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RE: Did millennials kill music?
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Did millennials kill music? (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
Robert Hughes wrote a book about culture and victim hood called 'Culture of Complaint'.
On the topic of white working class, that label is a logical fallacy. The white working class does not exist. Clinton I don't think felt entitled to the White House as much as miscalculated how racist and sexist America really is. The so called downtrodden white working class is playing to victim hood right now, that the reason they feel they are in dire straights is because they voted for Republicans for four decades and those politicians raped them.
Robert Hughes has always been among my favorite cultural critics. He has a rapier wit and always hits his targets with precision strikes.
The "White Working Class" is just a term to describe a segment of American society in a way that most people can understand. The "White Working Class" indeed considers itself a "victim," every bit as much as every other ethnic, cultural, and social group. In my opinion, it is just joining the chorus of those in our fragmented society who think that "identity" equals "being."----"I identify as a [ethnic, social, cultural] victim, therefore I am," a perverse variation of the Cartesian "Cogito ergo sum."
Regarding White Working Class racism, it certainly exists, just as a form of "soft-core" racism exists in most elements of American society (and that of other countries and cultures as well, by the way). Nevertheless, racism is far from the whole story. Post-election studies of the "Rust Belt" (White Working Class) counties in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that swung their votes to Trump this election were instructive. Those very same counties by and large voted for Obama in the 2008 election. That demonstrates that something other than racism was the driving force. One could speculate that in 2008 those voters voted for the change Obama represented, thinking his policies would enhance their lives. When they perceived his policies didn't deliver as anticipated, they voted for Trump, who appealed to their sense of grievance.
But returning to a U.S. Culture of Victimology, I don't think it serves anyone's purpose to constantly invoke "victimhood" as an excuse to justify failure to advance, whether it is invoked by ethnic, social, or cultural groups. To identify with particular groups as a "victim," whether as Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Christian Fundamentalists, or the White Working Class, is to join a chorus that represents the lowest common denominator whining at the highest decibel level.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 11 2017 17:03:56
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Did millennials kill music? (in reply to BarkellWH)
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A few years ago I sat in on an interview with a Spanish photographer about his work on incarcerated minors in Western Africa. When asked whether he had a message for young people in France, he said that he did, that they should stop thinking they deserved anything in life, be grateful for what they have and fight for what they don't. I'm sure some of the young people he met in Africa did feel like victims, but they do not have the luxury to dwell on it.
I wonder if this "culture of victimology", as you called it, has anything to do with what Paul Piff from University of California called "the a**hole effect". He conducted a series of studies that indicated that wealth increases a person's sense of entitlement and their propensity towards narcissistic behavior. In other words, it showed that the more you have, the more likely you are to feel like you deserve the good life, even at the expense of others. Of course, he was talking about wealth as compared to the standard en vigueur in the US but I wonder if we can extrapolate that to a larger scale, a global scale. If so, then it would make perfect sense that the wealthiest countries in the world are the ones where this over-the-top sense of entitlement appears, even in those segments of the society that are not so wealthy compared to the national standard. The "culture of victimology" could then be viewed as just a side effect of being a wealthy country.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Mar. 11 2017 18:23:10
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Did millennials kill music? (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
Post-election studies of the "Rust Belt" (White Working Class) counties in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that swung their votes to Trump this election were instructive. Those very same counties by and large voted for Obama in the 2008 election. That demonstrates that something other than racism was the driving force. One could speculate that in 2008 those voters voted for the change Obama represented, thinking his policies would enhance their lives. When they perceived his policies didn't deliver as anticipated, they voted for Trump, who appealed to their sense of grievance.
