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rude 'n' ridiculous rants + polite but painfully-slow prattle with passers-by

Started by rick957, June 23, 2012, 08:50:16 PM

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rick957

Alright, see what you think of this, you imaginary person who's reading any of this.  :)

This is what's been happening in my life.  I spent all these years and years and years and years and years struggling and feeling low, and it was everything it was cracked up to be:  it was hard.  Still is sometimes, one day to the next, keeping your head above water; not always easy, struggling to breathe.

All that said, I find that I'm being given things in my life that are so unexpectedly and inconceivably great and wonderful that -- it's not that it changes the past or anything.  It's not that it makes all the hardship or difficulty go away or seem any less painful, when I think about or dwell on that stuff.  But what it does seem to do whenever I receive something new is, well, what I'm being given is so great that nothing else matters.  Nothing.  Not the past, not the future.  I'm so overwhelmed.  Ineffable.

You get so used to carrying certain burdens that you forget they're there until one day you feel so good that suddenly you realize what you've been carrying all that time, just how huge and heavy the burden was that you thought you could never be free of, so you taught yourself to ignore it.  If you can't fix it or make it go away, if you have to carry certain hurts, you teach yourself to ignore them altogether, as much as you possibly can, and after enough time passes, you get really really good at it.  Practice makes perfect!  You get so good that nobody would believe the truth about you, what you live with each day.

I suspect that if any one of us could actually get inside the head of another one of us, if that simple thing could ever ever actually happen, we would each see the following:  you have known things in your life more wonderful than anything I have known, and other things more terrible than anything I have known.  I have done the same, in my life, compared to yours.  It's not about whose gifts or burdens are larger than the next person's.  Perhaps, perhaps each of us gets things that are just so fundamentally different from what any other person gets that comparisons are impossible, apples to oranges.  Could it be that way?  Why couldn't it?  How else could it be?

We are all nothing alike; we are all the same.  No different.

rick957

#201
It really isn't possible to be skeptical enough in this crazy old world.  :)

I'll give you a trivial example, and maybe it will illustrate the larger point.

A few years back -- quite a few years!  where's the time go? -- Neil Young put out an album called Greendale, which was released with a movie of the same name.  I can't recall if he directed the movie, but he wrote the fictional story around which the film and album were based.  The movie got a brief release in some big cities and then probably went to DVD or disappeared.

Now, if you know a little about Neil, you know that he's an unapologetic eccentric and iconoclast of the very highest order, which means that he's someone I admire as much as any person I've known in this world, and also means that he's probably a bit of a loon.  ;)  You know, he did drugs routinely for decades, from what I hear.  Who knows how he's lived for so long or kept his brain from turning into Jello.  He's one of the most important figures in the history of pop music and rock and roll, no question.

Anyway, Greendale.  As soon as I heard about it, I assumed it was another of Neil's crazy notions, some half-baked idea he woke up with one day and decided to execute, because he happens to have the time and money to indulge his sudden whims in that way, thanks to the many hit songs he's written and performed over the years, especially in the 60s and 70s of course.  Neil's rich as fuck, I hear.  Good for him.  The funny thing about Greendale is that I didn't actually listen to the thing at all before I assumed that it was probably somewhat trivial and half-assed, at least compared to his other albums where he sticks to writing great rock and roll and doesn't take off on far-flung notions about writing modern-day parables and turning them into concept albums accompanied with amateur movies.  I mean, come on, it sounds silly, right?  And it's hardly the first silly indulgence in his career.  The man's a genius sixteen times over, but he's got plenty of stinkers in his catalog; that's how it goes for many of the biggest geniuses out there.  Same's true for Prince, for example.  Maybe Tom Waits too, or maybe not.

So anyway, I picked up the Greendale CD eventually, because I'll buy anything with Neil's name on it, if I can find it at a good price, and now that I've had the disc for years and years and years, and everyone else on the planet including Neil himself has completely forgotten that Greendale ever existed -- he's had half a dozen or more albums since -- now I'm finally getting to know the music on the CD well.  I'm slow like that, but it's okay, because sometimes ... you know what?

There's some great shit on this disc.  Not just good shit.  Not just mediocre shit that's mildly engaging, like Dylan's been doing for the past thirty years.  There are new ideas on this disc.  There are some good new ideas here about what you can do with rock and roll.  There are production approaches I've never heard anywhere before, and some of them are successful.  This is not some half-baked, trivial album; it's got real vitality and purpose and accomplishment.  It's exactly the kind of thing that justifies Neil's entire career and justifies every mistake he's ever committed to disc; this is a man who breathes genius out of his fucking pores, he drops genius like cows drop poo behind them without even paying attention to it. 

Greendale is an important release.  It's probably uneven, I would guess; I don't know it well enough to say, yet, but I can guarantee you that I will eventually know every song on it well enough to have a serious critical response to it, and I won't be surprised in the least if it's actually a forgotten and overlooked masterpiece, because I know Neil is fully capable of that; his career is littered with them.  He has albums that have gone out of print that are better than any CD you've bought in the past five years, probably better than any CD I've bought in the past five years too.  Greendale might be one of them.  I already know it has songs on it that fill me with joy, elation, agony, ecstasy, sorrow, awe, admiration, envy, happiness, heartache.  This is what art is about, for me; this is how I get my fix, how I satisfy my personal little jones, how I enter into the world:  I get off on rock and roll, baby.  :)  It ain't a bad way to be.  (Lemmy from Motorhead, loosely quoted:  "I got rock and roll / to satisfy my soul ... and if that's all there is / it ain't so bad"!  Yeah.)

Oh, back to where I started this ramble.  The funny thing is that I figured out after paying attention to media rock critics for just a few years that they're frequently wrong about albums, and I'm skeptical enough about the media in general that I stopped assuming decades ago that the critical consensus on albums or movies was necessarily trustworthy, because I strongly disagree with the critical consensus on plenty of my favorite albums and movies, and I'm right.  :)  hehehehe It's the critics who are wrong, and I can tell you exactly why and how, at least with certain albums and artists.  If you haven't found instances in your music collection or DVD collection yet where the critics were dead wrong, then that means one of two things:  either you have a small music or DVD collection, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that; or, you haven't learned to think critically for yourself well enough, and there is something a little wrong with that.  The whole damn point of getting an education is to learn to think critically for yourself, and unlike what lots of people think, you can't agree with every opinion from anyone else and still think for yourself.  If you agree with everything your favorite professor thought, then you didn't learn to think critically well enough.  If you agree with everything Jon Stewart or Rush Limbaugh or anybody else thinks, then you need to learn to think more critically for yourself.  Get me?  I'm saying, don't be a sheep; don't be fooled by the cults of personality, and be sure of this, the halls of academia are just as full of sheep as the backwoods revival tents.  In fact the erudite sheep are often hardest to correct, IMO.  hehehehe I'm so full of crap! heheheehhehe

I love saying stuff.  Go worship at the temple of Neil, or whichever artist you admire as much as I admire Neil; you won't regret it.  :)  Thanks for reading.

