Transterrestrial Musings

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"anyone who imagines that he was a sophisticated political analyst should simply listen to the lyrics of "Imagine,""

Anyone who thinks Lennon's admirers consider him a "political analyst" has been reading too many J. Edgar Hoover memos. He presented a deep personal yearning for something people claim to want, but almost everyone betrays, and shared his conviction that it doesn't have to be that way. It's one person who believes in humanity expressing his love for it, his sadness at needless suffering, and his hope for and belief in a better tomorrow.

Now it's up to you whether to see that as the Communist Manifesto, as many people with your disposition did at the time; as sentimental drivel, as people like you tend to nowadays; or as what it is, a song of hope, which is how the vast majority of people who listen to it regard it. It was that song played after 9/11, not Toby Keith goosestepping in his plastic cowboy boots.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 18, 2007 08:30 PM

Lennon was actually pretty ticked that Imagine was hijacked as an anthem of political correctness.

Posted by Adrasteia at March 18, 2007 09:16 PM

I liked the old Beatles songs...

For Psychedeleic or something I stick to hard rock. (Or classic Rock)

It is Beatles or nothing concerning Lennon.

I do not agree with people giving too much credit to singers and songwriters. Just because it is a song does not mean that the person who created it is somekind of thought genius.

Posted by TonyZ at March 18, 2007 09:25 PM

"Lennon was actually pretty ticked that Imagine was hijacked as an anthem of political correctness."

It's never been an anthem of political correctness.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 18, 2007 11:16 PM

I think you hurt Squidward's feelings.

Posted by John Irving at March 19, 2007 05:10 AM

Actually, the song that was played after 9/11 was Alan Jackson's "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?"

Posted by McGehee at March 19, 2007 05:11 AM

McGehee: As true as your words are; they simply are not on BS's cue card, so they won't matter.

Posted by Leland at March 19, 2007 05:59 AM

McGhee: "Actually, the song that was played after 9/11 was Alan Jackson's "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?""

That could have been one of them, but Imagine and U2's One were clearly the main events.

Leland: "As true as your words are; they simply are not on BS's cue card"

Yes, it's called staying on topic. I'm aware the event organizers felt Red staters were in need of cultural affirmative action, and didn't want them to feel left out, but that has no bearing on what we're talking about: The cultural significance of "Imagine," and how people react to it.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 19, 2007 10:20 PM

Well Brian, I think the majority of Americans still "Imagine" there is a Heaven. If Atheism was a deep personal belief for John and he hoped for no religion in the future, the title of one of my favorite Firesign Theater albums makes perfect sense, "All Hail Lennon and Marx". That's John and Groucho. But really, as over-analyzed as the Beatles and the individual members were, I hated it more when one of their songs was hijacked as some anthem to this or that movement. They were great musicians. Nothing more, nothing less.

Posted by Bill Maron at March 20, 2007 03:35 AM

I always think of Pat Benatar's "Invincible" (from the movie LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN) as THE 9/12 song.

Posted by Bilwick at March 20, 2007 05:21 AM

"I think the majority of Americans still "Imagine" there is a Heaven."

Yes, tragic. They also imagine there are angels, and that the world began thousands of years after the first pottery was fired--must have been a bored seraph who did it.

"They were great musicians. Nothing more, nothing less."

Music is visceral for some people, just a beat for dancing; others it's background noise to turn off their feelings, anesthetic muzak; but for a significant minority it's a complete experience that resonates deeply, that creates feelings rather then numbing them. Now, as far as I'm concerned, U2 and a number of other bands are far superior to the Beatles/Lennon in this respect, but the Beatles and Lennon were first--they arrived into a pop-bubblegum wasteland and left behind something wondrous and alive.

They were explorers, artists to the last, and there's no way of knowing just how much they made possible or what the feelings their music inspired led to in turn. But it was new, and opened up new futures to the minds of those who felt it deeply. In fact, I'm surprised people around here don't recognize them as what they were: frontiersmen.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 20, 2007 06:08 AM

Gee, I don't remember mentioning Creationists. But you go ahead and lump all Christian people in the same group. I hope it's out of ignorance not arrogance. I personally prefer attending St. Mattress. My church-going friends understand and laugh about it.

"frontiersmen" Kind of like their idols? You know, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, those guys that had to fight just to get recorded and have their music played on the radio or even perform in public, Those "frontiersmen"? It's amazing how much what you are talking about really goes back to 12 bar 1,4,5 chord blues for its genesis. The Beatles had a new style that found an audience ready for one. Same for The Clash, U2, Pearl Jam and those that follow. I've been playing music since I was 8 so I am someone who has deep feelings associated with music but I have never attached mythic qualities to anyone who writes and performs.

Posted by Bill Maron at March 20, 2007 12:59 PM

"Gee, I don't remember mentioning Creationists."

Is it such a giant leap in absurdity from Heaven to dinosaurs walking among the ziggurats?

"But you go ahead and lump all Christian people in the same group."

Why do you insist on conflating people with their beliefs, like it's an insult to say someone is wrong?

"I hope it's out of ignorance not arrogance."

So do I. The way a lot of religious people behave looks like arrogance to me, but I'd rather interpret it more generously.

"I personally prefer attending St. Mattress."

I applaud your civil disobedience of the Almighty's Commandment to keep the Sabbath. If God wants your Sundays, he should give you longer weekends or make church more interesting.

