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Stop "Stop Hatin'"
By Ed Driscoll · February 6, 2009 01:46 AM · All You Need Is Ears · God And Man At Dupont University · Liberal Fascism · The New Puritans · The Newspeak Dictionary · The Return of the Primitive
The etymology of an all-too popular and surprisingly insidious pop-culture phrase, explored by the new blog (and like ours, a Sekimori design), Gotham Resistance. Putting Out The Fire With Gasoline
By Ed Driscoll · February 5, 2009 08:14 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Assault On Reason · The Return of the Primitive
Burning Man Festival gets sued--after man attending festival gets burned. (And at the other extreme of Mother Nature's thermostat, "Buffalo State College hosts the national teach-in on Global Warming Situations today -- a day the local temperature bottomed out at minus 6 degrees.") Oh, Say Can You See Me Lip-Sync?
Mime was money for Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma at the presidential inauguration, and similarly, lip-syncing is good enough for Jennifer Hudson to get the job done singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl. Greetings From The Asbury Park Wal-Mart
By Ed Driscoll · February 1, 2009 12:16 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Muggeridge's Law · Run To Daylight · The New Puritans
As I wrote in November about Bruce Springsteen: To borrow from the vernacular of The Boss's early '70s glory days (to coin a phrase), has any musician become more Establishment than Springsteen?Over at Andrew Breitbart's "Big Hollywood" salon, Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine (who, like myself, grew up in New Jersey in the middle of Springsteen mania) makes it official--and asks, "did Janet Jackson's nipple really condemn us to a lifetime of Super Sunday misery?" To be fair it's the Super Bowl halftime show--whether it's Up With People or a corporate dinosaur rock star, it's supposed to be miserable. But at least Up With People was honest in its own relentless polyester cheer. Springsteen will be singing to 66,000 people who have paid thousands of dollars to be in attendance, and tens of millions watching the game in their warm suburban homes in Dolby Digital Surround Sound on 52-inch rear projection HDTVs about how Dickensian the nihilistic purgatorial Hell the American existence is. Gillespie adds: I will say this much in anticipation of the composer of "Mary, Queen of Arkansas" performing this weekend: I grew up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, which contains both Springsteen's hometown (Freehold) and his early haunt (Asbury Park), so I can't stand him in the same way that only a New Yorker can really, really hate the Yankees. I think that even his biggest fans will admit that his output over the past 25 years or so would make even Beethoven nostalgic for the first few albums. Springsteen is in that elite group of rock stars who have objectively sucked two, three, or even four times longer than they were ever any good (are you listening Sting, David Bowie, R.E.M., Patti Smith?). That, and in the video for "Glory Days," he had the worst fake baseball throwing arm since Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees. Which is saying something.But then, as Mark Steyn notes, (quoting from another "Big Hollywood" essay), "for half-a-century now rock has very successfully been 'both establishment and anti-establishment'": In fact, "a rebellious underdog distributed by the status quo" is the very definition of rock: All those fellows calling for revolution while contracted to Capitol, Columbia, EMI., Warner Bros - the exact same companies running the music biz back in the days when Glenn Miller and Bing Crosby were where the big bucks were. A few years ago the Warner Megabehemoth Globocorp launched a rap label called "Maverick", and nobody laughed.Or apologizing to your fan base on the left for--gasp!--selling records in Wal-Mart. Not that there's anything wrong with that--though of course, as Billy Joel said to John Cougar Mellancamp when the latter man was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, "You're right, John, this is still our country and we'll always be victims of powerful people." No matter how many tens of millions they stuff into your bank account. Girl, You Know It's True
Wow, talk about phoning it in: the music by Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma for President Obama's inauguration was prerecorded, apparently because of the weather conditions: The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday's ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president's swearing in (which had problems of its own).No, of course not. Tom Blumer dubs it "Faked But Accurate"; Ann Althouse capsulizes the postmodern surrealism of the day: So we were listening to recorded music when the clock hit noon, the constitutional moment for the President to be sworn in! Then, he was sworn in and that might have been fake and there was a second of that too.Glenn Reynolds asks, "A Milli Vanilli Start To The Obama Presidency?" But Bob Owens notes that the Milli-ing--and even the Vanilli-ing--started quite some time ago. The Man Who Sold the World
By Ed Driscoll · January 22, 2009 04:31 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Muggeridge's Law
Someone on Fleet Street is a lad insane, as "Agent Bedhead" writes, if they think David Bowie(!) set in motion our current financial maelstrom. Personally, I blame these cracked actors. (Via Colorado's thin white vodka-swilling duke.) Update: Problem solved--evidently, "Kate Moss Will Fix That Dreadful 'David Bowie Recession'". Let's dance! Country Joe Biden And The Sea Kittens
By Ed Driscoll · January 21, 2009 11:15 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Return of the Primitive
in his last week in power, in order to ensure that the nation's capital actually survive the transition process, President Bush had declared DC a disaster area. Between the inclement weather, the lack of indoor plumbing, the minimum of functional outdoor plumbing, and hundreds of thousands of pop music-loving anti-war protesters, last Thursday, I wrote that the inauguration sounded like "a repeat of Woodstock, except with Geritol the drug of choice instead of LSD, and many fewer cool bands." CNN's John Roberts, the architect of CNN's infamous "Wright-Free Zone" last year, agrees. As Newsbusters puts it, "CNN's John Roberts Dubs Inaugural Crowds 'Barack-stock'": CNN's CAROL COSTELLO: You know, usually, you have a little bit of a problem getting people to agree to be on television, but not yesterday. People were begging to be on TV. They wanted their thoughts recorded. They were very much aware that history was being made, and they wanted to be a part of it in whatever way they could.Well far out, man! The lead act was pretty amazing, but did you catch Country Joe Biden And The Sea Kittens? Crosby, Stills And Rahm? Clinton Clearwater Revival? And how 'bout that oldies act, Thomas Jefferson Airplane! Seriously though, it did seem like there was plenty of featherweight pop culture and more than a few bad trips yesterday as well. Hopefully the administration will recover from their dalliance with nostalgie de la boue and actually govern like grownups. The legacy media's long strange acid trip of the last election cycle may have been too much for them to overcome, though. Update: While CNN's Roberts declared yesterday to be "peace, love, and history", Michael Medved notes that "President Obama explicitly and forcefully distanced himself from the far-left 'peace activists' who provided his drive for the presidency with much of its initial energy and urgency." Bobos At The Reflecting Pool
By Ed Driscoll · January 20, 2009 03:50 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted
It was revealing that one of the speeches most worthy of note, from the incomparable Forest Whitaker, was essentially a selection from William Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech, an uplifting affirmation of art and truth that is at the same time a denunciation of the worst of post-modernism and relativism. What we have forgotten, as unwittingly attested by the voices at this concert (excepting Mr. Obama, of course, who is a first-rate speaker), is that actors are not, in a classical Aristotelian sense, artists. They are skilled, to be sure, but they are empty vessels, to be fitted to parts as suits the real artists, the writers and photographers, the costumers and make-up specialists. This is not to deny the accidental beauty of Marisa Tomei or Jamie Foxx, or the emotive skill of Denzel Washington. But something is strangely out of whack when speeches are to be delivered at the foot of Lincoln, on ground hallowed by King, and the deliverers we choose are none of them thinkers or writers.As Woodlief writes, "It's a gentler kind of reflection we seek these days, not an inward look at what is good and evil within this country, within each of us, but instead a reflection that is all glitter and shine, delivered by beautiful people who have distinguished themselves by an ability to show us what we want to see." Reuters: Yesterday's News, Today!
This headline sounds like it could have been written in 1993: Music industry urged to embrace the InternetNot that they took that advice in 1993, of course. And The Beards Have All Grown Longer Overnight
By Ed Driscoll · January 19, 2009 11:45 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted · Liberal Fascism · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
In early November, I wrote: To borrow from the vernacular of The Boss's early '70s glory days (to coin a phrase), has any musician become more Establishment than Springsteen?Allahpundit notes the ranks of the Establishment have suddenly swelled: One of the amusements of the Obama years will be watching the counterculture transition from inveighing against The Man to trying to get The Man reelected.Too bad though that there doesn't appear to be an opposition party whose leaders have enough brains to capitalize on this. "To Trash Bush Was To Belong"
By Ed Driscoll · January 18, 2009 04:54 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Liberal Fascism · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
Some thoughts on "the primal tribal imperative that underlies the relentless scapegoating of our 43rd president by his political adversaries" from Sisu Willis. Related: On the other hand, "Welcome back from the Wilderness of Despair and Oppression, kids." America's Sweetheart
By Ed Driscoll · January 16, 2009 12:09 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Return of the Primitive
Behold the delicately filigreed philosophical wisdom of "Courtney Love, Anti-Semitic Trainwreck." (Via a mellow enharshened Kathy Shaidle: "I finally have to start hating Courtney Love.") Racing In The Streets--Of Big Hollywood
By Ed Driscoll · January 10, 2009 01:28 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · The Return of the Primitive
In "Bruce Springsteen: One-Hundred Percent Republican" over at "Big Hollywood", Evan Sayet believes that the Boss may be suffering from a case of false consciousness: The "culture war" that we hear so much about is, to borrow Thomas Sowell's phrase, a "conflict of visions." Visions, Sowell explains, go deeper than mere policy - in fact they are the font of where we stand on the issues - and they are founded on some of the most basic and fundamental beliefs the individual holds about the nature of man and, in turn, the role and purpose of government, family, religion and all other influential forces that society has evolved. Sowell called the conflicting visions the "Constrained" and the "Unconstrained" and offered Jean Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith as primary examples of the visions in conflict. More contemporary examples are John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen, the former holding the "unconstrained" vision (which I call here the Neo-Liberal view), the latter the "constrained," or, in my term, Conservative take. Just to be clear, yes, I'm saying that, while Springsteen the multimillionaire, rock star with the mansion in Beverly Hills may be a Liberal, Bruce Springsteen the poet is one-hundred percent Republican.I'm not sure if I agree with that--though I'd be willing to say that Bruce is a reactionary, but not a Republican. One of the reasons why the working class heroes and heroines that populate Bruce's albums never seem to transcend their problems is that they can't transcend their environment. To do so, some would have to leave their jobs in the factories, assembly lines and garages where all of Springsteen's characters seems to work and--gasp--put on a tie. Maybe even trade-in the '69 Chevy for an SUV or minivan. And take some responsibility for their situation, rather than decrying dark, unseen forces just offscreen. And singing about that is nowhere near as dramatic as the sturm und drang of Springsteen's shtick. Instead, the post Springsteen of the Born To Run album and beyond, the Springsteen who became a mouthpiece for the politics of Jon Landau, his manager, is just as nihilistic as the John Lennon of "Imagine", except his characters have really do have "no possessions"--unlike Lennon's eight-figure net worth. But on the plus side, the E Street Band sure sounds a lot better, lacking both Plastic and Ono. The Mothers Of The Velvet Revolution
"What Do Frank Zappa, Vaclav Havel, and iTunes Have in Common?" Interstellar Overkill
By Ed Driscoll · December 29, 2008 07:05 PM · All You Need Is Ears
A.K.A., The Great Planet-Smashing Gig In The Sky. In any case, it's your must-see video of the day--assuming you haven't seen it already. As Allahpundit writes, "Further proof that there's nothing 'Dark Side of the Moon' can't be synced to." Wait, I Thought That Was The Goal
By Ed Driscoll · December 12, 2008 05:10 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive
'Cause Baby, It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over
By Ed Driscoll · December 9, 2008 01:14 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media!
Wow, I really wish I had seen this 2007 clip from McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt, before I shot my "Red Queen's Race" video over the weekend. As P.J. Gladnick of Newsbusters notes, Pruitt does a terrific Baghdad Bob impersonation--but only before invoking his heartfelt commitment to "philosophers and rock 'n' roll songs. Sometimes it's one and the same as with Lenny Kravitz's song from a few years ago, 'Dig In.'" Her Satanic Majesty's New Dress
By Ed Driscoll · December 4, 2008 03:29 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Return of the Primitive · The Substance of Style · War And Anti-War
Reuters reports that Iran is cracking down on "satanic" clothing--Satanic in this meaning, "tight trousers and high boots." I guess from the Imams' point of view, Nancy Sinatra is the Anti-Christ. Or maybe Suzi Quatro. More Reuters: Some analysts say the authorities fear such open acts of defiance against the Islamic Republic's values could escalate if they go unchecked. This worries them when Iran is under pressure from the West over its disputed nuclear work, they say.I'd love to see Iran have its own Velvet Revolution--it certainly worked well in another corrupt culture well that was well worth infiltrating. Meet The New Boss
One of the better articles that Slate has run was Stephen Metcalf's 2005 profile of Bruce Springsteen, which (I think quite accurately) named manager Jon Landis as Bruce's downfall, transforming him from a funky regional act to a commercial superstar--and punitive establishment bore: For all the po-faced mythic resonance that now accompanies Bruce's every move, we can thank Jon Landau, the ex-Rolling Stone critic who, after catching a typically seismic Springsteen set in 1974, famously wrote, "I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen."Springsteen used his power with his base to become something safe and respectable, the left's answer to Pat Boone. He's the definitive establishment rock star--it's no coincidence that Springsteen's most visible when it's an election year and there's a Democratic president to elect. Bruce's fame, as Metcalf noted above, derives from repetition and predictability. Because, as Kyle Smith notes, no matter who's in office, when Bruce is at the local football stadium or hockey arena, it's always Darkness On The Edge Of Town: There is a bracing consistency in Springsteenian gloom, from the Ford years ("The street's on fire, a real death waltz") to Carter's ("Lately there ain't been much work on account of the economy") to Reagan's ("This old world is rough, it's just getting rougher") to the first Bush's ("Ain't no mercy on the streets of this town, ain't no bread from heavenly skies") to Clinton's ("Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin' away on the streets of Philadelphia?") to the second Bush's ("Woke up Election Day, skies gunpowder and shades of gray"). If the Boss has a motto, it has always been this: No hope, no change, no way.But as Kyle asks, what happens when one of show business's most famously punitive liberals can't blame America first for a change? (Incidentally, after a surprisingly long absence, note that the text of Kyle's blog is back online.) Won't Get Fooled Again
By Ed Driscoll · December 1, 2008 03:11 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media!