EDIT Oh wait shit, I finally re-read all that and realized that I never finished explaining myself.  My original point was that even though you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone with as much skepticism as I have about the trustworthiness of the media and especially the trustworthiness of so-called stupid-ass herd-mentality "rock critics" -- what a sad simple joke they are -- even though I'm super-skeptical as fuck about the media, I immediately and unthinkingly accepted the media line about Greendale, which was that it must be another half-assed piece of crap experiment from Neil, who's been known to do half-assed piece of crap experiments.  The way Greendale was talked about in the media was, Oh how quaint and adorable and silly, here's old man Neil indulging another half-baked idea he had about making a modern-day rock opera about environmentalism and shit; oh us fancypants media talking heads, we're so hip and modern that we only pay attention to Neil because he's supposed to be great but we don't really take him seriously, obviously he's not as vital or important as whatever piece of shit new artist we hyped yesterday morning, so anyway, here's Neil's silly new project, isn't it quaint and adorable.  Man, how did I buy into that bullshit?  The people in the media who presented Greendale as some half-assed experiment almost certainly never even gave the album a good close listen.  I'll bet you money that most of the people in the media who publicized Greendale never listened to the CD or watched the movie.  They were just doing their jobs, so they came up with this patronizing and snooty way of paying backhanded compliments to this new project in their articles and show segments about it, and me the dumb passive sheep who oughta know better and oughta have enough faith in Neil to give him the benefit of the doubt over the opinions of some stupid anonymous media people, me I just assumed the line I was being fed was true; Greendale must be quaint and largely inconsequential.  Know what?  I was dead fucking wrong as fuck!  Wrong wrong wrong!  I was so stupidly wrong.  Greendale has important stuff in it.  I found that out as soon as I sat down and paid a little attention to it. 

So anyways I thought I would tell you about all that, as a way of illustrating how people can be so wrong and so easily deceived, even in circumstances where you would think that they oughta know better.  Happens to me all the time!  It happens!  To me!  Lotsa times!  I think that's interesting to note.  :)  Thanks for reading.

rick957

Retitled the blog, rewrote the first post intro to the blog.  Just sayin'.  :)

Kythia

I approached Rick about a response to his last but one post and he was kind enough to offer up his blog as a ranting platform:

So biases out on the table.

I work as a music journalist.  If someone asks me what I do, thats what I say.  Now, due to the fact that thats not paying the bills I have another job, from which I earn more money than journalism and they consider themselves to be my career.  Me?  I consider them a way of paying bills.  I'm an actor who happens to wait tables.

And I can't really comment on the wider point - on Rick's:

QuoteIt really isn't possible to be skeptical enough in this crazy old world.  :)

I'll give you a trivial example, and maybe it will illustrate the larger point.

Or rather I can, but I'm not.  I do think his trivial example is a flawed analogy though.

Rock critics - lets both use the same terminology to keep things simple - have three jobs.

1) To have a broad enough range of knowledge of music in general to be able to give an idea of what an album or band sounds like.  To be able to say "This guy sounds like mid seventies Neil Young" and implicitly "If you like mid seventies Neil Young, there's a good chance you'll like this guy."  Now, sure I can miss the mark with a comparison but I don't sense that's where Rick objects.  In fact, I thing that aspect is the most useful one - there's a whole load of music and pointers like "mid seventies Neil Young" are a useful way of placing a new artist on a musical map.  Obviously there's no reason you can't do that yourself, technically.  But it does involve listening to a lot of albums and bands and many don't have the time to make that initial rough placement on their own.

2) To keep you updated.  To say "Neil Young has a new album out."  Again there's no reason you can't find that information out yourself.  But I get an emails from record companies with their weekly releases and frankly this is little more than a news service.  I don't think Rick objects to this job.

3) Here is where I think Rick objects, and where I think he's wrong - for some value of wrong - to do so.  The third part of the job is to say "Neil Young's new album sucks."  If I don't want to get shouted at I'll spin it out a little more than that, but that's the essence.

Now, the mistake I feel Rick is making is treating Rock Critics as a monolith.  Take me.  I can, off the top of my head, tell you the track listing of every single Def Leppard album.  I am at this precise moment wearing a vintage Whitesnake t-shirt which is one of my most prized possessions.  I know my eighties rock.  And if I write that Motley Crue's new album sucks then its coming from both a place of love and a place of knowledge.  I could also write that Greendale sucks.  Frankly I get paid by the word so I might.  But I've no, I dunno, enhanced knowledge of Neil Young.  He's not on my iPod and only a couple of songs are on my computer.  I own the Neil Young albums everyone does.  I'm not a fan.  So when I write that Greendale sucks, its not really as a Rock Critic.  It's as someone who listens to a lot of music.  My opinion on this matter carries no weight.

But I think Rick is wrong to encourage scepticism, and let me explain why.  This third job is a more specialised one than the first two and noone can do it for every single artist and genre.  Rick is saying the critics dislike it. That's not entirely true  That link is to a review by a guy called Paul Cashmere, founder of Undercover and Noise11.com.  He's a massive Neil Young fan and knows the guy's work inside out.  He likes Greendale and his is an opinion I trust.  David Segal of the washington post disliked it, but who the hell is he?  Does he like Neil Young?  Does he have an love for him comparable to my love for Bon Jovi?  Doubt it.

My point is that when it comes to this third job, all rock critics are not created equal.  Bon Jovi have some sucky albums, sure they do.  But when I review This Left Feels Right I'm at least doing it from a position of, I dunno, from a favourable position.  I know enough about the band that I'd like to think - and would like to build a career from that thought - I can give a better opinion of it than some journalism student who's been stuck on the music desk and told to listen to twenty odd albums.

