Twenty years ago today ... Mark Steyn

The New Criterion ^ | 4 Nov 2007 | Mark Steyn

[GOPJ]

I was filling up at a gas station the other day and I noticed that outside, at the pump, they now pipe pop music at you. This is one of the most constant forms of cultural dislocation anybody of the pre-Bloom generation faces: Most of us have prejudices: we may not like ballet or golf, but we don’t have to worry about going to the deli and ordering a ham on rye while some ninny in tights prances around us or a fellow in plus-fours tries to chip it out of the rough behind the salad bar. Yet, in the course of a day, any number of non-rock-related transactions are accompanied by rock music.

Great styff - as always...

[awelliott]

Lengthy, but worth every minute it took to read it. Thanks for posting...

[Rane _H]

Is this ping worthy?

[cpanter]

Steyn is automatic. I’ll pick this gem:

To eliminate a century and a half’s tradition of beauty and grace from your identity isn’t “keepin’ it real,” it’s keepin’ it unreal in deeply unhealthy ways.

[garyhope]

I’ve written many letters to both Starbuck’s and Barnes & Noble complaining about the constant din of unavoidable music which for me ruins the prospect of sitting and having a moment of peace and quiet to read or think.

I thought there were supposed to be some quiet places where noise was prohibited. I must be naive and out of it.

Sometimes at both Starbuck’s and B&N, you can ask them to please turn down the music if you can find a clerk (yes, a clerk, not an “associate”) who is at least semi literate and knows how to use a knob and they may even comply. They’re not “allowed” to turn it completely off without incurring the wrath of “corporate”. Gotta sell them CD’s!!

[Congressman Billybob]

Every now and then, Mark Steyn writes a long and thoughtful piece for a tolerant and literate editor, and the piece demonstrates that Steyn is capable as a social philosopher, not merely a political commentator on current events.

Congressman Billybob

Latest article, "Ma, They're Makin' Eyes at Me"

Here's my announcement of running for Congress in 2008.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Recently, I was sent a clipping from Newsweek’s 1964 cover story on the arrival in America of the Beatles:

Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian-Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair. Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah!”) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments.

Hilarious, immediately brings to mind some of the criticisms I'm seeing in another FR thread on hip-hop. I don't believe music critics really ever have anything more worthwhile to say than "I liked it" or "I didn't like it". Every criticism of music is always far too subjective to be useful to anyone else.

[GOPJ]

I've had the same problem in restaurants. Dreadful "music" is played, but worse, the level it's played at is chosen by the kitchen and wait staff... Once, after being told the customers liked it, I walked around to the tables near me and asked. To a person they resented having to shout over the noise. Then I asked for the manager and explained "all of us" wanted it turned down or off or whatever. People were waving and smiling support -- it was turned down... Still, it's easier to vote with my feet and take myself and my money elsewhere...

[sitetest]

Dear Rane_H,

“Is this ping worthy?”

Yeah, sure, why not? I think that the issues raised by Allan Bloom were important, and are important to consider for those of us who love classical music.

Classical Music Ping List ping!

If you want on or off this list, let me know via FR e-mail.

Thanks,

sitetest

[mylife]

John Kerry—replied: “Oh sure. I follow and I’m interested. I’m fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there’s a lot of poetry in it. There’s a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you’d better listen to it pretty carefully, ’cause it’s important. I’m still listening because I know that it’s a reflection of the street and it’s a reflection of life.”

Really? John Kerry is “fascinated” by rap and “listening” to hip-hop? Think if you broke into the Kerry household and riffled through John and Teresa’s CD collection you’d find a single rap album? I didn’t mind Senator Kerry when he was being mocked as a flip-flopper, but I find him even less plausible as America’s first flip-flopper hip-hopper. You can smell the fear in his answer.

Bwaahaaahaaa! Steyn is delightful!

[mylife]

Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian-Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair. Musically they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah!”) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments.

There was nothing unusual about those sentiments in 1964. As Bryce Zadel of the Instant History website put it, “The Beatles generation became so mainstream that nobody can imagine that people felt that way, but Newsweek wasn’t just being stuffy, they were representing the overwhelming feelings of the vast majority of people over, say, twenty.” Including some quite cool people over twenty. That same year, in the film of Goldfinger, James Bond compares drinking unchilled champagne to listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.

Dr Frankenstein~ Goldfinger

[Zack Nguyen]

As big as the Beatles were in 1964, they were little more than bubblegum pop at that time. They were exactly the sort of band that today would inspire a ferocious backlash against them by “cool” listeners.

[mylife]

Honestly, I love music, almost all music, But I like the right to decide when and where to hear it.

At work, we have the canned stuff piped in.
I will stay late just to turn off the speakers, next morning?, some ahole cranked it up again.

Ever try to write an 800 page report listening to “muscrat love”?

[mylife]

There IS still beautiful music being made, this was released last month.

Mike Oldfield~ On My Heart

[Gerfang]

Ok. So how do we fix it?

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Thanks for posting. Sent this to my "post-modern" daughter to see if she if she will take off her Walkman for a few minutes.

[Borges]

To be fair, when they arrived in America, in early 1964, their catalog wasn’t nearly as rich as it would shortly become.

[ichabod1]

Yeah, but then they tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. That’s when the mystique set in.

[Zack Nguyen]

Very true.