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Re: [bomp] Neil Young Admits Music Can't Change World
Back when Neil Young (and many others) thought music could change the world,
they were coming from a perspective of a solid thirty years when the people
being catered to by a growing amount of popular culture were a growing
number of people who believed that they, with or without music, could change
the world, and they took an interest in doing so. When Bob Dylan wrote
"Blowin' In The Wind" he wasn't being an entertainer. An artist, but not an
entertainer.
Today, popular culture is largely reflecting the twenty-year-old tendency of
a growing number of people who feel sorry for themselves and perceive the
culprit to be their own inadequacy, rather than assuming there are people or
institutions that contributed to their pathetic situation, or the conditions
that led to it, in any way that merits their anger. That is, when something
bothers them, they don't even know that there may be someone besides
themselves that they might want to take it out on. Call it Kurt Cobain
syndrome.
For the entirety of human history, and even now in most countries besides
this one, rebellion, that is to say outward-directed anger, be it aimless or
strategic, was the norm for youth, even its birthright. The young, white,
American has been castrated, and popular culture is selling product that
gives that marketplace what it needs most -- the feeling of being normal in
its reductionist sense of "just like most people."
Where once art, and even entertainment, could sell to a marketplace that saw
itself as an agent of change, today the marketplace is "misery loves
company," and that, more than anything else, is why the record "industry" is
going through another down- cycle: after twenty years, that shit's boring,
it's for your dad, the guy you have to lie to to have fun, and then he takes
your T-bird away, and you still have fun anyway.
The only trouble with Neil Young is that he started trying to change the
world with music near the peak of the last 35 year stretch, so for him,
after a great start trying to change the world with music, it was all
downhill. You'll never hear that from Pete Seeger, who's been through ups
and downs. When the marketplace wants change, music will again play its role
in how that develops.
So for now, what I recommend is negative reinforcement for all the whining.
Next time you see somebody consuming self-abnegating popular culture, give
him or her a swift kick in the ass, so they can have something to cry about.
Just maybe they'll get pissed off, and if this happens a couple of million
times, there will be change, and music to accompany it.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lounge Laura Taylor" <queenjanefondle@yahoo.com>
To: <bomp@xnet2.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2008 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: [bomp] Neil Young Admits Music Can't Change World
>
> I agree....I dig the honesty...when I was 17 and 18 and first getting into
> Bob Dylan, and really feeling the idealism of this 60s stuff, it helped
> sustain my beliefs...and while I am still passionate about them....time
> has marched on and I now think, at 40, he really only reflected
> "times"...while, in retrospect, these times, perhaps he wasn't the agent,
> merely the messenger?
>
> Cynthia <cynnkitty@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yeah, that's what he believes/says THIS week. Next week....
> -DavidH >>>>
>
> That's actually one of the things I like most about him as a
> celeb/somewhat public figure. Sure there's something to be said for
> conviction- but not for its own sake. Sometimes you change your mind.
> Sometimes experience leads you to a better way. It doesn't necessarily
> mean you were wrong before, but what makes sense in one place and time
> might not in another. Being open to re-thinking stuff, and not being too
> proud to admit it -I see as a mostly very positive quality.
>
>
>
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