Friday, June 30, 2006
It's a random compare and contrast exercise:
Another LA Times art piece, this by new pop music editor Ann Powers, "Common Dissents". This is a deep spread, with pop culture analysis and examples of argument (interactive multimedia, videos, and a lyrics gallery):
'When Young recently stated that he made the album "Living With War" because no younger artists were picking up the countercultural torch, he unfortunately associated his efforts with a generational attitude that drives Generations X and Y crazy. "It's a clichéd Rolling Stone boomer-idea, that pop culture managed to stop a war, that musicians once had power as galvanizing figures," wrote twentysomething blogger Tom Breihan in a May 17 Village Voice column decrying such views.'
So musicians are responding in a wide ranging way to their perceptions of current realities which means their critics will be obliged to, as well.
As with this "The War Profiteer: A classic-rock icon steals Newt Gingrich's motto and the hearts of aging hippies everywhere," coincidentally also published May 17, but far from New York and the Village Voice as can be, in an Oakland, California paper called the East Bay Express.
All I know for sure is that David Downs, the new music editor for the East Bay Express, is angry. So angry, he focuses completely on the superexpanded role in history that only the superegos of superstars could ever allot their superselves. Much of Downs's article is nearly incoherent to me. I haven't a real clue what he's going on about, except his anger and I caught onto that rather than "Impeach the President", he's turned the tables as a satirist should and suggests we "Draft Neil Young" instead.
'Which brings us back to the drafting of Neil Young.
'Bad back or not, conscript this man. Stick him on the wall of the Green Zone with that harmonica in his mouth and bullets whizzing by, and roll the cameras. The sight of our sad, confused old Crazy Horseman limping around, yelling "I've been a miner for a heart of gold," could match the pathos of that little girl running from napalm with her clothes burned off her.
'That's how you rock a vote and make a buck. With televised carnage and a draft.
'Just ask "Ohio."'
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Then there's the flip side, the real deal, with "The Hatred Behind Hadji Girl."
That form of hatred is also expressed in this morning's news. But these soldiers are likely to be punished, while the songwriter is not.
OK, now you boys and girls run along a stop a tank. ¶ 6/30/2006 06:13:00 AM
Another LA Times art piece, this by new pop music editor Ann Powers, "Common Dissents". This is a deep spread, with pop culture analysis and examples of argument (interactive multimedia, videos, and a lyrics gallery):
'When Young recently stated that he made the album "Living With War" because no younger artists were picking up the countercultural torch, he unfortunately associated his efforts with a generational attitude that drives Generations X and Y crazy. "It's a clichéd Rolling Stone boomer-idea, that pop culture managed to stop a war, that musicians once had power as galvanizing figures," wrote twentysomething blogger Tom Breihan in a May 17 Village Voice column decrying such views.'
So musicians are responding in a wide ranging way to their perceptions of current realities which means their critics will be obliged to, as well.
As with this "The War Profiteer: A classic-rock icon steals Newt Gingrich's motto and the hearts of aging hippies everywhere," coincidentally also published May 17, but far from New York and the Village Voice as can be, in an Oakland, California paper called the East Bay Express.
All I know for sure is that David Downs, the new music editor for the East Bay Express, is angry. So angry, he focuses completely on the superexpanded role in history that only the superegos of superstars could ever allot their superselves. Much of Downs's article is nearly incoherent to me. I haven't a real clue what he's going on about, except his anger and I caught onto that rather than "Impeach the President", he's turned the tables as a satirist should and suggests we "Draft Neil Young" instead.
'Which brings us back to the drafting of Neil Young.
'Bad back or not, conscript this man. Stick him on the wall of the Green Zone with that harmonica in his mouth and bullets whizzing by, and roll the cameras. The sight of our sad, confused old Crazy Horseman limping around, yelling "I've been a miner for a heart of gold," could match the pathos of that little girl running from napalm with her clothes burned off her.
'That's how you rock a vote and make a buck. With televised carnage and a draft.
'Just ask "Ohio."'
xxxxxxxx
Then there's the flip side, the real deal, with "The Hatred Behind Hadji Girl."
That form of hatred is also expressed in this morning's news. But these soldiers are likely to be punished, while the songwriter is not.
OK, now you boys and girls run along a stop a tank. ¶ 6/30/2006 06:13:00 AM
