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From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:
Ali G: [Pitches his business idea] What is the most popular thing in the world?
Donald Trump: [Ponders the question, then decisively finds the right answer] Music.
G: [Stumped, after a pause] No.
Trump: [Bored] Tell me.
G: Ice cream!
Trump [No emotion]: Okay…
Because music may well be the most popular thing in the world, I’m going to review two fine new books on music: Let’s Do It: The Birth of Pop Music: A History by Bob Stanley, a prequel to his well-regarded 2013 history of the rock era Yeah Yeah Yeah, and This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers, a popular science work about popular music.
Both writers are themselves old music pros. Stanley had a few hits in the 1990s with his cultivated dance band Saint Etienne, while Rogers was the recording engineer on Prince’s world-conquering album Purple Rain.
And both really love music and know a vast amount about it.
Both books are written in the 21st-century manner in which old-fashioned snide rock-music criticism has been displaced by poptimism, in which if you can’t say something nice about popular favorites, don’t say anything at all.
In his history of American and British pre-rock pop music, Stanley finds something good to say about almost every major figure, although blackface star Al Jolson is a challenge …
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
When one aspiring rapper kills another, the survivors are always quoted (while ducking errant shots) saying: “oh he just loved music, more than anything!” That makes him relatable, you see. Close runners-up are never mentioned. You know, things like drugs, crime, guns, knocking up baby mamas, etc etc.
I always get a chuckle when reading about the rapper shoot outs. A blessing really. Needs to happen more often. The killer rarely gets captured by the law, because who cares?
Speaking of, Ali G is a bit of cultural appropriation, innit?
Yet he wasn’t taken down for it. Almost like he’s immune..
Granted, in these woke days even making fun of white people trying to be black is probably a step too far.Replies: @BB753, @Richard B
I wasn’t aware Prince had a female sound engineer. When I read it, I fully expected her to be more of a Wendy Carlos type female.
We need a new song for our new transgender leadership class. It’s time to ditch Uncle Sam and come out with Uncle Samantha!
Something to celebrate all the Gurls at the Pentagon.
Maybe the federal government’s new song could be “Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed, complete with a tranny Uncle Sam to show our soldiers what they’re fighting for!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QbgZ2d0f-9k
Great work Steve as always.
What do you make of the studies that show in England both poor black Caribbean boys and poor white boys are failing at school. Seems to be cultural problem within these groups but what can be done?
Music may be popular, but musical taste is critically lacking, and musical preference is simply non-transferable.
The popular support for garbage masquerading as music no longer astounds me, but it still dismays me. As examples: Tayler Swift may be a good singer (I doubt it) but her music is second rate crap. Ani DiFranco is a good singer, but her oeuvre is garbage.
And you can’t make somebody like any music in particular, whether it is la ci darem la mano or man of constant sorrow, if you dont like it, you never will. Human brains may like music, but they seem pretty resistant to new musical experiences. And now hip hop comes along and destroys their brains.
Btw, if music is defined as harmony + melody + rhythm, then hip hop dont begin to qualify.
What age does interest in new music wane? Varies; I’d rather hear a really good new song, than keep listening to the same really good old songs. How many times can one listen to Brown-Eyed Girl e.g.?
When it comes to judging music, trust your own ear. Critics and musicians are both seeking novelty and virtuosity, but not the heart of music, which is soul and emotion. Most everything I have sampled on the advice of a critic has been unappealing, whether classical or pop/rock. (And for goodness sakes, NEVER trust the market/pop culture to pick your music).
Prince? Zappa? Ptewy!
Kristofferson, Yoakam? Now, you’re talking singing, songs and music.
Whatever happened to Richard Meltzer?
A character in a novel described your music as, “The music from late elementary school or junior high to when you have your first kids”. Which sounds about right.
Also, for al its traditionalism, popular country music seems to make sure it sounds a fair amount like pop music from 2 or 3 decades earlier.
Food.
Since you forgot a link: Stanley b/w Rogers.
Any, since it’s the only song I remember from the Bare Naked Ladies of the late 1990s ( a picture of them being in the article), I will post this fun song:
But, I mean, c'mon: Barenaked Ladies?Replies: @J.Ross, @Achmed E. Newman
“In This Is What It Sounds Like, Susan Rogers, recording engineer for Prince–turned–music cognition Ph.D. who now teaches record production at the Berklee conservatory, is even more enthusiastic than Stanley about all forms of pop music.
Granted, she has her own strong tastes: Stones over Beatles, soul over alternative rock, James Brown over Johann Sebastian Bach, “below the neck music” over “above the neck music.” ”
Gee, what’s the pattern we notice when observing Mzz Roger’s tastes in music?
“But she wouldn’t dream of criticizing your tastes.”
“But she wouldn’t dream of criticizing your tastes, bigot!” Fify.
Further, the only mention of Rogers on the Purple Rain wiki page is within the list of production credits. She is the second of 4 engineers listed, and behind David Leonard, who has produced and engineered 30 or so albums over 30 years. Her wiki page reveals she basically has one engineering credit before moving on into teaching – and we know what that means. In short, her actual practical experience is minuscule. it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the other engineers on the Purple Rain album found her pushy, argumentative, and all around difficult to work with.
You forgot the link to Taki.
Trump made a fool of Baron Cohen.
I think you forgot a link.
Btw, Robinson high school in Fairfax county just sent an email stating that “swastikas were found in one restroom, and the statement ‘Jews will not replace us,’ in another.”
Place your bets.
Any, since it's the only song I remember from the Bare Naked Ladies of the late 1990s ( a picture of them being in the article), I will post this fun song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV8N5JP29q0Replies: @R.G. Camara, @fnn, @vinteuil, @Curle, @Malcolm X-Lax
I remember the stoners in my high school were weirdly very into Barenaked Ladies. I could see Phish or Zepplin or Floyd or Marley or Nirvana or any other grunge, but the upbeat, happy, seemingly-clean-and-peppy Barenaked Ladies? It didn’t track.
It made me avoid the band, which was a shame, since when I gave them a listen they sounded good and the songs were sing-a-longable.
I have an older relative who loves Pink Floyd, or at least late 70s Floyd from high school. He didn't like much Led Zeppelin, because THEY were a "doper band".
Any, since it's the only song I remember from the Bare Naked Ladies of the late 1990s ( a picture of them being in the article), I will post this fun song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV8N5JP29q0Replies: @R.G. Camara, @fnn, @vinteuil, @Curle, @Malcolm X-Lax
Even Trailer Park Boys is a far superior example of Canadian culture.
Cue: Let The Music Play by Shannon
Thanks for these – I need something new to read and I am someone who listens to music all day long and still goes to a lot of concerts. I bought “This Isn’t Happening” about Radiohead’s Kid A album a couple years ago and it was a real slog that I ultimately abandoned. The author definitely seems more geared towards magazine length writing and I got sick of his style in pretty short order.
Most popular things in the world.
1. Puppies
2. Music
3. Pizza
4. Cadillacs
5. Hot sexy women
6. Bob Ross, Baba The Cosmic Barber, RIP, Angelo’s Shoe Shine and Haircut Harry ASMR vids. teehee.
“Writing about music, is like dancing about architecture,” as the saying goes. By contrast, writing about people, — i.e., the musicians themselves,— can be fun and insightful. But words about sounds, without being able to hear the sounds under discussion, is kind of a non-starter for most people.
https://www.prettygreen.com/news/2020/2/5/five-times-lester-bangs-showed-he-was-the-greatest-music-journalist-ever-846/
If a haughty all-powerful alien asked me why Earth and the pathetic human race should not be blown to smithereens, I would point to our gift for making music.
But while musicians might make good copy, I find that music itself escapes meaningful description — aside perhaps from “If you like X, you might like Y.” (And this even though I am 1. allegedly a writer and 2. listen to music about 9 hours a day).
There is a vocabulary for music. If you don't have it, you can't use it.Replies: @Known Fact
With me, I found that age 35 was when my brain started becoming relatively averse to new music.
But then there’s the old adage that the best calendar year ever for popular music was whatever year you turned 14. For me, that meant 1991. And while that did happen to be a special year for pop, the big highlight was how grunge exploded into the public consciousness with the “Nevermind” album, I happen to think that 1982 was the best year ever for popular music.
One more thing, while we’re on the subject:
I am barely old enough to have a conscious memory of the tail end of the first run popularity of the genre of music that would later and is now known as Yacht Rock. Back then, my contemporaries derided it as “station wagon music.” I called it “Aunt Joan music.”
And looking back, I now think the popularity of that kind of music back then had nothing to do with the merits (“–“) inherent in it that people are rediscovering about it today. Its popularity back then was entirely a function of it being lowest common denominator music. Meaning that nobody really liked it in the positive or affirmative, it’s just that it didn’t happen to offend anyone. Which meant that it was the perfect music to play in mixed company situations with people who probably had wildly differing affirmative tastes in music otherwise. Mixed company situations, such as, being on a yacht.
1972-1990, 1991-1998 good but still takes a backseat to '72-'90
Pre 1970? Decent but not overly impressive
Post 2000, pure shit with the exception of a handful of songs
As for pop … at that time the charts were dominated by the likes of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. Ugh.
I can’t think of a single song that was popular when I was in high school that I would rank among my favorites. Even then I was downloading ‘80s songs on Napster.
Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single pop-culture object - a song, a movie, a TV show, anything - from that era that I would rank among my personal favorites.
The other day I was talking to some college freshmen about pop music. The general consensus was that Michael Jackson was the GOAT.
Right now I’m sitting in a pizza place frequented by college kids. The radio is blaring that trendy “Running Up That Hill” song that was released right around the time I was born. It fits in perfectly with the newer songs.Replies: @njguy73
I stopped having any interest in contemporary music trends with the advent of grunge. To me, that stuff always sounded like exactly what it was---repackaged middle class anxiety. Being depressed and anxious in a Nirvana-like way was a disease of status, like having gout in the dark ages. It meant that you were well-off enough to have first world problems. This was the angst felt by teenagers who lived in tony Seattle suburbs with attached garages. To me, someone who grew up in a trailer park in the dusty plains of northern Colorado, it just didn't apply.
The 1980s was a great decade for pop music. The genre expanded beyond bubblegum and developed subgenres that gave talent that didn't comfortably fit into rock or pop a venue to tout their wares. Guys like Robyn Hitchcock who was able to grow and nurture his sound throughout the 60s and 70s and then arrive on the 1980s scene readymade. I wrote the bulk of his lyrics.
Trump is a great sport, sussed it out promptly and extricated himself smoothly. Ali G was a fun character for a minute, but is a perfect example of the limits of irony.
Here is something nice to say about about Al Jolson, with this story. So-so comic Mort Bernstein was spending his 20s and 30s in New York with limited success. He was married with two young children. He would hang out at Lindy’s (yes, that Lindy’s) with the comics until early in the morning, trying to network and get something going. One night, Bernstein tries to hold court with a story that goes nowhere with the other comics, leaving them staring at him. Jolson leans forward and counts off $1,000 and hands it to Bernstein. Jolson says, “look, you’re funny, but you aren’t going to make it in this business. Go home to your wife and kids, be a man and get a job.” Bernstein heads home, picks up some groceries, pays the back-rent on his way into the building, and puts down the money and food and a bottle of champagne. His wife says, “what happened, Mort?”
“Jolson said I was funny!”
Why hasn’t anyone written a good song about Emmett Till?
Emmett TillI dreamed I saw Emmett Till last night,
Alive as you and me,
Says I, "But Emmett, you're 67 years dead,"
"I never died," says he,
"I never died," says he.
In Mississippi, "Emmett," says I, in standing by my bed,
"They lynched you for grabbing a white man’s wife,”
Says Till, "but I ain't dead,"
Says Till, "but I ain't dead." "The white supremacists killed you Till,
They shot you, Till," says I.
"Takes more than guns to kill a man,"
Says Till, "I didn't die,"
Says Till, "I didn't die." And standing there as big as life
And smiling with his eyes
Says Till, "What they can never kill
Is a tale mythologized,
A tale mythologized. "From NPR to the New York Times,
Three times every month still,
Where liberals preach and mythologize,
It's there you find Emmett Till,
It's there you find Emmett Till!"Replies: @the one they call Desanex
https://youtu.be/YSYtUDDW1WU
When American pop music petered out in the late 80s, and alternative rock in the mid-90s, I started listening to Spanish-language music. Spanish music was very good in the early 2000s. I’ll pick two examples:
1) “Rata de dos patas” (Two-Legged Rat) (released in 2004) by Paquita la del Barrio has to be heard to be believed. If you think “Positively 4th Street” was a vicious putdown, you ain’t heard s— yet.
2) “La negra tiene tumbao” (2001) was a rousing last hurrah for the great Cuban singer Celia Cruz.
Who says music is necessarily a young person’s game? Paquita was in her fifties when she did “Rata,” and Celia was in her seventies when “La negra” came out (she died 2 years later).
If you think that was a slog, try listening to the actual album!
Imagine Tilda Swinton watching a “Donald Trump being hilarious for 5 straight minutes” YOUTUBE video. Harvest the aneurysm cells and ambient histamine molecules produced, cultivate them for 25 years, and voilà- another Thom Yorke is germinated, the demo tracks to OK COMPUTER already in his pocket!
But then there's the old adage that the best calendar year ever for popular music was whatever year you turned 14. For me, that meant 1991. And while that did happen to be a special year for pop, the big highlight was how grunge exploded into the public consciousness with the "Nevermind" album, I happen to think that 1982 was the best year ever for popular music.
One more thing, while we're on the subject:
I am barely old enough to have a conscious memory of the tail end of the first run popularity of the genre of music that would later and is now known as Yacht Rock. Back then, my contemporaries derided it as "station wagon music." I called it "Aunt Joan music."
