TheCapitalClinic

Many of you have noted, and I agree, that the fuzz community should start to talk some more about this thing called “excellence” that artists are ostensibly trying to create and their fans trying to find.

What is excellence? Can we measure it? Can we bottled it? Can we sell it?

Elsewhere I have hypothesized that “excellence” is “the absence of disorder”. Wha?!! If excellence represents a qualitative condition that is “above the norm,” the statement implies that, as a framing exercise, varying degrees of disorder might be closer to the“norm”. In other words, our lives are filled with crap unless and until we do something to lift ourselves out of it.

Bear with me here, because I am trying to get to a point that might be useful for budding artists operating in a music environment that appears, at first glance, to be increasingly in a state of disarray and not to get bogged down in a circular debate about excellence as a metaphysical concept.

We now need to move beyond the obvious semantic point that the absence of a negative [disorder] is a positive [order] and that that positive condition reflects varying degrees of "excellence." Musicians may find more meaningful answers in ongoing discussions by insiders closer to the coldface of reality who suggest that "excellence" may be a "proxy for happiness/utility" and the pre-condition to "excellence" should be celebrated in our search for diversity rather than universals. I elaborate on this nuance below.

To take another approach to the "quality vs crap" distinction that we are addressing, read Lefsetz’ blog on Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce and watch Here the 18 and 1/2 minute video of Malcolm Gladwell [author of The Tipping Point] that prompted Lefsetz’ ruminations.

A few of the interesting take-aways from the Lefsetz blog are:

1. the ultimate concept, that success comes not from trying to deliver one product to satisfy all people, but delivering a skein of products, that satisfy a great swath of the public.
2. Suddenly, with digital files, people could acquire a wide swath of material, essentially for nothing. And it turned out that although there was a demand for major label product, everything from Mariah Carey to Justin Timberlake to Madonna, that demand was far from the entire spectrum of consumer interest. It was just a slice. People wanted more.
3. it turns out many people don't like Mariah Carey. Some like banjo music. Some like emo. There's an infinite variety of musical styles, and an audience for each. Maybe the audience isn't large, but it exists.
4. maybe, if the public was exposed to something different, they'd like it! In enough quantity to make money! For everybody who likes Mariah Carey, there are tons who are turned off and hate her. This is the lesson of the twenty first century. Not that if everybody paid for music Mariah would sell more, but that many people don't want her music at any price, they want something different! He who will rule in the future is he who services all these niches, who gives people something different.
5. As Gladwell says, the search for universals is futile. Because they don't exist. Turns out the public is segmented, horizontally, they want a lot of different things. It's not about the lowest common denominator, but servicing each and every one of these niches.
6. We're presently in a period of chaos. I believe an aggregator will appear in the future, someone servicing artists at a low price to the creator, both artistically and financially.
7. The majors are heading towards marginalization, they're an ever-decreasing sideshow, to focus on them was to watch IBM to see where the personal computer revolution was headed, as opposed to Microsoft and eventually Netscape and Google
8. People don't always know what they want, and they can't explain what they want, so your call-out research is actually winnowing out listeners, those interested in a broader spectrum of music.

The Gladwell talk is also instructive and fun to watch. Getting back to the subject of “excellence” and how to bottle it as a “proxy for happiness”, in my opinion the most telling point of Gladwell's 18 and a half minute talk comes at the very end – the last minute. If true, he states something that is profoundly relevant to our search for "excellence". I recap his concluding observation:

1. Statistical research indicates that people voting on a scale of 1 to 100 regarding something that "makes you all happy" would reach an "average score" of 60, whereas if you divided the same population into clusters and voted on what made the cluster happy, the result would reach a satisfaction level of 75 to 78.

2. From the standpoint of "statistical significance," the difference between an average 60% satisfaction level of a universal notion [for example, the general state of mass consumption or a “universal concoction or brew” ] and a 78% satisfaction level in particular clusters [that reflect human variability] is HUGE!

3. Gladwell, in fact, goes even further and opines that the difference between 60% satisfaction of an undifferentiated whole and 78% satisfaction in a differentiated part is the difference between something that really makes you “wince” and something that could make you “deliriously happy”. Thus, you should embrace the diversity of human beings to find a surer way to true happiness [excellence?].

I also don’t want to get into a long dissertation on statistical analysis here, but we should indeed start to explore the over-arching questions that have been implicit in many of our discussions: What is Excellence and how do we achieve it?

Lefsetz, whom most musicians respect, and Gladwell, who seems to be a very practical evangelist, may be pointing us in the right direction if we are willing to take the treasure map and see where it leads us. Face it, we are all treasure hunters of the possible.