In essence, I'm saying Rick is using rock critics wrong, and thats necessarily given him a warped view.  All critics are not created equal.  I give Skid Row's Slave to the Grind five stars, others give it none.  My firmly held belief is that my background knowledge about the wider picture Skid Row sit in means I can give a fairer review.

It's possible this is just a frantic attempt to defend my profession, but I hope not.
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rick957

Thanks so much for the knowledgeable and detailed response, Kythia.  :)  My head is happily spinning with all the interesting topics you've raised, but it's also too tired and addled to formulate anything like an intelligent response to your post until later (tomorrow or soon thereafter).  Perhaps in the meantime another reader might share their thoughts, but even if not, I hope you don't mind waiting a while for a reply.  Considering my personal preoccupation with pop music of many kinds, it's a special pleasure for me to dialog with anyone with your interests and expertise, so I'd like to take my time and craft a thoughtful, well-considered reply.  Thanks for your patience meanwhile, and for stopping by.

rick957

I should probably be asleep right now.  :)  Instead I think I'll write that response I was meaning to write.

Kythia:  I admire you for choosing such a challenging career to pursue.  I'm sure you know even better than I do how hard it is to make a living or even get a paycheck for writing music criticism.  I'd love to know how you chose your preferred career (what steered you that way) and how you've done with it so far.

As to the substance of your post, there was only one thing you said that I strongly disagree with, but really, I think much of what you said was based on some false assumptions you probably made about my views; and I imagine those false assumptions were probably inspired by my careless writing approach.

I don't know how Greendale was responded to by critics; I'm sure I read some reviews at the time, but I don't recall anything about them.  The little tirade in my post about how Greendale was received poorly without justification was based on my vague recollection that I saw some media coverage at the time of the album's release in which the project was described in terms that made it clear that this was not going to be an important album, no matter what, partly because the project was so unconventional and unusual, but mostly, simply because it was a Neil Young project.  Back when there were major critics at widely-read publications, they pretty much all said the same stuff all the time, in my opinion (based upon many years of first-hand experience, reading music mags), especially when it came to established, well-known artists, and the critical consensus about Neil was that he was respected and legendary and too old to do anything that really matters anymore.  Only young new artists were ever accorded that sort of attention and acclaim; only the young and new could ever make truly vital, groundbreaking, and important music.  There are very specific commercial and vocational reasons why pop music critics uniformly held such a discriminatory view against older musicians; it had to do with the need of those journalists and the publications they wrote for and the corporations who owned the publications to convince young people to keep buying CDs and music mags.

Sometimes the top critics would disagree with each other about younger artists or about one particular album here or there, but the amount of general consensus among the top critics about major releases was preposterously high and stayed that way until the pop-music-criticism profession itself basically died, which in my opinion happened a few years ago.  There was a herd mentality that seemed to pervade the profession, at least among its most famous and most widely-known practitioners. 

You may or may not agree, but those claims are impossible to prove or disprove at the moment, because the world of music journalism is in flux and has metamorphosed into something totally new and different from anything it was before.  From 1970-something to 2000-something, there were prominent music critics working for a handful of major publications in the U.S. and U.K. who reached a sizable audience and therefore could sway opinions, affect album sales, and influence one another directly.  For example, you could safely assume that throughout that time period, the New York Times pop music critic (whoever they were) kept track of the reviews written by the Rolling Stone and Playboy and Billboard critics, and vice versa, so they were all likely to know (or find out very quickly) what each other thought of any major release from the biggest artists at the time.  That was the shape of the world of rock music criticism from its inception up until recently. 

Now, there are far fewer critics employed anywhere, and probably none who write exclusively for weekly or monthly print publications, and there are no music publications at all that are widely read -- read by any significant, identifiable segment of the public, in the way that music mags were paid attention to for several decades straight by a large number of pop music aficionados.  Now the aficionados turn to the internet for music news and views, and the internet is overloaded with amateur or otherwise unpaid criticism, produced on totally unpredictable schedules (as opposed to weekly or monthly), and reaching a totally splintered readership that is much, much smaller for each individual website than it was for any single mag back in the day. 

In other words, any generalizations that characterized the world of music journalism ten years or longer ago no longer apply.  There are no major critics left who reach as large an audience as those at the top of the profession used to -- not even one -- nor is there a remaining group of critics who reach a large enough audience to even be considered to constitute a critical consensus or even a field.  The field that exists now is hundreds or thousands of people with small internet readerships, so they couldn't keep up with the entire rest of the field if they tried.  Of course there is a much wider range of opinion than ever before, but no one's opinion counts for much of anything anymore, because there is no longer a sizable, receptive audience for any given handful of critics.

So anyway, you probably knew all of that already, but it all seemed relevant, so I wanted to review it for anyone who happens to be reading along.  :)  I fully agree with you that different critics can be more or less knowledgeable and therefore have more or less trustworthy opinions about albums.  I don't agree with you that it's a good idea for anyone not to be skeptical about most things, including the opinions of music critics.

One of the problems with pop music criticism is that there are no qualifications whatsoever for writing the stuff -- no degree to earn or anything -- so you never know anything about the critic's level of music knowledge, whether about any given artist's catalog or about the entire field.  I'm sure plenty of pop music critics never heard the most important albums in the history of rock (not least of which because there isn't even a consensus on just which were the most important ones, but that's really beside the point).  Having read craploads of music criticism and studied English a little bit, I figured out a very long time ago that certain specific kinds of writing skills are the only qualifications that many (perhaps most) music critics have for writing their reviews.  Other types of art criticism -- literature and film in particular -- are published in peer-reviewed professional journals published regularly by major universities and colleges, so there's not only a high level of knowledge and writing skill required, but the academic publishing system promotes high standards and common standards for the entire field.  Not so with rock criticism -- that's never been the case, not even when there were big-name critics who reached sizable audiences.

Anyway, I guess my point is that pop music critics have always had dubious qualifications and low trustworthiness even back when there were lots more of them out there getting paid.  Nowadays, with the death of print journalism (including most music mags) and the proliferation of music websites written by everyone and his uncle, it's a safe bet that fewer people than ever who write music criticism know squat about the history of the form; and therefore, I would think it's more important than ever for people to be skeptical about any claims made by people writing about pop music anywhere.

You may have your own views about a lot of that -- and I would absolutely love to hear all about them, or any views you care to share, at least -- but I think the thrust of your response to my original post was misdirected due to my lazy, badly-edited, stream-of-consciousness approach to writing this entire blog.  I'm sure there are a handful of people out there writing knowledgeable and trustworthy reviews of albums and singles, and I hope you are (or will soon be) among that privileged group who not only write reviews but also get paid for it.  But even those critics are likely to be sometimes wrong, in my opinion. 

