I wonder if anybody else remembers the Garnett Mimms hit, Cry Cry Baby, that briefly lit the charts in about what 1964? Janis Joplin later covered it, but Garnett Mimms had such a wonderful range in his voice. Mimms is still alive, but I bet he can't still sing like he did then. What an athletic, operatic voice for lovely rock. We should turn it on for all our Democratic friends who have come home crying that they lost again.People do need to grieve when they've lost, but an invitation to cry coming from the winners is more of a taunt. And I've spent so many nights, reading comments on this blog, and so many times, lefties have countered the complaints of righties by saying things like "whine and bitch, whine and bitch," "call the wahmbulance," and "waaaaaaahh." It's meant to rub it in, and it's not Mimmsy at all.
But what I said to Meade was I remember when that song — and I mean the Garnet Mimms version — was on the radio. It was 1963. I was 12. I listened to top 40 AM radio, and I liked the songs that felt like they were about teenagers. There was a brightness and a happiness to the songs that dominated the top 40. Even the songs about crying. The biggest song about crying in 1963 was "It's My Party." Lesley Gore is gloriously triumphant in her claim of the right to cry.
"Cry Baby" seemed to come from a dreary 1950s world of old people and their problems. Meade says he loved music like that. Maybe that look into the weighty, complicated lives of adults was enticing to some really young radio listeners, but I wanted it on a different station. Here, I said, here's my answer to that "Cry Baby":
I love the original Kinks version too, and you'd better believe I had all the early Kinks albums
, Kinks, Kinda Kinks, and Kinks Kontroversy. I still love that kind of [kinda] thing. It still appeals to me more than the anguished bellyaching of soul music.
***
Bonus: "Best Songs About Crying."
Posts
151 comments:
I'm a fan of the Janis Joplin version. Best White Female Blues Singer evah.
My favorite is "Piece of My Heart"
LOL academic plagiarism spam
I like the Pretenders' version better than the Kinks' version.
That Pretenders version of "Stop Your Sobbing" is the best ever cover of a Kinks song. It's got a ton of swagger, but is also gorgeously melodic. Plus, it's one of the great gender reversals as a tough "modern" (well, ca. 1981) woman lowers the boom on a cringing modern man.
You've got great taste in music Ann - but then you and I are from the same generation. Love it when one can connect with the similar music interest, similar basic values, and similar political philosophies all at once.
Love "Cry Baby". Like Joplin's best but Mimms is great. I'm with Sarge about "Piece of my Heart". Janice made you feel it.
an invitation to cry coming from the winners is more of a taunt.
Yes, it is. Sometimes it's OK. It's like the big kid slamming the little kid bullying him. After a certain point, retribution is OK.
"Everybody Hurts" by REM. Great line: "and you're sure you've had enough of this life, hang on"
And now it's back to the DU and Kos to read the weeping and feed the schadenfreude beast.
This post reminds me of Skeeter Davis' The End of The World...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BweCXILNe28&feature=related
Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow up above?
Indecipherable Lyrics:
Okay, at the end of "Stop Sobbing," I've always wondered does Chrissie Hynde say "don't weeze, don't weeze"?
It's not printed on any lyric sheet.
I actually like her, but jeez, can't sob, can't weeze, can't eat meat, can't wear fur...
Good idea- I will listen to my Kinks greatest hits CD today and Janis Joplin greatest hits too.
In reading the lyrics for "Cry Baby" I pictured the Professor speaking (singing) to all of those young innocent simplistically liberal protesters, trying to clue them into her experience as a once hippy-chick now older, wiser but still cool mama:
Don't you know,
Honey, nobody ever gonna love you
The way I try to do.
Who'll be willing to take your pain
And all your heartache, too ?
Honey, I swear I'll always, I'll always be around
(all the while, Meade gets the video.)
An addition to that top 100:
Darius Rucker (aka Hootie) Let her cry
Re: Chrissy Hines and the Pretenders
Where are all of the great female rockers!?
The musical movement that never was.
Never heard the Dinah Washington version, but everybody remembers Julie London doing, "Cry Me a River".
I notice they don't have Timi Yuro's "What's 'A Matter, Baby", so bad it was good.
PS You must have listened to WIBG. Or did you cross over to WDAS and WHAT?
AS usual the rightists take a subversive --in this case Janis Joplin-- and twist her music into some type of justification for their populist-libertarian agenda; like hey we're radicals too, man-- though for Nixon Reagan, Rehnquist,Gingrich BushCo, etc. bull sh*t.
The point isn't sobbing--rather, it's the reasonable non-conservative response to yokels (including the TP yokels in House and Senate) who insist that supply-side/de-reg policies always works, when it...don't.
Hank Williams" "I'm so Lonesome I Could Cry" is at the top of the linked list, and I can't disagree.
I like the version by the Cowboy Junkies, too.
Yesterday we were the radical right-wing. J can't make up whats left of his mind.
And Professor, just to break you out of your Boomer nostalgia, for pure Millennial chutzpah you gotta love
Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River"
You're still right wing, Fen-Trash-- as my point indicates. That hasn't changed dimwit, just as your reading comprehension hasn't quite reached like 10th grade. Got that hick? .
Stick to some GOP jinglehemiers like the beach boys, or Pat Boone and leave Janis alone, dreck.
Best cover of a Kinks song ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fAd7MoT9c8
I don't think Zappa ever did a cry song, but if he did it would be poignant and I'd like the beat because it would be easy to dance to.
The best Dem song to bemoan Prosser's sudden come back is a Righteous Brothers hit: You've Lost That Winning Feeling"
Ah, the Kinks. I caught their act live at Felixstowe Pavillion, Feliexstowe-by-the-sea, circa 1970 while stationed in the UK in the USAF at RAF Bentwaters/Woodbridge.
Was the perfect venue--a crowd of no more than 2-300 in a structure the size of a small HS gym. w. the audience all standing no more than 4-6 deep and booze being served at the back of the room.(The dirty little secret in those days was that British rock bands toured America for the big payday, but played in the smallest of places to the smallest of crowds in the UK to keep their local fan base alive.)
FWIW Ray Davies is a stand-up guy. While vacationing in New Orleans in the early 90s (he loves the place and comes often) he was mugged & robbed, but chased the guy down the street,, who turned and shot Ray in the hand. They eventually tracked the guy down and Davies flew back from England to testify at the trial.
"The anguished bellyaching of soul music."
No comment. [spit]
Phil 3:14 said...
Where are all of the great female rockers!?