Back in December of 1979, 11 people died when attempting to rush into Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium to see the rock group The Who. The following week, Time magazine surprised many by running a cover story that absolved the group of virtually all blame in the incident. The cover dubbed the band "Rock's Outer Limits", and the accompanying story focused on their success as musical artists, rather than the tragedy in Ohio. (And I'd be the last person to argue that in 1979, near the height of their power as musicians, they weren't an awesome group, especially live.) But unlike a rock group beloved in the eyes of most boomers, the discount chain Wal-Mart doesn't garner the same sort of good will amongst journalists. Responding to the incident on Black Friday when one of their employees died when the doors were opened to allow the first mob of shoppers into the Long Island store at 5:00 AM, a New York Times went out with the following absurd headline: "A Shopping Guernica Captures the Moment." Evidently, New York Times economics reporter Peter Goodman (or perhaps his editor, depending upon who wrote the headline) fancies himself as the next Picasso. So who are the Nazis in his mind? The management at Wal-Mart who, somewhat like Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium 30 years ago failed to have adequate security and preparations for the onslaught of a crowd, or the shoppers who crushed the unfortunate sales clerk? The article, found via Newsbusters doesn't say. I'd excuse a high school or sophomoric college newspaper journalist making such an overwrought analogy. But if the New York Times and its writers and editors can't see the difference between an unfortunate shopping incident and the Spanish Civil War, one wonders what what value the newspaper has as an information source to be trusted by their readers. Update 12/2/08: Wow--who knew this little post would receive so much traffic? Welcome Instapundit and Five Feet Of Fury readers, and even those die-hard defenders of the establishment at Sadly No. One Cincinnati-based reader emailed in: The New York Times has become the WKRP of journalism. The hyperbole you noted in your blog is symmetrical to Les Nessman's comparison of the eternally hilarious turkey drop to the Hindenburg disaster. Except WKRP was supposed to be funny.Eric McErlain of the Off Wing Opinion sports blog noted that I may have mixed my Queen City stadium names: Just a short note -- the Who concert was held at Riverfront Coliseum, not Riverfront Stadium. It's a big difference, as the former is an indoor arena with a much smaller capacity, while the latter was an open air baseball stadium.Fair enough. More: Another reader emails in: The article's author does not use the word Guernica in the article. It was apparently the brainchild of one of their brilliant editors who does not know the difference between Guernica and Pamplona, which is what he was obviously trying to refer to.So perhaps the Gray Lady was trying to run with the bulls, rather than attempting a Homage To Catalonia. Into The Mystic
By Ed Driscoll · November 28, 2008 12:15 PM · All You Need Is Ears
The Pinedale Shopping Mall Has Been Bombed By Live Turkeys
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us here at Related: Jules Crittenden has a reassuring list of "Things To Be Thankful For In A Troubled World", and Jennifer Rubin proffers "Ten Reasons for Conservatives to Be Thankful." Help Me Obi-Wan Obama, You're My Only Hope!
By Ed Driscoll · November 5, 2008 07:55 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President
Slate has a little fun with CNN's latest technological gimcrack: Exit question: Did David Bowie's "TVC-15" single from the mid-1970s predict this latest video development? Update: Welcome InstaReaders! Meanwhile, Hot Air's Allahpundit enharshens CNN's mellow: "Heart-ache: CNN holograms not really holograms." He's Got A Plan--To Stick It To
By Ed Driscoll · November 2, 2008 11:37 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President
Just to follow-up on the Springsteen post below, nowadays, the only time I read about Bruce touring is every four years during a presidential campaign, when he hits the road as a well-paid (at least from the gate receipts) adjunct of the DNC. To borrow from the vernacular of The Boss's early '70s glory days (to coin a phrase), has any musician become more Establishment than Springsteen? Well, there are a few who come close--and what they say about themselves illustrates the duality of corporate rock perfectly. As Diana West wrote in The Death of the Grown-Up last year: When U2's Bono promises Grammy night fans "to keep f----ing up the mainstream," as critic Mark Steyn has noted, Bono fails to see--or admit--that he is the mainstream, a bonanza to corporate stockholders and well fit to perform at the official, ribbon-cutting opening of a presidential library in Little Rock.I recently came across a similar moment in Wikipedia's profile of Billy Joel. (No, I don't know how I ended up there, either, but pop culture ephemera is what Wikipedia does best): On March 10, 2008, Joel inducted his friend John Mellencamp into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a ceremony that took place at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. During his induction speech for Mellencamp, Joel said:But of course: no matter how many TV commercials, supermarket Muzak systems or football stadium loudspeakers play your music, no matter how many millions of albums you've sold or millions you've earned, "You're right, John, this is still our country and we'll always be victims of powerful people.""Don't let this club membership change you, John. Stay ornery, stay mean. We need you to be pissed off, and restless, because no matter what they tell us - we know, this country is going to hell in a handcart. This country's been hijacked. You know it and I know it. People are worried. People are scared, and people are angry. People need to hear a voice like yours that's out there to echo the discontent that's out there in the heartland. They need to hear stories about it. [Audience applauds] They need to hear stories about frustration, alienation and desperation. They need to know that somewhere out there somebody feels the way that they do, in the small towns and in the big cities. They need to hear it. And it doesn't matter if they hear it on a jukebox, in the local gin mill, or in a goddamn truck commercial, because they ain't gonna hear it on the radio anymore. They don't care how they hear it, as long as they hear it good and loud and clear the way you've always been saying it all along. You're right, John, this is still our country and we'll always be victims of powerful people." That's right! Stick it to the man--even if he's yourself! Brilliant Disguise
By Ed Driscoll · November 2, 2008 11:13 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President
Back in April, during the Pleistocene primary season, seemingly one million years ago, I wrote: Sadly, as Slate of all publications once noted, Bruce's second manager, Jon Landau, who went from Rolling Stone critic to rock Svengali, took that Springsteen away from us, transforming Bruce in his formative years from an exciting quirky apolitical musician to just another leftwing product on the showbiz assembly line.With Jake Tapper breathlessly writing about The Boss supporting the World's Biggest Celebrity, even as his bicoastal Keystone State gaffes are in the news yet again, who knew how timely it would be at the very end of the campaign: Related: More on Springsteen and friends in the following post. New Silicon Graffiti Video--"Live From The Ministry Of Truth"
By Ed Driscoll · October 29, 2008 08:00 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Ed TV · Hollywood, Interrupted · Liberal Fascism · The Future and its Enemies · The Gulag Archipelago · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole · The Newspeak Dictionary · War And Anti-War
In the latest edition of Silicon Graffiti videoblog, we visit industrious Outer Party Member Winston Smith hard at work in the Ministry of Truth, and look at how history can be turned on a dime, including:
Think Of The Matrix--With The Soundtrack By The Bee Gees
By Ed Driscoll · October 26, 2008 11:23 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Assault On Reason · The Making of the President · The New Puritans
"Joe Biden's RAVE Act of 2002 was a terrible blow against dance-generated alternative energy." And A Grateful Planet Says Thanks!
By Ed Driscoll · September 24, 2008 12:07 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Assault On Reason · The Making of the President
Sky News: "Singer Bette Midler Quits Touring To Help Save The Planet." Glad to see that at least one celebrity has taken my advice after Al Gore's Live Earth concert last year: I wouldn't have as much of a problem with Live Earth if it really were The Last Rock Concert by those who participated in it. It takes an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously believe that the planet's ecosphere is soon to be doomed, but the solution is a blowout concert in two different football stadiums.More news regarding energy and an even bigger celebrity, here. All You Need Is Hate
By Ed Driscoll · September 13, 2008 07:18 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Radical Chic · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
The legacy of the post-breakup Beatles comes full circle--the terrorists whom Yoko Ono publicly admires have told Paul McCartney, as Allahpundit puts it, "Play Israel and we'll kill you." (Fellow 1960s Britpop vet Cat Stevens could not be reached for comment.) "Smartest Man In Pop Music" Arrested At LAX
By Ed Driscoll · September 11, 2008 04:57 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Memory Hole · The Perfect Storm
Considering how the media exploited Katrina "to talk about Iraq without talking about Iraq" to "damage Bush politically for a long, long time" as Mickey Kaus wrote in September 2005, there's a fascinating sense of schadenfreude in this story. In late summer of 2005 Kanye West was first dubbed by Time magazine as "the smartest man in pop music" and two weeks later then blurted into an open microphone during a fundraiser telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina on NBC that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Today, West was arrested at LAX: Hip-hop star Kanye West has been arrested in Los Angeles on charges of felony vandalism after a heated confrontation with photographers at the city's international airport.Video here. Incidentally, "Give me the f**king videotape" seems to be quite a timely catchphrase at the moment. Obama Chameleon
By Ed Driscoll · September 10, 2008 11:19 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President
While the new McCain ad highlighting yesterday's gaffe from Obama is pretty good, and I commend the speed with which it was crafted and uploaded to YouTube, the late-August video from Team McCain (embedded above) is just devastating. It's crafted with lurid psychedelic colors, filled with ancient 1960s peace symbols, and linking Obama with Boy George, David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, the late drag queen Divine, 1970s Greenwich Village cult singer Klaus Nomi, and other international musicians and celebrities. Really potent raw red meat for conservatives. Though I imagine the left might not be too sanguine with some of th.... ...Oh wait, it's not from McCain? It's a pro-Obama message? Who can tell these days?! Well, That Didn't Last Long
By Ed Driscoll · September 9, 2008 01:06 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Making of the President · The New Puritans · The Newspeak Dictionary · The Return of the Primitive
Hey, remember a month ago when leftwing Hollywood puritans blew a gasket over a movie using the word "retard?" Nahh, neither can I. Update: And neither could Christian Toto, who also heard the Tinseltown crickets chirping in response response to the latest outbreak of the R-word. Digitally Replacing Hollywood's Stars
By Ed Driscoll · August 28, 2008 01:26 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Ed On The 'Net · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Future and its Enemies
This BBC article, which starts breathlessly, "Hollywood is on the verge of breaking into an entirely new virtual world", really isn't all that surprising; Arthur C. Clarke was writing about "synthetic thespians" over 20 years ago. Though why not start with musicians first? The MTV/YouTube small-screen format has to be a lot more visually forgiving than a 40-feet movie screen, and an all digital, all synthetic singer seems like a logical progression from today's formula pop stars, as I wrote four years ago for Tech Central Station. The Bonfire Of The Eco-Weenies
By Ed Driscoll · August 25, 2008 10:43 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Assault On Reason · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
As Richard Miniter recently wrote, "In the 1950s, the most puritanical place in America was somewhere in Kansas. Today it is Los Angeles", and that hectoring puritanism has seeped into its celebrity culture in a massive scale. Fortunately, whenever such Hollywood hypocrisy occurs, the opportunity for satire is rife, and Cracked.com riotously pushes back with "The 7 Most Retarded Ways Celebrities Have Tried to Go Green." I can't argue at all with their number one choice; I would have found a way to work this item into the list somewhere as well though. (Found via Dirty Harry, and definitely one for Orrin Judd's "All Comedy Is Conservative" files.) Really? It Never Stops Me
By Ed Driscoll · August 16, 2008 06:26 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · Oh, That Liberal Media!
The Onion: "Study: Watching Under Four Hours Of TV Impairs Ability To Mock Pop Culture." ABC Throws A Fit About McCain Celeb Ad
By Ed Driscoll · July 31, 2008 10:21 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Making of the President
Scott Whitlock writes, "The hosts and correspondents on Thursday's 'Good Morning America' did not hold back in expressing their displeasure over a new John McCain ad that depicts Barack Obama as a celebrity and compares him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton": Co-host Diane Sawyer hyperbolically derided the spot as a "political nuclear attack" and asserted that the campaign is taking "a strange new turn."You know you're over the target when you start receiving flak. The local San Jose CBS station led with the story last night; their teaser ad also hyped it as if it was some sort of out-of-bounds attack. But the danger of a politician acting like a rock star is that he sets himself up to be treated like one by his opponent. Jann Wenner's wildest fantasies to the contrary, we don't elect rock stars, we just buy their records. Related: Leave Barack Alone! And Robert Stacy McCain has some thoughts that are worth reading as well: If Obama starts sliding in the polls, he's going to be like a guy at the steering wheel of a vanload of backseat drivers, with the MSM geniuses endlessly second-guessing his every move, and the likes of Keith Olbermann and David Gregory wondering aloud what the hell is wrong with his campaign. There is nothing more beautiful to behold than the sight of Conventional Wisdom crumbling at it's first collision with reality.Robert notes that "The grumbling from the MSM's backseat drivers has already begun." Meanwhile, Rachel Lucas blames "beer goggles", and Confederate Yankee explores the inevitable result of too much drinking: the next day's hangover. Flip-Flopper Hip-Hoppers, Then And Now
By Ed Driscoll · July 30, 2008 05:43 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Making of the President · The Return of the Primitive · The Substance of Style
Back in 2004, Mark Steyn noted that the famously hard-partying John Kerry had his sensitive troubadour side as well: The time: last month; the place: MTV. The interviewer asks: ''Well, we know that you were into rock 'n' roll when you were in high school, and we know that you play the guitar now. Are there any trends out there in music, or even in popular culture in general, that have piqued your interest?''Steyn dubbed Kerry's "America's first flip-flopper hip-hopper"--sad to say, he's not the last. Now Ze's Time On Sprockets Ven Ve Vote!
By Ed Driscoll · July 29, 2008 11:43 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President · The Return of the Primitive
Fans of Mike Myer's Dieter character and his techno-Brechtian goof Sprockets will get a chuckle out of this, but as Allahpundit notes, I'm not sure how well it will play back in We Are The World We've Been Waiting For
By Ed Driscoll · July 24, 2008 11:45 AM · All You Need Is Ears · The Making of the President · The Memory Hole
The Obama Berlin speech versus "We Are The World"--see if you can identify which line comes from which! (And the latter certainly worked out well for all concerned, of course.) Darkness On The Edge Of Uptown Girls
By Ed Driscoll · July 20, 2008 02:01 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Godzilla Versus Rodan; the Cowboys versus the Steelers; Ali versus Frazier; Coke versus Pepsi; Springfield versus Shelbyville: life in the arena is a harsh one. Fortunately Kyle Smith is there to referee the celebrity caged death match between two middle-aged angst-ridden rockers each perpetually trapped in 1975: It does not happen often, but once in a while the urge comes upon me: I want to rock.Read the rest. All You Need Is Cash
Eric Idle's proto-Spinal Tap Beatles parody TV movie in 1978: In the midst of all this public bickering, "Let it Rot" was released as a film, an album, and a lawsuit. In 1970, Dirk sued Stig, Nasty, and Barry; Barry sued Dirk, Nasty, and Stig; Nasty sued Barry, Dirk, and Stig; and Stig sued himself accidentally.Newsmax, today: "Rangel to File Ethics Complaint--Against Himself." Abba-Dabba-Do!
