Dream Theater and Kenny Rogers – The New Metrics of Music
My old college roommate – Mark M’Roommate – and I used to discuss the comparative merits of bands. Because the qualities that make music good are pretty intangible we quickly found that this wasn’t easy. How does one rate Wesley Willis? He’s awful and yet so enjoyable. Can you compare him to Yngwie Malmsteen and say that Yngwie is categorically better? (The answer is no, by the way.)
The problem is that what makes music good is only related to the performer’s ability to extract an emotive response from the listener. A good example would be Elliot Smith who is a very good guitarist, yet his music is stripped down to only what he needs to communicate. Highly technical music that doesn’t say anything more than, “I can play fast” tends to be nearly unlistenable. It lacks the passion that music deserves yet is not bad enough to become unique or amusing in its own right.
In other words, it’s Dream Theater.
But for all that is lame about them, Dream Theater might be one of the most important bands in music because they define the bottom end of music’s listenability, yet there are bands who are arguably worse. It’s fairly undeniable that Tay Zonday is worse than Dream Theater, and yet I would rather listen to Chocolate Rain for an entire day than anything from Awake for thirty seconds.
Ask youself if any music you enjoy is better than Kenny Rogers. Yes, it most likely is. Now ask yourself if any music you enjoy is worse then Kenny Rogers. Probably not. Kenny Rogers is right at the edge of bland mediocrity and yet is still acceptably listenable. Through the Years, The Gambler, She Believes In Me – These are all the epitomy of just fine songs.
The chart below illustrates how music can be so bad it’s good, so bland it’s bad, and so good it’s great.
(Click on the image to see a larger version.)
Obviously the truly great acts are on the right side of this graph. The Beatles, for instance, would be right around a .95 on both listenability and quality. Notice, also, the plateau where quality is better than average, but listenability stays relatively flat. The majority of music sits in this neighborhood. It’s good, but not great.
The absence of quantitative metrics like the ability to play super burnin’ fast licks is intentional because that bears little impact on the quality of music. As an anonymous poster commented, Nirvana was a great band while not being technically proficient. Similarly, King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra are great bands with virtuosic playing abilities. Dream Theater—and Paul Gilbert, to a lesser extent—have amazing chops but suck balls.
Not only does this chart validate listening to bad music, but it also validates that good music really is good and that technical proficiency isn’t an inherent indicator of quality. You can finally listen to your Hall and Oates albums without shame.
Have fun figuring out where your favorite bands sit on this chart.
Yr Fthfl Bddy,
Mike
Your Wrong
Listen thats False Information
Dream theater are a very talented and influential band
Just because you can’t appreciate that genre
doesn’t mean you should be so negative!
Re: Your Wrong
Hi Crimson Moon Four,
Thanks for your comment, pro or con I enjoy the feedback. But I should argue that the progressive metal genre is not very far removed from my absolute favorite genre: Prog.
And while my favorite bands are Genesis and King Crimson, I also quite like Pain of Salvation (or Pan of Salivation as I mistyped). Opeth is okay, but I do like Voivod. And the latter is a reasonable tie into another band I’m starting to dig: Magma.
But Dream Theater, in my opinion, do not have the spark of creativity and adventure that these other artists have. Also, I’ve found that most Dream Theater fans haven’t quite spread out into listening to other acts within the same field. Pain of Salvation albums aren’t exactly flying off the shelf.
It comes down to the sincerity in the music, and there’s just not much there for Dream Theater.
But thanks again for your response,
Mike
Actually, a pretty reliable scale. Shouldn’t “Quality”, though, be replaced with “Proficiency”?
A good point
Hi Greyman 24,
Thanks for your comment, and you raise a good point that I tried to avoid. What exactly defines the x-axis of this scale?
It’s not really proficiency because I would argue that the Beatles are not as proficient as Dream Theater. Though both are more proficient than, say, Ken Nordine.
Perhaps the x-axis is really the ability of an artist to speak in the language of music. How fluid they are in communicating something using this abstract language. If that’s the case, then certainly we have a progression from Wesley Willis to Dream Theater to the Beatles.
To an extent, that qualifies as proficiency but in a more abstract sense than technical prowess.
Maybe it should be grooviness?
– Mike
Re: A good point
Grooviness, while admittedly awesome, is a somewhat subjective variable. You need something more objective, like understandability.
Or understandacoolswankability.
I can’t agree more w.r.t. Dream Theater. Sure, they are highly technically proficient musicians, but I haven’t heard more than a measure out of them that wasn’t yawn-inducing. I also find it interesting that many of the DT crews’ side projects, while not pants-moistening in awesomeness, are at least an order of magnitude more listenable than their collective effort. Liquid Tension Experiment comes to mind as a prime example. Yes it’s virtuoso wank, but at least it is fun and the fact that the musicians are having a good time making it comes through in the sound. I get nothing like that from Dream Theater.
On a related note: could someone kindly explain the appeal of Radiohead to me?