| dc.description.abstract | This is a study of motivation, practical organization and evaluation among musicians in rock bands in Seattle. It is an inquiry to musicians and listeners' experience of rock. My study encompasses both reception and production of music, and my center of attention is musicians' relationship to their activities, that is, their motivating orientation. I look for motivating orientations on three different levels. First, by looking at band practices and band meetings. Next, by watching artists and listeners' relationship to live performances. And third, by discussing promoting activities, networks and musicians' relationship to the music industry. Along this search for orientations I look at the tension between pragmatic and aesthetic issues and I scrutinize driving forces, evaluative principles, myths, dreams and reality. It turned out that there were more than one way of experiencing rock. Based on empirical observations, I have outlined a theory about two kinds of experiences, or two sensibilities to rock. That is, rock makes sense in two different ways, depending on the individual's motivating orientation. I use two analytical categories, entitled the 'Utopian' and the 'Subjunctive' sensibility to rock, to elucidate these differences. I deduce a theory on how these sensibilities influence and affect musicians' relationship to their activities, the music industry, and to evaluation of own and others' music. I argue that a great deal of rock's power comes from the ability it has to move. What the two sensibilities have in common is a search for such sensation; for the extraordinary, the special. To move and be moved by music is experienced as "kicks", which occur as a result of what I speak of as "successfully transmitted energy" in an interplay between musicians and audience. These powerful "kicks" are experienced as having a physical, ecstatic impact on the head, feet, spine, skin or other parts of the body. In my thesis, such sensation of being moved by music is represented by the aesthetics of Goosebumps: as an empirically inferred, organic metaphor for manifested energy. I conclude in my study that the mode of expression, the form and symbol material rock provides is used to express two different matters. One to create a new, cosmic order and one to let chaos in on a controlled way in an already existing order. These differences, stemming from musicians' motivating orientations, exist side by side on the musical scene, often even within bands. This has consequences for the relations between band-members, and affects the cooperation of their common aesthetic project. Despite of the different orientations I show how participation in a rock band creates meaning and coherence in life for individuals categorized in both kinds of sensibilities. | nor |