WHEN I WAS
Posted on 11/03/2007 9:33:02 AM PDT by neverdem
We are all rockers now. National Review publishes its own chart of the Fifty Greatest Conservative Rock Songs, notwithstanding that most of the honorees are horrified to find themselves on such a hit parade. The National Review countdown of the All-Time Hot 100 Conservative Gangsta Rap Tracks can’t be far away. Even right-wingers want to get with the beat and no-one wants to look like the wallflower who can’t get a chick to dance with him. To argue against rock and roll is now as quaintly irrelevant as arguing for the divine right of kings. It was twen- ty years ago today, sang the Beatles forty years ago today, that Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. Well, it was twenty years ago today—1987—that Professor Bloom taught us the band had nothing to say.
I don’t really like the expression “popular culture.” It’s just “culture” now: there is no other. “High culture” is high mainly in the sense we keep it in the attic and dust it off and bring it downstairs every now and then. But don’t worry, not too often. “Classical music,” wrote Bloom, “is now a special taste, like Greek language or pre-Columbian archaeology. Thirty years ago [i.e., now fifty years ago], most middle-class families made some of the old European music a part of the home, partly because they liked it, partly because they thought it was good for the kids.” Not anymore. If you’d switched on TV at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999 you’d have seen President and Mrs. Clinton and the massed ranks of American dignitaries ushering in the so-called new millennium to the strains of Tom Jones singing “I’m gonna wait till the midnight hour/ That’s when my love comes tumblin’ down.” Say what you like about JFK, but...
(Excerpt) Read more at newcriterion.com:81 ...
Ping list ping.
And it was 40 years ago that Paul McCartney died...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Ballads went away, rag time went away, swing went away but this damn trash appears to be going on forever!
Sad but true.
Few of us -- certainly not myself -- want be considered completely unhip, although fortunately, some of us are okay with less hipness than others.
bttt
(Frankly, I think his show would be better if could accept that nobody gives a rat's butt what his favorite Motown song was and may even doubt that he was ~ever~ hip, not that there is anything wrong with that.)
A clear exposition that shows why Mark Steyn is such a great writer:
He actually knows stuff.
I immersed myself in Renaissance music twenty years ago and have never looked back.
Renaissance music is incredible - I an very fond of Gabrielli.
Ahhhhhhhh, Palestrina..........
WHEN I WAS
It's getting harder and harder to find a radio station that is exclusively devoted to classic Gregorian chants. All that new stuff (beginning with Bach) sucks.
We've sure come a long way from "Wake Up Little Susie" to "Let's Spend The Night Together".eh?
I liked these lines best:
“I didn’t mind Senator Kerry when he was being mocked as a flip-flopper, but I find him even less plausible as America’s first flip-flopper hip-hopper.”
and
“When you think about it, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” makes a much better anthem for seniors than it ever did for rebellious youth.”
It could happen! Fiddy's a Republican.
Like a lot of other things it's gotten decentralized and fragmented.
Today, you don't have MTV beaming out videos 24/7.
You have people seeking out performers they like on the Internet.
So popular music isn't quite as much of a mass phenomenon as it once was.
Or maybe I've just gotten older and lost interest.
Anyway, Bloom's analysis is a little dated.
Maybe we're living in a "post-barbarian" epoch -- whatever that might mean.
“btw...I think it is kinda funny how Bill Bennett — one of our most self-conscious defenders of traditional values and culture — works so hard showing how down he was with hip culture in his younger days.”
I had heard a rumor that he “dated” Janis Joplin & didn’t believe it. Then Bennett made a personal reference to her on his show which seemed to acknowledge that the rumor was true. He said it in a “when-I-was-young-and-stupid-I-was- young-and-stupid” way.
Apparently Bennett was a real wild man in his Democrat hippie days. Yikes.
Great observation! It's especially apropos now, since the blitz of awful "holiday" music will begin on Monday. I think I may die.
A blind date with Janis!