I think the post election analysis got it wrong on that count. Sexism was a big factor, and Trump did not sway the Obama voter to change course. What happened was Trump woke another sector of the white public that felt it never counted. As soon as a woman became a viable candidate who made the nomination sexism played a big part, and Trump's awakening of a rigid patriarchal minded public that feels its male authority eroding was then mobilized. Remember now many Trump voters were new voters of returning voters who previously said politics did not provide a voice for them. It was a protest vote, but not as much an Anti Obama coalition vote as conservatives like to couch it. Remember that much of Republican opposition in Congress is based on visuals of Republicans not wanting to be seen agreeing with Obama and Dems. Even when the issues were fairly centrally located a deals cloud be hammered out Republicans stone walled causing disfunction which they hen spun to blame the Democrats for. John Boehner was ready to deal, his coalition would not allow him to go forward. Remember when he quit, he gave the finger to his former coalition and said to now Speaker Ryan you work with these unruly bastards? It reminds me of what Kissinger said to Nixon after failing to broker a deal with the North Vietnamese: "They are just tawdry sh*ts* Dick."
Post election analysis is like physics, if you are looking for waves you find waves, if you are looking for particles you find particles. The reason is we can't track individual voters to see if they turned, we only see blocks of voters and turning of tides. Remember also in the swing states the margins of victory were slim, the whole election was determined by 100,000 votes in three states, while the Democrat still won the popular vote by over 3 million. BTW my vote in CA only counted as 1/5th of a vote from someone in Montana- so by shear numbers Democrats are more popular.
Also factor in the Republican Gerrymandering efforts of 2010 which have proved effective in voter suppression of minorities- See yesterdays 35th District Court ruling in Texas that found redistricting did suppress votes and the action was found unconstitutional. The ruling is unlikely to be overturned even if appealed. Factor in that Republican lawmakers in 2010 stacked the deck in their favor in a once in an lifetime coup using the 2010 Census to redraw the district lines to exclude minority voters from participating in districts where they would have more voting power if left as a natural geographic-ethnic district.
If the opposition, Democrats, would have redrawn districts to downgrade the power of white voting blocks Republicans would have screamed bloody murder. Seriously, the bent of Republican ethics to give its own side an unconstitutional advantage is repugnant. If districts were drawn fairy and ethically several of the red states would turn blue in an instant. The State gubernatorial races would be more even with more Democrats winning governorships, and the resultant cabinets and other elected offices would be filled by other Democrats winning on coat tails. So we know by this analysis of redistricting that Americas Red /Blue mapping would look decidedly more Blue had the Republicans not hijacked the districting lines.
I feel it is an important thing for the rest of the world to understand that the mapping of America as a divided country is a false analogy, or a political illusion. On those grounds I refute the idea that the 2016 election was won by discontented whites, but really it was won by political maneuvering in 2010 which set up a dynamic that suppressed votes, among other political mechanisms.
The three Republicans that redrew the map in 2010 are basically cheaters who got away with political murder. Now the redress of grievance against the actionable and unconstitutional offense of illegally redrawing the districts is being heard in court. The 35th District Court ruling is vitally important and now will stand as a precedent for other districts. Slowly the districts will be redrawn and a new picture of the electorate will come into focus.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Mar. 12 2017 1:08:50
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Did millennials kill music? (in reply to estebanana)
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I probably would not enjoy to be in a room with Nina Kravitz' crowd, but her sophistication at manipulating musical material is advanced. She's a composer in a popular genre. All that knob twiddling is not all that easy.
I remember in the late 70's and into the 80's there was a counter movement to excessive guitar soloing in songs. I think the breakdown of the guitar God was the issue, the music was getting too guitar-solo-centric after Zed Zepplin and Van Halen came bands like Joy Division, Sonic Youth, Gang of Four, I could list a few dozen, that followed a kind of music making that depended on guitar base in the music, but deemphasized solo as the anchor climax of the song. Guitar solos that raged for 20 minutes became unfavored because it's not 'democratic' in the structure of the band. The guitar solo in the 70's in sense was both a dictator and a saint to be revered. I think the end of the 70's brought a closer look at th reasons why that came to be.
And during the reformation of guitar soloing in the 1980's there was also a counter reformation saying guitar soloing is still a base, but it's more raw. Dinosaur Jr. and J Maseys guitar solo based songs a case in point. Strictly speaking I think the first generation to question the guitar as the center were the Boomers in the late 70's.