And looking back, I now think the popularity of that kind of music back then had nothing to do with the merits ("--") inherent in it that people are rediscovering about it today. Its popularity back then was entirely a function of it being lowest common denominator music. Meaning that nobody really liked it in the positive or affirmative, it's just that it didn't happen to offend anyone. Which meant that it was the perfect music to play in mixed company situations with people who probably had wildly differing affirmative tastes in music otherwise. Mixed company situations, such as, being on a yacht.Replies: @Trinity, @Stan Adams, @Intelligent Dasein, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Hypnotoad666, @SunBakedSuburb
Period of best music IMO.
1972-1990, 1991-1998 good but still takes a backseat to ’72-’90
Pre 1970? Decent but not overly impressive
Post 2000, pure shit with the exception of a handful of songs
A guy I know won a Grammy for producing a Stevie Wonder record years ago. His insight was there is nothing about music he could possibly teach Stevie Wonder, so his job was to get the musicians Stevie wanted, rent the studio, have Stevie meet co-writers or the guys to put the songs together etc. Strictly logistics because Stevie is blind. It worked. Now he makes movies about golf courses.
The guy sounds just like Steve down to the golf courses.
At the height of his popularity, Jolson was, IIRC, considered the greatest solo entertainer alive. Apparently the Black face stuff didn’t get in the way of performing with the equally great Cab Calloway.
It is period piece stuff, but the way Jolson can hold a note with perfect pitch is a wonder to behold
Susan Rogers:
Can’t agree with that! Dave Pinsen, love ya, but please don’t drop any wack tracks in this thread. Awright, we do a little ball-busting, it’s called we do a little ball-busting. 🙂
https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-decline-of-capitalization/#comment-5351988 (#7)
I keep discovering and rediscovering music I like and didn’t pay much attention to when it was new. I’m 62, and I’m enjoying a personal renaissance with alternative rock. I have OCD, so maybe if somebody would stick an electrode in my brain I would start listening to Johnny Cash.
https://youtu.be/Jknn7MMszNo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHCfZTRGiI
2 indie recs:
Vetiver's Roll on Babe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v30HkjPWUaU
Belle and Sebastian's I Know Where the Summer Goes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovyZ72W9X1kReplies: @Buzz Mohawk, @vinteuil
But then there's the old adage that the best calendar year ever for popular music was whatever year you turned 14. For me, that meant 1991. And while that did happen to be a special year for pop, the big highlight was how grunge exploded into the public consciousness with the "Nevermind" album, I happen to think that 1982 was the best year ever for popular music.
One more thing, while we're on the subject:
I am barely old enough to have a conscious memory of the tail end of the first run popularity of the genre of music that would later and is now known as Yacht Rock. Back then, my contemporaries derided it as "station wagon music." I called it "Aunt Joan music."
And looking back, I now think the popularity of that kind of music back then had nothing to do with the merits ("--") inherent in it that people are rediscovering about it today. Its popularity back then was entirely a function of it being lowest common denominator music. Meaning that nobody really liked it in the positive or affirmative, it's just that it didn't happen to offend anyone. Which meant that it was the perfect music to play in mixed company situations with people who probably had wildly differing affirmative tastes in music otherwise. Mixed company situations, such as, being on a yacht.Replies: @Trinity, @Stan Adams, @Intelligent Dasein, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Hypnotoad666, @SunBakedSuburb
I was 14 in 1999. What was popular with teenage boys then? Rap, which I’ve always loathed.
As for pop … at that time the charts were dominated by the likes of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. Ugh.
I can’t think of a single song that was popular when I was in high school that I would rank among my favorites. Even then I was downloading ‘80s songs on Napster.
Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single pop-culture object – a song, a movie, a TV show, anything – from that era that I would rank among my personal favorites.
The other day I was talking to some college freshmen about pop music. The general consensus was that Michael Jackson was the GOAT.
Right now I’m sitting in a pizza place frequented by college kids. The radio is blaring that trendy “Running Up That Hill” song that was released right around the time I was born. It fits in perfectly with the newer songs.
I strongly recommend checking out the YOUTUBE channel of my homie, Punkrock MBA. He’s a young GEN-XER (once mentioned he attended a PANTERA concert at age 14 where someone next to him got stabbed in the neck- had we gone to high school together he’d automatically have become a living legend to me and then my kids through embellished oral retelling). Anyway, despite technically being of an age where one walks into the sunset of musical nostalgia, he has a real good touch for finding what’s interesting and worthwhile in contemporary music:
Try The Black Keys. Duo out of Ohio. Imagine Steely Dan meets ZZ Top, sprinkled with some old school blues and post grunge rock.
Meanwhile I’m off to buy another CD from a German composer of the baroque period. I’m not saying who but he’s long dead and isn’t JS Bach.
What is with you guys, really? Only Derbyshire can be trusted with music.
Bach just called. He's asking if you've thought about giving Laserdisc a try.Replies: @Kylie
Not that SBC is very funny here, but Trump never laughs. It’s kind of amazing.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=118tjaPHlWA&feature=share&si=EMSIkaIECMiOmarE6JChQQ
https://mymodernmet.com/isaac-and-nora-musicians-latin-america-tour/
Because “I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion… If everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way…” I pretty much detest pop music from about 1985 onward. In the early 1980s. I attended an Articles of Faith show in Chicago and saw a bunch of kids who didn’t fit in anywhere hanging together with this hard, aggressive music. I jumped into the hardcore music scene and never looked back.
My listening varies as I get older. Right now I’m listening to lots of Jazz. I still go on long binges of metal and hardcore. My long suffering wife, who was a music major, pretty much hates most of my record and CD collection.
But then there's the old adage that the best calendar year ever for popular music was whatever year you turned 14. For me, that meant 1991. And while that did happen to be a special year for pop, the big highlight was how grunge exploded into the public consciousness with the "Nevermind" album, I happen to think that 1982 was the best year ever for popular music.
One more thing, while we're on the subject:
I am barely old enough to have a conscious memory of the tail end of the first run popularity of the genre of music that would later and is now known as Yacht Rock. Back then, my contemporaries derided it as "station wagon music." I called it "Aunt Joan music."
And looking back, I now think the popularity of that kind of music back then had nothing to do with the merits ("--") inherent in it that people are rediscovering about it today. Its popularity back then was entirely a function of it being lowest common denominator music. Meaning that nobody really liked it in the positive or affirmative, it's just that it didn't happen to offend anyone. Which meant that it was the perfect music to play in mixed company situations with people who probably had wildly differing affirmative tastes in music otherwise. Mixed company situations, such as, being on a yacht.Replies: @Trinity, @Stan Adams, @Intelligent Dasein, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Hypnotoad666, @SunBakedSuburb
I’m three years younger than you, but I have always liked it in the positive and affirmative. These Yacht Rock artists comprise a huge chunk of my favorite music.
I stopped having any interest in contemporary music trends with the advent of grunge. To me, that stuff always sounded like exactly what it was—repackaged middle class anxiety. Being depressed and anxious in a Nirvana-like way was a disease of status, like having gout in the dark ages. It meant that you were well-off enough to have first world problems. This was the angst felt by teenagers who lived in tony Seattle suburbs with attached garages. To me, someone who grew up in a trailer park in the dusty plains of northern Colorado, it just didn’t apply.
But then there's the old adage that the best calendar year ever for popular music was whatever year you turned 14. For me, that meant 1991. And while that did happen to be a special year for pop, the big highlight was how grunge exploded into the public consciousness with the "Nevermind" album, I happen to think that 1982 was the best year ever for popular music.
One more thing, while we're on the subject:
I am barely old enough to have a conscious memory of the tail end of the first run popularity of the genre of music that would later and is now known as Yacht Rock. Back then, my contemporaries derided it as "station wagon music." I called it "Aunt Joan music."
And looking back, I now think the popularity of that kind of music back then had nothing to do with the merits ("--") inherent in it that people are rediscovering about it today. Its popularity back then was entirely a function of it being lowest common denominator music. Meaning that nobody really liked it in the positive or affirmative, it's just that it didn't happen to offend anyone. Which meant that it was the perfect music to play in mixed company situations with people who probably had wildly differing affirmative tastes in music otherwise. Mixed company situations, such as, being on a yacht.Replies: @Trinity, @Stan Adams, @Intelligent Dasein, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Hypnotoad666, @SunBakedSuburb
At age 14 I was listening to KISS and that brief, great period of southern rock. Then I discovered 80s alternative and new wave. After that I thought KISS was ridiculous. Now, I think they’re absolute kings even though I don’t listen to the music. They will be in rock & roll Heaven.
The 80s was a great decade for music. I call it the Last White Decade–85% of the country. Now, it’s less than 60%, and in one generation whites will be a minority. It will be like Brazil or Lebanon, but with 400 million people and nukes. The (somewhat) good news is there won’t be anybody left who knows how to maintain them.
For similar reasons, I hope the last act of the last Republican government will be to destroy all the GOF labs.
OK, again, Owww! Stop it, Achmed!Replies: @Known Fact
Best TITLE of a book about pop music remains, and will forever remain, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom by Nik Cohn (who also gave us, indirectly, the movie Saturday Night Fever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nik_Cohn )
On the other hand, he gives appropriate credit to Charlie Rich, one of the most versatile singers in pop, whose range encompassed country, soul, R&B, pop and jazz. And he absolutely loves the Who ("the last great fling of Superpop"), although I suspect he had little good to say about the group's metamorphosis into a stadium act.
It was just about the first book on rock music I ever read, when I was twelve or so, and it's stayed with me ever since. Highly recommended for an afternoon's reading. (It's also been issued under the titles Rock from the Beginning in the U.S., and Pop from the Beginning in the U.K.)Replies: @Meretricious, @Reg Cæsar
Regarding Susan Rogers and the seven dimensions (hey, sounds like a
comboerrr, band!): I don’t know about the 3 non-musical ones, but of the 4 musical dimensions, you’ve got melody, lyrics, and the sound (her rhythm and timbre). Of those, I maintain the lyrics are by FAR the least important.Exhibits A and B are The Kingsman’s Louie, Louie and The Talking Head’s Burning Down the House. They could be singing any old thing, and it would not detract from the SOUND. Then, one could right some great poetic lyrics paired with a bad melody and/or played terribly, and the song would suck.
Then there’s REM, in which the rest of the band admitted they didn’t have any idea what Michael Stipe was on about say, throughout the excellent Murmer album. Who cares? Listen to Radio Free Europe, much preferably on a speakers that can put out some bass, and it doesn’t matter what the blabbering is about.
Maybe rappers wouldn’t want to hear it but lyrics aren’t the music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkWI85aGKSs
Sad story A-G: I was moving, and nothing more could fit in the packed rent-a-car, so 4 albums had to be left behind. I was kinda insulted that the used record store guy would only give me a quarter per album, so I left the 4 albums on the grassy median of the busy street, so someone could avail themselves. One of them was KISS Destroyer. I am kicking myself through this very day. Ouch! Guess what I should have left behind – Leo Sayer’s Greatest Hits!
OK, again, Owww! Stop it, Achmed!
Music, popular music anyway, is meant for dancing. Miller understood that. Solos have their place, but they are basically attention-getters: stop doing what you are doing and pay attention to me! That’s fine, even admirable, on certain occasions; you go to Carnegie Hall to appreciate individual excellence. But if you just want to dance, they are annoying. To dance is to forget everything, to give the brain, the mind, a rest and let the body take over and exult in existence. Miller understood that.
As an aside, I notice that, as I expected, the comments focus on listening to music, not playing it, and certainly — certainly! — not dancing to it. Today’s men, especially white men, baring rare exceptions, will not dance. They just won’t. And if you do drag one onto the dance floor, he just shuffles around. God forbid he should ever raise his hands above his head — gay!
But his grandfather and great-grandfather certainly would dance, with skill and enthusiasm– and do so while wearing a suit and tie! Miller made music for these men and their girls in an era now vanished and so alien to the present that it seems incomprehensible to most of today’s passive consumers of commercial noise product.
I like the way the lady at the 3:36 mark adds funny facial expressions to the mix!Here's an amended, but HD, cut for the same music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYu4p0S4bZc&ab_channel=morrisjrs1965
I find myself going back and listening to music right around the time I was born more and more often. I was too young when it came out to have any recollection of it. There were all those great Sun Records artists like Presley, Perkins, Lewis, Orbison, Cash plus many more obscure ones. Same thing with Chess Records and Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Little Walter etc.
I found the early chapters of Stanley’s last book interesting. I had always thought that period right before the Beatles arrived was a musical wasteland but there was really a lot going on. You had the folk movement led by Dylan in New York. New York also had all the Brill building songwriters. Los Angeles had Phil Spector and the girl groups and also the Beach Boys. A lot of great soul music was already coming from Stax Records in Memphis and Motown in Detroit. Roy Orbison had moved from Sun to Monument and was turning out a string of hits.
Stanley’s new book sounds like a good way to find out about even earlier pre-fifties musical artists. They would be almost completely unfamiliar to anyone under seventy, which means most people currently walking around. I can remember as a small child seeing someone like Louis Armstrong on television and thinking how ancient he looked. Young people today must think the same thing about Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney or the Rolling Stones.
Louis Armstrong seemed ancient to me, too, when I was small. I'm glad he's not forgotten. I hear him singing "It's a Wonderful World" on Instagram all the time. But it's a shame his earlier music isn't better known. He was a virtuoso musician, truly phenomenal. I heard this just last year and instantly bought all his early recordings with the Hot Fives and Sevens.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zPgh7nxTQT4&feature=share&si=EMSIkaIECMiOmarE6JChQQ
There are a lot of very fine music critics writing now (read The New Yorker, eg). I always recommend this article on Lester Bangs to skeptics: if you like what you see here I highly recommend reading his articles at Rolling Stone, Creem (especially), and The Village Voice.
https://www.prettygreen.com/news/2020/2/5/five-times-lester-bangs-showed-he-was-the-greatest-music-journalist-ever-846/
If this world continues to exist, ethno-racially, in more or less the same state in the next 100 years – virtually all contemporary pop-culture will have been forgotten.
