5 Mar
2006
5 Mar
'06
10:56 p.m.
On Sun, 5 Mar 2006 11:44:57 -0500
"Dan Easley" <daneasley(a)gmail.com> wrote:
certainly america has a culture; it's not one
i'm particularly fond
of, but it's also so diversified that i must claim ownership and
alliance with bits of it, and lifelong enmity towards other parts.
still, judging its value as a whole or in part is so difficult as to
be misleading. let's say robert wyatt is my janet jackson - it would
be as rude of me to force others to listen to wyatt as it is of others
to make me listen to janet.
Glad to hear that you have TV and radio music shows that plays more
than the same run-of-the-mill payola without falling into the 'classic
rock' trap. I understand then that you do not feel that a certain
choice of music is imposed on you.
But up here in the northern part of America there's none, even if you
pay $100 per month for cable TV. I do not say that the four basic musc
TV channels in Germany are a lot better, but at least when zapping you
may hear interesting stuff from time to time (like Rammstein's
'Amerika' ;-) while up here it's 100% not interesting.
certainly i read this list and work with linux audio
tools while my
roommates watch people shoot at each other on the tv. i don't think
i'm any better than those guys - in fact, i wish i were as easily
amused.
Strange goal to attain... Especially since there are so many shootings
in schools in the USA (I didn't say there are none elsewhere, I've just
underlined the quantity).
i must take the canonized developer's attitude on
this. don't like
our culture? submit a bug report, or learn to code a patch.
Yes, a cabbage patch ;-)
yours in america, proud land of harry partch and kurt
vonnegut,
Vonnegut recently at a US campus (audience filled at 2,000 capacity) had
quite a few strong words against the US government. Many intellectuals
in the USA do. Take Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine
(founded in 1850 something) who was doing a talk at Ottawa University
recently. There's a good number of these fine people in the USA, but
they are outweighted significantly and that's the second point I earlier
mentioned: interest. General interest. When it lies in bing-bang
shootings on the tube, what do you expect ? A strong democratic country
with 4 or 5 strong political parties none of them having the same
financial support background ? I don't think so, and that's the same
everywhere in the world. The mass of people matters, not only
individuals that you see once in a while, because it's after all the
mass that makes the country.
I think the mood is set for some 'Music for the Masses' ;-)
Cheers.