From his "nation of cowards" remark to the preacher's quatation he carried around for years about the sense of race-based kinship he feels with other Americans who are black, to overseeing the hands-off approach to voter intimidation, to the deliberate hiring of radical lawyers for the DOJ, to his refusal to use the term "radical Islam" when asked about it by Rep. Lamar Smith during his House judiciary committee testimony on the Times Square bomber to his feigned ignorance of Fast and Furious, we've long held that Eric Holder is arguably the most horrid member of the MEC's cabinet.
Latest substantiation for this: his war on voter ID laws.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
It's been rough in the most literal sense of the word, let alone in more figurative ways
I guess you wouldn't come to a blog called Late in the Day looking for hefty doses of sunshine. Frankly, besides hardcore statists, who have the momentum of the tide of events on their side, do you know anyone who is, here in late December 2011, sashaying through his daily life on a gust of everything-is-going-to-be-dandy-ism? If so, do him or her the kindness of passing along the phone number of a competent therapist.
There are several levels on which we can mark the steady, continued deterioration of Western civilization throughout 2011, and most of them are regularly monitored by specialists in those areas. For the cultural rot that continues unabated, there is Brent Bozell at the Media Research Center. For the hair-raising level of indebtedness and profligate government spending which assures a future worse than that of Greece, there is Mark Steyn and Mike Shedlock. For the advanced stage of the encroachment of sharia and jihad, there's Andrew McCarthy and Pam Geller. For the continued astronomically costly obsession among far too many in our society with the non-existent trouble that "the planet" is in, there is Climate Depot.
What is left that LITD might focus on and in the course of so doing offer some kind of fresh insight?
For all the above aspects of our current juncture, I'd say that a clear sociocultural theme that emerges when one surveys 2011 is a plain breakdown in basic public order.
There was the rash of fast-food-restaurant beat-downs early in the year. There was the near-riot at an Alabama amusement park in June over a reduced-admission promotion. There were the flash-mob robberies of convenience stores. There was the Independence Day riot at a Peoria housing project when some residents decided to put on a large-scale fireworks display and when police moved in to to tell them to knock it off, got the fireworks turned on them. There was the clearly-racially-motivated riot at the Wisconsin State Fair, There was the unrest outside a George Clinton concert in Cleveland. More recently, there was the melee at Minnesota's Mall of America when rumors of Lil Wayne's presence spread throughout a crowd of hooligans.
And that's just the outbreaks of a general kind (although, as I say, some of these situations did indeed have racial overtones).
There were also labor-union conflagrations. The most noteworthy of these was the sit-in at the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison by teacher-union activists that went on for weeks. What a fine example these erudite educators were setting for their young charges by screaming for government largesse that, as Governor Walker tried to explain pretty much every day, simply wasn't there, due to the state's deficit, camping out in the capitol rotunda, and getting forged doctor slips. There was also the shutdown of the Longview, Washington shipping port in September by longshoremen's union thugs.
If one wants to expand the examination of this phenomenon to the West in general, the riots in Athens and London provide ample material.
Then, of course, there is the Occupy Wall Street movement, which brings together a number of elements present in much of the year's mayhem: spoiled white college kids (ironically, there was very little participation by blacks or other ethnic minorities), the dreadlock-tie-dye-bong-and-drum-circle crowd looking for a party, determined socialist operatives who were orchestrating matters behind the scenes, Jew-hating jihadists, and garden-variety drifters who were mainly looking for free meals and girls to molest.
Look back over all the above-enumerated developments (including the ones for which I've included specialists' links) and then ask yourself if the slip in our level of civilization is a mere hiccup - an unfortunate but momentary lowering of our expectations of ourselves as citizens of an advanced society. Is that what it really looks like to you? Or is the re-attainment of the heights we achieved in the middle of the last century less than likely?
I'm not without at least a faint glimmer of optimism. That residual reserve is not based on any evidence that would justify it. It's just that a human being without any hope that some solution to a dilemma he's facing would shut down and collapse in a heap of inertia. Not me. Apparently I'm not there yet, because I can readily say there is a lot of stuff I want to accomplish in 2012.
That said, I'm not operating under any illusions. I - and everyone else with intentions, ambitions, goals and dreams - will be conducting my affairs in an atmosphere best described as accelerated entropy in the year ahead.
