Re: (TV) rap

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SCOTT ALDRICH wrote:

> "And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to anaesthetize
> the way that you feel."    Elvis Costello
>
> In all fairness I can't categorically dismiss the entire genre of rap,
> that's in part why I signed my post "Philistinely yours". Of course I liked
> Public Enemy, Spoony Gee, The Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest and few
> others. I met Professor Prince Paul once and he turned me on to a lot of
> old-school R&B, weird New Orleans stuff, tons of soul music that is great. I
> think from a production standpoint, sampling or spinning, it's an art. I've
> seen some great dj's in action, and to talk to them their knowlege about
> music is broad. The best ones see connections in all sorts of music, from
> Euro-pop to R&B to rock and roll. I acknowlege that there is an adventurous
> spirit in some of the best of it, but in the end I find it to be just party
> music, and to me music has got to be more than just being funky. A lot of
> the old-school R&B that is most frequently the source in hip-hop, James
> Brown, the Meters, Parliament et al., while funky as it gets, is incredibly
> interesting in terms of it's tight, contrapuntal ensemble playing. The
> musical shapes they make are timeless. Part of my visceral response to rap
> has to do with the fact that much of this music it uses as a base now sounds
> played out to me. Whatever initial creative spark there was in hip-hop has
> been so thoroughly marketed to sell everything to everyone that it has no
> credibility to me anymore, and that's too bad. Also, a collective amnesia in
> terms of musicianship seems to have taken hold, I think in large part due to
> the influence of hip hop. I taught a few years ago in some high schools in
> NY and to listen to anything other than hip-hop was anathema. This is
> definitely because of pop-culture mass-marketing, and there is no other
> culture offered in the school. This is what you get when you have a
> conservative government elected by liberals wanting security, "culture"
> becomes a tax-deductable program sponsored by Starbucks. We have a president
> who cuts social programs and professes his favorite jazz(!) musician is
> Kenny G! And yet most liberals champion him. Meanwhile our kids are going to
> grow up never hearing about Charlie Parker unless it's in a textbook warning
> of the dangers of heroin, or a hip allusion in a Spike Lee movie.
>
> I think it's interesting that a list like this one even exists. All of us
> have a yearning for the sleazy 70's it seems to me, a time when the freaks
> ran the show, and musician/poets like Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith and Richard
> Hell had a brief hold on fashion and taste. Joe Hartley's posting of the
> Zappa quote about today's so-called "happening" record execs who actually
> promote the most insidious form of convention perfectly illustrates my
> point. Our collective nostalgia for this interesting moment in the past I
> hope would spur us on to making interesting work that has some meaning. All
> artists need a network of like-minded folks around them, as Television and
> the whole CGBG's scene did, maybe this list in a way can serve part of that
> function.
>
> See you all,
> Scott
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