If we get to dialog further anytime, I'd love to give you my spiel about the specific paradox inherent in all pop music criticism that essentially guarantees its irrelevance -- it's a carefully thought-out criticism that I've only told to maybe one person before, so hearing your informed opinion about it would be a real privilege.  For now though I better stop and hope that I made at least a little sense here and didn't bore you too much.  :)  Oh and sorry for the length, if that was off-putting. 

Please feel free to reply or to dialog further, but don't feel obligated to do so at all, unless you feel like it; and of course feel free to continue to disagree with me about anything and to further educate me about your views.  Thanks for reading!

rick957

Kythia -- if you're still out there, I hope I didn't scare you off with my super-long and sharp opinions and whatnot.  :)











Starlequin -- ditto all of the above, my friend, and many times over.











Okay, here's a funny thing I'd like to share with anyone reading.  I'm pretty sure that the only hits that this or any other Elliquiy blog receives regularly are not from human beings at all, but from search engines.  It's very easy to verify this; all you need to do is look at "Everyone" who is on the board right now (there's a place on the site that lists them), and then if you catch one of the listed search engines looking at a thread, click on that thread, and you'll see that "1 Guest" is viewing that thread at that moment.  Computer visitors to threads.  I've had 3700-something of them to this thread so far.

Now, I'm exaggerating a little with that number, but only a little.  I know I've had probably a few dozen humans look at this thread at different times, and that's great; I'm sure it's many more than some blogs, and probably fewer than some, and that's all good, I can't complain.

Oh, one more thing.  All those hits that you see on any other thread at Elliquiy -- not just the blogs, but the game threads?  Computers.  Seriously.  Not all of them, but plenty of them.  I could be wrong of course, I'm no authority.  I would go so far as to speculate that the only people who read game posts are participants in 99 out of 100 cases, and all those other sections on the site often go completely unread by humans except the posters themselves.

Isn't it interesting though that when Elliquiy posters think they're talking to human beings, they're actually often talking to only themselves and to searchbots?  I wonder if it would affect the way that posters post, if more of them knew that.  And assuming my suppositions are true.










I was a different person yesterday than I am today, and a different person the day before that, and before that, and the week before that, and the previous month, etc.  I've been a few dozen people over the last few years.  Most people don't notice; actually, come to think of it, not one of the people I've interacted with has noticed, not once in all that time.  People don't pay very close attention to each other, you know.  They only hear about 20 percent of what's said to them.  The rest they fill in themselves.  I do it too.  (I'd like to get up to 25 or 30 percent, but I'm not at all convinced that it's humanly possible to get very close to 100 percent.)

These days I balance on a blade's edge
Below me there's terror on one side, and bliss on the other.
What choices!  Such startling options!
Wouldn't have it any other way, thanks.  :)

Oniya

I'm sure that I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but 'spiders' (the little programs that search engines use to index the Web) aren't able to access pages that are password protected, to the best of my knowledge.  That said, I'm sure that at least some of my threads are mildly inflated by the fact that I will keep a tab open if I read my partner's post and can't think of an immediate response.  This can sometimes take a couple days, so that's a couple more 'hits'.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

rick957

Boy ya gotta get up early in the morning to sneak one past that Oniya.  She's a whipcracker, she is!  :)

I just attempted to test your theory and came up with results that verify your claim or at least support it, so I stand corrected!  At some point long ago, I formed the impression that the members-only areas got far fewer spider hits, and text content from those areas could not be retrieved from a search engine, but I coulda sworn I saw spiders looking at some game threads a long time ago, and that's what gave me my misimpression.  Live and learn! 

Grazie tanto for the correction!

Kythia

Whoops.  Sorry I'd somehow managed to toally miss your reply.  Whoops.

Will read a dissect.  Sorry
242037

Kythia

Hey Rick.  Sorry for not noticing your reply, again.

Anyway.

Lot to respond to there.  First the easy bit - I worked on the newspaper when I was at Uni and kinda fell into being the music editor.  Came out of uni and applied for some jobs but didn't get any.  Took the other job I mentioned (or technically, took a different job in the same department but whatever), moved towns.  Wrote the local newspaper with samples of my work and eventually got a half page a week there.

On to the harder *sniggers*

We may be arguing semantics here without realising it.  I'll try to explain, though probably won't

You're absolutely right that no qualifications in music journalism are required (although they do exist).  But thats only insofar as qualification=piece of paper.  Leaving aside the writing aspects of it and just focusing on the other there are, or I'd like to think there are, qualifications needed.  As an aside there is also a wealth of academic literature about pop music, if you're interested shout and I can PM you links to some sources.  But that's by the by.

Where I think we may be arguing semantics is that you say <paraphrasing> Music journalists are unqualified and there are low barriers to entry.  As such, one should treat their works and opinions with skepticism.

Is that right?  Anxious not to caricature your argument.  And if I'm not then the second half of this post can be summed up with the phrase "Kythia rambles on about something unrelated".  Fair warning.

My issue there, which I kinda touched upon in my previous (previous but one, technically) post is that music journalists aren't a monolith.  There are qualifications needed or rather there is one qualification needed - a knowledge of a music.  Because there's a shed load of it, "music" ends up being too big, IMHO, and that gets refined to a knowledge of music for some given value of music.

Ah but Kythia, I hear you cry, what of the current proliferation of "music websites written by everyone and his uncle".  They're not music journalists, they're bloggers.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Music is a massive part of my life and I love to hear and read about it.  God bless you, music bloggers of the world.  But being a music journalist means you're getting paid for this shizzle.  Journalist is a profession.  And pulling that paycheck, large or small, puts you in a certain position. 

If every day my editor received letters talking about how Kythia clearly didn't have a clue what she was talking about then, well, technically he'd wonder who the hell Kythia is because thats not my real name.  Leaving that aside though, he'd soon stop me from writing.  Even moer so the case in the likes of NME, Kerrang!, etc.  Because money is involved there is a heightened need for, you know, accountability.  Once an equilibrium is reached, the vast majority of paid writers should be better than the vast majority of unpaid.