There are several levels on which we can mark the steady, continued deterioration of Western civilization throughout 2011, and most of them are regularly monitored by specialists in those areas. For the cultural rot that continues unabated, there is Brent Bozell at the Media Research Center. For the hair-raising level of indebtedness and profligate government spending which assures a future worse than that of Greece, there is Mark Steyn and Mike Shedlock. For the advanced stage of the encroachment of sharia and jihad, there's Andrew McCarthy and Pam Geller. For the continued astronomically costly obsession among far too many in our society with the non-existent trouble that "the planet" is in, there is Climate Depot.
What is left that LITD might focus on and in the course of so doing offer some kind of fresh insight?
For all the above aspects of our current juncture, I'd say that a clear sociocultural theme that emerges when one surveys 2011 is a plain breakdown in basic public order.
There was the rash of fast-food-restaurant beat-downs early in the year. There was the near-riot at an Alabama amusement park in June over a reduced-admission promotion. There were the flash-mob robberies of convenience stores. There was the Independence Day riot at a Peoria housing project when some residents decided to put on a large-scale fireworks display and when police moved in to to tell them to knock it off, got the fireworks turned on them. There was the clearly-racially-motivated riot at the Wisconsin State Fair, There was the unrest outside a George Clinton concert in Cleveland. More recently, there was the melee at Minnesota's Mall of America when rumors of Lil Wayne's presence spread throughout a crowd of hooligans.
And that's just the outbreaks of a general kind (although, as I say, some of these situations did indeed have racial overtones).
There were also labor-union conflagrations. The most noteworthy of these was the sit-in at the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison by teacher-union activists that went on for weeks. What a fine example these erudite educators were setting for their young charges by screaming for government largesse that, as Governor Walker tried to explain pretty much every day, simply wasn't there, due to the state's deficit, camping out in the capitol rotunda, and getting forged doctor slips. There was also the shutdown of the Longview, Washington shipping port in September by longshoremen's union thugs.
If one wants to expand the examination of this phenomenon to the West in general, the riots in Athens and London provide ample material.
Then, of course, there is the Occupy Wall Street movement, which brings together a number of elements present in much of the year's mayhem: spoiled white college kids (ironically, there was very little participation by blacks or other ethnic minorities), the dreadlock-tie-dye-bong-and-drum-circle crowd looking for a party, determined socialist operatives who were orchestrating matters behind the scenes, Jew-hating jihadists, and garden-variety drifters who were mainly looking for free meals and girls to molest.
Look back over all the above-enumerated developments (including the ones for which I've included specialists' links) and then ask yourself if the slip in our level of civilization is a mere hiccup - an unfortunate but momentary lowering of our expectations of ourselves as citizens of an advanced society. Is that what it really looks like to you? Or is the re-attainment of the heights we achieved in the middle of the last century less than likely?
I'm not without at least a faint glimmer of optimism. That residual reserve is not based on any evidence that would justify it. It's just that a human being without any hope that some solution to a dilemma he's facing would shut down and collapse in a heap of inertia. Not me. Apparently I'm not there yet, because I can readily say there is a lot of stuff I want to accomplish in 2012.
That said, I'm not operating under any illusions. I - and everyone else with intentions, ambitions, goals and dreams - will be conducting my affairs in an atmosphere best described as accelerated entropy in the year ahead.
The kind of development that sheds light on why the Most Equal Comrade never uses the term "victory" in relation to our struggle against jihad
The MEC has enlisted the Muslim Brotherhood's Qaradawi to mediate secret talks between the US and the Taliban.
That MEC - a real national-security kind of guy.
That MEC - a real national-security kind of guy.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Elmer Gantry on the deck of the cruise ship
In the course of poking around the Web, I came across a fantastic blog I highly recommend to anyone for whom New Age "spirituality" is a teeth-grinder.
The blogmistress is a delightfully sharp and astringent writer who calls herself - in what should be obvious irony - Cosmic Connie. Her main thrust is exposing the charlatans who take millions of dollars of Americans' money dispensing the most infantile and obvious-to-anyone-who-is-not-desperate-to-find-a-way-out-of-the-consequences-of-their-bad-life-choices hooey and build personality cults on the premise that it is not about them - no, sir, he or she is just the person behind the podium in the hotel ballroom through whom the "entity" comes - but rather about "source energy." Never mind the rock-star adulation pulsating through the room.
Among the other ills that are currently besetting America, perhaps the most alarming is gullability. We are willing to swallow the notion that "channeled entities" - or "received beings," if you'd rather - have some kind of profound gems of insight to hand to us, much like we are willing to believe that Manhattan will be submerged in ten years if we don't switch en masse to electric cars and solar panels, or that food stamps and unemployment benefits stimulate the economy.