"My church-going friends understand and laugh about it."

Makes you wonder why they're church-going.

"Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis"

They were frontiersmen too, but like Columbus they didn't know what they'd found--the tip of a whole New World. It was just cool dance music and radio pop, nothing special in itself, but the raw material for greater things was there. Lucky for us there was England, or the whole thing would have just decayed back into its country, blues, and jazz constituents. Rather, the youth of a tired urban society reached back into the deepest soul of our common culture and gave us the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zepplin--the most incredible music since Beethoven. And at the pinnacle of it all, appropriately (or tritely) enough, Stairway to Heaven.

"It's amazing how much what you are talking about really goes back to 12 bar 1,4,5 chord blues for its genesis."

What's amazing is where rock and blues went after branching--the former into a symphonic art form, and the latter into lyrical improv freestyle that spawned rap (i.e., unforgiveable tripe). Of course most rock is still pop drivel, but the heights to which it occasionally soars are worth the slog.

"Same for The Clash, U2, Pearl Jam and those that follow."

Yes, indeed. Each discovers some new quantum of the underlying spirit of the medium. The only subspace of rock I refuse to recognize was the dismal period between the long dormancy of Aerosmith and the rise of Nirvana--the Dark Days of Glam. Please, no death threats from Kiss Legion, but I can't respect male rock musicians who wear makeup, perm their hair, and perform in front of styrofoam skeletons.

"I've been playing music since I was 8 so I am someone who has deep feelings associated with music but I have never attached mythic qualities to anyone who writes and performs."

That's the tragedy of all deep knowledge. Fortunately we can't know everything, so there's always something magical. As sad as it seems, that's really all frontiers are about--placing that magic just over the next hill, just across that sea, just across the ocean, across the empty gulfs to that russet dunescape, across the unimaginable void to other stars. We as a species survive because of that, because we are most ourselves when seeking, and *knowing* that the awesome is just over the next hill. But to someone who already knows what's there, it's just more rocks and dust; a fascinating topic of inquiry, but not That Which is Sought.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 20, 2007 04:01 PM

"and perform in front of styrofoam skeletons."

I hope you aren't casting ill upon Iron Maiden, the greatest metal band ever.

"Driven south to the land of the snow and ice
To a place where nobody's been
Through the snow fog flies on the albatross
Hailed in God's name,
hoping good luck it brings.

And the ship sails on, back to the North
Through the fog and ice and
the albatross follows on

The mariner kills the bird of good omen
His shipmates cry against what he's done
But when the fog clears, they justify him
And make themselves a part of the crime."

Posted by Mike Puckett at March 20, 2007 05:05 PM

"I hope you aren't casting ill upon Iron Maiden, the greatest metal band ever."

Apart from some Sabbath, I never liked early metal that much--all goofy showmanship and merchandising, not much substance. Then it just went from bad to Metallica, branching later into a meth-lab soundtrack for skinheads or a bass-chord orgy for teenage boys in black lipstick, and by then I couldn't stand metal at all. It has the same obnoxious, militant zeitgeist and rigid content that makes rap such an abomination.

But no, I don't think I was talking about Iron Maiden so much as its imitators, as well as the general spectrum of so-called "rock" between the demise of Zeppelin and ascent of Nirvana. There were some bright stars in those dark times, but it was largely a wasteland of hair bands, androgynous dimestore foofaraw, and arena rock substituting for actual music.

Today is a new dark age for the genre, having been reduced to junior partner on the charts by "recordings" that even an impartial observer would have a hard time describing as music. I keep waiting for rock to reclaim its rightful place and smash the hip hop unbelievers, but despite some hopeful signs of demoralization within the enemy camp ("Hip Hop is Dead" by Nas), a shocking surrender of sacred ground at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame took place:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/12/music.hiphop.hall.ap/index.html

Yes, that's right--rhythmic talking to the sound of records being scratched has been elevated to the level of Zeppelin and the Who. Aesthetic outrage aside, it would seem illogical to induct people into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who never made rock and roll. Maybe Pete Rose can avoid all his gambling issues by being inducted into the Rugby Hall of Fame instead.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at March 21, 2007 04:57 AM

There was the New Wave of British Heavy Metal of which I am a big fan and then there are hair bands which are a corruption of the art form.

There were IMO spawned by Motley Crue and a lesser extent Kiss.

I can take some Kiss and Crue. I give Crue a pass for being original but overall I blame hair metal for the great harm it inficted on the genre.

Still, metal is supposed to be about Heavy themes, not 'Girls, Girls, Girls'

That is what other genres are for.

I think a comeback for R n' R is in the offing and is bubbling up under the surface. As Rand posted a couple of weeks ago, Rap is melting down.

What makes me think Rock is poised to make a real comeback?

A stupid yet neat video game craze that has swept the nation: Guitar Hero one and two.

I disagree with your assertion that without the Beatles and other British influences that rock would have unraveled itslef.

It would certainly have been a far, far poorer place without the Beatles, Stones, Who, Zep, Kinks, Floyd et all but I think, based on the timeframe, Jefferson Airplane, The MC 5 and The Doors would have happend anyway. Much the same as they happened anyway.

People fail to understand that much like how the Apollo program artifically accelerated progress in spaceflight, the 60's counterculture did that to R n' R.

That era was a cambrian explosion for rock and it will not be repeated in our lives.

Posted by Mike Puckett at March 21, 2007 04:48 PM

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