[Harp-L] re: best harp/answer

[Jonathan Ross <jross38@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Harri wrote:

"Debates on music are never ending and I want to finalize this thread  
from my part."

Actually, the debate has a nice ending.  It's realizing that music  
isn't a competition, that there is no "best" at anything musically,  
just the people you prefer.  It's accepting the subjective reality  
rather than trying to insist the world accepts a false objectivity.   
It's as simple as adding the little abbreviation IMO (which stands  
for In My Opinion) to statements of preference, thus taking them from  
being definitive and absolute statements into subjective and personal  
ones.  Hell, if jazmaan had done that in the first place then the  
whole thread probably wouldn't have existed (or, at the very least,  
and I'm sure to the glee of most people on the list, I wouldn't have  
joined in).

" Stevie is great on harmonica and I actually just purchased his  
harmonica-only album Eivets Rednow. In the original discussion only  
living players were accepted as benchmarks of the harmonica. If we   
take comparison to all-time masters of the instrument then, I'm  
afraid Stevie drops down about 50 notches."

For you.  For me he still ranks just as highly as always (in large  
part because I make no such distinctions--I don't care if someone is  
living or dead, because I have things called CD players and so  
forth).  Note that my original part in this thread was saying that  
calling Stevie "the best" was ridiculous (as in worthy of ridicule)  
and my argument with you is less about Stevie's worthiness and more  
about getting that point across, with a secondary part about the  
implications I've seen made (in this case by you, but it happens  
often enough in many media) about multi-instrumentalists.

Harri again wrote:

"I did not put Stevie Wonder down in any of my posts"

Actually, you did.  You implied that because he doesn't just play  
harmonica he can't be considered as good a player, or perhaps as  
serious or dedicated a player as someone who does just record on the  
harmonica.  That was my point.

"I stand behind my opinion that he is a good harmonica player but not  
the best on earth. "

I still say the problem is the fifth-grade mentality that shows up  
which feels a need to create some false thing called "the best  
harmonica player on Earth" or the like.  Assuming the people are  
technically capable, there is only the people you like more than  
others.  Even if we limit the criteria as in most influential  
harmonica players, jazz players or the like, it still ends up being  
just personal opinion.  What was ridiculous about jazmaan's statement  
that Stevie is "the best alive" is not that he chose Stevie, but the  
idea that such a person could exist.




 ()()    JR "Bulldogge" Ross
()  ()   & Snuffy, too:)
`----'