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If you don't care enough about a certain art form then you'll never search deep enough (and most of the times it's not even that deep) to find the good stuff. T

If you don't care enough about a certain art form then you'll never search deep enough (and most of the times it's not even that deep) to find the good stuff. This guy spent a few of his points talking about music. What does he listen to then? Is he passionate about music? Is he knowledgeable? Or does he just like music in general and listens to the radio and his Spotify library? Of course if you have a superficial interest you'll only get fed the mainstream bullshit. But is it seriously that difficult to peruse the cinema's pamphlet and choose some quirky movie near the bottom? Is it that difficult to peruse your radio spectrum and find a station that features more indie musicians? And how about doing some actual research on the internet once you find that quirky movie or that indie song? Maybe you search for the director or the singer, you discover a new genre, you find a forum somewhere and deep down the rabbit hole of incredible new stuff you go. This post screams Gell-Man amnesia to me, I'm sure that this guy is passionate about a topic and would cringe if I said that everything about his favorite passion is mainstream and indie content is disappearing.

cbfrench 4y ago
> What does he listen to then? Is he passionate about music? Is he knowledgeable? Or does he just like music in general and listens to the radio and his Spotify library? I mean, Ted Gioia is probably the foremost jazz critic and historian in the country, so I’d warrant that his listening is fairly broad, and he’s definitely knowledgeable. But it’s likely broadest only within that particular sphere. I’d absolutely trust his opinions about jazz. I’d moderately trust his opinions about music more generally (except, probably, for pop). And I’d only marginally trust his opinions on culture as a whole. I’m sure he’s generally “cultured,” but that doesn’t make one an astute critic, as this piece rather illustrates. The problem with the list of theses he’s produced is that he’s trying to parlay his expertise in a fairly sheltered part of culture into an expertise on culture generally. Some of his pronouncements aren’t entirely off-base; they’re just issued with a confidence that is probably unfounded. What’s weird is that, as a jazz critic, you’d think he’d be more in-tune with forms of culture outside the mainstream, since he spends most of his time thinking about one of them…

cbfrench 4y ago

> What does he listen to then? Is he passionate about music? Is he knowledgeable? Or does he just like music in general and listens to the radio and his Spotify library? I mean, Ted Gioia is probably the foremost jazz critic and historian in the country, so I’d warrant that his listening is fairly broad, and he’s definitely knowledgeable. But it’s likely broadest only within that particular sphere. I’d absolutely trust his opinions about jazz. I’d moderately trust his opinions about music more generally (except, probably, for pop). And I’d only marginally trust his opinions on culture as a whole. I’m sure he’s generally “cultured,” but that doesn’t make one an astute critic, as this piece rather illustrates. The problem with the list of theses he’s produced is that he’s trying to parlay his expertise in a fairly sheltered part of culture into an expertise on culture generally. Some of his pronouncements aren’t entirely off-base; they’re just issued with a confidence that is probably unfounded. What’s weird is that, as a jazz critic, you’d think he’d be more in-tune with forms of culture outside the mainstream, since he spends most of his time thinking about one of them…