Inaccessible

There's a recurring internal debate popping up - do you have fun and create some crazy noise and call it a tune, or do you tone it down make sure your music is accessible?

Seems that sometimes the word "accessible" could be used to define commercialising, selling out, removing the outstanding characteristics, submitting to fear and ensuring conformity to boundaries. The world does not accept the insanity that creates, but if you smooth the corners and create a result which hides its true origin, that's ok.

Granted, sometimes "accessibility" means deleting some crazy rubbish born on the wrong tangent if it takes value away from something which could be great. Let's call that accenuating the positive.

There are different degrees of conformity though. I wonder if the sex pistols, in all their rebellion, conformed to the style expected of them and lost some of their creative freedom? I admire the way Ween just do whatever they want on their albums, it remains accessible through their polished madness, but they express their freedom on the rest. Tom Waits sometimes seems completely off the wall until you listen closely and hear the classical influence and beautiful melody behind the apparent insult.

With music being art, it's important to fight the "accessible" word sometimes and let the truth emerge when it can. There is an art and pleasure in mundane repetition and there's art and pleasure in crazy insane angry emotion poured onto tape in a cascade of noise which hurts your ears. The noise is perhaps more emotionally accessible and simultaneously  challenging, while the mundane lets you drift happily. Balance.

In brief...
That which appears beautiful is ugly and distorted, and that which appears ugly and distorted is truly beautiful.