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Sex, drugs, and rock and roll

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m a little late to this party, but I wanted to say a few words about the Chrissie Hynde brouhaha:

…Chrissie Hynde has waded into another contentious area ”“ the overly sexualised nature of modern pop music.

In an obvious reference to scantily-clad stars such as Miley Cyrus and Rihanna, the former Pretenders lead singer branded them ”˜sex workers’ for selling music by ”˜bumping and grinding’ in their underwear. The 64-year-old also accused them of doing ”˜a great deal of damage’ to women with their risque performances…

Miss Hynde added: ”˜I don’t think sexual assault is a gender issue as such, I think it’s very much it’s all around us now.

”˜It’s provoked by this pornography culture, it’s provoked by pop stars who call themselves feminists. Maybe they’re feminists on behalf of prostitutes ”“ but they are no feminists on behalf of music, if they are selling their music by bumping and grinding and wearing their underwear in videos.

”˜That’s a kind of feminism ”“ but, you know, you’re a sex worker is what you are.’

There are two messages here. One is that today’s female pop stars go so far in their sexual come-ons, and their scanty dress, that they effectively are porn stars of the soft-core variety. The second is that this behavior creates an atmosphere that provokes and increases sexual assault.

I pretty much agree with the first. I’m not at all sure about the second, and it’s a subject so vast (what encourages sexual assaults and what decreases them, and also how broadly one should define the term “sexual assault) that I’m going to shelve it for now and concentrate instead on the first.

Over the years I’ve watched pop music degrade to the point that it’s so sexually explicit as to be virtually indistinguishable from what was considered to be soft-porn entertainment in my youth. That sort of thing is now mainstream, accepted, and even considered by many feminists to be empowering. Who was the entertainer who made it that way—Madonna (whom I’ve always found coldly repellent—but then again, I’m neither a heterosexual male nor a lesbian woman, nor even a gay guy)? Whoever it was, it’s in full flower now, and even pre-pubescents get to watch, right in the comfort of their own homes.

When I read what Hynde had said, I immediately thought of Allan Bloom’s 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind (not necessarily an obvious segue, I know). The book has long been one of my favorites, and I’ve written about it and recommended it many times, usually in the context of a discussion of education (especially colleges) and PC thought, and the takeover of the university by special interest groups.

Bloom’s book was focused on the university and its effect on our society. In fact, it’s subtitle was “How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students.” You can see the emphasis on colleges, but what is sometimes lost is the second half of the subtitle, the part about impoverishing the souls. In the service of that idea, Bloom mounted an attack on rock and roll music, a critique I thought odd at the time I first read it, and which I haven’t discussed much on this blog when I’ve written about him because it hasn’t been relevant. Now I look back on it and I think I understand better what he was getting at:

Civilization…is the taming or domestication of the soul’s raw passions—not suppressing or excising them, which would deprive the soul of its energy—but forming and informing them as art…Music, or poetry…always involves a delicate balance between passion and reason, and even in its highest and most developed forms—religious, warlike, and erotic—that balance is always tipped, if ever so slightly, towards the passionate. Music, as everyone experiences, provides an unquestionable justification and a fulfilling pleasure for the activities it accompanies: the soldier who hears the marching band is enthralled and reassured; the religious man is exalted in his prayer by the sound of the organ in the church; and the lover is carried away and his conscience stilled by the romantic guiter. Armed with music, man can damn rational doubt. Out of the music emerge the gods that suit it, and they educate men by their example and their commandments….

