Double-posted

Part of something I wrote elsewhere and continued here because I felt like it.

Quote:Why are you even arguing about any of this, since you think your opinion is no better than anyone else's, including a 10 year old's? On that, we agree.

I think my opinion is the best one there is, but I recognize other people think differently. Your view unilaterally dismisses anybody who likes Van Hagar, anybody who likes ICP, anyone who thinks Abbey Road is better than Robert Johnson, [hardly overlapping groups] for no better reason than that they hold an opinion you don't share. Or else that they're young whippersnappers who don't know what's good for them and can safely be dismissed.

I hate to say that's a strange way for a Marxist to behave, but alas, whenever Marxists have actually authority to back up their opinions, what people actually want becomes a very minor point in the discussion.

Capitalism has to provide law and order for everybody. On a day to day basis, doing it the old way trumps whatever way comes along 9 times out of 10 at minimum, whatever system you live under. What system works the best for everybody involved, maximizing collective security and material comfort?" Why you want make sacrifice to Great Spirit Snake? What wrong with Buffalo God?"

Mao, Castro, Stalin and Qaddaffi can rule for decades in as much security as the President of the United States. Qaddaffi has taken to riding open-air vehicles lately, so you know someone's looking out for him.

In America, we have color television, comic books and rock'n'roll. Gosh aren't we oppressed. So many Marxists who like it here.

Quote:Your view amounts to saying anything produced on American Idol is just as culturally, intellectually, and aesthetically valuable as Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung.

My view is that there is more to culture, intellect, aesthetics and value than is dreamt of in your philosophy. Pete Townshend is in stadiums singing "Hope I die before I get old" and bayou trash mother of several Britney Spears is pushing 30. Capitalism lets people not heavily addicted to self-destruction or heroin rely on law, order, security, legal contracts, where 9 times out of 10 (or more) the old way of doing things is the best way.

Hey, if picking up a guitar to get some pussy (or because you like playing guitar, but who gives a shit about those freaks) is the best option available, you do what you gotta do. At least you're not being lectured to, told to clean your room, get to your place of duty on time, all that Nazi-like behavior. You get to do whatever you want.

So forgive me for not living up to your high fucking standards of rock and fucking roll, ok! God!

Yeah, be sure and let me know when any Marxist anywhere has ever permitted THAT much dissent against their core beliefs when they had the power to suppress it. For now, there's a power ballad needs my attention.
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I think a 'death is getting pretty damned close' feeling from the boomers is starting to hit the rock aristocracy hard. At least Jim and Jimi and Janis (and whoever else) are all long dead, so that's all you'll ever get forever and, for most of our lives, it always has been.

The Eagles had to give themselves a cozy corporate entity that lets them do drugs and fuck whoever they want and charge outrageous amounts of money for whatever they want to do for the rest of their lives, just from the royalties of "Hotel California" alone. The guy who created that song was kicked out by Glen and Don ages ago, but the band goes on. Hell, I can't stand the Eagles' version - they only have a few songs I really like and a handful of others I find tolerable - but I've recorded multiple version of "Hotel California" because it's an awesome song to sing and play.

To the obnoxiously-decadent and immoral leftists who made it possible, the big corporate drek-producing entity who made a sport of screwing over their own, it's a mark in the plus column on anybody's scoreboard. Good luck with the only judge that matters.

[I do have Don Henley's greatest hits though, enjoy a number of songs from that. He's also achieved the highest honor a human being can bestow, a style parody by Weird Al. Not song parody, style parody. The man is a true genius. Weird Al that is, not Henley.]

Roger Waters is on tour flogging The Wall, having flogged Dark Side of the Moon for three years, and the "In the Flesh" tour ran about as long before that being mostly composed of old Pink Floyd stuff. He's the one who left the band after dominating it increasingly during the 1970's. This is the guy who got thousands and thousands of Berliners to scream, in unison, "Tear down the wall!!!" And, according to Nick Mason's book, he gives his road crew t-shirts with the words "Am I being cost-effective?" printed backwards SO THEY WOULD SEE IT WHEN LOOKING IN THE MIRROR!

Hey, he got Pink Floyd back together at that big concert a few years back though, so it can't be all bad. Unless you're a Syd Barret fan anyway.

I have read it on Wikipedia and sites linked from there so it must be true, but after the reunion, Waters and Gilmour were very public about not doing it again, with Waters bitching about how much of a hassle it was to roll over just for one gig. But more recently he started saying he'd love to play toegther even for fun. After a brief acoustic show for pro-Palestian [philistine] causes, he has received a promise from Dave Gilmour to perform "Comfortably Numb" at one (only one) of the "Wall" performances forthcoming. If such a large-scale operation can be mounted successfully. How's that Marxism working out for you, eh Rog? "Money, it's a hit. Don't give me that do goody-good bullshit" has a lot of credibility for a lot of people. They'll even pay for it.

But I'm listening to the Live8 reunion right now, and it's an interesting historical event, recreating songs from before I was born, made more poignant by the fact that it would be the last time these guys would ever share a stage. They wouldn't gotten that far without the legal contracts and property rights to defend work they were making when they were 'merely profitable' to the record company. They wouldn't have gotten THAT FAR if they hadn't decided it would be eaiser to play gigs and just leave Syd at home to write songs.

