Posted on 03/07/2008 11:56:33 AM PST by GQuagmire
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and your third grade teacher have some strikingly wrong similarities They’re both bloated, dowdy and prissy fossils that are way too full of unconditional love. Oh, and they both get positively giddy over James Taylor’s chardonnay-and-brie, adult-contemporary lullabies.
The Hall of Fame induction committee has never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings or make tough decisions - like actually defining what is and isn’t rock ’n’ roll - so for 22 years it has distributed inductions like Miss Anderson handed out ribbons on diorama day.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
That's a matter of opinion. To me, they are not. I like both.
Yeah,and there's something like 8000 plus post on an American Idol thread.Go over there and tell them American Idol sucks and watch yourself get flamed bigtime.That's why Rock and Roll is in the shape it's in now.People will only eat what's spoonfed to them by television these days.
It is mostly horrid, TV is following down the same path that ruined popular music: appealing to the lowest common denominator. And Broadway musicals have an additional burden, there’s just something wrong with the basic concept, I haven’t been able to figure it out but with rare exception Broadway musical songs are terrible. The golden era was mostly able to find 1 or 2 good songs per musical, Guys and Dolls has Luck Be a Lady, and of course there’s Porgy and Bess and King And I which are at least good (and Porgy and Bess frequently steps all the way to brilliant) pretty much from top to bottom. But by and large musical music is just bad, sophomoric, uninteresting, and just bad. It’s a cursed form, it’s so bad it can’t even be spoofed well, Zappa’s Thing Fish is one of his worst albums. and yes that means I dislike The Sounds of Music, lame music, terribly boring story, 100% not entertaining on any level in any rendition, ever.
Unusual modal chords doesn’t make good music, good music makes good music, and for the most part the Beatles did not make good music. They saccharine appeal to the common denominator rubbish, top 40 crap.
I doubt that. You probably like music I and other call saccharine, but I seriously doubt you’d call any music you like saccharine.
Most American pre Rock pop music came from musical theater. It’s been around for centuries when people like Mozart practiced it (The Magic Flute). Something like ‘West Side Story’ is just brilliant from start to finish (ignore the awful movie version) Rodgers and Hammerstein’s best shows were filled with great songs. ‘The Sound of Music’ produced quite a few standards. A lot of people think that Edelweiss and The Lonely Goatherd are actual Austrian folk songs. ‘My Favorite Things’ goes from major to minor every few bars and John Coltrane obviously found it fascinating. Even the much maligned Andrew Lloyd Webber has written some fine music.
Sorry but anybody that says Andrew Lloyd Webber has ever written anything that should be listened to simply lacks the ability to seriously criticize music. I’d rather listen to Love Me Do a thousand times than 1 minute of ANY Webber song. He’s the worst pablum manufacturer to ever walk the planet.
And as for the other West Side Story is not brilliant from start to finish, it mostly sucks. And while Sound of Music might have produced standards they were very low standards.
Rodgers and Hammersteins best show (singular), The King and I, was filled with great songs. Oklahoma is horrible, Carousel is worse, South Pacific is vile, and Sound of Music is some of the worst crap ever foisted on human being that didn’t result in a jailing.
Broadway musicals make terrible songs. Sure some of them are toe tapping, but it’s the kind of toe tapping that leaves you dirty afterwards. The lyrics are dumb, the music is pathetic, it is simply a flawed medium that only manages to produce good things on accident.
You need to go listen to some actual music that doesn’t suck. Pick up some Zappa (not Thing Fish), some King Crimson, some Miles Davis, some Alan Parsons, ACTUAL music that ACTUALLY wants you to be an intelligent listener and not just tap your toes like a brain dead zombie. Crap like musicals and the Beatles is music designed to have you drool to, real music the listener takes an active part, figures out which instrument to be paying the most attention to, notices how the rhythm is constructed from contributions of all the instruments but none play it in whole, has lyrics that are worth looking up on the web and just reading. Real music is the absolute antithesis of everything the Beatles, and Bernstein and Rodgers and Hammerstein ever stood for. Real music isn’t looking for the lowest common denominator, it’s looking for people willing to invest into the listening.
ALW never lived up to his early promise. ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ is quite good.
It’s hilarious that you’re claiming I don’t know anything about music since on other threads I got flamed for defending Arnold Schonberg.
Oklahoma revolutionzied American theater. It was the equivalent of what Aaron Copland was doing in the concert hall.
Leonard Bernstein may have been the most gifted American musician of the 20th century. Ever hear his symphonies? You’re making a fool of yourself comparing him to poseurs like Zappa. Miles Davis was more of an instrumentalist and arranger than composer (composers mostly aren’t important in post 30s Jazz anyway, the most important Jazzman of all time, Louis Armstrong was a negligble composer).
Jesus Christ Superstar is horrid cheese.
I wouldn’t say you don’t know anything about music, I’d say you’re just too nice, you want every song to be good so you find a reason for them to be. The reality is that 90% of all creative stuff done, every song, every book, every painting, every movie, stinks. That’s just how it is.
Oklahoma might have revolutionized American theater, but not in a good way. It opened the door for a rash of bad musical with terrible music. Not all revolutions are a good thing, in fact most of them aren’t.
Bernstein was a light classical pablumist. Heard some of his symphonies, well as much as I could manage to stay awake for.
You make a fool of yourself writing off Zappa. Miles Davis might have been “just” an instrumentalist, but he farted better music than anybody your touting ever hoped to make.