If various Africans, Muslims, South Asians, …. move into previously white countries in huge numbers & continue to destroy them, unchecked- then nothing would matter, no culture, high or low.
comboerrr, band!): I don't know about the 3 non-musical ones, but of the 4 musical dimensions, you've got melody, lyrics, and the sound (her rhythm and timbre). Of those, I maintain the lyrics are by FAR the least important.Exhibits A and B are The Kingsman's Louie, Louie and The Talking Head's Burning Down the House. They could be singing any old thing, and it would not detract from the SOUND. Then, one could right some great poetic lyrics paired with a bad melody and/or played terribly, and the song would suck.
Then there's REM, in which the rest of the band admitted they didn't have any idea what Michael Stipe was on about say, throughout the excellent Murmer album. Who cares? Listen to Radio Free Europe, much preferably on a speakers that can put out some bass, and it doesn't matter what the blabbering is about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Dekd24kMM
Maybe rappers wouldn't want to hear it but lyrics aren't the music.Replies: @Ian Smith
I can’t understand what Liz Fraser is singing in Cocteau Twins, and I love it.
Recommend Johnny Cash’s brilliant cover of Trent Reznor’s (Nine Inch Nails) Hurt:
2 indie recs:
Vetiver’s Roll on Babe:
Belle and Sebastian’s I Know Where the Summer Goes
But then there's the old adage that the best calendar year ever for popular music was whatever year you turned 14. For me, that meant 1991. And while that did happen to be a special year for pop, the big highlight was how grunge exploded into the public consciousness with the "Nevermind" album, I happen to think that 1982 was the best year ever for popular music.
One more thing, while we're on the subject:
I am barely old enough to have a conscious memory of the tail end of the first run popularity of the genre of music that would later and is now known as Yacht Rock. Back then, my contemporaries derided it as "station wagon music." I called it "Aunt Joan music."
And looking back, I now think the popularity of that kind of music back then had nothing to do with the merits ("--") inherent in it that people are rediscovering about it today. Its popularity back then was entirely a function of it being lowest common denominator music. Meaning that nobody really liked it in the positive or affirmative, it's just that it didn't happen to offend anyone. Which meant that it was the perfect music to play in mixed company situations with people who probably had wildly differing affirmative tastes in music otherwise. Mixed company situations, such as, being on a yacht.Replies: @Trinity, @Stan Adams, @Intelligent Dasein, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Hypnotoad666, @SunBakedSuburb
Maybe that’s generally true. But there was clearly a vast explosion of music quality in the 1960’s. The best music from that era (and ever since) is still wildly popular and if it were released for the fist time today would still be popular. But the the 60’s were 60 years ago. The time between today and the 60’s is equal to the time between 1960 and 1900! Can anyone imagine the music of 1900-1910 being popular or cool in the post WWII era.
Vinyl records were not introduced until the 1930s (and not used for home use until the 40s), so you would have had wax, rubber or shellac discs - none of them particularly durable.Replies: @Carol, @Redneck farmer
It’s because he knew he was getting set up and he wasn’t clever enough to come back at Cohen. All Trump had to do was ask Cohen if he himself used the ice cream gloves to hold his cock while taking a leak.
If you can’t chose between different genres or eras of music check out Bill McClintock’s very fun mashup channel. For example, if you were ever wondering what a James Brown-Judas Priest or Michael Jackson-Ted Nugent super-band would sound like, he’s got the answer.
OMG this has touched my heart. Thank you, Kylie!
And thank you. Nothing makes me happier (in the realm of human connections) than sharing music with someone I know will like it. 😊
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHCfZTRGiI
2 indie recs:
Vetiver's Roll on Babe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v30HkjPWUaU
Belle and Sebastian's I Know Where the Summer Goes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovyZ72W9X1kReplies: @Buzz Mohawk, @vinteuil
Thank you!
Yes, the Johnny Cash cover is something I do know and love. In fact I posted it here a couple of years ago. It actually makes me think about my poor mother, who came from a small town in Georgia. Through her, I have a connection to… to… to whatever you want to call it. She suffered terribly, and I finally traveled to her home town, to bury her ashes, and I met cousins of mine and friends of hers I didn’t know or know about.
I hope that’s not TMI (I am occasionally guilty of that) but that Cash recording, and the video, are very heavy and beautiful for me. Thank you.
The thing is, I can’t be unique. I am constantly discovering music I was not aware of, and I love it. Music from any age is good, by definition I think. And for those who wonder, this includes the very old, such as the works of J.S. Bach. Nobody likes a Bach fugue more than I.
What a nauseating Afro noise blather in both cases.
No wonder America, helped by degenerate Brits, is full of woke sh*t, being Afro-idiotized into full retardation mode for decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW3IbwEvR4I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AogBoLwWm0Replies: @vinteuil
You are welcome! I knew you’d like it. I just knew it.
And thank you. Nothing makes me happier (in the realm of human connections) than sharing music with someone I know will like it. 😊
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHCfZTRGiI
2 indie recs:
Vetiver's Roll on Babe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v30HkjPWUaU
Belle and Sebastian's I Know Where the Summer Goes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovyZ72W9X1kReplies: @Buzz Mohawk, @vinteuil
Wow.
It is period piece stuff, but the way Jolson can hold a note with perfect pitch is a wonder to behold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfiftuUUV8YReplies: @the one they call Desanex
I think Jolson’s appeal, like Elvis’s, had a lot to do with his moves, the expressive gestures and swivelling hips. Audiences go wild over a performer who puts his whole body into a performance, like Michael Jackson or Jackie Wilson. Jolson was ugly, but so was James Brown.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKab0Uu6kFQ
Agreed: there is no better title of a book about music. The book itself is a piece of work, as well: wildly opinionated, lovingly out of date to 21st century ears and often offensively wrongheaded (Cohn refers to the Stax/Volt label — home of Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Booker T. and the MG’s, Eddie Floyd, William Bell, Rufus and Carla Thomas, et al. — as “the heart of the sweat-and-Tom syndrome” with “much to answer for”). He spends an entire chapter on P.J. Proby, and three paragraphs on Sam Cooke.
On the other hand, he gives appropriate credit to Charlie Rich, one of the most versatile singers in pop, whose range encompassed country, soul, R&B, pop and jazz. And he absolutely loves the Who (“the last great fling of Superpop”), although I suspect he had little good to say about the group’s metamorphosis into a stadium act.
It was just about the first book on rock music I ever read, when I was twelve or so, and it’s stayed with me ever since. Highly recommended for an afternoon’s reading. (It’s also been issued under the titles Rock from the Beginning in the U.S., and Pop from the Beginning in the U.K.)
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/8ToAAOSwxflZvLJN/s-l1600.jpg
Our first-grader's teacher played "(What a) Wonderful World" for the class as part of some project. Thankfully, it was Satchmo's song, not Sam's. The latter is inappropriate for school.Whatever the "best" title of a pop music book, the most fitting is John Strausbaugh's Rock Till You Drop. It ages better than any other!Replies: @AceDeuce
That was the theme song for the series Narcos. Very cool song.
Belle And Sebastian is a criminally underrated retro Montavani/1980s British pop band.
The “old-fashioned snide rock-music criticism” was when Jew critics were trying to police emerging cultural trends and drive them towards desired end states. You can find the same thing in jazz criticism in the 50s and 60s.
Now, the Jew’s sensibility has so thoroughly permeated our degenerate Weimar culture that that kind of policing is mostly unnecessary.
Now the Jew can simply go after the errant artist directly. See Kanye West.
Where's the gratitude?
ABBA got no respect from critics in their day, but some of their songs are rightly recognized as pop classics. Carpenters were crucified by the likes of Marsh, but over time a handful of their songs have stood the last of time. Also, downloading and easy online music has restored the centrality of the single whereas the classic era of rock criticism was centered on the album. So, lots of band that had some memorable singles but didn't produce album-length quality material often got forgotten. On the other hand, even if a band never produced a truly great song but had albums that were mostly listenable from beginning to end got elevated.Today, the one-hit wonders are better remembered than many of the much praised rock acts with good albums but no big hit. In the end, XTC will probably be remembered only for "That's Really Super, Supergirl". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HT7v-orQLw
Tits. Everybody loves them, from the day we’re born til the day we die. Least controversial objects in the universe.
Not if they're on a man.
https://youtu.be/Z-vpnsYtsiY?t=52
I also recommend this guy who as the channel name implies does mostly comicbook superhero, sci-fi, and fantasy TV/movie reviews. Two recent interesting developments- the Disney/Marvel TV streaming show SHE-HULK ATTORNEY-AT-LAW just wrapped up in which the villains are revealed to be (alt-right adjacent) “Internet trolls” before the whole thing devolves into a self-referential/meta commentary on The MCU’s problematic fandom (i.e. paying customers). The first season of the MOST EXPENSIVE TV SHOW IN HISTORY- Amazon’s Tolkien-prequel RINGS OF POWER- also wrapped up in mixed fashion after predictable epater les fans casting choices and marketing campaign (black dwarves and elves, kick-butt babe to the cube power protagonist, etc.)
Basically GamerGate redux except it’s now Episode V: THE FANS STRIKE BACK as there are dozens of high-profile streams and YouTube channels where real enthusiasts and fans for this sh!t (personally I’d be happy never to see another superhero movie for the rest of my life) can give the legacy media woke shills and phonies the @$$-tearing they deserve.
What makes this actually significant is that: 1) the NPC/bluecheck playbook for handling legitimate, actually democratic dissent has become so pervasive that critics of RINGS OF POWER are no longer just trolls or incels but “far-right”and “semi-fascist” (soon to be “threats to our democracy” and “Putinists” in the next TEEN VOGUE issue coming to a newsstand near you). Using such language for those who are ratio-ing the pop-culture pablum of a monopolistic, Deep State-assimilated mega-corporation is more absurd BRAZIL than scary 1984 at this point, until you realize that it’s the exact same sh!t they pull for critics of their nuclear armageddon-risking, vital energy pipeline sabotaging, all-laid out in a RAND CORPORATION memo war of Eurasian grand strategic imperialism.
So it was just wonderful to see a light-hearted fandom livestream (these things go insanely long, over 5 hours sometimes, as they are basically online fund-raising drives/panhandling expeditions) suddenly veer off into a full-throated yet innocently spontaneous “Let’s Go Brandon!” revel (scrub to 2h/33m/21s if link timestamp doesn’t work):
What is with you guys, really? Only Derbyshire can be trusted with music.Replies: @Fluesterwitz, @al gore rhythms
Nikolaus Bruhns? If not, you may want to give him a try.
I mean he never laughs, ever. Have you seen him laugh?
I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.
I have an older relative who loves Pink Floyd, or at least late 70s Floyd from high school. He didn’t like much Led Zeppelin, because THEY were a “doper band”.
Couldn’t agree more.
Well said.
So far, so good.
And yet – you always seem to support Nato aggression against Russia.
What’s up with that?
Just because he publicly denounced homo propaganda & gender ideology, Putin is not a friend of historical West whom he loathes. He is the enemy breaching treaties, wanting to commit ethnocide against smaller neighboring nations.
Basically, he is a Hitler without extreme racial-genocidal policy- but would be glad to see Europe and America sink into Afro-Muslim-Asan- Mestizo exploitation & destruction of the Western culture.
The last thing in his mind would be the preservation of European & American classical, high & traditional "normal" culture.
Not for nothing, he and Lukashenka had tried to dump into Poland tens of thousands of Pakistanis, Afghan, Central Asian Muslims, blacks and Africans.
Eastern European peoples know the best it is not the war between LBGTQWERTY decadence/Gender ideology and other Anglo-Saxon suicidal perversions, but against a predatory paranoid empire that wants to destroy their ethnic-racial-traditional identity.
NATO is not a code work for Africa-Tranny-OikoLeukoHolokaust.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/poland-rapidly-finishes-its-border-wall-preventing-belarus-from-flooding-it-with-third-world-immigrants/#comment-5432438
He articulated it over & over, the latest edition being his “historical” speech.
Whatever one can think of Hitler, one must admit that his world-view was coherent. Putin’s, on the other hand, is a mess.
Putin’s “thoughts” are- if he is sincere – these:
Russia is neither “white” nor non-white. He doesn’t think in these categories. For instance, he’s constantly drumming against Western imperialism, which he thinks began with the Age of Exploration.
His chief devil is not very well defined, but it seems to be a combination of Western Christianity (Catholicism & Protestantism) & now, perhaps, Anglo-Saxonistan which is, in his fantasies, dominated by WASPs. It is not clear how he treats other Europeans, but his image of the West is confusing- it seems that “West” is a combination of Poles, French, Germans & Swedes, Russia’s historical invaders; on the other hand, he easily switches between centuries & mixes the 17th C with the 21st C.
Putin’s narrative is also contradictory. It is not clear whether historical invaders of Russia (Poles, French, Germans) are now the threatening & potentially Russia-conquering West, or just puppets of the global WASP power. Anyway, all Western Christians, from the Portuguese to the English, are racists. Putin’s version of the contemporary world is that “good guys” are colored races (China, India, Africa, blacks in the US,..). Russia, in his view, is not “white” (whatever this may mean).
As far as religious culture goes, Western Christianity is the enemy. (in the past 900-10000 years) It is only Eastern, Orthodox Christianity that he thinks of “defending”. Also, his reinterpretation of history is laughable: he states that historical “friends”, buddies in Russia are Eastern Orthodox, Jews and Muslims (with a smattering of Buddhists).
For anyone who knows anything about the history of Russia- this is absurd. Before Communism, Jews and Muslims were considered irreconcilable aliens & enemies. He’s lying about trivial facts.
Then, his fantasies about WASPs, now, have nothing to do with reality. He fantasizes that TG, gay & Globohomo ideology is basically WASPy, or “white” tool for domination over colored races, Russia & a sword wielded by US “whites” to conquer the world & to exploit it.