As I say, her writing style is funny and provocative, and she does her homework. Check in often, if thsi is an area of interest to you.
The blogmistress is a delightfully sharp and astringent writer who calls herself - in what should be obvious irony - Cosmic Connie. Her main thrust is exposing the charlatans who take millions of dollars of Americans' money dispensing the most infantile and obvious-to-anyone-who-is-not-desperate-to-find-a-way-out-of-the-consequences-of-their-bad-life-choices hooey and build personality cults on the premise that it is not about them - no, sir, he or she is just the person behind the podium in the hotel ballroom through whom the "entity" comes - but rather about "source energy." Never mind the rock-star adulation pulsating through the room.
Among the other ills that are currently besetting America, perhaps the most alarming is gullability. We are willing to swallow the notion that "channeled entities" - or "received beings," if you'd rather - have some kind of profound gems of insight to hand to us, much like we are willing to believe that Manhattan will be submerged in ten years if we don't switch en masse to electric cars and solar panels, or that food stamps and unemployment benefits stimulate the economy.
As I say, her writing style is funny and provocative, and she does her homework. Check in often, if thsi is an area of interest to you.
Freedom-hatred at the hootenany
Ron Radosh, a former New Left radical who converted to conservatism decades ago, on some aspects of Woody Guthrie's life that are coming to light as we approach the Dust Bowl troubadour's 100th birth anniversary. Specifically, some new substantiation of Guthrie's communist ideology.
Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax - all Communists.
One fact I didn't see in Radosh's piece, but that I knew from my research as a popular music historian, was that Guthrie wrote a column for the Daily Worker in the late 30s called "Woody Sez."
One interesting new bit of information I did get from the piece, though, was that Radosh took banjo lessons from Pete Seeger in the 1950s.
Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax - all Communists.
One fact I didn't see in Radosh's piece, but that I knew from my research as a popular music historian, was that Guthrie wrote a column for the Daily Worker in the late 30s called "Woody Sez."
One interesting new bit of information I did get from the piece, though, was that Radosh took banjo lessons from Pete Seeger in the 1950s.
Lurching toward socialism - today's edition
Fred Wszolek at Townhall has a column today on the radicalization of the National Labor Relations Board that puts the lie to any lip service the Most Equal Comrade gives to wanting to see businesses prosper.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
It's this kind of thing that has put a damper on any hope I have about Western civilization's prospects
As I've said before, Newt Gingrich is problematic in the extreme. For every time he has given a rousing speech full of all the right cadences and forthright expressions of conservative principle, nailing the urgency of the task at hand, he has made wacko moves of the most unsettling kind.
Such as this. I feel like I know a fair amount about his life, but maybe I need to learn more about how his overall worldview was formed. For a guy who professes to be the embodiment of conservatism, he behaves more like a technocratic pragmatist, pulling "American solutions" from whatever corner if they have some sort of wonky appeal for him. Yet most pragmatists don't swaddle their mishmash of policy recommendations in the kind of grandiosity he imparts to most everything. I mean, to say that Romneycare had "the tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system."?
I realize the Iowa caucus is just days away now, and more primaries come on its heels. One of the second-tier candidates (that would be Bachmann, Santorum or Perry) absolutely must make an irreparable dent in the double-digit lock that the three absolutely horrible candidates (Gingrich, Romney and Paul) have on the first tier.
The United States of America cannot survive another hold-our-noses Republican presidential candidate, even if the election produces solid conservative majorities in the House and Senate. The DNC and the MEC machine are well aware of any fresh signs of vulnerability, such as the above-linked item about Gingrich. The MEC cannot run on his record, but he's not particularly worried about it. If, during campaign stops or particularly during one-on-one debates, he has a dossier on his opponent brimming with examples of inconsistency and Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome, he can draw the blood necessary to ensure four more years of "fundamental transformation."
Such as this. I feel like I know a fair amount about his life, but maybe I need to learn more about how his overall worldview was formed. For a guy who professes to be the embodiment of conservatism, he behaves more like a technocratic pragmatist, pulling "American solutions" from whatever corner if they have some sort of wonky appeal for him. Yet most pragmatists don't swaddle their mishmash of policy recommendations in the kind of grandiosity he imparts to most everything. I mean, to say that Romneycare had "the tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system."?
