How many times have I read War+Peace. Once. Well, I didn't actually finish it. It finishes with a 50 page chapter on Tolstoy's theory of history. I don't think anyone has ever finished that.

Director Grant Marshall of Film Headquarters said he had spent 18 months looking for a band willing to go along with the mobile-only film concept.

To bad he found one--that video is crap.

I think the "Presidents of the United States of America" make the WORST music I have ever heard. Oversimplified crappola.

I love car talk.

I really liked that cramps poem, as I am experiencing them right now and it's making me want to rip someone's face off.

The cameraphone video:

The song isn't bad. It needs a contrasting section. Nice hook, a phase-shifted anapest/dactylic foot-rhythm reminiscent of Miles Davis's "Four". Not too tight, not too loose. Good use of the flat VI chord, powerful, like in bar 238 of Mvt. IV, Beethoven's Ninth Symph.

This "crappola" has evolutionary possibilities. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, or some such, it just needs a "B" section. And they need to try some more variations before they do a final selection.

As if!

banal, uninspired and uninspiring flavor of the week teen pop

Tax, tax your ears a bit, pop them open, de gustibus ignoramibus EST disputandum!

Ignorance is piss.

I didn't even know this band was still around. I wish I'd have kept it that way.

Is there a parallel? Shallow listeners project their superficiality on the music, not realizing they are hearing themsleves, how boring they are.

Shallow creationists project their simplicity and pseudo-profundity on Science, and see it as just another belief system, a faith held by intellectual snobs.

You need to hear between the lines, with a magic ear for a magic eye.

Whatever else they are, United-statesians are, typically, the most musically ignorant people on the planet.

                    A.O.L.

or we're just not fans of said band... and pop crap in general.

AOL:

Fuck off and go masturbate in your hole about how much you think you know. Maybe you're right about the typical US listeners of today (although, when you take a look at the pop coming out of, say, the UK -- you might want to rethink your position). On the whole however, you've painted yourself as the ignorant here.

Perhaps you've missed the 20th century.

I do not need to elaborate.

Do you have any idea to whom you are talking?

You are talking to someone who lives in the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY! At least I know how much I don't know about how much I don't know, unlike some Rumsfeldian poseurs, you, you, skating Dinosaur, you!

I'm not arguing ad hominem here.

Oh well, maybe I am arguing...

ad reptiliem.

Just kidding about ad reptiliem (I wasn't trying to impersonate Christopher Hitchens).

Never mind. Who cares has it right.

Idiot -- I wrote the 20th century and meant it. Methinks you missed the point. Which would explain the rest of your posts. I don't care who you are (or who you think you are), but what you wrote shows your ignorance.

You wrote, "...United-statesians are, typically, the most musically ignorant people on the planet." Maybe I'll just copy and paste what I typed before and see if you might actually respond to the content:

Perhaps you've missed the 20th century.

I do not need to elaborate.

And shit, A.O.L. -- Rumsfeldian? You're dense. That dumb son of a bitch would probably stop any conversation at Elvis. It seems to me that perhaps you are not versed at all in what America has contributed musically in the last 100 or so years.

Since one relevant hotbed of my point has just been turned into an ocean, maybe you ought to start there. I hope you're clever enough to figure that one out.

(Just like Bush doesn't care about it, neither does he KNOW anything about it. So stick your Republican labels on someone else; you don't know what you're talking about.)

Lieblich M.S.N.:

Reptiles are supposed to evolve, into scurrying lizards, turtles, or soaring birds.

Perhaps you haven't heard?

You are a Brontosaur skating on thin ice, and this in a time of global warming.

Or do I misconstrue?

The crux of the matter is, if I'm ignorant, what am I ignoring?

What should I pop my unprecedentedly sensitive ears open to, to listen?

Pray enlighten me.

I wager I have experienced more of the twentieth century, and at first hand, than you ever will.

Rumsfeld? I was boxing your ears with a red herring!

Are you

hearing?

alas,

A.O.L.

You either misconstrue, or you're trolling. In the case of the latter -- pricks will be pricks, I guess. Cute post. You remind me of someone who was on this blog a while ago. A lot of empty allusions, often incoherent yet condescending, to prop yourself up as "sophisticated" and knowing. If this isn't what you're doing, then I admit I misconstrue you. But the stuff you write reads like that. And obviously, a person who truly feels he should be on a pedestal wouldn't be battling it out with a "brontosaur" like me, now would they?

I think you're being a troll. You wrote that the US is musically ignorant. (Fine, today's average listener is fed a lot of tripe.) Then you went on to imply that we've always been ignorant. (This is where I take issue.) I refer you to the 20th century. I remind you of the wonderful things that have originated in America. Specifically, I'm talking about the jazz and the swing and the blues and the rock and the R&B and the funk and the soul that the blacks produced here. Don't you fucking forget that the U.S. isn't just Bush and the bigoted, white, Christian right. If you want to label me along with them, go ahead -- now THAT is where I call you an ignorant. You follow me yet?

This is what I tell you to pop your "unprecedentedly sensitive ears open to, to listen." And if you already have, and you still want to be a prick up on your horse, then we're done arguing. YOU then become the dinosaur in my view, my friend.