By Ed Driscoll · July 17, 2008 02:50 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted
Kyle Smith writes: Wouldn't that be a violation of the Wertham Act of 1954? Darkness On The Edge Of Germany
By Ed Driscoll · July 17, 2008 12:51 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law · War And Anti-War
Back in 2006, I wrote, "Baby We Were Born To Run--From The Wall"--but Reuters has put an entirely new spin on that headline! Betsy Newmark spots everybody's favorite wire service praising Bruce Springsteen's efforts in the twilight of the Cold War, with the headline, "Did the Boss help bring down the Berlin Wall?" Frankly, this revisionism of the Cold War by the MSM cannot stand. We were told by no less an authoritative source as the BBC that a former actor who envisioned himself going on to bigger and greater things ended the Cold War, without firing a shot in the process. As he once wistfully told a German reporter, "I find it a bit sad that there is no photo of me hanging on the walls in the Berlin Museum at Checkpoint Charlie." Celebrity Fauxtography
By Ed Driscoll · July 12, 2008 12:43 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Memory Hole · The New, New Journalism · The Substance of Style · War And Anti-War
While Charles Johnson has spotted a serious example of fauxtography, and is thus only receiving belated, grudging acknowledgment from the Jurassic media, Ann Althouse looks at fauxtography's lighter side, and asks, "Why is it so hard for a magazine to shoot a decent celebrity cover?": Some shocking examples of uglification here. My theory is that magazine editors want professional models and are annoyed to by the fact that celebrity faces on the cover help circulation so much that they can no longer do what their aesthetic sensibilities tell them is right. Thwarted, the wreak their revenge. It's passive aggression.And speaking of fauxtography's lighter side, one of the house bloggers at Yahoo's music blog spots "Jennifer Hudson's Slim Chance" and asks, "Is it just me, or does Jennifer Hudson look, um, DIFFERENT on her debut album's cover?" I Need A Book To Tell Me This?
By Ed Driscoll · July 9, 2008 09:38 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive
"Memoir says Madonna's true love is herself." Triumph Of The Mud
By Ed Driscoll · July 5, 2008 06:59 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · Liberal Fascism · Muggeridge's Law · The Memory Hole
John Nolte, on his Dirty Harry's Place film blog, spots Roger Ebert making quite an interesting analogy in his latest review, which revisits Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous Triumph of the Will: Try to imagine another film where hundreds of thousands gathered. Where all focus was on one or a few figures on a distant stage. Where those figures were the object of adulation. The film, of course, is the rock documentary “Woodstock” (1970). But consider how Michael Wadleigh, that film’s director, approached the formal challenge of his work. He begins with the preparations for this massive concert. He shows arrivals coming by car, bus, bicycle, foot. He show the arrangements to feed them. He makes the Port-O-San Man, serving the portable toilets, into a folk hero. …Wow, who knew that the famously leftwing Roger Ebert was such a fan of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism?! But such a comparison is ultimately futile: Freddie Mercury and Queen weren't even bandmates when Woodstock occurred in 1969, and they were history's first fascist rock and roll group--just ask Rolling Stone. Coloring Between The Staves
By Ed Driscoll · May 27, 2008 10:16 AM · All You Need Is Ears
When I first started playing guitar, I remember reading a sort of dual-interview published in 1982 in the now sadly-deceased Musician magazine between Robert Fripp of King Crimson (a pretty amazing guitarist in his own right) and John McLaughlin, who, as I've written before, I think can safely be considered amongst the greatest guitarists alive: McLaughlin: I don't meditate or fast or anything, but I reflect on the ramifications of what I do. For example, there's a relationship between two chords that you've known, that I've known, for a long time, and only recently do I begin to discover this more intimate relationship, what it means. Even though I've looked at these chords from every possible viewpoint, I'm looking for a way that maybe exists up there, but I don't know where it is. Then, a little while ago, I discovered it, it just arrived. So the work that we do, I don't think we benefit from it until later. But once we have colors and palette, the richer the palette is, the richer the music can be.I've long thought that this passage was simply musical hyperbole, but perhaps its an example of a condition that Oliver Sacks describes as "synesthesia". (I wonder if Jan Hammer "suffers" from that...?) Place Them In A Box Until A Quieter Time
By Ed Driscoll · May 23, 2008 12:52 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Assault On Reason
Much like his lyrics, Dave Matthews puts a typically goofy ironic spin on what numerous conservatives--and even some musicians--said last year: "The whole joke of Live Earth was how wasteful it was": The May 29 edition of Rolling Stone looks ahead to the summer concert season, and the rock-music mag is praising the Dave Matthews Band for their use of biodiesel for buses and "biodegradable goods for catering." But this exchange was interesting, about Al Gore's "Live Earth" concerts.As I wrote last year, right around this time: I wouldn't have as much of a problem with Live Earth if it really were The Last Rock Concert by those who participated in it. It takes an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously believe that the planet's ecosphere is soon to be doomed, but the solution is a blowout concert in two different football stadiums.Or as Glenn Reynolds said at the time, "I'll start acting as if it's a crisis when the people who are telling me it's a crisis start acting as if it's a crisis." Music For Driving
By Ed Driscoll · May 19, 2008 12:12 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Ann Althouse discusses her favorite driving songs here. One of my favorites--at least as long as our overseas betters actually allow us to drive--is this: Given the song's stately, rolling feel, it's not a coincidence that its working title was "Driving To Kashmir". Wish You Were Here
By Ed Driscoll · April 25, 2008 12:13 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
I once dubbed Pink Floyd's Roger Waters the Pat Buchanan of British rock: both, in retrospect, would have been quite OK with appeasing Nazi Germany; both are anti-Israel. But Julia Gorin has an excellent suggestion (and yes I'm very late to this) for Waters' next destination on his bringing "The Wall To The Wall" tours. Of course, I could see why Rogers wouldn't want to Meddle there, not when his prospective audience would likely shout "One Of These Days, I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces!" The Final Cut would then be followed by the Great Gig In The Sky, unless Waters plans to Run Like Hell after the gig. OK, I'll stop now, before Brain Damage occurs... The Wild, The Innocent, And The Barack Street Shuffle
By Ed Driscoll · April 19, 2008 08:08 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · The Making of the President · The New Puritans
So many on the left seemed perpetually trapped in the past, usually in the 1930s, '60s, or the 1970s, but recently, Jonah Goldberg spotted the slightly more recent epoch that has made Barack Obama so bitter: There’s always been a certain cultural lag time to Barack and Michelle Obama, a kitschiness that’s hard to pinpoint. But I think I’ve got it: They’re self-hating yuppies straight out of the 1980s, which were to the Obamas what the 1960s were to the Clintons.And as Abe Greenwald of Commentary writes, so does someone else with a Brilliant Disguise, whose artistic career peaked just before the decade the Gipper made: It’s true that Obama speaks to the America Springsteen usually writes about. But I’m not sure what he’s referring to in this description. Springsteen’s America is a soot-covered wasteland of junked cars, violent townies, shotgun weddings, racist cops, closed factories, and endless unemployment lines. If you think Obama was tough on small town mentalities, consider the lyrics of Springsteen’s “Born to Run”:Sadly, as Slate of all publications once noted, Bruce's second manager, Jon Landau, who went from Rolling Stone critic to rock Svengali, took that Springsteen away from us, transforming Bruce in his formative years from an exciting quirky apolitical musician to just another leftwing product on the showbiz assembly line.Baby this town rips the bones from your back (And speaking of Slate, nice of them to create a fun anti-Obama ad, which will have a little traction even after this week's PA primary has passed.) A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be
By Ed Driscoll · April 17, 2008 02:43 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · The Making of the President
Proof that your 1970s-era leather jacketed populist hero to the working man persona may be looking a bit threadbare these days--when you actually say with a straight face, “I’ve found enormous sustenance from Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd”. Update: Bruuuuuuce! is Reason #4 of the 20 Reasons Why Frank Martin Is Bitter. And I'm even more bitter than he is over Reason #17: 17. I now own 'Blade Runner' in 5 different DVD formats.Heck, in addition to owning multiple DVD copies, and writing about the movie for Pajamas, I've owned it on VHS, and two different laser disc versions. And reading in Billboard around 1987 that there was this new company called Voyager with something called a "Criterion Collection" that had released Blade Runner as a letterboxed laser disc (back when letterboxing was new and controversial!) and was planning to release a letterboxed 2001: A Space Odyssey later that year is why I bought my first laser disc player. I mean, you go into these small colonies near Clavius and the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly and, like a lot of small earth colonies in the Sol Sector, it's not surprising that when people get bitter, they cling to laser discs, DVDs, or (via Lileks) space age prunes... Conspiracies So Vast
By Ed Driscoll · April 13, 2008 12:31 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Radical Chic · The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive
Matthew Sheffield writes, "If you've always thought her music was hackneyed and dull now you may have another reason to dislike Alicia Keys: she's apparently a racist conspiracymonger", as this AP report highlights (ellipses in Matthew's post): There's another side to Alicia Keys: conspiracy theorist. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter tells Blender magazine: "'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other."[...]Matthew adds, "All this nonsense really should come as a surprise to Keys's mother, Teresa Augello, who is white. Is this just a phase? In any case, it's hard to see how a white entertainer or a religious-oriented entertainer making statements like this and it not doing significant harm to their career." She's not alone of course; Keys' remarks regarding her profession sound much like those expressed by Rev. Eric Lee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who featured prominently in several recent articles over on the main Pajamas site this past week, including this one: “In a very small part of my presentation, I referenced a meeting I had with Rabbi’s and other community leaders. A Rabbi stated in that meeting that the close relationship between the African American and Jewish communities had been disconnected after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. I further referenced in my speech that my response to the Rabbi was that the Black Power Movement emerged after the assassination of Dr. King and it was a direct response to the negative characterizations of African Americans through the silver screen, TV and the music industry, industries that are influenced by many in the Jewish community. I then stated to the Rabbis that the Black Power Movement was our effort to define for ourselves our own identity rather than be defined by anyone else. I then indicated in my presentation that I told the Rabbis’ that before a genuine coalition could be rebuilt between our communities, there would have to be dialogue and efforts made to deal with the negative characterizations of African Americans.”But Keys' and Lee's conspiratorial ravings ignore a crucial element of the success of "Gangsta" rap: nobody twisted the arms of performers to record those records, or to strike thugish poses in videos and magazine covers to promote them, or consumers to purchase them. As Mark Steyn wrote last month regarding another prominent conspiracy theorist: The Reverend Wright believes that AIDs was created by the government of the United States — and not as a cure for the common cold that went tragically awry and had to be covered up by Karl Rove, but for the explicit purpose of killing millions of its own citizens. The government has never come clean about this, but the Reverend Wright knows the truth. “The government lied,” he told his flock, “about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”Rather than conspiracy theories about "the government and the media" as Keys believes, the latter "influenced by many in the Jewish community" as Lee believes, and the former fermenting "genocide against people of color" as Wright believes, where are the calls for personal responsibility, by three people who are all voices of influence in their respective circles? (Onion video originally found here.) Both Ends Burning
I've been a bit surprised to see ascots appearing in my latest Brooks Brothers catalogs; I think it's still a look that's far too affected, even for me, but Betsy Newmark wonders if we aren't seeing the aura of a penumbra of its comeback: According to USA Today, we are seeing glimmerings of a comeback of the ascot. A handful of guys in the public eye are wearing them. The most public practitioner is American Idol contestant, Michael Johns. While I really like Johns and he's my favorite on Idol, I hope he starts to resist such advice from the Idol stylist as this:With the unfortunate death of Robert Palmer in 2003, doesn't Bryan Ferry currently have the absolute lock on that job description? (At least as frontman--Charlie Watts is often the best dressed drummer since Tony Williams.)And yet: American Idol contender Michael Johns sang a bluesy number last week while wearing a pink-and-purple Alexander McQueen ascot, chosen by Idol stylist Miles Siggins. The contestants need "a recognizable brand, and I was thinking dandy rocker," says Siggins, who has picked out a vintage ascot for Johns to wear this week."Dandy rocker?" You gotta be kidding. "Indeed, Queen May Be The First Truly Fascist Rock Band"
By Ed Driscoll · April 8, 2008 06:54 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Liberal Fascism · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Memory Hole
Jonah Goldberg goes F-Spotting: I don't know why I didn't think of this before. Behold a new sport for readers. Send me your examples of people just using "fascist" to describe things they don't like. For example, Kevin Costner in Bull Durham: “Quit trying to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring and besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls. They’re more democratic.”Here's an oldie-but-a-goodie from 1979 by music critic and veteran Bruce Springsteen hagiographer Dave Marsh in Rolling Stone magazine: Whatever its claims, Queen isn't here just to entertain. This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior. Its anthem, "We Will Rock You," is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band.As an audience member (and Queen was my first rock concert, as I recall, with Billy Squier opening), I would not have presumed to have rocked Queen. It seems reasonable to assume that when one plunked down money to see Queen, one presumed that they would be the core element of the experience which would be doing the rocking during the concert. How that made Freddie Mercury and company fascist, I cannot fathom, but like the man said... Incidentally, in 1992, Rolling Stone magazine celebrated its 25th anniversary with a lavish party at the Four Seasons in Manhattan, a restaurant whose interior was designed by Philip Johnson. Their Geriatric Majesties' Request
By Ed Driscoll · April 5, 2008 10:52 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted
In the Weekly Standard, Sonny Bunch writes that Martin Scorsese's Shine A Light, his Rolling Stones concert movie, is no Last Waltz. Cold comfort for those of us who also thought the latter was more than a little overrated--or to be more charitable, hasn't been well served by the passage of time. (Speaking of which, don't miss Bunch calling the modern sixty-something Stones "leather Muppets"! And for a great Rolling Stones concert movie, you can't go wrong with the classics.) How The West Was Won