I realize the Iowa caucus is just days away now, and more primaries come on its heels. One of the second-tier candidates (that would be Bachmann, Santorum or Perry) absolutely must make an irreparable dent in the double-digit lock that the three absolutely horrible candidates (Gingrich, Romney and Paul) have on the first tier.
The United States of America cannot survive another hold-our-noses Republican presidential candidate, even if the election produces solid conservative majorities in the House and Senate. The DNC and the MEC machine are well aware of any fresh signs of vulnerability, such as the above-linked item about Gingrich. The MEC cannot run on his record, but he's not particularly worried about it. If, during campaign stops or particularly during one-on-one debates, he has a dossier on his opponent brimming with examples of inconsistency and Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome, he can draw the blood necessary to ensure four more years of "fundamental transformation."
Sunday, December 25, 2011
What a nice bunch of folks
25 Nigerian Catholics blasted to bits while celebrating Christmas Eve Mass. Oh, we should probably do what we can to identify the culprits: Muslims.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
The LITD Christmas Eve post
This is the first Christmas for this blog. (For any new visitors here, let me quickly brief you: my old blog of five years, Bent Notes, just up and disappeared and no amount of Wordpress support could bring it back.) At Bent Notes, I customarily wrote a Christmas Eve Post.
I don't know that they were anything close to my best stuff as a writer. I generally wound up harping on the remaining doctrinal sticking points in my quest to really understand, and thereby embrace, Christian faith. I do wish I had the entire collection of the BN posts in the "religion and spirituality" category, because there were some nuggets of genuine hard-won insight, and some sincerely grappled-with and precisely articulated points that were still hanging me up.
I think what strikes me most as I compose the first LITD Christmas Eve post is the challenge for someone for whom spiritual inquiry is at the forefront of life's concerns, yet who is untrained in theology, to write credibly about something so big.
I finally get it that Jesus is the only begotten son of the Most High. For years during adolescence and well into adulthood I tidily deemed the Nazarene a "wayshower," in the parlance of the New Thought denominations. Now, after years of approaching the apologetics of C.S. Lewis with the respect and humility that allows for the possibility that he is exactly right, I see that we are talking about a miraculous birth here, not only because of the mother's virginity, but because of who the father was.
It widens one's perspective on the gospels to remember that Jesus, as dvinity incrnate, knew everything. Even when he was kind of playing games with people such as the woman at the well, or various disciples, or even Pharisees, he asked question of others not because he lacked any information, but because he wanted them to see something they hadn't previously seen.
No one else knows everything about you, not your spouse, closest work associate, oldest childhood friend, or dearest sibling. Some of those people do indeed know you very well, and look compassionately on your shortcomings to the degree that they have cultivated a sublime and mature love.
Still, there are recesses of your mind and heart - places where traces of foul, unsavory indulgences of greed, lust, envy and resentment thrive with little or no sunlight - that these people will never know. You know them; you visit them in those stark middle-of-the-night moments after you've run through the next day's to-do list and the week's bills. You and God.
How are you supposed to react in the presence of someone who knows you completely? Before long, you have to ask that someone, out loud or at least mentally, how could you love someone like me?
The only way that someone could indeed love you is to create a way for you in your totality, dark recesses and all, to be okay.
That's what's really going on in the conception, birth, life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's another thing I find myself doing when discussing Christmas the older I get. The whole thing is of a piece. Implicit in the birth are all the other significant aspects of His earthly existence. The cross and the empty tomb can be seen from the manger.
After all, he was God. Right there in three dimensions, tender and mild.
I don't know that they were anything close to my best stuff as a writer. I generally wound up harping on the remaining doctrinal sticking points in my quest to really understand, and thereby embrace, Christian faith. I do wish I had the entire collection of the BN posts in the "religion and spirituality" category, because there were some nuggets of genuine hard-won insight, and some sincerely grappled-with and precisely articulated points that were still hanging me up.
I think what strikes me most as I compose the first LITD Christmas Eve post is the challenge for someone for whom spiritual inquiry is at the forefront of life's concerns, yet who is untrained in theology, to write credibly about something so big.
I finally get it that Jesus is the only begotten son of the Most High. For years during adolescence and well into adulthood I tidily deemed the Nazarene a "wayshower," in the parlance of the New Thought denominations. Now, after years of approaching the apologetics of C.S. Lewis with the respect and humility that allows for the possibility that he is exactly right, I see that we are talking about a miraculous birth here, not only because of the mother's virginity, but because of who the father was.