Not many in the 60's, but you'd sure have to count Joplin, Grace Slick, and Linda Ronstatt
Hey Crack, You are an expert...
how would you rate Joplin as a White Female Blues Singer?
"Everybody Hurts" by REM. Great line...
Perhaps the most desperate cry is the one you don't even knowing why.
Daysleeper
I cried the other night
I can't even say why
Fluorescent flat caffeine lights
Its furious balancing
I'm the screen, the blinding light
I'm the screen, I work at night
I see today with a newsprint fray
My night is colored headache grey
Don't wake me with so much.
The Ocean machine is set to 9
I'll squeeze into heaven and valentine
My bed is pulling me,
Gravity
Daysleeper...
-------------------
That Pretenders version of "Stop Your Sobbing" is the best ever cover of a Kinks song.
I'm not a true fan of Eddie Van Halen, but I do like the 1980s shred he adds to You Really Got Me.
Don't mention Zappa either, ba boy. Zappa hated conservatives--
He's not down with the party of Cheney. Don't forget--yr the pigs (with most demos as piglets, mainly).
J, try not be an ass. Everything is not about politics. You can like an artist's work (well except hanoi Jane, in my case :) without agreeing with their politics.
As a guy, I like soul and blues very much, just like Meade. Was watching a DVD of a benefit blues concert. One of the female singers remarked that the blues was one of the few venues where men can express negative emotions in a form that society approves. A thoughtful statement.
STFU, pig.
Stick to the Lawrence Welk show, honkay.
Or at least honest mafia sounds--Sinatra--probably Bone-boy's fave ahhtiste. Sinatra--that's Aynhouse. (tho even Frankie a demo at times)
If you decide to leave me, it's all over
If you decide to leave me, it's all over
I tried to make you happy
I gave you all my love
There's nothing left for me to do but cry
If you decide to leave me, it's all over
If you decide to leave me, it's all over
I tried to make you happy
I gave you all my love
There's nothing left for me to do but cry
Ooo, oo-ooo, ooo, oo-ooo, ooo, oo-ooo
Stuff up the cracks, turn on the gas
I'm gonna take my life
Sss-stuff it!
If you decide to leave me, it's all over
If you decide to leave me, it's all over
I tried to make you happy
I gave you all my love
There's nothing left for me to do but cry
If you decide to leave me
If you decide to leave me
I'll cry
(If you decide to leave me)
(I'll cry!)
O-oh, I'll cry
(If you decide to leave me)
(I'll cry!)
I-I-I'll cry
(If you decide to leave me)
O-oh, don't go
(If you decide to leave me)
Don't le-ee-ee-ee-eave me
(If you decide to leave me)
(If you decide to leave me)
(If you decide to leave me)
Don't go
(If you decide to leave me)
O-oo-oh . . . don't go . . .
speak......... of the devil.
dese vagabond shooze... are longin to stray....
Boppa dooayyydoo
Boppa dooayyydoo
Boppa dooayyydoo
Boppa dooayyydoo
No no no no no no no-o-o-oo-oh
Makes me cry to see you go-o-o-oo-oh
No no no no no no no-o-o-oo-oh
Makes me cry to see you go-o-o-oo-oh
Left me here to cry alone
With a bottle of juice & a pork chop bone
No no no no no no no-o-o-oo-oh
Makes me cry to see you go-o-o-oo-oh
J,
One of the hardest things about being a conservative is losing respect for artists when they opine on politics or economics, but you just need to decide that's not why you like them anyway. I also don't abandon my favorite thinkers because they can't carry a tune. It IS tough, since most artists are hypocrites who live as conservatives, while badmouthing others who do the same AND say so. I mean, how many artist support income redistribution while charging top dollar for their work, and hoarding the cash.
Art is just one of the many areas where a conservative uses his mind over his emotions to make decisions. Art is essentially emotional, so it is very tough. I have stopped supporting a lot of artists that I used to just because they opened their mouth without the band playing. I have my weaknesses.
Another favorite: dedicated to the one i love
bagoh20,
I don't think Zappa ever did a cry song, but if he did it would be poignant and I'd like the beat because it would be easy to dance to.
Unless you mean a song that specifically mentions crying, he did - "How Could I Be Such A Fool?" on Freak Out! And then there's tons of messages in Zappa songs that go against the (what shall I call it?) sheltered perspective of the NewAge, such as "I wanna be dead, in bed, please kill me, 'cause that would thrill me" on Sheik Yerbouti's "Tryin' To Grow A Chin".
All that "anguished bellyaching" is what inspired most of the artists listed here, you know. Some call it the Pat Boone syndrome.
You know who Pat Boone is - and his role in music - don't you, Ann? maybe you and skdankle can discuss it as "great taste in music" since you're both "from the same generation." You know, the pampered one that only gave others a reason for "anguished bellyaching".
[spit]
So, J, are you going to then take responsibility for the bloodbath your radical leftist musical heroes' brought about by supporting the Vietnamese Communists victory over your own nations Armed Forces?
Jackass.
The Drill SGT,
Hey Crack, You are an expert...
how would you rate Joplin as a White Female Blues Singer?
Hard to say, because she died so soon and with so few recordings, but what she left behind is enough for a template others have to regard.
Of course, since she specialized in "anguished bellyaching", I have no idea why anyone would want to do that.
Hey, Ann, what happened on American Idol this week? Did the course of history change? Did you find the next Pat Boone?
How about a little Wanda Jackson?
Tears Will Be The Chaser For Your Wine - Wanda Jackson
From the Grand Ole Opry, circa 1967. My all-time favorite Wanda Jackson song was My Big Iron Skillet. Don't mess with Wanda!
wv: sudem. Every lawyer's cry!
There are girls' songs and boys' songs in radio programming schedule.
Dilbert covers it.
Of course, since she specialized in "anguished bellyaching", I have no idea why anyone would want to do that.
ROFLMAO Crack
Bagoh20,
Art is just one of the many areas where a conservative uses his mind over his emotions to make decisions. Art is essentially emotional, so it is very tough. I have stopped supporting a lot of artists that I used to just because they opened their mouth without the band playing. I have my weaknesses.
Agreed. I'm cool with most still (their work and I are, at least, on speaking terms) but certain ones make it tough, like The Clash - a brilliant band that couldn't help but reframe every issue they tackled for the wrong side.
The Drill SGT,
I should add that Janis is the artist whose name is spoken, so she probably does hold the title.
Johnny Ray's CRY was horribly maudlin and yet it topped the charts for like forever. Or maybe that's why it topped the charts.
