Where's this generosity when discussing the Middle East? Anyway, I said nothing about entitlement. People can buy whatever crud they want to. Either you're saying my view has validity, or some slack-jawed ICP fan's does. Either way, you're being no more "open minded." I'll happily claim that the world would be a lot worse off for not having Robert Johnson, but our cultural legacy wouldn't be much affected by removing whatever the Jugalos love. I can understand a teenager not getting this, but an adult sounds like an idiot making the opposite claim.


More phony choice. Enya was promoted out the wazoo. Who hasn't heard of her? I imagine quite a few collections out there have Enya next to Fleetwood Mac.

And you've said nothing about other people having a right to their views. You've done everthing you can to deny any validity to alternate views, and to degrade those who hold them, completely in line with Marxist tradition. That is the boot stamping on a human face forever, imposed by your snotty disdain. Good thing you don't celebrate productivity.



Than what? Someone who denies all validity to opinions different from his own and casts those with different opinions in the role of inferior? Someone who says permitting all those people with all those different opinions to get what they want is being "force-fed" them but denying them their choices is true freedom? I guess I'm not that open-minded.



Now you're distinguishing the value of opinions by the age of the one who holds them.



Lots of people. Air America was promoted out the wazoo. 50 million global warming refugees by 2010 was promoted out the wazoo. The evil shredding of the Constitution by a President who started bombing an oil-rich country of brown-people who never attacked us and kept other brown people indefinitely detained was promoted out the wazoo. If there's no substance to the promotion - and lots of times, even when there is - it won't work. The history of Marxist countries demonstrates that.

But hey, it's a free country, you can believe what you want.

That's because we weren't talking about the rights of people. I haven't expressed an opinion on your rights, but that doesn't mean I think you have none. Do you really need this explained?


I didn't deny "all validity to opinions different" from my own. Nor did I cast anyone as being an inferior person for having shitty taste. Nor did I say anyone should be denied anything. This is all made up by you.


There's still some hope for a teenager into ICP; not so much a 50 year old.

Why are you even arguing about any of this, since you think your opinion is no better than anyone else's, including a 10 year old's? On that, we agree. Your view amounts to saying anything produced on American Idol is just as culturally, intellectually, and aesthetically valuable as Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung.

Ok, then why is everything you support about degrading anybody who thinks differently and denying them their choices whenever possible, whether they're they're fans of Sammy Hagar, ICP or younger than you? [You do acknowledge there are ICP fans who are not "slack-jawed", right? Wait, that would be tolerant and open-minded of you, so never mind.]



No, you just make constant assertions to that effect and avoid any opportunity to acknowledge that there is any validity, or even that their opinion is equal to your own. I'm still waiting for you to prove







Where is the part where you grant any validity to a point-of-view that differs from yours? Has there ever been an intelligent sentence that began with the words "only a fool would think"? Your sentence sure doesn't qualify, but I support your right to hold it, and speak it, and purchase whatever music you believe supports it while disdaining whatever music you don't believe supports it.



Your view is valid, the slack-jawed ICP fan's is valid, the non-slack-jawed ICP fan's is valid and there's a lot more of them then there is of you. This is how open-mindedness works.



Your way doesn't permit people who want to hear more than Robert Johnson, or evolution to people who were inspired by them. ICP were releasing albums (and getting shit-canned by their Disney-owned record label) back when Axl Rose was a productive popular celebrity.

You seem to think ICP has a flaw or two, so do they qualify as this "non-perfect rock" that, according to you, is when rock is best? You don't seem to have any coherent principles behind your music tastes, so wouldn't it be more benevolent to assert the validity of other perspectives? At the very least, wouldn't it be more in line with what people want and more supportive of their right to choose?



Well it's not going to happen if you keep assuming (a) people are blank slates (b) that you know precisely who programs them (to mix a metaphor) and how (c) nothing can ever ever ever happen that proves you wrong in the eyes of other people. Vox populi means nothing to you.

I repeat, good thing you don't support productivity, or capitalism.



It's not up to you whether or not there's hope for anybody. Why would you assume it is?

Replace ICP with anything else, you sound like the uncoolest parent on the block. "Still some hope for a teenager into comic books, Elvis, Marxism, etc..." Who are you trying to appeal to other than people who have as big a nut against ICP [or Sammy or Dave Sim or Glen Beck, or comic books, Elvis, Marxism...] as you do?