It widens one's perspective on the gospels to remember that Jesus, as dvinity incrnate, knew everything. Even when he was kind of playing games with people such as the woman at the well, or various disciples, or even Pharisees, he asked question of others not because he lacked any information, but because he wanted them to see something they hadn't previously seen.
No one else knows everything about you, not your spouse, closest work associate, oldest childhood friend, or dearest sibling. Some of those people do indeed know you very well, and look compassionately on your shortcomings to the degree that they have cultivated a sublime and mature love.
Still, there are recesses of your mind and heart - places where traces of foul, unsavory indulgences of greed, lust, envy and resentment thrive with little or no sunlight - that these people will never know. You know them; you visit them in those stark middle-of-the-night moments after you've run through the next day's to-do list and the week's bills. You and God.
How are you supposed to react in the presence of someone who knows you completely? Before long, you have to ask that someone, out loud or at least mentally, how could you love someone like me?
The only way that someone could indeed love you is to create a way for you in your totality, dark recesses and all, to be okay.
That's what's really going on in the conception, birth, life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's another thing I find myself doing when discussing Christmas the older I get. The whole thing is of a piece. Implicit in the birth are all the other significant aspects of His earthly existence. The cross and the empty tomb can be seen from the manger.
After all, he was God. Right there in three dimensions, tender and mild.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
An avoidable hose-up that now must be remedied with as little lasting damage as possible
Erik Erikson at Red State on how Capitol Hill Pubs got themselves into the payroll-tax-cut-extension mess and how they must now proceed.
While they do come off as inept, let us remember that principle really is on their side. A two-month extension does nothing to help the economy and causes huge administrative hassles for employers.
While they do come off as inept, let us remember that principle really is on their side. A two-month extension does nothing to help the economy and causes huge administrative hassles for employers.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Another one of those scenarios that encapsulates the whole MEC regime's blight on America
Michelle Malkin beckons us to take a look at the federally subsidized switch to trendy health foods in the cafeterias of the Los Angeles school district. Upshot: 21,000 uneaten meals are getting tossed each day. The kids want their corn dogs back; they're just not into lentil-and-brown-rice patties and quinoa salad. This story has all the elements we've seen over and over again since this regime gripped America's throat three years ago: fluffy notions of what people would really want to consume if they were exposed to an alternative to the bitter-clinger fare they've always consumed, nanny-state intrusion into American's lives, rampant waste, and sops to organized labor.
This may be madness, but it's where we are.
This may be madness, but it's where we are.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Regardless of whether the North Korean missile test had anything to do with Kim Jong-il's death . . .
. . . it was pretty clearly a signal to the U.S envoys who attended the China-brokered bilateral talks with NK last week that that business about a moratorium on missile tests was not to be taken literally.
What really happened to the music
I have signed on to a management role at a music website for which I've been a contributing writer since 1999. Its founding was actually an act of prescience; the editors / owners foresaw the tipping of the music industry's balance away from the record label / radio / fan infrastructure including a press establishment / all-purpose management agency model to that of the DIY approach, in which a musical act must be a business organization and a publicity agency as well.
As a writer during this whole period (dating as it does back to the Clinton era), I've seen predictions and forecasts come true and fall flat. I've seen sub-sub-genres come and go. I've seen new models for all the components of the biz - radio, labels, touring, recording, distribution - prove their efficacy and / or fizzle.
Fifteen years ago, such modern-day music-biz conventions as street teams and album release parties were in their infancy. Musical acts still regarded signing with a major label as the pinnacle of their careers. Radio, increasingly in the hands of big congomerates that kept excruciatingly precise data on the consuming behavior of every imaginable demographic comrpising the American - indeed, world - public, was still the arbiter of which music was going to herald current paradigms and stake a rightful claim in the pantheon of timeless classics.
Much literature about the industry's convulsions has been published over that time. While it would be too broad of a brush stroke to declare mass consensus among these numerous books, a theme does emerge to some extent. Authors inquiring into all this generally believe that it is somehow the greed, and resultant short-sightedness of those at the top of these huge recording / concert-promotion / radio organizations that did the old model in, and that the indie model is democratizing everything for both music-maker and listener, and that much exciting artistic activity is taking place even as uncertainty reigns over the whole field.
While the shift from old-line ways to DIY is undeniably dramatic and full of exciting stories such as rock groups suing websites such as Napster, and interim models such as My Space rising and falling in the space of, really, mere months, there is much that hasn't changed at all.
