Sunday 19 April 2009

What can I become? My Sweetest Online Friends.



Johnny Cash performs a magnificent version of Hurt. A song of effectively presented but mostly teen obsessions by the talented and silly creep Trent Reznor: the perfectly marketable and thus enormously successful fake rebel and authentic teen/man. In John's hands, Hurt becomes a profound and elegiac statement of artistic fact. Much like Billie Holliday made often B material worthy of the Great American Songbook.


Angie Stone I Wish I Didn’t Miss You Anymore. Maybe it was something I said?




Billie Holliday God Bless The Child. Yep, God bless the child who grows up in a Western capitalist democracy. Poor Billie. Doomed to half-adulthood in a drug addled aspic.




John Legend Again. Again, if you missed Sam Cook, Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye, you can dig the wonderful Legend.




John Legend Ordinary People.




As is common in R&B and soul acts, the song is the message and therefore a coherent adult narrative partnered to a melody, feel and purpose.

Though still like most everyone else, not really about anything to scare the horses. But then, music that’s allegedly “about something” is often turgid, insane and political agitprop crap. Or it’s about imaginary threats and spineless causes, such as the alleged Third Reich of ex-PM John Howard and ex-President Bush and NEVER about actual oppression in Nth Korea, the Middle East or Cuba.

And gee, the two Fuhrer’s merely retired peacefully without a problem, didn’t they? Fancy that. I guess “BushHitler” was actually just phony, boring and stupid mass bullshit after all, like a lotta pop and faux serious culture today.

Sometimes great music is often about hey, music or the singular and or paradoxically universal obsessions of the author. Go figure, thus we get Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Frank Zappa, Mozart, Sibelius, Wagner the loon, and Ray Charles. I myself prefer music about music, such as instrumental jazz, [for what it's worth]and orchestral in which I find most everything reflected.



I’m reading for the second time in a row The Death of The Grown-Up by Diana West. It’s magnificent and a pivotal tome. And it’s had an effect on me, bub.

Dig the link for a magnificent post on the surreal liberal fascism of the current Homeland Security release that see’s conservative principles of being “pro-life, pro-law-and-order, pro-marriage” as “right wing extremism!” Left Obamessiah codespeak for “agree with us totally or else!” Ah, a “diversity” of their leftard opinions only. Got it. Nuance.

The central premise of the death of Mom and Dad is that post WWll, the dominant meme in Western culture has gone from teenagers regarding their time as an awkward and thus ASAP transition to a much desired adulthood, to a permanent state, in fact THE state most desired by even adults who aspire down to being a teen forever. No really. Look at the Democrats: it’s entirely teenage in it’s world view. Bush is gone and now a grateful, warm hearted and rational world loves America and the rest of the Anglosphere!

“Look out Dad, look out Mom! It’s Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, Cheney’s gone!”

And it’s rather pointedly thrown up my own rather slow, fiasco ridden and oft times embarrassing climb to maturity. Many of the laughable concerns, interests and amusements of my years past now leave me blank or sickened. I simply don’t care because Hell, they’re unimportant junk, but it took me a damn long time to blindly figure that out.

I take music and its effects a lot less seriously than I used to. I guess I don't find the er, "ideas" in music as interesting as the ideas found in public speaking writers and their work.

“I’m gonna change the world with this chord progression! Then they’ll see!” No.

It’s no coincidence that more life and death ideas like gee whiz, the destruction and fall of the free West to Islamisation, enabled by the Marxist product sodden left and so on, is where I kinda focus

It’s no coincidence that I find true conservatives, conservative principals and the military a source of maturity and inspiration. The ideas of the left liberal are teenage Utopian simple minded inversions for the irresponsible child that cannot concentrate for long on one thing with profundity. As Diana West shows, it’s like a prolonged and even lifetime tantrum.

Conservative principles of a respect for the Constitution, a respect for life, limited government, [limited parental figure] and personal responsibility ARE adulthood. Thus I’ve failed on points and all my problems can be narrowed down to not becoming a conservative ASAP and thus an adult.

