is / isn't

As long as the Yes and related thread has gone on for so long, one thing bothers me:

"x is the best rock album."
"x is the best rock song."

If one replaces "rock" with "classical", the inanity of it all seems somewhat clear: "rock" is not one thing. Comparing a Yes album with one by PIL, Black Flag, the Ramones, the Clash, etc. just isn't going to work.

This branch of music has been around long enough, has developed such an enormously diverse styles and contexts that I - speaking probably just for myself - have a hard time singling out one song or album. The best maybe one could say about a Yes album would be that it was (ITHO) the best art-rock or prog-rock album.

I happened to pick up a mag called "Grooves - Experimental Electronic Music" because it had an article on a group I like. The experience was similar to picking up some skateboard mags back when I was shopping for a longboard - an entirely different culture, with a huge amount of resources, people, and product.

That's how this was; I couldn't believe the number of labels, 'artists', scenes, etc. Not to mention the vast array of sub-genre labels used for the music many of these people create. Even though I'm not *totally* out of the loop, the panorama is pretty amazing.

Yeah, probably a lot of it is crud. But it is out there, and there is an audience and people actively engaged in it. And the bulk of it appears to have been spawned by rock and roll, not by IRCAM or Stockhausen!

It's a world out there...

Cheers,
Jon

>Black Flag, the Ramones,

now yer talkin! :-)

Dante