Asymmetric Music

"This isn't the Democratic party of our fathers and grandfathers. This is the party of Woodstock hippies. I was at Woodstock — I built the stage. And when everything fell apart, and people were fighting for peanut-butter sandwiches, it was the National Guard who came in and saved the same people who were protesting them. So when Hillary Clinton a few years ago wanted to build a Woodstock memorial, I said it should be a statue of a National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie."-John Ratzenberger.

Yesterday, I assembled some Rock and Roll songs that trumpeted conservative values. Today, I'm doing my far left* brothers and sisters a favor by compiling a list to encourage them as they seek to change America for the better:

1. Sign of the Times, Donna Fargo.

Podcast

Donna Fargo Winners by Donna Fargo

The Best of Donna Fargo: 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection

In this song, Donna sings of the American dream turning into a "nightmare." 1863? 1933? 1942? No, the year we'd all like to forget, 1986. Apparently, Donna had access to some detailed census data, as she concluded that Jews suffered proportionately. Unemployment was at 50%?

2. Cortez the Killer, Neil Young.

Proving that extremism begs for an opposite, "noble savagery" is an attempt by Europeans to reverse European feelings of superiority over the people whose land they colonized. The problem with those who take the noble savage route, is that, in their desire to make amends, they often lie, distort, or, like Neil Young, just say stupid stuff.

The Cortez in the song is Hernan Cortez, Spanish conquistador. Why sing about Cortez and not, say, other conquests in history like in everywhere else in the world since the beginning of humanity? Because Cortez was white and the Aztecs weren't, I guess.

If you know anything about Aztec civilization, you know how ridiculous this is:

And the women all were beautiful
And the men stood straight and strong
They offered life in sacrifice
So that others could go on.

Hate was just a legend
And war was never known
The people worked together
And they lifted many stones.

Read more »

A couple of years ago, John J. Miller from National Review compiled what he thought were the "50 greatest conservative rock songs." It's a thoughtful list, but, quite expectedly, incomplete. Below is my contribution to Miller's fine effort, a Conrock addendum, as it were. I'll just second his introduction and dive right in:

1. This Land is Your Land, Peter, Paul, and Mary.

An ode to manifest destiny, Biblically-based dominion over the earth, property rights, and Intelligent Design. It's the podcast.

Relevant lyrics:

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me those golden valleys
This land was made for you and me!

This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California, to the New York island,
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.

Peter, Paul and Mary - Carry It On - A Musical Legacy

2. Two Kinds of Seagulls, Tom Chapin.

Another folk-rockish ballad. Not quite Aquinas, but, still, a rather eloquent case for Natural Law.

Relevant lyrics:

There's two kinds of llamas: papas and mamas.
They wear different pajamas and that's why there's llamas.
Most creatures come in pairs. That's the way they mingle.
One kind only would be lonely. It takes two to tingle.

There's two kinds of peoples: he-puls and she-puls.
He-puls like she-puls. She-puls like he-puls.
And that's why there's me-puls, and you-puls,
And peoples.

Mother Earth

3. Jungle, B.B. King

A musical expression of the phenomenon known as "business flight" ("race to the bottom" for liberals) wherein business and people move from high tax states to more business-friendly ones.

Relevant lyrics:

I work hard everyday
From Monday to Friday night
The wages that they pay me
I swear that they're very light
The take out a little for the state
A little more for Uncle Sam
How can I ever catch up
And get myself out of this jam
Yes, I think I'll move to the jungle
Move way out in the woods
Yes, because the way things are here now
Well, I ain't doin' myself no good

The Ultimate Collection

Read more »

Most of the Veterans Day tributes on youtube have music that I don't like as much as the standards or oldies. The new ones seem a little melodramatic. Vaughn Monroe sings "Old Soldiers Never Die" here. He takes service in stride, as part of a man's nature, not as some extraordinary feat. That's probably because service was more universal back then and people had more of a sense of duty. Countries, too, saw war as part of the human experience, to be avoided, sure, but not unthinkable.

Vaughn Monroe had other male classics in "Sound Off" and the truly great "Ghost Riders in the Sky."

"Sound Off"

"Ghost Riders in the Sky"

A version by Johnny Cash is the podcast.

From the Corner:

You can not have a broad discussion of sellouts in America without discussing the band Metallica.

While they claim "the only thing they've ever sold out was every seat in every venue they've ever played in" they recorded, released, and filmed a music video of an Irish Drinking Song.

Compare that to their earlier work and it is clear that they sold out like no other

A person who thinks that a band has "sold out" because it ran out of ideas and wanted to keep making money is somebody with a total lack of perspective. At which point was Metallica working for a living wage?

The whole idea of Rockers "selling out" reminds me of how people attacked Gospel singers who replaced "lord" with "baby" to bring their talent to millions more people, like Sam Cooke or Ray Charles. Or, the calling of Rock entertainers "sell outs" can be another mis-placed religious impulse, this time having to do with the concept of doctrinal purity or unblemished intentions.