I live in the inner-city. Before I went to university I imagined it would be so adult, cosmopolitan and a real rite of passage. It was almost none of those things much like the inner-city. We just think it is but it’s largely superficial and shallow pose and almost nowhere to be found. No really. If anything, the Pavlovian left defaults of many an urban groover are dated, indoctrinated stupid defaults from high school and university.

Still it's fun, the few alternatives are worse and I can't live anywhere else unless that anywhere else is New York, Tokyo, a ranch in Wyoming or an ultra-modern beach house in some far away and isolated sand dunes. But I digress as I do...

Many I speak to seem to know nothing about the greatness of the Western Canon, [or even that term] or history and are incurious about it, and possess little or no thinking or behavioural skills. This was a virtual tool kit for past adulthood. Today millions of young have their heads filled with the PC mediocrity and essentially Marxist nihilist junk by teachers, the MSM, celebrity and the government, and then it feeds back and around, and is essentially self-fulfilling.

These bastards are ripping-off the young. I was ripped-off even trying to believe left guff.

“Soylent Green is young people!”

Looking at these songs I realise there seems little adult music to be found anymore, because the common way of seeing the world without seeing is virtually ALL teen.

Don’t get me wrong, living in the past is not my bag, man. I’m totally hip to the happening and stoned soul chicks on the scene! I'm also utterly non-sentimental and nostalgia gives me claustrophobia, yet I diggeth history and dig Americana and our own story. I'm a heritage kinda guy! Go figure.

Listen to many acts as they say thanks for an award and they give genuine thanks to God, the Church and their parents first. Many a true talent is so disposed.

Teendom is a kind of permanent and meaningless now if one extends it artificially in the peculiar way that many people very much past the age of nineteen do. It’s neither serious nor relevant to anything beyond being a teen.

So dig, most music at anytime is largely crap and corn however well crafted, even black music and why not? The biggest selling albums of the sixties were not the clichéd and alleged “adult” and “classic” tastes of Beatles and Stones products ad nauseum; in Britain it was the Sound Of Music album and in America, teeny bubble gum pop ruled.

As Hendrix notd, black folks mostly bought black music and found Jimi a weirdo with Hendrix being a fan of [the unheard of past 51st street] Bob Dylan. And then at a Hendrix concert it was everybody and standing room only. Go figure.

I mostly listen to non-commercial radio shows, jazz, theme, orchestral, the freshest contemporary and old school R&B, soul and funk et al and thus by default the latter is largely black, the former being the usual mix of most everybody. It’s the invariable Church born authenticity of it as well as the groove and sheer musicianship. I listen to really no Australian music at all.

What can I say? Very little of what I hear here interests me in the slightest. I'm sure there's something though. Gotta be. Go figure. Well, we don't have the history or the Italian, Jewish, Latino, European and black pool that generated the Great American Songbook, Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building and the singer/songwriters, do we?

Now I also dig peculiar sampled elongated grooves, gospel, raw mountain people music, music history, movie incidental and thematic music. Actually I like a lot things if it’s swingin’ and often I like nothing: like silence where I can hear the drifting sounds of outside especially at night.

You want a romantic, sophisticated and contemplative adult evening? You put on Angie Stone, John Legend, Marvin Gaye and so on or still, Miles. Though I can’t put on the latter so much anymore, cos for me they’re kinda done to death. Ok, I do still sometimes listen to 'em and Aretha and Jaaaaames, but only VERY loud.

When later in the said evening of lurv you want to bang like a pair of loons from the light fittings, the choice is rather more er, more extensive. But I digress.

Now Sinatra was an adult and his music went from teen to aggresively adult as he naturally and forcefully matured, adopting not just the interests, mode, tastes, responsibilities and behaviour of an adult, but the dress style and acoutrements of an adult, cos he was one. I can’t think of a single artist that has taken a similiar journey today. Often so eager to stay forever fashionable and preposterously young.

