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Rocky Road From Classic Rock to Progessive to hip hop to today's hot new tunes! |
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Rocky Road From Classic Rock to Progessive to hip hop to today's hot new tunes! |
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In Reply to: Re: Well, that's typical... posted by J on April 25, 2006 at 19:49:43:
>In your world does Dylan equal Bach in terms of musical genius?No. Is that okay with you, or must you cling to inaccurate presumptions?
>Shall we declare Santana the equal of Schubert in terms of compositional sophistication?
No. I happen to loathe his work..."
Thanks for making my point for me, but I'm still waiting for you to state your position and defend it. Why the reluctance to do so? Perhaps it's because the guitar is a toy and easy to master, compared to the violin, as Isaac Stern has pointed out. Or is it because too many rock groups have had successful careers living off a couple of chords? Or because their personal lives never seem to climb above the toilet rim?
Yes, yes, Keith Emerson was classical trained. Is that fact supposed to impress me? Ted Nugent has pointed out that many of the rockers he toured with had to crawl through ten feet of their own vomit in order to reach the stage, only to deliver embarrassing performances. Rock icons such as Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Moon and Cobain all had one thing in common, a total lack of self-discipline that prevented them from reaching the grand old age of thirty.
As for compositional skills, even "super groups" such as the Stones and Beatles churned out a paltry amount of work compared to the young Mozart. Of course, Mozart himself was not averse to partying. But here's the difference: an intoxicated Mozart could compose rings around John and Paul on their best day. He wasn't affecting a phony pose; he was the real deal. Then there’s Bach, if one were to toss away the three hundred cantatas, the hundred-odd chorale preludes, the three oratorios, the passions, and the Mass (which would be the equivalent of destroying half of Shakespeare), still the other half would sustain Bach as a creature whose afflatus is inexplicable, for some of us, in the absence of a belief in God.
The late Carl Sagan, who doubled as the village atheist, reported that the biologist Lewis Thomas of the Sloan-Kettering Institute answered, when asked what message he thought we should send to other civilizations in space in a rocket we fired up there a few years ago with earthly jewels packed in its cone, "I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach." Then he paused, and said, "But that would be boasting." There are those who believe it is not merely to boast, but to be vainglorious to suggest that the movement of Bach's pen could have been animated by less than divine impulse.
And there are those village idiots who believe Philip Glass is Bach's equal in terms of compositional expertise and importance to musical history. Others insist Snoop Dog eclipses both. There is no persuading such people otherwise, all one can do is smile. Nor should such ignorance surprise us when one considers the fact that there has existed in this country for over one-hundred years, an organization called "The Flat Earth Society."
"If there's anything more ridiculous than trying to make a point by offering a direct comparison between two things that have nothing in common anymore than Citizen Kane has with Behind The Green Door, it's driving it home with a challenge that one must defend their preferences. I'm not terribly interested."
Not interested or incapable? Again, the common denominator is music. One genre is oftentimes representative of what is best in man, the other is schlock sold to kids as "art." It’s instructive to note that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste or IQ of the American consumer. Now I'll let you have the last word, which seems to be so terribly important to you. :)
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Follow Ups
- Re: Well, that's typical... - regmac 08:17:42 04/26/06 (3)
- Re: Well, that's typical... - J 14:01:43 04/26/06 (0)
- ain't it fun? - tunenut 13:39:10 04/26/06 (0)
- Art is subjective - meisterkleef 12:45:28 04/26/06 (0)
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