To what are you currently listening?

[Molly Grue]

I was just listening to my David Bowie station on Pandora, so I'm probably guilty of something.

you rebel rebel 

I had to laugh over this as in fact the radio had just played that song, but I don't really feel all that rebellious. After five years of listening to the lugubrious classical selections on the only public radio station I could access out in the boonies, I needed something livelier. I wonder, though, what is wrong with engaging the lower passions to some degree. Perhaps this thread would tell me if I had time to read the whole thing.

[Gardener]

Celtic folk music gives me the same "up" feeling as rock. I doubt anyone here would get their knickers in a twist over the below.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1_-bx-RagA[/yt]

Or Paul Brady's version of "Arthur McBride", which is a song about two Irishmen out for a stroll who are approached for recruitment by the British and proceed to beat the crap out of them and their little drummer boy:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBdywzKD2Jw[/yt]

[Mono no aware]

I don't think anyone denies that lively and spirited music existed before the 1950s, Gardener.  Now in olden times, if you had the means to afford it, you could maybe hire a chamber orchestra to play in your mansion, like in Barry Lyndon.  And then you'd have edifying classical music.  "Lugubrious" stuff, as Molly put it.  (Good word).  Nevertheless it was there to stimulate your higher faculties.  But more commonly, your musical intake would likely consist of hearing folk tunes at the public houses or at céilís and such.  I think a musicologist would probably tell you that the folk tunes of yore were usually "story-songs," and indeed there were murder ballads in the mix, but there were also lots of religious themes.  So on the whole it was not really a scene that celebrated rebellion or sex or paganism.  The criticism against rock music is not just that it's "up," but that it's feral and obnoxious.  There's a difference between your average foot-tapping-&-hand-clapping Irish pub tunes and, say, Little Richard, or The Sex Pistols.  The anti-rock-n'-rollers are not necessarily anti-folk.  There's a distinction between the two genres for good reason.  But even some moral theologians were inclined to mildly discourage folk dancing or waltzes—"permissible," they conceded, but nevertheless "dangerous."  And if that was the verdict on folk and waltzing, then surely the ruling on rock n' roll would have to be a definite "nyet."

[Molly Grue]

I'm a big believer in raising children on adultery-and-murder ballads. That will teach them something about human nature.

[Chestertonian]

i also question whether every single piece of music we listen to has to stimulate the higher passions

i kind of look at it like the waypeople eat

does every food have to ve a sublimw culinary experience

there are some foodslike fresh vegetables and fruits, meats, broths, fish, eggs, nuts

thebulk of the diet should be nouridhing foods.

rock music is simper and easier to appreciate than say, Haydn. like your musical plate of macaroni and cheese.  i like macaroni and cheese.  you can learn the whole song and sing it in the shower, or tap your toes to it on the morning commute.

is it good to eat macaroni and cheese every meal of the day?  or refined sugar?  i think there is something very wrong with people who only listen to pop music and rock, it's like living on a steady diet of refibed carbs and candy.. eventually that catches up with you

i know as a music teacher a lot of kids just want to play popular music.. you have to make them eat their vegetables and learn schumann and brahms

[Mono no aware]

You're missing the point, Chestertonian.  It's not strictly about tapping your toes or singing in the shower.  As I conceded to Gardener, there was lively music around before there was rock n' roll.  And maybe your intake doesn't have to be all Schumann and Brahms.  But the criticism of rock n' roll is that not only does it excite the base passions, but rock music typically comes with a whole "scene" which is about more than just the beats and the melodies: it's also about attitude, fashion, aesthetics, and so on.  Typically this is a rebellious and sexual package, and it does have a measurable influence on youth culture.  I've discussed this already.  You need only to look at the cultural impact rock music had in the 1960s.  When the decade began, most of your performers were clean-cut kids wearing suits.  By the time you get to the 70s, you've got David Bowie dressed up as a transvestite space alien doing bizarre kabuki-and-mine performances to shrieking guitars.  You can also see it in the evolution from the three-minute pop song to the 12- and 20-minute psychedelic jams of Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.  The scene got really trippy.  We don't have the phrase "sex, drugs, and rock n' roll" for no reason.  By reducing the argument to "what's so harmful about a catchy little ditty?," you're committing an obvious fallacy of omission.  Surely you can see this.

[Chestertonian]

is this a problem with the music itself or problem with the way 20th century america decided to "do" adolescence" a la the modern merican high school that groups everyone in arbitrary grades according to age and everyone self identifies with their own jock/nerd/baskeetcase/prep/stoner box because they crave a readymade identity

people send their kids away for several hours of the day and are shocked when they define themselves based on a dumbass haorcut and a band tshirt

[Mono no aware]

is this a problem with the music itself or problem with the way 20th century america decided to "do" adolescence" a la the modern merican high school that groups everyone in arbitrary grades according to age and everyone self identifies with their own jock/nerd/baskeetcase/prep/stoner box because they crave a readymade identity

people send their kids away for several hours of the day and are shocked when they define themselves based on a dumbass haorcut and a band tshirt

Well, I'm sure there are a lot of contributing factors, but the essential argument is that yes, the problem is with the music (and the scene) itself.  Independently of whatever was going on in American high schools, David Bowie was all about gender-bending and occult mysticism.  The Beatles wrote songs about LSD trips and Hindu philosophy and sundry other surrealist topics, goo goo g'joob.  As for whether the educational system is to blame for not properly inoculating kids against this, I don't know.  That's a whole other ball of wax, man.  My mom went to a Catholic girls' school in the 50s and she ended up liking Elvis anyway.  So even pre-Vatican II they were failing the young, if that's your argument.  But that would seem to be a different topic.  A diversion, if you will.  Surely you can see that as well.