Globohomo ideology is, in his definition, the invention of globalist Anglo-Saxonists to subdue Africans, Asians & other coloreds- and, of course, Russia, which is a natural colored ally
It can be easily decoded if one reads his last speech & watches short videos (when he says, in translation, Christianity, he means only Eastern Orthodoxy; also, when he talks about races, and white race especially, he doesn’t include Russians in the definition).
Putin’s core world-view is that of an Eastern Orthodox Euro-Asian Jihadist- basically, this is the same as Dugin- consumed with hatred of not just post-modern Globohomo West, but of the historical European identity.
He doesn’t think in terms of “liberating” Europe from “WASP racist/imperialist/Globohomo yoke”. This ethnic-cultural point of view is completely alien to him. Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
Not sure how much of the music of 1900-1910 would even be available in the 1960s.
Vinyl records were not introduced until the 1930s (and not used for home use until the 40s), so you would have had wax, rubber or shellac discs – none of them particularly durable.
It’s true, music has been all downhill since that pervert from Tupelo swiveled his hips on the Ed Sullivan show. But if you want to avoid degenerate negro music there are also all-white mash-ups, like Leo Sayer-Metallica and Steely Dan-Steve Miller.
Em Till, the elf of Never, that’s dead a long, long time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW3IbwEvR4I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AogBoLwWm0Replies: @vinteuil
Pop stuff has such a short shelf life.
“I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, whenever I might see you,” said Philip,—“I mean, the same in everything that made me like you better than anyone else. I don’t want to explain that; I don’t think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he couldn’t have told how he did it, and we can’t tell why we feel it to be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms.”
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Btw, Robinson high school in Fairfax county just sent an email stating that “swastikas were found in one restroom, and the statement ‘Jews will not replace us,’ in another.”
Place your bets.Replies: @Nicholas Stix, @duncsbaby
My hoaxometer exploded, the moment I read that. Fortunately, I buy them by the gross.
And now for something completely different: go to 2:13:56, since UR goes back to the beginning
Parts of Aida have been stuck in my head since June. Must be her fingernails. (This her nemesis Amneris singing with the priests who have condemned their mutual boyfriend)
After food and sex … and money? Probably.
But as an iSteve topic. Mostly commenters posting boring links to their oh-so-special music that’s so superior to the other guy’s boring and annoying oh-so-special music.
It's music.
But, yeah, as an "ISteve topic?"Replies: @J.Ross
On the other hand, he gives appropriate credit to Charlie Rich, one of the most versatile singers in pop, whose range encompassed country, soul, R&B, pop and jazz. And he absolutely loves the Who ("the last great fling of Superpop"), although I suspect he had little good to say about the group's metamorphosis into a stadium act.
It was just about the first book on rock music I ever read, when I was twelve or so, and it's stayed with me ever since. Highly recommended for an afternoon's reading. (It's also been issued under the titles Rock from the Beginning in the U.S., and Pop from the Beginning in the U.K.)Replies: @Meretricious, @Reg Cæsar
Gary, if Cohn spends an entire chapter on P.J. Proby, and three paragraphs on Sam Cooke, then he’s a proven musical ignoramus, as Proby is about as talented as Michelle Obama. I cannot believe a writer who could make such a glaring error could be on the money elsewhere.
My suspicions are that at least half the “anti-Semitic” comments on Unz.com are planted there by young Jewish sophomores. Other demographics probably pull,the same stunt, but would be less adept at it. Thus, these hoaxes.
As for pop … at that time the charts were dominated by the likes of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. Ugh.
I can’t think of a single song that was popular when I was in high school that I would rank among my favorites. Even then I was downloading ‘80s songs on Napster.
Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single pop-culture object - a song, a movie, a TV show, anything - from that era that I would rank among my personal favorites.
The other day I was talking to some college freshmen about pop music. The general consensus was that Michael Jackson was the GOAT.
Right now I’m sitting in a pizza place frequented by college kids. The radio is blaring that trendy “Running Up That Hill” song that was released right around the time I was born. It fits in perfectly with the newer songs.Replies: @njguy73
Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” for those who don’t know, has become popular again thanks to its use in Stranger Things. And video games like Grand Theft Auto have revived interest in dozens of ’80s songs.
Any, since it's the only song I remember from the Bare Naked Ladies of the late 1990s ( a picture of them being in the article), I will post this fun song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV8N5JP29q0Replies: @R.G. Camara, @fnn, @vinteuil, @Curle, @Malcolm X-Lax
AEN – you seem like a nice enough guy. You seem to want to make things better.
But, I mean, c’mon: Barenaked Ladies?
As an aside, I notice that, as I expected, the comments focus on listening to music, not playing it, and certainly -- certainly! -- not dancing to it. Today's men, especially white men, baring rare exceptions, will not dance. They just won't. And if you do drag one onto the dance floor, he just shuffles around. God forbid he should ever raise his hands above his head -- gay!
But his grandfather and great-grandfather certainly would dance, with skill and enthusiasm-- and do so while wearing a suit and tie! Miller made music for these men and their girls in an era now vanished and so alien to the present that it seems incomprehensible to most of today's passive consumers of commercial noise product.
https://youtu.be/mHANNkKBSNUReplies: @njguy73, @Right_On
In 1989, a British father-son DJ duo did a mashup of “In The Mood” and several rock ‘n roll oldies. It hit #11 on the Hot 100 and will be played at weddings so long as marriage exists.
It wouldn’t have worked with “Sing, Sing, Sing.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_the_Mood
Agreed. I am ancient, and I was in high school then. Every few days one of these great works of music was released. One every few days! We thought it would go on forever. But we were wrong; it stopped. You write “if it were released for the first time today.” In fact, it is, in the form of a background jingle accompanying a high-end commercial aimed at young people. The cool, modern producer has correctly decided it is better to pay royalties than to utilize anything new. I mention this because it imparts some semblance of confirmation.
Anyway, regarding the extraordinary bunching-up during the 60s. Perhaps synchronicity is real. There is some connectivity law of the physical universe we do not understand yet. Or it is an unseen hand. Or we are in a video game and whoever devised it added bunching-up to his algorithm because it is more fun to observe.
No such thing. There is Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Just because he publicly denounced homo propaganda & gender ideology, Putin is not a friend of historical West whom he loathes. He is the enemy breaching treaties, wanting to commit ethnocide against smaller neighboring nations.
Basically, he is a Hitler without extreme racial-genocidal policy- but would be glad to see Europe and America sink into Afro-Muslim-Asan- Mestizo exploitation & destruction of the Western culture.
The last thing in his mind would be the preservation of European & American classical, high & traditional “normal” culture.
Not for nothing, he and Lukashenka had tried to dump into Poland tens of thousands of Pakistanis, Afghan, Central Asian Muslims, blacks and Africans.
Eastern European peoples know the best it is not the war between LBGTQWERTY decadence/Gender ideology and other Anglo-Saxon suicidal perversions, but against a predatory paranoid empire that wants to destroy their ethnic-racial-traditional identity.
NATO is not a code work for Africa-Tranny-OikoLeukoHolokaust.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/poland-rapidly-finishes-its-border-wall-preventing-belarus-from-flooding-it-with-third-world-immigrants/#comment-5432438
He articulated it over & over, the latest edition being his “historical” speech.
Whatever one can think of Hitler, one must admit that his world-view was coherent. Putin’s, on the other hand, is a mess.
Putin’s “thoughts” are- if he is sincere – these:
Russia is neither “white” nor non-white. He doesn’t think in these categories. For instance, he’s constantly drumming against Western imperialism, which he thinks began with the Age of Exploration.
His chief devil is not very well defined, but it seems to be a combination of Western Christianity (Catholicism & Protestantism) & now, perhaps, Anglo-Saxonistan which is, in his fantasies, dominated by WASPs. It is not clear how he treats other Europeans, but his image of the West is confusing- it seems that “West” is a combination of Poles, French, Germans & Swedes, Russia’s historical invaders; on the other hand, he easily switches between centuries & mixes the 17th C with the 21st C.
Putin’s narrative is also contradictory. It is not clear whether historical invaders of Russia (Poles, French, Germans) are now the threatening & potentially Russia-conquering West, or just puppets of the global WASP power. Anyway, all Western Christians, from the Portuguese to the English, are racists. Putin’s version of the contemporary world is that “good guys” are colored races (China, India, Africa, blacks in the US,..). Russia, in his view, is not “white” (whatever this may mean).
As far as religious culture goes, Western Christianity is the enemy. (in the past 900-10000 years) It is only Eastern, Orthodox Christianity that he thinks of “defending”. Also, his reinterpretation of history is laughable: he states that historical “friends”, buddies in Russia are Eastern Orthodox, Jews and Muslims (with a smattering of Buddhists).
For anyone who knows anything about the history of Russia- this is absurd. Before Communism, Jews and Muslims were considered irreconcilable aliens & enemies. He’s lying about trivial facts.
Then, his fantasies about WASPs, now, have nothing to do with reality. He fantasizes that TG, gay & Globohomo ideology is basically WASPy, or “white” tool for domination over colored races, Russia & a sword wielded by US “whites” to conquer the world & to exploit it.
Globohomo ideology is, in his definition, the invention of globalist Anglo-Saxonists to subdue Africans, Asians & other coloreds- and, of course, Russia, which is a natural colored ally
It can be easily decoded if one reads his last speech & watches short videos (when he says, in translation, Christianity, he means only Eastern Orthodoxy; also, when he talks about races, and white race especially, he doesn’t include Russians in the definition).
Putin’s core world-view is that of an Eastern Orthodox Euro-Asian Jihadist- basically, this is the same as Dugin- consumed with hatred of not just post-modern Globohomo West, but of the historical European identity.
He doesn’t think in terms of “liberating” Europe from “WASP racist/imperialist/Globohomo yoke”. This ethnic-cultural point of view is completely alien to him.
You are so harshing my vibe, man. Why not chill a little? Find a little wood, one with trees I mean ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GLgjJOFrks
And both really love music and know a vast amount about it.
Stanley attributed a song on Blonde on Blonde to Highway 61 Revisited(or vice versa) in Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. He thinks New Morning is Dylan’s best work. He ridiculously overrates the Turtles and Bangles. Turtles did have some smash hits but were nothing major. Bangles were merely okay. He is overly harsh on Huey Lewis for what seems an unhealthy obsession. Not a Lewis fan but “Heart and Soul” is one hell of a song. And the man has a sense of humor.
But as an iSteve topic. Mostly commenters posting boring links to their oh-so-special music that's so superior to the other guy's boring and annoying oh-so-special music.Replies: @vinteuil, @SunBakedSuburb, @Ralph L
Oh, no – it’s not food – it’s not even sex that dwells in the inner chamber.
It’s music.
But, yeah, as an “ISteve topic?”
Vinyl records were not introduced until the 1930s (and not used for home use until the 40s), so you would have had wax, rubber or shellac discs - none of them particularly durable.Replies: @Carol, @Redneck farmer
But they had sheet music and a lot more pianists who could read the stuff.
They’re one of the few acts where it’s worth listening through the whole album on every album.
But, I mean, c'mon: Barenaked Ladies?Replies: @J.Ross, @Achmed E. Newman
It’s interesting looking back to when they first came out in the 90s that they were already poz, they were visibly soyboys, they look like the abortion in the GrubHub commercial. They were the future.
But, I mean, c'mon: Barenaked Ladies?Replies: @J.Ross, @Achmed E. Newman
• Soary (said with Jordan Peterson accent): Achmed E. Newman
But then there's the old adage that the best calendar year ever for popular music was whatever year you turned 14. For me, that meant 1991. And while that did happen to be a special year for pop, the big highlight was how grunge exploded into the public consciousness with the "Nevermind" album, I happen to think that 1982 was the best year ever for popular music.
One more thing, while we're on the subject:
I am barely old enough to have a conscious memory of the tail end of the first run popularity of the genre of music that would later and is now known as Yacht Rock. Back then, my contemporaries derided it as "station wagon music." I called it "Aunt Joan music."
And looking back, I now think the popularity of that kind of music back then had nothing to do with the merits ("--") inherent in it that people are rediscovering about it today. Its popularity back then was entirely a function of it being lowest common denominator music. Meaning that nobody really liked it in the positive or affirmative, it's just that it didn't happen to offend anyone. Which meant that it was the perfect music to play in mixed company situations with people who probably had wildly differing affirmative tastes in music otherwise. Mixed company situations, such as, being on a yacht.Replies: @Trinity, @Stan Adams, @Intelligent Dasein, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Hypnotoad666, @SunBakedSuburb
“I happen to think 1982 was the best year ever for popular music.”
The 1980s was a great decade for pop music. The genre expanded beyond bubblegum and developed subgenres that gave talent that didn’t comfortably fit into rock or pop a venue to tout their wares. Guys like Robyn Hitchcock who was able to grow and nurture his sound throughout the 60s and 70s and then arrive on the 1980s scene readymade. I wrote the bulk of his lyrics.
I’ve never even heard of P.J. Proby
Does “Strange Fruit” count?
https://www.npr.org/2012/09/05/158933012/the-strange-story-of-the-man-behind-strange-fruit
Funny, with how much negroes yammer on about lynching, they haven't made any music about it.
"Strange Fruit" was written by a White man--well, by a "Rhymes with (((Chew Toy)))."Replies: @Gary in Gramercy
Stanley: What pop lost was a lot of melodic and lyrical subtlety and its cross-generational pleasures.
But as boomers grow old and younger generations like the same kind of music, a new kind of cross-generational connection developed. Difference is prior to rock n roll, the young ones listened to music to feel adult whereas today the older people listen to rock to remember their youth and remain ‘cool’.
Rogers: Every brain is formed out of an uncountable number of genetic and physiological events influenced by chance. Every brain grows up in a different musical culture…
That’s why I always tell my students: Never be a music snob.
There’s a lot to be said for this point of view. As a former market researcher, I tend to bring that perspective to writing movie reviews: e.g., I often explain that this film will appeal to these types of people but less so to these other types.