[Rock music] has risen to its current heights in the education of the young on the ashes of classical music, and in an atmosphere in which there is no intellectual resistance to attempts to tap the rawest passions…[R]ock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire—not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. It acknowledges the first emanations of children’s emerging sexuality and addresses them seriously, eliciting them and legitimizing them, not as little sprouts that must be carefully tended in order to grow into gorgeous flowers, but as the real thing. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later…

…[A]n enormous industry cultivates the taste for the orgiastic state of feeling connected with sex, providing a constant flow of fresh material for voracious appetites…

I could go on and on and on quoting Bloom, but I’ll stop there and just say you should read the book, or reread it (Bloom has a whole chapter entitled “Music,” from which I got those quotes). He further ties the sexuality fostered by rock music, and the rebellion against parents and authority that it both reflects and engenders, as generalizing to a more blanket condemnation of parents, authority, tradition, and society, and also to the embrace of leftism: “From love comes hate, masquerading as social reform…In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.”

Bloom’s book was published in 1987, and it was based on his lectures and notes that in some cases were even older. The rock music of that time was chaste compared to that of today (and much of the music was better, too, IMHO). Going back even further, the rock music of my 50s/60s youth was, comparatively speaking, a celebration of puppy love (“I Want to Hold Your Hand”). And yet it contained the seeds of the blatant and loveless sexuality we see today.

I like quite a bit of pop music, especially the music of my youth. However, I find today’s explicit and coarse sexuality in music, that Hynde deplores and blames—and that Bloom already seemed to foresee, although I wonder whether even he would have been stunned by how far it’s come so fast—deplorable. But I’m not the demographic it’s appealing to, and that demographic celebrates and is affected, influenced, and shaped by it.

[NOTE: And yes, the left intends these developments, which suit their purposes admirably.]

ADDENDUM: Here’s one of my favorite rock songs and rock performances. And yes, it’s very orgasmic, but in a different way from what Hynde is describing (and there are no women, except in the audience). I love Mark Knopfler and I love Dire Straits, and this performance occurred in the summer of 1983, a bit before the years in which Bloom wrote his book but roughly during the same era.

Here the sexuality is inherent in the music itself, although there are also some suggestive moves by the performers (not so much Knopfler, who has a cooler quality, but mostly the other guitarists). The “orgasm” part I’m talking about starts at around 7:26 and goes till the end:

Comments

<i>Sex</i>, drugs, and rock and roll — 79 Comments

  1. Worship of promiscuity, free sex, and libertine behaviors isn’t new. In fact, it’s pretty retrograde, if one looks up the origins of Aphrodite, Venus, and thus Ishtar, fertility goddesses.

    Not only are Leftists pagans in the spiritual sense, Christian heretics in the doctrinal sense, and traitors in the political sense, they are also reactionaries or rather what people think reactionaries are.

  2. The reason why current modern peeps think constraint is Victorian or “old” is because at a certain point in time, promiscuity and free sex or holy sex, was part of the downfall of civilization, notably Rome but it’s seen in other Late Stage empires as well.

    Thus as a reaction to these excesses of prostitution, using political power to capture sex slaves, boys and girls, for public or private orgies, the Catholic Church and other institutions went rather extreme on such things.

    It’s all a part of the greater cycle however. And we’re reaching the end of one right now. Nobody can stop it. Not even people’s new Messiah Trump.

  3. Ymarsakar:

    No, it’s not new at all.The difference is that that was channeled into a religion, something that, although pagan (and often violent), involved awe. It used sexuality in the service of that religion.

    Today’s music sexuality is either mindless (sexuality for the sake of sexuality), or channeled into the service of the left.

    There was also the Weimer Republic, which today’s excesses somewhat remind me of.

  5. Here’s what I got out of Hynde’s recent comments about the VMAs as well as her comments on her own sexual assault many years ago: Hynde is saying that women should not make themselves such desirable targets; they should not be creating the opportunity for sexual assault by being scantily dressed and drunk/drugged up in public.

    I see her comments in line with advice from personal security experts who provide tips on how to avoid catching a mugger’s/robber’s/rapists attention. For example, don’t leave your new phone in an unlocked car (something I did recently – ugh!). Did the person who stole it plan on stealing a phone that day, or did I just create such an irresistible opportunity that he couldn’t help himself?

