Metamusic

UNDEFINITION

What I observed is that Dr. Herpes' notions cannot serve as the foundation of a definition. A definition of something as lacking certain characteristics (as Dr. Herpes puts it, as having non-triggers) is clearly indefensible. A boat does not have wheels, a telephone booth does not have wheels, therefore a telephone booth is a boat – not. We also need a definition of "inappropriate." For example, the bass playing on Inez and Charlie Foxx's "Hurt by Love" is musically inappropriate, to be sure, but is it metamusically inappropriate?

Let's consider UB40's "Red Red Wine." That was a cover of a re-interpretation (Tony Tribe's) of an "original" (Neil Diamond's). Is UB40's version metamusical? Tony Tribe's? Neil Diamond's? – just joking.

Incidentally, I heard Scotty's "Draw Your Brakes" in one of the Starbuck's at Yonge and St. Clair the other day. Is that metacultural or what?

Towards Defining Metamusic

My discomfort with the discovery of my WTHWT response to 78s was that it pointed to the inefficacy of WTHWT as a potential demarcation criterion. My delight at Hardwick's response is that it retrieves this possibility. Of course, the prior question - and it underlies Mr Sutton's contribution - is: why search for a definition of metamusic at all? In the end, this is surely a matter of authenticity, not an academic debate about how a spectrum of categories tends to blur in the middle. WTHWT seems to me an authentic response; therefore it may help us to seek out authentic experience. Of course not all authentic experiences are the same. Mr Sutton appears to find Neson Eddy qua Nelson Eddy authentic - or, at least, not to misquote, metamusical; I find the recorded experience of Nelson Eddy somewhat metamusical. We each bring to the experience or own subjective valuation of what is experienced and our sensibilities about metamusic. I suppose that a potential test case would be to take, say, Britney Spears' Oops I did it again and give it an electronic treatment (which modern software may make possible) that makes it sound as if it were recorded on a 78 and then see if it evokes WTHWT. Yet even here, the result would not be clean-cut, since a WTHWT experience would not be of Ms Spears' warbling but of a manipulated performance, which may, indeed, be judged to be authentically metamusical. I conclude pro tem that WTHWT remains a valuable heuristic in our pursuit of metamusical authenticity.