Church of the New Apostate

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Working on a massive rant about music and the arts.  Will copy here.

[Richter]

BUENO.

[Richter]

Note to young men:

You may hear some noise from these people or groups talking more about "Manliness".  Like character, integrity, strength, or proper use of testosterone are some kind of fine lost art.

They're NOT.

Growing your chin pubes won't do shit.
Carrying a pocketknife won't do shit.
Suspenders, pipe smoking, bourbn drinking, gun shooting board nailing, woods walking, Jack Londoning, Melville, Kipling, Kennedy, striahgt razoring, Masons, turkish baths and Indian clubs won't do SHIT EITHER. 

That little voice in the back of your head - the one that you disregard because it sounds like daddy or grandaddy - that tells you to do something because it's "Right" or "responsible" - start there.

If you don't have this voice find a role model.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Note to young men:

You may hear some noise from these people or groups talking more about "Manliness".  Like character, integrity, strength, or proper use of testosterone are some kind of fine lost art.

They're NOT.

Growing your chin pubes won't do shit.
Carrying a pocketknife won't do shit.
Suspenders, pipe smoking, bourbn drinking, gun shooting board nailing, woods walking, Jack Londoning, Melville, Kipling, Kennedy, striahgt razoring, Masons, turkish baths and Indian clubs won't do SHIT EITHER. 

That little voice in the back of your head - the one that you disregard because it sounds like daddy or grandaddy - that tells you to do something because it's "Right" or "responsible" - start there.

If you don't have this voice find a role model.

[Richter]

Note to young men:

You may hear some noise from these people or groups talking more about "Manliness".  Like character, integrity, strength, or proper use of testosterone are some kind of fine lost art.

They're NOT.

Growing your chin pubes won't do shit.
Carrying a pocketknife won't do shit.
Suspenders, pipe smoking, bourbn drinking, gun shooting board nailing, woods walking, Jack Londoning, Melville, Kipling, Kennedy, striahgt razoring, Masons, turkish baths and Indian clubs won't do SHIT EITHER. 

That little voice in the back of your head - the one that you disregard because it sounds like daddy or grandaddy - that tells you to do something because it's "Right" or "responsible" - start there.

If you don't have this voice find a role model.

Ever see a college student with a lumberjack beard try to choke down a double shot of rye, wincing at every sip?  It's crap like that. 

I'm still trying to put my finger on the other side of the equation

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm still trying to put my finger on the other side of the equation

[Richter]

Cramulus once spoke "Some people really fuck up their dicks"

There was context, we swear.

Upon reflection, how does this serve as a metaphor for the adult males life.  Each one a history of the destruction of his dick.

[Richter]

So Spake Richter

Idiot proof anything well enough and life will oblige with a finer idiot.

Any science fiction series, written long enough, will degenerate to everything being saved by weird space sex.  (Niven and Herbert, we're looking at YOU.)

Keep your hands to yourselves or you won't be allowed to have any.

Yes I'm evil, but does that make me a bad person?

[Richter]

"Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't paranoid, too.  Is it not written: The entire world operates on ancient butthurt and paranoia?  Watch thy back, trust nobody, sleep with one eye open."
- The Tucson Codex 5:32

Likely developed concurrent, yet independent to Richterrian Standard Operating Procedure #2

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The music rants, so far:

Part 1

In The Beginning, there was The Club, and the semi-erect hominid howled and invented the drum solo on the skull of the bigger, meaner ape who was after the same female ape.  That's how it all started, really.  Music was born, but it was largely a collection of dull thuds and cracking rocks.  It kinda sucked.

A million years went by.  People behaved very badly.  It wasn't because of a devil or original sin or whatever, it was because people are monkeys and monkeys are dicks.  Eventually, The Gods grew weary of the dickishness, and cursed the people so that they could see their fate...Much like the cyclops, but not in detail.  No, alone among the animals, humans understood that they were on a great conveyor belt;  born at one end, and the sounds of a coffin closing at the other.  Everyone knew this, but you don't really believe it until you're in your 40s.