The Drill SGT,
That last comment was supposed to read:
"I should add that Janis is the ONLY artist whose name is regularly spoken, so she probably does hold the title."
And, yeah, Ann and music are like oil and water sometimes. I mean, she just dissed an entire genre in as ignorant a manner as I've seen/heard in a while. Incredible.
My favorite part is 0:22 when the twins are singing.
"Tracks of My Tears" gets plenty of attention but its well deserved. Linda Ronstadt did a great cover too.
"Code Blue" by the True Sounds Of Liberty
I never got along with the girls at my school
Filling me up with all their morals and their rules
They'd pile all their problems on my head
I'd rather go out and fuck the dead
'Cause I can do what I want and they won't complain
I wanna fuck I wanna fuck the dead
Middle of the night so silently
I creep on over to the mortuary
Lift up the casket and fiddle with the dead
Their cold blue flesh makes me turn red
'Cause I can do what I want and they won't complain
I wanna fuck I wanna fuck the dead
And I don't even care how she died...
But I like it better if she smells of formaldehyde!
Never on the rag or say leave me alone
They don't scream and they don't moan
Don't even cry if I shoot in their hair
Lying on the table she smiles and she stares
Chorus
A song fit for a goddess.
for J
Johnny Ray's CRY was horribly maudlin and yet it topped the charts for like forever.
No kidding. No list of "cry" songs should exclude it. It must be one of the top "cry" sellers of all time.
"Rollin' and Tumblin'" by Bob Dylan
I rolled and I tumbled, I cried the whole night long
I rolled and I tumbled, I cried the whole night long
Woke up this mornin', I must have bet my money wrong
I got troubles so hard, I can't stand the strain
I got troubles so hard, I just can't stand the strain
Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains
The landscape is glowin', gleamin' in the golden light of day
The landscape is glowin', gleamin' in the gold light of day
I ain't holding nothin' back now, I ain't standin' in anybody's way
Well, I did all I know just to keep you off my mind
Well, I did all I know just to keep you off my mind
Well, I paid and I paid and my sufferin' heart is always on the line
Well, I get up in the dawn and I go down and lay in the shade
I get up in the dawn and I go down and lay in the shade
I ain't nobody's house boy, I ain't nobody's well trained maid
I'm flat-out spent, this woman been drivin' me to tears
I'm flat-out spent, this woman she been drivin' me to tears
This woman so crazy, I swear I ain't gonna touch another one for years
Well, the warm weather is comin' and the buds are on the vine
The warm weather's comin', the buds are on the vine
Ain't nothing so depressing as trying to satisfy this woman of mine
I got up this mornin', saw the rising sun return
Well, I got up this mornin', seen the rising sun return
Sooner or later you too shall burn
The night's filled with shadows, the years are filled with early doom
The night's filled with shadows, the years are filled with early doom
I've been conjuring up all these long dead souls from their crumblin' tombs
Let's forgive each other darlin', let's go down to the greenwood glen
Let's forgive each other darlin', let's go down to the greenwood glen
Let's put our heads together, let's put old matters to an end
Now I rolled and I tumbled and I cried the whole night long
Ah, I rolled and I tumbled, I cried the whole night long
I woke up this morning, I think I must be travelin' wrong
Oh yeah - that ain't soul music - so it must be O.K.,...
Libtard: Your still rite wing, Fen-Trash---- as my point indicates.!! That hadn't changed dimwit, jest as you're reading comprehinsun hadn't quite reached like like 10th grade. Got that hick? . !!
Poor J. This is the best insult he could muster. I blame the public school system.
From the decline of antediluvian England to teenage angst, from working class schmaltz to high fashion foppery and movie stars,
Ray Davies is the greatest rock lyricist of the last 100 years!
O.K., two more and I'm done, because the topic is too stupid to go on:
"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" (Hank Williams, Sr.) by Al Green
And
"Jesus Is Waiting" by Al Green
That second one leads back to my site, and a post where I specifically mention my anguish ("as angry and unattractive as it can seem") trying to show how beautiful soul music is, both, an expression of pain and a balm for it. I wouldn't be talking to you without it.
I would hate to live in a world where Ann Althouse chose our music.
Lesley Gore was always "gloriously triumphant", even when immersed in the anguish of, say, "What am I Gonna Do With You".
AA saves her most bellicose salvo for the very end, which is impressive. In Burkean terms, I suppose it's a preference for the "Beautiful" over the "Sublime".
Great suffering motivates art, often including art that gives the *impression* of being sunny and untroubled.
On the other hand: is some canonical pop music, including some soul classics (as also, say, grunge) faking it? Perhaps. Perhaps when a style is in ascendance it's possible to squeeze by just by working the dominant conventions without feeling your way through.
The left and right probably agree on the goals: human rights, a sound economy, a clean environment, etc., but the left thinks it has the capability to deliver these things more reliably than the right.
The right generally does a better job. Human rights in communist countries are virtually non-existent. In Vietnam they've never heard of freedom of speech. Ditto in China, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba. In the Soviet Union and its colonies in Eastern Europe, not only was there no freedom of speech, and no Frank Zappa or Jack Kerouac except in the most underground circles, but there was also a complete disregard of the environment such as that which caused the Aral Sea -- once the world's fourth largest sea -- to become a dustbin of history.
In Cuba, under Castro, merely to be gay meant four years in reeducation: a prison that was even worse than the rest of their society and in which many died.
American academia was poisoned by the remnants of a Marxist elite that didn't get pushed out by McCarthyism (unfortunately) and rapidly rallied around its key goals, and phrases: race, gender, class. These have in turn led to a kind of cultural genocide toward the right including their churches, but finally, the right is fighting back.
I suppose that's what we see in a taunt like yesterday's Cry cry Baby post. I thought the thread was already dead, but Meade dug it up, and then it got to Ann, and she remembered the original. It's fun to see all this. It's the first chance I've had to sit down all day at the computer. Thanks to Meade and Ann! I loved that Mimms song when I was a boy (I was six in 1963), and then when I heard it again in Finland (there is a side of Europe that LOVES American culture -- our bluegrass, our early soul -- and consider it a kind of amazing avant-garde -- our Thunderbirds -- Kerouac -- think of Aki Kaurismaki and his film, The Man Without a Past).
The left has managed to brainwash the young through their near-100% control of the universities, of which some 85% of Americans now attend. They try to dismantle the religious thought of the youth, and turn them against America, and smash the child-molester Foucault into their brains, and sick Rorty, so that there is no counter-valent truth.