[Chestertonian]

yes i would say that this problem began before the 60s

syaye sponsored compulsory education creates an environment by its very nature that puts children in a different world than their parents.  instead of seeing their family as their "tribe" they identify with the peer group.  siblings go off into their own worlds.

then adolescence happens and parents go "who is this strange being living in my house with strange friends listening to strange music"

[Molly Grue]

So here's the big question: If we couldn't see David Bowie, would his music still be a problem?

Some of it, of course. "Suffragette City" would no doubt be frowned upon by orthodox prelates. But what about all those cute harmless songs about star men and milk floats and fun to funky and oh, you pretty things? No doubt those, too, have subversive meanings, but what if we remain obtuse?

Trippiness is next to godliness, or at any rate it can be for some of us benighted souls. It's the aural equivalent of a cathedral, in my opinion.

Of course I also am fond of classical music, but the persistent minor key selections of the Roanoke NPR station brought me down.

[Molly Grue]

I have it: The degenerate youth was caused not by the music itself, but by mass media. People could actually see what the musicians looked like and see how they performed. Worse, they could read stupid interviews with them in stupid music magazines and they actually cared what these musicians thought. You can see what's come of all that.

[Mono no aware]

yes i would say that this problem began before the 60s

syaye sponsored compulsory education creates an environment by its very nature that puts children in a different world than their parents.  instead of seeing their family as their "tribe" they identify with the peer group.  siblings go off into their own worlds.

then adolescence happens and parents go "who is this strange being living in my house with strange friends listening to strange music"

If your opinion, Chestertonian, is that the actual problem is with public and parochial schools, then I guess your solution is not that rock music should be avoided, but rather that everyone should homeschool their kids and inculcate a firm sense of the family as a tribe.  (And to think that the early critics of rock n' roll condemned it for its "tribalism."  I guess they were thinking more along the lines of naked savages dancing around a bonfire).  But anyway, good luck with that.  Something tells me it won't work.  I think peer groups are fairly important for kids.  And I don't think rock succeeded because families and schools were lame.  Give it some credit.  It succeeded because rock music is really alluring.  And I mean the whole scene.  The haze of pot smoke and incense; the dizzying patterns of lava lamps spangling the walls; the drone of the sitar and the hypnotic bass line; Hendrix leaning on the wah-wah pedal; girls with cool haircuts and immodest fashions.  When John Lennon remarked that the Beatles were more popular with kids than Jesus, he was actually just saying out loud a fact parents and educators were already privy to.  Hands were already being wrung over that.  "And now it's all this."

[Chestertonian]

I have it: The degenerate youth was caused not by the music itself, but by mass media. People could actually see what the musicians looked like and see how they performed. Worse, they could read stupid interviews with them in stupid music magazines and they actually cared what these musicians thought. You can see what's come of all that.

yeah... who knows what rolling stone would have put about schumann..  or brucknet....wgner... liszt..apparently mozart was obsessed with farting

[Maximilian]

If we couldn't see David Bowie, would his music still be a problem?

You mean like his songs about going out on the town as a transvestite while high on heroin?

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a82arE0JSQ[/yt]

Trippiness is next to godliness, or at any rate it can be for some of us benighted souls. It's the aural equivalent of a cathedral, in my opinion.

That was the dream, wasn't it?
But how has that worked out?
Where are the Sid Barrett's of yesteryear?

[Mono no aware]

So here's the big question: If we couldn't see David Bowie, would his music still be a problem?

Some of it, of course. "Suffragette City" would no doubt be frowned upon by orthodox prelates. But what about all those cute harmless songs about star men and milk floats and fun to funky and oh, you pretty things? No doubt those, too, have subversive meanings, but what if we remain obtuse?

Don't forget, though, Molly, that the pretty things in that song were "driving their mamas and papas insane."  Bowie loved 50s rock n' roll, with its attitude of joyful rebellion against parents.  But now that Bowie (in his glam rock prime) is gone from the mainstream cultural radar, it's possible, I guess, to enjoy the songs on one's Pandora radio without the theatrics.  But anyone who likes the songs enough to be curious to know at least the first thing about Bowie can look him up on Wikipedia and YouTube and find out that the theatrics are nearly as legendary as the music.  And why wouldn't they be curious?  Rock music has always been a "package" or a "scene."  If it was possible to divorce one aspect of the scene from another, then maybe we could just have radio and everything would be okay.  But video killed the radio star.  Generally speaking, you have to consider rock music as a scene.