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VORTEX

                           12/2/00

                Additions: 04/15/01
                           10/19/02

It's a simple thesis: 

The typical musical phenomenon isn't
really musical, at least not entirely.

The artist becomes an icon, 
a symbol of some sort of 
tribal membership.

   The actual art becomes 
   a kind fame surfing.            (And maybe this is why I 
                                    called this node "VORTEX".)
    
   Playing with celebrity:
   the real instrument.   
                       
                            It's always seemed to me 
                            that Madonna was fairly 
                            talented, just not at Music. 
                            

       Another obvious example:  
       
          David Bowie

                  
                  I read a trash bio of Bowie 
                  ("Loving the Alien"), which 
                  discusses his Nazi    
                  fascination in his 
                  "Thin White Duke" phase. 
                                     
                        It occurred to me that there 
                        wasn't any way to know if that 
                        was for real.  
                                   
                        Couldn't it be that he was
                        thinking: "I've got to do
                        something else to stay
                        outrageous.  I've done
                        the sex thing already.
                        How about politics?  but
                        everyone does left-wing
                        politics, what if I drop
                        hints I'm going to the far
                        right?  The nice thing
                        about being a drug addict
                        is you can always claim
                        later that it was all just
                        the drugs."
                                   



       Perhaps another example: 
       the strange case of 
       the Monkees.... 
                      


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