But what held Union Armies against the human-rights abusing Confederates if not Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic?
"as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, as God goes marching on"
What is REALLY pushing human rights around the world? Is it the secularists who don't care about the women of Afghanistan, and their waffling Obama? Or was it George Bush, who had at least one foot in Christian revivalism and who could probably recite Howe's entire poem?
Who's pushing the anti-abortion agenda: rights for children and babies?
Who's going to deliver? More and more, I hope the young (post-Obama) will begin to see that it's the right and center that offer true freedoms, including the central one that Locke offered: the right to private property.
The left strips that out of a vicious envy from first the upper classes, then the middle classes, then the Kulaks, and finally there is no one who possesses anything but the state, and with this dispossession, goes all the other rights, and the ability to defend them against the Cyclopsean Socialist Night.
But here we can still listen to Garnet Mimms. What a voice!
I am the same age as you and I loved the Kinks from the first time I heard them. I could never figure out where they came from musically - they didn't sound like anybody else.
I think many here are missing the obvious:
Althouse, to some extent, chose "progressive" rock over commercial-
Some said, until the Pistols and Ramones, that it was even "punk".
Anyone who went to high school in the '70's--having Molley Hatchet and REO Speedwagon shoved down our throats know what I mean.
And then there's the Country music singers. You know, the ones who sing about their mother being in prison and their dog being done dead. If that doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you have no soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x4AZHDT-4A&feature=related
Probably nobody remembers Barbara Lynn either, but while we're on a kick of this period's music, why not introduce a few more? She could sing well, and is also still alive (Beaumont, TX).
Many of our rappers and hip hop artists barely live to see their thirties. Something really bad happened to the black community in the 60s and 70s when the Marxists got them going in the wrong direction. The riots in Detroit basically destroyed the city, and Motown never recovered.
James Brown tried to help with his black is beautiful riff, and by stumping for Nixon. But he couldn't bring his community back.
From the civil war up until at least the 60s many blacks were Republican. But the party of Tammany bought their vote in exchange for subsidized housing and ghettoization. It killed the black community.
Tammany's party still tells them if we can only finish off the rich whites, then we can have all their stuff. But you can never have other people's stuff. You can only ever have your own. Stuff you've worked for is all you'll ever appreciate. An awareness of this is part of what the black community lost. Their songs reflect a tragic change. Tammany bought their souls for the price of a vote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2XY6oRD2xc&feature=related
If anybody's still interested in this kick: try this old James Brown hit and notice how the goals of his singing are so similar to those of Mimms.
It would be interesting to hear the Garnet Mimms perspective on the rappers and on early hard rockers like Jimi Hendrix, and what he thinks happened to black music and whether or not anybody can turn that sick perspective around.
Against the Wind - Bob Seger
When the music wasn't bullshit.
AllenS said...
You know, the ones who sing about their mother being in prison and their dog being done dead.
Johnny Cash?
The ultimate Crying song with Roy and KD.
No soul like old soul, sounds like Meade and I have the same taste in music. Sad to say, I cannot provide a link to Solomon Burke's Cry To Me.
@Crack
You're so used to the adulation aimed at soul music that you can't even accept someone saying they prefer The Kinks! I didn't say soul music is bad. I just said that when I was a teenager, I didn't want to hear about these heavy adult relationships. It didn't go with flower power. It wasn't meant for young girls.
There's a lot of high drama to it, and, frankly, much of it is very florid and hammy. You put down "American Idol," but "American Idol" is full of singers trying to do soul. The mannerisms of soul music are tiresome, and the subject matter of the lyrics is often battered woman syndrome or some such dysfunctional relationship.
And you of all people playing the race card! I prefer Garnet Mimms's "Cry Baby" to Janis Joplin's. To me, soul is like gospel with a human lover replacing God and suffering replacing joy. There's only so much of that I can take before I think of phrases like "anguished bellyaching."
Now, stop your anguished bellyaching.
It's too bad that when people began to get rid of God, and go secular, they began to hoist their loved ones, musicians, writers, poets, political heroes, sports stars to the status of Christ.
I remember when Lennon said, "We're bigger than Jesus Christ."
I thought, "Not to me you're not, Buster."
Mark David Chapman was inevitably disappointed.
Once I saw a Japanese fan go gaga over a Finnish hockey player named Teemu Selanne. He said, "Teemu's God!"
Actually, he's just a hockey player with a decent schtick.
Most of this soul music comes out of gospel, and gospel is the deeper, "real thing," that can still build decent real communities with the right values.
Everything about the secular community is misplaced adoration.
The poor rock stars, sports stars, etc. They have to be like God. No one should have to be like God.
God is God!
(If we remember that, and don't get too many kinks in it, I too loved flower power at the time. I liked their writer -- Brautigan -- and some of their musicians. Most of them died from the bizarre conclusion that they were like God, but they were a lot of fun while they lasted.)
heh-
It appears someone is lyrically sensitive when it comes to their musical tastes.
be-boppedy biggoty bang boom.
Clearly, clear lyrics are important.
Ann,
The only Kinks song that's stood the test of time, across races and genres, is "You Really Got Me". The work of Ray Davies may be a sentimental favorite for hippies, in the still-ongoing and epic battle over who's best - between anybody that copied black music and The Beatles - but in the larger scheme of things they hardly existed.
So yes, I say your choice of the Kinks over AN ENTIRE GENRE OF MUSIC that encompassed a multitude of artists and styles is ignorant and silly on it's face, reflecting a pampered and sheltered upbringing that didn't leave you open to even a cursory understanding of what you were listening to as it played.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to hear EVERYTHING, because it was music, and, within that, the world. I wasn't acting out some adolescent rebellion against my parents or, as you're CONSTANTLY trying to do, defending some stupid cause - because that's NOT what music's for. (Who the hell cares what the subject matter is? Is it done well? Do you think Alan Lomax, when he was recording the history of this country's music, folded up his kit every time somebody sang of a subject that didn't pay homage to whatever his politically correct feelings were at the time? You must be joking.)
Yeah, on American Idol they're TRYING to do Soul - because it's HARD - unlike Rock, which almost anyone can do, talent or not, just ask The Sex Pistols (or do consider Sid Vicious a genius of high caliber?)
I hate to break it to you, but your tastes (such as they are) don't define a music's worth or purpose. If you want to go through life as a grinning fool, then so be it, but godammit, there's a hell of a lot more to it than your simpleminded desire - no, DEMAND - that everybody always be "happy". Or "sexy" or whatever other form of juvenilia you're still dwelling in (at 60!) before someone grows up.