Ace spots this amusing Reuters item: If you are male and a Led Zeppelin fan, chances are you may be leaning toward voting Republican in the U.S. presidential election, according to a survey of rock radio fans released on Wednesday.Gosh, never saw that one coming! Exile On McCain Street
By Ed Driscoll · April 3, 2008 12:14 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Making of the President
One of these two people is 96 years old. Or maybe both... Neil Aspinall, "The Fifth Beatle", Dies
By Ed Driscoll · March 24, 2008 01:12 PM · All You Need Is Ears
While New York DJ "Murray The K" may have claimed the title of "The Fifth Beatle" at the height of Beatlemania in a shameless act of self-promotion, in reality, if any man could claim the title, it was Neil Aspinall, who died recently at age 66, according to the Telegraph: One of his last tasks as their eminence grise had been to remaster the group's back catalogue for legal downloading on the internet. Aspinall's involvement with the Beatles dated from 1960 when the group's original drummer, Pete Best, asked him to become their driver.There's a direct line from Beatlemania to the most pretentious and overwrought aspects of the 1960s, but there's also hours and hours of brilliant music as well, and short of George Martin, who was recording and actively shaping the Beatles' output, Aspinall had the best seat in the house to watch its production. The Audacity of Copa
New York Post film critic Kyle Smith comes clean: I worshiped at the Church of Manilow for many years. He is a part of me. I can no more disown him than I can unload my LPs of ABBA’s “Super Trouper” or “The Best of Andy Gibb.” However, I respectfully request that you please not hold any facts against me and start talking about something else.No word yet on what Obama's grandmother thought of him. The Ghosts Of 1968, The Year Of The Hippie Poseur
Tom Stoppard describes 1968 as "The year of the posturing rebel". Or as John Lennon confessed a decade later: "I dabbled in politics in the late 1960s and 1970s, more out of guilt than anything. Guilt for being rich and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something, or get punched in the face to prove I'm one of the people. I was doing it against my instincts."Fascinating though, that the 1960s and '70s, a period that was rife with poseurs such as Lennon, is still influencing us to this day. You can see it in music, in the form of ersatz nostalgia acts such as Lenny Kravitz and Sheryl Crow, who dress in period costume (sort of the tie-dyed equivalent of greasers like Sha Na Na in leather jackets and D.A.s in 1975, or a big band that same year still playing in tan dinner jackets and bow ties). Or much more dangerously, in a politics that still takes it rhetoric from a period now four decades in the past, whether it's John Kerry in 2004, or Rev. Wright in 2008. But then, when starting from zero, one is always tempted to stay trapped in Year One. I Read The News Today, Oh Boy
This sounds like a Tiger Beat questionnaire from the Bizzaro universe: Which Beatle's wife you think Hillary would be reveals your true personality! "Okay, but don't start arguing Hillary's Barbara Bach." Broadway Babies Say Goodnight
By Ed Driscoll · March 9, 2008 01:36 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive
This just in: "Do NOT get Mark Steyn started on 'Show Boat'". Edge Of Darkness
By Ed Driscoll · February 24, 2008 12:52 PM · All You Need Is Ears
I've had the riffs from this moody Eric Clapton/Michael Kamen soundtrack piece rumbling through my head all weekend. Now it's your turn: This Just In
By Ed Driscoll · February 20, 2008 07:35 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive
UPI breathlessly reports that "Hearing rap music can spontaneously activate pre-existing awareness of sexist beliefs, North Carolina State University researchers determined." All together now: I need a study to tell me this? It's Doing A Pretty Good Job All By Itself
By Ed Driscoll · February 11, 2008 09:30 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the American Spectator, James Bowman writes, with tongue only slightly in cheek: The New York Times obituary of Robert Goulet reminded us that "in 1961, The New York Daily News Magazine called him ‘just the man to help stamp out rock ’n’ roll.’" Alas, as the obituarist for The Times added — could it be just a touch wistfully? — "it was an impossible assignment." By 1967, when The American Spectator first saw the light of day in Bloomington, Indiana, most people of the generation of the Spectator’s editors — and your correspondent — would probably have forgotten that in that dim and distant past of six years previous anyone had even wanted to stamp out rock ‘n’ roll. By that time, the parents who had complained about the suggestiveness of Elvis Presley’s stage performances had much bigger problems to worry about. Yet for 40 years the magazine has offered the hospitality of its pages to those who would write the minority report out of the sixties, including even a few would-be Savanarolas who, however belatedly, might still be up for a campaign to stamp out rock ‘n’ roll.It's actually doing a pretty good job at the moment of finishing the job that Bob started: Amy Winehouse, Herbie Hancock and Kanye West didn't provide quite enough drama to enthrall television viewers. Preliminary estimates indicate the Grammy Awards telecast was watched by 17.5 million people.The industry can't blame this on sales lost to downloading, as we note each year when the typically dreadful postmortem arrives. The Decline Of Western Civilization, Part XXXVII
By Ed Driscoll · February 10, 2008 12:42 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Return of the Primitive
(Via the vast Manolo empire.) Everybody Wants To Rule The World
"While in Berlin for the release of a new documentary he helped produce, music legend Neil Young shocked reporters Friday with the revelation that music cannot change the world." That painful moment when youthful naivete gives way to wisdom, made even more difficult when you're 62 years old. Sexy Sadie Has Left The Building
The ironically eponymous star of the Beatles' "Sexie Sadie" from the White Album moves on to the next plane of existence, at age 91. How Soon Is Now? About 600 A.D. If You're Morrissey
By Ed Driscoll · February 2, 2008 08:29 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
As the Times of London aptly quips, "Never mind the fundamentalists, here’s Morrissey": Iran is still suspicious of pop music. Last summer police raided an underground festival in an orchard near the town of Karaj to stop what they called a “provocative, satanic concert”. More than 200 people were arrested.I guess that's as good a definition for the current meaning of progressive rock as anything. Does Anybody Remember Laughter?
By Ed Driscoll · January 31, 2008 05:05 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Here are two more tracks to add to the CD edition of SCTV's classic Stairways To Heaven album: Update: Here's an even cooler DIY mash-up. The Red Hot Chili Pipers!
By Ed Driscoll · January 24, 2008 06:12 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Back in early 2006, Australia's John Birmingham profiled Tim Blair, amongst others, in his look at conservative comedy: Blair, the closest antipodean analogue of O'Rourke, is a declared political warrior, with no interest in fairness, unlike traditional satirists such as Patrick Cook or Mike Carlton who are even-handed in their choice of targets. A Blair column is predictable insofar as you know who is going to get whacked - exactly the same people who took a beating in that morning's Miranda Devine op-ed piece. But unlike Devine, Blair consistently rewards attention with little hash cookies of humour such as his obsession with AC/DC's bagpipe player. Does he tour? Does he have groupies? Are they called bag ladies?He does indeed tour--and gets down with his bad, Utilikilted self! They Finally Made Her Go To Rehab
Amy Winehouse, this year's answer to the self-destructiveness of Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin, merged with the frightening visage of Patti Smith at her most emaciated, is "headed for rehab the same day The Sun newspaper ran on its Web site a video of her allegedly smoking a crack pipe." The Birth Of The Cool
By Ed Driscoll · January 18, 2008 11:02 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted
Tremendous passage from the late Michael Kelly, found via Cold Fury: Sinatra, as every obit observed, was the first true modern pop idol, inspiring in the 1940s the sort of mass adulation that was to become a familiar phenomenon in the '50s and '60s. One man, strolling onto the set at precisely the right moment in the youth of the Entertainment Age, made himself the prototype of the age's essential figure: the iconic celebrity. The iconic celebrity is the result of the central confusion of the age, which is that people possessed of creative or artistic gifts are somehow teachers-role models-in matters of personal conduct. The iconic celebrity is idolized-and obsessively studied and massively imitated-not merely for the creation of art but for the creation of public self, for the confection of affect and biography that the artist projects onto the national screen.One of the observations that Diana West made in The Death of the Grown-Up is how much of the heavy lifting in the birth of modern culture--with all its pluses and minuses--occurred in the 1950s, though the 1960s gets all the credit. But while Sinatra was indeed a harbinger of things to come, he was also very much a man of his times. In Gay Talese's epochal 1966 "Frank Sinatra Has A Cold" article for Esquire, you can actually see the cool style of Sinatra’s highpoint ebb into the sunset, and the aesthetic of the late sixties being born, when Sinatra encounters legendarily cranky sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison. And as Mark Steyn wrote recently, by the following decade dispatches between the two cultures--the post-war showbiz culture and the anti-war culture of mud--were even chillier: One reason why the Oscar shows of the early Seventies are such a hoot compared to the butt-numbing snoozeroos of today is the tension and sniping between the John Wayne/Bob Hope/Frank Sinatra set and the hipster crowd reading out telegrams from the Viet Cong. Back then, being anti-war meant taking a side. In today’s Hollywood, being anti-war is the only side.Which means, through the paradigm of The Manchurian Candidate and even programmers like Von Ryan's Express, plus his support of JFK and RWR, we can look back at Sinatra as a remarkably patriotic, all-American guy, in spite of himself, his myriad excesses, and nihilistic cool. Maybe it was simply that while Sinatra was indeed cool, he never succumbed to its successor pose: irony. Which, in retrospect, may have saved him from himself, unlike those who followed in his wake. Update: Welcome Libertas and Jules Crittenden readers! Long Live Rock!
Err, don't bet on it--at least in its current form: IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.Meanwhile, over at Blogingheads.tv, Michael Hirschorn of VH-1 and Jon Fine of Business Week bemoan what they call "The last days of the rock star". A fascinating subtext of their conversation is that both are unhappy over the media's continuing fragmentation, as the Long Tail grows longer. In Hirschorn's case, it's awfully ironic: In the decade before the World Wide Web began riding on top of the Internet in the early 1990s, cable television was the Long Tail of the 1980s, as narrowly-themed channels such as his own VH-1 began to demassify the Big Three television networks, ending their 35 year uncontested run. Bobos In Classrooms
By Ed Driscoll · January 12, 2008 01:28 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · God And Man At Dupont University · The Long Tail · The Return of the Primitive
Back in the mid-1970s, Jimmy Page told an interviewer that "I always thought the good thing about guitar was that they didn't teach it in school." In other words, for Page, and his fellow British guitarists growing up in the late 1950s, rock and roll and the blues were genres you had to be dedicated enough to learn on your own. Found via Bloggingheads, David Brooks writes that "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen's longtime rhythm guitarist (and eventually, owner of the Bada Bing Club) would like to see that changed: It seems that whatever story I cover, people are anxious about fragmentation and longing for cohesion. This is the driving fear behind the inequality and immigration debates, behind worries of polarization and behind the entire Obama candidacy.Education used to do this as well. Not so much, anymore. But back to the main point of Brooks and Miami Steve. Jazz was essentially frozen in amber as a creative force once Lincoln Center hired Wynton Marsalis to be its "Musical Director of Jazz." Miami Steve wants to do the same thing to rock. And it's not like education isn't already dominated by Present Tense Culture. (Or, for another way to look at Brooks' column: this just into the New York Times: Pop culture is fractured and demassified, something that Alvin Toffler predicted 28 years ago.) Do The Huck Rap!
By Ed Driscoll · January 10, 2008 02:59 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Making of the President
Sure John McCain may have picked up this key Hollywood celebrity endorsement, but how can he top the sheer animal power of this? Statistically Speaking, Are You Down With O.P.P?
By Ed Driscoll · December 14, 2007 07:21 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Err, in this case, Old PowerPoint Presentations. Found via Galley Slaves, it's Rap Music, the spreadsheets: ![]() ![]() (And yes, there's a language alert, but that probably goes without saying.) Geritol Graffiti
By Ed Driscoll · December 10, 2007 07:40 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Drudge has the early line on the Led Zeppelin comeback gig: LED ZEPPELIN FIRST REVIEW...Some photos here. But is it a one-off night on the tiles, or the precursor to an extended tour of the houses of the holy? Update: Video added above; elsewhere, the New York Times loves them some Zeppelin. Not sure how that will fly at the New Criterion, though. Video: The 2007 Arlington Guitar Show
Back in October, I visited the Arlington, Texas Guitar Show. I finally had a chance to come up for air from the PJM Political audio stuff to finish the short video I shot and edited of the action in the main showroom. (And yes, that's me playing assorted electric and acoustic guitars on the backing track): Latest PJM Political Online
In case you missed it, yesterday's show on XM satellite radio's POTUS '08 channel is available for downloading here. Pretty nifty line-up, too: Join host Bill Bradley for thoughts on yesterday's GOP YouTube/CNN debate, plus:For podcasting techies wondering what I used to record the segments with Liz and Scott, and the previous segments from the last two weeks' shows all recorded earlier this month from Blog World in Las Vegas, I simply used my trusty Samson Zoom H4 Handy Recorder (which has a pair of pro-style XLR jacks, visible in the photo that accompanies the Videomaker review), a pair of Shure SM58 mics, and a pair of tabletop mic stands. The Zoom recorder uses an SD card, and an 2-gig sized card provides about two hours of audio, which can quickly be ported over to a PC's hard drive and then into your DAW program of choice for editing and mixdown. I threw them all into a suitcase before heading to Vegas just as a lark, but I was astounded at how clean the audio was, even with the roar of Vegas Convention Center crowd all around, which is why I ended up doing so many interviews there. The trick, I think, is the Shure SM58s. There's a reason why so many rock groups use them on-stage and on live recordings--their cardioid input pattern makes them great at focusing the loudest sounds (which normally should be the person talking/singing/playing into them) and de-emphasizing the background noise. They'll Definitely Sing A Mean Version Of "Daisy"
Mark Steyn looks at Japan's demographic woes, beginning with a quote from the BBC: Japan has the world's highest proportion of elderly people. More than 20% of the population are now over the age of 65. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to about 40%.Mark writes: I wouldn't want to be a Japanese teen circa 2020 in a Lawrence Welkified society. But maybe by then the robots will be hot enough to be pop singers and movie stars.As I wrote a few years ago for Tech Central Station, as far as the technology to create Max Headroom-style pop stars, it really is only a matter of time. Oye Como Buh-Bye
By Ed Driscoll · November 2, 2007 04:45 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Radical Chic · The Gulag Archipelago
I've been getting numerous visitors today searching on "Deborah Santana"; they've been going to my post with a photograph of Carlos Santana and his wife Deborah at the 2006 Oscars, with Carlos in his dinner jacket and uber-reactionary Che T-shirt, and now I know why: they're declaring their marriage splitsville. For those who are interested, here are the details from the San Jose Mercury of their divorce announcement. "Everything In The Music Industry Is Up!"
