Re: The Who Mailing List Digest V8 #221

[Alan McKendree <amckendree@mail.nur.utexas.edu>]

>Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 09:52:51 -0400
>From: "Mark R. Leaman" <mleaman@sccoast.net>
>Subject: The Who Generation
>
>The counterculture came directly from the antiwar movement.

No quibble here.

>The US was less oppressive in the `60's than it is now. Thanks to Ronald
>Reagan's so-called "drug war," a LOT of civil rights were disposed of.

Reagan may have started it but Clinton certainly embraced it as well.

>Understandable. We were ground under the heel of the Micropublican party,
>and we were right and they knew it.

I'm not clear on who the "we" is and when we were ground under, but it was
Kennedy and Johnson, Democrat stalwarts both, who ramped up Vietnam into
the disaster it was, generating the antiwar movement you mention above.
Anyone else remember, "Hey, hey LBJ, how may kids did you kill today?"  I
do.  Nixon, a Republican, was the one who removed our troops (admittedly by
surrendering, but at least not tossing any more lives into the abyss).  As
I've said before, I realize both major parties have severe flaws.  You'd be
more credible if you weren't such a Republican basher/Democrat cheerleader.

They want this mess of a world...let
>them wallow in their own shit. The problem with this is that now we're ALL
>in the same boat: the environment is becoming dangerous,

Just read an article today claiming quite the contrary:  posted it at
http://www.nur.utexas.edu/eco-surprise.htm  for (all) your edification.
Thesis (buttressed by 3,000 footnotes): "...that the rate of human
population growth is past its peak, that agriculture is sustainable and
pollution is ebbing, that forests are not disappearing, that there is no
wholesale destruction of plant and animal species and that even global
warming is not as serious as commonly portrayed."

>the US is becoming a third world country,
>the elite is forcing their selfish (and shortsighted) views down our throats.

Not sure what you mean by this.  Any place that has running water is pretty
much out of the "third world" category. And "the elite" is so nebulous as
to be content-free.  It comes off as just free-floating resentment of
anyone wealthy and/or in goverment.

>Also it's a lot easier to play the game and
>make a lot of money than fight for what we all know is right.

There's no inherent dichotomy between making a lot of money and doing what
one knows is right.

>Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 16:33:54 EDT
>From: Sroundtable@aol.com
>
>Of course, the Beatles were incredible, but all their music is so similar.

<cough>  <cough>  <COUGH COUGH COUGH KAFF kaff kaf a hak a kak kaff...>

And I Love Her
Paperback Writer
I Want to Hold Your Hand
Tomorrow Never Knows
Helter Skelter
Ballad of John & Yoko
Why Don't We Do It in the Road?
Eight Days a Week
When I'm 64
She Loves You
Yesterday
She's So Heavy
(could go on and on)

Sorry, I just don't get it if you hear these as similar.

>The Beatles songs I think are best are the few that feature a different sound
>from the strawberry fields, penny lane, yellow submarine genre that dominated
>their work- such as paperback writer and back in the ussr.  Put it this way-
>how much different did the Beatles music sound from the start of their run
>till the end?

See above, sort out the early from the late and judge for yourself.

And one album does not make a band a risk taker (White Album).
>Discount crap like I am the walrus,

Crap?  Strikes me as evocative impressionistic poetry capturing
frustration, alienation, spirituality, and quite risky for the time with
the dissonances.

>The Beatles are Mozart-
>everything they did was perfect, but the Who is Beethoven- great music with
>an edge to it.  I respect a band more when they lay everything on the line
>for their music.

Good way of putting it.

Cheers,

Alan
Dell is the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.  Apple sees in 3-D.