Great music, but let’s call this event what it is: a thinly veiled plea for the kind of government regulation of American business that would make even the staunchest communist proud. And fasten your seatbelt folks, with our media pounding out the drumbeat for people like Al Gore and Michael Moore, we’re going to be hearing more about these two issues than anyone should have to.
9 thoughts on “Live Earth”
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Exactly what it is, it’s just a fancy ploy for media attention of behalf of the Man who wanted so bad to be President, and claims to have “fallen out of love with politics”. Vaya, No lo digo yo, con la paliza que le dio George W. Bush en la carrera hasta yo tambien denunciara la politica. On another note, among the bands, I heard The Police were there. What’s the verdict on them?
They are playing Miami in two days. We have special activities planned. See http://bucl.org
Music aside, here’s a cadre of talented if loony comrades, using the only thing they know how to do, for the purpose of preaching bicycles and hybrid cars to us, while they jet from concert to concert in their freaking PRIVATE jets, hauling their equipment and entourage, burning fossel fuels right & left & center, creating tons of garbage in the process, and covering their guilt by contributing to some backwater school or greenie NPO in Africa. Cara dura doesn’t begin to describe this sham.
How do you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E-S?
I love these music concerts. I am just befuddled that they have not invited my friends Silvio Rodriguez or Pablo Milanes to participate. “En cada cuadra un comite/en cada barrio revolucion.”
A “progressive” band sings “Piojo. piojo” x 100 repetitions in one song led by a HS drop-out with great greeny intellectual pronuncements and thinning moosed hair product of too much dope and chemicals consumed while saving the Brazilian forest, next song is “Roxanne” the jinetera:
“Roxanne, you don’t have to put on spandex at night, walk the Malecon for Spaniard middle-aged slobs, high on Viagra, does not matter if Piojo In Chief drags a colostomy bag, Roxanne walk the streets for soap end up in U-Tube with a lardy white as milk old man”, then woody old sour loser VP Al laments if not have been for Elian he would hold a Novel price…
All due respect Henry, but I have to disagree with you that ANY Rock bands are “great”. By definiton, Rock is a “manufactured” music, a bowlderisation, blandicisation, and Lowest-Common-Denominatorisation of legitimate “roots” music forms like Blues and “Old Time” (i.e. “Hillbilly”) music. A manufactured form of art (other than that which specifically relies on technology for it’s existence, e.g. film, TV, etc.) is not real, does not come from the heart of a people, but is fed to a people via social manipulation through ruthless promotion, to the detriment of music that is “real”. (I remember very well growing up how “rock” was for cool people, “folk”, “classical”, etc. of any kind was for the “un-hip”, the “un-cool”.)
“Real” music, to me, is people and groups like Celia Cruz, Beny More, Vicente Fernandez, Clifton Chenier, The Louvin Brothers, just to make a few examples. People doing real music, that comes from real people and real traditions. IMO, all Rock, and yes, I mean every last little bit of it, from Bill Haley to “The Boss”, is degenerate non-music, representing a non-culture (the “culture” of Rock n’ Roll). Period. End of story, end of song. Ditto for most C&W, especially the “Nashville Sound” stuff. As much as I despise most of the philosophy of the late Sam Francis, and folks like the Anglo-Saxon Supremicists at VDARE, one thing as a cultural traditionalist that I do agree with them on is the idea that as good a thing as capitalism, entrepenurialism, and the profit motive are, they should never overrule or de facto become the authentic culture of a people, but should always help to preserve it and keep it alive. Authentic music that comes from a people can be “jazzed” up, can be played in new and different ways, but it should always be authentic to tradition and the culture it comes out of. Can and should it be brought to and promoted to people through Capitalistic means? Of course! Can and should their be “stars”? Most certainly! But music should always be a representation of the culture that produces it, not an attempt from outside it to reshape it soley to make a buck, and no other reason.
Final thought: It should surprise no one that a bunch of people “playing” a degenerate “non-art form” should all be supporting degenerate and immoral causes.
Peshkatari-
You are truly a hardcore purist/oldschooler when it comes to musicology, and I have to tip my hat to you for that. That said, there are a few rock bands who have borrowed from their disparate influences and coalesced their music into a “bowlderized” interpretation, and became great in the process. Yes, their predecessors have laid the path and set the standard, but im glad that the many rock bands that I appreciate today merely did not become clones of their inspirations.
Lastly, not all bands espouse ridiculous political causes like Live Earth’s global warming rant- there are lots of bands out there that don’t bow down to the counter-cultural “mainstream”- although I have to admit, there are way too many.
Thanks for the kind feedback, Lucha. 🙂 (Interestingly, your handle reminds me of a discussion I had the other week on just how degenerate pro-wrestling in this country has become-I go back to the old Vern Gagne days of the 70’s-and how the Lucha Libre people still have it “right” as to what it should all be about, not “Junior”.) And yeah, I guess you could say I’m a purist about music, and culture in general. 🙂 Didn’t always used to be that way, though….heck, at one time I even had my own band! (Described by me at the time as a cross between Black Flag and early-period Mothers, though I would not today necessarily consider Zappa/Mothers a Rock band, either.) But about 13 years ago, I started hanging with the Albanian-American community, eventually becoming sort of an “adopted brother” to my local one, and not too long after that started hanging with the local Latino community too (including some Cubanos), and got shown what REAL music and REAL dancing was all about, and how it SHOULD relate to culture.
That being said, you approached me in a spirit of respect, expressing your disagreement with my opinion in a calm and respectful way, so I do the same in return (I may be “hardcore”, but I’m not entirely close-minded!). You said you felt their were some Rock bands that were culturally and musically worthwhile. I’d be interested to know what ones you think are, and why? (And I think you probably meant the other of my “choice words”, blandicised, as it seems to fit what you were saying better than bowdlerised. 🙂 )
Peshkatari-
Interestingly, I used the “Lucha Libre” handle because it had a couple of different connotations, the first one being the one you identified that only wrestling fans would know (im an old school wrestling fan too), and the second one being the name translated as “Fighting for Freedom” or “Freedom Fighter” which certainly applies to Cuba, and authoritarian governments around the world in general.
If I were stranded on an island, and I only could listen to 5 Rock bands/musicians (no other genres permitted), I would choose the following-
Metallica, Black Sabbath, Rush, King’s X, and Joe Satriani. I could go into much more detail about why I love each one of these artists, but for brevity’s stake, here’s my opinion on why I think Rush is such an awesome band here:
http://yankeegator.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/rush-still-the-band-of-the-millenium/