Coffee Talk
Is this event a sign that?
A. Jews are cool, with it, and urban;
B. Rock is getting too mainstream and losing any sense of rebellion;
C. Both.
Discuss…
Features
Hot Posts
A Message From Devcat
Devcat is watching over, but if you notice any problems contact the editors and Devcat will be notified and deployed immediately.
Recent Comments
on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.He's a rebuke. A rebuke that got a "HOW DARE YOU" in 2016. Maybe it'll be listened to by 2028. Maybe…
on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.What search engine are they using in SD I wonder?
on Movie of a Man Awakened at NightBarely on topic... I am so looking forward to being able to sleep on my left side again.
Comics
-
November 27, 2024
-
Movie of a Man Awakened at Night
November 26, 2024
-
It’s Going to be a Hard Winter
November 25, 2024
-
Hunting the Wild Goose – It’s a Funny Game
November 24, 2024
More Comments
on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.
on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.
on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.
on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.
on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.
- on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.
- on Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.
D Rock went mainstream, roughly, before you were born…..you kids.Report
There is mainstream and there is mainstream.
Sonic Youth were never really a popular radio or MTV band. Same with Sleater-Kinney for the most part. There was a brief moment in the late 80s and early 90s when mainstream rock media began paying attention to Sonic Youth because Nirvana liked them but they were still largely placed in the night.
I’m just largely bemused that the sources for indie rock today seem to be NPR stations, 501(c)(3) community radio stations, and former downtown avant-garde darlings like Kim Gordon can sell out events that the most middle-class and highish brow of institutions, the Jewish Community Center. And there was a time when Sonic Youth was considered really edgy and downtown and closer to a sub-culture art bohemian scene than anything else. I wonder if we are heading to an era where nothing is avant-garde or underground even stuff that is pretty arty or arty enough including movies like A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night.Report
Very few people are able to carry the edgy feeling of punk rock into middle or old age. A lot of rock music does not age well and looks kind of ridiculous when performed by older people. Sonic Youth as a bad of twenty somethings made sense. Hearing them perform Teenage Riot when they are in their fifties does not. The same goes with Joan Jett. I saw a clip of her on youtube. She was a guest on one of the daytime talk shows like Today and performed a song. It just looked kind of pathetic, like a parent trying to prove she still has it to her teenage kids.
It is possible to be cool in your middle ages and a senior citizen but it requires a subtler approach that the teenage and twenty something type cool.Report
I was asking a friend the other day, why is it so easy to be a cool old blues or jazz musician, or even country, but so hard to be a cool old rock musician?Report
In the 80’s the home of indie rock was college radio station. Alt rock always needed less high profit minded places to survive. Nirvana wasn’t really much of a indie band fwiw. They were on the first wave of bands big labels picked up from the college/alt scene to be made into The Next Big Thing.Report
When you don’t get around all that much anymore and have clearly outlived your youth, you look pretty damned stupid singing My Generation.Report
@saul-degraw I don’t think is that complicated. The 16 year olds who snuck out to see Sonic Youth at a divey bar in 1989 are now 40-ish year old’s who are part of the main audience for the Jewish Community Center.Report
@james-hanley
Jazz went into an avant-garde and arty status pretty early but there are plenty of oldish or old Blues and Jazz musicians who make their living playing to largely white and largely middle-class audiences at places like SF Jazz. Blues was never super-popular as a music form like rock became. Jazz needed to be sweetened and watered down to become popular. Paul Whiteman and Glen Miller found ways to smooth it down and make it more palpable for mainstream audiences. People like Chet Baker and Sonny Rollins went from clubs to the concert hall or stayed in the clubs. They never went to places like Shea Stadium or Madison Square Garden for large shows.
I recently read a book called Do Not Sell at Any Price which was about people who went on epic hunts for rare 78s. The rarest records tended to be by obscure blues musicians in the 1920s and 30s. The musicologist Elijah Wald thinks that the hunters changed how we perceive the music because they turned the obscure and unpopular into the desirable by searching out for records that were not really popular when released.
The Blues and Jazz musicians have always had tough lives at low pay. Maybe also the Country Musician. Many rock musicians including people like Sonic Youth learned to develop some kind of bourgeois and upper-middle class life. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore traded downtown NYC for the college town of Amherst, Mass.Report
@jesse-ewiak
Bemused was the wrong word but maybe not completely. I would think that some people would want to keep their edginess alive but maybe the cultural programmer thinks he or she is shaking up the old and stuffy from NPR and the Jewish Community Center.
I find it amusing though.Report
michael gira’s made the transition to older very well, and he lives upstate.Report
Jews are cool, with it, and urban;
David Lee Roth already covered that…if you think he’s cool.
OK, Lenny Kravitz…well, if you think he’s Jewish.