Think about what a beginning musical act needs to consider. It needs to play some shows in the biggest venues possible, give those who become acquainted with it some reason to become familiar with it, and even become fans, and it needs to get some professional recordings made and get those played on appropriate radio stations. Twenty, fifty, seventy years ago, acts delegated much of this to others who specialized in these areas, but the checklist of what needs to be accomplished remains the same.
A lot of how-to articles on sites catering to the indie / DIY sector exhort musical acts to build a fan base with street teams and social-network contact lists and the like. Much of that kind of activity passes on the exhortation in the form of slogans like "Support local music."
Well, just what kind of person in our modern society is really that interested in going out and consuming live music on a regular basis? Who are the die-hard fans of the handful of acts that comprise the music scene in any given city? For that matter, who goes to all these festivals and showcase conferences one sees advertised on indie sites? Is the mortgage-apying parent of three with a demanding career more or less likely to seek out live music on a frequent, regular basis than, say, a single person in his or her early 20s living alone or with friends in an apartment?
I'm aware, given that in my role as an adjunct university instructor in popular-music history I research this stuff, that some of the richest treasures in American music came out of the clubs and ballrooms of Harlem, Beale Street and Watts, the honky-tonks of Texas, the auditoriums and tent shows of the gospel circuit, and the festivals at Newport, Montreux and Monterrey. Furthermore, I'm aware that the venue owners, booking agents and even musicians themselves that made for that era's greatness were often as driven by greed and hedonistic impulses as their modern counterparts.
What was different about that earlier time is really pretty simple: the music was better. Even the most raucous of the R&B or the most rural of the honky-tonk music expressed an implicit awareness that a listener expected basic human dignity to be conveyed in the art being made.
I'm not saying the greed of those clawing their way to the tops of big corporations wasn't a factor. It most certainly was. What happened was that that greed reached a critical mass at exactly the same time that the boomer generation, which made the consumption of music into some kind of statement of self-importance, basically overdosed on the sheer amount of product that was out there. this would have been about the mid-70s, when the market for contemporary musc fragmented and each demographic wore "its" music like a badge. If you were into, say, southern rock, or disco, or heavy metal, or straight-ahead jazz, or fusion jazz, or introspective singer-songwriter music, the industry's infrastructure was there to affirm your keen aesthetic discernment and bolster your sense of self-worth.
Maybe it goes back a little farther. I think of how EMI producer George Martin sweat bullets in the winter of 1966-67 as he acted as the go-between for the record company and The Beatles as that group ran up huge budget overruns and insisted that the Abbey Road studio be available to them at all hours of the day and night. They had arrived, you see. They sat atop the worldwide entertainment field and could basically snap their fingers and get whatever they wanted. At the same time, they were following a pseudo-spiritual charlatan (the Maharishi) and indulging any whim they harbored so much as momentarily.
That's really the story of the whole music business from about then to about 2000 in microcosm. The industry was awash in gravy, and everybody was mainly concerned with self-gratification.
It made for a jaded bunch of people. How were the heads of Warner Music or EMI or Sony in any position to hear - and recognize - something that was of true musica value, that is to say, ennobling, deeply, sonically rich, expressive of recognizable human passions? They weren't. They were too loaded.
So I don't put much stock in those studies of the whole thing that go back, say, thirty years and, because that allows for a discussion of big hits and phenomena such as MTV, Madonna, Prince or Michael Jackson, assert that that was such a different era as to really characterize a different music industry. The fact is, that by that time, the music was nearly all awful. Michael Jackson was awful. Madonna was (and is) awful. Ditto Prince, Metallica, Garth Brooks, whoever. These people rpovided the soundtrack to the arrested development of every living generation of Western civilization.
It's important to mention the confluence of the extolling of informality as a virtue with the collectivist ideological impulse, and to trace the development of that, we may have to go back farther still. The folk boom of the 50s and 60s really just brought what Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax and their associates had been doing for a while to mainstream America's attention. Rock and roll came along at this time as well, and the notion that music need only be a matter of a small vocabulary of chords and melodies played on highly portable instruments such as guitars, took hold on a mass scale. The notion that one ought to be at least rudimentarily familiar with the way musical principles had been codified into notation and theory was going by the wayside. I remember a few years ago doing a phone interview with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls - for the very site I'm now getting more involved with. I asked her about what, during a given day, motivates her to pick up her guitar. "Do you run through some scales to warm up?" I asked. She said she didn't and muttered something about not really beeing a great guitar player. That exchange spoke, and speaks, volumes about the place aesthetic standards has, or doesn't have, in our culture now.
