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33 minutes ago, ATR said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gopnik's central idea here is one of cultural deterioration, or at least Broadway's in particular, as evidenced by the fact that musical numbers are not making it into the popular music mainstream via 'jazz' artists.  I have more of a problem with that idea than with any of the little mistakes he makes in trying to support his core notion.  And furthermore, he could be right even though he's wrong about the particulars.  Just look at how many times 'My Ship' has been recorded per wikipedia to take one example, and they don't include my personal favorite version by Andrew Cyrille on Metamusician's Stomp.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Ship

I couldn't be asked to count them :) Fewer than two score, I'd guess.

I looked in the Lord Jazz discography instead. 269. My edition is copyrighted 2011, so it's not bang up to date. But there are recordings from 2008 and 2009 listed, so the song's still somewhat current.

And Wikipedia doesn't include MY favourite, either; George Freeperson's version from the LP 'Birth sign'.

As far as I'm concerned the culture (oh, which one please???) has been busy deteriorating since 1959. I understand that, in those days, most UK A&R managers were professional musicians. Apparently they did some kind of deal with the BBC for the broadcast of Rock & Roll to cease, or be significant'y reduced. And that happened! I noticed, around April, that my record collection was mostly shit, so I had a sort through into good, OK and crap. The Rock & Roll and R&B was kept and I resolved to buy only R&B from then on. But it became hard. One had to start learning stuff that would help one identify good records without knowing anything about them other than title, artist, label and catalogue number. So I worked out how to identify records originating with Atlantic, Chess and Imperial, then got better at it.

But I'm conscious that this ain't YOUR cultural deterioration. Or is it?

MG

 

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On ‎3‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 6:57 AM, Simon Weil said:

I've got a Penguin book, Winter King, by Thomas Penn - about Henry VII. The guy has a PhD in Tudor History, which legitimizes it in the eyes of publishers and readers. It came out in 2011 and has been a big hit here, changing the way people see the man. It professes to get inside his head, to which end (IMO) it uses creative writing techniques. I.E. Penn looks to have done creative writing courses and then applied the technique to his sound knowledge of the period to produce what is essentially a historical novel  dressed up as history,

Yet it's got rave reviews, from people who one would expect to know better. That's a judgement of mine - that they've been taken in by a historical novel dressed up as history - and I doubt I'd get anywhere trying to convince all those who have bought into it (they've got too much to lose and there's too many of them - and the subject is one I'm not a specialist in).

The book makes a really, really dumb mistake in its introduction:

"Perhaps the most telling verdict of all is that of Shakespeare, who omits Henry VII altogether from his sequence of history plays..."

Actually Henry appears in one of the Henry VI plays (in a minor role) and in Richard III (in quite a substantial one). I'm not a Shakespeare expert and I had to look it up to check it, but I thought "well surely Henry VII might appear in Richard III" - and, sure enough, there he was. But nobody at Penguin - and certainly not Penn, with his bold wrong-headed certainty, could be bothered to do so. It just really gives you pause, this sort of thing. I mean this is basic stuff, knowing your Shakespeare - and that a trusted publisher like Penguin doesn't have the staff at hand to pick up this howler, it's just frightening.

So, from that point, I go to the book is horseshit and nobody's picking it up.

My daughter was cast as Henry VII in a high school production of Richard III.

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4 hours ago, ATR said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gopnik's central idea here is one of cultural deterioration, or at least Broadway's in particular, as evidenced by the fact that musical numbers are not making it into the popular music mainstream via 'jazz' artists.  I have more of a problem with that idea than with any of the little mistakes he makes in trying to support his core notion.  And furthermore, he could be right even though he's wrong about the particulars.  Just look at how many times 'My Ship' has been recorded per wikipedia to take one example, and they don't include my personal favorite version by Andrew Cyrille on Metamusician's Stomp.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Ship

Wow. I love that song. Never knew there were so many jazz versions.  Of course I first heard it on Miles Ahead.  They use an Oscar Peterson/Nelson Riddle version of it as score in The Phantom Thread. 

