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VORTEX

                                                    December 2, 2000
                                           Adds:    April   15, 2001
                                                    October 19, 2002
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 of 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."

                                                   DUKING

                                           (Jan 13, 2016)

                             It could have been calculated
                             on both ends.  Or not.



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



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