Now, mankind had to do a couple of things in response to this curse.  First, they had to survive while on the conveyor belt (this is what we call "industry" or "work" or "a job, hippie").  Second, humans had to find some sort of way to forget that horrible final noise at the end of the conveyor.  This was really, really important, because humans had an instinct that told them if they paid too much attention to that noise, they'd become depressing and nihilistic, and nobody would invite them to parties.

So music, among other forms of art, was improved upon.  You still had the club, of course, but you also had the bow, so people started messing with stringed instruments.  Mandolins.  Hurdy Gurdys.  Lyres.  Music really sucked for a long, long time (and still does, if you're willing to shell out $30 to watch geeks eat mud pies at "renne faires").

At some point, a GENIUS monkey decided it might be a good idea to MIX the club and the bow.  The first proto-piano was born.  At this point, it was possible to make something resembling modern music.  But the music was almost immediately hammered into very tight formulas by the boss monkeys (this was to be repeated forever), for ritualized dances at their palaces.

And then Punk was born.  Punk was born the first time a monkey said "I like this music stuff, but I don't like it YOUR way.  I'm going to do it MY way."  This revolution, once ignited, spread like wildfire.  Before you knew it, you had Wolfgang Mozart and Beethoven and all their pals yelling "FUCK YOU, OLD MAN!  I'LL DO IT MY WAY!"  Suddenly, you had rulers paying them to make the music they WANTED to make, because - frankly - they were simply too talented to kill off.

Music was sorta better for a few hundred years.  But at some point, one group of humans in North America had decided that it would be good idea if they made another group of humans do all their shit-work.  They'd killed off most of the humans who were there before them (and who didn't make very good slaves at all, when you come right down to it), so they imported humans from another area.  These humans had spent most of the preceding history isolated from the main groups of history, and they had their own languages, culture...and, mostly, music.  Then they more or less performed forced labor for 400 or so years.  This made life miserable, so they improved their music.

Then there was a not-at-all confusing war over some very confusing subjects.  The slaves were freed...But by no means were they equal.  They got shat upon for more than a century afterward, which caused their culture to grow even FASTER, because culture = human creativity + human misery + time.  Eventually, the dominant race found out about this music.

There were two reactions.  The younger of the group fell instantly in love with the music the ex-slaves produced, because their own music was sterile, basically a rehash of the awful old shit played to the kings back in the day.  The older primates frowned upon this music and it was denounced from the pulpit as being immoral.  This, of course, only made the youngsters want it more.

Jazz was born.  You remember jazz.  Good old haven't done anything since 1940 jazz.  And in 1940, after a couple of decades in labor, it gave birth to the blues, which gave birth to R&B, which gave birth to rock n roll.

And with each iteration, the previous generation bemoaned the death of REAL music.  Oh, the music they were talking about WAS slain, by Chuck Berry and Duke Ellington and of course Elvis Presley and The Beatles and so on...But it wasn't the REAL music that was dead, it was the stale old zombie music that the older folks didn't want to let go of, because it now reminded them of when they were further back up the conveyor, and the horrible noise at the end wasn't as clear.

It was during this time that the record companies had formed.  Music existed to make more music; recording companies existed to make money.  This unholy combination meant that more music WAS made, but only music PROVEN TO SELL.  The results were fairly predictable.  Every time something new managed to wiggle its way on stage and succeed, countless copies of it were made by competing recording contracts.

It now became necessary for the old guard to be killed in order for the new music to flourish.

And so rock gave way to heavy metal (a he-man style of music that involved wearing tights and cosmetics and singing sappy love ballads), which in turn was slain by a completely different art form, mockery (Beavis and Butthead).  This allowed some loser named Kurt Cobain to drag a pack of sniveling Seattle jackasses out into broad daylight.  He then shot himself, and the scene was left open again.