    Hynes is noting that these current popstars are mainstreaming porny behavior that is being emulated by women to their detriment. This behavior, like leaving a phone in an unlocked car, is making them easy targets for sexual assault. Not the same as creating sexual assault, but creating the opportunity for it.

    We can advise people to not display a wad of cash in public, or to not park in a dark corner of a parking garage to avoid being an easy mugging target, but thanks to feminists, we can no longer tell young women that dressing and behaving in an overtly sexual manner (and weakening their defenses through too much alcohol and/or drugs) makes them an easy target for rape.

  6. A few days ago I googled Carly Simon because I had loved her music so much and for so very long. I wanted to see what she up to. Wiki has a mini-book!! for her and interestingly enough, in the 90’s she was at a Joni Mitchell concert when guess who walked up to her and punched her? Chrissie Hynde. So either that was false or violence is more up her alley than sexual prowess. Can’t say I was impressed. But I do love Carly

  7. Not the same as creating sexual assault, but creating the opportunity for it.

    I think their porn behavior creating and encouraging the opportunity to members of our society spatially the youth, again its part of feminists

  8. Islamic Jihad is a slightly different topic. They came to power sometime in the 7th or 8th century, desert tribal warriors from Arabia, stoked up on the opiate for the masses from this pedophile named Mohammed.

    Suffice it to say, Islamic Jihad uses a religious institution to make offensive raiding and war, pay for itself, in the form of sex, slaves, and population control. They control the population of infidels by raiding them, raping their women, and killing them or forcing them to convert, and they take these resources back, including the jizya from their tax farms, and make better harems and stronger Muslim armies.

    In fact, it’s one of the oldest forms of sexual slavery in the world, including Africa, and is the cause for certain cultural artifacts in Spanish and Indian society even today. The fact that Islam was able to harness the human desire to conquer and raid for so long, without it all falling apart as happened to the Romans or the various Christian churches (which Islam converted by the sword), is a testament to the power of Islam itself.

    And the power of Christianity is of course, a different topic, as it was often a power created in reaction to islamic invaders.

  9. Also to be exact, Islamic jihadists expect “houris”, angelic humans who have hairless bodies, except for the face and hair. Take a look at how Europeans “shave” their women for an example.

    Still think the Islamic Jihad 72 houris in heaven are a fantasy? To them, the reward is right here on Earth, not merely after they die.

  10. Carly Simon??

    Carly Simon – 67 – Broke And Having To Work For A Living!

    “Ms. Simon grew up in New York, where her father was a founder of the publishing house Simon & Schuster.

    “People think I’m an heiress,” she said, pointing out that she had inherited just $60,000 of the million dollars her father received for his stake in the company.”

  11. Still think the Islamic Jihad 72 houris</i.

    Should they fasting from sex on earth till they die and enjoy their 72 houris?

  12. And name a dozen rock band that have sold lots of music and been very influential in the popular culture. Taylor Swift is the only one that comes to mind.

    Country has been way more popular.

    And don’t get me started on rap. From the Spinners to Kanye. Gag.

  16. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later…

    …[A]n enormous industry cultivates the taste for the orgiastic state of feeling connected with sex, providing a constant flow of fresh material for voracious appetites

    Makes me wonder just how many “conservatives” benefit financially from that industry.

    It also reminds me of how Tipper Gore was ridiculed way back in the 1980s for daring to push for warning labels on music albums to let parents know the content of the lyrics.

  17. Sexuality in popular music goes back at least to jazz, the name for which comes from a slang word for sex. It’s silly to blame it on rock ‘n’ roll, and shows an ignorance of music history. Of course, things have gotten more explicit over time, but that’s a general trend in society that affects everything–look at TV and movies. Bemoan that trend if you like, but don’t blame it on rock. Lots of rock isn’t any more sexual than other popular music, and Dire Straits is less.