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3 hours ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

As far as I'm concerned the culture (oh, which one please???) has been busy deteriorating since 1959. I understand that, in those days, most UK A&R managers were professional musicians. Apparently they did some kind of deal with the BBC for the broadcast of Rock & Roll to cease, or be significant'y reduced. And that happened! I noticed, around April, that my record collection was mostly shit, so I had a sort through into good, OK and crap. The Rock & Roll and R&B was kept and I resolved to buy only R&B from then on. But it became hard. One had to start learning stuff that would help one identify good records without knowing anything about them other than title, artist, label and catalogue number. So I worked out how to identify records originating with Atlantic, Chess and Imperial, then got better at i

 

See, if you would have been in America during this time, I'd have to say, geez, that's a pretty random, one might even say dumb, decision, why didn't you just listen to the black radio stations? But I get it, because of the BBC, y'all didn't have any black radio, right? So you had to fend for yourself, do your own math, I totally get it. Lsiten outside that one box and go from there.

But Americans and other citizens of the world today - use your radios! Realize that if you hear a station playing songs sung in Spanish, it might well be a completely different type of music than the next on, and/or the one(s) after that. Listen to a language that sounds like "Asian" long enough to find out if they play music, or if it's just a talking community service talk format and/or an evangelical infomercial of one kind or another.  Listen to some Bollywood, old and/or new, there's a BIG evolution there, the more things change, etc. and learn to love microtones in your pop culture that are intentional and highly controlled. Radio today is sorely lacking in some ways (i.e. - black pre hip-hop R&B, rural classic C&W pre-Urban Cowboy, modern classical, any kind of African) there's more, probably). But DO NOT GET BBC-ed! As you can see here, as a service, they deliver admirably, but as a provider, they're not going to do your exploring for you, are they, right?

Just sayin' - your curiosity is on you. Use it or lose it.

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4 hours ago, ATR said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gopnik's central idea here is one of cultural deterioration, or at least Broadway's in particular, as evidenced by the fact that musical numbers are not making it into the popular music mainstream via 'jazz' artists.  I have more of a problem with that idea than with any of the little mistakes he makes in trying to support his core notion.  And furthermore, he could be right even though he's wrong about the particulars.  Just look at how many times 'My Ship' has been recorded per wikipedia to take one example, and they don't include my personal favorite version by Andrew Cyrille on Metamusician's Stomp.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Ship

Admittedy, Gopnik irritates me, but in this piece, as in many others, I would say that he has no central idea but is merely agitating the air in attempt to convince us that ideas are being presented by him. Way back in 1945 the late Isaac Rosenfeld, in a piece about the New Yorker and E.B. White, nailed it when he referred to the Yiddish phrase "hacken a tcheinik,  which means to chop up a teakettle, to talk up a breeze -- of nonsense." (That is, the steam from the kettle's spout is being pushed this way and that, chopped up, by the more or less meaningless words of the speaker.)  

Yes, there are times in the piece when one might think Gopnik is talking of deterioration, but in fact he's just talking about how "the plates move and shake in a genre of entertainment" -- what happens then," he continues "is that "you survive [if you do] by getting either smarter or more spectacular."  Got that? And Lloyd Webber took the latter route, Sondheim the former. But  then, in his final paragraph, as so often is the case with The Gop, he rather spinelessly tries to cover all bets and ends up saying almost nothing at all:

"Spectacular is, in the end [love that "in the end"], a species of smart. Popular artists find solutions to problems presented by the circumstances of their time when no one else was aware of  them until the artist solved them. Lloyd Webber solved the problem of how to make a credible spectacle from recycled material. Using fresher material to make something spectacular on its own terms remains the job that needs doing. Every good art form needs a phantom or two in the basement to haunt it. They just shouldn't be allowed the run of the house." 
.

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Sounds like he's blind to the fact that film "soundtracks" became the new source for hits, until they didn't.

He's talking about an art in terms of the industry around it, which seems like asking Peter to pay Paul to call Mary, or whatever that expression is. No matter, as even an amateur electrician can tell you, connecting two loose ends does not in and of itself make a circuit.

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On 3/19/2018 at 1:06 PM, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

Mame's original cast did quite well. In 1966 the OC got to #23 and was on the chart for 66 weeks. In 1974, the ST got to 197 and was on the chart for three weeks. And Mame's the only song you hear.

Sound of music, in 1959, got to #1 for two weeks and was on the chart for 233 weeks. The ST in 1965 got to #1 for 16 weeks and was on the chart for 276 weeks. Is it possibly because it was Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel in the OC and Julie Andrews was in the ST? Or was it simply because more people went to the cinema than to the theatre? I dunno, guv.