As a matter of fact, it's that very unrealistic, and I'll go so far as to say even delusional, impulse that's created the real-world forms you choose to so denigrate. It, by it's very immaturity, demands an answer.
As, so often, do you - whether you consider it "bellyaching" or not.
Like religion, you don't know the first thing about music but the superficial, so you might as well quit trying to pass it off like you do.
Crack - your tastes in music do not trump anyone else's. Ever heard of live and let live? Who are you to decide what is great music for everyone else?
Sad to say, I cannot provide a link to Solomon Burke's Cry To Me.
BT: Will this do??
Everybody has an opinion about music. Crack is a professional musician so his views are more vehement. It is what makes up his identity much like the professor does with the law and the President does with Islam. It is what makes them who they are.
But everyone should enjoy the music they like.
Well except for polka. That shit sucks.
You know what really sucks?
Mexican Polka.
I go to this restaurant where they play Mexican polka music all night long.
It's enough to make you puke out your nachos.
Now, what I wish existed was live film footage of Minnie Riperton, in her Rotary Connection days, singing "Stormy Monday." I've had the version forever, but never the vision.
In one of the more...interesting...New Year's Eves I spent prior to meeting my now husband, I found myself at a party in Milwaukee (this would have been, oh, 1987, maybe '86) dancing with these two guys to a polka band playing something called the "Japanese Twist."
Never heard anything like it either before or since. Unique, indeed.
Crack Emcee wrote:
That second one leads back to my site, and a post where I specifically mention my anguish ("as angry and unattractive as it can seem") trying to show how beautiful soul music is, both, an expression of pain and a balm for it. I wouldn't be talking to you without it.
I would hate to live in a world where Ann Althouse chose our music.
I would agree with Crack here. You might say blues has a lot of bellyaching, since that is what the blues at heart is all about, but soul music (which I would characterize as from Sam Cooke to Motown, Stax Volt and Philly) is decidedly upbeat. There might be songs that deal with bellyaching, but Motown is pure pop music. How could a genre that includes Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Al Green, James Brown, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, Etta James, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations and coutless others be considered crap? Just the male vocalists alone would rank as in the top vocalists in all of pop music.
Now, that being said, I think that R&B took a nosedive in the 80's with the exception of Prince & Rick James and a few others, and has never recovered and todays R&B is crap compared to the 60's and 70's (and even the 70's wasn't quite as good as what came before, with the exception of Al Green and a few others). But still, what is Ann talking about?
I go to this restaurant where they play Mexican polka music all night long.
What is the restaurant? Are the food and/or margaritas any good?
Psota wrote:
That Pretenders version of "Stop Your Sobbing" is the best ever cover of a Kinks song. It's got a ton of swagger, but is also gorgeously melodic. Plus, it's one of the great gender reversals as a tough "modern" (well, ca. 1981) woman lowers the boom on a cringing modern man.
A tough modern woman like Chrissie Hynde is as oabnoxious as a cringing modern man metrosexual. She embodies all the stereotypes that I hate in lib women. in addition to everything else she is a PETA enviro anarachist type who has issues with McDonald's. Could you imagine having a relationship with that? No wonder Ray and her split.
I wouldn't screw her with Crack's dick.
Don't get me wrong (Pretenders ref), the first Pretenders album is a great album. But Chrissie Hynde is a real twat.
Ann wrote:
There's a lot of high drama to it, and, frankly, much of it is very florid and hammy. You put down "American Idol," but "American Idol" is full of singers trying to do soul. The mannerisms of soul music are tiresome, and the subject matter of the lyrics is often battered woman syndrome or some such dysfunctional relationship.
Soul gets a bad rap because the kids trying to do it today, and emulating their betters don't know how to do it right, and what you're hearing is a pale imitation. For example, when a good soul singer emoted, though they might use mellisma in their vocal styles, it was actually subtly done. Todays artists use it with every freaking line in a pop song. Like Aguilera doing the Star Spangled banner. Not every syllable in the song needs to be enunciated repetitively!
The modern artists, especially those on American Idol, are simply not coming to their soul sounds from an authentic place. They are simply emulating their betters.
ugh.
Fear, loathing, and gnashing of teeth...over MUSIC!
That which brings universal happiness?
fuck it-
Time to roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun-
You're up, Trooper!
Man....a couple of weeks ago it was a discussion of Zappa...now Janice, the Kinks and the Pretenders....I guess I never realized a law professor could be such a cool chick...
course we are dating ourselves here. My 18 year old daughter said "what are you listening to?" as I was listening to the pretenders.....
Crack Emcee wrote:
The only Kinks song that's stood the test of time, across races and genres, is "You Really Got Me". The work of Ray Davies may be a sentimental favorite for hippies, in the still-ongoing and epic battle over who's best - between anybody that copied black music and The Beatles - but in the larger scheme of things they hardly existed.
And here's where I disagree with ya. Because the Kinks were decidedly anti hippie. If anything they were decidedly conserivative in many instances, and never wrote songs about love. Rather they wrote about dead end streets, and Queen Victoria and how england has become decadent, and Farms, and small town life, and the pain of memory.
Read the lyrics to Village Green Preservation Society and it sounds like Davies is anything but a hippie. Though you could never tell with Davies, because you were never sure if some of his stances were in fact ironic.
I'd give the Kinks a few more listens actually. They have their proto punk phase which has a bunch of lasting songs, then they have their Village Green phase, where most kinks fans think they were at their greatensts. Then they had their english theater phase, which I'm not fan of, though even here Davies managed some great songs, then their Give the people what they want phase where they gave up on the pretensiousness of their musical theater and decided to become a singles band again.
And,,,,I am not sure why songs about crying made me think of Loudon Wainwright singing "Unrequited to the Nth degree" but it did and it does kind of fit....
When I die and it won't be long...hey your gonna be sorry that you treated me wrong....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ht1Hihjis
There are many good pop songs which feature crying, but two with identical themes may be my favorites: "Crying in the Rain" by the Everly Brothers and "I Wish it Would Rain" by The Temptations. Both brilliantly heartfelt.
reader_iam--Thanks!!!