  18. Yeah, anybody who thinks that raunchy, sexual music started with rock & roll has some learning to do.

    You might want to start by searching for Lucille Bogan on YouTube. No, I ain’t gonna link it. *blush*

    These kids today don’t know what “explicit” means.

  21. Also from 1938, echoing Bloom’s remark “The power of music in the soul — described to Jessica marvelously by Lorenzo in the Merchant of Venice — has been recovered after a period of desuetude.”

  23. Also Hollywood records dealers and the mover/shakers there, they live that life they spew out as poison. Entertainment and selling it is one thing, but there’s a difference when what you are selling is only a slightly exaggerated dose of how the actors actually live in that culture.

    For example, Hollywood records dealers routinely trade sex for favors, and pressure women and young girls into going with the “flow” that is the Hollywood culture of power and sex. They are inculcated into that cult early on, often by pressure and advice from the other ‘working women’ around them.

    So when you see sex on the screen or whatever in audio, that’s not an exaggeration of what they do all the time in life. That’s actually an understatement, because what they do is rated XXX and is poisonous on that level, whereas what they show is softer.

  28. Ymarsakar:
    “…was part of the downfall of civilization…”

    Thank you for confirming that fact. I’ve cited it during discussions with Dems and other lefties and they usually react like I’m some kind of bible-thumping puritanical ignoramus.

    I’ve always come away from such encounters feeling a bit like I’ve been ‘Gaslighted’, but maybe their reaction comes from mere ignorance coupled with the cognitive dissonance that accompanies news that one doesn’t want to hear?

  29. Didn’t MTV and music videos have something to do with the increased slutttiness? Music became more accessible to younger people, and the need to stand out made singers more likely to take off more clothes.

  30. The decay of popular music to the gutter is part of a much larger and longer trend in the “Arts”.

    It is the need, the demand, the requirement that all Art, visual, auditory, whatever, be forever NEW. It is the essence of Progressivism to always “advance” without ever reaching a goal or and endpoint.

    This gives us Snoop Dogg, a rap “artist” who has made many millions and lives in a manse high above the Pacific.

    Progressivism in the Arts gives us “music” that is only rhythm, going back to primitive man beating on a log.

    It is the tatoos and piercings, the “body art” we see everywhere, a throwback to the Stone Agers of New Guinea.

    It is Jean-Jacques Rousseau writ very large. Nihilistic.

    In painting, progressivism is the paint splatters of Pollock, and the sliced shark in formalin that sold for millions, the Piss Christ, the spreading of colored plastic over the geography.

    And in politics, it is the worship of the brown and the black, the demonization of the white.

    Finally, in religion it is the elevation of primitive ignorant vicious Islam and the demonization of Christianity and Judaism.

    It all ties together. Which means humanity is headed into a very very long Dark Night.

  31. Neo writes a post about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.

    30 posts later, and not a single joke or tall tale from our youth.

    Sure, pop culture’s become a sordid thing, but that’s no excuse for us being so boring.

  32. I’ve always come away from such encounters feeling a bit like I’ve been ‘Gaslighted’, but maybe their reaction comes from mere ignorance coupled with the cognitive dissonance that accompanies news that one doesn’t want to hear?

    Generally I don’t expect zombies to understand human art or history. It’s just not their thing.

    The thing about zombies is that reason doesn’t communicate anything to them and art doesn’t transfer any emotions. It would be easier trying to teach dogs, cats, and ants what the value of human art and history is.

    And in some cases, dogs and cats, at least, understand human emotions better.

  33. Sexuality and pop music are warp and woof of the same cloth. Unrestrained, they are in turn neither sexy nor musical. Unrestrained, they are a degradation of human nature. Unrestrained they destroy both, intimacy and harmony. And that’s the point is it not? To destroy, first truth, then the good, and finally beauty.