That’s confusing culture studies with criticism. To understand a culture or sub-culture, one has to be empathetic and try to understand its appeal, the psychology of the community. So, one could totally hate the Grateful Dead but still be thoughtful about the Dead Cult.
In contrast, criticism has no value without artistic and/or moral criteria. It’s the difference between a criminal psychologist and the judge. The former only needs to understand whereas the latter has to judge.
Also, what does Rogers mean by ‘music snob’? Disregarding entire genres of music can be stupid, but surely there is good and bad in any genre. There is good hard rock, bad hard rock.
Also, some genres, despite gems(which exist in all genres), are on the stupid side. Punk, Heavy Metal, and Rap. Also, from a cultural studies angle, one has to take into the negative social, moral, and cultural impact that much of pop music has had. Being open-minded about the ingenuity of much of pop music is a good thing, but being closed-minded about the dire impact pop music/culture has had on society is a bad thing.
Being open-minded is sometimes cover for cowardice. I’m sure Rogers really dislikes certain kind of music, even entire genres. Then, she should be honest and say it instead of being ‘nice’ and likable to all sides. That’s not an open mind but a lack of spine.
Rogers distinguishes between three audiences for musicians: critics who can provide fame, other musicians who can offer respect, and the public who deliver love (and money).
Critics can provide reputation, not fame, which only comes with popularity. Critics didn’t make the Beatles or Stones, especially when Rock criticism was hardly a thing in those times.
Consider novelty. Musical genres can be mapped onto a “novelty-popularity” bell curve. At one tail is radically innovative art music that requires too much cognitive exertion to sell well.
The problem with musical modernism is it soon suppressed innovation by creating schools and dogma, whereby composers were pressured and expected to toe the line. While the creator of the school was innovative, most of what followed was by the numbers.
The current biggest hits fall into the middle of the curve by including enough familiar elements to appeal effortlessly to a mass audience, but also enough fashionable innovation to rivet the attention of faddish teens.
True in the 60s, 70s, some of 80s and 90s, but not today, though there are exceptions. Biggest hits today are utterly formulaic, a good number of them written by a handful of specialists.
For example, reggae was cutting-edge a half century ago, but today it ranks with country as one of the most traditionalist genres.
Part of reggae’s appeal even 50 yrs ago was its ‘rustic’ quality, especially in the era of Progressive Rock, arty and glam music. Like blues and country(taken up by rockers in the late 60s), reggae provided a sense of community.
last time I can recall being generally excited about new music was at age 34 in 1993 when I finally bought a car with a radio in it again and was belatedly introduced to grunge rock.
How can anyone like something called ‘grungy’? It’s like falling for a genre called ‘stink rock’.
But as an iSteve topic. Mostly commenters posting boring links to their oh-so-special music that's so superior to the other guy's boring and annoying oh-so-special music.Replies: @vinteuil, @SunBakedSuburb, @Ralph L
AnotherDud: “minoritarian” ad nauseum
What do you make of the studies that show in England both poor black Caribbean boys and poor white boys are failing at school. Seems to be cultural problem within these groups but what can be done?Replies: @AceDeuce
These days, and for some time now, the vast majority of authentically poor White people in the U.S. and England are essentially negroes. They have aped (pun intended) negro speech, mannerisms, attitudes, behavior, taste in music, drug use, sexual incontinence, proud defiant stupidity, dysfunctional family dynamics, and lack of work ethic. The authentically working class Whites are much the same.
It’s not natural for Whites to act like that, which is obvious, (Samuel Johnson — “Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”) so these Whites aren’t as quite as horribly destructive to society as negroes are. They lack the innate psychopathy and genuine stupidity of negroes (as well as having no protective race card), but the self-destructive results among these “mutant Whites” or feral Whites” as I call them, is still evident, as is the massive negative general effect on our society that the utter waste of these White lives causes.
We're now looking at the third generation with no way out.
Anthony Daniels covers the topic of the underclass in "Life at the bottom"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_BottomReplies: @AceDeuce
“Least controversial objects in the universe.”
Not if they’re on a man.
The path out of poverty for Whites in England has largely been destroyed. Started in the ’70’s accelerated with the de-industrialization and financialization of the economy in the past 40 years.
We’re now looking at the third generation with no way out.
Anthony Daniels covers the topic of the underclass in “Life at the bottom”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom
On the other hand, he gives appropriate credit to Charlie Rich, one of the most versatile singers in pop, whose range encompassed country, soul, R&B, pop and jazz. And he absolutely loves the Who ("the last great fling of Superpop"), although I suspect he had little good to say about the group's metamorphosis into a stadium act.
It was just about the first book on rock music I ever read, when I was twelve or so, and it's stayed with me ever since. Highly recommended for an afternoon's reading. (It's also been issued under the titles Rock from the Beginning in the U.S., and Pop from the Beginning in the U.K.)Replies: @Meretricious, @Reg Cæsar
Any word on Bertha Franklin? She deserves a song of her own. As does the three-dollar motel.
Our first-grader’s teacher played “(What a) Wonderful World” for the class as part of some project. Thankfully, it was Satchmo’s song, not Sam’s. The latter is inappropriate for school.
Whatever the “best” title of a pop music book, the most fitting is John Strausbaugh’s Rock Till You Drop. It ages better than any other!
David Byrne, of Talking Heads fame, wrote “How Music Works” which was a good, slightly more analytical way of deepening the reader’s music appreciation than lighting a pine tree.
Another scattered impression is that James Jamerson who is rumored to have written idk, like every Motown song (and died young as did the other master of the hook Bernard Edwards)–that guy would make a good music biopic. There could be little animations flying off the bass staff a la Fantasia
Here’s a video on him
Any, since it's the only song I remember from the Bare Naked Ladies of the late 1990s ( a picture of them being in the article), I will post this fun song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV8N5JP29q0Replies: @R.G. Camara, @fnn, @vinteuil, @Curle, @Malcolm X-Lax
Now I remember why I never listened to these guys.
Vinyl records were not introduced until the 1930s (and not used for home use until the 40s), so you would have had wax, rubber or shellac discs - none of them particularly durable.Replies: @Carol, @Redneck farmer
The Summit.fm at 5 PM every Friday, plays “Cruising the Decades” starting with songs from the 1910s. Autotune and some backing synthesizers, most of the 10s, 20s, and 30s stuff would be hits today.
“Billie Holiday may have popularized “Strange Fruit” and turned it into a work of art, but it was a Jewish communist teacher and civil rights activist from the Bronx, Abel Meeropol, who wrote it, first as a poem, then later as a song.”
https://www.npr.org/2012/09/05/158933012/the-strange-story-of-the-man-behind-strange-fruit
Moves didn’t hurt Elvis but at the end of the day it was the voice.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/8ToAAOSwxflZvLJN/s-l1600.jpg
Our first-grader's teacher played "(What a) Wonderful World" for the class as part of some project. Thankfully, it was Satchmo's song, not Sam's. The latter is inappropriate for school.Whatever the "best" title of a pop music book, the most fitting is John Strausbaugh's Rock Till You Drop. It ages better than any other!Replies: @AceDeuce
Written by a White man.
Disney settles Lion song dispute
(This Ronnie Mack is not to be confused with white sideman in Mel Tillis's band who may or may not have murdered his wife Coral.)
It's music.
But, yeah, as an "ISteve topic?"Replies: @J.Ross
Would you rather discuss golf?
LOL-But nah. It’s not about him. It was written a good fifteen years before young E.T. fkd around and found out.
Funny, with how much negroes yammer on about lynching, they haven’t made any music about it.
“Strange Fruit” was written by a White man–well, by a “Rhymes with (((Chew Toy))).”
As an aside, I notice that, as I expected, the comments focus on listening to music, not playing it, and certainly -- certainly! -- not dancing to it. Today's men, especially white men, baring rare exceptions, will not dance. They just won't. And if you do drag one onto the dance floor, he just shuffles around. God forbid he should ever raise his hands above his head -- gay!
But his grandfather and great-grandfather certainly would dance, with skill and enthusiasm-- and do so while wearing a suit and tie! Miller made music for these men and their girls in an era now vanished and so alien to the present that it seems incomprehensible to most of today's passive consumers of commercial noise product.
https://youtu.be/mHANNkKBSNUReplies: @njguy73, @Right_On
Great compilation clip. Back then, if you asked a girl to dance you’d better be damn sure you knew some fancy moves.
I like the way the lady at the 3:36 mark adds funny facial expressions to the mix!
Here’s an amended, but HD, cut for the same music.
Yet he wasn't taken down for it. Almost like he's immune..Replies: @AceDeuce, @Peter Akuleyev
Good point. Must be the beanie that’s under his beanie.
I found the early chapters of Stanley's last book interesting. I had always thought that period right before the Beatles arrived was a musical wasteland but there was really a lot going on. You had the folk movement led by Dylan in New York. New York also had all the Brill building songwriters. Los Angeles had Phil Spector and the girl groups and also the Beach Boys. A lot of great soul music was already coming from Stax Records in Memphis and Motown in Detroit. Roy Orbison had moved from Sun to Monument and was turning out a string of hits.
Stanley's new book sounds like a good way to find out about even earlier pre-fifties musical artists. They would be almost completely unfamiliar to anyone under seventy, which means most people currently walking around. I can remember as a small child seeing someone like Louis Armstrong on television and thinking how ancient he looked. Young people today must think the same thing about Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney or the Rolling Stones.Replies: @Kylie
“I can remember as a small child seeing someone like Louis Armstrong on television and thinking how ancient he looked.”
Louis Armstrong seemed ancient to me, too, when I was small. I’m glad he’s not forgotten. I hear him singing “It’s a Wonderful World” on Instagram all the time. But it’s a shame his earlier music isn’t better known. He was a virtuoso musician, truly phenomenal. I heard this just last year and instantly bought all his early recordings with the Hot Fives and Sevens.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zPgh7nxTQT4&feature=share&si=EMSIkaIECMiOmarE6JChQQ
But as an iSteve topic. Mostly commenters posting boring links to their oh-so-special music that's so superior to the other guy's boring and annoying oh-so-special music.Replies: @vinteuil, @SunBakedSuburb, @Ralph L
Would you rather we shared recipes, homemade porn, and investment advice?
When it comes to judging music, trust your own ear. Critics and musicians are both seeking novelty and virtuosity, but not the heart of music, which is soul and emotion. Most everything I have sampled on the advice of a critic has been unappealing, whether classical or pop/rock. (And for goodness sakes, NEVER trust the market/pop culture to pick your music).
Prince? Zappa? Ptewy!
Kristofferson, Yoakam? Now, you're talking singing, songs and music.Replies: @middle-aged vet
I sometimes wonder if Zappa, who seemed to be a thoughtful person, ever felt regret for all the really bad music he foisted on the hipsters of his day.
Best I can tell, he never did feel bad about it. It is possible he did not really think of music as anything important, one way or another.
Sad! Poor guy would quite possibly have been so much happier, musically speaking, as a non-celebrity non-professional-musician who just liked to listen to old-time jazz and classical music in his spare time.
Any, since it's the only song I remember from the Bare Naked Ladies of the late 1990s ( a picture of them being in the article), I will post this fun song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV8N5JP29q0Replies: @R.G. Camara, @fnn, @vinteuil, @Curle, @Malcolm X-Lax
I always liked “One Week” and “Jane.”
I strongly recommend David Byrne’s book: “How Music Works.”
J.Ross, since you asked 😉 :
Knowing ‘cerebral’ lyrics, but is it good music? I say no: The music is merely a forgettable backdrop keeping time to a slice-of-life story. It’s SWPL White rap. It should be short fiction, not a song.
Contra upper-middlebrow “Sukie in the Graveyard” is lowbrow goth band The Cemetary Girlz with “I Was Born… (To Be Cold)”: Simpler, maybe even literally sophomoric lovesick/mental lyrics, but with immersive sound to match the real emotion.
The singer’s POV could be that of a young ‘simp’ burning for a ‘Sukie’—real first person presence rather than arch third-person comedy-of-manners observation. Even without knowing the lyrics—the sound will either get you or not: with B&S, it ain’t happening.
sociologist john schumaker proposed that ancient primitive tribal ceremonies with motion and music have long been used by our species to trigger a trance state, evoking a convulsive or semi-conscious state, such as for example ‘holy rollers’ in some churches, which he says may be an evolutionary adaptation used to ‘regularize’ brain activity related to death anxiety…he proposed that such an adaptation evolved perhaps 100s of thousands of years ago…and that we no longer achieve the full trance state, due to the influence of modern society.. leading to all sorts of pathology and dysfunction, such as are associated with advanced societies…however music may used to create a partial trance state, but it’s not the full trance state..
A guy I know won a Grammy for producing a Stevie Wonder record years ago. His insight was there is nothing about music he could possibly teach Stevie Wonder, so his job was to get the musicians Stevie wanted, rent the studio, have Stevie meet co-writers or the guys to put the songs together etc. Strictly logistics because Stevie is blind. It worked. Now he makes movies about golf courses.
The guy sounds just like Steve down to the golf courses.
Something to celebrate all the Gurls at the Pentagon.
Maybe the federal government's new song could be "Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed, complete with a tranny Uncle Sam to show our soldiers what they're fighting for!Replies: @Joe S.Walker
The very thing…
I always despised St Etienne. They belonged to a class of bands that might be called “record-collection rockers” – people who do nothing whatever original or adventurous or exciting, but they want you to see what cool old records they’ve got.
Why hasn’t anyone written a good song about Emmett Till?
The One They Call Desanex could do better, but here’s my effort:
Emmett Till
I dreamed I saw Emmett Till last night,
Alive as you and me,
Says I, “But Emmett, you’re 67 years dead,”
“I never died,” says he,
“I never died,” says he.
In Mississippi, “Emmett,” says I, in standing by my bed,
“They lynched you for grabbing a white man’s wife,”
Says Till, “but I ain’t dead,”
Says Till, “but I ain’t dead.”
