only know how to play a computer keyboard come and steal your thunder, eat your lunch.

HOW FANTASTIC IS THAT?

Isn't that the ethos of punk?

Punk stripped it all down. Beat on the brat with a baseball bat? It was so simple and stupid and funny as to be great. The Ramones were all about conception. They wore leather jackets...Joey Ramone was about as dangerous as a flea, it was all posturing. And very few got it at first, only other musicians, primarily in England, who embraced the sound. Actually, it took DECADES for the masses to catch up with the Ramones, that's how far ahead of the game they were. Not because they were experts on their instruments, but because they used their BRAINS!

I see the same thing in the literary world. People from the Iowa Workshop rewrite their tomes ad infinitum to the point they're too dense and oftentimes barely comprehensible, putting style before substance. And then someone comes along who focuses on plot instead of style and triumphs commercially AND THEY CAN'T HANDLE IT! They go back to their teaching jobs laying bogus information upon another generation of soon to be failed writers.

Your experience is a jumping off point, not the end all and be all.

Three chords and a beat? That used to be enough, but not anymore. Hell, you may only need one chord...and that can be INNOVATIVE!

But the arbiters of truth keep telling us otherwise. They sit in judgment.

This is why the Grammys are so bogus. They can't recognize true genius and have missed the mark ad infinitum. Because the people judging...they've paid their dues but real stars don't have time to sit and debate records, they're too busy making them!

Everybody who comes along and does it some way new is excoriated by the old. But it's the old who are missing the point. The cheese has been moved. You can stay in the past, but don't try to bring the rest of us back there with you, which is what you want.

The lame movie directors who insist their productions must be seen in theatres. Why? The public has moved on, the home experience is much better, it's on demand, there are no interruptions and people have giant screens with great resolution.

Kind of like the music business that tried to convince us CDs were better than MP3s.

And then we heard for years that the MP3's sound sucked. So now even better than CD quality is streamable and how many people care? ALMOST NONE! Turns out most people weren't clamoring for better sound, just those lost in the past.

I'm not saying sound is not important, I'm just saying if your argument is based on protecting the past...

As for musical training, skill... I hate to tell you, they're not necessary for successful art, for that you need an idea. Hell, you might even get other people to execute it!

But sour grapes rules.

I hear it myself. The main criticism of my writing isn't that I'm wrong, BUT I'M A WORTHLESS PIECE OF SH*T WHO SHOULD STOP WRITING AND CRAWL BACK INTO THE HOLE THAT I CAME OUT OF.

So their principles can rule.

But I've earned my place in the firmament whereas they've never tried to play. Why don't you start writing. Oh, you can talk, but everybody can. Writing so people will read it, have a reaction to it? That's much harder. And the day you start is not the day you're great.

But they criticize the writing too. It's not in the proper style.

Meanwhile, I'm laughing ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK!

Which some of the complainers work at. They didn't take the road less traveled, they didn't want to go into the great unknown, and they don't want you to either.

The public is hungry for the new and different. And if you think that it's going to look and sound exactly like the past...

You've got another think coming!


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