Pop music

Robert Lockhart

I think there’s somehow something about contemporary popular music – it’s ingenuity of invention stimulated by the sheer singularity of the drive on the part of the popular music industry to achieve commercial profit being an example of how pragmatically efficient the Capitalist ‘system’ is at meeting and stimulating demand btw – that’s just so symptomatic of an aspect of the ‘Esprit’ of our Age!
Pop-music’s all about ‘Fun & Entertainment’ needless to say but... does its' allure consist in those compelling sensual rhythms, overwhelming our sense of propriety, so intrinsic to the experience of it?...Or maybe perhaps in those fantacy-type melodies so idiosyncratic to it that serve to induce in you a sort of escapist pseudo-sense of romance? - Don’t know, but...I think nonetheless there is something about the general ambience of the genre that's distinctive of our times!

Personally btw, I also think that nothing in the entire cannon of modern popular music has ever managed to comprehend even an iota of objective reality - despite some of it admittedly having succeeded in symptomaticaly reflecting its' then concurrent social trends - and that the claim by some of its' apostles that even a few examples of it have succeeded in so doing is really just an indulgent illusion. - What's the difference btw between something being merely symtomatic of the Spirit of its' Age and something being a comprehension of same? - Therein I'd say lies the difference in kind that exists between Punk Rock and Beethoven!
Though - having said all that - I still find myself puzzled by the lack of perspicacity in some ‘young-uns’ nowadays - whenever I try tell them just how indescribably wonderful being present at a ‘Status-Quo’ concert really was! Like many in that audience of long ago of course - What wouldn't I then have given to be that lead guitarist guy up there on stage! :)

tom

↪Robert Lockhart

Turn the volume up!

Robert Lockhart

NB:- Among various personal regrets of my own, some more significant than others of course, is one whereby as a teenager - when at the time it represented the cutting-edge means by which you could realise that need to believe you’re rebelling against convention so indespensible to teenage hubris – I myself allowed my own admittedly herd-instinct aspirations towards assuming the very desirable fashions of ‘Punk Rock’ to be subsumed by social inhibition - and ultimately then to succumb to the somewhat unsympathetic injunction of my elders, “- Just behave yourself”!
Funnily enough though - Can still sometimes recollect that adolescent sense of frustrated ambition whenever I occasionally hear the old anthem – Can’t remember now who sang it at the time - “I wanna be a Punk Rocker"! :)

BC

I think there’s somehow something about contemporary popular music – it’s ingenuity of invention stimulated by the sheer singularity of the drive on the part of the popular music industry to achieve commercial profit being an example of how pragmatically efficient the Capitalist ‘system’ is at meeting and stimulating demand btw – that’s just so symptomatic of an aspect of the ‘Esprit’ of our Age! — Robert Lockhart

It's an old story. Didn't Plato say something about the wrong kind of music being able to corrupt a society?

"Do I hear a Waltz?" The waltz originated in the 1600s in Austria, and was pretty much "folk" dance. When the waltz was introduced to high society in the early 19th century it was considered somewhat immoral because the young upper class folk dancing it were just a bit too close, a bit too exuberant. We all know where THAT leads.

My first exposure to exuberant rock and roll dancing was in college, 1964. I was sort of appalled and sort of interested at the same time. Maybe I appreciate the spirit of rock and roll (in its 1950s-60s-70s guise) now much more than I did then.

Robert Lockhart

Bitter Crank: Yeah - Seems the now traditional conceit peculiar to the Modern Popular Music movement that it’s shock effect on older generations derived from their inflexible and naive preconceptions regarding its innovative nature was just that – a self-conceit – and that, when viewed through the longer eye of history, the initial antipathy towards the genre seems in retrospect to have been just another example of that perennial process by which the novel and thereby controvertial gradually in time becomes subsumed into the norm of contemporary society, only to be overtaken in turn, and then forgotten, in the wake of the next ‘unprecedented revolution’ happening to fall off the conveyor-belt! - Human vanity is such of course that every generation likes to flatter itself it has invented anew!
Anyway - Rock on! :)

Terrapin Station

and that the claim of even some examples of modern popular music to have succeeded in acheiving an objective description of reality — Robert Lockhart

Not really the point of it to almost anyone making music, and I'd say that anyone looking at it that way doesn't really get the idea of art.

Terrapin Station

My first exposure to exuberant rock and roll dancing was in college, 1964. — Bitter Crank

Just curious where you'd been the previous 7-8 years.

BC

Just curious where you'd been the previous 7-8 years. — Terrapin Station

Living under a rock may have been a contributing factor, but as a socially incompetent loner, there was no great benefit in being up to date with my would-be peers. Also, I grew up poor in a very small town. To be in the swing of things, such as they were, in this wretched berg meant either joining the even-more-outré in-crowd (which I wasn't exactly invited to do) or join the A-list in-group), but that was not a real option either.

Very small towns in rural America are great places to be a child, or to complete the dying process in quiet solitude. In between they are pest holes. Escaping to even a small state college campus was a relative heaven on earth.

Were I to have avoided this tragedy of the stagnant backwaters, I would have had to have grown up in New York City where I might have blossomed on time and fully. I would have needed progressive parents, nearby gay bars and docks to cruise on, more money, more self confidence, a circle of people like myself, and so on. As soon as the new affordable time machine comes on the market...

Terrapin Station

↪Bitter Crank

Ah, that explains it. ;-)

Robert Lockhart

...Anyone remember, "Geraldo"?

Numi Who

↪Robert Lockhart

Pop culture is still all about 'glory' and 'identity'. The difference is in style - the next generation finds a style that it can call its own, but the 'glory' is still there - mainly in the form of media sensationalizing and attention.

Note that most of the world views 'pop' culture as childish, not knowing that we cling to it throughout our lives as a (futile) means to cheat aging...! (as we try to be perpetual fourteen year olds)....

Robert Lockhart

...Noted! - while publically deferring to my statutorily required adult garb - as (secretly) the world's oldest teenager! :)

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