Daily Archives: December 12, 2008

Art vs. Craft

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What’s the idea with Bob Lefsetz? I’ve seen music blogger Bob Lefsetz in person and he’s a trip. At Canadian Music Week earlier this year he was talking about the draw and star power of today’s musicians and asked a packed house “Would you fuck Feist?”  Point made. Today his post starts with “Fuck Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg is a pompous…”

With Lefsetz it’s not about the f-bomb – though, there’s a lot of that – it is about his in-your-face attitude, question-everything-mentality, and amazing prose of the day. There is no better blogger. He gets today. He gets his readers.

Check out his rant today about the poor state of the music business. Piracy and bad management aren’t the problem, he argues, lousy music is.  He’s so right. There is too much craft and not enough art in music today.  Art is personal and it comes from the depths of the heart. When the heart and the guitar throb, the music tends to be powerful. Listen to Janis Joplin or early British punk. When Janis wrote and sang her art she wasn’t thinking of tax-deferred annuities or who will be handling the catering at her shows.  She was feeling it. Lefsetz is art, other music writers are craft.