Let me try this one: Dee Clark
here!
j....news flash for you buddy Zappa disliked liberals even more.
j...news flash for you buddy, when you leave Madison, you aren't in Kansas any more Dorothy
Songs that make you cry?
mmm...mmm...mmmm
Just a reminder-
Ray Orbison is pissed off you forgot him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-EiKPrAOHA
Music is secondary for most of us to the worldview represented. Chryssie Hynde's glamour is that she is a tough cookie -- compare her to Petulia Clark or whoever sang These Boots Were Made for Walking, and she's like ten times hotter and more dynamic. Neither one is exactly a Good Samaritan. Hynde is like she's from Pluto she's so cold. I can imagine that as fun in terms of a new role model.
People who pay attention to the music itslef are like mathematicians in terms of what they are paying attention to. I do like it when a singer has a good voice, and has good moves, but it's the overall zeitgeist they represent that I think lures most of us.
It's the people that matter in American Idol. It's fun to root for someone because you like them. I liked the Kinks. I didn't like The Beach Boys. I didn't like Black Sabbath.
The music had nothing to do with it.
I often wish I could have entered the world of classical or opera. However, I prefer silence.
I often wish I could have entered the world of classical or opera. However, I prefer silence.
This is interesting. In part, I find it interesting because I don't know what you mean by "could have entered" nor by "However, I prefer silence," much less what by putting those two sentences together to express what you're thinking.
It's rare I ask a question like this, online, but:
What do you mean? Why can't you? Why don't you?
Sincerely wondering: no snark or setup involved.
Kirby: So sorry for the errant "what" between "less" and "by" in my first paragraph after the quote from your post. It causes a real hiccup in the flow of my question.
JR565,
The first Pretenders album is a great album. But Chrissie Hynde is a real twat.
The first Pretenders album is brilliant.
The Kinks were decidedly anti hippie.
I know - my reference was to how they're interpreted. ("You Really Got Me" was a proto-punk track if there ever was one.) I like The Kinks, respect them even, but I have to make a distinction between their work, public perception, and their place in the canon. I think they got their due (more than their due, actually, being almost musical affirmative action babies for hippies) but when Soul music - the entire genre - gets slammed in their name, something has to be said.
Troop - you kill me.
Alex,
I don't tell Ann how to decipher the constitution, and I'll correct her when she makes stupid claims that Soul music is "bellyaching". There's some things she knows, some things I do, and each of us has the right to defend it as such. I don't wish (or think) music is based on my tastes - my tastes are as individualized as anyone else's and I love to be surprised - I accept it as it is, and for what it is, but, if I did have a say, at least, I'd be assured we'd hear more of a higher caliber and not have to suffer through the indignity of the mess we see praised, by the likes of Ann, at this present time.
We, all, deserve better.
I mean hell I like Foreigner, but i'm sure most of you will trash that.
Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, as sung by Willie Nelson.
WV: nopiven, no Jeremy, either.
Alex,
What do you mean? Foreigner's cool. I'm shocked they haven't been sampled yet. "Urgent"?
It practically demands it.
I think all music must be rated in context.
Meaning, when everyone was getting jiggy with Ray Conniff Jr., and along came Elvis...
I wonder what Crack thinks about Bob Marley-
Another great Janis Joplin cover version is Maybe, originally done by the Chantels. It's only when the Chantels do the chorus that you can tell it's the same song.
I don't think there's ever been a singer who put their raw emotions on display the way that Janis could.
How can Cry, Cry, Baby be mentioned on althouse without a nod to Allison Iraheta's Idol moment with the song?
Another great Janis Joplin cover version is Maybe, originally performed by the Chantels. You can barely tell it's the same song, except for the chorus.
I don't think any singer, male or female, has ever sung with the raw emotion that Janis allowed herself to expose.
So you've wrung your eyes of all their tears
And you caught them in a glass
To save them for some day next year, when you're waxing over your past
And should you ever begin to believe
That the good part was worth all the waste
Find your glass of last year's tears and you take a taste
Slobberbone - Find The Out
I'm going to teach my four-year-old twins to say, when asked, that we listen to geezer rock at home.
Crack, there's a lot of crap in every genre, as you well know. Not everyone decides to be an omnivore. Most young people find a genre that feels right to them, and stick with it.
As we get older, then out palates broaden, and we can enjoy geezer rock, and Patsty Cline (even when we hold our noses at the arrangements), and Nitin Sawhney, and the Nevile Brothers, and Django, Louis, Ella, Janis, and whatever Jack White is calling himself these days, etc. etc.
Still, for any of the genres any of these artists work(ed) in, you can honestly say most of it is/was crap. At 17, all you want is the crap that works with your world.
J said...
Don't mention Zappa either, ba boy. Zappa hated conservatives--
He's not down with the party of Cheney. Don't forget--yr the pigs (with most demos as piglets, mainly).
Frank's not down with anyone, he's been dead for years. As for his politics, I think Frank was pretty much libertarian in his point of view.
He regularly mocked the pieties of the left. He made fun of the Peace Corps, hippies, and the uniformity of the left.
One things for sure, FZ wouldn't have spent more than a couple of minutes in your presence because his fundamental philosophy was to not suffer fools gladly.
I liked suspensions in the 60s
John Blow Ode on the Death of Purcell was a favorite, albeit a Deller version.
Judy Collins Chansons des Vieux Amants wasn't bad, though it's a young person's view of old age. That would be the 70s.
There's this and then there's this.
Foreigner sucks...
Unless you know what love is
Just sayin'
Reader_Iam asked about my interest in silence and my inability to enter classical music. There have been a few rare moments when I've entered classical music. Once in Finland I was in a cabin north of the Arctic Circle and Sibelius' Finlandia came on. There were trees turning orange in the brief winter daylight (about an hour) and layers of deep snow, maybe a foot, or two, or three, all the way to the horizon, which was uninhabited except for wolves and owls. I listened to Finlandia and for some reason entered it. But I entered it visually, I think.
Another time I was driving in winter here in the Catskills and something by Schubert came on. I really enjoyed this, but again I think I entered it visually.
I have entered a very strange Indian classical raja, I think it was called, with sitars, but again my appreciation was visual -- it was the design of the mosaics inside of it that interested me.
I think there's probably another way to enter classical music. I've tried classes, and have asked people to explain Tchaikovsky and play it for me, but I got nothing from these experiences except a dull and baffled feeling.
Mimms, on the other hand, I just plain get. As do I get James Brown, and blues. I don't get Idol generally because the feeling seems artificial to me.
As for silence I love to sit in an empty room, or out in the country in a barn, and just watch dust fall for hours and hours. It is so quiet. But if it gets too quiet I start to hear the blood pump in my head, which annoys me. It's so much noise! The only way to probably get pure silence is to die, in which case we may no longer have the correct apparatus to appreciate total silence. I hope this explained something.