By Ed Driscoll · October 29, 2007 10:02 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · The Long Tail
Err, "except those plastic discs", writes Chris Anderson of Wired and The Long Tail in a good follow-up to our earlier post here. The Future Of Audio, Video...And Guitar
By Ed Driscoll · October 29, 2007 07:37 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal · Hollywood, Interrupted · Pajamas Theater 3000 · The Long Tail
Libertas's "Dirty Harry" writes that the format war between competing high definition DVD formats has slowed the acceptance of the successor to the DVD, which is now in its tenth year of existence. And the film studios are shooting themselves in the foot, since the money isn't in the player, but the back catalog. A format war merely slows--or stops--Hollywood's efforts to resell its back catalog yet again, which is where the real long term money is, anway. When I go high-def DVD, I'll be on my fourth or fith copies of some movies, having gone from VHS to 12-inch laser disc (remember those?!), to DVD. And along the way, having bought pan & scan and letterboxed LDs, and original issue and remastered DVDs of some of the titles I was more obsessive about. Meanwhile, I just downloaded my first MP3-only only album off Amazon.com. It's a complete win-win for both consumer and Amazon: there's no physical product to be inventoried, packaged and shipped, and it downloads so quickly over broadband that it's near-instantaneous consumer gratification. The individual tunes are MP3s so there's complete portability amongst the PC and iPod-style player. It's been licensed by the record company, so there are no Napster legal issues. And the MP3s are rendered in 256 kbps format, which is, I believe the second highest quality format available via MP3. (Per XM's request, we do PJM Political as a 320 kbps MP3, which is the highest quality MP3 format.) There's little doubt that as broadband speeds increase--and they will--video will be soon be added to the download mix, and not just teeny YouTube clips. Eventually DVD collections such as these will be a download away. I don't think bricks and morter stores will fade away anytime soon, but the Long Tail is becoming increasingly easier for savvy online retailers to implement. Oh, what album did I buy? This. No, really! Fooling around with Roland's new VG-99 guitar modeling system and its built-in recreation of their classic original GR-300 guitar synthesizer got me in the mood to hear 1984's version of "The Future of Guitar." (Would that that future came true, as compared to what passes for pop music on the radio today.) And speaking of the VG-99, if you're a guitar aficionado, you may enjoy my review of Roland's latest guitar modeling system, which I knocked out for Blogcritics over the weekend. The Long Tail Of Classical Music
When I reviewed Chris Anderson's The Long Tail for Tech Central Station in 2005, I picked a musical genre with an enormous catalog but less than blockbuster front-end sales as an example to demonstrate how the Internet is changing retailing: Back in October of last year, Chris Anderson of Wired magazine created a powerful meme -- the concept of "The long tail". His article discussed how e-tailers such as Amazon and Netflix are changing how we think about inventories of books, DVDs and CDs; and how pop culture is transformed by making available not only obscure titles that would otherwise consume valuable space in a physical store, but also all of an artist's back catalog.La Shawn Barber writes that even more than jazz, classical music is benefitting from this development: You may not find a wide selection of classical music at the local Tower Records (do they still operate brick-and-mortar stores?), but in the digital world, the pickings are plentiful, as are online discussions about classical music. The Internet fuels the long tail of retail, which in turn favors niche industries and products, independent artists (filmmakers, musicians), classical music labels, etc...And anyone using a computer has immediate access to at least 30-second samples of music in that thousand-year back catalogue.Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds examines another online trend: "There are now more World of Warcraft players in America than farmers." Leroy Jenkins could not be reached for comment. Coming Back From Big D
By Ed Driscoll · October 22, 2007 06:33 AM · All You Need Is Ears
Just heading back from Dallas, where I spent the past weekend conducting research into antique electrically-powered sound-pattern creation devices such as this: Back in a bit with more. "Smells Like Studio Sweat"
By Ed Driscoll · October 19, 2007 10:30 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Return of the Primitive
Well, I certainly had a good laugh today at Universal's expense. How in the world can the studio expect truthfulness from a just greenlighted Kurt Cobain biopic when Courtney Love will exec produce with attorney Howard Weitzman? You know, and I know, but they don't seem to care, that this movie is gonna get crucified by critics, audiences and Nirvana fans just by involving Courtney, who owns her dead hubbie's life rights.On the other hand, how could it be any worse than this recent cinematic musical abortion? Jonah Goldberg's latest op-ed dovetails rather nicely into Kurt & Courtney's entertrainwreck life story: For years, conservatives criticized the likes of Madonna for proselytizing commercialized decadence, and conservatives routinely came out the losers. The press, generally being liberal, disliked the perceived censorial uptightness of conservative “culture warriors.” The press, also being professionally and personally infatuated with celebrity, instinctively defended stars over the meanies, because stars boost ratings and get you into glamorous parties. The meanies stay home with their kids.Read the whole thing. It's Not Just A Good Idea, It's Blair's Law
By Ed Driscoll · October 15, 2007 05:09 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
Naturally, with CNN this weekend having reanimated half of the fossilized "No Nukes" brigade from their cryogenic suspension since 1980, Chris Matthews on MSNBC tracks down the rest of the team. Further proof of the trend that Blair's Law documents: "The ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force." Coming up next after this brief commercial timeout: Strawberry Alarm Clock's take on drilling In ANWR. Old Reactionaries Protest New Reactors
By Ed Driscoll · October 13, 2007 11:09 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media!
I've read a lot--and posted my fair share--of material on the graying of television's audience. But I had no idea how bad the problem had truly become. In the late 1980s, television tried to keep my parents' generation glued to the tube by recycling oldsters such as Raymond Burr, Andy Griffith, Telly Savalas, and the blue-haired cast of The Golden Girls. But as Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason notes, times change, and new eras call for new nostalgia: Writing for CNN today, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, and Harvey Wasserman share some thoughts about nuclear power (Note: Don't think about that last sentence too hard. You'll hurt your head or bring on the apocalypse or something). They're worried that the siren song of cheap, clean energy will seduce us once again, when we should be rightfully seduced only by Bonnie's dulcet tones.This line in the CNN piece is a remarkably dual-edged sword: These "new" reactors are the same as the old ones, with a few bells and whistles, and a proven 50-year track record of catastrophic failure.Indeed, and it's brave of the "Troubadour-American Community", as James Lileks dubbed them on Thursday's Hugh Hewitt show, to admit their own shortcomings. (Audio here, which foreshadows the geriatric rockers' CNN piece rather well.) Fortunately, nuclear engineers are a bit more introspective. 2007: An Entertrainwreck Odyssey
The word of the day: can you say "entertrainwreck" boys and girls? I knew that you could! It’s refreshing to know that even during troubled times, prison-tat enthusiast and consummate entertrainwreck Amy Winehouse still takes time to coordinate her ill-chosen foundation garments with her cherry flavored phallic symbols.Click over for shudder-inducing photograph. Exit Question: is Amy in the midst of "The Odyssey Years" that David Brooks writes about today? In his essay today, Roger L. Simon mentions listening to Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool in the late 1950s. One of the ironies of someone like Winehouse, who no doubt believes she's absolutely on the cutting edge (probably in more ways than one) of pop culture is that she's affecting a style that was done 50 years ago by artists like Miles and on the distaff side of '50s jazz, Billie Holiday. And even while attempting self-immolation via various and sundry white powders, they made infinitely better music, to boot. And I Guess That I Just Don't Know
Found via Tim Blair, Malcolm Farr writes that far too many rock musicians became "bogged down with superficial heroin chic", including "God" himself: Eric Clapton might have contributed more to the world than wonderful music had he been candid earlier about the stupidity and indignity of heroin use.Reading biographies of the great jazz artists of the 1950s, it's astonishing how many of them were addicted to smack, back when Clapton, Jimmy Page, Lou Reed, and the Beatles were still in grade school. But then, to Start From Zero is to believe that there's no history in the world to learn from. News From 1977
Lock up your Meanwhile, Woody Allen, the director whose best film dates from this same immediate post-Bicentennial period tells an interviewer: I'm not a perfectionist. I like to do a film every year and throw a lot of stuff up on the wall; what sticks, sticks, and what doesn't, doesn't. I don't like to make a big production of every film and dine out on the successes and brood over the failures. I just like to make them, take the money and move on with my life.That sad thing is, just like his movies, he's not joking. (One potential benefit to New Yorkers and their daughters: Woody's threatening to permanently spend his dotage in Europe. Hey, it's worked for Polanski!) The Blogosphere Full Employment Act Of 2007
By Ed Driscoll · September 18, 2007 05:30 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Muggeridge's Law
The punchlines are endless; fire at will, boys! Having Done So Much To Advance Catholicism In The 1980s
By Ed Driscoll · September 16, 2007 11:25 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive
"Madonna: I'm an 'ambassador for Judaism'". Update: "Rock & roll, we know, is sexually charged music that tends to trivialize whatever it touches, even as it has largely replaced Shakespeare and the Bible as our cultural shorthand." No doubt, Esther's ambassadorial duties will help fill the gap! (And speaking of filling gaps...) Won't Get Fooled Again
By Ed Driscoll · September 15, 2007 03:23 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Assault On Reason
Glenn Reynolds notes, "In the New York Times: Global warming is Jane Fonda's fault. Well, yeah", as the Times identifies The Fonda Effect: “The China Syndrome” opened on March 16, 1979. With the no-nukes protest movement in full swing, the movie was attacked by the nuclear industry as an irresponsible act of leftist fear-mongering. Twelve days later, an accident occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in south-central Pennsylvania.Proving that Pete Townshend was more right than he could have possibly known in 1980: I’m for nuclear power, but I haven’t told anyone because I am still hoping to f*** Jane Fonda, like everybody dreams of doing who’s involved in the No Nuke movement.Me? Like the cast of The Pepsi Syndrome, I'll stick with Barbarella. Update: Welcome readers of the Professor, who in linking to our post, adds that "Pete Townshend's perspicacity...may explain why the anti-nuclear movement isn't doing as well as it was in the 1970s." But the anti-energy movement as a whole isn't suffering all that much, as Noel Sheppard notes, bringing things full circle with the present day. Related: The dreaded Pepsi Syndrome seems to be attacking Blue Crab Boulevard's nuclear reactor, even as we speak. News From 1988
By Ed Driscoll · September 11, 2007 04:29 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted · Oh, That Liberal Media!
I'd say it was all downhill from here. Luciano Pavarotti Dead At Age 71
By Ed Driscoll · September 5, 2007 10:15 PM · All You Need Is Ears
Standing Athwart History Yelling Stop
By Ed Driscoll · September 5, 2007 04:47 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Assault On Reason · The Future and its Enemies
While William F. Buckley's slogan was the original rallying cry for post-War conservatives, as Jonah Goldberg and Radley Balko have each noted, it's become the unconscious catchphrase of the post-JFK left, who've lost confidence in both themselves and western civilization as a whole. Standing athwart history is the thread that ties together two otherwise very different stories in this Roger Friedman article. As the lead discusses, Leonardo DiCaprio's environmental religious beliefs are designed primarily to greatly hinder the expansion of technology and business (presumably not his, of course, but no critic will ever ask him that, lest he be dropped from the Hollywood gravy train). And at the tail-end of Friedman's article, woe betide the man who seeks to modernize Manhattan, he notes: New Yorkers don't like it when you mess with our history.Iggy Pop threw up there once in 1977--it must be worth saving! When The Middlebrow Overculture Goes Under
By Ed Driscoll · September 5, 2007 12:45 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · Radical Chic · The Return of the Primitive
Two new articles explore the death of middlebrow culture in America. First up, Mark Steyn reviews Wilfrid Sheed's The House That George Built, which Steyn describes as "A music book that's not muzak": "You can't receive all your inspiration from listening to old records," writes Wilfrid Sheed. "It's like receiving your fresh air in cans."Flashforward to the present, as Terry Teachout explores the difficult job that Alan Gilbert, the next music director of the New York Philharmonic has in store, as symphony audiences become grayer and grayer: Even if he proves to be a conductor comparable in quality to Bernstein, there is no possibility whatsoever that he will become as famous as Bernstein.And Bernstein didn't have to contend with this: The school superintendent in Amherst put the kibosh on "West Side Story" as the annual high-school senior musical after a handful of complaints claiming that the work was racist in its portrayal of Puerto Ricans. (In fact, this modern-day Romeo-and-Juliet story is the most beautiful anti-racism work in American musical theater.) "Political correctness," writes Mr. Keller, "is the signature cultural statement of the ruling elites, undermining their moral authority and driving a wedge between them and the working class far more effectively than any right-wing demagogue could hope for."Ironically though, when PC in America was in its infancy, Bernstein was perfectly willing to dynamite traditional mass culture, when it suited the political fashion of the time. Seeger's Second Thoughts
By Ed Driscoll · September 3, 2007 10:46 AM · All You Need Is Ears · The Future and its Enemies · The Gulag Archipelago · The Return of the Primitive
At age 88, with the terminal moment approaching with ever-increasing speed, Pete Seeger has second thoughts. For Seeger, it's too little, and more importantly far, far too late, but at least he's attempting to square his record somewhat by publicly admitting that he was wrong--twice--on the most important moral questions of the 20th century. Update: "Better late than never, but Jesus, is this late". Heh. Indeed. Oh, No Hybrids For Yoko
By Ed Driscoll · September 2, 2007 02:28 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Assault On Reason · The Return of the Primitive
"Ono blasts eco-friendly cars": Yoko Ono will never use an environmentally friendly car--because they are not as comfortable as her Bentley. The wife of late Beatle John Lennon has snubbed the Hybrid car--which is popular with Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Leonardo Di Caprio for its low pollution levels - in favour of travelling in luxury. She says, "Can someone make Hybrid cars as comfortable as a Bentley, please?"Say, whatever happened to "imagine no possessions"? [It died right around the same time as "nothing to kill or die for"--Ed] Unleash The Furry Fury!