And that's not even the end of it.  Lordie, no.  Because not all of those music journalists are the same.  I talked about genre knowledge and you didn't seem to argue so I hope we can agree the relevance.  And its like if you had two chemicals and wanted to know if they were safe to be mixed together.  You ask me and I say "well, screwed if I know, Rick.  Give it a shot", you ask a chemist and he says "dear god no" and leaps behind a table.  Who you gonna listen to? 

You can (and if I've read your argument correctly, are) calling it skepticism saying that music journalists are a shifty and untrustworthy bunch.  I call it, actually I'm not sure what I call it because I cant think of the word.  My counter is, though, that theres also an onus on you here.  As I mention above, Im not overly a Neil Young fan.  As you mention above you are.  My review on a Neil Young album is gonna focus on the "dear lord, will this song never end" ness of some of it, etc.  You can say I'm wrong, I can disagree, this isn't objective.  I do think there's an onus on you though to eventually decide that my column is crap (or not for you at least) and move on. 

Basically, I'm saying that music journalists specialise in different areas and that you should shop around until you find a few people who's opinions you trust.  I don't see that as a sign of skepticism, perhaps you do.  If you do, then we are definately arguing semantics.

And, on a final note, I'd love to hear your spiel.
242037

rick957

QuoteHey Rick.  Sorry for not noticing your reply, again.

Hey, no worries; replies aren't ever obligatory here.

QuoteWe may be arguing semantics here without realising it. 

Yeah I think so.

QuoteWhere I think we may be arguing semantics is that you say <paraphrasing> Music journalists are unqualified and there are low barriers to entry.  As such, one should treat their works and opinions with skepticism.

Is that right?  Anxious not to caricature your argument. 

It's almost but not quite right.  I would say

QuoteMusic journalists are often unqualified and there are often low barriers to entry.  As such, one should often treat their works and opinions with skepticism.

or similarly

QuoteMusic journalists are sometimes unqualified and there are sometimes low barriers to entry.  As such, one should sometimes treat their works and opinions with skepticism.

I hope the distinction is clear there, because it's a fine but real distinction.  I'm making a generalization but doing so very carefully, acknowledging that there are plenty of exceptions to the generalization, but in spite of that, the generalization holds true for the rest of the cases.  I would not and hopefully did not argue that the generalization holds in every case.  That argument, which I hope I didn't make, is one that I would disagree with myself, for much the same reasons you do. 

It's a fascinating and amazingly common error that people make all the time.  Person A makes statement X.  Person B hears statement X but believes that it was statement Y.  Statement Y is a slight but definite exaggeration or expansion of statement X.  Person A has already considered and dismissed statement Y as false, although he/she might not have specified this detail while he/she was making statement X.  Nevertheless, person B argues against statement Y and directs the argument at person A, under the false assumption that person A said statement Y.

It may sound like I'm making mountains of molehills, but I only do so because this is the exact structure of an astonishing number of common disagreements that occur in daily life, and I think that's fascinating; so many disagreements are just misunderstandings and not actual disagreements. 

[The next common mistake (hehehehe) occurs when person A fails to realize that person B is arguing against statement Y; he/she believes that person B is arguing against statement X.  Person A proceeds to argue against Y also.  Then person B believes that Person A is defending statement X, not statement Y.  The argument proceeds, with misunderstandings piling one on top of the other.  Sometimes A and B untangle the knot, but very often they don't, and they go away disagreeing with each other unnecessarily, sometimes with hurt feelings on top of all that, which is the worst shame of all.  Have a peek at the PROC section of Elliquiy, where people occasionally disagree with each other -- very rarely, but on rare occasions -- and you'll see this very pattern played out again and again.]

In other words, I think you and I basically agree.  It looks to me like you were disagreeing with a "caricature" or a more extensive, unqualified version of the argument that I actually made.  (If I expressed myself poorly and thereby caused all of that to happen, sorry about that!  Wouldn't be the first time, I'm afraid.)

Nevertheless, the points you made in your posts were all good ones and valuable contributions to any discussion of these topics, so it looks to me like it all worked out well.  :)

QuoteThey're not music journalists, they're bloggers.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Music is a massive part of my life and I love to hear and read about it.  God bless you, music bloggers of the world.  But being a music journalist means you're getting paid for this shizzle.

You're making a vocabulary distinction which I think few readers would bother or know to make.  Personally I don't have any opinion about whether paid and unpaid music writers need to have separate titles to distinguish one from the other, nor do I care which titles refer to which group, but I would say that the distinction between unpaid amateurs/bloggers and paid professionals/journalists is no longer a distinction with any practical value for readers.  Readers don't care and usually don't know whether the author of an article or review was paid for it or not.  Sometimes readers can tell that the author was extremely knowledgeable; other times, they can't tell one way or the other.  The first situation happens with plenty of "bloggers," and the second situation happens with plenty of "journalists."  The distinction doesn't matter any more -- except to the people who want to get paid for writing about music (and I sympathize strongly with them; I had such notions myself sometimes but dismissed them as impractical due to the incredible rarity of paid music writing gigs.  In the USA, for example, I would be astonished to hear that any but the top 100 and maybe more like top 20 newspapers, circulation-wise, still pay people to write album reviews, and it might be as low as the top 5.)

From what I've seen, the most extensive collection of album reviews on the internet is at allmusic.com -- you may know of a site with more, and if so, please share, but I've never seen any other that even comes close.  That site has many reviews from paid writers, I think, but also has some reviews from writers who did them for free.  I think.  I used to know someone who knew someone who wrote for them.

QuoteIf every day my editor received letters talking about how Kythia clearly didn't have a clue what she was talking about then, well, technically he'd wonder who the hell Kythia is because thats not my real name.  Leaving that aside though, he'd soon stop me from writing.  Even moer so the case in the likes of NME, Kerrang!, etc.  Because money is involved there is a heightened need for, you know, accountability.  Once an equilibrium is reached, the vast majority of paid writers should be better than the vast majority of unpaid.

This example may apply well to the UK or Europe, but in the U.S., there just aren't enough paid writers left to make such generalizations about them.  How many Americans are currently making at least a living wage by writing about music and nothing else?  I doubt there are fifty of them, and the number could be as low as a dozen -- some writers for Rolling Stone and the top handful of newspapers.  (Does Spin still exist as a print mag?  Maybe it does.  Circus?  I don't know.  I know Paste and No Depression gave up years ago.  What else is there?  Metal Maniacs?  Maybe!  hehehehe) (Counting the instrument mags ex. guitar mags is cheating IMO!)