We always assume everyone else has our exact experience. But our experience I suppose is unique and probably incommunicable as a result of its idiosyncrasy.
"Listening to musicians talk about politics makes about as much sense as listening to politicians make music"
- Frank Zappa
MC5, another great band with really shitty politics.
I've enjoyed this thread. I think everyone was at their best. This includes J, which isn't saying much, of course.
I think it's fascinating to enter a whole world. There are some worldviews I can't enter and one of them has been the Kinks and another David Bowie. There is an entrance fee in it having something to do with glitter that I refuse to pay on some level that is so deep I can't really do much about it.
On the other hand, one of the original glitterrock bands, T. Rex, is a band I've not only entered, but have spent thousands of hours inside. Why one, and not the other?
I honestly don't know. Many people have played Kinks albums for me, and Eagles albums, and lots of other groups, but I can't get past the lobby.
T. Rex, for whatever reason, is just catnip. I love it and have even tracked down rare bootleg albums to see different variations of Hot Love, among other songs. Why do we buy one group, and not another? One genre, and not another.
I can totally understand Ann not buying into soul, especially because of the pleading aspect of not liking to imagine the voluptuous aftermath of having been beaten by a man back in the 50s.
Kirby, you're just a Jeepster. Nothing you can do about it.
FTR (which Mark didn't make clear), Jeepster is a T-Rex reference.
Kirby: Thank you.
Jeepster.
Disambiguation. It's not just a good idea.
Uh huh. I know. But you started it, Mark. Based on *what* should I not join in, merrily enough?
You had other choices, too.
Just riffing, reader. Should have put the link in the original comment.
This whole thread has gotten me browsing guitars for sale on Craigslist.
For the record, my references to soul here don't include Sam Cooke or any of Motown. I think those things fit the category of teenager music of the 1960s.
What I wished would be on a different station was the more adult, more sexual seeming soul music like Solomon Burke and Percy Sledge. I also thought the "old standards" type people like Sinatra and Tony Bennett should be on a different station. I'm not saying any of that music is bad. I'm just saying I didn't want it mixed in with the music I was choosing to listen to as a young girl. There was a mood of youth and happiness in that 60s music that didn't fit with the adultery stories and sexual obsessions of people who sounded like they were at least 30 years old.
It's always fun to watch Republicans pretend that they were ever young.
Placeholder - you really are a 1st grade douchebag.
Placeholder, some of us grow up.
It's always fun to watch Republicans pretend that they were ever young
What are you 15 years old?
It's always fun to watch Republicans pretend that they were ever young
What are you 15 years old?
Or, to put it another way, some of us of the conservative (libertarian!) persuasion have been young longer than you have been alive.
Seriously, who here sounds defensive, bitter, and twisted? The crusty wingers? Or the progressive true-believers?
Who else can tear your heart out withy a song? Try Billie Holiday or Otis Redding (Loving You Too Long or These Arms of Mine). Try Bessie Smith. Or am I going back too far for the kiddies?
Troop, Joplin's cover of Bessie Smith" Turtle Blues is better than Piece of My Heart.
I prefer The Pretenders' version produced by the multi-talented Nick Lowe to The Kinks' original. I like to think of the Lowe-Hynde collaboration as the new wave reincarnation of Phil and Ronnie Spector, minus the relationship drama and death threats.
Speaking of Spector, I really enjoyed Pia Toscano's faithful version of "River Deep, Mountain High," but the American Idol voters disagreed or are unfamiliar with the failed masterpiece that sent Spector into semi-retirement.
And now it's Judy's turn to cry
Judy's turn to cry
Judy's turn to cry
Cuz Johnny gave her my STD.
Speaking of the likes of Nick Lowe (whom I love, as I have for many years), did you all know that Ian Hunter went on to do a fine version of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square"? Oh, sure, I know: It's not like any of the originals, exactly (and, trust me, I have sooo many versions of that particular song), yet he was right in saying, at the end of his: "I told you I was good!"
The love of it all counts for something, too.
A great cover is either almost exactly like the original, or some totally unique take on the source material.
I love Eliza Doolittle's Fuck You cover. Don't love the original.
Mark:
You are right! She's doing a great job of this song.
That poseur bass player is for shit, though. He's awful, period, an insult to the instrument he's using [supposedly playing], full stop.
He's the equivalent of an oboe *player* who thinks that instrument's best ability to evoke passion and/or intensity is to imitate the honking of an angry goose.
Bleccch. Yuck. Just SO BAD (so bad, so bad).
"Placeholder - you really are a 1st grade douchebag."
This (PH) is the guy who said, "what's with all the insults from you wingnuts". But you are too harsh, Alex. Douchebags actually serve a useful purpose.
Just for the record, wingnuts, I'm not bitter. I'm laughing at you. And at Althouse. Unlike me, she's getting a $10,000 pay cut. I've always thought law professors made too much money, didn't you?
Libtard: Just for the record, wingnuts, I'm not bitter. I'm laughing at you.
Sure. Its just a flesh wound.
@Placeholder
"Just for the record, wingnuts, I'm not bitter. I'm laughing at you. And at Althouse. Unlike me, she's getting a $10,000 pay cut. I've always thought law professors made too much money, didn't you?"
The mind of a left-wing selfish brat, encapsulated in one perfect post. Thanks Placeholder.
Because they have the market cornered on 'fairness'. And because they own the class-envy play at every turn. Its the very same level of maturity seen in 7 year olds at recess.
Ridiculous.
Ann:
This may change your impression of Sam Cooke, it was recorded live in Miami 1963 and released in 1986. It's a rare look at what music was like on the Chitlin' Circuit in the 1960s and shows Cooke to be a very different performer than what you heard on the radio. I just wish I could find his version of Chain Gang from that same album, it is killer.
Enjoy
For the record, my references to soul here don't include Sam Cooke,...
I give up. You claim you're not a NewAger? Heh. You don't have a clue what you're saying and you're too arrogant to admit it - hubris is the word, right?
Absolutely Helen Thomas level breathtaking.
For the record:
"Motown specialized in a type of soul music it referred to with the trademark "The Motown Sound". - Wikipedia
"The program will include tributes to Motown’s distinctive soul-infused pop music sound that solidified its popularity in American culture, and showcase Motown’s impact on all music." - From the Classic Motown website, on Barack Obama's recent White House tribute to the label.
You should change your intro to "I'm a lawyer, who sometimes writes about the law, and, other times, I just babble. But be warned: I will never say 'I'm wrong'."