“The white supremacists killed you Till,
They shot you, Till,” says I.
“Takes more than guns to kill a man,”
Says Till, “I didn’t die,”
Says Till, “I didn’t die.”
And standing there as big as life
And smiling with his eyes
Says Till, “What they can never kill
Is a tale mythologized,
A tale mythologized.
“From NPR to the New York Times,
Three times every month still,
Where liberals preach and mythologize,
It’s there you find Emmett Till,
It’s there you find Emmett Till!”
Hey, Steve, you didn’t mention what the writers had to say about cursers.
Now, the Jew's sensibility has so thoroughly permeated our degenerate Weimar culture that that kind of policing is mostly unnecessary.
Now the Jew can simply go after the errant artist directly. See Kanye West.Replies: @Gary in Gramercy, @Anonymous
If Norman Granz were alive to hear this kind of talk from you, it would kill him.
Where’s the gratitude?
Funny, with how much negroes yammer on about lynching, they haven't made any music about it.
"Strange Fruit" was written by a White man--well, by a "Rhymes with (((Chew Toy)))."Replies: @Gary in Gramercy
And Cole Porter (sans parentheses) wrote “Miss Otis Regrets.”
I think the best album review I ever read was for the Foghat album, Rock and Roll Outlaws. It simply read, “Wanted: Dead or dead. No reward.”
The lyrics, which I only got a little bit of at the end (cause they usually don't matter!) remind me of this one - really great sound and melody (and good lyrics) by Tai Bachmann, son of the Overdrive guy. Great guitar riff!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ElORM9O-0U
And, a fun video to boot.Replies: @the one they call Desanex
But while musicians might make good copy, I find that music itself escapes meaningful description -- aside perhaps from "If you like X, you might like Y." (And this even though I am 1. allegedly a writer and 2. listen to music about 9 hours a day).Replies: @Dube, @duncsbaby
But while musicians might make good copy, I find that music itself escapes meaningful description – … (And this even though I am 1. allegedly a writer and 2. listen to music about 9 hours a day).
There is a vocabulary for music. If you don’t have it, you can’t use it.
Btw, Robinson high school in Fairfax county just sent an email stating that “swastikas were found in one restroom, and the statement ‘Jews will not replace us,’ in another.”
Place your bets.Replies: @Nicholas Stix, @duncsbaby
It’s a hoax, of course but if it is ever found out to be one it will be buried right away. It will be used as a struggle session for white students and white parents either way.
But while musicians might make good copy, I find that music itself escapes meaningful description -- aside perhaps from "If you like X, you might like Y." (And this even though I am 1. allegedly a writer and 2. listen to music about 9 hours a day).Replies: @Dube, @duncsbaby
Advances in CGI are going to make this irrelevant. Already the best Warhammer 40K movies are ones made by fans. If the kids don’t like the content being put out by the big studios, they’re going to make their own. This is going to rock the industry. You won’t need billion dollar studios and million dollar actors any more to make good-looking movies.
It looks like most of the songs on the Till soundtrack are mid-century black classics, but there’s this original song.
I’m always interested in the question of at what age interest in new music fades. For example, the last time I can recall being generally excited about new music was at age 34 in 1993 when I finally bought a car with a radio in it again and was belatedly introduced to grunge rock.
Similarly, novelist John Updike, supremely gifted with aesthetic perceptiveness, wrote a long article about all the pop songs he’d loved as a teen in the 1940s–50s. He concluded by mentioning that the last new song on the radio that he could remember making an impression on him was “Hey Jude” when he was 36. Evidently, by a certain age, it takes “Hey Jude” to get even John Updike to notice new music.
That’s crazy. I cannot comprehend a life devoid of coming across new music and new sounds.
You wrote once that you listen to music through some sort of shitty ear bud type headphones, mate, you don’t do that to your eyes, treat your ears the same, go out and get yourself some decent headphones or at least a good stereo system in your clothes cupboard.
Why have you become stultified in your music?
It’s not as if you have to get up and performative dance. Not listening to new music is like not wanting to see new towns and new vistas, or take a deeper more profound interest in your own surrounds. I think not listening to new music says you’ve become dead inside.
Leaving aside the fact that we’re vibrating to scales beyond Fibonaci, and that you can be seen from a kilometre or more away through colour vibrations of your scale in the sky, not listening to new music is soul constipation.
You should drive more. Get a good car stereo and drive alot. I drive well over 50,000kms per year and I thank the Good Lord for Spotify, I couldn’t make it through each day without burrowing my way through a back catalogue of an artist I read on a critics forum or Christgau.
Just the other day I was looking up ELO on Robert Christgau’s site and learned that Jeff Lynne co-wrote and pretty much re-launched Tom Petty’s career. Wow!
Never knew that!
From there I went into The Move and found Message from the Country, and from there after reading his disparaging reviews of Petty, as an unsubstantive sort of mediocrity who’d achieved fame through mass produced musical formula, something which I always felt, went searching for the Cars, to confirm my thoughts of Christgau as a negative piece of shit, and instead landed on Car Seat Headrest instead.
Wow! Each day I’m staggered at the sonic artistry of our people. It keeps me alive – from the metaphysical through to not falling asleep at the wheel and finding myself upside down face first in a gum tree with petrol leaking down on my face, in a regular tap tap tap.
We're now looking at the third generation with no way out.
Anthony Daniels covers the topic of the underclass in "Life at the bottom"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_BottomReplies: @AceDeuce
I own that book, as well as a couple others by Dalrymple.
I grew up in the 70s in Rust Belt America, as a member of the working poor.
You can be poor without being a drug-addled criminal lowlife. You sure as hell aren’t going to get anywhere living like a piece of garbage. Funny how all this “poverty” coincides with the trickle down use of drugs to the proles in the 1970s and the concurrent rejection of religion.
Thousands of Vietnamese refugees hit England back then. No real education, as a rule; No English–and as far as an ouch contest, their previous decade was worse than any Brits.
Don’t know that any of them got rich, but I’ll wager that most didn’t become a bunch of yobs.
I shudda taken the Swiss job...Replies: @AceDeuce
I saw Tom Petty four or five times from 1978-1986. As a stage performer, he was close to my favorite. E.g., I found it unwise that Bob Dylan in 1986 employed Petty and his Heartbreakers as his back-up band, because Petty was so much better of a live performer than Dylan.
On the other hand, as a composer, Petty struck me as a … ditty-writer. For instance, here’s one of my favorite songs ever:
And yet, is this really a good piece of music?
Still, Petty was a strong lyricist and sometimes struck gold:
Yes. A master hits the target and doesn't need to fill up space. Consider how he produces the twang in "Break Down."
"Free Fallin'"
And yet, is this really a good piece of music?"
Yes, I think "Free Fallin'" is really a good piece of music. But I don't think it's a really good piece of music, like a classic ballad or classical art song.
I'm not sure what your standards are here. The vast majority of pop songs are ditties ("a short simple song") except for the "concept albums" and "power ballads", many of which are laughably bloated.
"Free Fallin'" does what a pop song should do. It's very catchy with a strong rhythm and great hook, easy to hum or sing, with clever lyrics that say a little something. My musical preference is almost exclusively classical yet I'm always glad to hear this. It pleases my ear. Yes, within the limits of a pop song, it's good music.
I could not bear to listen all the way through to most of the songs on this thread except for this and "Hurt". They literally hurt my ears. "Free Fallin''" makes me smile. I liked it the first time I heard it decades ago, it's safe to say I'll always like it. So, two thumbs up from me.Replies: @J.Ross
This is a breakthrough for Petty because for the first time the Heartbreakers (his Heartbreakers, this L.A.M.F. fan should specify) are rocking as powerfully as he's writing. But whether Petty has any need to rock out beyond the sheer doing of it--whether he has anything to say--remains shrouded in banality. Thus he establishes himself as the perfect rock and roller for those who want good--very good, because Petty really knows his stuff--rock and roll that can be forgotten as soon as the record or the concert is over, rock and roll that won't disturb your sleep, your conscience, or your precious bodily rhythms. B+That's the thing with Petty, though, which I don't find with ELO. Up till his solo album there's nothing to chew on and earworm it's way into your psyche like a true work of art would. But, it's just rock n roll, as Gene Simmons said of Ramones https://www.kissasylum.com/news/2014/12/12/gene-simmons-success-band-chicago-ramones/Alice in Chains is pretty good.
You’re saying it’s pretty good; I’m not saying it’s good or bad. That’s not a level of success. There’s only success, and you can move out of your mom’s basement. So The Ramones, bless them. We’re a fun band, and everything else, and influential to you. It’s not a big band that plays stadiums that goes, “Oh yeah, I started because of them.” So you take The Ramones which is widely accepted by the media as the most influential this and that. They have one gold record after they died. The one they hated the most. Chicago had 22 platinum records in a row.So you’re officially saying on record that you like Chicago more than The Ramones.
My point is, it doesn’t matter what I like or what you like. It doesn’t matter. It only matters what the masses like. Either that, or we can say, “We are holier than thou. My opinion is worth more than yours.” I don’t subscribe to that theory; I believe the masses rule.Personally, I think Kiss' legacy will recede where Ramone's will take seed.As the flamboyance of current day marketing forces decay substantial acts of art evincing everyday life will flower in stone for future archaelogists to read their influence on present day.Back to Free Fallin:GM: Was “Free Fallin’” an example of you having the thrust of the song and Jeff coming in later to help shape it?TP: Well, I sat down at a little keyboard, and I had kind of the main lick, and I think even with that Jeff said, “If you trim a bar off of that, it’ll be better.” And so I did, and he was right. Then I just sang most of the song right off the top of my head, the lyrics and the melody. He was very helpful with the chorus. He had that line “free falling” and I couldn’t quite see how it could work. I couldn’t get it all it in one phrase. But thank God he did. So we finished that up and decided to record them. We recorded those two songs very fast; I think we did them in two days. I remember coming home with those two tracks on a cassette and playing them over and over, just saying, “Wow, this is really good.” I had to talk Jeff into finishing the album with me.You had that post about McCartney being the most wonderful nice guy of rock. Well, not even McCartney can top Jeff Lynne, the nicest and most artistic of the lot, he even got McCartney going again producing Flaming Pie.Lynne was clearly born out of Magical Mystery Tour Beatles, my own favourite album even if purests will tell me it wasn't an album but an EP, still, the album we know today is the best thing in rock for mine and is key to knowing Jeff Lynne.Lynne, like Petty, wasn't strong on lyrics, but he was magnificent on feel. And that's all it's about, really. How they make us feel.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7eU741fQgY
Emmett TillI dreamed I saw Emmett Till last night,
Alive as you and me,
Says I, "But Emmett, you're 67 years dead,"
"I never died," says he,
"I never died," says he.
In Mississippi, "Emmett," says I, in standing by my bed,
"They lynched you for grabbing a white man’s wife,”
Says Till, "but I ain't dead,"
Says Till, "but I ain't dead." "The white supremacists killed you Till,
They shot you, Till," says I.
"Takes more than guns to kill a man,"
Says Till, "I didn't die,"
Says Till, "I didn't die." And standing there as big as life
And smiling with his eyes
Says Till, "What they can never kill
Is a tale mythologized,
A tale mythologized. "From NPR to the New York Times,
Three times every month still,
Where liberals preach and mythologize,
It's there you find Emmett Till,
It's there you find Emmett Till!"Replies: @the one they call Desanex
Perfect, Harry! As I would say, “Sung to the tune of ‘Joe Hill’ (Joan Baez).”
X was pretty great in 1980-81.
Exene of X struck me as a rare example of how a woman doesn’t have to be good looking, she just has to be confident, to snag top men. Her first husband, bandmate in X John Doe went on to have a substantial movie career in the 1980s in a lot of Dennis Quaid’s Best Friend roles. Exene’s second husband, Viggo Mortensen, doesn’t make many movies, but when he does he’s one of the great leading men of this century: the King in “LOTR: The Return of the King,” “Eastern Promises,” and “Green Book.”
Which one is Belle?
Yet he wasn't taken down for it. Almost like he's immune..Replies: @AceDeuce, @Peter Akuleyev
Ali G was mocking cultural appropriation. This is perhaps clearer to British people. His character canonically comes from the middle class white suburb of Staines-on-Thames and his full name is “Alastair Leslie Graham”. He is meant to be a white poseur.
Granted, in these woke days even making fun of white people trying to be black is probably a step too far.
1. to insult white people (which aside from their obsession with $ is what they live for).
2. to divert attention away from who controls the culture that produces rappers and poseurs.
I was a poor working class kid in Liverpool in the 60’s. Unlike Pythons Four Yorkshiremen, I didn’t know we were poor. After a turbulent few years, I settled down, got a temp job with an American bank and 15 years later I was a VP in New York with an apartment (rent controlled no less) on Fifth Ave.
I shudda taken the Swiss job…
The name is a reference to a poorly animated 80s cartoon about a girl and her giant dog. Not Japanese by the way, but French. Could’ve been much worse, could’ve been Dogtanian.
>is this really a good piece of music?
Yes. A master hits the target and doesn’t need to fill up space. Consider how he produces the twang in “Break Down.”
That was a good sound, Mr. Ross, from a band I’d never heard of. The keyboards really make this one. Thanks.
The lyrics, which I only got a little bit of at the end (cause they usually don’t matter!) remind me of this one – really great sound and melody (and good lyrics) by Tai Bachmann, son of the Overdrive guy. Great guitar riff!
And, a fun video to boot.
https://media.tenor.com/pSZ_yK6bB90AAAAd/stop-saying-that-stop-it.gif
:)
I saw Tom Petty at a Halloween show. It was one of the best rock shows I’ve seen. He had this big fake Live Oak tree on the stage. I can’t remember the Rebel flag for Born a Rebel, but it wasn’t, OK, NOTHING was, that big a deal back then.
Granted, in these woke days even making fun of white people trying to be black is probably a step too far.Replies: @BB753, @Richard B
Still, he was a Jew posing as a Gentile and making fun of “whiggers”. Could the converse be imaginable ?
