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o i dunno. i think that lady gaga has smarter writers and a better production team, really. britney's music has some good hooks, but the writing doesn't let her work them and the production doesn't over-ride the writing. circus has a great break, but britney et al either didn't recognize and or didnt believe it and so didn't roll with it. lady gaga's production crew understands better the space that is pop/dance music and ways to cross back and forth one to the other.
as for the performances--i'm of two minds about this. on the one hand, i'm kinda interested in the live=live thing, but frankly after seeing more laptop performances than i can remember i've long since stopped really caring about what that means for certain instruments or types of music. but i don't but the old-fashioned notion that the only "real" music involves traditional musical instruments and repetitive chord changes and riffs that in the case of someone like satriani gets extended to arpeggios (ooo) no matter how fast you play them. i'd much rather attend a performance done by someone on a laptop who has an interesting sense of how to organize sound using found sound and pre-recorded materials than hear some fusion cat go blah blah blah really fast. but to each his or her own---people like what they like and it doesn't really matter so much except to them. but "authentic" performance, as a criterion, means nothing to me as such.
as for going to a pop show....depends what you're looking for (same as the above, really)....britney's sound is constructed through extensive overdubs. the choreography is such that nothing can be changed in the songs anyway. so it's not like there's going to be an improvised note in any given show. what's the difference between hearing a recording and hearing the recording reproduced live note for note except with the vocal track fucked up? but that follows from a particular conception of pop music, and it's a kind of recent one. are you going to a britney show for the music or for the spectacle?
i think lady gaga is obviously a better musician, btw. but i am not sure of the role her musicianship plays in the lady gaga thing.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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