I think my opinion is the best one there is, but I recognize other people think differently. Your view unilaterally dismisses anybody who likes Van Hagar, anybody who likes ICP, anyone who thinks Abbey Road is better than Robert Johnson, [hardly overlapping groups] for no better reason than that they hold an opinion you don't share. Or else that they're young whippersnappers who don't know what's good for them and can safely be dismissed.

I hate to say that's a strange way for a Marxist to behave, but alas, whenever Marxists have actually authority to back up their opinions, what people actually want becomes a very minor point in the discussion.

Capitalism has to provide law and order for everybody. On a day to day basis, doing it the old way trumps whatever way comes along 9 times out of 10 at minimum, whatever system you live under. What system works the best for everybody involved, maximizing collective security and material comfort?" Why you want make sacrifice to Great Spirit Snake? What wrong with Buffalo God?"

Mao, Castro, Stalin and Qaddaffi can rule for decades in as much security as the President of the United States. Qaddaffi has taken to riding open-air vehicles lately, so you know someone's looking out for him.

In America, we have color television, comic books and rock'n'roll. Gosh aren't we oppressed. So many Marxists who like it here.



My view is that there is more to culture, intellect, aesthetics and value than is dreamt of in your philosophy. Pete Townshend is in stadiums singing "Hope I die before I get old" and bayou trash mother of several Britney Spears is pushing 30. Capitalism lets people not heavily addicted to self-destruction or heroin rely on law, order, security, legal contracts, where 9 times out of 10 (or more) the old way of doing things is the best way.

Hey, if picking up a guitar to get some pussy (or because you like playing guitar, but who gives a shit about those freaks) is the best option available, you do what you gotta do. At least you're not being lectured to, told to clean your room, get to your place of duty on time, all that Nazi-like behavior. You get to do whatever you want.

So forgive me for not living up to your high fucking standards of rock and fucking roll, ok! God!

Yeah, be sure and let me know when any Marxist anywhere has ever permitted THAT much dissent against their core beliefs when they had the power to suppress it. For now, there's a power ballad needs my attention.

Oh, and happy 1 May.

I think this 'death is getting pretty damned close' feeling from the boomers is starting to hit the rock aristocracy hard. At least Jim and Jimi and Janis (and whoever else) are all long dead, so that's all you'll ever get forever.

The Eagles had to give themselves a cozy corporate entity that lets them do drugs and fuck whoever they want and charge outrageous amounts of money for whatever they want to do for the rest of their lives, just from the royalties of "Hotel California" alone. The guy who created that song was kicked out by Glen and Don ages ago, but the band goes on. Hell, I can't stand the Eagles' version - they only have a few songs I really like and a handful of others I find tolerable - but I've recorded multiple version of "Hotel California" because it's an awesome song to sing and play.

To the obnoxiously-decadent and immoral leftists who made it possible, the big corporate drek-producing entity who made a sport of screwing over their own, it's a mark in the plus column on anybody's scoreboard. Good luck with the only judge that matters.

[I do have Don Henley's greatest hits though, enjoy a number of songs from that. He's also achieved the highest honor a human being can bestow, a style parody by Weird Al. Not song parody, style parody. The man is a true genius. Weird Al that is, not Henley.]

Roger Waters is on tour flogging The Wall, having flogged Dark Side of the Moon for three years, and the "In the Flesh" tour ran about as long before that being mostly composed of old Pink Floyd stuff. He's the one who left the band after dominating it increasingly during the 1970's. This is the guy who got thousands and thousands of Berliners to scream, in unison, "Tear down the wall!!!" And, according to Nick Mason's book, he gives his road crew t-shirts with the words "Am I being cost-effective?" printed backwards SO THEY WOULD SEE IT WHEN LOOKING IN THE MIRROR!

Hey, he got Pink Floyd back together at that big concert a few years back though, so it can't be all bad. Unless you're a Syd Barret fan anyway.