QuoteBasically, I'm saying that music journalists specialise in different areas and that you should shop around until you find a few people who's opinions you trust.  I don't see that as a sign of skepticism, perhaps you do.  If you do, then we are definately arguing semantics.

No, we agree about that.  We might disagree about this, though:  many if not most paid music journalists in the past lacked basic knowledge of the kind of music they were commenting upon.  I make that claim based on many years of reading album reviews that demonstrated either ignorance about the artist's back catalog or ignorance about the major albums in the genre of music being written about.  If you can turn a phrase in a particular way, you could get away with knowing nothing about music or about the artist and still do album reviews for many publications, at least in the late 80s through early 2000s, when there were far more music publications than there are now.

QuoteAnd, on a final note, I'd love to hear your spiel.

Heh.  :)  I'm flattered and relieved that you haven't already had more than your fill of my music opinions.  I'll have fun writing that up, ASAP, and I hope you let me know afterwards what you think about it, because your opinion in particular would be especially interesting to me, given your knowledge and background in the relevant field. 

rick957

@ Kythia

I've been thinking about how to explain that spiel I mentioned, because I am very interested in your response to it, but I don't know how soon I can get it written up.  What I'll do is put it here with your name above it (like this paragraph) so that it's clearly marked and you don't need to bother reading any other stuff I post here between now and then.  This blog is sort of a dumping ground for many things, so today's post is on a different topic altogether. 

Thanks for your patience; oh, and if you'd rather that I PM the "spiel" to you instead of putting it here, or if you'd rather that I skip it altogether because you've got other things on your mind, all you need to do is tell me in whatever way is comfortable and convenient for you, and I won't be bothered a bit by it.  Thanks! 








Today I'm dumping a scrapped RP post here.  It's a little racy, but it's mostly just suggestive; the real smutty smut-smut was supposed to happen later.  ;)

I wrote this as the first post for a 1x1 RP with me playing a new male teacher at an all-girls boarding high school, one of those imaginary secret ones where the girls get diddled right and left as part of their schooling.  Go ahead, laff away; it's not only an utterly unoriginal, generic, stereotypical setting, but it's also obviously and unapologetically designed for maximum smut value.  There could be a hundred or more RPs at Elliquiy already with a similar or identical setting.

In all seriousness, though, this is the sort of trifle that I come to Elliquiy for, primarily; this blog is just a temporary, side thing.  I use "adult RPing" as an excuse to practice writing short fiction, and I approach the pornographic content is an incentive, something to motivate me to write.  Lots of people do something similar at Elliquiy, while others approach RPs in totally different ways for totally different reasons, and somehow we each manage to find something we enjoy that keeps us coming back for more.  It takes all kinds.  (I so love that saying.)

I'm dumping this here because the person I hoped to do the RP with declined.  She was very polite and friendly about it, so I have no regrets about approaching her anyway. 

I'm still shopping for a new RP or two, and I still think this could work as the intro post for one, but perhaps it wasn't meant to be (alas!).  :)

BTW, I find these kinds of RPs hilarious in all sorts of ways, but that doesn't mean I'm not quite happy to participate in them.  I love smut!  I'm a dude.  I get horny.  I jerk off.  Big surprise, huh?  ;)  I don't jerk off to RPs, but I find the well-written ones arousing in a theoretical, intellectualized way. 

(Do you think it's easy to write good smut?  I think it's so difficult that it's nearly impossible to do.  When I see really well-written smut -- and let me tell you, there are a few smut-writing prodigies on these boards, if you have the patience to dig deep enough -- I have enormous respect and admiration for it.  I have enormous respect and admiration for good writing of any kind, and "erotica" seems as valid a genre as any other, on the surface of it, to me at least.  I tend to think that it's how it's done that determines whether it's any good or not, so well-written erotica can be breathtakingly thrilling.  I'd like to learn to write well in various genres including this one.

But like I said, I've got a long way to go.  That's alright, I'll have plenty of fun on the way, even if I never get there.  :)  Here, you be the judge.  (Stop that snickering over there, you!)  hehehehehehe








smack.

It wasn't a SMACK; only a

smack.

Because it came from down the hall.  That wasn't the most extraordinary thing about it, though; what came next was shocking -- scandalous, even.  Probably illegal in some states, for all he knew.  What came next was barely audible from his classroom, but it was instantly recognizable nonetheless, there was no mistaking it. 

It was a single note elicited involuntarily from the throat of a eighteen-year-old girl. 

He didn't know enough about music to identify the note, but there was only one; it was a short yelp, a kind of gasp, probably accompanied with a sudden exhalation, though he couldn't hear that part.

His eyes wandered to the corner of the classroom in which he was sitting behind the instructor's desk.  The door was closed and there were no students at this hour; classes were out for the day.  Over in the corner was a leather riding crop, leaning at about a 15-degree angle from vertical, handle up.  It might have been what the other teacher was using down the hall, or something similar; each classroom was outfitted with a range of such devices. 

These were standard instructor's equipment here, not unlike chalk or blackboard erasers.

smack. (yelp)

smaCK. (yelp!)

He noticed that he wasn't aroused -- his cock was flaccid, disinterested.  Not because spanking didn't turn him on; it could.  But he was far too freaked out to get turned on by any of this yet. 

Fifteen minutes ago, he had stood at the front of a room filled with eighteen- and nineteen-year-old ...

'Children. 

'Children?  Certainly not,'
he thought, remembering accidental glances from the corners of his eyes as he had taught this first class on this first day of the fall semester, accidental glances brimming over with curving flesh, curving flesh carefully covered with modest and unrevealing uniforms, but curving flesh nonetheless.  That was the part -- those were the parts that made it most obvious that these were no longer children by any real measure, although their emotional maturity might be dubious indeed; there was no mistaking that physically, these were women; fully equipped as such, with all the implications that came with that; implications for them; implications for him.

Such implications.

Funnily, he suddenly remembered that he had conducted that first geometry class using the techniques that came most naturally to him, but they were ones that really belonged in the outside world, not at Chestershire.  In particular, he had spent the entire forty-five minute session with his eyes either making direct eye contact with students or else trained on inanimate objects.  One or the other; never, never, ever trained on anything else.  See, the else could be a problem -- in the outside world, that is; because the else might contain any number of delectable and utterly forbidden objects. 