MG

Keep in mind that the Mame film soundtrack album had Lucille Ball "singing" the title role, which is about as bad as fingernails on a chalkboard.  There are other songs from the show which one hears (or at least did hear back int he days when TV variety shows were a thing).  Every Christmas you're likely to hear at least one version of "We Need a Little Christmas" playing at the mall and "If He Walked Into My Life" and "Bosom Buddies" were also occasionally heard in contexts outside of the original show.

The film version of TSOM was the highest grossing film of all-time until, what, Jaws (I think) surpassed it, so naturally there would have been a strong and lasting demand for the soundtrack album.

As for Mr. Gopnick's assertion that, "By 1964, all that had altered for good; a successful original-cast album went from  the place where hits always happened to a place where they rarely did”, I could mention "Send In The Clowns", "Big Spender", "Ease On Down The Road", "I Don't Know How To Love Him", "Don't Cry For Me Argentina", "Memory", "Grease Is The Word", "The Impossible Dream", "What I Did For Love", "One Night In Bangkok", "I Am What I Am", "Seasons of Love" just off the top of my head.

9 hours ago, JSngry said:

Didn't Stan Kenton win a Grammy for his WSS album?

Yes he did win the 1962 Grammy for "Best Jazz Performance -- Large Group (Instrumental)"

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10 hours ago, ATR said:

Jazz has always aspired to be a musical form on par with so-called 'serious', classical music.  That Gopnik makes the point at all about Broadway losing its power because jazz musicians were no longer recording hit arrangements of show tunes is one made in ignorance of American musical forms and expression.  He's not just a know nothing on the details, he doesn't get the big picture either.

I don't think the jazz musicians who were playing in the brothels of New Orleans early in the century were aspiring to be a part of 'serious music'. I think they were just trying to play good dance music for the customers. And that idea has NEVER left jazz to this day; it's what inspires present day smooth jazz which I'll admit is pretty uncreative, but the idea's still there. Jazz ain't only one thing; it's lots of things because the audience has always been very varied.

YOU may want 'serious' music from jazz; I want good dance music. Neither of us is wrong; neither of us is wholly right; neither approach is better than the other;.

MG

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18 minutes ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

I don't think the jazz musicians who were playing in the brothels of New Orleans early in the century were aspiring to be a part of 'serious music'. I think they were just trying to play good dance music for the customers. And that idea has NEVER left jazz to this day; it's what inspires present day smooth jazz which I'll admit is pretty uncreative, but the idea's still there. Jazz ain't only one thing; it's lots of things because the audience has always been very varied.

YOU may want 'serious' music from jazz; I want good dance music. Neither of us is wrong; neither of us is wholly right; neither approach is better than the other;.

MG

:tup:tup

 

 

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13 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

 

"Spectacular is, in the end [love that "in the end"], a species of smart. Popular artists find solutions to problems presented by the circumstances of their time when no one else was aware of  them until the artist solved them.

 

Popular culture presents what lots of people see as solutions. But such "solutions" can be stop-gaps to get them over the moment, cultural ways of "kicking the can down the road". Or they can be true.

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42 minutes ago, ATR said:

Jazz as a dance music pretty much went out mid-last century.  Jazz as easy listening music is pretty much risible to most people who know the music well.

No need to be so condescending as for "Whatever gets you through the night" ... True, jazz was no MAJOR force to be reckoned with anymore when it came to jazz as DANCE music  - BUT:

A good deal (if not most) of this was and is due to the fact that whoever considered themselves the enlightened scribes, academia bigwigs and/or promoters of "valuable" jazz systematically dismissed those styles of jazz (and wrote them off as being outside jazz) that DID get people to dance, ranging from late 40s jump blues through soul jazz (that - comparatively speaking - was relatively accepted but had the scribe vultures sit high on the power lines throughout anyway, waiting for whoever they could castigate for "honking" or other commercial or uncouth, all too down-to-earth blowing or tinkling) through certain types of 70s fusion and up to the 90s neo-/retro swing movement.

"WHAT? JAZZ THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY DANCE TO? THEN IT IS NOT JAZZ! IT CANNOT BE JAZZ!"

And if this did not silence those jazz fans who appreciated those styles of jazz ANYWAY and DESPITE what the "powers that be" wanted to proclaim to be the only "valuable" forms of jazz then that jazz "fraternity" tried to excommunicate them for indulging in music "of no musical value" and/or allowing jazz to be "dumbed down". (Says who? Those who've found themselves in Third Stream dead ends or those "free" styles that were misunderstood as "free for all" and sought legitimacy for their OWN, subjective definitions of what was and wasn't jazz and - to get back to the core problem raised of many posts in this thread - tried to (re)write jazz history to fit their own agendas?)