Actually before Oklahoma was mostly the cheese. Dancing girls and little to no dramatic weight. It opened the door for mixing musicals with ‘serious’ theater. Something Bernstien’s Kaddish symphony is light pabulum? A lot of it is atonal and very difficult to digest. It still doesn't really have a popular following and doesn't get performed all that often. In his other work he's a descendant of Mahler and Gershwin...the exact opposite of the Mantovani rubbish that makes up ‘light classical music’.
Zappa actually had pretensions to serious composition and admired Edgard Varese. None of his stuff is played in the concert hall anymore however. Even someone like Pierre Boulez who had some nice things to say about it in the 80s doesn't program it. You're just a prog rock/ jazz snob. :-) You have the same school in Classical circles who think melodic composers like Tchaikovsky were schlock-meisters.
In some ways I agree. But as I feared, I largely disagree.
Sorry, but to me, the SUCCESSES should definitely be in there, no matter what they “didn’t do”. I’m sick of all the snotty elitist sniveling about “he has to write something himself” to ever be considered “great”.
To me, pretty much any act that churned out the hits over and over should get recognition if “only” for performing. Who cares they didn’t write it themselves? They’re singers, musicians, and they carried it.
Kind of interesting, but often confusingly set up and paying way too much homage to the usual suspects from the ‘60s. Also, it’s VERY LAME that their “hall” is nothing but gold-colored signatures/names on a plexiglass lit board. No description, no explanation, no nothing.
Read comments as on this thread, and you’ll see it’s clear people (at least, the fringe on the Internet who always seem to be the 1s on these discussions) generally think anything pre-Beatles is “not rock&roll”. Damn elitist idiots, they CREATED it!
No we’re not talking about the cream of the crop. We’re talking about the standard average lowest common denominator crap, we’re talking about the 90%.
Oklahoma is dancing girls with less than zero dramatic weight.
Gershwin is another light classical guy. Can’t really say anybody that followed his path is the opposite of any other light classical guy.
Zappa had desires to serious composition, that’s why he got into the rock, to earn enough money to hire his own orchestras. None of whose stuff is played in the concert hall? Zappa?! You’d be wrong about that. Many modern symphony orchestras continue to play Zappa music, that’s what he spent large portions of his final years doing, transposing his rock band music to orchestral. As with most of the years he was alive his real audience is in Europe.
I am a music snob, much like how you’re a movie snob. You look at things in movies the average person doesn’t see, I’m pointing out things in music that I know you’re intelligent enough to see but for whatever reason you’re not looking.
I can make a good argument for Tchaikovsky being s schlock-meister but not because he was melodic, I’d nail him for his addiction to crowd pleasing percussion. Although as a metal fan I kind of like the first guy to make loud music for the sake of it being loud.
I’m quite possibly the only person under the age of 40 (or under the age of 30 for that matter) that still thinks the Moody Blues should be in the Hall.
not a bad article
but what sort of Hall of Fame do folks expect from a late middle aged homosexual chicken hawk ultra liberal shmo
Oklahoma is boring and stupid.
Sorry but Zappa is played. There’s a handful of Zappafests in Europe every year which feature both rock bands and orchestras playing his music. So it is being played, maybe not in Chicago but that doesn’t mean a damn thing, and your assumption that if it isn’t played there it wouldn’t be played anywhere shows why assumptions are a bad thing. Heck right on their website they talk about a guy wholast year that plays Zappa ( http://www.cso.org/main.taf?p=7,1,2,4,100 John Ethridge) doesn’t look like he played any there but it demonstrates you’re wrong. Actually they seem to mention how their people like Zappa a lot and yet don’t show anything featuring his stuff, might be something interesting going on there, maybe they’re holding a grudge over Illinois Enema Bandit.
I never said anything that isn’t on the fringe or cusp of the fringe is worthless. I said the Beatles and Broadway musicals were mostly worthless. But I also named two musicals that are clearly not fringe and two very popular Beatles songs as good to brilliant stuff. I liked John Williams up through Empire but in the last 20 years or so I think he’s lost his edge. Jaws, the first Star Wars and Close Encounters are some of the best movie scores ever made.
Most of Beethoven’s loud stuff came when he was going deaf. He got loud so he could hear it. Tchaikovsky just seemed to like getting loud sometimes.
I don’t know about manly. I hate light classical, mostly because it’s slow and boring and I think wastes the orchestra, you get 80 instruments to play with you just use them. Mozart is plenty entertaining. I like Wagner because he projects ego through his music better than anybody, his pieces are so full of themselves, it’s very interesting.
Illinois Enema Bandit! Good light clasical music like Offenbach operettas and Strauss waltzes make great use of the orchestra. Brahms thought Strauss was a master of orchestral sound. With Wagner, Ego and Id is is more like it! ‘Tristan’ is a celebration of sensuality that’s borderline obscene...just the music I mean. It still ruffles Puritan feathers to this day. Did you know that Frank Zappa named one of his albums after a Leonard Bernstein ‘Young People’s Concert’ (’Is there Humor in Music?’). If you ever get a chance watch the DVDs of those YPC, Bernstein did. It’s some of the very best in a dreaded genre (music appreciation) ever done by anyone.
Elvis, however, is where everything finally converged ( Blues synthesized with Country and a little Bluegrass ) and crossed over to reach a mass audience. He almost single handedly kick started an entire cultural revolution that in many ways still has not stopped. No one else could have really done that at that critical point in time.
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