Re: The Who Mailing List Digest V5 #249

[Brian <bmcgow01@wild.vill.edu>]

Well, the seasons go round and round and the painted ponies go up and
down:

> The only one that I can get to fit is "My Generation"!  Peo-ple try
> to put us down, just be-cause we get a-round. . .up a-bove the world
> so high, like a dia-mond in the sky. :)
>
> -Yellow "Rose of Texas" Ledbetter

Every single song written in 4/4 time (which contains all but two or three
Who songs), can be sung to the melody of any other song written in 4/4
(like "twinkle").  The fact that almost every rock is in 4/4, is one of
the reasons I think it such a poor form of expression.


> No they can't. Unless you're "doing a Dickinson" by transposing words
> and changing where it breaks to suit the tune.
>
Yes, they can, I can have several musicians confirm this if you would
like.  They would definately sound very wierd, but so would a Dickinson
poem if you sung it to anything.  While they were metered to fit songs,
the accents fall at some very awkward places (for a song).

For a while now, several of you have been "hiding behind" the argument
that art is anything you say it is.  I have done my best to stay away from
this, but since this seems to be going in no other direction, I feel I
should just address it now.

I believe that this argument is a useless waste of time.  The reason for
this comes directly from the pages of some philosopher's whose name I have
long since forgotten.  He said that something's definition cannot be that
thing.  The argument some of you have taken says that art = art because I
say it does.  According to this definition I could look the word computer
up in a dictionary and it would define it as "a computer."  That
definition is unacceptable for anything, how can it possibly be true of
art?

And I have one more thing to say about the music vs. society debate.  Take
for instance Monet.  He was a painter who painted things, among them
flowers.  Monet did not invent, or otherwise alter, flowers, he just
depicted them.  Now take for instance Ms. Joplin.  She was a song
writer/poet who wrote about social change.  She didn't change society, she
just wrote about its changes.


> Society as a whole was fragmented, yes...
>
So it wasn't unified...

> If the music was a product of the generation gap, then it's dead
> because that particular generation got old before they died.
>
No, I think it died in the 60's.  Sometime around the time a group of four
guys from across the Atlantic were successful at molding rock into their
image.

> So what was it that brought about the jazz and rock revolutions?
>
I believe that were caused by the circumstances around them.  I will start
with jazz, keep in mind that I only know the basics about music.  In 1918,
the greatest war the world had yet seen had ended, the idea of a rural
nation had died, technology was here to stay, prohibition had taken hold
and was considered by the youth to be an attempt of the elders to impose
their will on the country, the women's movement essentially died after the
19th amendment, there was an overall view that reform was bad and baseball
was bigger than ever.  In a very real sense these factors (especially WWI)
all combined to create the golden age of American art.  The 20's was the
high period in all forms of American art, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dreiser
Stevens, Pound, Robinson, Frost, O'Neill and in my opinion the second
greatest poet, T.S. Eliot were all writing.  It was in this decade that
painting also took off in the nation.  Because of this golden age, the
time was right for jazz to make it big.  The Laconia treaty was just
signed, as was the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Washington Naval Disarmament
treaty took affect and world peace seemed to be within grasp.  It seems to
us like it would have been a good time to be alive, but all of the
aforementioned factors created the biggest generation gap in history.  The
youth simply rejected everything it had, they were a "Lost generation."
Of course this all changed in '31, with the beginning of WWII, and '32,
with the total onset of the world depression.  The 1920's is perhaps the
most fascinating off all decades in US history, at least I think so.

Rock was altogether a different story.  While a generation did clearly
exist, it was not even close to as dramatic.  Plus it did not produce the
kind of artistic golden age the 20's did.  I will detail this decade
somewhat less because I'm sure you all know many of the gory details.  The
most signifigant thing to occur in this decade, historically speaking, was
the Cuban Missle Crisis.  It was from this moment that people became
disallusioned with the world.  Compound this dissalusionment with the
Vietnam world, and you have a society that wants to tear itself apart.
This the very environment that rock needed to thrive in.  Rock was all
about destruction, at its core.  Louder was better, and anti-establishment
was great.  Rock was both of these.  Without this culture, it is very
unlikely that rock would have existed in the same form than it did.  So, I
say again that music is a reflection of society's changes, not the cause
of those changes.


> And why did The Who seem to hit
> it so dead on?
>
Bottom line here is that I can only guess at it.  Perhaps they were the
right people at the right time in the right place.  Perhaps they were just
really good.  Perhaps they said something that people wanted to hear.
Perhaps they just looked like a real rock band should.  Perhaps they just
got lucky.  I don't think anyone can say for sure.

> I do think that with this Broadway thing, he's finally making a gesture
> toward preserving the music within a traditional institution.
>
My guess is that you are correct here.  History will never forget
Shakespeare, but can anyone other than an English teacher remember John
Dryden? (Dryden was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and was actually more
popular).

> Don McLean says it's a joke.  Still, lots of people have fun worrying
> with it.
>
Perhaps it is, he would know better than I.  But it still has some really
interesting stuff in it.  I mean any time you can juxtapose Christ with
Hamlet, you've got to appreciate that.

On the Twain Dickens thing:
These two authors are a very difficult pair to compare in any way.  They
are so very different, but the bottom line is that Twain was far more of a
dialectical realist.  In Huck Finn there are 21 different dialects, this
was something that Dickens may have tried to do, but it doesn't really
appear that way.  Perhaps the best testament to Twain's realistic dialogue
is to look at the importance it plays in his novels.  His books are pushed
forward by his dialogue, where as Dicken's novels are pushed forward by
narration.  Somewhere there is probably an opinion of Dickens written by
Twain.  If I find this, it should shed the final bit of light on this
discussion.  But, while Dickens did write realistc dialogue at about the
same time as Twain, he was far behind Twain's level and certainly did not
influence the future of the novel to the same degree as Twain.


> Retail sales is the best form of quality control ever invented.
>
Ouch...This hurts.  According to this, Shakespeare would be virtually
ignored today, and William Dean Howells would be worshiped as the greatest
American writer.

> And by admitting this, you admit The Who's music is Art!
>
Negative.  I said that art does move you, but so do trains.  I am also
moved by other random things, including a good oreo now and again.  I
wouldn't go so far as to call a train or a cookie art.


> How so? Music has changed MUCH more than poetry.
>
I don't have the time to give you all the details, but if you take a look
at very old poetry (the pslams would work) and then compare this to modern
poetry (Frost would be good) you will see two totally different things.
While music has changed quite a lot from the beginnings, it has generally
been behind the times where as poetry is often the first art form to mark
the change into a new era.


> Music is limited by its appeal, while poetry (it seems) will find
> SOMEONE to defend it on the basis of being worthy by mere reason of its
> existence.
>
Same can said of music.  It seems that most people on this list are
content with saying music is art because music is art.  Sounds like they
are claiming it is worthy simply because it exists.

> And my contention is Art can only be measured by its A) effect on the
> person experiencing it, & B) its influence. By this measure, music (and
> Rock music in particular) comes out the clear winner.
>
And my contentious is that one cannot measure in this totally personal
manner.  I also contend that rock music has had only marginal influence on
anything, except the size of our wallets.  Art must be looked at in terms
that can be defined, or else there is no reason to ever discuss it.  If
art is simply what we think it is, so is everything else in this world,
and that is just not true.

> > Pick up Catch-22.
>
> Read it and still stand by my statement. I've read a lot, actually.
>
Fair enough.  I just think Tolkein is a fairly minor writer.

-McGoo