Without Sid writing the songs, he would have had a much harder life. Just this moment I've realized I'd mispelled "Syd" in every Pink Floyd reference I made, and it would take very little for the ideas I'm discussing to be relevant to Sid Vicious and the punk movement reacting to the original Pink Floyd Sound. Syd Barret gave us Waters talking about how emotional it is to be up here with these guys as Gilmour plays a guitar line that is unquestionably classic.

"Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for the lead role in a cage?"

No, sometimes I don't wish you were here. In fact, sometimes I wish you'd shut up and go away. In the literal 'I have to deal with this every day' sense that constitutes most human interaction. Unpleasant interaction certainly. At least you can reasonably walk in safety outdoors with your children without bullets and bombs. Or people who will turn you in for unauthorized criticism. At the very least, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

Following a Waters Wiki-link led to a reference he made recently about how contracts were signed when he actually left the band. [or at least I found it recently. This is the internet, it must be true.] At the time, he was being sued by the band because he wasn't permitting them to work as Pink Floyd, even under their recording contract. The record company was displeased as well. This was not Death Row records, these were English gentlemen, so nobody died and everybody went home millionaires. Even Syd, the guy who was kicked out decades ago and had no contact with the band whatsoever, but I digress.

This is true, and Waters doesn't seem to have a good explanation for why he would prevent other members of Pink Floyd from acting as Pink Floyd. The record company was capitalist and evil and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister isn't really a sufficient explanation decades later. I mean, it makes more sense than the distinctions between Stalin and Trotsky [or Biggie and Tupac] but that's because these guys are English gentlemen.

English gentlemen got to be English gentlemen by centuries of breeding. If this Syd Barret and Nancy circus is what the public likes, and maintains law and order and not being machine-gunned in the street as Qaddaffi does with impunity, then where's the harm?

In America, we find our own gentlemen in our own particular amusements. I myself am a fan of some works of art produced by a couple of New York City Jews in an office building during the 1960's. They did their job, collected their pay, supported their families. They weren't in a union or anything, and some of them got screwed pretty bad. But they could rely on food being at the store, gas being in the station, popular culture, and things that stayed the same because 9 times out of 0, the old way works better day after day after year after year.

Six years ago, Barack Obama was promising he would not run for President. What are his plans for six years from now? Or should politics be avoided as a subject entirely. What else, sports? Movies? Tv? What you read on the internet? Comics? The royal wedding? Another generation's passed for them you know. Is it true Charles has been officially passed over for King? Are they in the Top 40?

Don Henley, Sting, Prince, Grace Slick, CSN&Y, some of them got with the program and produced work over a longer period of time than Jimi, Janis, Jim, Brian Jones. The Temptations and the Four Tops weren't shooting each other, but they replaced members and only had the legacy Berry Gordy built from his own hard-earned work and investment in his rights and property. Kept a lot of food on people's plates, and Berry certainly is no saint. Without him, the Jacksons would be an ordinary black family, church-going, child-raising, tax-paying, wealth-creating group of citizens. Without Berry Gordy, EVH would have never discovered the crossover audience when he played on "Thriller" and DLR wouldn't have made "Dancing in the Streets" a hit again.

One of the reasons I love rock'n'roll is that it appeals to the historian in me, because it makes generational shift more discernable. Have you seen recent pictures of Grace Slick? Do you think Sarah Palin will look that good in twenty years?

Berry Gordy and the session players showed up on time and were presentable every way they needed to be. If they do their job, are on time and play by the rules the way their boss wants them to, they can afford to look out for five or ten years into the future. They could expect law and order and security for themselves and their families and friends. Marvin Gaye's estate is assured a piece of his work as a singer, producer and songwriter. Depending on their deal with Motown or other record companies, they can rely on people trying to impress chicks with "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (or getting a buzz from CCR's jam).

The guys showing up to work every day for a check really got the better part of the deal, because at least that's a known quantity. If you're unreliable, that's a known factor, and 9 times out of 10, that's where it winds up. And they know it too. It doesn't matter if he's a violent drug-fulled lunatic who hasn't heard the word "no" for a decade, the contract is signed and if it's too expensive to maintain, they'll dump him, because that's how the company has survived so far. The same legal system that impedes Berry Gordy from glorious capitalist exploitation will punish you. Diana Ross is hotter than Grace Slick or Janis Joplin ever were, and Berry was nailing that ass at its finest. Sug gives us Dre and Snoop, bitches ain't shit and "gin and juice". They're mainstream too.

One of my favorite R. Crumb stories is the one about the po' Southern boy who hitches a ride to the city, blows his horn and records a few sides that languish in obscurity until some well to-do white boy pays an old lady for them and later shows them off for his equally well to-do friends. [from memory, I haven't read it in years.] It did a brilliant job of describing the levels of decisions being made, the middle-aged white guy executives who can't justify spending money on more field recordings for the "race" market, the producers and players who had to keep showing up on time to work.

I have no idea what Crumb says about the story, but I know he's said things like the reason he moved to France was because Reagan would put people in camps, so I think I can guess. Still, Crumb is part of the intelligencia, as are others of the small community he made possible, by reliably producing his work for a long period of times. The Eagles and everybody whose work they featured - Linda Rondstadt's primary claim to faim at this point was that they started out as her backing band - can earn livings for themselves, their families, their friends and companies, and they don't even have to shut up about the rainforest or whatever they're lecturing about. Shut up and sing.

I don't know why I wrote that, but I obviously needed it.