So back to Kravtiz, the Dj format gave people a way to compose with fragments of music and make long compositions that develop and overall architecture of sound that only symphonists before that could command. I'm not saying Kravits and her predecessors are the equal of a Bruckner symphony in organization of structure and development, but it does give the music maker the opportunity to command big structural components and create long arcs of continuous thought in structure. If you look at it that way it may have killed guitar, but it also gave way to a popular format where structure is important, and that is not bad. The thing is I cant stand the dance format and the teen age zombies mindlessly tuning out.
But the argument is that to DJ returned music to the realm of the non specialist. Before the radio and after, but especially before the TV families would engage in music making in the home. There might be a piano,or banjo or guitars or mandolins around and family members would jam. Think how much of a pain in the neck that would be if ol Uncle Henry were a shredder on mandolin and al he wanted to do was show off his complex and mannered solos that lasted for 15 minutes while everyone else vamped behind him....Ughhhhhhh....Uncle Henry would be rude and he would not get invited over to jam because of the obnoxious wall to wall mandolin soloing. I think this happened in rock music in the late 70's and there was a reset in music going forward that said less male ego based masturbatory solos in rock and rock based musics.
I don't think the guitar solo went away, but fewer guitars are being purchased on the fantasy vision of being the guy in the band who everyone look sat to play the solo. For one thing women are playing a lot of guitar and playing better than the men or giving the boys a challenge. Overall that music is much less, much less composed around a face melty guitar solo and more about guitar being another texture. All that said the guitar God concept of face melt bands is going strong, often lead by women guitar soloist band leaders, it remains a discipline unto itself and it ain't going away. Only more women are not buying the passive participation route of standing in the audience letting a guy make their panties soak with a guitar solo, they are grabbing the Les Paul's and putting in the time to soak their own panties. And no shame either if a woman wants to bake her cookies and take them to a metal show to get her panties wet, everyone is free to have fun.
My summing up is that feminism killed the guitar, because the possibility of every teenage boy to grow up to be a potential panty wetter guitar soloist was dampened down by powerful chicks like Joan Jett who went against stereotypes and picked up the guitar and raged. The women now had a choice, they could follow Sister Rosetta Tharp and Joan Jett instead of Debbie Harry and Grace Slick. The boys in high school had to contend with that odd girl who did her homework everyday and then retired to her room with her telecaster and beat the crap out of it. Why a guitar the boys would would think, some chick is just going to smoke me on stage.
The tamborine was out, the axe was in. And you know once a willful woman gets her hands on a palo she ain't ever lettin' go.
I admit I lusted to be a panty loosening electric guitar soloist and spent good money after bad Japanese Les Paul's, then I figured out something very important, I call it The Remora Effect. The Remora is a fish that suckers onto a big shark and feeds on the crumbs of the things the shark eats. In rock and roll I learned if you get to know the lead guitarist of a band that you can get laid even if you are a talentless hack if you are willing to enlist the Remora Strategy. Any guitar God is only human and can accommodate so many women in one tour, so you handle the over flow. Yes you become a shameless bottom feeder, only you justify it by rightfully helping all the women who get backstage by paying attention to the ones the Guitar God spurns. Being the band Remora is a noble and thankless task helping the band tend to all the female attention after a show.
Better to be a remora than a set of ragged claws shuffling along the floors of silent seas.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Mar. 20 2017 1:30:50
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: Did millennials kill music? (in reply to estebanana)
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**clap clap** Excellent essay/rant, I enjoyed it!
The guitar solo might have properly died in the grunge era (my formative period), when flannel-wearing, goaty-singing neckbeard baritones with Les Pauls brought angsty, faux anti-corporate attitude, sloppy riffs, and unintelligible lyrics to the forefront.
I doubt it had much to do with Bonnie Raitt or Joan Jett, as awesome as each of those ladies were and are. My daughter's next project is "Cherry Bomb."
The death of blues-based rock ****ing is a near-daily topic on the GearPage, a site mostly composed of baby boomers of the type that actually go to Joe Bonamassa concerts and such.
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Date Mar. 20 2017 18:32:16
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