Quotes to remember
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Arthur C. Clarke (1956): Of all the thousands of forms of recreation in the city, these were the most popular. When you entered a saga, you were not merely a passive observer, as in the crude entertainments or primitive times which Alvin had sometimes sampled. You were an active participant and possessed -- or seemed to possess -- free will. The events and scenes which were the raw material of your adventures might have been prepared beforehand by forgotten artists, but there was enough flexibility to allow for wide variation. You could go into these phantom worlds with your friends, seeking the excitement that did not exist in Diaspar -- and as long as the dream lasted there was no way in which it could be distinguished from reality. Indeed, who could be certain that Diaspar itself was not the dream?
[...] For adventure and the exercise of the imagination, the sagas provided all that anyone could desire. They were the inevitable end product of that striving for realism which began when men started to reproduce moving images and to record sounds, and then to use these techniques to enact scenes from real or imaginary life. In the sagas, the illusion was perfect because all the sense impressions involved were fed directly into the mind and any conflicting sensations were diverted. The entranced spectator was cut off from reality as long as the adventure lasted; it was as if he lived a dream yet believed he was awake. --The City and the Stars
[...] For adventure and the exercise of the imagination, the sagas provided all that anyone could desire. They were the inevitable end product of that striving for realism which began when men started to reproduce moving images and to record sounds, and then to use these techniques to enact scenes from real or imaginary life. In the sagas, the illusion was perfect because all the sense impressions involved were fed directly into the mind and any conflicting sensations were diverted. The entranced spectator was cut off from reality as long as the adventure lasted; it was as if he lived a dream yet believed he was awake. --The City and the Stars
George Carlin: And, by the way, when it comes to liberal language vandals, I must agree with their underlying premise: White Europeans and their descendants are morally unattractive people who are responsible for most of the world’s suffering. That part is easy. You would have to be, uh, visually impaired, not to see it. The impulse behind political correctness is a good one. But like every good impulse in America, it has to be grotesquely distorted beyond usefulness.
Clearly, these are victims, but I don’t agree that these failed campus revolutionaries know what to do about them. When they’re not busy curtailing freedom of speech, they’re running around inventing absurd hyphenated names designed to make people feel better. Remember, these are the white elitists in their customary paternalistic role: protecting helpless, inept minority victims. Big Daddy White Boss always knows best.
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Or IOW, remember: The Western mindset is always the puppeteer, even when it seems to wallowing in guilt and practicing penance. Beware the Lord Protector facade.
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Clearly, these are victims, but I don’t agree that these failed campus revolutionaries know what to do about them. When they’re not busy curtailing freedom of speech, they’re running around inventing absurd hyphenated names designed to make people feel better. Remember, these are the white elitists in their customary paternalistic role: protecting helpless, inept minority victims. Big Daddy White Boss always knows best.
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Or IOW, remember: The Western mindset is always the puppeteer, even when it seems to wallowing in guilt and practicing penance. Beware the Lord Protector facade.
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Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
"All your lives you sweat and save
Heading for a shallow grave
Must be something else we say
Somehow to defend this way"
_The Doors
Heading for a shallow grave
Must be something else we say
Somehow to defend this way"
_The Doors
G.C. Prock: Intelligence is built on preference. Not indifference, neutrality, lack of choice, randomness, everything is special, or "let every sh__ that comes along pass through the gate unabated". --Rumours in the Round Peg
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Apart from occasional exceptions, I don't follow or listen to 21st-century pop music.
But I recollect Tommy Emmanuel (during a Rick Beato interview) saying that he got some inspiration from a Taylor Swift album, for "A Drowning Heart". The rest came from the 90s (Nirvana) and the 70s onward (Billy Joel).
VIDEO EXCERPT (Beato interview): I had this idea that this is flooding, and this is drowning. So I thought, okay -- a drowning heart. There's my title. [...] I thought about Nirvana ... that kind of idea.
And then I was listening to Taylor Swift's new album. That's all I listened to for about three days, just to soak in something new. And the thing that I loved about some of her stuff was that the chorus of some of her songs-- it's not a lot of notes, it's one note and the chords change underneath. And it's this cry from the heart, and I said that's what I need.
So the Nirvana part is now the Taylor Swift part ... so that goes through that twice, and then we have a double chorus ... we do a double chorus, then it comes into the Billy Joel inspired part...
And that's how it finishes. It's got all those elements in it. The original idea from getting that idea from the flooding/drowning, the Nirvana idea, and then Taylor Swift and then Billy Joel. I'm drawing things from those influences, and making something new... (A Drowning Heart)
Tommy Emmanuel playing his solo instrumental version of "Purple Haze"
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???
By "pop music" here do you mean, like, pop pop music or popular music more in the Adornian sense? (Not with respect to all the trappings of the "culture industry" and all that, just as in as opposed to music typically composed by conservatory trained musicians, that is--IOW everything from jazz to noise to folk to black metal to....)
If you mean the former, which I suspect you do, yeah, I get that. American pop popular music, with some few exceptions scattered across the decades, has always been unsettlingly banal. Weirdly, there's occasionally some half-way decent stuff on the British charts (like Sleaford Mods, for instance), but in the US it's always been roughly one half-way decent every 18 to 36 months, with some decades faring slightly better (or worse) than others.
Edit: On brief reflection, I realized that you obviously meant that in the former sense, otherwise... well, it just wouldn't make sense. I may or may not have undergone a severance procedure recently.
I'm referring to the earworm stuff that makes the charts -- what J Q Public is usually listening to -- not offbeat genres and independent nooks and crannies that don't register that quantity of sales/hits/visits or whatever is left that trips the money meter reading in this radically altered era. I mean, my god, if that Top Ten debris that Beato occasionally devotes an overview to is still the state of the pop market industry today, then please torture me with AI-generated music that has been trained on the band-centered output of the prior hundred years, if I'm ever held prisoner in a room for months on end. I'd prefer THAT to THAT.
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Yeah, I figured as much. It is interesting that decent stuff does still occasionally make it on to the "charts" in the UK--artists like caroline and Black Country, New Road, for instance, aren't exactly mainstream but they'll get some recognition nonetheless. I don't really know how to interpret that: Do the English just have better taste? More "refined" "sensibilities"? What exactly is going on over there to account for this marked disparity?
I was recently exposed to Sabrina Carpenter via Beato perhaps, or maybe someone else... It was excruciating. The late Robert Calvert (of Hawkwind) once remarked that he and Simon King (drummer) were the only members of Hawkwind who were capable of withstanding a KGB interrogation. I modestly feel the same way of myself, but I'd spill every state secret were I ever to have to listen to Sabrina Carpenter again.
Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
Your mind is like an umbrella, it can't perform it's function unless open.
Charlie Chan
Charlie Chan
Jae Holiver: Most schools of thought desire to survive, and consequently output apologetics for themselves. But one that never applies cynicism to itself, or does not recognize the universal corruptibility of human individuals in any context, is incrementally sliding down into the outhouse cavity just as it regards the non-special Others that it aloofly monitors from the hilltop.
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Wizard of Whatever
Valued Senior Member
Candy is dandy, but sex doesn't rot your teeth.
Anonymous
Anonymous
English please, we do not speak Russian here.