Great Paintings shouldnt be in museums. . . . Museums are cemeteries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in mens rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out. The only thing where its happening is on the radio and records, . . . . Continue Reading »
Rocks other significance in relation to modernity, which David Bowie understood better than anyone, is that it sanctions a new type of heroism, that in contrast to, say, an astronauts bit part in a space-flight that is essentially the military-industrial establishments . . . . Continue Reading »
For never are the ways of music moved without the greatest political laws being moved. Plato, The Republic, 242c And so they say, this the golden age . . . U2, New Years Day At this point one might well wonder why I am bothering with rock, having abundant reasons to dislike the . . . . Continue Reading »
Rock intellectualizings third basic flaw is its captivity to bohemian/New Left assumptions regarding morals, culture, and politics. The Songbook will examine rocks largely uncritical promotion of the sexual revolution as it unfolds, but here we consider the oddity of its leftism. On one . . . . Continue Reading »
To continue where we left off in Songbook #14, rock intellectualizing not only involves dismissal of the musically fine, but also of intellectually fine. Its very activity demonstrates its ambivalence toward the core activity of the life of the mind, the wrestling with thinkers of first rank. . . . . Continue Reading »
. . . the rock and roll apparatus affectively organizes the everyday life of its fans by differentially cathecting the various fragments it excorporates along these three axes. . . . It involves vectors (quantities having both magnitude and direction) that are removed from the hegemonic . . . . Continue Reading »
I accept the saying that The Who were one of the thinking mans rock bands, but this Songbook entry is more music-focused than idea-focused. Instead of considering the fairly interesting and very zeitgeist-representative lyrical content of these two songs, Im contrasting them . . . . Continue Reading »
Today was a day for patriotism, and Tocqueville describes two kinds. One is the natural love humans develop for the place and polity they were raised in, for its folkways and so forth. The second is a more reflective patriotism that, aided by enlightenment rationality, grows with the exercise . . . . Continue Reading »
Got Some Truth! Emphasis on the some. Being against Carter in 1980 was an easy step. A number of rockers got the political jitters towards the end of the 70s—Bowie famously suggested, under whatever mix of drugs I know not, that Britain might need a fascist strongman, and even Paul Weller, as . . . . Continue Reading »
Back to war, and the anti-war stance. Part of the conclusion of Songbook #6 was that the stance of songs like Blowin in the Wind and New Years Day could easily lead to despair and overindulgence of anger. Masters of War certainly is a . . . . Continue Reading »