I remember hearing Shirley Maclean say how Frank and Dean “always smelled so good” and were always so adult, sharply dressed in their cool. A cool that became a joke and then returned as something unattainable by most anyone today. There were no pathetic dishevelled celebrity spastic on the street shots of Frank and Dean babbling and then such failure seen as a success and er, “rebellion.”

Regular bathing and grooming is one of the sure signs of adulthood. Just ask my wife!

True rebellion is an individual thing or as sacrifice for something larger than ones self. Today rebellion is almost entirely ersatz and a mass product with clearly pre-proscribed limits. Many self-proclaimed rebels, rebel at things that are entirely harmless.

This is why almost every celebrity of pop, film and so on has predictable and interchangable by the number opinions. Sad, lazy, unread, unserious, incurious and utterly ineffective, they can prattle on without ever testing a damn single scam in harsh reality, cos there’s always another craze comin’ along.

Thus George Clooney thinks he’s brave for taking on HUAC fifty years after the fact by misrepresenting and lying lazily about it. After the Soviets released classified documents and more, McCarthy was proven to be entireley right about Commie creeps in government, media, education, entertainment and so on. Gee, just like today except that now it's much, much worse.

Take on Iran, Nth Korea, Mugabe or Cuba, George. What about Muslim “honour” murders in the West? No go? Didn't think so. Carry on then George, you courageous tinsel town warrior...

I’ve seen a lot of stand-up comedy lately and no matter what the act, they mostly say variations on themes in the same way and about the same things, especially when they imagine they’re being “daring” which is most of the time. Faux transgressive is the default pose of a toytown rebel, kids.

I saw a vid of a guy who has a terrorist puppet, conveniently stripped down to a skelton so gee, it could be anyone doing these er, 95% Muslim acts of terror. In the entire act that I saw, the guy makes not a single relevant or gee, “daring” joke about Islam or Muslim terror, beyond the catch phrase “I kill you!”, which as a comedy act he didn’t.

And even that clear statement taken from the Islamic fact that millions of Muslims want to do exactly that to non-Muslims and each other, doesn’t seem to register with either the alleged comic or his easily amused audience.

Nope, he used the prop of a terrorist puppet to make daring jokes about Christians and Jews, none of whom will ever want to kill him.

In this way, one can act out obsessive empty transgressions without any consequences because the core non-ideas such as they are, are entirely disconnected from any empirical reality that an adult must face.

This is why lots of film, music and writing is not about anything, especially the herd of elephants in the room of Islamisation, the dominance of Marxist left control freakery and dhimmitude, the massive scam of global warming, the death of the mainstream media and the collapse of the West into fantasy and self-loathing depression.

Why do so many young people get depressed? Jesus, why do so many not? See, a glib circular fatuity!

We live in a tiny bright spot in the dark tunnel of human history and millions have been indoctrinated to believe that this all we “have become” is entirely a bad thing, and that it’s best to destroy it so we can go back to er, “traditional” ways that never existed. You know, back to nature and no dentistry, plumbing, obstetrics and technology. Then we can all roll around in the collective dirt of the moronic barbarism of conformist tribalism. No such advanced culture has ever attempted such a collective suicide.

Ah, then the average mired in irony teen minded adult and teen, can experience the true irony of finding that the natural world destroys teens and that’s why teens didn’t exist until the affluence of the free West created them. Like that Frankenstein dude who was like totally sick.



Johnny Cash interview.




Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash duo on Girl From The North Country. With the help of his great talent re Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde and Blood On The Tracks et al, and his cool 60's beat look, Bob managed to parlay the fact of him having little that was always coherent or actually mature to say, into being allegedly coded with mysterious hidden er, meanings. Sadly, since he started speaking more clearly we find while Bob’s still very amusing , he has the apparent bog standard political tastes of mass leftard Obamaism.




Frank Sinatra That’s Life. Frank is the only complete adult in the pack and now he’s gone forever. Mark Steyn noted how Sinatra was “the most sane” artist he'd ever met. Well Frank for all his dark flaws, was if anything an adult man and a profound artist of song and the art of living.