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=54301&ShowAllNews=Y
While a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Texas, Bennett, then a rock fan, was set up on a blind date with Janis Joplin, who was then at the height of her singing career. According to People magazine, the date “must surely rank as one of the least likely blind dates of all time.” In later life, Bennett would condemn rock fans as immoral. When asked what he and Janis did on their date, Bennett said, “Hey, that really is none of your business.”
http://www.bookrags.com/William_Bennett
In 1967 he had a blind date with Janis Joplin, and he also played guitar with a rock and roll band called Plato and the Guardians.
Kerry made such an idiot of himself trying to sound like he's "cool" and listens to rap. It's like when Gore told Courtney Love how much he loves her songs and she asked him to name one. I'm surprised that liberals get any votes from the average guy with statements like "Lambert Field", How great a basketball player "Michael Jackson" is, what a great musician "Eric Clapner" is, etc.
What killed popular music was teenagers with money. Or subteens with money. The younger they are, the more basic their musical tastes are. And the music industry creates music for the demographic with the most dough. So that’s why we have rap, loud angry rock, and sappy love songs. The youth of today wants those things.
Similarly, Rakhmaninov's "Piano Concerto #2," with a vocal version known as "Full Moon and Empty Arms" was a hit for a number of artists, including Frank Sinatra, in 1946. In the late summer of 1950, Jo Stafford had a smash hit with "No Other Love," a vocal version of Fryderyk Chopin's "Etude in E."
Popular artists were having hits based on classical pieces into the 1970's. In 1972, Apollo 100 had a bestseller with "Joy," a rock version of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude" (Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring). Three years later, Eric Carmen had a number two hit on the Billboard Hot Hundred with "All by Myself," another song based on Rakhmaninov's "Piano Concerto #2." And in 1976, Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band had a hit with "A Fifth of Beethoven, a disco version of the first movement of Beethoven's fifth symphony.
"Wake Up, Little Suzie" charted in September of 1957, while the Rolling Stones' opus charted in January of 1967. Pop music came a long way in just a few years.
Alot of us were.
OMG!
That might not be the most important little nugget that I have ever picked up on FR, but it is a ~definite~ contender for the most interesting.
(I guess I owe Bill an apology for doubting his hip credentials. I hope no diseases got passed along to Mrs. Bennett.)
I listen to Classic FM from the UK. It is always on if I am not listening from my classical CD collection. It treats and presents classical music as popular and commercial music which it truly is. Classical music in America is presented by stuffy condescending liberals on public stations often arms of universities. My point is that Classic FM had a series of programs dedicated to finding the strains of classical music in enduring rock music. It was quite interesting. As a babyboomer I was raised on Top 40 AM, but I have grown to appreciate classical music. When I am in my car, I fondly listen to a local golden oldies station, but in my home I always go back to the main course which is classical.
I’m glad it was a blind date. LOL
Just one step up from purple dinosaurs...
Maybe we could get Row, Row, Row Your Boat back in the top 40 with properly placed financing...it'd be an improvement over hip-hop, imho.
Ping! This article’s right up your alley! ;-)
One of Steyn's best.
All you can do is expose the kids to good music and hope it "takes". It took with one of mine, but not with the other. It's not for want of exposure. Maybe he'll return to the classics once he gets older.
Heh, my kids are captives of my musical taste, especially at Christmas. I'm a fan of early music, so instead of Frosty the Snowman and Have a Holly Jolly Christmas, they instead get 15th century Hungarian carols, or Medieval and Renaissance music.
I m hoping to get to see Boston Camerata again this year. Last year, I got to see their French carols program, this year it's the Renaissance program. I'm so excited!
“What Allan Bloom observed in his students can now be found in the teachers.”
Dear God in Heaven have mercy on us.
“Ballads went away, rag time went away, swing went away but this damn trash appears to be going on forever!”
Those were merely steps on the way down from Motzart to this damn trash, as were blues, jazz, and rock & roll.
One of his best yet.
I think you made an excellent point. What will an on-demand culture look like, and how will it evolve? Will it eventually remember all of our preferences and end up composing music and even film just for you and just for me?
Why is the gas station pumping pop music out at us? Is it now to the point where the RCA’s actually need gas stations to play pop music because it accounts for a 1.7% bump in record sales?
