Pancho and Lefty ~ Townes Van Zandt
B song ~ Edgar Meyer and Bela Fleck
Over the Rainbow ~ Papa John Creach
3 Strange Days ~ School Of Fish
Posted on 09/11/2014 4:45:53 PM PDT by WesternCulture
Excellent call on Bela Fleck. His song “Sliding Down” is among the best of a fine tradition of American music. It is reminiscent of Dvorak, Copland, Foster. It is a masterpiece in my humble opinion.
I think people who have read you over the years do know that about you. You love to tweak the Americans, but its always good-natured and always gets a good thread going.
Look at this one, for example. You pulled our whiskers about the execrable crap that passes for American music these days, which is true, and got a good thread going about what various FReepers consider good music, yourself included. Great thread and great fun.
- Thank you very much for your friendly words.
Like you seem to be perfectly aware of, the reason that I often express myself in a rather fierce and provocative way is I want to stir up a debate, not that I'm a ridiculous America basher or anything like that. Few, if any, of us Europeans who master things like reading and spelling are.
Best of regards.
Magnificent.
This music touched my heart.
What chaps the hide of Europeans is that the US has taken the global lead in business, science, medicine, sports—and both popular and high art.
A case could be made for too much art of all forms having taken a wrong turn in the past 100+ years, but America is still squarely the cultural leader—high and low.
Sincere thanks for opening up my senses to this great music!
Speaking of Tennessee (and Sweden), have you heard of Doug Seegers?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-m1V6dqQC8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjfbHiVpvrc
Seegers in concert (the guy introducing him sounds like he’s got some strange object made of tin foil up his nostrils, but never mind):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6vqhCalqg
A case could be made for too much art of all forms having taken a wrong turn in the past 100+ years, but America is still squarely the cultural leader—high and low.”
I'm the first to acknowledge the greatness of America, but nevertheless I'd like to question your ideas about America leading the World in “business, science, medicine, sports—and both popular and high art”:
- According to the World Bank as well as the CIA, The European Union has a larger total GDP than the US (and if Norway and Switzerland were members the difference would be even greater)
- Europe has already got the CERN, in 2019 we'll have the ESS.
- Medicine? Let's call it a draw.
- In the area of sports the US leads in basketball and certain fields of athletics but not in a lot of other fields.
- Art is flourishing in both America and Europe.
one of the things we can learn from others is to benchmark our own country against the best of the other countries.”
- This is why patriotism always will work and multiculturalism never will.
Patriots like you and I are allowed to bite back here on Free Republic and whenever the Americans wish to attack us they know what's coming to them next time issues are to be settled in a hockey rink.
They're being good hosts and if we would all meet in person it would absolutely end up in a great round of laughter, drinking and other healthy things like BBQs, Smorgåsbords and buttertarts. But after such a great party each and everyone goes back to his own house (at least after a day or so) and respect the ideals of one family, one nation, one flag. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, is the opposite of this great order.
In any case, disposing of both the CERN and the ESS will be a major advantage and I hope the ESS will encourage even more young Europeans to devote themselves to the study of advanced physics. But we also need to fund our universities and other organizations that perform scientific research better.
When it comes to economy, America sure has a larger GDP/capita than the EU as well as Europe as a whole. However, the total nominal GDP of the EU is bigger than the GDP of USA.
The last 10-20 years America has also enjoyed a higher economic growth rate than most Western European nations, but, nota bene, the US has also had a far higher population growth, something that quite naturally always will affect GDP growth in a positive direction (as long as productivity per capita, for some reason, doesn't decrease in a dramatic way).
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