I'm annoyed because I was saying something the other day about art and commerce, music specifically, I think something to do with Brian Eno, and now I can't remember what it was.
The first thing that comes to mind at the moment is Lewis Black. The other day on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart he was saying how Trump would be an ideal president for America because he can make you want to buy anything, even if you know it's just a turd with a bow on it. The thing about art is that it's not commerce, and it's not politics. It's supposed to be a realm where truth reigns, and selling things implies a definite bending of the truth. But wouldn't the parallel be that art bends reality in order to, in a way, sell itself? Is there not a sort of immaterial transaction taking place? The worlds of art and commerce might appear more closely linked if we look at them this way.
For this entry I choose to view Zappa as using his commercial skill to sell not an item but a worldview. Of course a major part of his career was packing this worldview into items: his albums. But he also used techniques which begin to seem strangely resonant with business and advertising. His registration booths at concerts are not unlike kiosks or free samples at malls. Putting up a banner at the back of the stage reading "WARNER BROS SUCKS" is similar to putting up a billboard. His movies sometimes seem like extended music videos, a major promotional tool for mainstream music.
I think I mentioned in another entry the sensitivity of the artist, and how he puts up defences to guard that sensitivity which I will postulate is his delicate artistic conscience. This form of commerce contains that conscience. Even if Zappa did try to sell you a turd with a bow on it, he wouldn't want you to buy it because you thought it was anything else. He'd want you to know not just in the back but in the very forefront of your mind that it is a turd with a bow on it, and to love it and want it precisely as is.
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