This thread has probably died but thanks for reminding me of Jeepster. I googled. New T Rex vids keep going up, as they were on English Tv a lot back in the late 60s and 70s (I think there was only one American tour, which I missed). I remember that I was working in a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the early 70s (an awful job, and I can't stand to even smell the stuff as I drive by now, and am almost a vegetarian as a result of my experiences there), but one of my co-workers liked T. Rex and got me interested in the band. Hot Love has such a good basic rhythm. It works far better in the older version that features a slower tempo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfHzJU-Rlo4&feature=related
Bolan added two backup singers in the mid-70s. One of them was his wife. He also started to do more lead guitar work instead of his simple crunching Bo Diddley rhythms. I think he was probably good at doing this, I just didn't like it, as it didn't as emotionally resonant. He died in a car crash in I think 1975 or so. His backup singer wife was driving the van, and wasn't hurt.
Here he is in his later phase (he's drinking a lot and has lost some of his simpler Bo Diddley type crunch -- using the guitar as a rhythm machine, and he's now trying to do pyrotechnical things. Does it work? Not as well, but maybe it would have morphed into something more functional had there been time? He's trying to incorporate African rhythms via the bongo and it just doesn't gel. Probably the only thing that's really working still is his bass player rolling rhythm:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF9wHJW24cg&feature=related
Anyway, we're a long way from weeping in pop music, and taunting the other side, though I see the leftists are still trying to poke away at the very idea that a conservative should enjoy rock music, or that older people might still enjoy music.
All NewAgers to the gas!
There is such a thing as growing up but still remembering the things of childhood with fondness. But we eventually ought to grow up, and put away childish things, like the sense that life can be just ducky as long as there's a crypto-communist in the White House.
I certainly here what Ann is saying about soul, and I get the Sam Cooke reference too (though I would place him squarely in the soul category). Ann is talking about music that would appeal to teens, and is saying that soul is more adult music. You won't have a Fun, Fun, Fun type song in soul that didn't veer into pop. Like say, Oogum Boogum Song. And she's thinking of Sam Cooke Having A Party with "the cokes on the icebox and popcorn on the ceiling" and "Wonderful World". In those cases Sam Cooke definitely did stray into the pop territory, and pop that could appeal to teens (talks about going to school and history books).
She's simply viewing the lighter elements of Soul, R&B as pop music.
jr565,
I certainly here what Ann is saying about soul, and I get the Sam Cooke reference too (though I would place him squarely in the soul category).
Yeah, "squarely."
So I can hear what that guy was saying about the constitution being hard because it's old, and why people get away with killing others because the victims are brainwashed, and all kinds of other slippery shit, but the truth is, whether it's self-awareness or self-help, these Boomer bastards are not got going to acknowledge there's anything nailed down outside of themselves - and if it insults, maims, or kills anybody else, tough titties because "Love means never having to say you're sorry."
Fuck 'em all. Sam Cooke falls "squarely in the soul category" but you know what her 12-year old self means about music? Well, so do I - about music and everything else:
She and her entire tribe have always meant as long as you don't have the balls to go Kent State on that ass they'll run over you, and everything you know, and leave it in tatters. Nothing ever has, and nothing will ever have, meaning as long as they're alive. Fuck 'em all.
Sidney Lumet R.I.P.? Hell no:
Sidney Lumet - get the fuck outta here!
And - Hey - let's put Donna Summer in the Soul category because, confronting adult themes for the first time, Ann remembered how she felt the first time she heard "She Works Hard For The Money"!!!
This is fun! What's next? James Brown in Trooper's Mexican Polka? I can hear that! The bass line in "The Big Payback" is simple enough that I can go there!
Why, if we keep this up, music will have even less meaning than when someone calls Lady GaGa a great musical artist for changing her outfit.
But that's the point, isn't it?
Cocksuckers, and suckers, the all of you.
Alright - I've had my coffee and I take back what I said about Sidney Lumet;
He was a great artist.
And the "cocksuckers" reference"
I've been watching too much Deadwood.
But, now that I've said that, I ask you again:
When was the last time you've heard Ann take something back? Admit she was wrong? Even mistaken?
It's bullshit.
Crack,
It's generally agreed that categories of thought are humanly made, and do not name actual existing entities.
Therefore, soul is an arbitrary category, and not something that exists the way a rock or a tree exists.
It has several constituents.
I have no idea what they are.
Let's instead talk about general quality. how would you rate Mimms compared to Brown as vocal artists? could you copare them and contrast them, please?
Which one is BETTER?
Also, have you listened to T. Rex? How do you like their bass player Steve Currie? Is he a talented musician, or not?
I think these categories are all somewhat arbitrary, and not preexisting, so we are making them up as we go. I think Ann can't be wrong in terms of these categories or how she concocts them because we are all just making these categories up. Of course, to think at all, we need categories.
Where does Eminem fit? Is he a soul artist? Perhaps a bad one, but still soul?
Are there any Asian soul players?
What about Eskimo soul players?
Is the category fundamentally racial? Or is it driven by age?
Does it require a certain age to GET soul music?
Perhaps you have to have experienced soul -- tragic mixed emotions of an adult -- befor eyou can really appreciate the sentiments expressed.
Just forget this. I am asking too many questions.
i enjoyed your comment about Kent State from a humorous perspective, but of course it destroyed the conservatives' credibility. You have to stay calm and discuss categories, and politely push these boundaries back and forth forever, without going outside the law, even once.
Again Crack, I hear where Ann is coming from when it comes to a song like Cry Cry Baby as being considered old. You wouldn't find a lot of songs in the soul genre that appeal to Fun, Fun, Fun (like say the Beach Boys). Rather soul is more old sounding (in that it adheres to traditional song structures and arrangements) and deals with more adult fare. You wouldn't think of most rock as being old, yet Cry Cry Baby sounds like it was written with adults in mind. There are of course exceptions to every rule, but I hear her point. And if she doesn't like that type of song, she doesn't like that type of song (as much). I have the same feeling about Dylan that she does about Soul music. It sounds like dated music to me, too wordy, not enough melody, the singer isn't that good (cmopared to say a Smokey Robinson or a Marvin Gaye or a Sam Cooke). I ahve the same reaction to a lot of country music. It's all variations on the same theme.
All it shows is that different people come to music from different places. There is no real right or wrong, just what you like or dont' like.
I'm sick of pop, country, soul, R&B whatever. The same old shit. I get my crazy on in alt-genres.
Pergolesi Stabat Mater.
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