Even if danceable jazz covered only a minor segment of the wide field of jazz - it WAS and IS there, proving that it CAN exist and CAN be done.

P.S. I for one can very well enjoy a 50s Miles Davis Quintet record, for example, for relaxing late-night easy listening every now and then and find nothing wrong with that at all. Takes some previous listening but that's all been done ... ;)

 

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15 hours ago, ATR said:

Sure, Larry, but so what?  Your original irritation concerned him making a misstatement of fact.  What I was trying to say is that he put the cart before the horse in looking for some deeper significance to the fact that jazz musicians were no longer making hit records from arrangements of Broadway show music; which I found to be an error of a different category.  See my remark above about how I see the aspirations of those who practice America's greatest art form.  I don't really give a hoot about Sondheim being smarter and Webber being more spectacular as to whether Gopnik's  being insightful or merely blowing smoke up our rear ends.  Peace.

Just to be clear, though this is peripheral to the concerns of most of us here, my lasting irritation with Gopnik is because IMO he's a particular kind of journalistic creep who has only Potemkin Village ideas and fairly often retails mis-information in an attempt to, as in the case I cited, add to his all-important air of casual omniscience. Given all that, Gopnik also matters if you think the New Yorker still matters, because he's become as crucial to that magazine's identity as any writer on its staff.

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@ATR:

Well .... words can imply and convey many meanings, including that "it's fine with me" might very well be understood to mean "oh well .... do so if you please but don't expect me or anybody else to take it all that seriously". Because it HAS been used that way. So if read like that then it can well be understood that way (maybe not if heard in a face-to-face conversation but this is one shortcoming of forums as we all know ... ;)).

Anyway ... your assertion that "jazz as dance music pretty much went out" is rather a sweeping generalization that really ought to read "jazz music as dance music pretty much was pushed out of the picture by interested parties", don't you think so at least a little bit if you look closer? Sounds more and more to me like even in this respect (defining what jazz was and was not at that time) there have been forces at work over and over again through the decades that set out to shape and rewrite history (just like it has been discussed in all directions in this thread about the question of how many musical or show tunes became jazz hits - which really is a very minor aspect in the overall picture, isn't it?), likely in an either misguided or - worse - calculated attempt at obtaining "respectability" for jazz and elevate it onto an "art" pedestal on a level with classical music by whatever means it took. But what for? As if classical music automatically was on a higher level that jazz had to be "elevated" to. Wouldn't jazz in its many facets have been able to exist on its own terms? And why should jazz try to humor the audience of classical music in the first place?

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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12 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

@ATR:

 

20 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

@ATR:

Well .... words can imply and convey many meanings, including that "it's fine with me" might very well be understood to mean "oh well .... do so if you please but don't expect me or anybody else to take it all that seriously". Because it HAS been used that way. So if read like that then it can well be understood that way (maybe not if heard in a face-to-face conversation but this is one shortcoming of forums as we all know ... ;)).

Anyway ... your assertion that "jazz as dance music pretty much went out" is rather a sweeping generalization that really ought to read "jazz music as dance music pretty much was pushed out of the picture by interested parties", don't you think so at least a little bit if you look closer? Sounds more and more to me like even in this respect (defining what jazz was and was not at that time) there have been forces at work over and over again through the decades that set out to shape and rewrite history (just like it has been discussed in all directions in this thread about the question of how many musical or show tunes became jazz hits - which really is a very minor aspect in the overall picture, isn't it?), likely in an either misguided or - worse - calculated attempt at obtaining "respectability" for jazz and elevate it onto an "art" pedestal on a level with classical music by whatever means it took. But what for? As if classical music automatically was on a higher level that jazz had to be "elevated" to. Wouldn't jazz in its many facets have been able to exist on its own terms? And why should jazz try to humor the audience of classical music in the first place?

Use of the word risible is in itself provocative and condescending. If you look it up in Roget's Thesaurus, you'll find it marshalled under ludicrousness.

So I'm on Steve's side here.

But I can't do part quotes to save my goddamn life.