The music's the thing, guys. Some sincere people make crappy music and some cads rock.

Proviso: Insincerity is "selling out."

I don't like Heavy Metal, but the song below, to which the dude in the email referred, isn't too bad as far as these things go. It's a funny video too.

Not that I don't find Metallica's "death talk" silly and immature.

Very ungroovy

As usual, Powerline does the blogosphere a service by providing an alternative to the adulatory coverage of Pete Seeger's 90th birtday. It's not like Powerline is ruining the appreciation of good music by considering Seeger's politics: a great deal of Seeger's appeal is his politics.

And what were his politics up until a few years ago, when it was irrelevant: Seeger maintained faithful allegiance to the the second most murderous political group in history (China's holding at #1), reminding us that:

1. For many on the left, feelings trump reality, "Seeger sang about loving each other."

2. Of course, Nazi-Soviet hypocrisy. A Nazi folk singer probably wouldn't have won the Medal of Honor for art (how ironic that he received his award in a building named after JFK who hated Communism and was killed by a Communist) nor gotten a PBS special.

3. Many on the left prefer style over substance. Consider the Che T-shirts, the long say-nothing speeches of President Obama, that they seem much more likely to form opinions based on art.

4. One can admire a brave, principled Communist, sort of, but Seeger refused to say whether he was Communist and withdrew an album because his Soviet puppet masters told him to.

5. In looking for music for this post, I came across this song, called, "What Did You Learn in School?" Well, Pete Seeger, Communist, must be happy that kids today are pretty much learning the leftist ideas he espoused all of his life. The most popular history text on campus is People's History by Communist sympathizer Howard Zinn. Communist libel like the book Obama accepted from Chavez, Open Veins of Latin America
is popular in college as well. Even in my high school, I noticed that Mother Jones graced the magazine rack in the library. No issues of the National Review or Weekly Standard were there to contest it.

Magazine rack at Huntington Park High School.

Here's an album. Please don't reward the capitalist pigs who run the record companies by paying for it:

The Essential Pete Seeger

A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) by Howard Zinn

The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano

Proving once again that being an artist, especially a Rock star, is no guarantor of personal virtue, Phil Spector was convicted of second degree murder for killing actress Lana Clarkson.

Phil Spector is a Rock and Roll legend, having been involved in a series of early sixties girl group songs as well as having collaborated with the Righteous Brothers and the Beatles. According to Wikipedia, Cuban and Caribbean music was a big influence.

Phil Spector's famous for his "wall of sound" technique which means, to me, that there's a lot of instruments and you can't quite tell what they are.

The most prescient song is "He Hit Me and it Felt Like a Kiss" (above).

Ronnie Spector of the hyper-cleverly named group, the Ronettes, was his suffering, secluded wife. "Be My Baby" is the Ronettes' best song.

Read more »

I'll walk a few steps from the Blues, brushing up against the Rolling Stones on my way, to reach Led Zeppelin. Expand the radius a little further to say, Black Sabbath, and I begin to feel a little trepidation. I won't venture farther than that.

In other words, Led Zeppelin is as far as you can take basic Blues/Rock and Roll and still have it be listenable. Led Zeppelin has melodies, rhythm, singing- you know, it's musical.

Many of you are aware that Blues artists like Willie Dixon influenced Led Zeppelin, who remade blues songs like "when the Levee Breaks" done by artists like Magic Slim. Well, I've got a couple more for you. Nobody, to my knowledge, has made the following connections.

And no, I'm not one of those, "He ripped off..." guys either. It's ridiculous to be so (see this squid, "Oh my God! Led Zeppelin did remakes!), as very few musicians create in a vacuum.

"I Wish You Would" by Billy Boy Arnold is in the podcast (to which you should subscribe) above. I think the resemblance of Arnold's harmonica part at the end of the bridge to Led Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song" is pretty obvious.

Vee Jay: 50th Anniversary

Led Zeppelin, "Immigrant Song"

Led Zeppelin III

This next one is a bit of a stretch. If you go to the middle of the Cuban song "El Palo de Anon," you'll notice the same whistle that you hear in "Fool in the Rain" from In Through the Out Door. This Led Zeppelin song is kind of Latin-sounding, anyways. Heck, Robert Plant's voice almost son montuno-s halfway through.

La Explosion del Momento!

In Through the Out Door

If you like this kind of stuff, these albums may interest you:

Read more »

The Dow's performace today brought back memories of 1997. Let me think. I had been married two years, living in a small apartment. I worked at Gomper's Middle School in Los Angeles, one of the two worst schools in California. My first son was born.

The music? I stopped listening to contemporary music in the early nineties so I really couldn't say. This dude made a list. I'll use it and add some video. The good part is that most of the acts are old enough to have greatest hits.

1. Smash Mouth, Walking on the Sun.

Read more »

Songs to leave off your playlist on Valentine's day:

1. All Right Now, Free. The most unromantic song on earth. Co** rock at its most base. Summary: Veni, vidi, vici.

More, and videos below

Read more »