Couple that with the notion that the "folk" ethos, broadly understood, contributed a sense that it was appropriate for popular music to be "topical," to address societal ills. Again, we are back to the late 30s, when the Communist party members and fellow travelers congregating in the Greenwich Village hub of that world were playing labor rallies, and when Communist high-school teacher Abe Meeropol wrote "Strange Fruit" for Billie Holiday. Cut to the present, when politics seems to permeate every note of what musicians - both indie and big-shot - play.
So it doesn't matter that now we have Spotify instead of Columbia Records. When you hear the term "music" or see the little icon for it on the toolbar of your web browser, it has the same dreary set of connotations it has had for decades now.
Shifting business models and changing technology are not the core issue. What we should look at squarely, since it's facing us squarely, is a culture in which even something that had, until about forty years ago, been one of the most sublime realms of the human experience, has become a mere orgy of infantile self-congratulation.
Now, I have to scour the music sites for some hot news and trends.
As a writer during this whole period (dating as it does back to the Clinton era), I've seen predictions and forecasts come true and fall flat. I've seen sub-sub-genres come and go. I've seen new models for all the components of the biz - radio, labels, touring, recording, distribution - prove their efficacy and / or fizzle.
Fifteen years ago, such modern-day music-biz conventions as street teams and album release parties were in their infancy. Musical acts still regarded signing with a major label as the pinnacle of their careers. Radio, increasingly in the hands of big congomerates that kept excruciatingly precise data on the consuming behavior of every imaginable demographic comrpising the American - indeed, world - public, was still the arbiter of which music was going to herald current paradigms and stake a rightful claim in the pantheon of timeless classics.
Much literature about the industry's convulsions has been published over that time. While it would be too broad of a brush stroke to declare mass consensus among these numerous books, a theme does emerge to some extent. Authors inquiring into all this generally believe that it is somehow the greed, and resultant short-sightedness of those at the top of these huge recording / concert-promotion / radio organizations that did the old model in, and that the indie model is democratizing everything for both music-maker and listener, and that much exciting artistic activity is taking place even as uncertainty reigns over the whole field.
While the shift from old-line ways to DIY is undeniably dramatic and full of exciting stories such as rock groups suing websites such as Napster, and interim models such as My Space rising and falling in the space of, really, mere months, there is much that hasn't changed at all.
Think about what a beginning musical act needs to consider. It needs to play some shows in the biggest venues possible, give those who become acquainted with it some reason to become familiar with it, and even become fans, and it needs to get some professional recordings made and get those played on appropriate radio stations. Twenty, fifty, seventy years ago, acts delegated much of this to others who specialized in these areas, but the checklist of what needs to be accomplished remains the same.
A lot of how-to articles on sites catering to the indie / DIY sector exhort musical acts to build a fan base with street teams and social-network contact lists and the like. Much of that kind of activity passes on the exhortation in the form of slogans like "Support local music."
Well, just what kind of person in our modern society is really that interested in going out and consuming live music on a regular basis? Who are the die-hard fans of the handful of acts that comprise the music scene in any given city? For that matter, who goes to all these festivals and showcase conferences one sees advertised on indie sites? Is the mortgage-apying parent of three with a demanding career more or less likely to seek out live music on a frequent, regular basis than, say, a single person in his or her early 20s living alone or with friends in an apartment?
I'm aware, given that in my role as an adjunct university instructor in popular-music history I research this stuff, that some of the richest treasures in American music came out of the clubs and ballrooms of Harlem, Beale Street and Watts, the honky-tonks of Texas, the auditoriums and tent shows of the gospel circuit, and the festivals at Newport, Montreux and Monterrey. Furthermore, I'm aware that the venue owners, booking agents and even musicians themselves that made for that era's greatness were often as driven by greed and hedonistic impulses as their modern counterparts.
What was different about that earlier time is really pretty simple: the music was better. Even the most raucous of the R&B or the most rural of the honky-tonk music expressed an implicit awareness that a listener expected basic human dignity to be conveyed in the art being made.
I'm not saying the greed of those clawing their way to the tops of big corporations wasn't a factor. It most certainly was. What happened was that that greed reached a critical mass at exactly the same time that the boomer generation, which made the consumption of music into some kind of statement of self-importance, basically overdosed on the sheer amount of product that was out there. this would have been about the mid-70s, when the market for contemporary musc fragmented and each demographic wore "its" music like a badge. If you were into, say, southern rock, or disco, or heavy metal, or straight-ahead jazz, or fusion jazz, or introspective singer-songwriter music, the industry's infrastructure was there to affirm your keen aesthetic discernment and bolster your sense of self-worth.
