The Songbook was analyzing a set of songs about Loneliness and Individualism, such as Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” before it got side-tracked into laying out my theory of modernity’s sociological stages. It’s time to return to the first task, which brings me . . . . Continue Reading »
Okay, here’s a shorter way, for those of you who haven’t the patience for my full cinemascopic link-littered prose, to get at what I mean by Intermediate Modernity In Book VIII Republic terms, intermediate-modernity was the era of the self-repressing Oligarchic Soul, and “the . . . . Continue Reading »
Robert Cheeks suggests in his comment on my last Songbook post that if there aren’t any, there’s really no point in me saying that Rock is ambivalent about or even resistant to modernity. He has a point. So, here are two possible candidates. The first is the most obvious choice, the . . . . Continue Reading »
The Songbook inevitably has to analyze modernity, precisely because it is interested more in what rock reveals about our overall sociological and spiritual situation than it is in rock itself. So what follows are two organizing posts concerning this. Here, I’ll quickly lay out my . . . . Continue Reading »
Yeah, she was the cute-as-can-be gal in the one great Will Farrell movie, Elf . Also in Almost Famous , early on as the hip sister who becomes a stewardess. The commenters at Big Hollywood are happy about Zooey’s rendition of national anthem at the World Series—not her first time at . . . . Continue Reading »
But really, when you consider how much praise and attention is heaped on lyric writers, its astonishing how rare it is for any of its great exponents to try to dig a little deeper (or at least ramble on a little longer) than a three minute pop song allows. I have a theory about this. It’s a . . . . Continue Reading »
What to make of the #occupy “movement?” Well, come to think of it, I unknowingly did say something about it a few weeks back when I wrote a far too long post on Joe Pug’s contemporary folk song I Do my Father’s Drugs. So my contribution to the punditry’s occupation with . . . . Continue Reading »
No, I do not take Zombies with my Jane Austen, so you know I’m talking about the musical group of the 60s! Well, they’ve reunified for some new songs and gigs, and the fab Dawn Eden reports on their recent DC-area concert over at the Weekly Standard. For those who didn’t see the . . . . Continue Reading »
Songbook #20 tried to talk about the 9-11 interregnum and how it dealt a blow to rock’s radicalism, but in retrospect, it was really more about the nineties revival-of and eventual disenchantment-with such radicalism, with 9-11 seeming to serve as the final nail in the coffin. And Songbook #21 . . . . Continue Reading »
. . . social democracy has been unable to fill the vacuum left by the failure of the great communist hope. Does this mean, as many predict, that the hour of the churches has come? If this should turn out to be the case, I hope that there will be left on the earth at least a small handful of human . . . . Continue Reading »
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