I have read it on Wikipedia and sites linked from there so it must be true, but after the reunion, Waters and Gilmour were very public about not doing it again, with Waters bitching about how much of a hassle it was to roll over just for one gig. But more recently he started saying he'd love to play toegther even for fun. After a brief acoustic show for pro-Palestian [philistine] causes, he has received a promise from Dave Gilmour to perform "Comfortably Numb" at one (only one) of the "Wall" performances forthcoming. If such a large-scale operation can be mounted successfully. How's that Marxism working out for you, eh Rog? "Money, it's a hit. Don't give me that do goody-good bullshit" has a lot of credibility for a lot of people. They'll even pay for it.

But I'm listening to the Live8 reunion right now, and it's an interesting historical event, recreating songs from before I was born, made more poignant by the fact that it would be the last time these guys would ever share a stage. They wouldn't gotten that far without the legal contracts and property rights to defend work they were making when they were 'merely profitable' to the record company. They wouldn't have gotten THAT FAR if they hadn't decided it would be eaiser to play gigs and just leave Syd at home to write songs.

Without Sid writing the songs, he would have had a much harder life. Just this moment I've realized I'd mispelled "Syd" in every Pink Floyd reference I made, and it would take very little for the ideas I'm discussing to be relevant to Sid Vicious and the punk movement reacting to the original Pink Floyd Sound. Syd Barret gave us Waters talking about how emotional it is to be up here with these guys as Gilmour plays a guitar line that is unquestionably classic.

"Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for the lead role in a cage?"

No, sometimes I don't wish you were here. In fact, sometimes I wish you'd shut up and go away. In the literal 'I have to deal with this every day' sense that constitutes most human interaction. Unpleasant interaction certainly. At least you can reasonably walk in safety outdoors with your children without bullets and bombs. Or people who will turn you in for unauthorized criticism. At the very least, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

Following a Waters Wiki-link led to a reference he made recently about how contracts were signed when he actually left the band. [or at least I found it recently. This is the internet, it must be true.] At the time, he was being sued by the band because he wasn't permitting them to work as Pink Floyd, even under their recording contract. The record company was displeased as well. This was not Death Row records, these were English gentlemen, so nobody died and everybody went home millionaires. Even Syd, the guy who was kicked out decades ago and had no contact with the band whatsoever, but I digress.

This is true, and Waters doesn't seem to have a good explanation for why he would prevent other members of Pink Floyd from acting as Pink Floyd. The record company was capitalist and evil and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister isn't really a sufficient explanation decades later. I mean, it makes more sense than the distinctions between Stalin and Trotsky [or Biggie and Tupac] but that's because these guys are English gentlemen.

English gentlemen got to be English gentlemen by centuries of breeding. If this Syd Barret and Nancy circus is what the public likes, and maintains law and order and not being machine-gunned in the street as Qaddaffi does with impunity, then where's the harm?

In America, we find our own gentlemen in our own particular amusements. I myself am a fan of some works of art produced by a couple of New York City Jews in an office building during the 1960's. They did their job, collected their pay, supported their families. They weren't in a union or anything, and some of them got screwed pretty bad. But they could rely on food being at the store, gas being in the station, popular culture, and things that stayed the same because 9 times out of 0, the old way works better day after day after year after year.

Six years ago, Barack Obama was promising he would not run for President. What are his plans for six years from now? Or should politics be avoided as a subject entirely. What else, sports? Movies? Tv? What you read on the internet? Comics? The royal wedding? Another generation's passed for them you know. Is it true Charles has been officially passed over for King? Are they in the Top 40?

Don Henley, Sting, Prince, Grace Slick, CSN&Y, some of them got with the program and produced work over a longer period of time than Jimi, Janis, Jim, Brian Jones. The Temptations and the Four Tops weren't shooting each other, but they replaced members and only had the legacy Berry Gordy built from his own hard-earned work and investment in his rights and property. Kept a lot of food on people's plates, and Berry certainly is no saint. Without him, the Jacksons would be an ordinary black family, church-going, child-raising, tax-paying, wealth-creating group of citizens. Without Berry Gordy, EVH would have never discovered the crossover audience when he played on "Thriller" and DLR wouldn't have made "Dancing in the Streets" a hit again.

One of the reasons I love rock'n'roll is that it appeals to the historian in me, because it makes generational shift more discernable. Have you seen recent pictures of Grace Slick? Do you think Sarah Palin will look that good in twenty years?