By this point, the descendants of the slaves had noticed that THEIR music had left them for another man.  So they did Motown, which was more or less re-hashed R&B.  They flailed around a bit, got lost in the disco swamp for a while, and then THEY DID IT.  They went out and invented rap, which gave birth to hip hop.  Hip hop pissed EVERYONE off, even - especially - the shitnecks who had claimed the title "Punk" for themselves, back in 1977, by telling EVERYONE to fuck off.  Police?  Fuck off.  Powerful and self-satisfied white folks?  Fuck off.  White kids, looking to join in?  FUCK OFF.

It was a hell of a time, and it was PUNK AS FUCK, and it allowed people like Chuck D to yell a lot.  That yelling was kind of necessary.  But, after a time, the recording companies got their hands of these guys as well.

And the recording companies knew how to take "PUNK AS FUCK" and turn it into "pop" by this point.  Oh, yes.

A few other things happened, but they're basically just repeats of the stuff I mentioned above.  But the end result is, every musical scene goes flat (faster if the recording companies are involved), and has to be killed to make way for the next wave.  Unless you want to start thinking about that horrible noise up ahead (which ain't so far ahead, these days).

But there's always a few who don't want to let go, isn't there?

Part 2

One phenomena that has always made me laugh is when you get a bunch of people standing around arguing about which music is "authentic".  What the hell does that even mean?  I mean besides the obvious message, which is "we are going to demonstrate why we are more knowledgeable than you on this subject".

Music is art, and art is almost wholly subjective.  That's the whole point.  There's nothing "authentic" about it...If people LIKE it and LISTEN to it, then it has accomplished its goal. This is why music critics are both wholly unnecesarry and also full of shit.  If you need someone to tell you what music you should like, then you should probably just fling yourself off a cliff.

Hell, even King Crimson has fans, right?  Granted, they are all themselves musicians, and they seem to like it because it lets them discuss technique and other inside shit.  They're basically like a travelling engineering convention, when you get right down to it.  Same with Tower of Power.  And you know what?  Good on 'em.  There's nothing wrong with targeting your own industry.  Point is, someone enjoys it, whether or not they enjoy the music itself, or the "technique" discussions. 

Now, calling something "garbage" is pretty damn arrogant.  You can call it "stale", "derivative", or whatever, and be accurate.  But "garbage" is imposing your personal opinion on other people.  You are in essence stating that they enjoy the wrong things, as defined by you.  If nothing else, it's an insult.

"Stale", though, stale is a different matter.  Art that is repetitive, that is never challenged, becomes flat.  It fails to serve its purpose, which is to change your emotional state.  Art cannot be static and remain art.  This is WHY jazz is deader than yesterday's fish sandwich, and why pop has to have its knees shot off every few years or so.

This isn't to say that there aren't classics.  People still listen to Wagner.  People still listen to Elton John.  People for some reason still listen to The Beatles.  Reason being, some samples of genres are so good that they maintain their ability to change your emotional state decades or even centuries after they're made.

"Derivative", on the other hand, is another way of saying "influenced by" or sometimes even "copied from".  Right now, country music is busy copying every pop song made in the 80s.  Taylor Swift is a good example of this, as is the latest rash of male country performers.

Both derivative and stale music points toward a cultural stagnation.  Nothing new is generated, nothing original exists to startle people.  The reason this happens is both cultural inertia ("old Aerosmith is the only Aerosmith worth listening to", or "music was far better when I was a teen"), which is usually the voice of those that are Too Damned Old...Or it is the result of a timid recording industry (which is currently being countered by the ability of small organizations to record on their own).

Part 3

Thing about being around artists of any kind is, you're going to meet some interesting people.  Back in 1985 or so, there was a joint in Chicago called The Cabaret Metro.  It was an awful little shithole of a place, but I saw Lou Reed there, and Black Flag, and a bunch of other great acts.  The only constant there was Jerry the Skinhead.

Jerry was this skinny little guy who bounced for the place.  Bald, Doc Martins, stripey pants, suspenders, white tee shirt.  And his smile.  He spent the entire evening on a folding chair, watching the crowd with this horrid little smile that said "I'll be wearing this smile when I beat you to death.  It won't change a bit."  He scared the living blue Jesus out of all of us.  There were never any fights, and that was a rough fucking crowd, even for the 80s.

