From: Dan Glover (daneglover@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 06 2005 - 01:24:51 GMT
Hello everyone
Quality is what you like. I consider myself luckier than those who only
listen to the classics. I've been exposed to a wide variety of music during
my life. I grew up in a classical household -- my father listened to Bach,
Mozart, Handel, Vivaldi, Schumann, and many others too numerous to mention.
He had been in WWII and suffered permanent hearing damage from the big guns,
my father, so you could always tell when he was home from work. He had
hundreds of albums and played his music very loudly. I loved it and it was
all we listened to.
When I was old enough I enrolled in band; all we played was the classics. I
had heard of some funny looking guys from England with bad hair cuts who
called themselves the Beatles but somehow "I love you, ya,ya, ya" just
didn't stack up to Beethoven's 5th Symphony. One day in band class the
teacher was introducing us to some new music when a fellow student made a
smart-ass remark that perhaps we might learn some Steppenwolf. The whole
class tittered as if they all knew something I didn't, which was not an
uncommon occurence for me, then or now. I had never heard of Steppenwolf but
I kept my mouth shut.
After class, I caught up with the Steppenwolf boy and asked him, who is
that? Who is Steppenwolf? He looked at me kind of funny and said, you never
heard Steppenwolf? I said, no. He said to come over to his house and he
would play his new album for me. So I did. It was as if a whole new universe
opened up for me. I could not believe what I was hearing and asked the boy
to play the album again and again. The next day I went out and bought the
album for myself. I wore it out. My father hated it, couldn't stand it in
fact, threatened to smash my album, and wondered where on earth I heard such
music. But I was done with the classics from that day on.
When I met my wife she introduced me to jazz. She played for me Lionel
Hampton, Clarence Williams, Bobby Hackett, Baby Dodds, and many, many
others. I loved it. And the blues! How I love the blues. When our children
started listening to music they liked Guns n Roses and Metallica and worse,
rap. I couldn't stand any of it. And they played it as loudly as my father
used to play his music only they didn't have his excuse. Funny though, as
time went by I found that I grew to like Sublime, Pantera, Limp Bisket and
even Snoop Dog and Eminem as much as I like Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd. Now
I listen to just about everything although my real love is rock, and I still
melt when I hear Steppenwolf's "The Pusher."
I guess I'm glad to be a barbaric juvenile rather than a closed-minded bigot
who only has an ear for one type of music.
Thank you for your comments,
Dan
"I know it's only rock and roll, but I like it." (The Rolling Stones)
>From: "Platt Holden" <pholden@sc.rr.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org, owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
>Subject: RE: MD Nihilism (Punk)
>Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2005 08:56:53 -0500
>
>All:
>
>A critical examination of rock and roll, from "The Closing of the
>American Mind" by Alan Bloom:
>
>"Rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire --
>not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. It
>acknowledges the first emanations of children's emerging sensuality and
>addresses them seriously, eliciting them and legitimating them, not as
>little sprouts that must be carefully tended in order to grow into
>gorgeous flowers, but as the real thing. Rock gives children, on a silver
>platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry,
>everything their parents always used to tell them they have to wait for
>until they grew up and would understand later.
>
>"Young people know that rock has the beat of sexual intercourse. That is
>why Ravel's Bolero is the one piece of classical music that is commonly
>known and liked by them. In alliance with some real art and a lot of
>pseudo-art, and enormous industry cultivates the taste of the orgiastic
>state of feeling connected with sex, providing a constant flood of fresh
>material for voracious appetites. Never was there an art form directed so
>exclusively to children.
>
>"Ministering to and according with the arousing and cathartic music, the
>lyrics celebrate puppy love as well as polymorphous attractions, and
>fortify them against traditional ridicule and shame. The words implicitly
>and explicitly describe bodily acts that satisfy sexual desire and treat
>them as its only natural routine culmination for children who do not year
>have the slightest imagination of love, marriage or family. This has a
>much more powerful effect than does pornography on youngsters, who have no
>need to watch others do grossly what the can so easily do themselves.
>Voyeurism is for old perverts; active sexual relations are for the young.
>All they need is encouragement.
>
>"The inevitable corollary of such sexual interest is rebellion against the
>parental authority that represses it. Selfishness thus becomes indignation
>and the transforms itself into morality. The sexual revolution must
>overthrow all forces of domination, the enemies of nature and happiness.
>From love comes hate, masquerading as social reform. A worldview is
>balanced on the sexual fulcrum. What were once unconscious or half-
>conscious childish resentments become the new Scripture. And then comes
>the longing for the classless, prejudice-free, conflictless, universal
>society that necessarily results from liberated consciousness -- "We Are
>the World," a pubescent version of "Alle Menschen werden Bruder," the
>fulfillment of which has been inhibited by the political equivalents of
>Mom and Dad. These are the three great lyrical themes: sex, hate and a
>smarmy, hypocritical version of brotherly love. Such polluted sources
>issue in a muddy stream where only monsters can swim."
>
>In short, rock is of, by and for juveniles.
>
>Platt
>
>
>
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