Chianti, Italy by Tony Bennett
I think Tony might have a point. /s
Posted on 08/22/2006 12:27:52 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Legendary singer Tony Bennett has slammed his home country of America for not contributing anything other than jazz music to world art and culture.
The If I Ruled The World crooner feels that Europe and Asia offer far more culturally than America does.
Bennett says, "I have travelled around the world to Asia and Europe. They show you what they have contributed to the world. The British show you theatre, the Italians show you music and art, the French show you cooking and painting, and the Germans show you science.
"The only thing that the United States, which is still a young country, has contributed culturally to the world is jazz - elongated improvisation. It's tragic."
And Bennett feels that Americans don't even appreciate the impact of jazz in popular culture.
He says, "Fifty years from now people will be bowing to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, just like impressionist painters like Monet, who were starving in their day. The Americans don't even know what they have come up with."
And comics. And the mystery novel.
And Blues. And Country. And Rock and Roll.
Maybe Bennett should bestow himself on another country.
Gotta tell ya, when you look at the hip-hop culture and the music, I think Tony has a point.
Bob Dylan says modern music is worthless
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1688105/posts
Tony Bennett was as suprised as anyone when he got to appear on MTV in the 1990s.
Hey, Bennett idiot: if it weren't for the US, they'd be lampshades or bars of soap!
Hells bells, we gave the world Fluff & PeanutButter Sandwiches, Jello, Spam, soap operas, game shows... I could go on and on.
Heh.
If it can be called "a slice of Americana" then it is culturally significant and a contribution to the world.
Some French brothers invented moving pictures but the science and technology were improved, refined, and perfected in America, the land of opportunity.
And technology. and photography. and the ability to travel to the moon and stars. and long slow, deep seductive kisses that last thru a rainstorm.
He's gonna be doing a duet with the Banana Boat Man?
That "moron" fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
He's a singer. We don't expect singers to be political geniuses or philosophers except Dylan. He's trying to point out something that we know already but keep ignoring since it didn't happen in the past five minutes.
He's gonna be doing a duet with the Banana Boat Man?
I wouldn't go quite that far.. lol
I agree,
the man has a point.
We don't create lasting art or great music anymore.
AlGore invented the Internet....
Of course, whether he's an "American" or not is subject to interpretation.
Start with the culture of representative democracy. The United States of America was the first and is the oldest functional representative democracy in the world.
Then think of the culture of political parties. We may or may not think this is so wonderful, but the good old USA gave birth to modern political parties.
How about "little" cultural things like the steam engine, electric lights, the assembly line, the polio vaccine, personal computers, skyscrapers, and similar things that Americans have contributed to the modern world? How about that good old brash American can-do spirit that yanked Europe and the world back from the brink in WWI, WWII and the Cold War?
How about the American musical theater, early Hollywood, the golden age of Hollywood, and television? How about the great songwriters who literally invented popular music and gave Bennett his material to sing? The Gershwins, Jerome Kern, Jonny Mercer, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein...the list is very long indeed.
How about Gable, Stewart, Wayne, Cooper, Grant, Bogart, Hepburn (both Audrey and Katharine), Garland, Monroe, Astaire and Rogers, and the whole panoply of stars who defined the very essence of what it is to be a movie star.
How about Sinatra, Garland (again), Crosby, Elvis, and the whole long list of great singers who made American popular music the most pervasive musical form in the world?
How about the moon landings, the space race, and all consumer items that resulted from it?
How about interstate highways, mass marketing of automobiles, the modern advertising industry, bikini bathing suits, transistors, the list of American inventions and cultural contributions goes on and on and on.
So Bennett should sit down and shut up, because he's making a fool of himself.
He should try spending some time in Appalachia.
Plenty of culture there and it's all-American. Story-telling, cooking, work ethic, music, art...the works.
Mr. Benedetto is a senile old boob.
You know, I really don't care about whether we as a people have created art, literature, and music to the liking of the elites in Europe. While they were playing, painting and writing, we were inventing. Things like the cotton gin, steam engine, steel plow, reaper, thresher, combine, sewing machine, railroad, telegraph, telephone, electric light, air conditioning, air planes, synthetic cloths, the transistor, and computers. The list is unending. Not to mention faster systems of manufacture of nearly everything.
Asians learn english. Moslems hate us becuase of our culture "corrupting" theirs. Europeans envy us. Mexicans are over running us because of our culture.
But I digress....
Tony Who?
From Life of Brian
REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES:Brought peace.
REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up! [bam bam bam bam bam bam bam]
[bam bam bam bam bam]
Lyle Lovett, Ray Benson
OK,
Patsy Cline I agree with,
And while I am a Star Trek fan,
I don't know if I would claim it as culture ;)
The Cinematographe made motion pictures very popular, and it could be better be said that Lumiere's invention began the motion picture era. In 1895, Lumiere and his brother were the first to present projected, moving, photographic, pictures to a paying audience of more that one person.
The Lumiere brothers were not the first to project film. In 1891, the Edison company successfully demonstrated the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures. Later in 1896, Edison showed his improved Vitascope projector and it was the first commercially, successful, projector in the U.S..
Because as you alluded, Americans have been people of vision.
"The cinema is an invention without a future" - Louis Lumière
I like Tony Bennett's music. But I wonder if he includes his own work as a part of America's failure to contribute anything to world culture. I doubt that he would, because that would be admitting that he's become very rich and very famous for doing nothing.
If he had taken this in a different direction-- for example, that a lot of artistic expression in America is junk, that would be true. It would also be true for Britain and France and Italy and Germany and everywhere else. But for him to overlook all of the accomplishments of Americans in art, music, literature, film, and even media such as radio, not to mention science and technology, and to boil it all down to jazz which --he says -- none of us appreciates anyway, is astounding.
Chianti, Italy by Tony Bennett
I think Tony might have a point. /s
This item "created" cultural voids about the size of .45 inches in diameter.
Well, Frankie, who invented the phonograph that enabled you to become a recording star? Television? The light bulb? Movies? The airplane that flies you all over the world? Telephones...regular and cell? The computer revolution? Frank, you wouldn't have had much of a career without the fantastic PRODUCTIVE, CREATIVE culture of the good old USA. You and the Dixie Chicks should just shut up and sing.
Dr Who, then? :-)
OK,
The Tardis could be held up as a great work,
sorta like...
like...
The Golden Arches??
Except, after I posted that, I remembered - Dr. Who is a BBC production.
How about Babylon 5?
We gave the world Bluegrass music, too. Of course, it's not as 'sophisticated' as fat women in strange costumes and men in tights bellowing out songs in an unintelligible language, but it's OURS.
And cooking? Give me a break. Southern fried chicken, Tex Mex, Soul food, Calabash style seafood, pig pickin's. Our food is real.
Science? Last I checked, we're still the only country on this planet to have a flag stuck in the surface of the moon. BMW's are nice cars but I don't think any of them have ever left the planet.
We may not be perceived as 'sophisticated' like the Europeans but we're real, we're honest and if you get in trouble, we'll help you out.
So, since we're our brothers keeper, the rest of the world should at least entertain us.
Hey Frenchie! How's bout whipping me up some Southern Fried Chicken while I watch these Italian fags dance around in tights and look at paintings by a guy that cut his ear off. And when the Islamofags get ready to take over your country, we'll bail you out.......again.
I agree somewhat with Tony. Frankly what recently has stood for American Pop Culture sucks, and I believe it does not reflect well on this country.
And thank God for Al Gore on that, specifically. llevrok running for cover......
Tony, STFU. You know nothing about culture you little prick.
Fifty years from now nobody will even recognize the name, Tony Bennet, except for the occasional disconnected geek doing non-publishable research on musical anomalies of the past century.
Yeah wake me up when another country produces a Frank Zappa.
Tony Bennet . . .
Just never construed him to be a paragon example of . . . culture.
We may not have the 7,000 years of cultural depth that China has . . . but we sure have blessed a lot of people around the world with hospitals, schools and most importantly THE GOSPEL.
In eternity . . . I suspect that will count for a lot more than China's 7,000 years of culture.
GOD IS THE BOSS.
THE BOSS WINS.
THE BOSS IS ALWAYS RIGHT.
Thankfully THE BOSS is Love personafied.
Hmmmmm
The Blues, Country and Rock & Roll.
God have mercy on us if that constitutes some of our main cultural contributions to life and the pursuit of happiness.
Though there are some Country ballads I like.
Sons of the Pioneers era is my preference.
And Marty Robbins.
Gotta tell ya, when you look at the hip-hop culture and the music, I think Tony has a point.
= = = =
Sadly we have been over energetic at majoring in minors and minoring in majors in our culture.
Hey dude. Randy Travis, George Striaght, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, even Toby Keith. They will be remebered more fondly than Bennet in 50 years. He's so damn overrated its pathetic.
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