Maybe, just maybe, we will find the reference points all on our own because of the internet, so that when I listen to the last movement of Janes Addicition’s “Three Day’s” I will discover it is derivative of the Santana’s “Black Magic Woman”... and that the bassline of Steely Dan’s song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” is homage to Horace Silver’s “Song for my Father”.
But I date myself, and digress.
Years ago, when San Francisco was still fit for human habitation, there were two major classical stations: KKHI, with down-to-earth DJs who treated the masters as old friends and their music as a natural part of life, and stuck-up KDFC, which expected its listeners to genuflect at the altar of High Art. In retrospect I think most of its audience were on their knees for other reasons... not to mention what they were stuck up.
A man who likes showtunes has no right to complain about rock-n-roll. Just kidding.
But seriously, what Steyn doesn’t mention is that the former “high culture” has only itself to blame for its demise.
I confess: I was a teenage punk rocker, and I still like The Who. My wife listens to current popular music at work — mostly British pop stuff — and I occasionally put on Devo or the Beach Boys at home. However, we both consider modern pop music to be “ear candy”; tasty on occasion, but unfit for consumption as a meal. When we want “meat”, we listen to “meaty” music — everything from Gregorian chant to Daniel Picker. Real music, composed by real artists, played by real people using real instruments: that’s nutrition for mind, body and soul. That’s music to grow on.
European art music (aka “classical music”) is High Art and High Culture, but it is NOT music for stuffed shirts or the elite alone. Art music can be appreciated and enjoyed by anyone, from any walk or station in life. It is music rooted in Reason, not pure emotion, and, as such, reflects the best and truest of the human spirit. One needs not be sensitive, educated, or even Western to appreciate this; Japan, for example, has its own perfectly valid classical music tradition, but when Japanese parents send their kids to music school, it is Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven that their kids study.
One big difference between art music and modern pop music is that art music must be actively listened to. Putting on some classical as background music is fine, but it’s like wallpapering a bathroom with prints of the Mona Lisa. To get the benefit of art music, one must concentrate upon it. To properly appreciate a Bach concerto or a piece by Copland one must sit still, stop doing anything else, and concentrate upon the music, listening to each note and phrase. In a sense, art music is as different from pop music as a fine meal differs from a drive-thru burger; one gobbles a Big Mac, but one eats a fine meal slowly, savoring every bite and noting the complexities of flavor.
And, of course, a fine meal is much better for you than a fast-food burger.
To those who do not like classical music, I ask you to try this experiment: go and buy (or download) a recording of Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007 by J.S. Bach. (You will recognize the tune — it’s used in quite a few movie soundtracks and TV commercials.) Find a quiet place with subdued lighting, close your eyes, and listen to the piece. Don’t hum along, tap your feet, or nod your head to the music; just listen to it, concentrating upon the music as it is played. (It’s not a lengthy piece.) Do this once a day for seven days. My guess is that at the end of that seven-day period, you will find that you have changed inside in one way or another for the better — you may become calmer, or more friendly, or find yourself with more pep. I’d be willing to bet you’ll also find yourself more willing to listen to classical music, and maybe even eager to hear more. (Don’t worry — there are five more Bach suites for cello!)
Our son is named after Johann Sebastian Bach. Our second son (if we ever have one!) will be named Wolfgang. That should tell you where we stand in terms of music. Ear candy is fun, but it’s no substitute for real (musical) food.
To mix genres, have you an opinion of Sting's lute album, "Songs from the Labyrinth"? I'm unused to rock vocalists singing pieces normally sung by classically-trained singers, and I have no confidence in my judgment.
Sting's interest in the lute is very encouraging. I've listened to him play, and to tell you the truth I don't think he rates anywhere near the world-class lutenists (or vocalists, for that matter) but then again, neither do I, and I've been playing the lute for nearly twenty years now.
No wonder his wife is divorcing him.
I can still play most of it in my head.
When we lived in NJ, I used to listen to WQXR out of New York City. It was a great station, and didn’t have the elitist feel of the public radio stations. Here in MA, I listen to WCRB, Classical Radio Boston, and it’s very similar. I like it when they tell little anecdotes about the composers and performers.
I never learned to play the piano, though I did play the guitar for a while. It’s been a VEY long time since I played that, though.
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