MG

10 minutes ago, ATR said:

As long as you insist on my having an agenda besides just saying it's okay for you to believe what you want I'll say that your remarks in return strike me as being defensive.  There's no need for that.  I don't know you, you don't know me, and I rarely comment on this forum.  I will say that although it's allright for people to believe what they please it's another thing to ignore historical fact.  I've looked closely at jazz for many years and I can say with confidence that although you seem passionate and believe strongly your statements are unsupported by facts.  You're the one using generalizations to make a point.  Everyone should know the seriousness of Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, Charlie Christian, Artie Shaw, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum and everyone else, even Nat Cole,who played the music when it was supposedly still dance music and popular entertainment.  Everyone should also know that the focus of jazz post WWII was on Bird and what followed.  That's called history, and if you don't know it you don't know jazz.  Of course you're entitled to your opinion.  But as I said, it's a discussion that is beyond the scope of this thread.

Depends what you mean by the focus of jazz. The focus of criticism was mainly on Charlie Parker; only contemptuous criticism was levelled at the likes of Paul Williams and Big Jay McNeely. But McNeely is (I think) still playing and blowing walls down.

Steve IS being defensive. Me too. You weren't trying to buy soul jazz albums in the 1960s. I've no doubt you wanted stuff that every other 'proper' jazz fan wanted (assuming you were around in those days). But it DOES make one feel like the music one's always loved has been continually under attack for decades for no better reason than someone's opinion that it ain't as good as something else. And someone else's opinion is, actually, no better and no worse than mine.

I don't mind you disagreeing with me, but I DO feel like being defensive to someone who treats the music as a laughing stock.

MG

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26 minutes ago, ATR said:

As long as you insist on my having an agenda besides just saying it's okay for you to believe what you want I'll say that your remarks in return strike me as being defensive. 

Just to make matters clear, it was definitely not YOU I was thinking of when I said there were and are people in the discussion of why to "elevate" jazz who have/had an "agenda."

As for what's beyond the scope of the thread (true ...), I was just referring to your assertion that  "Jazz has always aspired to be a musical form on par with so-called 'serious', classical music." (Always??)

OTOH, as for this remark of yours,

" Everyone should also know that the focus of jazz post WWII was on Bird and what followed.  That's called history, and if you don't know it you don't know jazz.  "

Now if this isn't condescending ... I'm almost inclined to think I know more about the history of post-WWII jazz than you do. Your statement just reproduces the oft-followed practice where certain parts of jazz were written down (and off) by (primarily white?) jazz scribes. No doubt that Bird and the bebop movement were at the core of the major lines of development of post-WWII jazz but were they the whole picture of what there was in the field of jazz as taken in by the AUDIENCE? Most parts of the black community that had been dancing to black swing bands only a few years before by and large did not give a hoot about BIrd and the beboppers but went for other, more danceable styles of jazz (yes, jump blues aka early R&B) which was the OTHER line of development of swing-era jazz after the end of WWII. And the borderlines between both were blurred anyway (ever listened closer to early Gene Ammons or Leo Parker, to name just two?) and IMO both lines of development were only made out to be so incompatible by those who felt they needed to form the shape of jazz through the public exposure they were able to use (e.g. through their writings in the media).

But NOW we are getting off-topic.

 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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Oh, and the music wasn't 'supposedly' dance music in the forties.

As you're so intent on history, I'm sure you know that Charlie Parker went on a tour of ballrooms with Willis 'Gator Tail' Jackson. And they played together. Gator knew Parker could outplay him (though Von Freeman didn't a good many years later) and, after a few choruses stepped back and just let Parker play - OK. But Gator was no mean player; he was just doing something different.

Steve's wrong about the black public at large not giving a hoot about Parker. He's VERY well respected in that part of society; almost all soul jazz musicians included bebop tunes at gigs and on albums and it's clear the audience knew what was going on. But Parker was not LOVED by the black public the way Gene Ammons and Arthur Prysock were.

I saw Arthur and his brother Red in 1990 in Newark, NJ. Three other white people (apart from me) in the ballroom and EVERYONE except a little old white lady who, with her Mum, had run one of those hotels black musicians were allowed to stay in when on tour and knew Arthur (and Parker and Bobby Bland) was dancing. And the feeling in the place! Best gig I've ever been to, even including Ouza in Dakar. I don't imagine you'd have liked it and I'm not trying to persuade you to like it. But your view of jazz history is definitely coloured white.

Somewhere here, Jim  Alfredson has written up some experience(s) with smooth jazz musicians in black ballrooms in Michigan. I couldn't find it again if I tried but I know Jim is carrying no torch for smooth jazz, but the main burden of what he wrote was that it's still out there for black youth and they're still dancing to it. 