By Ed Driscoll · September 2, 2007 11:24 AM · All You Need Is Ears
I think it's because I'm just back from Vegas and have no brain cells left, that this seemed pretty funny. Though Phil Collins sure went overboard with the hair transplants, huh? Less percussive blogging to resume shortly. "Father-In-Law: Boycott Amy Winehouse Albums"
Wow, I am so retroactively ahead of the curve on this one! New Podcast: Greg Hendershott, CEO of Cakewalk
But most musicians wanted to do more than that--and these days, companies such as Boston-based Cakewalk offer products that give the average home musician as many tracks as his PC's memory and hard drive will hold. Not to mention PC-based software synthesizers that are also infinitely more flexible than their 1980s counterparts. George Martin and Quincy Jones cost a lot more to hire, but the same basic technology they use in their recording studios is increasingly accessible to those recording home. Having launched in 1987, Cakewalk are currently celebrating their 20th year of business, and my interview with Greg Hendershott, Cakewalk's CEO, is an attempt to bridge the gap between those early days and now. Ideally, it will make a good overview to those new to PC-based recording, but dying to dip their toes into the water. It's 20 minutes long, 18.7 MB in size, and can be downloaded here, or via our Apple i-Tunes page. (No iPod required; virtually any PC can download and play an MP3.) Attention Must Be Paid
Oh wait, that's the catch phrase from Death of a Salesman, not to mention the headline to every one of Arthur Miller's obits. But Mickey Kaus notes that People magazine (which had then only recently been spun-off from the march of Time) paid little attention in 1977 to Elvis's death--exactly two paragraphs' worth in the issue that followed his demise. (Or return to the mothership, depending upon your personal epistemological beliefs in the after-Elvis-world): Elvis was no longer a big deal in some circles, but he was in other, well-populated sectors. This scenario--the media elites not caring about Elvis, but then why are all those people going to Memphis?--reinforces the point that the culture of celebrity is an organic, populist (and pre-Diana) phenomenon and not a recent, top-down corporate trick.Some things never change: as I wrote back in 2004, the elite media also paid short shrift to a quite similar outpouring of grief after Dale Earnhardt's death in a Nascar accident in early 2001, from what must be something of a shared fan base, and both being considerably drawn from those living in what we now call the Red States. But then, that will happen when you have a one-size-fits-all legacy media attempting to cover an increasingly diverse country primarily from offices in New York and L.A. (And as can be seen by the above two examples, failing pretty badly.) Well, I Can't Argue With That, Part Deux
Linking to a recent Time magazine article on the--it can't happen soon enough--death of rap, James Hudnall writes: Now, I like some old school hip hop, back when artists actually used their own music and weren’t sampling and remixing everything. But I feel sad that the culture that gave us jazz, the blues, R&B, and soul music could provide this abortive fetus of a genre.I concur! By the way, Time magazine notes: The growth spurt was fueled by sensationalism. Tupac Shakur shot at police, was convicted of sexual abuse and ultimately was murdered in Las Vegas. But Shakur both alive and dead has also sold more than 20 million records. Death Row Records, which released much of Shakur's material, was run by ex-con Suge Knight and dogged by rumors of money laundering. But between 1992 and 1998, the label churned out 11 multiplatinum albums. Gangsta rappers reveled in their outlaw mystique, crafting ultra-violent tales of drive-bys and stick-ups designed to shock and enthrall their primary audience--white suburban teenagers. "Hip-hop seemed dangerous; it seemed angry," says Richard Nickels, who manages the hip-hop band the Roots. "Kurt Cobain killed himself, and rock seemed weak. But then you had these black guys who came out and had guns. It was exciting to white kids."Some can take a Pinch more than others, of course. When Elvis Met Nixon--And Vice Versa
Power Line reflects on the former, Mojo Nixon on the latter: Meanwhile, England's Telegraph has a snapshot of boomer narcissism and the urge to "Start From Zero" defined: "Before Elvis, there was nothing," said John LennonAnd Ten Years After (to coin a phrase), we could imagine there was no heaven--and back then, it was easy, if you tried. Didn’t We Learn Anything From Led Zeppelin’s Private Plane?
In a move not seen since the mid-1970s when Jimmy Page and Keith Richards were flying high--in more ways than one--on their bands' private planes, "Madonna Shocks Aeroplane Passengers With Mid-Air Vitamin Jab" screams this Evening Standard headline: Madonna is reported to have started injecting herself with vitamins to boost her energy levels.And she calls herself an environmentalist. (Incidentally, even by Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 standards, those are some scary arms that Madonna's shooting into!) Update: And speaking of injections... PBS: The House Of The Rising Che
By Ed Driscoll · August 14, 2007 06:36 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Return of the Primitive
Needless to say, Carlos Santana is far from the only dinosaur rock star who wears his love for murderous communist stooges on the sleeve of his T-shirt: On March 26, 2005, on the Washington, DC local PBS station WETA Channel 26, while watching "Viewer Favorites," I was shocked to see singer Eric Burton - formerly of the group "The Animals" - wearing a Che Guevara shirt while performing on that show.Really? Via Download, This Just In
By Ed Driscoll · August 13, 2007 01:11 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Long Tail
Reuters: "Study finds kids justify illegal downloads". As Jonah Goldberg wrote a few years ago, "I need a study to tell me this?" Stephanopoulos: "Melissa Etheridge Is The New Ted Koppel"
By Ed Driscoll · August 10, 2007 01:03 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Making of the President
Actually, Etheridge is a step up for ABC. I remember when they employed an up-and-coming child actor during the 2000 election as The New Ted Koppel. Pacifist Strong-Arming
By Ed Driscoll · August 10, 2007 02:24 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
Pinch-hitting for Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, Dean Barnett asked Mark Steyn about John Cougar Mellencamp's recent appearance on Comedy Central's Colbert Report, "where he had a particularly muscular response he had in mind to al Qaeda and 9/11, didn’t he?" Steyn replied: [Mellencamp] got rather annoyed at the idea that being a pacifist means you’re a wimp. And he challenged Stephen Colbert to I think it was an arm wrestling match as evidence that in fact real men are pacifists. He’d argued that the proper response to 9/11 would have been to do nothing, to have said okay, look, man, you’ve blown a huge smoking hole in the center of New York. But we’re bigger than that, so we’re not going to do anything. And he argued, he was in effect attempting to argue that that was really the manly response. And a lot of these rockers get very twitchy when, as Stephen Colbert did, that you put it to them that this is a rather kind of feeble response when somebody does that to you. And his response, his rather curious attitude then was to offer to arm wrestle Stephen Colbert into the ground. I would have liked to have seen how that would have gone.Probably about as well as this threatened pacifistic rumble from a few years ago. Cougar has written several songs that do a reasonable job mining territory long since explored (to death) by Bruce Springsteen. But talk shows really aren't his best medium, it seems. Me? I'm Starting A Ban On Bans
By Ed Driscoll · August 1, 2007 04:25 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
Elton John bypasses merely a ban on dihydrogen monoxide (though who knows, he'd probably be for outlawing that as well) and goes straight to the ultimate ban of all. He wouldn't be alone, of course--here's somebody who would sympathize. Elton's rant also dovetails nicely with a piece I wrote for Tech Central Station a few years ago.
The Jim Morrison/Julie London/Gil Evans Connection
Mark Steyn's Song of the Week is The Doors' "Light My Fire", which Mark notes was covered by everybody, back in the day: It set the summer on fire four decades back. The single was edited down to under three minutes, but the disk jockeys played the original seven-minute album track anyway, from the Doors' eponymous album The Doors. And within a few years it was established as one of those iconic long-form works - "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Stairway To Heaven", "A Day In The Life", "Like A Rolling Stone", etc - that are regarded as the acme of rock. The crude formula seems to be: Length + psychedelic lyric = art. "Light My Fire" comes in at big hit sound 35 on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Songs of all time, and places similarly on other lists of all-time blockbusters. But "Light My Fire" can't be confined to the long-form psychedelia category. For one thing, unlike "Bohemian Rhapsody", it's one of the most "covered" songs of the last 40 years. Once upon a time, that was the natural expectation of a song: it would have seemed extraordinarily reductive to say, okay, some guy's already sung "It Had To Be You" or "The Way You Look Tonight", we better find something else to do. Yet, in an age of singer-songwriters, the idea of a song being particular to one artist became an iron law and deviations therefrom were regarded as "covers", the very term indicating something less than an authentic experience. "Light My Fire" must rank as one of the most covered covers of the rock era, and oddly enough it was taken up by the same kind of singers who, a decade earlier, would have been singing standards: the easy listening crowd, the MOR set, the Europop VIP loungers. Who does "Light My Fire"? Everybody. Jose Feliciano. Astrud Gilberto. Jack Jones. Les Brown and his Band of Renown. Trini Lopez, Nancy Sinatra, Al Green, Minnie Riperton, Helmut Zacharias, Etta James, Woody Herman, Mae West, Johnny Mathis, Charo, Horst Jankowski, Edmundo Ros and his Orchestra, Ted Heath and his Orchestra, the Enoch Light Singers, the Burbank Philharmonic... As Mitteleuropean groovers like to say, "Gekommen auf baby, beleuchten sie mein feuer!"Unlike the Summer of Love, the very early days of Blogcritics were only five years ago, not forty. But as I wrote back in August of 2002, in Out of the Cool, Stephanie Stein Crease’s 2002 biography of Gil Evans, she notes that the opening riff from Gil Evans’ “Jambangle” from his 1957 album, Gil Evans & Ten, was the basisfor the chord changes for “Light My Fire”. Once you hear Evans’ song, it’s unmistakable, and you can hear the first 60 seconds here. Maybe in a way, it kind of makes sense for someone more traditional like Julie London to cover “Light My Fire”, if only to complete the circle. The Global Village Elder People
By Ed Driscoll · July 17, 2007 09:46 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive
In his nifty "D.I.Y." song from 1978, Peter Gabriel sang the praises of Do It Yourself: When things get so big, I don't trust them at allBut that was a long time ago. These days, Peter sounds much less entrepreneurial--as does one-time uber-entrepreneur Richard Branson: Nelson Mandela celebrates his 89th birthday tomorrow in Johannesburg, launching a humanitarian campaign along with former President Jimmy Carter, ex-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other “elders” of the global village. The initiative stems from an idea by British entrepreneur Richard Branson and musician Peter Gabriel to create a world council of elders to tackle issues such as conflict, AIDS and global warming.Peter Seeger wouldn't complain much about Gabriel and Branson's "idea", of course. But for everyone else, it's obvious that the old days of "Don't trust anybody over 30" have sure gone out the window, now that the average superstar rock musician is typically quite an elder himself. Update: "I for one welcome our new geriatric overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted blog commenter, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground Metamucil caves." Hots On For Nowhere
By Ed Driscoll · July 14, 2007 12:33 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Ed On The 'Net · Podcasts · The Assault On Reason
In this week's Blog Week In Review podcast, Austin Bay gets Jeff Goldstein and Neo-Neocon's thoughts on Live Earth: "Rockstars For Whatever". And speaking of Live Earth, Tim Blair writes that the party to fight global cooling continues! Video: Easiest Way To Learn Guitar Yet?