Letting one's eyes stray was the very first thing that this twenty-seven-year-old male math instructor had taught himself not to do, to never ever do under any circumstances while teaching, because that was one of the things that got you in very serious trouble indeed while teaching high school students.  Let your eyes wander, and before long, they'd be sure to gravitate towards a beautiful body part of a woman within viewing range, and that woman would be a student, if it was class time; and staring at students' bodies -- uh uhBig, big no-no. 

After all, this was precisely why all-girls' boarding schools like Chestershire normally preferred hiring female teachers; much less chance of straying eyeballs, naughty glances, and all the taboo activities that might follow.  (Normally in the outside world, that is.  Chestershire's secluded, private campus in the Pennsylvania woods was staffed almost entirely by men, for specific reasons which the outside world would find quite -- abhorrent.)

sMACK. 

No yelp this time?  Apparently not.  Perhaps she was biting her tongue. 

'Poor girl.  Poor WOMAN, dammit; these are women.'  He had to keep reminding himself. 

This whole situation was going to take a lot of getting used to.

Chestershire was many things, but "normal" wasn't one of them.

ManyMindsManyVoices

"So, as I said, I'm here reading and entertaining myself, and so far, it's good. I like it, your opinions strike me as intelligent and thoughtful. Turns out, I totally have an interest in the subject matter of your most recent post, which shouldn't be surprising given where we are, but I'm glad I have something I can discuss/debate right off the bat."

Quote from: rick957 on October 25, 2012, 08:15:25 PM
BTW, I find these kinds of RPs hilarious in all sorts of ways, but that doesn't mean I'm not quite happy to participate in them.  I love smut!  I'm a dude.  I get horny.  I jerk off.  Big surprise, huh?  ;)  I don't jerk off to RPs, but I find the well-written ones arousing in a theoretical, intellectualized way. 

(Do you think it's easy to write good smut?  I think it's so difficult that it's nearly impossible to do.  When I see really well-written smut -- and let me tell you, there are a few smut-writing prodigies on these boards, if you have the patience to dig deep enough -- I have enormous respect and admiration for it.  I have enormous respect and admiration for good writing of any kind, and "erotica" seems as valid a genre as any other, on the surface of it, to me at least.  I tend to think that it's how it's done that determines whether it's any good or not, so well-written erotica can be breathtakingly thrilling.  I'd like to learn to write well in various genres including this one.

But like I said, I've got a long way to go.  That's alright, I'll have plenty of fun on the way, even if I never get there.  :)  Here, you be the judge.  (Stop that snickering over there, you!)  hehehehehehe

"I agree with the idea that good smut can be hard to write (haha, that's what... no, okay, anyway...) I'd be happy to share one or two of my favorite scenes with you and see what you think. Sometimes you can see writing, say 'that's great writing' then go, 'I dunno why the hell it's good!' So maybe if you like my writing, I can help you determine what I did that you enjoyed. Solicit them in a PM if you want."

"Anyway, one thing I find hard about writing erotic scenes is words... There's something inelegant about most of the words we use to describe sex, body parts related to sex, and sexual acts. The stereotype erotica, with the guy on the cover with his nipples showing ('Friends' joke), that's always apparently about pirates (seriously, how many times have you seen that cliche, at least in jokes)... Sorry, that sentence deviated... Anyway, the stereotype seems to think puns and awkward wordplay are the way to go. So now 'Captain Shaft' 'hoists the main flag' or 'shows his mighty mast', and 'thrusts the bow of his great ship into the sea of her womanliness', or something. I dunno, but it's usually pretty ridiculous."

"However, I find the flipside just as... unnappealing. The one with no metaphors or word play, just straight up dicks and plowing and talking about how massive and hard everything is... Some people want that, and that's fine, but at that point, it feels like, why bother... I got porn, I've seen massive, hard everything and girls screaming. It's better with images."

"Great erotica, to me, comes from the characters. Give me a little sex, and a little dialogue. Got a supernatural setting? Use that magic, or superpower, or something, do something two humans can't do. While you're at it, sex shouldn't just be all jackhammer pounding. Do most of us make love that way? Get vulgar and hard, but also be sweet and tender, and go with the mood. Be vague sometimes, because I know what 'sliding inside her' means, and sex isn't about body parts, it's about sights, and sounds, and sensations. Give me those, tell me the feel of your tongue, or the feel of me on your tongue..."

"I mean, I know all these things are subjective, but I feel that there's still a standard. I dunno, those are just my thoughts, I hope they inspire a discussion, a debate, or just one or both of us to really think about the topic."
My O/Os * Everyone should read 1/0

This is the Oath of the Drake. You should take it.

rick957

Yay, welcome Ryuka Tana -- fresh views and comments from visitors are always a pleasure, and I'll have more to say in reply to your comments later.  Just wanted to say hello and welcome.  :)










Most days life just won't put out for you.  She wrinkles her nose, smirks mischievously, and wanders off, keeping all her special gifts to herself, or worse yet -- aargh! -- she puts out for others and denies you!  Fickle strumpet!

Today life spreads her legs and invites me in.  I plan to take full advantage.

(Lord knows when she'll be in the mood next!)

ManyMindsManyVoices

Quote from: rick957 on October 26, 2012, 05:48:32 PM
Most days life just won't put out for you.  She wrinkles her nose, smirks mischievously, and wanders off, keeping all her special gifts to herself, or worse yet -- aargh! -- she puts out for others and denies you!  Fickle strumpet!

Today life spreads her legs and invites me in.  I plan to take full advantage.

(Lord knows when she'll be in the mood next!)

"Give that bitch one for me."
My O/Os * Everyone should read 1/0

This is the Oath of the Drake. You should take it.

rick957

Screen Names that Totally Rule Department.  Today's award goes to "Hymenbreacher."  hehehehehe  Rock on, dude!

Runner-up award from a few days back:  "Red Lobster."  hehehehe

(No, I don't know those people, but I mean no offense whatsoever, and quite the contrary, it's a kind of compliment that's quite sincere; I'm genuinely and innocently amused.)









Quote"Give that bitch one for me."

hehehehe

rick957

Wish I Could Figure Out How Many Child Deaths I'm Responsible For This Week Department.  I mentioned the issue of Obama's drone policy before in this blog.  This Guardian article (UK) mentions that in connection with a couple other horrifying American foreign policies.  I don't know what to think about any of that shit except I wish the writer was wrong, I wish I knew all of that shit a long time ago, I wish the motherfucking major media and politicians would talk about something that mattered for a change.  Some days it doesn't pay to try to stay even a little bit well-informed.

