Thursday, September 30, 2010

Traditional Rock

On the radio today, classical WDPR, I heard an interview with the Blue Man Group, who have a performance in Dayton soon.  During the interview the music that accompanies their performance was mentioned.  One of the troupe referred to it as rock - "well, maybe not traditional rock." 

Dear Lord, I must be old.  Rock is now traditional.  Chuck Berry, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney - give it up; get your rockin' chairs ready.  You're trad now.  Though, I suppose, since so many of the originators of the genre are dead, maybe it's just as well.  We can just ignore how young most of them were at their deaths. 

In a way, it's kind of healthy, and I've seen few enough signs of cultural health these days.  Young people, including young musicians, know and have some appreciation for the rock masters of the Eisenhower through Nixon years.  When I was young, it wasn't done to admit to any taste for or appreciation of our parents' music.  It was yet another not-so-smart attitude from the Baby Boomer generation, and I'm glad our kids did not continue it.  Thanks, youngsters! 

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The Right is Insane, the Left is Impotent and there’s Nobody in the Center

Before Microsoft Windows, the classical example of insanity was repeating an action and expecting it to have a different result. Now, of course, a PC service tech won’t even listen until you’ve repeated it twice at least.


This has had an unfortunate effect on American politics. Now, even those few people who know a little of history are likely to ignore it. People now hold economic and political opinions as revealed dogma; only truly evil people would disagree.

The American right wing is advocating a continuation, even an expansion, of the very policies that put us in the current predicament. The policies that produced the 1930’s have also produced the 2010’s. The American left is divided into a hand-wringing moderate wing, and a socialist nut-squad who cannot see that their ideas as well have been tried and failed.

In party terms, the Republicans have a moderate, center-oriented wing but it is being bludgeoned into submissive irrelevance by the true-believing right. The Democrats have a moderate, center-oriented wing but it keeps trying for bi-partisan solutions, apparently unaware that “bi-partisan” requires two sides trying to come together. At least the Democrats are not yet controlled by their maniacs, but they have accomplished so little.

It seems that currently the right-wing crazies outnumber the left-wing nutcases by a fairly large amount. So the right may wind up in control of things when our balance is completely gone. And that, as Arianna Huffington is saying, will result in the USA becoming just another third-world country – the richest few will control everything, and we will no longer have a large middle class.

All summer without a post and I come up with another h-in-h rant. I’m sorry. I’ll try to have something more cheerful for the next post. I’d better; I have another gripe almost ready to go.