Yes, it took me until my 50s to discover
Handel
Gregorian Chant
Hildegarde of Bingen
Songs Of The Auvergne
And Latin music of all kinds – from Chicano doo-wop, through gaita and cumbia from Colombia, to mid-60s “boogaloo”. At one stage video of Pete Terrace, circa 1965-66 at a place called “Chez Jose” (I assume in Manhattan), was available here.
https://www.historicfilms.com/search/?q=pete+terrace&q=pete+terrace#p1
Great social document (I downloaded when it was available), very hip young ladies in the height of short skirt fashion, racially mixed (although the black guy heavily featured looks like Belafonte’s little brother), and tremendous music – the singer, who’s also playing congas, must have been exhausted after 90 minutes.
The full album is available on the tube, pity its not available with the video.
OT Where were you when you realized Stacey Abrams just admitted that abortion kills a “child” (she literally specifically used the word “child”)?
On Topic, The First
On Topic, The Second
And the ultimate
Just because he publicly denounced homo propaganda & gender ideology, Putin is not a friend of historical West whom he loathes. He is the enemy breaching treaties, wanting to commit ethnocide against smaller neighboring nations.
Basically, he is a Hitler without extreme racial-genocidal policy- but would be glad to see Europe and America sink into Afro-Muslim-Asan- Mestizo exploitation & destruction of the Western culture.
The last thing in his mind would be the preservation of European & American classical, high & traditional "normal" culture.
Not for nothing, he and Lukashenka had tried to dump into Poland tens of thousands of Pakistanis, Afghan, Central Asian Muslims, blacks and Africans.
Eastern European peoples know the best it is not the war between LBGTQWERTY decadence/Gender ideology and other Anglo-Saxon suicidal perversions, but against a predatory paranoid empire that wants to destroy their ethnic-racial-traditional identity.
NATO is not a code work for Africa-Tranny-OikoLeukoHolokaust.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/poland-rapidly-finishes-its-border-wall-preventing-belarus-from-flooding-it-with-third-world-immigrants/#comment-5432438
He articulated it over & over, the latest edition being his “historical” speech.
Whatever one can think of Hitler, one must admit that his world-view was coherent. Putin’s, on the other hand, is a mess.
Putin’s “thoughts” are- if he is sincere – these:
Russia is neither “white” nor non-white. He doesn’t think in these categories. For instance, he’s constantly drumming against Western imperialism, which he thinks began with the Age of Exploration.
His chief devil is not very well defined, but it seems to be a combination of Western Christianity (Catholicism & Protestantism) & now, perhaps, Anglo-Saxonistan which is, in his fantasies, dominated by WASPs. It is not clear how he treats other Europeans, but his image of the West is confusing- it seems that “West” is a combination of Poles, French, Germans & Swedes, Russia’s historical invaders; on the other hand, he easily switches between centuries & mixes the 17th C with the 21st C.
Putin’s narrative is also contradictory. It is not clear whether historical invaders of Russia (Poles, French, Germans) are now the threatening & potentially Russia-conquering West, or just puppets of the global WASP power. Anyway, all Western Christians, from the Portuguese to the English, are racists. Putin’s version of the contemporary world is that “good guys” are colored races (China, India, Africa, blacks in the US,..). Russia, in his view, is not “white” (whatever this may mean).
As far as religious culture goes, Western Christianity is the enemy. (in the past 900-10000 years) It is only Eastern, Orthodox Christianity that he thinks of “defending”. Also, his reinterpretation of history is laughable: he states that historical “friends”, buddies in Russia are Eastern Orthodox, Jews and Muslims (with a smattering of Buddhists).
For anyone who knows anything about the history of Russia- this is absurd. Before Communism, Jews and Muslims were considered irreconcilable aliens & enemies. He’s lying about trivial facts.
Then, his fantasies about WASPs, now, have nothing to do with reality. He fantasizes that TG, gay & Globohomo ideology is basically WASPy, or “white” tool for domination over colored races, Russia & a sword wielded by US “whites” to conquer the world & to exploit it.
Globohomo ideology is, in his definition, the invention of globalist Anglo-Saxonists to subdue Africans, Asians & other coloreds- and, of course, Russia, which is a natural colored ally
It can be easily decoded if one reads his last speech & watches short videos (when he says, in translation, Christianity, he means only Eastern Orthodoxy; also, when he talks about races, and white race especially, he doesn’t include Russians in the definition).
Putin’s core world-view is that of an Eastern Orthodox Euro-Asian Jihadist- basically, this is the same as Dugin- consumed with hatred of not just post-modern Globohomo West, but of the historical European identity.
He doesn’t think in terms of “liberating” Europe from “WASP racist/imperialist/Globohomo yoke”. This ethnic-cultural point of view is completely alien to him. Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
“Putin’s core world-view is that of an Eastern Orthodox Euro-Asian Jihadist- basically, this is the same as Dugin- consumed with hatred of not just post-modern Globohomo West, but of the historical ….”
You are so harshing my vibe, man. Why not chill a little? Find a little wood, one with trees I mean …
I looked at the background to that video and thought it didn’t look very Latin American – they’re from Brittany!
https://mymodernmet.com/isaac-and-nora-musicians-latin-america-tour/
There is a vocabulary for music. If you don't have it, you can't use it.Replies: @Known Fact
That’s a good point — as a writer I’ve had to bone up on a variety of arcane sciences to do intelligent interviews, but my only professional brush with music in 40 years was profiling a bland female folk singer you might vaguely recall. When I look up something like “downtuning” it seems more like algebra or trig, and that’s not good
It’s like most of their other songs: twee children’s music with adult lyrics. Pass.
OK, again, Owww! Stop it, Achmed!Replies: @Known Fact
One time I moved, my alphabeticallly arranged vinyl was delivered OK — except for the very last box. Goodbye entire Wishbone Ash collection
“The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think…”
When one aspiring rapper kills another….
I always get a chuckle when reading about the rapper shoot outs. A blessing really. Needs to happen more often. The killer rarely gets captured by the law, because who cares?
I just don’t understand deep music writing like Bangs or Christgau, so my main exposure to professional music commentary is getting lured into reading those 500 Best Albums or 100 Best Guitarists lists, which are frustrating and often seem to just be the list-maker showing off.
Otherwise I stick to the YouTube comments, where every album is “underrated” or “(insert obscure metal genre here) album of the year so far! (in February)”
Although this could give them a run for their money.
Great article,
Can the Men of Unz help me out:
I remember years ago listening to a radio interview in which the host and her guest were discussing a book by a French philosopher which argued that music being plastic and relatively easy to produce was a front runner to cultural change.
This is probably wrong (surely paintings are just as easy to produce) but the relationship of music to culture has always intrigued me and I have long wanted to find the book. If anyone knows of it. his theory. (or the radio interview) can they let me know.
As an aside I went from being obsessed with music in my teens / early twenties (industrial / hard rock) to only listening to Foetus (thirties) to finding my tastes broadening considerably from my forties onwards – I both listen to country music and look forward to Opera now.
Could it have been Pierre Bourdieu? He was a Sociologist rather than a philosopher but he wrote a lot about music iirc. 'Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste' is his most famous book.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
Popular music can influence the general culture much faster than wall art. Literature would fall somewhere in between.
Architecture would be dead last, at least from the architect's standpoint. His work may suddenly make a splash, but he's lucky if he's still in his fifties when it does.
Boy, the subject of music always brings out the iSteve comments. Also films.
Who says we are just a bunch of intellectual failures?
As to the popularity of music, it has always been somewhat popular but when recordings made that easily available, instead of live performance, it really took off. Now many more ways to hear it non-live.
However I might suggest that one reason for the popularity (and personal likes) is that it seems closely associated with “the mating game” or dating rituals. Most of what we like best was heard/produced in our peak sexual “hunt” years of mid teens to about 30, depending.
You basically heard and liked what your peers also did. Unless you actually played an instrument, learned formal music theory, had parents who taught/played, and graduated to classical music forms.
So like popular fiction, it is best enjoyed fresh and young. Popular music rarely ages well. New generations come up with their own forms and formats.
Does anyone here love jitterbug music? Case closed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IttOTro5Ip8
Who says we are just a bunch of intellectual failures?
As to the popularity of music, it has always been somewhat popular but when recordings made that easily available, instead of live performance, it really took off. Now many more ways to hear it non-live.
However I might suggest that one reason for the popularity (and personal likes) is that it seems closely associated with "the mating game" or dating rituals. Most of what we like best was heard/produced in our peak sexual "hunt" years of mid teens to about 30, depending.
You basically heard and liked what your peers also did. Unless you actually played an instrument, learned formal music theory, had parents who taught/played, and graduated to classical music forms.
So like popular fiction, it is best enjoyed fresh and young. Popular music rarely ages well. New generations come up with their own forms and formats.
Does anyone here love jitterbug music? Case closed.Replies: @Joe Stalin, @Achmed E. Newman
This guy’s schtick is Boogy Woogie on the piano and the gals love it.
Yes
What is with you guys, really? Only Derbyshire can be trusted with music.Replies: @Fluesterwitz, @al gore rhythms
You still buy music on CD?!
Bach just called. He’s asking if you’ve thought about giving Laserdisc a try.
You still buy music on CD?!"
I do. I buy DVDs, too. I live in an area with frequent power outages. I have a CD/DVD player that plugs in or runs on batteries.
Also, I'm not keen on streaming services. I know you can download stuff and play it offline but there always seems to be a catch (or cache).
I also buy used HB books.
Who says we are just a bunch of intellectual failures?
As to the popularity of music, it has always been somewhat popular but when recordings made that easily available, instead of live performance, it really took off. Now many more ways to hear it non-live.
However I might suggest that one reason for the popularity (and personal likes) is that it seems closely associated with "the mating game" or dating rituals. Most of what we like best was heard/produced in our peak sexual "hunt" years of mid teens to about 30, depending.
You basically heard and liked what your peers also did. Unless you actually played an instrument, learned formal music theory, had parents who taught/played, and graduated to classical music forms.
So like popular fiction, it is best enjoyed fresh and young. Popular music rarely ages well. New generations come up with their own forms and formats.
Does anyone here love jitterbug music? Case closed.Replies: @Joe Stalin, @Achmed E. Newman
Don’t know about Jitterbug, but I like Ragtime. I missed celebrating the century anniversary of it by about a decade. We all did.
Then, there’s Fife & Drum music … got some old, old albums on bakelite …
“On the other hand, as a composer, Petty struck me as a … ditty-writer. For instance, here’s one of my favorite songs ever:
“Free Fallin’”
And yet, is this really a good piece of music?”
Yes, I think “Free Fallin’” is really a good piece of music. But I don’t think it’s a really good piece of music, like a classic ballad or classical art song.
I’m not sure what your standards are here. The vast majority of pop songs are ditties (“a short simple song”) except for the “concept albums” and “power ballads”, many of which are laughably bloated.
“Free Fallin’” does what a pop song should do. It’s very catchy with a strong rhythm and great hook, easy to hum or sing, with clever lyrics that say a little something. My musical preference is almost exclusively classical yet I’m always glad to hear this. It pleases my ear. Yes, within the limits of a pop song, it’s good music.
I could not bear to listen all the way through to most of the songs on this thread except for this and “Hurt”. They literally hurt my ears. “Free Fallin”” makes me smile. I liked it the first time I heard it decades ago, it’s safe to say I’ll always like it. So, two thumbs up from me.
I remember years ago listening to a radio interview in which the host and her guest were discussing a book by a French philosopher which argued that music being plastic and relatively easy to produce was a front runner to cultural change.
Could it have been Pierre Bourdieu? He was a Sociologist rather than a philosopher but he wrote a lot about music iirc. ‘Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste’ is his most famous book.
Could it have been Pierre Bourdieu? He was a Sociologist rather than a philosopher but he wrote a lot about music iirc. 'Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste' is his most famous book.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican
Or maybe… Jacques Vendroux ? On-topic:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Vendroux_(journaliste)
https://www.unz.com/isteve/croatia-vs-france-in-world-cup-final/#comment-2412968 (#46)
There may be some mistakes in that transcription… mais je ne regrette rien!
The lyrics, which I only got a little bit of at the end (cause they usually don't matter!) remind me of this one - really great sound and melody (and good lyrics) by Tai Bachmann, son of the Overdrive guy. Great guitar riff!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ElORM9O-0U
And, a fun video to boot.Replies: @the one they call Desanex
“… [the lyrics] usually don’t matter!”
🙂
If it’s not Black Sabbath it’s crap.
By two white men, at least one of them Jewish. However, George David Weiss is a poor choice for racial triumphalism, seeing that he lost a plagiarism lawsuit to an African. At least George Harrison lost his to an American black, Ronnie Mack. (Well, to their estates. Both men were long dead.)
Disney settles Lion song dispute
(This Ronnie Mack is not to be confused with white sideman in Mel Tillis’s band who may or may not have murdered his wife Coral.)
Bach just called. He's asking if you've thought about giving Laserdisc a try.Replies: @Kylie
“
You still buy music on CD?!”
I do. I buy DVDs, too. I live in an area with frequent power outages. I have a CD/DVD player that plugs in or runs on batteries.
Also, I’m not keen on streaming services. I know you can download stuff and play it offline but there always seems to be a catch (or cache).
I also buy used HB books.
They are easy to produce, but not so easy to sell. It takes quite some time for a painter to establish a reputation. A theater prof at my college used painting as a counter-example to the stage, where something had to be a hit immediately, or it was dead in the water.
Popular music can influence the general culture much faster than wall art. Literature would fall somewhere in between.
Architecture would be dead last, at least from the architect’s standpoint. His work may suddenly make a splash, but he’s lucky if he’s still in his fifties when it does.
A bad orchestra can hit a few good notes.
