It's Not Spiritual And It's Not Hippie - It's American Music

I wouldn't call it this - because The Spiritual Danger of Being Bored to Death ain't been my problem - I'm an artist.

My issues are much more fundamental - To be or not to be? What does it mean to be? Will I be allowed to be? That kind of thing.

And by the way, doesn't Foreigner look good?

   

 I remember "Urgent," hilariously reframing the Dirty White Boys as a New Wave band without style, back-in-the-day.

They were, momentarily, traitors to the culture (as we were recently reminded) "the sort of thing we loathed at the time and called 'disco.'"

I wasn't part of the "we" in that quote, for various reasons, but mostly because I can't count how many times I was set upon (sometimes violently) for enjoying music's evolution back then. If you want to know what it was like, imagine the reaction Dylan got for going electric, but following you around for more than a decade. 

   

 The future had arrived without warning, in synthetic form - and finally featuring rhythm - and machines! But, by welcoming it, I was the bad guy.

   

 Like it was my fault Led Zeppelin had one of the only drummers in Rock who thought (what we now call) a Rap beat was actually important - and who didn't think he practiced to, either, play metronome or occasionally express how "crazy" he was.

   

The larger culture waited for Talking Heads' eventual invitation, to join in what David Byrne called "changing my shape," and the rest of us called a party. We'd have to wait a little while longer.

   

 Of course - once the party officially got kicked off - where the future was heading didn't make many folks happy, either, so there was conflict again. 

You could say, from 1977 to 1987, it was pretty much open warfare - with me in the middle - until my "side" brought the walls down.

Since then, I don't have to remind you, there's been a few times when we've all had reason to contemplate ending it.

   

 But, like I said - it was because of the unwarranted hostility to change - not because it stayed boring,...

 

Everything That They Don't Know Is Equal - To What I Do Know - And Even I Know I Need Help In Knowing Things

I've never heard of Karl Kraus, but he sounds, as the saying goes, like "a kindred spirit":

He wasn't in the business of denigrating the masses or lowbrow culture; the calculated difficulty of his writing wasn't a barricade against the barbarians. It was aimed, instead, at bright and well-educated cultural authorities who embraced a phony kind of individuality – people Kraus believed ought to have known better.

You can guess who all they'd be, today, I'm sure.

The political results - with blacks and the poor clamoring to join their cause - speak for themselves.

And, if not, here's a "ought to have known better" hint.

ADDED:

Can you imagine what things would look like, if Putin had written his Op-Ed, but started referencing the "teachings" of Joseph Smith?

We'd be far beyond just "embarrassed" on the world stage,...

 

Read What Very Few Will Tell You Or Else They'll Be Sad

Vanna White 'fears that she is losing her teenage son to the Hare Krishnas'

A culture of cult worship

Why Vegan Diets Are A Terrible Idea

Health care profession 

is increasingly adopting meditation

Mike Adams puts Chicken McNuggets 

“under the microscope.” Hilarity ensues.

I'm Stuck On A High-Speed Rail Train To Nowhere Fast

While reading this, I had no idea if I should laugh or cry because, Buddy, TMR's already there:

A healthy culture transmits values. When it stops doing that, it dies. When the values no longer seem to be applicable, than the culture hunts around for new values, it undergoes a period of confusion while its forward motion slows down. That is where Japan is now. It's where America has arrived. 

The values of the left, that are present in both Japan and America, are a cultural suicide pact. The left pretends to add a spiritual dimension to modernism. It has been peddling that lie for two centuries and it has yet to deliver. In countries where it wielded full control, there was neither modernism nor values. Russia destroyed the economic, technological and spiritual potential of generations of its people. China is trying to use Communist values to avoid turning into another Japan, not realizing that those are little better than the collective obligations with which Japan rushed into the future. 

As America gazes at the ruins of Detroit and the insanity spewed forth by a digital frontier that increasingly looks every bit as eccentric and toxic as anything coming out of Japan, it is all too clear that we are Japan. There is no unique insanity in East, only a common disintegration of values in the East and the West. 

Asia and Europe have both witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations. It isn't technology that destroys technology that destroys civilizations, but a lack of values. 

To understand where Japan and Europe are, imagine an America decaying with no new ideas, losing its religion and values, losing its economy and finally its sanity, becoming coldly conformist and inhuman, while its families fall apart and its youth retreats into their own makeshift worlds. That reality is closer to home than we might like to think. 