Maybe it goes back a little farther. I think of how EMI producer George Martin sweat bullets in the winter of 1966-67 as he acted as the go-between for the record company and The Beatles as that group ran up huge budget overruns and insisted that the Abbey Road studio be available to them at all hours of the day and night. They had arrived, you see. They sat atop the worldwide entertainment field and could basically snap their fingers and get whatever they wanted. At the same time, they were following a pseudo-spiritual charlatan (the Maharishi) and indulging any whim they harbored so much as momentarily.
That's really the story of the whole music business from about then to about 2000 in microcosm. The industry was awash in gravy, and everybody was mainly concerned with self-gratification.
It made for a jaded bunch of people. How were the heads of Warner Music or EMI or Sony in any position to hear - and recognize - something that was of true musica value, that is to say, ennobling, deeply, sonically rich, expressive of recognizable human passions? They weren't. They were too loaded.
So I don't put much stock in those studies of the whole thing that go back, say, thirty years and, because that allows for a discussion of big hits and phenomena such as MTV, Madonna, Prince or Michael Jackson, assert that that was such a different era as to really characterize a different music industry. The fact is, that by that time, the music was nearly all awful. Michael Jackson was awful. Madonna was (and is) awful. Ditto Prince, Metallica, Garth Brooks, whoever. These people rpovided the soundtrack to the arrested development of every living generation of Western civilization.
It's important to mention the confluence of the extolling of informality as a virtue with the collectivist ideological impulse, and to trace the development of that, we may have to go back farther still. The folk boom of the 50s and 60s really just brought what Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax and their associates had been doing for a while to mainstream America's attention. Rock and roll came along at this time as well, and the notion that music need only be a matter of a small vocabulary of chords and melodies played on highly portable instruments such as guitars, took hold on a mass scale. The notion that one ought to be at least rudimentarily familiar with the way musical principles had been codified into notation and theory was going by the wayside. I remember a few years ago doing a phone interview with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls - for the very site I'm now getting more involved with. I asked her about what, during a given day, motivates her to pick up her guitar. "Do you run through some scales to warm up?" I asked. She said she didn't and muttered something about not really beeing a great guitar player. That exchange spoke, and speaks, volumes about the place aesthetic standards has, or doesn't have, in our culture now.
Couple that with the notion that the "folk" ethos, broadly understood, contributed a sense that it was appropriate for popular music to be "topical," to address societal ills. Again, we are back to the late 30s, when the Communist party members and fellow travelers congregating in the Greenwich Village hub of that world were playing labor rallies, and when Communist high-school teacher Abe Meeropol wrote "Strange Fruit" for Billie Holiday. Cut to the present, when politics seems to permeate every note of what musicians - both indie and big-shot - play.
So it doesn't matter that now we have Spotify instead of Columbia Records. When you hear the term "music" or see the little icon for it on the toolbar of your web browser, it has the same dreary set of connotations it has had for decades now.
Shifting business models and changing technology are not the core issue. What we should look at squarely, since it's facing us squarely, is a culture in which even something that had, until about forty years ago, been one of the most sublime realms of the human experience, has become a mere orgy of infantile self-congratulation.
Now, I have to scour the music sites for some hot news and trends.
Kim Jong Il, dead tyrant
When an evil person dies of basically natural causes and has been living a life of unimaginable splendor and luxury right up to his passing, it forces us to revisit age-old spiritual questions about a moral balance to the universe and cosmic come-uppance. Does faith, as it's understood by the conventional Judeo-Christian worldview, include as one of its aspects a certainty that eternity is having its justice on such a figure? And is such certainty categorically different from a revenge wish, a fervent desire that that be so?
Of course, there is also the plethora of earthly questions that this event puts before us: smooth succession to Kim's youngest son, or factions within the military having other ideas? Less or greater regional stability? Continuity of North Korea's membership in the worldwide axis of terror and chaos-foment?
And, are the news reports about the entire citizenry of NK being in tears today accurate, or does the regime have a handy bunch of cryers it can trot out for international consumption?
Of course, there is also the plethora of earthly questions that this event puts before us: smooth succession to Kim's youngest son, or factions within the military having other ideas? Less or greater regional stability? Continuity of North Korea's membership in the worldwide axis of terror and chaos-foment?
And, are the news reports about the entire citizenry of NK being in tears today accurate, or does the regime have a handy bunch of cryers it can trot out for international consumption?
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