I just can't fathom why you still hang around here if you really think you're above it all. Care to shit out some more "intellectualism"?

Now it is you who misconstrue.

All that jazz and funk (have you ever heard of Conlon Nancarrow?) has been prostituted by the clever businessmen in the Mediamegalopolies, recycled, castrated, cannibalized, feed antibiotics and steroids, and generally Slimed From The Video And Audio.

Since WWII the greatest Musicians and Scientists in the word have sought, and been granted refuge here, except for Conlon Nancarrow. But what influence do they have on business and politics?

Suppose Richard Dawkins became professor, at You Favorite U.? Would it change the fact that many, most Americans are abysmally miseducated and ignorant, Johns of the Media Pimps.

You still haven't told me what I'm ignoring, and be specific, not general, or phylal, or familial, royal, or imperial!

And use lots of exclamation marks like I do!

I think you belong to the great unwashed, you live in an artisic trailer park, through no thought of your own!

I meant no "fault," but...

...many a truth is told in Freudian Slip...

Autoerotic Otto's Lover

Auto, I agree that most of the US are abysmally miseducated and ignorant. And of course many an evil man has capitalized on the good things born here, and recycled, castrated, cannibalized, fed antibiotics and steroids to, and generally slimed these things over the years. I'm ashamed of the general state of America in 2005, and I've always been ashamed of people who want to distort art for the sole purpose of making money.

I just take it to heart when someone comes and makes a such a blunt, blanket statement about my country, discounting so many achievements and so much history, only because evil prevails here. I'm sure I'd see you posting if I speared your nation in such a cold and ignoring way (ignoring, yes -- I think you ignore a lot of great stuff by bashing the US as one collective thing).

And yes, I know Nancarrow -- but that's a whole other flavor, a whole separate scene not relevant to my posts. If sheer complexity is what turns you on, then we're not on the same page here. That just boils down to taste, which should have little to do with this argument. Did you not read my last post? (Or am I miscontruing this point too?)

"I think you belong to the great unwashed, you live in an artisic trailer park, through no thought of your own!"

Huh? Why waste the time accusing me of something like that? Be more specific, or please keep it to yourself. I don't follow you. What have I said that puts me in this trailer park? Clarify for me. If you're saying I live by none of my own thoughts, you're wrong -- you're not getting me. I hear someone like Robert Johnson, Coltrane, Hendrix -- I know what it's about. I don't need to be told what's beautiful about it. You can't sit there and say that I don't recognize what I'm hearing.

Or am I just once again confused by your post? Are you telling me that yesterday doesn't count because America's gone to hell today? Or that, because businessmen have taken some of these things and prostituted them, that the origins are no longer valid? I just disagree. And if you think I don't understand where YOU are -- well, it's as much your fault for not being clear as it is my fault for not being an omniscient interpreter.

I think you're denigrating many, many great artists by discounting the US as a whole. What do I not understand about your position?

Mrs. M.S.N.:

Okay, so I was wrong about the trailer park. But there is such a thing as reverse snobbery, everyone piling on "Pop" music, as if it were something it's not meant to be. The Presidents of the United States aren't Hendrix isn't Nancarrow. And Nancarrow's a bit robotic, if he isn't interpreted by Ursula Oppens. But he wasn't allowed to live in the united States in any case, because...

...he fought the fascists in Spain.

September 11th, 1973, Nixon-Kissinger install a fascist regime in Chile, assassinateing the elected president. Viet Nam. Friends/enemies Saddam H. and M. Noriega., etc., etc.

And the sad thing about it is that your Media, and ours, Bertelsmann, etc., are installing a new Fascist Musical Culture worldwide. Look at what has happened to African drumming when it becomes corporatized: an idiotically smiling human rhythm machine for happy "World" music (really U.S. Pop-flavored water).

It is Kraftwerk redux. Only Kraftwerk wasn't done to please the Investors.

Soon all will be sampled and owned, and not collectively, and few will be the wiser.

An Old Lesbian

Finally, I agree with your entire post. Every point. And I'm not being sarcastic.

Seems that this was a simple misunderstanding. I think I know where you're coming from now, at least for the most part.

For the record, I did not join in the pile on the Presidents. And I completely get your point regarding Nancarrow/Oppens.

I will now take my cookie and go to bed happy.

Well, I should say "happy that we resolved this"...

Definitely not happy about what's happened (and happening) with music in the corporate world.

I won't despair. But at the same time, it doesn't look like it's changing soon.

What shall we do now?

Look,...

...cool!

I thought the Presidents were no worse than..lots , tons of... product, and presumeably they weren't trying to be anything more than what they were trying to be anything more..

Now if they were in the oval office, or were as famous as the Beatles, that would be an outrage.

Come to think of it, if the Beatles were as famous as the Beatles it would be an outrage.

Cone (yeah, cone) to think of it...

Bush IS...

It IS an outrage!

(posted by only 66.667% clever)

What we shall now do is undo the 1996 Communications/Copyright/Clintonesque/Corporate enclosure/Clear Channel monopoly/Carving up the airwaves among deaf feds/Anti-ntellectual property/Call it what you will Act. Barring that we shall look for a wormhole into another universe.

2D chance!