The Metro wouldn't have been the same experience without him, which only goes to show that in the world of art, it's the personalities that really make the difference, even if that personality is a 2mm deep smear of glee and homicidal mania.

And it's usually personality that determines who the next big thing is.  Example:  Madonna vs Cindi Lauper.  That contest (which wasn't bitter or even recognized, I think, at the time) determined music's direction for about 5 years or so.  Cindi Lauper had a better voice, this amazing range, but she fell down flat when she allowed herself to be defined by Girls Just Wanna Have Fun...While Madonna moved from teeny bopper to one "shock" after another.  When she made the video for Like a Prayer, her career was sealed, because EVERYONE had an opinion on her at that point.  Not only the burning crosses thing, but she made suckface with Thank You Black Jesus.  And everyone was like "HEY!  JESUS WASN'T BLACK!  AND WHY'S THAT THERE WHITE WOMAN MAKIN' KISSY FACE WITH HIM?"  Pissed EVERYONE off, usually for multiple reasons.  Cindi Lauper was never heard from again.  Which is kind of a shame.  She seemed so nice.

It's hard to remember how disturbing that video was when it came out, given that by today's standards, it was pretty small potatoes.  But at the time it gave people the screaming jimjams, and that's what most people want in their art.  They WANT to hate it, to get really, really fucking angry.  They WANT to be upset...Just so they can remember what an honest emotion FEELS like.  And they weren't going to get that shit from The Beach Boys, that's for fucking sure.  There's a band that came out of the gate stale.  Wait, they get a chapter all to themselves, because they were so fucking awful.  So, yeah, that's next.

Part 4
The Scum Also Rises

The Beach Boys formed in 1961, to sing to people in 1951.  They WERE the 50s.  Wholesomely dressed young men singing wholesome songs, and getting insanely fucked up when nobody was looking.  Their music was stale, the only song they ever sang that meant anything (Sloop John B) was an unattributed blatant rip off of a West Indies traditional song. 

They sang about hot rods, surfing, and women...Nice and safe "rebellions".  Absolutely sterile.  They were as fucking vanilla as it gets, and catered to their audience's PARENTS, who were, after all, the ones buying the records for the little darlings.  And the parents were glad to do so, because THIS:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Sullivan_Beach_Boys.jpg

...Wasn't dangerous.  It was SAFE.  The alternative, THIS:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Chuck_Berry_1971.JPG/497px-Chuck_Berry_1971.JPG

...Didn't look quite so wholesome, so SAFE.

In fact, it is my argument that The Beach Boys and all the other Jan & Dean rip-offs were what directly led to the acid rock movement.  Society had narrowed it's value of "acceptable" til it became fashionable to be a reject.  Also, the Boomers had figured out that it was easier to get girls into bed with them if they were on quaaludes instead of a beach blanket.

The really SAD thing is that The Beach Boys have dragged on, zombie-like, to this very day, even after the only member of the band that could actually surf drowned.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/The_Beach_Boys%2C_May_29%2C_2012.jpg/800px-The_Beach_Boys%2C_May_29%2C_2012.jpg

Make it stop.  For the love of God, make it stop.

Part 5
Corporate Whores

First off, let me say that *I* am a corporate whore.  I work for a multinational, and I'd be willing to bet that I actually make more money at it - for less work - than the vast bulk of recording artists.  And that ain't saying much.

There's a reason that corporate music sells, incidentally.  Several, really.  The financial backing and technology are available to make decent studio recordings.  The support in the form of songwriters, etc, is right there.  And because these things are in place, the evil corporate masters can be a little choosy when it comes to basic competence in the artists in question (though this is hardly infallible).

The main reason most people who hate corporate music hate it is that it's COMMONLY AVAILABLE.  Everyone knows what you're talking about when you mention them.  You aren't SPECIAL, because you didn't have to go to some moldy-ass flooded basement to hear the band playing their instruments badly in a room whose accoustics are about the same as my fucking bathroom.  It's hard to sound knowledgable when any damn fool can bop down to the WalMart and buy the album, right?