The PR firm that represents Fretlight contacted me last month and asked if I wanted to write a review of the Fretlight guitar teaching system. When their CEO showed up with a guitar in his hands yesterday to demonstrate, I thought it would also be a great excuse to shoot some video: NBC's 75-Hour Infomercial For Al Gore
By Ed Driscoll · July 11, 2007 08:03 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Assault On Reason · The Making of the President
Investors' Business Daily declares Al Gore, NBC, and its parent company GE "Birds Of A Feather": NBC and GE have other interests in hyping climate change. Let's not forget GE is the parent of NBC and stands to make a wad of cash from selling alternative energy products from wind turbines to solar panels to those compact fluorescent bulbs containing mercury.On the other hand, having tested the marketplace of ideas with a former vice president, the news anchor of Today and a few dozen wrinkly rock stars, it's significant to note that the marketplace simply yawned in response. That seems the fairest reply of all. Wreck On The Highway
Fox News' Roger Friedman writes that Sony is counting on a new Bruce Springsteen album this fall as its corporate savor: For Bruce, a new album would be the first E Street Band release since "The Rising," his magnificent recording about 9/11. That album sold better than any previous Springsteen albums and picked up a number of Grammy nominations. Springsteen lost the award for best album to Norah Jones' debut, if you recall.Springteen will be 58 in September, and as his modern visage in the otherwise exceptional 30th anniversary Burn To Run DVD/CD package illustrates, looks increasingly silly in the Fonzie-style leather jackets, motorcycle boots and t-shirts of his mid-'70s heyday. Is the recording industry truly "over" as Friedman quotes his Sony source? Historically, it's always been an industry that's been obsessed with youth and entertainment. But Don Surber writes that just like Springsteen himself, the recording industry as a whole now finds itself with a talent pool that's both increasingly shrill sounding in its emphasis on activism over entertainment, and also increasingly long in the tooth. Fire Make Sea Gods Jump
By Ed Driscoll · July 10, 2007 10:03 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Assault On Reason · The Perfect Storm · The Return of the Primitive
In "Dead On Arrival", Jonah Goldberg writes the postmortem for Live Earth: "If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down. Come on, mother-[bleepers]!” Madonna railed from the stage at London's Live Earth concert Saturday. “If you want to save the planet, let me see you jump!”Maybe Petra was simply trying to fly under radar with a subversive Iowahawk reference... Living Through Live Earth
Mister, you're a braver man than I. Update: "Can global warming be stopped by an out-of-breath, middle-aged, super-rich narcissist in a leotard and high heels?" George Galloway was at Live Earth? Who knew! Ouch: "I wonder how much NBC paid 'Live Earth' to come in last in the ratings?" Live Earth: The Academy Awards Of Rock
By Ed Driscoll · July 8, 2007 11:43 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Assault On Reason · The Memory Hole
At least in the ratings department, where 75 percent of America has tuned out of both shows. Or is Live Earth simply the return of World Jump Day? Maybe, as Madonna told her audience, "If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down!” I'd say that was the most logical statement uttered by anyone during the show, if Chris Rock hadn't been there: U.S. comedian Chris Rock expressed the kind of disbelief shared by many on the day that Live Earth would make a lasting difference, even if he was only joking:Mission Accomplished! In any case, as Glenn Reynolds comments, "I'll start acting as if it's a crisis when the people who are telling me it's a crisis start acting as if it's a crisis." Update: Bipartisan consensus reached! Hugh Hewitt and Willie Brown concur on Live Earth and what it bodes for Gore's political future. Another: America and England: Two nations seperated by a common disinterest in yesterday's concert. Help Me Obi-Al Kenobi, You're My Only Hope
By Ed Driscoll · July 7, 2007 01:49 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Assault On Reason · The New Puritans
"Al Gore Appears On Live Earth Tokyo Stage As A Hologram". Triumph could not be reached for comment. Much more at Hot Air, whose name describes the concert--aka, “Private Jets For Climate Change” perfectly. And speaking of which, Newsbusters has some thoughts on the private jet-setting Jann Wenner. Update: "Mostly Mild Weather Greets Live Earth Global Warming Concert Goers. Backstage, the Red Hot Chili Peppers get puritanically scolded (what else did they expect?) for using their red hot private jet. More: "Whither the Gores’ war on sex, drugs, and rock and roll?" If, as Gore once claimed, a traffic accident involving Al III was the singular moment that transformed him into the scourge of the automobile industry, I wonder if we can blame today's proceedings at Live Earth entirely on Al being dissed by Courtney Love and desperately trying to recover his leftwing pop culture streed cred. But then, this isn't the first industry that Al's been forgainst. Related: Is this all a sign that global warming has “jumped the shark”? That's 'Cause I'm Wearing Proustian Rush By Chanel
James Lileks writes that "Prince’s new perfume debuts tomorrow": It 's called “3121,” which is either some mystical secret message or his ATM PIN. It’s billed as “xquiste” and “xotic,” and it’s probably as xpensive (hah! See what I did there?) as the rest of the perfumes on the market. Americans spend $2.8 billion on fragrances per year, which seems a little low. That’s about 3,953 bottles.When I was going to school, Polo was the big cologne; I remember guys who would bathe in it if they had a hot date that night. I like a lot of Ralph Lauren's duds, but I could easily do without smelling his cologne again. Green Age Wasteland
By Ed Driscoll · July 6, 2007 04:17 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Assault On Reason
Like America's Investor's Business Daily, England's Daily Mail is equally none-too-thrilled about Live Earth: A Daily Mail investigation has revealed that far from saving the planet, the extravaganza will generate a huge fuel bill, acres of garbage, thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions, and a mileage total equal to the movement of an army."Live Earth is encouraging 'citizens of the world' to take small steps: share a car, plant a shrub, turn off a light or hang out washing rather than use a dryer." But feel free to light up the football stadium, plug-in 500,000 watts of amplification, and buy boxcars full of CDs and acres worth of playbills. Related thoughts at Pajamas HQ. Will Get Fooled Again
By Ed Driscoll · July 6, 2007 03:43 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Assault On Reason
Investor's Business Daily notes that "one of most monumental acts of hypocrisy in memory" will be occurring tomorrow: For years, fear mongers have been telling us carbon dioxide emissions caused by our use of energy have created a greenhouse effect that's warming the planet at a rapid and dangerous rate. Yet these people are not the least bit concerned about the amount of carbon and useless hot air that will be spewed into the heavens as a direct result of Live Earth.I can't argue with that; of course, it's not like the concerts' original namesake accomplished its goals, either. "The Biggest Problem" The Recording Industry Faces
By Ed Driscoll · July 4, 2007 11:04 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Long Tail
Billboard and Reuters report that "The global recorded music market fell for the seventh consecutive year in 2006, and the slide is accelerating in 2007": Sales fell 5% year-over-year to $19.6 billion, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a London-based group that represents the major record labels. Actually, the biggest problem the recording industry faces, much like Detroit in the 1970s, is that its new product by and large--to borrow one of James Lileks' favorite words--is krrrepp. Related: "Hollywood's Big Summer Turns Ho-Hum", though Transformers could still save the day. But just as last year's Pirates of the Caribbean sequel salvaged another forgettable year, isn't betting much of the summer's success on just one or two pontential mega-blockbusters quite a risky way to do business? And for the Old Media trifecta: "NBC Chief Tries To Halt The Exodus". Happy Fourth Of July!
![]() ![]() And for some music to further set the mood, here's the Ed Driscoll Orchestra (aka Sonar and Reason) perfoming the "Washington Post March". (On Monday, a friend sent me this link and asked me to make a loop of the WaPo March for the NRA's float in the Morgan Hill Fourth of July Parade; after routing all of the MIDI tracks through the synthesizers in Reason, and some reverb, I'd like to think it at least sounds a bit better than the version on the site.) Beverly Sills Died
By Ed Driscoll · July 3, 2007 01:31 PM · All You Need Is Ears
"Beverly Sills, the singer who did both during a storied career that spanned the swing and disco eras, died Monday night in her New York City home. She was 78", E! News reports. (H/T: Maggie's Farm, which has a clip of Sills in The Barber of Seville.) Update: Much more on Sills from Orrin Judd, who dubs her "the Un-Diva". Live Earth in Hamburg: Going Kaputt?
By Ed Driscoll · July 2, 2007 03:46 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Assault On Reason · The Return of the Primitive
The National Association of Manufacturers' blog links to Die Welt, Germany's Hamburg-based national daily: Continued weak demand for the singing saviors of climate changeWon't that simply encourage binge tourism? As far as the American segment of the Gaia-destroying shows, Tim Blair writes that their organizers' distinct anti-New Jersey bias is hard to avoid. Live Earth: It's Necessary To Destroy The Planet To Save It
By Ed Driscoll · July 2, 2007 10:04 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Assault On Reason
Tim Blair writes: I’ve been trying to come up with a violently destructive Gaia-raping stunt for us to participate in on Live Earth day, but it is literally impossible for even several thousand non-millionaires to match Live Earth’s own level of eco-vandalism while remaining within their means and the law.And NBC is essentially sending a modern day Martha Quinn to breathlessly VJ the concert. If the legacy networks were truly objective, wouldn't they want someone to report from an even slightly contrarian position just to create the penumbra of the aura of the emanation of resembling being fair and/or balanced? Speaking of MTV, astonishingly, Kurt Loder, the longtime MTV commentator and former Rolling Stone journalist actually says something negative about a Michael Moore movie! I thought these things didn't happen in New York since Pauline Kael went off to the great press junket in the sky. The Music Must Change
According to Rolling Stone, CD sales are in rough shape this year: Overall CD sales have plummeted sixteen percent for the year so far — and that’s after seven years of near-constant erosion. In the face of widespread piracy, consumers’ growing preference for low-profit-margin digital singles over albums, and other woes, the record business has plunged into a historic decline.Libertas's "Dirty Harry" surveys the wreckage and wonders why Rolling Stone is willing to blame everything but the low overall quality of major label music itself. And speaking of which, England's Telegraph spots a genre of the music industry whose sales have plumetted at double the rate of the overall CD market: In 2006, rap sold 59.1 million albums, down 21 per cent from 2005. Not one rap album made the American top 10 sellers of the year - a list headed by the saccharine tunes of the soundtrack to Disney's made-for-television High School Musical. The bad boys of rap are now trailing the cowboys of country and the headbangers of heavy metal.If the mid-to-late 20th century is any guide, popular music in general, and black music in particular seems to undergo major self-immolations every few decades on a regular basis. In the 1940s, Miles, Dizzy, Bird and Charlie Christian used their Manhattan nightclubs as a laboratory to invent bebop, eventually killing the swing orchestras dead in their tracks. While bebop and its offshoots produced some brilliant music, by and large, it wasn't a genre you could easily dance to. Which is why, as Mark Gauvreau Judge wrote in 2000's If It Ain't Got That Swing, the teenagers of the 1950s found an alternative: rock and roll. A few years later, Berry Gordy's Motown borrowed from the assembly lines--not Detroit's, but Hollywood's--and adapted Tinseltown's studio system approach to music, and produced hit after hit. One of the reasons why both bebop and rock succeeded was that it required less musicians than the large swing orchestras. And somewhat similar to the demise of swing jazz, the singers, producers, tunesmiths and studio musicians of 1960s Motown and its '70s offshoots such as Philadelphia’s soul studios--and of course, disco--were replaced by rap's turntables, drum machines and sampling. But rap took off over 25 years ago (with a sneak preview provided in 1970 by the Last Poets' cameo on the soundtrack of 1970's Performance), and that genre has also played itself out. I don't know what comes next, but I'd like to see a move back to quality songwriting, melodies and musicianship--and infinitely less misogyny. Of course, like the film industry and network TV, it may just be that popular music as a commercial force is another holdover from the era of mass media, and going forward will face increasing difficulties competing in the era of the Long Tail. In any case, with rap, rock and pop all deep in the doldrums, I'm quite happy to roll my own, as it were. When The Peace Train Gets Derailed
By Ed Driscoll · June 25, 2007 10:28 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
Mark Steyn writes: Far away at the back of my mind, I still remember the Rushdie of the 1980s - reflexively leftist, anti-Thatcher, the works. The old line – a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged - goes tenfold for him. He’s not just a liberal mugged by reality; he’s a liberal whom reality has spent the last 13 years trying to kill.Long off the Peace Train, The Artist Formerly Known As Cat is very much up for the job. Now It All Makes Sense
By Ed Driscoll · June 25, 2007 05:07 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Assault On Reason · The Return of the Primitive
Don Surber writes: The British princes join that American prince, Albert Gore, in saving the planet by living life to the hilt, spewing carbon dioxide and various pollutants into the atmosphere in order to save the planet from global cooling.I am fully prepared to do my part in this battle as well with as much binge travel as possible. And I'm not alone: thousands of jet setters, not to mention dozens of THE HOTTEST ROCK STARS! will also Fight The Cooling come next month. Life Imitates Spinal Tap
By Ed Driscoll · June 23, 2007 02:51 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive
Motley Crue sues their manager for--wait for it!--harming their image: In the lawsuit, filed today in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the four founding members of the band (Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee) through Motley Crue Inc., claim manager Carl Stubner and Sanctuary Management Group gave them bad business advice and attempted to "divert revenue from [the band] and redirect it to themselves.Wouldn't the Crue and their lawyers have been better off simply suing the government for their slice of heavy metal disability insurance? In other Life Imitates Spinal Tap news, 15 year olds everywhere are, even as we speak, thinking that this is the Coolest...Guitar...Ever. Let's Think Cool About It
By Ed Driscoll · June 23, 2007 12:22 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Assault On Reason · The Return of the Primitive
Technorati has been running a series of ads from MSN promoting all of the HOT ARTISTS performing at Al Gore's Live Earth concert next month. Here's a sample: ![]() Needless to say, MSN's copywriter has raised some inconvenient questions which beg explanation. If the goal of the concert is to stop the global warming that's coming before global cooling returns from the depths of the 1970s, do we really want all of that hotness concentrated in one area? Wouldn't cool artists be better than hot artists? Couldn't too much concentrated hotness burn a hole in the ozone layer over the Meadowlands? Maybe all of that hotness has actually caused global warming. You never heard about global warming when Sinatra and Dino were playing Vegas and Miles Davis was Kind of Blue, did you? I rest my case. Especially since it's becoming too hot, and I need to put it down. Further thoughts on those HOT ARTISTS! from the always cool Tim Blair. Nostalgia For The Mud
As I've written before, "Nostalgie de la boue" is a French phrase for "nostalgia for the mud". This site explains the meaning of the phrase: "Nostalgie de la boue" means ascribing higher spiritual values to people and cultures considered "lower" than oneself, the romanticization of the faraway primitive which is also the equivalent of the lower class close to home. I have been submerged in such ideas since I was born and am just getting my head out of the waters. My parents romanticized Hungarian folk culture — my father photographed and published peasant architecture, my mother wore folk dresses, my uncle and father promoted native handicrafts in the weaving workshops they organized in the 1930's. I went much further in romanticizing the seemingly most unromantic Aztecs, leaping across an ocean, a continent and five centuries in revalidation.On the other hand, these reprimitivized folks seem to be taking their nostalgia for the mud just a little too seriously. Stockholm Spinal Tap Syndrome
The fine line between stupid and clever just narrowed considerably, as Roger Tullgren, 42, of Hässleholm, Sweden, "is now the first person in his native country to receive disability benefits due to, of all things, his addiction(?) to heavy metal music". Hrrmph--It's Probably Not Even Soy Milk!
By Ed Driscoll · June 19, 2007 02:15 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Assault On Reason · The Return of the Primitive
James Lileks writes: An open letter to the nice young idealists who’ve decided to stand outside the supermarket and ask leading, guilt-inducing questions to people who just want to get some MILK, for heaven’s sake: let’s make a deal. I will listen to your concerns. I will nod politely while you make your points. Then I get to talk to you about my totally unrelated pet issue for an equal amount of time, during which you will be unable to ask anyone else to take your brochures or sign your petitions. And since you’re there every day, we can do this every day. Fair?Fortunately, early next month, the government will be rounding all such supermarket pests up and deposting them here. Sadly, their timeout--and ours--will only be for a day. Pearl Jammed
By Ed Driscoll · June 16, 2007 11:00 AM · All You Need Is Ears · The Assault On Reason · The Return of the Primitive
Jules Crittenden writes that Gaia's more than happy to fight back against those who try to immanentize the eschaton. (I'm about to tempt Gaia's wrath myself, as I'm flying--unfortunately not on one of Al or Laurie's Gulfstreams--to Los Angeles this weekend.) The Case For John McLaughlin
By Ed Driscoll · June 12, 2007 11:37 PM · All You Need Is Ears
No, not the pundit--the guitarist. Over at Blogcritics, Michael J. West writes: It’s for that reason that I suggest (not propose, but suggest; this one needs far more examination before it can really be a solid theory) that John McLaughlin is the real key figure of jazz fusion. He and Miles stand toe-to-toe in that sub-genre's pantheon: Miles, the man with the vision, and McLaughlin, the only one who knows how to execute it.Since the death of Segovia, I think you could easily make the case that McLaughlin is the world's greatest living guitarist, in terms of both breathtaking technique and all of the musical genres he's dared to survey. But I'd argue (and in fact already did so back in 2003) that McLaughlin's greatest moment with Miles Davis wasn't the much more celebrated Bitches Brew, but the next album the two men would record together, the blazing (and most definitely rocking) A Tribute To Jack Johnson. (For McLaughlin in a much more tranquil vein, check out the above clip from the mid-1980s with his then wife, pianist Katia Labeque, which I've been looking for an excuse to post for a while now.) Pete's Pivot--And Today's
By Ed Driscoll · June 12, 2007 10:35 AM · All You Need Is Ears · The Future and its Enemies · The Memory Hole · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War
In the New York Sun, Ronald Radosh explores the early days of Pete Seeger: The film's most egregious moment comes when it tells us that Mr. Seeger joined the Communist Party in 1939, and drifted out of it a decade later. It relates how in 1941 he joined the first folk music group, the Almanac Singers, which sang for the labor movement and the CIO. Next the film mentions that Mr. Seeger entered the Army during World War II, another sign of his patriotism.Fellow useful idiots to Stalin such as Dalton Trumbo and Charlie Chaplin would make similar pivots at the same moment; it's even possible to observe 180-degree pivots today if you look carefully enough. Update: Orrin Judd puts it succinctly: "A few good tunes for nursery school kids don't make up for being an agent of a murderous enemy power". Bobby Brown Still Fears George Bush Will Kill Him!