History isn't what 'authority' believes; it's everything that happened. And no one knows it all because there's too much to know and too many societies in which different things happened.

MG

PS, for a different view, try to find a short story by Leroi Jones, called 'The Screamers' which deals with a gig of Lynn Hope in Newark in the early fifties. Apart from anything else, it explains WHY the honkers and screamers were necessary in black society. Also take note of Ornette Coleman's words on the sleeve of 'Ornette on tenor'.

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32 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Just to make matters clear, it was definitely not YOU I was thinking of when I said there were and are people in the discussion of why to "elevate" jazz who have/had an "agenda."

As for what's beyond the scope of the thread (true ...), I was just referring to your assertion that  "Jazz has always aspired to be a musical form on par with so-called 'serious', classical music." (Always??)

OTOH, as for this remark of yours,

" Everyone should also know that the focus of jazz post WWII was on Bird and what followed.  That's called history, and if you don't know it you don't know jazz.  "

Now if this isn't condescending ... I'm almost inclined to think I know more about the history of post-WWII jazz than you do. Your statement just reproduces the oft-followed practice where certain parts of jazz were written down (and off) by (primarily white?) jazz scribes. No doubt that Bird and the bebop movement were at the core of the major lines of development of post-WWII jazz but were they the whole picture of what there was in the field of jazz as taken in by the AUDIENCE? Most parts of the black community that had been dancing to black swing bands only a few years before by and large did not give a hoot about BIrd and the beboppers but went for other, more danceable styles of jazz (yes, jump blues aka early R&B) which was the OTHER line of development of swing-era jazz after the end of WWII. And the borderlines between both were blurred anyway (ever listened closer to early Gene Ammons or Leo Parker, to name just two?) and IMO both lines of development were only made out to be so incompatible by those who felt they needed to form the shape of jazz through the public exposure they were able to use (e.g. through their writings in the media).

But NOW we are getting off-topic.

 

Actually, I don't think we are getting off-topic.

Larry's post and subsequent points are all about people rewriting history. To me, this isn't so much that people are deliberately trying to distort things as that no one can know all of the history. The problem is that people think that they DO know all of the history when they only know one part of it (the 'authorised version' as it were). But once one realises that there IS at least one other version, and that it has its own legitimacy, it ought to follow that one ought to at least have a nodding acquaintance with the other versions. I'm not sure that THAT'S happening much. No, I AM sure it's not happening much. And it leads to people making provocative statements that are, because they only know one side, tantamount to rewriting history.

Well, life goes on and black people will still be dancing to funky music when we're all dead and buried.

MG

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Here's an earlier post of mine:

"Popular culture represents what lots of people see as solutions. But such "solutions" can be stop gaps to get them over the moment, cultural ways of "kicking the can down the road". Or they can be true."

This is about how people attempt to face (or get out of facing) the challenges of the present (and future). That is it doesn't fit into Magnificent Goldberg's (rewriting of the history of the thread)

"Larry's post and subsequent points are all about people rewriting history"

1 hour ago, JSngry said:
Edited by Simon Weil
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Another typo and I've lost my goddamn post!

OK, for the third try...

What I THOUGHT I'd typed was  "Larry's first post and subsequent points are all about people rewriting history."

Sometimes my cursor goes into different places without me noticing, because, even after almost 40 years, I STILL don't know where the letters are and have to watch the keyboard.

MG

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3 hours ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

Well, life goes on and black people will still be dancing to funky music when we're all dead and buried.

Well...only if we define "funky music" as any and all music to which "black people" have, do, and will dance...otherwise I don't see how that's a forgone conclusion into eternity.

What happens when we get all into cloning and interplanetary colonization and conquering peoples and genetic machinations and all that stuff?

This game ain't over, these battles is not over, which is one more reason to call bullshit everywhere and know as many true facts as possible.

Sir Nose ain't dead yet...

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9 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Well...only if we define "funky music" as any and all music to which "black people" have, do, and will dance...otherwise I don't see how that's a forgone conclusion into eternity.

What happens when we get all into cloning and interplanetary colonization and conquering peoples and genetic machinations and all that stuff?

This game ain't over, these battles is not over, which is one more reason to call bullshit everywhere and know as many true facts as possible.

Sir Nose ain't dead yet...

I didn't say eternity, Jim. I said when we're all dead and buried. That's not going to be very long, in a historical timescale. But we all won't give a fuck.

MG

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