Berry Gordy and the session players showed up on time and were presentable every way they needed to be. If they do their job, are on time and play by the rules the way their boss wants them to, they can afford to look out for five or ten years into the future. They could expect law and order and security for themselves and their families and friends. Marvin Gaye's estate is assured a piece of his work as a singer, producer and songwriter. Depending on their deal with Motown or other record companies, they can rely on people trying to impress chicks with "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (or getting a buzz from CCR's jam).

The guys showing up to work every day for a paycheck really got the better part of the deal, because at least that's a known quantity. If you're unreliable, that's a known factor, and 9 times out of 10, that's where it winds up. And they know it too. It doesn't matter if he's a violent drug-fulled lunatic who hasn't heard the word "no" for a decade, the contract is signed and if it's too expensive to maintain, they'll dump him, because that's how the company has survived so far. The same legal system that impedes Berry Gordy from glorious capitalist exploitation will punish you. Diana Ross is hotter than Grace Slick or Janis Joplin ever were, and Berry was nailing that ass at its finest. Sug gives us Dre and Snoop, bitches ain't shit and "gin and juice". They're mainstream too.

One of my favorite R. Crumb stories is the one about the po' Southern boy who hitches a ride to the city, blows his horn and records a few sides that languish in obscurity until some well to-do white boy pays an old lady for them and later shows them off for his equally well to-do friends. [from memory, I haven't read it in years.] It did a brilliant job of describing the levels of decisions being made, the middle-aged white guy executives who can't justify spending money on more field recordings for the "race" market, the producers and players who had to keep showing up on time to work.

I have no idea what Crumb says about the story, but I know he's said things like the reason he moved to France was because Reagan would put people in camps, so I think I can guess. Still, Crumb is part of the intelligencia, as are others of the small community he made possible, by reliably producing his work for a long period of times. The Eagles and everybody whose work they featured - Linda Rondstadt's primary claim to faim at this point was that they started out as her backing band - can earn livings for themselves, their families, their friends and companies, and they don't even have to shut up about the rainforest or whatever they're lecturing about. Shut up and sing.

Honestly, it seems like the only “incentive” (for lack of a better term) that will increase production from a Marxist is an appeal to getting something desirable for no effort or expense. Anything that lets them avoid showing up on time and presentable to work is fine, especially if they can blame capitalist oppression for the results. Poverty, racism, ‘phobia’ of whatever sort, anything is preferable to granting any validity to the people who show up on time for work every day.

Science has discovered at least three and a half other ways to rock, so Sammy Hagar’s not the end-all be-all of human thought, and no one thinks he is. Not liking Sammy is one thing, different strokes for different folks and all. Dismissing him and everything he stands for as the province of fools, no if’s and’s or but’s and you are on a tower of certainty only a lunatic would dream possible. Ditto the ICP. Ditto people who like Abbey Road more than Robert Johnson. [of those three categories, I only fall into one with an unqualified yes.]

Don’t forget that art itself changes over time. There was a period of a few years where the story of “Star Wars” consisted entirely of two droids stranded and separated on a desert planet. We all live in the shadow of that pop culture Ground Zero, the people whose first exposure was the original movie with no conception of what would follow. I can remember wondering if Vader was really Luke’s father. The only people who knew were the ones who made the movie. Most people alive have no idea what that sort of world is like.

But when push comes to shove, Star Wars is only a movie, made because Lucas wanted to rip off Flash Gordon Akira Kurosawa, and he and Coppola were finding horse’s heads in their bed. The audience liked it and more was produced. “Star Wars” reportedly saved Marvel Comics, remember?

In the end, Roger Waters and Bono are only pop stars (who avoid countries that have heavy taxation, strangely enough). They can mount national tours, and their records get a lot of airplay. Joe Jackson’s made damned sure to give his grandkids a tour of his old friends, and doubtful this will come to pass, but you can bet that the first thing he did was have those kids lay down some tracks, anything. He knows – crazy as he is – that something has to be built before it can be sold and if anyone ever cares what Michael’s kids can do, he’s ready. He worked hard for that much security, and his kids followed in his footsteps.

That seems to be the Ayn Rand theory, anyway.

You apparently missed the Al-TV segment wherein it was explained how Hagar came to be the lead singer of Van Halen.

And this year, no Republicans want to face him. Odd, that.