[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.

[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.

[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

[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”?

[Gerfang]

Ok. So how do we fix it?

[Da Coyote]

The replies have centered on the music. However, Bloom’s book is a treasure. He targeted our culture with a 50 cal in that book and scored a direct hit.

It’s still a superb read.