Thus Frank always picked himself up, dusted himself off and took on the challenges of life as the adult making adventure it clearly is. Sure, it get's you in the end, but in the meantime...

“They can’t take that way from me."

In contrast, many a contemporary [and past act too] can wallow in lessons that are supposed to be the ticket out of the lost kingdom of teen. Hey, there’s trouble everywhere and what do I know? Nuttin'.




Edith Piaf Non Je Ne Regrette Rien. The only regret is that Piaf was incapable of maturing as much as her great art.




Edith Piaf Milord.




Edith does the innately adult Autumn Leaves.




The Verve Bittersweet Symphony. Their idea of youth rebellion is apparently being an alienated boorish brat who casually assaults people while merely walking single mindedly down the street. It's a great ton though. And those billionaire rebels the Stones, litigate the song credits from the Verve for a snippit.

Ah, sixties "sharing" at work. Someone once said that Mick Jagger was as "erotic as a pissing frog." And even more daring.




Diamonds Are Forever Shirley Bassey. Shirley always sounded like an adult woman because she is. Then she had to allegedly get hipper by performing with younger artists, when it was Bassey that brought the adult cred, [which is the true essence of hip] to recordings of what were essentially “contemporary” teen amusements . Go figure. What lasts? Expressing oneself as an adult and diamonds.




I Never Met A Girl Like You Before Edwyn Collins. This is a great pop song. It’s simple, hypnotic and ironic, innit? Edwyn has not met a hit song like this before or since, which defines the utterly cellophane wrapper thinness of what is offered up as important. And one hit is one more than me.




Radiohead Karma Police. Another excellent teen stream diary non-narrative. It’s effective but to what end? What’s it about? Apparently something, nothing and everything and maybe that’s why kids love it. It requires no effort whatsoever. Just feel the er, feelings.




Radiohead Creep. Ah, all those school lessons of self-loathing ideology instead of confidence in one's culture, understanding and rational judgement have paid off. The death of the free West certainly produces some enervating and catchy dirges, don’t it?




Voodo Child Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix allowed himself to be vulnerable to the absurd 1960’s dumb ass idea of no standards whatsoever as a standard for living, to stop him dead in his tracks, and long before he got a chance to be the adult he could have been. Wilfully ignorant of his finances, Jimi saw it as a good idea that he should just make enough touring to cover less than expenses! No really. You know, to help the kids. The affluent hippie kids.

And yet of all artistic projections, Jimi made most every other artist apart from say James Brown, look like a one dimensional and merely fashionable teen, which is what they often were and still embarrassingly often are.




Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Oddly, many a girl around here still aspires to Audrey’s version of an eternal adult-child waif, calculating but intellectually and morally adrift in the big city. Still, a girl must maintain her sense of style, however ineffective and fragile if nothing else. And apart from disease and the suicidal urges, it’s fun.

Hey, dig the famous scene of the last adult party on earth. At least most adults still looked and dressed like adults. Still, being a Holly Golightly invitee party, it's a bit of a smorgasbord of the many ticks of needing to stay hip a la teen. Now "Fred's" bedroom is my idea of comfort and privacy and it's not so curiously back in vogue. If you can't have the adulthood, get the decore!




The Verve Lucky Man. Hell, they are and don’t even know it.




The Verve The Drugs Don’t Work. Nope, only maturity does.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahh, another bitter old conservative, angry that the world isn't the way it should be! Get real old man; get some clue of what reality is before you start spouting off with your incredibly small minded world view. I agree with some of what you say about pop culture and the troubles of our youth, but everything else is complete buillshit. For eg: if you think we don't need a sustainable economy, you will very shortly be proved wrong. If you think that young people aren't capable of advancing the buman understanding of the universe, you will again be proven very wrong. And if you despair because you think the youth aren't capable of fixing the messes that (largely conservative) small minded old people have left us with, you are agina, dead wrong. A Conservative political position is on only of fear of the inevitable, and an unwillingness to adapt, evolve and grow.

