[Tango-L] Why are you dancing tango if you don't like tango?

[Alexis Cousein]

On 06/05/2010 04:32, Huck Kennedy wrote:
>> You'll never really find a group you like if you first assume you won't like
>> them.
>
>        Now that makes no logical sense at all.  There is always room
> for the element of pleasant surprise.

The fact of the matter (and why it is indeed logical) is that you
don't find a flower blooming on earth you've just scorched. Those
kinds of "surprises" don't happen.

 > I have yet to hear an American tango band attempting to play the
 > tango classics that can come anywhere even close to the Golden Age
 > bands.  Not even remotely.

Nobody (not even me) can claim to have heard *all* the Golden Age
bands, and I'm pretty sure that even if you limit yourselves to
the best ones that we can hear on records, some of those bands were
better when they were recording things than they were when they
started - and that's even more true for individual musicians.

Some bands must have been pretty awful, and some of the musicians
you hear in those good bands must've been pretty awful when they
started, too. But there's no reason to remember the bad bands and
less recording of musicians when they were still awful. There's
a reason that the Golden Age also gave its name to a type
of cognitive bias.

Those very best Golden Age bands didn't grow in a vacuum. And
the culture has changed, and to become a good band today is harder.

I've got a bottle of 1914 Pernod Fils absinthe. Nothing else I've
tasted comes close to it, but I don't harbour the illusion that
most absinthe in 1914 was better than the best absinthe you can buy
these days because that one bottle is good (and the several other
ones of that brand that I've tasted also were, even though they
actually aged more).

And I do my best to make sure that those who try to recreate modern
versions are supported as best they can be, because that Pernod Fils
from before WWI isn't going to be around forever (and isn't cheap).