That isn't to say that there isn't an element of soulessness in corporate music.  Typically, the best corporate music (Elton John/Bernie Taupin) have the most control over their own projects.  You've got a production team whose exec has a veto, but for the most part, proven money-makers are left alone unless they're about to fuck it all up (Warrant's Cherry Pie album was originally intended to be called Uncle Tom's Cabin, but an exec with a better-than-usual amount of common sense put a stop to that).

But to state that ALL corporate music sucks is to state that 99.9999 of available music sucks, and to say THAT is like stapling the Brad Pitt hat directly to your skull, and pedaling your tallbike off into a glorious future of really shitty, but really underground music.

Part 6

Art critics are basically the carbuncles of the art world.  This isn't because they are bad people (though every one I've ever met has been a shitbag of enormous proportions), but rather because - like art - art criticism is market-driven.  No critic ever made a name by stating the obvious (though in some cases, they don't have much choice...For example, the last 3 Star Wars flicks made).

No, they have to basically be contrarian to sell their columns, or else they have to take something everyone already KNOWS is shit, and grind the artist's face in their own poop long after doing so has stopped being useful (yes, we knew the Nickleback album was gonna suck.  We knew this.  Thank you for wasting our time.).

The first thing to remember about critics is that critics are failed artists.  Either they tried and failed, or they didn't have the guts or the work ethic to do art...Though usually they still play at it, or talk about their latest "ongoing work" (that never actually gets completed) at parties, to people desperately trying to escape.  As a result, they hate artists, and will spend hours or days trying to find a reason why any given successful artist is crapulous.  As we've seen, this will include made up definitions for standard terms, accusations of inauthenticity, and casual dismissal of anyone making money as "corporate whores", etc.

Everyone has seen the above (except for the critics themselves, of course) in action.  The real question is, if I am forced to talk to an art critic - at a party, for example - what do I do?  My advice at this point would be to roll up a newspaper and beat the critic to death with it.  Yes, killing a man with a rolled-up newspaper takes real effort, but you and I both know the motivation to do so will overcome any considerations of time and effort.  You have to be firm about this sort of thing.  You have to say "NO" and then follow through, so the other critics understand, otherwise they'll be on your doorstep at 2 AM, with a stupid smile on their face and their pants around their ankles.

So, you know, if you want to know if a piece of art is GOOD, my suggestion is that you LOOK at it or LISTEN to it YOURSELF, and FORM YOUR OWN OPINION.  If there is significant risk involved, you can send me a copy of the art and $300, and I'll let you know.  This allows you to protect your family from pictures of poker-playing dogs, Puddle of Mud videos, etc.  Safety first.

[LMNO]

Thanks for compiling these!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Thanks for compiling these!

No problem.  I felt the need to separate them from the thread about holist that I foolishly posted them in.

[LMNO]

Thanks for compiling these!

No problem.  I felt the need to separate them from the thread about holist that I foolishly posted them in.

I SEE WHUT U DID THAR.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

#6 is so true.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

#6 is so true.

There was this guy, Noah Antwiler, who used to do a movie review in the back of Knights of the Dinner Table, back in the day.  He was HILARIOUSLY BAD at it, and the letters to the editor EVERY MONTH had people sticking up for him or DEMANDING that his column be removed.  Every 2 months or so, there were at least 2 people who cancelled their subscription because of him.

Because of a 1-2 page column that was FILLER in the back of a comic/gaming magazine.

Critics like that are GEMS.  I'd laugh my ass off every month, during proof-reading.  He wasn't pretentious or arrogant, he was just REALLY REALLY BAD at dissecting a movie.  The ONE time he made sense (his justifiably brutal review for the 3rd Pirates movie, long after I left), resulted in a dozen cancellations.

And he was one of the GOOD ones.  He was doing it for fun, with no educational background or any work experience in film.  He made bad reviews an art form of its own, though I am certain that this was only partially intentional.