Umm, ok, you win.Report
David Lee Roth may or may not be cool but it could be devastatingly funny at times like his famous comment on rock critics and Elvis Costello.Report
could be devastatingly funny
It’s a trait common to all Hoosiers.Report
Eh, take off, you Hoosier.Report
Also, I am of the opinion that DLR was so uncool that he circles around to being totally cool.
Proof:
http://www.avclub.com/article/the-uneven-alchemy-of-van-halens-runnin-with-the-d-90900Report
His cover of “Just a Gigolo” might have been Peak David Lee Roth. At the time, we didn’t know that Peak David Lee Roth was possible…Report
You know that he has worked as an EMT?
I can’t decide if it would be amazing or terrifying to come back out of the light to see Diamond Dave over you holding the defibrillator paddles.Report
“Roth is a drunken aerobics instructor who stumbles into a karaoke bar after a long night of moonlighting as a porn star.”
And now I’ve read all I need to read today.Report
@leeesq I remember seeing an interview with DLR back when he was with VH (the first time), and him saying something like, “There are these great artists out there like Springsteen and Clapton who need years to make great albums. We’re here to churn stuff out while you’re waiting for their stuff.”Report
@tod-kelly, Van Halen was one of those rare rock bands that never took themselves that seriously.Report
We also have some of the Ramones!
Hey Ho! Let’s Go!Report
And Guster.Report
and 1/4 of BNL.Report
They’ve got Lou Reed and Gene Simmons.
I’d call that a wash.Report
@glyph
It is funny how both Gene Simmons and David Lee Roth have both come up in this thread, considering that Simmons discovered Van Halen.
DLR quote from above is very pragmatic, and reminds me of Gene Simmons’ attitude towards being a rock star.Report
@scarletnumbers, apparently Gene Simmons made a point of wearing a suit to business meetings during his Kiss days. He thought it was more professional.Report
When Howard Stern left radio for Sirius, he was replaced on WFNY-FM 92.3 in NYC by none other than DLR.
To call the show a train wreck would be charitable.
He was replaced after three months by Opie & Anthony.
Some have suggested that DLR was hired to be fired. In other words, CBS knew that no one could really follow Howard Stern, so they hired someone expendable.Report
I am going to go with B. Doing an interview at a Jewish community center is just the biggest sign of bourgeoisie capture of the subversive arts.Report
“bourgeoisie capture of the subversive arts”
This is a nice turn of phrase.Report
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/when-art-is-dangerous-or-not.htmlReport
The bourgeoisie hate us for our freedom.Report
Thats how many people actually perceived the bourgeoisie during the 19th and early 20th century. Aristocrats, proletariat, and bohemians were all united in their hate of the bourgeoisie.Report
And we hate the bourgeoisie because it bugs us that we are them.Report
In fact, that reminds me of a theory I once made up a decade or so ago which went like this:
One of the ways to determine if you are part of the bourgeoisie is if you ever use that actual word.Report
@tod-kelly
I refer to myself as bourgeoisie. Does that male me bourgeoisie or not?
🙂Report
You do have a certain discreet charm.Report
I refer to Mayo as bougie but that is because he often starts his weekends with yoga and brunch.
He’s 21 months.Report
“(like her recent paintings of Lena Dunham’s tweets”
Proof, yet again, that P.T. Barnum was dead right.Report
Yeah, I love that one.Report
All babies feed by sucking, so he was actually off by a couple orders of magnitude.Report
To simply call Kim Gordon a musician is like saying that Andy Warhol was just an artist.
In other words, she’s not a musician, period?Report
Oh snap…..
Though I like Warhol’s silk screens, my favorite pop artist was Lichtenstein. Though my real favorite artist from the 1960s is Wayne ThiebaudReport
Ahh yes Lichtenstein…….one of my favorite European micro republics for aesthetically pleasing mountain based scenery.Report
Technically, Liechtenstein is a constitutional monarchy. It is currently headed by Prince Hans-Adam II, a great-nephew of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, whose assassination triggered World War I.Report
Yes Mike, it is actually a constitutional monarchy not a republic. This if of course the best kind of technicality, because it is pointless and irrelevant but still true. I’m going to have to more careful with my pithy remarks about Monaco and Luxembourg.Report
@greginak
My favourite pointless fact about Lichtenstein is that it’s one of two countries that is double-landlocked; it is surrounded by landlocked countries.Report
I thought Franz Ferdinand was that Alex Kapranos character from Scotland.Report
Jews are cool, with it, and urban
Well they are urban, so you got that…Report
Jews are cool, with it, and urban
Well they are urban, so you got that…Report
Rock is rebellious in the exact same way that a Mercedes is exclusive.
Here is Joan Jett on the View:
Report