Gee if music is so popular then how come my trilogy novels about a fictional rock band aren’t so popular? Maybe because the novels are based on a Biblical parable, the Prodigal Son, and the novels are part of the Prodigal Band Trilogy? Hmmmmm….. Being facestious…. Bwahahahahahhahah!
https://omegabooksnet.com
"Free Fallin'"
And yet, is this really a good piece of music?"
Yes, I think "Free Fallin'" is really a good piece of music. But I don't think it's a really good piece of music, like a classic ballad or classical art song.
I'm not sure what your standards are here. The vast majority of pop songs are ditties ("a short simple song") except for the "concept albums" and "power ballads", many of which are laughably bloated.
"Free Fallin'" does what a pop song should do. It's very catchy with a strong rhythm and great hook, easy to hum or sing, with clever lyrics that say a little something. My musical preference is almost exclusively classical yet I'm always glad to hear this. It pleases my ear. Yes, within the limits of a pop song, it's good music.
I could not bear to listen all the way through to most of the songs on this thread except for this and "Hurt". They literally hurt my ears. "Free Fallin''" makes me smile. I liked it the first time I heard it decades ago, it's safe to say I'll always like it. So, two thumbs up from me.Replies: @J.Ross
Destination Jazz did a show (without their normal song and artist attribution, so I cannot post anything here) about a wierd magic moment in late 40s jazz pop when short records (predating the “LP”), top shelf talent, high development of the art and societal popularity enabled a subgenre of remarkably brief yet musically complex songs. Several were worth knowing, but for this episode, their service of having the information in a scrolling field at the web site failed, possibly because of the high volume of artist names for such short songs.
Here is something nice to say about about Al Jolson, with this story. So-so comic Mort Bernstein was spending his 20s and 30s in New York with limited success. He was married with two young children. He would hang out at Lindy's (yes, that Lindy's) with the comics until early in the morning, trying to network and get something going. One night, Bernstein tries to hold court with a story that goes nowhere with the other comics, leaving them staring at him. Jolson leans forward and counts off $1,000 and hands it to Bernstein. Jolson says, "look, you're funny, but you aren't going to make it in this business. Go home to your wife and kids, be a man and get a job." Bernstein heads home, picks up some groceries, pays the back-rent on his way into the building, and puts down the money and food and a bottle of champagne. His wife says, "what happened, Mort?"
"Jolson said I was funny!"Replies: @Jonathan Mason, @Sam Malone
Ali G was kind of interesting at the time when he first appeared on TV because a lot of people were fooled into thinking that he was a real person, and there was a genuine phenomenon of white youth adopting black manners so to appear cool.
At the time nobody knew who Cambridge University-educated Sacha Baron Cohen was, and Borat had not yet been born.
Ali G has not aged well.
For instance, here’s one of my favorite songs ever:
Sensational song!
Because everyone can see themselves in the lyrics as that amorphous forgotten blob, falling through the cracks into the oblivion of anonymity and, most importantly, sing along to the chorus, lamenting that fact of our combined castration.
Such a simple song that echoes itself over and over.
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/tom-petty-free-fallin-i-wont-back-down-interview
Paul Zollo: On to Full Moon Fever now, which was released in 1989. You wrote “Free Fallin’” with Jeff Lynne?
Tom Petty: Yes I did. It was, I think, the first thing we wrote together. When we really got nose to nose and wrote a song. Jeff came over and I had a little electric keyboard that Bugs [technician and longtime Petty roadie Alan “Bugs” Weidel] had bought. I really gave him hell about buying it. I said, “Why would you waste money on this? I would never play something like this.”
He said, “Well, look, take it into the house. If you write one song on it, it will pay for itself.”
And I thought, “Well, OK,” and Jeff was over and I had the little keyboard. And I started playing on it and I hit this riff; this little chord pattern that we would know as “Free Fallin’”. But I had a couple notes more in the riff.
And Jeff looked up and said, “Oh, that’s good. Can you leave out that last chord there and see what it does?”
And when I did that, it made this nice round of chords. And so I was just trying really to make Jeff smile as I was ad-libbing these words. You know, “She’s a good girl / Loves her mama / Loves Jesus and America too.” And Jeff smiled. I kept going. And I got right up to the chorus bit and I didn’t know what to sing, and he said [in a British accent] “Free Fallin’”. And I tried to sing it, but I couldn’t get “Free Fallin’” to fit into the line. So I just sang “Free…” And then in the next line I sang “Free Fallin’”. And then he perked up and said, “That’s good. That’s great! But take your voice up an octave when you do it, when you go to the chorus.” And, bang, there it was: “Free Fallin’”. I was very excited. I loved the song.
Reminiscent of McCartney birthing Get Back on the recent released video.
That’s very generous of Petty, Paul Simon would definitely not have attributed Lynne in a similar situation, just like countless other musicians would attest to collaborations with Simon, Simon owned whatever came out of his sessions with you.
It’s that sort of miserly Jew…Scottish attitude that has dogged Simon’s reputation to this day, and probably why everyone attests to what a top bloke Petty was by way of contrast , the everyman to Simon’s withdrawn, constantly scavenging Scrooge.
And yet, is this really a good piece of music?
Damn the Torpedoes [Backstreet/MCA, 1979]
This is a breakthrough for Petty because for the first time the Heartbreakers (his Heartbreakers, this L.A.M.F. fan should specify) are rocking as powerfully as he’s writing. But whether Petty has any need to rock out beyond the sheer doing of it–whether he has anything to say–remains shrouded in banality. Thus he establishes himself as the perfect rock and roller for those who want good–very good, because Petty really knows his stuff–rock and roll that can be forgotten as soon as the record or the concert is over, rock and roll that won’t disturb your sleep, your conscience, or your precious bodily rhythms. B+
That’s the thing with Petty, though, which I don’t find with ELO. Up till his solo album there’s nothing to chew on and earworm it’s way into your psyche like a true work of art would. But, it’s just rock n roll, as Gene Simmons said of Ramones
https://www.kissasylum.com/news/2014/12/12/gene-simmons-success-band-chicago-ramones/
Alice in Chains is pretty good.
You’re saying it’s pretty good; I’m not saying it’s good or bad. That’s not a level of success. There’s only success, and you can move out of your mom’s basement. So The Ramones, bless them. We’re a fun band, and everything else, and influential to you. It’s not a big band that plays stadiums that goes, “Oh yeah, I started because of them.” So you take The Ramones which is widely accepted by the media as the most influential this and that. They have one gold record after they died. The one they hated the most. Chicago had 22 platinum records in a row.
So you’re officially saying on record that you like Chicago more than The Ramones.
My point is, it doesn’t matter what I like or what you like. It doesn’t matter. It only matters what the masses like. Either that, or we can say, “We are holier than thou. My opinion is worth more than yours.” I don’t subscribe to that theory; I believe the masses rule.
Personally, I think Kiss’ legacy will recede where Ramone’s will take seed.
As the flamboyance of current day marketing forces decay substantial acts of art evincing everyday life will flower in stone for future archaelogists to read their influence on present day.
Back to Free Fallin:
GM: Was “Free Fallin’” an example of you having the thrust of the song and Jeff coming in later to help shape it?
TP: Well, I sat down at a little keyboard, and I had kind of the main lick, and I think even with that Jeff said, “If you trim a bar off of that, it’ll be better.” And so I did, and he was right. Then I just sang most of the song right off the top of my head, the lyrics and the melody. He was very helpful with the chorus. He had that line “free falling” and I couldn’t quite see how it could work. I couldn’t get it all it in one phrase. But thank God he did. So we finished that up and decided to record them. We recorded those two songs very fast; I think we did them in two days. I remember coming home with those two tracks on a cassette and playing them over and over, just saying, “Wow, this is really good.” I had to talk Jeff into finishing the album with me.
You had that post about McCartney being the most wonderful nice guy of rock. Well, not even McCartney can top Jeff Lynne, the nicest and most artistic of the lot, he even got McCartney going again producing Flaming Pie.
Lynne was clearly born out of Magical Mystery Tour Beatles, my own favourite album even if purests will tell me it wasn’t an album but an EP, still, the album we know today is the best thing in rock for mine and is key to knowing Jeff Lynne.
Lynne, like Petty, wasn’t strong on lyrics, but he was magnificent on feel. And that’s all it’s about, really. How they make us feel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7eU741fQgY
Granted, in these woke days even making fun of white people trying to be black is probably a step too far.Replies: @BB753, @Richard B
This serves two purposes for them.
1. to insult white people (which aside from their obsession with $ is what they live for).
2. to divert attention away from who controls the culture that produces rappers and poseurs.
Yeah, Frank Zappa was thoughtful and articulate in interviews, as you say, but man he made a lot of seriously lousy music, and I gave some of it a fair shot. The other day for some reason I was listening to his Valley Girl song on YouTube and remembered that his musical part of it really is garbage – clearly the only reason it ever became a hit was that people liked hearing how hot his teenager daughter sounded talking about vaguely dirty stuff.
I then watched a recent interview with her (Moon Unit Zappa only goes by “Moon” for some reason), and she mentioned that it made things awkward between them when it became a huge hit, I think because it was sort of embarrassing that he only got any taste of real national success once he let his 14 year old daughter talk briefly over his musical crap. In other words, his musical tastes and artistic instincts were 100% orthogonal to those of ordinary humanity.
Or maybe it was that, plus he actively wanted to avoid making music that sounded good and that squares outside the hipster bubble would like. Either way he certainly succeeded at remaining a niche interest that people might mention once in a while to sound cool but would never want to actually sit and listen to.
Well, this is two days late, but finally I am putting it here:
Thanks to our host, I am currently reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a work of literary art that was written by the Czech novelist Milan Kundera in the 1980s. I have been a fan of the film version since its release in 1988, but I had not read the book until now!
Anyway, there is a passage in this book: it contains the thoughts of the artist and sexual being of lightness Sabina about music. They ring true for me:
Forgive me a moment now. When I was living with my dog in the log cabin I had built next to a meadow at the bottom of a hillside, that hillside was covered in snow in late winter. It was cold, and one night we walked outside onto that hillside. The Moon was bright, and the snow was pure white. On that entire slope, there was but one small tree, casting a shadow then under the Moon. Imagine a man and his dog in the cold night on a hillside, out in the open next to the forest, with one, solitary tree casting a shadow on that clean, white snow.
That was music, but it was silent.
.
.
.
Addendum: Last weekend I showed my wife the film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It was so heavy for her that she did not sleep all night . There are too many things in it that touch deeply for her.
I shudda taken the Swiss job...Replies: @AceDeuce
They can’t keep a good man down, I always say. Kudos.
Frank Zappa was the epitome of a couple of concepts in Rogers’ book: the maker of radically innovative art music that is too novel for most people to get enough musical pleasure from in return for their cognitive effort; and the musician who has the respect of other musicians.
Here is something nice to say about about Al Jolson, with this story. So-so comic Mort Bernstein was spending his 20s and 30s in New York with limited success. He was married with two young children. He would hang out at Lindy's (yes, that Lindy's) with the comics until early in the morning, trying to network and get something going. One night, Bernstein tries to hold court with a story that goes nowhere with the other comics, leaving them staring at him. Jolson leans forward and counts off $1,000 and hands it to Bernstein. Jolson says, "look, you're funny, but you aren't going to make it in this business. Go home to your wife and kids, be a man and get a job." Bernstein heads home, picks up some groceries, pays the back-rent on his way into the building, and puts down the money and food and a bottle of champagne. His wife says, "what happened, Mort?"
"Jolson said I was funny!"Replies: @Jonathan Mason, @Sam Malone
I’m hearing this comment with the accent and cadence of the archetypal 1930s New York Jew and it’s perfect.
This should be the go-to canned script any actor has to master if they want to really nail a role in that genre.
The Frank Zappa album Hot Rats was very good. All instrumental tracks except one bluesy vocal by Captain Beefheart.
It was issued about the same time as the great Miles Davis double album Bitches Brew
Back in those days we liked avant garde music with long instrumental tracks, because it was good to listen to while smoking marijuana. No one had any interest in whether the musicians were getting rich.
Pink Floyd was another avant garde band that benefited from that post-summer of love demographic and eventually got very rich.
Which was only tangentially about lynching. It was not a serious song–Porter basically wrote it as a joke. In any event, Miss Otis wasn’t described as black.
Now, the Jew's sensibility has so thoroughly permeated our degenerate Weimar culture that that kind of policing is mostly unnecessary.
Now the Jew can simply go after the errant artist directly. See Kanye West.Replies: @Gary in Gramercy, @Anonymous
The “old-fashioned snide rock-music criticism” was when Jew critics were trying to police emerging cultural trends and drive them towards desired end states.
There was some of that, especially with rise of stuff like feminist rock criticism.
But of the big five of rock criticism, only one was Jewish or part-Jewish, I think: Greil Marcus.
Robert Christgau, Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, and Paul Nelson weren’t Jewish, at least not that I know of.
And if old rock criticism had one bias, it was being respectful of black stuff(even reverent) while dismissing ‘white bread’ or bland stuff, though there were exceptions. And they didn’t much care for Progressive Rock either. Usually, blacker in sound the better, more authentic, though there were obligatory nods to country music stars like Dolly Parton and crooners like Rick Nelson.
The main beneficiaries of ‘poptimism’ were the once despised white pop, euro pop, and the like.
ABBA got no respect from critics in their day, but some of their songs are rightly recognized as pop classics. Carpenters were crucified by the likes of Marsh, but over time a handful of their songs have stood the last of time.
Also, downloading and easy online music has restored the centrality of the single whereas the classic era of rock criticism was centered on the album. So, lots of band that had some memorable singles but didn’t produce album-length quality material often got forgotten. On the other hand, even if a band never produced a truly great song but had albums that were mostly listenable from beginning to end got elevated.
Today, the one-hit wonders are better remembered than many of the much praised rock acts with good albums but no big hit. In the end, XTC will probably be remembered only for “That’s Really Super, Supergirl”.
Reg, that never occurred to me, but it would be thoroughly logical, granted their m.o. Thanks.