Maybe most of all I wish I already knew the defense or justification for those policies.  I don't even know where to look to find it.

ManyMindsManyVoices

"I do, go find a 5-year-old... He'll tell you, 'They started it!'"
My O/Os * Everyone should read 1/0

This is the Oath of the Drake. You should take it.

rick957

Bit of biography, pinch of philosophy, spritz with as much pomposity as possible Department.  My parents have accomplished far more in their lifetimes than you or I probably will.  Each of them developed their personal faculties until they could use them to go as far as they could, and the path they traversed was much longer than most, starting from a place far lower than most, and ending far higher.  They set an example for me that demonstrated that I could do anything I wanted to with my life, just as they had, and I have followed that example better than they could have anticipated, so much better that the end result has turned out to look completely different from anything they expected or hoped for.  I realized that if my limits were really so few, then I had a responsibility to exercise my freedom to the fullest extent possible, and, perhaps more importantly, I wanted to do that; it isn't enough for me to achieve as much as possible for the sake of any altruistic impulse or ethical ideal; my ends are self-serving because they can be, and if they can be, then I think they ought to be.

I don't believe any person's life was ever meant to benefit others primarily.  I know many people believe that putting others first is not only a moral imperative but also the surest route to achieving personal fulfillment.  I think they're completely wrong.  All of them.  I know they have only the best intentions; I know the results of their efforts are often far more admirable than any accomplishments achieved by others who pursue self-serving aims throughout their lives.  None of that matters.  They're all still wrong. 

I'm not suggesting people should be selfish jerks; it's much more complicated than that.








Visitor Appreciation Bureau.  If you're new to this blog, you should know that it's not made to be reader-friendly, because much of what's here probably won't interest anyone but me.  On the other hand, paradoxically, I like having readers; in fact, whenever I ponder the high likelihood that I often have none, I lose my motivation to continue this blog.  So if you're reading any of this, you aren't expected to necessarily understand or even enjoy much of it, but at the same time, your participation is hugely appreciated.  Self-contradictions abound.  ;)

Visitors whom I have selfishly put off responding to but still plan to respond to as soon as possible under the quixotic and arrogant pretense that they might still be paying attention to this blog and might still have some interest in getting a response by the time I actually get around to doing one:  Kythia, Ryuka Tana.  (Hi Ya'll!  Whaaasssuuppp?  Thanks for your patience.  Or if you aren't patient, sorry for being so slow and so self-absorbed.  I have many faults.)








Politics Department.  Do you know what this expression means?  If so, please help me out.  "Politics ends at the water's edge."  That's an expression, isn't it?  What the heck does it mean?  I dunno.

I voted.  Obama.  I'm so sick of hearing about the motherfucking goddamn election.  I'm so sick of finding out new, nasty things about American politics, especially about the few people in American politics whom I like slightly more than all the other people in American politics.  Most of all, I'm sick of the media coverage of American politics.  Even if you stick to the more reputable and genuinely-less biased media outlets, the reportage is mostly trivial and irresponsible and ethically incorrigible; it's just a lot less obvious about being that way, and that might actually be a worse way to be.  At least you can see the biased buffoons coming and you know when they're pulling a fast one on you.  The canny crooks sneak it past you every time if you aren't careful and suspicious as hell.  Is it possible to be suspicious enough, skeptical enough, cynical enough?  Nope! 

I'm all of those things in spades.  Also?  I'm optimistic as hell.  No, really!  The bastards -- the real ones; who aren't the ones you expect, but that's beside the point -- will get theirs.  Don't let 'em grind you down.  Take it from me.  :)


Oniya

Quote from: rick957 on November 04, 2012, 12:37:50 PM
Politics Department.  Do you know what this expression means?  If so, please help me out.  "Politics ends at the water's edge."  That's an expression, isn't it?  What the heck does it mean?  I dunno.

Oh, you do know how to pull me out of the woodwork, don't you?  ;)

Basically, the concept of 'Politics ends at the water's edge' is the idea that - as much as different factions disagree with each other - once you cross the international boundary, 'we're all 'Murrcans, gol durn it!'.  On a smaller scale, it's the way two siblings can be at each others' throats from morning to night inside the house, but if an 'outsider' picks on one, the other one is first in line to administer the ass-whupping.

Or, to quote Lorne Greene:

Here in the west,
we're livin' in the best
Bonanza
If anyone fights any one of us,
he's got a fight with me
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

rick957

I always get turned on when you quote Lorne Greene, Oniya.  ;)   ::)   ???

Thank you for the helpful info!  Now that you mention it, I actually knew what the phrase meant, except I got confused about it recently when I heard it being used incorrectly by a commentator.  Durn commentators.

Was that the theme song for the TV show "Bonanza"?  If so, I'm even more excited.

Oniya

Part of one version of it, yes.  There was another version that they used on the actual show before switching to the instrumental we all know, (Bottom of this page) but Lorne Greene recorded the version I quoted for one of his albums.  I'd misremembered it as having to do with 'nobody fights my brother but me', but the version I found still works with the 'Politics stops' concept.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

rick957

LOL

(Reasons for LOL:
1. There are multiple versions of the Bonanza theme song?  Who knew?
2. Oniya knew!  WTF?  hehehehe 
3. Link to page with Bonanza theme song.  Rock!
4. Is there anything that isn't on the internet? 
5. Is there anything on the net that Oniya can't come up with a link to in four seconds flat?  hehehehe
6. Lorne Greene had albums?  I thought he was an actor.
7. Oniya has/had Lorne Greene albums?  ... Rock!)

Oniya

Quote from: rick957 on November 04, 2012, 01:12:49 PM
LOL

(Reasons for LOL:
1. There are multiple versions of the Bonanza theme song?  Who knew?
2. Oniya knew!  WTF?  hehehehe 
3. Link to page with Bonanza theme song.  Rock!
4. Is there anything that isn't on the internet? 
5. Is there anything on the net that Oniya can't come up with a link to in four seconds flat?  hehehehe
6. Lorne Greene had albums?  I thought he was an actor.
7. Oniya has/had Lorne Greene albums?  ... Rock!)

Oniya had a favorite GM who was into westerns. ;D  Never underestimate the reference source of 'old man from scene 37'.  ;)


(For what it's worth, there were lyrics to a number of shows that most people assume were instrumentals.  Hogan's Heroes had lyrics, and I've also seen lyrics to the Star Trek theme.)
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17