Colonel Robert Neville said...

Dear um, "Anonymous."

Ah, a classic "anony mouse" package of logical fallacy and cognitive disssonance. Bravo.

Excellent strawman, false dichotomy, ad hominem and so on ad nauseum. Nope, not "bitter". Read the banner. "satirical rationalist etc".

Small minded? Er, no. You appear unable to grasp that I posted all this stuff cos for all it's limits, I er, like it. Rather obvious really.

The "everything else" you mention is merely strawman drivel innit? "Sustainable economy" is leftard drool: meaningless spouting for those incapable and too lazy to actually study economics or really anything seriously.

ALL real capitalist democratic economies are sustainable by default if you know anything much...nope, guess not.

I never said young people are incapable of "advancing the buman!" I'm all for advanced bumanism.

NONE of the unstated "messes" are conservative by definition. They are ENTIRELY the creation of Marxist product sodden left liberal socialism via the ever exapanding state. Let people keep their money and do as they see fit and hey presto, wealth!

The left always acts as if the governemnt always know how to handle OTHER peoples money better than they do. Ironically, th
e left liberal often avoids paying taxes. Witness nine or more of the ObamaMessiah's tax cheat government drop-outs!

Conservative principles are respect for The Constitution, respect for life, limited government and personal responsibility. Simple AND effective ALWAYS.

So how does this and saying the individual is always more important than the state and group, somehow end in "messes?" It doesn't.

Neither does the conservative principles of freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, low tax, private property rights, the rule of law, freedom and so on.

What have YOU done to "adapt, evolve and grow" lately? Apparently nothing. Your comments stink of dated leftard statism groupthink, bub.

Like most left indoctrinated apparent drones, you are profoundly ignorant of what conservatism is. It is the PROVEN set of ideas that has created EVERYTHING that sustains golly, you.

You seem to know nothing of the control freak and bankrupt history of left liberalism either. Why are you not alarmed? At what point do you become creeped out over governemnt uber-regulation and parasitism? Is this a new kind of left liberal rebellion?

Rebellion through mass conformity! Ah, as per usual, a fraudulent pose.

How you define er, "change" and wish to adapt, evolve and grow is not for the state and the mob to impose, but a largely due to the autonomy of the individual, something the left wishes to destroy.

Do you understand at all the nature of fascism, socialism, Nazism, Marxism, Communism, totalitarianism and leftard liberalism? Nope, too problematic eh?

Nevermind. Of denial...

Oh, for "grow, evolve and adapt", you mean conformity to PC left liberalism. Got it. Nuance.

I suggest you read some P.J O'Rourke and the following just to start:

[Left] Liberal Fascism Jonah Goldberg. Death Of The Grown-Up Diana West. While Europe Slept Bruce Bawer.

Stealth Jihad Robert Spencer. Brigitte Gabriel Why They Hate. Terror In Beslan John Giduck. America Alone & Lights Out Mark Steyn.

Al Qaeda Reader R.Ibrahim. Infidel A.Ali. Londonistan M.Phillips.The Case Against Obama David Fredosso. Unholy Alliance & Radical Son DavidHorowitz.

Next time show the alleged courage of your convictions and leave an actual name. Leftards and Muslim loons invariably go by "Anonymous", AKA cowards and phony's.

Also, try focusing on a single point and countering with gee, EVIDENCE.

Toodle ooh and thanks for the comment.

Colonel Neville.

paul said...

Col. Bob: thanks for the great read and satire to boot! If the present educational system were at least as unbiased, say, as to actually have dialogue about alternative points of view, rather than their distilled neo marxism destined to breed more robots incapable of uncritical thinking, they actually might have books like "Liberal Fascism" by the great Jonah Goldberg on the curriculum. Another would be, "Guilty" by Ann Coulter (the one they love to hate). At least these works are very comprehensive because they have been thoroughly researched, pondered, and distilled into eminently readable form.