Some people love it. Myself, I find it kind of warmly amusing ("Aww, the kitty threw up again....") when I'm not feeling particularly driven. But it can have a dreadful effect on TFUL282 neophytes. Witness this recent message from the patriarch of the Parmenter political dynasty, a well respected figure in his time:
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:48:43 -0400 From: tompar@world.std.com (Tom Parmenter) To: raydavis@pseudopodium.org Subject: The Thinking Fellers Controversy Reply-To: tompar@world.std.com keeps on ticking! keeps on licking! fick nick mit der raketeman! fulton j. fineman will dance again!Oddly, breathtaking ensemble tightness (à la the Arditti Quartet or the Famous Flames) is what the Thinking Fellers Local 282 in-concert experience is all about. It's only on record that they screw around.
People make a distinction between songs done in a normal studio and tape pieces. It's all the same to me really, but since it has lower fidelity and lacks verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure, it's often taken that you're purposely making your music less accessible.And in other interviews they've compared their Filler to such catchy found material as Raymond-and-Peter. But creating "catchy found material" on purpose may be beyond even the incredible powers of Thinking.
Which isn't to say that there's no point in screwing around. It's just a question of how you handle the post-coital glow.