By Ed Driscoll · June 11, 2007 08:33 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · War And Anti-War
Sorry--just reading this headline through Rosie-colored glasses. The Demassified Future And Its Enemies
By Ed Driscoll · June 10, 2007 03:32 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Future and its Enemies · The Long Tail · The New, New Journalism
One of the themes of Virginia Postrel's terrific The Future And Its Enemies is that for many, top-down control of markets can seem awfully reassuring. There are still lots of people who preferred the simplicity of the days when AT&T was synonymous with telephone, because of how simple and universal it made things. But never mind that rates for a long-distance call were much, much more expensive before AT&T was broken up. Similarly, many people long for the days when men wore suits when flying, even though an airlines ticket cost a heckuva lot more before the industry was deregulated to the casual masses. As Glenn Reynolds writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Andrew Keen, the author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture (and at least for a time, a frequent contributor to Pajamas Media, ironically enough) waxes nostalgic for the days of mass media: Keen's thesis is that talent is rare and that worthwhile products - whether we're talking about news reporting, music composition or filmmaking - can be produced only if that talent is nurtured at great length and filtered to a great extent. Only a long and expensive process of refinement can dispose of the common dross and produce the pure gold of quality work.Remember when films like Rollerball and Network hyped the dangers of a world controlled by a handful of big corporations? That's exactly the mid-20th century mass media model that Keen prefers. Sturgeon's Law is an absolute in the sense that if, as Theodore Sturgeon quipped, "Ninety percent of everything is crud", then today's explosion of information and entertainment on the 'Net produces an exponentially greater amount of crud then the mid-20th century, when there were only three television networks, a handful of movie and TV studios and record labels, and only one or two newspapers per big city. So it is that much more difficult to mine the gold from the dross. But I'd rather have many more news and entertainment choices to pick from then less, (plus the option of creating in these genres myself) particularly when today's legacy medias, despite more competition than ever before, continue to underperform. Baby, You're So Square
By Ed Driscoll · June 8, 2007 07:33 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Radical Chic · The Future and its Enemies · War And Anti-War
Che Guevara: "He’s the ultimate symbol of radical chic but was Che Guevara really a homophobic, racist square who personally ordered the jailing and executions of innocent men, women and children?" Che detested rock and roll and railed against “long hairs,” “lazy youths,” and homosexuals. At one point, he wrote that the young must always “listen carefully - and with the utmost respect – to the advice of their elders who held governmental authority.”Read the whole thing, then someone tell Carlos Santana! It's The Return Of Icy Hot Stuntaz!
By Ed Driscoll · June 2, 2007 11:43 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Return of the Primitive
And man, their lead singer has put on a few pounds since his glory days! Aussie Age Asks Inconvenient Questions Regarding Gore Aid
By Ed Driscoll · May 20, 2007 02:26 PM · All You Need Is Ears · The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive
Newsbusters' Noel Sheppard writes, "an editor for Australia’s The Age, Melanie Griffin, published an absolutely delicious article Sunday slamming the upcoming 'Live Earth' concerts about to be thrown in the name of global warming alarmism". I don't want to reprint Noel's whole post, so here are just a sample of the questions that Griffin asks: What if all those rock groups donated serious cash to a fund that subsidised alternative energy sources?As Sheppard writes: Yes, Melanie, what if?Indeed it is. The Blogosphere Gets Testy
By Ed Driscoll · May 19, 2007 02:36 PM · All You Need Is Ears
While Tim Blair is out test driving his latest ride, I'm putting a different sort of machine through its paces. I'll let you know when the review is online or on dead tree. Won't Get Fooled Again
By Ed Driscoll · May 19, 2007 11:48 AM · All You Need Is Ears · The Future and its Enemies · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
Roger Daltry's not buying into the hype of the puritanical "Live Earth" concerts to help raise Al Gore’s stature, and ideally amongst the left, help to dramatically slow the economy by attempting to force Kyoto-style anti-business regulations down the throats of the US government: JUST when it looked like every rock star on the planet was jumping aboard AL GORE's green bandwagon, there’s a backlash already underway.(Via Instapundit.) This will never happen of course, but I'd love to see an interviewer ask the participants at Gore Aid to take a pledge involving their touring and personal lifestyles, similar to the one that Gore himself recently rejected: An interesting event took place during soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore’s visit to Congress on Wednesday. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) asked the former Vice President to take a pledge that he would not use more energy in his personal residence than the average American, and Gore refused (video available here).I wouldn't have as much of a problem with Live Earth if it really were The Last Rock Concert by those who participated in it. It takes an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously believe that the planet's ecosphere is soon to be doomed, but the solution is a blowout concert in two different football stadiums. As Daltry told the The Sun, "I can't believe it. Let's burn even more fuel". Each concert will require massive transportation efforts involving jet planes and tractor-trailers, hundreds of thousands of watts of electricity to power the lighting and sound gear, and the deforestation required to print at least couple of hundred thousand souvenir programs (and many more no doubt, for sale afterwards). And heck, just think of all of the methane emissions coming from the stadiums' rest rooms, where, no matter how much the audience promises, the Sheryl Crow Rule is incredibly difficult to enforce. But in the minds of its participants, a cause like Live Earth is worth it. But a generic, everyday, run of the mill concert shouldn't be. So go out with a bang, rock stars--and then, don't be hypocritical puritans; take the sort of pledge that even the Goracle won't. Ann Althouse Knows What Men Like
By Ed Driscoll · May 18, 2007 11:15 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Oh, That Liberal Media! · The Substance of Style
Certainly more than the New York Times does, at least. (Via Instapundit. Besides, her post gives me an excuse to link to one of the great trash rock songs of the early days of MTV.) Bo Diddley Suffers Stroke
By Ed Driscoll · May 18, 2007 01:14 AM · All You Need Is Ears
The San Jose Mercury News reports: Four days after suffering a stroke, Bo Diddley walked around the intensive-care unit at Creighton University Medical Center, and doctors were encouraged that the singer-songwriter-guitarist would be able to perform again, his manager said.I saw Bo Diddley in Philadelphia (where this watch is still worth fifty dollars) in the mid-1980s, when he played in a small, funky bar during his endless touring. His namesake rhythm, the "Bo Diddley Beat", which is sort of “shave-and-a-haircut, two bits” played on an open-tuned electric guitar (typically one of Bo's funky box-shaped axes, the only thing remotely square about the man), is one of the great rock and roll rhythm patterns. It's been adapted by rockers following in Bo's wake as diverse as Buddy Holly (for "Not Fade Away") in the late 1950s, to the Pretenders during their original line-up's hip early days at the start of the 1980s. Their "Cuban Slide's" rhythm pattern is a near perfect example of Bo’s beat. Here's hoping a swift, full recovery to the former boxer turned rock pioneer. The Last Days Of Disco
The redorkulated love child of John Denver and Bill Gates has a hit new song! WKRP On DVD: Back To The Muzak
By Ed Driscoll · April 30, 2007 09:22 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · The Long Tail
As Chris Anderson of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail explains, there's sad news out of Cincinnati: station manager Arthur "Big Guy" Carlson of AM radio's WKRP has finally lost his long-running feud with his mother, the station's owner. After nearly 30 years of the Carlsons' station in the Top 40 rock & roll format, WKRP is reverting back to generic Muzak. To Be Honest, He Looks More Like Andrea Mitchell To Me
By Ed Driscoll · April 27, 2007 01:45 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive
"Manolo says, ayyyyyy! The Ellen DeGeneres is looking bad these days". Hillary And Double Standards
A topic discussed on video: Because it won't be in the legacy media. Speaking of which, Don Imus could not be reached for comment. With This, I Give You Peace In Our Bathrooms
By Ed Driscoll · April 24, 2007 11:02 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The Return of the Primitive
Sheryl Crow is taking the path of least resistance and declaring her toilet paper manifesto to be a joke. I think that’s a wise move on her part, though the damage to her rep has already been done. Part of the problem is that zealots tend not to have a wild-‘n’-crazy madcap, whacky sense of humor. (See also: Gore, Al. I don’t recall Rachel Carlson or Paul Ehrlich being a big hit at the Improv or the Café Wah in the 1960s, either.) Lileks declared her Friday cri-de-Cottonelle a satire, but anyone who’s uttered a quote such as this one isn’t, in all likelihood, the second coming of Terry Southern. As Malcolm Muggeridge noted as far back as the early 1960s, real life is becoming increasingly hard to satirize, and Crow’s remarks certainly dovetail nicely with earlier comments from her partner in eco-zealotry, the high-flying Laurie David. Like I said yesterday, Crow’s timing was wonderful, even if her humor was so subtle it flew under many people’s radars. And fortunately, it’s done inestimable harm to the anti-toilet paper movement (and oh how these people must hate her right now). And to that, we can only give thanks. Update: More from the "is it a parody or isn't it" file: Remember kids, "Ham is not a toy, and that there are consequences for being nonchalant about where you put your sandwich". Give Sheryl Crow Credit For Her Timing
By Ed Driscoll · April 23, 2007 04:54 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Hollywood, Interrupted · Muggeridge's Law
I don't think it was her original intent, but a nation recovering from of a week of darkness has found much-needed comic relief in Sheryl Crow's remarks on Friday. And that's really all you can ask of--or should expect from--a Hollywood entertainer. The First Jab Is The Deepest
Byron York writes, "In light of the eyewitness' account, another way of saying it might be, how hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be jabbed in the chest by Sheryl Crow?" I think after reading this, I'd want to run baby, run baby, run, myself. Possibly in one of these compact, economical, fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles. Update: Don Surber has more fun with Crow's lyrics, and Jonah Goldberg ponders Sheryl's home cooking: "Who's up for some hand rolled sushi and then some steak tartare? I hear she makes it all herself". Hey, if it makes you happy... Keeping It Unreal
In a review of Faking It: The Quest For Authenticity In Popular Music by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor appearing in England's self-proclaimed socialist New Statesman, Jeff Sharlet argues that "all pop musicians are fakes": Leadbelly, Barker and Taylor reveal, was by necessity a master of "faking it", a sophisticated musician of cosmopolitan taste limited to a repertoire of "Negro" songs and told by his manager to perform in prison garb. That manager was John Lomax, one of the early 20th-century giants of what has come to be known as "roots music". "The music that was, for Lomax, the most authentic," write the authors, "the most black, the most free from 'white influence', was the most primitive." That doesn't mean Leadbelly was primitive, only that Lomax and, decades later, Cobain decided to believe that he was, the better to break the bonds of artificiality they felt modernity and celebrity imposed. Leadbelly was a tool. This shifty truth comes to us by way not of postmodernism, but of old-timey Marxist analysis. In 1937, the novelist Richard Wright, profiling Leadbelly for the Daily Worker, declared his coerced performances "one of the greatest cultural swindles in history".The leftwing readers of The New Statesman might not like the territory it explores, but that topic was covered extensively in this article on Pete Seeger by Howard Husock in a 2005 issue of City Journal, which dovetails surprisingly well with Sharlet's essay. (Via Maggie's Farm.) The First Cut Is The Deepest
By Ed Driscoll · April 20, 2007 02:21 PM · All You Need Is Ears · Muggeridge's Law · The New Puritans · The Return of the Primitive
The first cut of a roll of Charmin, I guess. Audio Desecrations
Sort of the podcast equivalent of his hilarious Interior Desecrations book, James Lileks sticks a sonic shiv into the dark heart of the 1970s and its most clichéd music in his latest "Diner": "Ooga; Shakka" When Avant-Garde Becomes Garde
By Ed Driscoll · April 10, 2007 11:14 AM · All You Need Is Ears · Bobos In Paradise · The New Puritans
James Lileks posts photos of one the great moments of fifties swank, the original automobile compact disc player. It probably skipped and popped a whole lot more than the real CD players of today, but the original gets bonus points for style and creative, if impractical thinking: It’s the Highway Hi-Fi. It’s a record player for your car. I repeat: a record player for your car. More details can be found here. (Warning: BYO Paragraph Breaks.) Also here. Ah, but what music would you play on such a miraculous device? Well: this would be an excellent time to try out our new music-playing widget, and provide the following tune for your driving pleasure. It's a selection from a record provided to Kresge stores: this is what they played over the speakers in the ceiling.Having spent my teen years toiling in the family retail store, where my father insisted on Easy-Listening Muzak over the frequent protestations of his rock & roll crazed son, I find it more than a little ironic that today’s Muzak is…rock & roll. But for unintential irony, it's hard to beat the notion that singers like Madonna, and Sheryl Crow with her cover of Yusuf Islam’s “The First Cut (of the Palestinian suicide bomber) Is The Deepest” think of themselves as épatering les bourgeois when their music is now fit to be non-offensive background tunes. Here’s a tip: when your songs are being played on the Muzak speakers by the pool and cabanas of the Bellagio Hotel & Casino, you’re no longer avant-garde. You’re officially the garde. Similarly, I’m old enough to remember when rock musicians actually were edgy and dangerous, and not entirely play acting at it. Now they’re puritanical nags, ordering their listeners to cut down on CO2 emissions, even as they organize tours around private jets, limousines, and tractor-trailers full of HiWatt amps, PA systems and more stage r |