America is destroying its values on an industrial scale. In a post-industrial nation, the destruction of values has become one of its chief industries. And while there is value in challenging values, in the conflict and clash of ideas, that requires that values go on existing, or there is no longer anything to challenge. And then there is nothing left but emptiness and madness. 

Another stupid product from an infomercial. Another ridiculous politician. Another protest. Another indicator of economic decline. Another day, week, month, year of empty nothingness.

I just used my "American Values" tag, on the last post, remembering all the flak I caught for it in the past. It does seem pretty worthless now, next to everyone scheduling "Eastern" medicines in with their meditation ("not just for new-agey folks") and no clue why they're doing either.

That's the only reason why I don't know whether to laugh or cry,...

Cargo Cults, Black Women In Church, Restoring The 10, An Anti-Vax Preacher's Measles, And Rock's Died Again

Cargo Cults

Why Do Black Women 

Remain in the Church?

Top Ten Deadliest Cults Photo Gallery

The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God

Texas megachurch run by vaccine-denying preacher 

battles measles outbreak which has contaminated 

21 congregation members

Rock and Roll Is Dead

It's Easier To Be French Now, Troubling French Lovers, Taxing French Drug Dealers, Fixing France, And Money

French citizenship to become more accessible

Troubles expats have with French lovers

FRANCE TO DRUG DEALERS: 

WE'RE TAXING YOU TOO

Can Anyone Fix France?

Sisters find more than 150,000 euros 

inside dead brother’s couch

Destructive Appearances

And then, every so often, I catch a glimmer of daylight:

  Millennials Hate Bruce Springsteen

Which, of course, needs to be stamped out - that's the purpose of the article. The writer, being a fan of the adulterous and multi-married Springsteen, he probably thinks, or thought, like this:

Some years ago, the man I am married to told me he had always had a mad desire to go to an orgy. Why on earth, I asked. Why not, he said.

And he'd later be divorced by that woman, who'd become admired for it, because she thinks, or thought, like this:

It would be just like the dances at the YMCA I went to in the seventh grade—only instead of people walking past me and rejecting me, they would be stepping over my naked body and rejecting me.

These are misshapen trolls, presented as our cultural heroes.

Thank goodness, not everyone's following their lead,...

 

Simon Cowell's Having A Baby With Another Man's Wife (So, That Means, Criticism Stops At Judging Ourselves)

Pop is suffering from the same malady as the art world, which is stuck on the tired old rubric that shock automatically confers value. But those once powerful avant-garde gestures have lost their relevance in our diffuse and technology-saturated era, when there is no longer an ossified high-culture establishment to rebel against. On the contrary, the fine arts are alarmingly distant or marginal to most young people today.

Unfortunately, the media spotlight so cheaply won by Cyrus will inevitably spur repeats of her silly stunt, by her and others. Image and profile now rule the music industry. At a time when profits are coming far more from touring than from CD sales, performers are being hammered too early into a marketable formula for cavernous sports venues. With their massive computerized lighting and special-effects systems, arena shows make improvisation impossible and stifle the natural rapport with the audience that performers once had in vaudeville houses and jazz clubs. There is neither time nor space to develop emotional depth or creative skills. 

Pop is an artistic tradition that deserves as much respect as any other. Its lineage stretches back to 17th century Appalachian folk songs and African-American blues, all of which can still be heard vibrating in the lyrics and chord structure of contemporary music. But our most visible young performers, consumed with packaging and attitude, seem to have little sense of that thrilling continuity and therefore no confidence in how it can define and sustain their artistic identities over the course of a career.

I think the phrase that pays nowadays is "unsustainable".

I love when Boomers pretend that - after their kids witnessed their antics - they now have no idea where any of this is coming from.

But - they also assure us - there's nothing that can be done.

It's just so neat and tidy,...

 

Self-Serving? (Why, If That's The Case, I'll Take Two) II

Naturally, Rush Limbaugh is on the mark, waaay before the rest of these klutzes, in assessing why conservatism doesn't win:

"We're nowhere in the pop culture. We are nowhere in movies. We're nowhere in television shows. We are nowhere in music. Nowhere!"

*COUGH*

I guess this is a bad time to remind everyone, after years of releases, I've got a conservative album in the works and need donations to finish it, huh? 

Maybe somebody can look into telling Rush Limbaugh:

You know, so he doesn't get the wrong idea or anything,...