music appreciation note #1

I find it fascinating how a work of art can grow in significance over time in the court of critical and public opinion. While sipping puh erh and eating chinese barbeque I pontificated on this matter to a friend. My example was the '80's remake of "Scarface". This was a film that most critiques panned when first released. They made fun of Pacino's accent, skewered Oliver Stone's script (a relative unknown at the time), and debated if De Palma had become a hack.

Now, here we are twenty some years later and Rotten Tomato calculates an 89% positive rating for the DVD re-release. Tony's cliches and "fuck you"s have become signposts and even bigger cliches. Posters of a swarthy Pacino are more popular than ever and the video game just came out. "Scarface" is now considered a certified classic like Miami Vice and crack cocaine. But back in the '80's these things were NOT cool. What happened? Jung's collective unconscious seems to have decided that "Scarface" is important and will continue grow in relevance as the 21st century progresses.

The first musical example of this process of growing cultural relevance I can think of is Black Sabbath. The critics hated them. The hippies ignored them. Until the 80's, radio would not play them. They were the biggest underground band of the '70s, too popular to be called a cult band yet to weird to be part of the mainstream. Then you started to hear "War Pigs" and "Iron Man" on the classic rock stations. There was nothing like getting wasted in a car at 3am with Iommi's guitar moaning metallic angst..............

By the early '90's Sabbath were becoming cool. People started to realize that here was a band that had spawned multiple genres: death metal, grunge, prog metal, metal metal........Sabbath was the most to blame for all these bastard musical children. I remember hearing Soundgarden for the first time, tracks from "Badmotorfinger", and I heard all that was great in those early Sabbath tracks.

Sabbath (note you don't even have to use the "Black" anymore for people to know what you're talking about), are now a part of the mass consciousness, part of the fabric of modern culture.
Working class losers are now artistic shamen who transformed rock 'n roll into a modern benediction to technology and primeval darkness.

How long before the moody instrumental pieces like "Planet Caravan" enter into heavy rotation and are re-appreciated as influential works of genius as well? Anything is possible in the time machine of critical and public opinion.