    Mr Bloom’s “From love comes hate” is much too sanguine and yes he would be surprised at the devolution. But its gone far beyond devolution. We are witnessing now a Gnostic rebellion of the first order. I seem to recall Bloom being somewhat surprised at the popularity of the song ‘Mack The Knife’ and lamenting that the poor dears had no notion of what it was going on about. There’s no doubt now that great swaths of the entertainment industry not only know but are fully in accord with the desecration of both sexuality and music.

  34. The fact that Islam was able to harness the human desire to conquer and raid for so long, without it all falling apart as happened to the Romans or the various Christian churches (which Islam converted by the sword), is a testament to the power of Islam itself.
    ——————

    Not entirely equivalent. Rome was a political body. Islam is religious. There have been a number of different Islamic political bodies over the centuries, all of which have collapsed.

  35. The Left has a kind of Skinner conditioning effect as well. The people like Neo Neocon or Bookworm or others who may have found the utopian caring compassionate Democrats to be likable or natural, eventually started figuring out what the problems with totalitarian obedience was and that they were not so far different from the good Germans as history may have implied in school. But those are the rare ones that question the status quo, that leaves all the rest on the Left to be like rabbits. They obey their conditioning because anyone that disobeyed, has long since been pushed, purged, or disappeared.

    So all that leaves is what we see. It is easier to think of it as them being incapable of reason and human emotion rather than that they are ignorant of it. Ignorance can be cured. What the Left has done to humanity, isn’t on the same level at least.

    A true believer or fanatic/zealot, invests quite a lot in their belief and it is no shallow thing. Reason, emotions, convincing arguments, evidence, all of that pales in comparison to the strength of their belief. That is what makes a fanatic, a fanatic, they care nothing for or much less for, anything unrelated to their primary object of worship and adoration. The “change the world” types have more tendency to become like that. But it’s a human flaw that tends to go through every community. Most people get by by obeying authority, but that is not the same as the fire of zealous belief.

  36. rickl, I agree, it’s not bad stuff that Lenka does. That floating toothbrush was kind of creepy, though.

    That one “Trouble Is A Friend” is a little subtly naughty, but an intelligent song, anyway. Could that be the issue, or an issue, with all this naughtiness that we’re talking about in pop music now–no intelligence, no introspection behind it?

    I long ago came to regard pop music as essentially selling mechanized sexuality, so I pretty much gave it up. There are exceptions here and there that catch my ear, but it’s mostly that desert that I sense. Tumbleweeds.

  37. since so many of the “artists” of today don’t compose their music and can’t perform without autotuned lipsynching, what else do they as pre-fab performers have to offer other than sexuality.
    Hyde wrote her own music.
    what we now have are live action Archies.

  38. Neo, I thought of Bloom’s book also and that video is my all-time favorite and epitomizes rock and roll as I experienced it growing up.

  39. Rock music is far from the singular shaping influence it used to be 20 to 50 years ago. There’s much more available by style (eg, country) and eras (eg, the internet), and at lower cost.

    Thus, Hynde comes off as a more sexless, aging has been than a wise momma (which I don’t believe she is, anyway).

    The yound partake much more from music of many eras than mine ever did in my youth, or the boomers did (until much older).

    And therefore I’d like to dispute much of your claims and cite other worries as larger and more epic.

    In a summer review in Commentary (June, I think), Terry Techout covered the second (or third) volume of the history of the song.

    I recommend his depressing insights: in every culture and every time-period which we know, the song has been about love and the meeting of a desirable mate for reproduction. Until recently, until our time, today.

    The death of the love song joins the demise of the rom-com? It seems to be.

    Can this devaluing of mating and child bearing survive the era of inconsequential marriage? Where gay and poly and K9 marriage is now fully optional because equal with traditonal monogamy as the cultural ideal? Or, under the New Dispensation, superior? Replaced only by any love and caring of any kind?

    If so, I think we face problems worse than the decline of America and Western civlization: we are facing the decline of humanity – destined to be replaced by machines that will soon displace us.

    Humanity has “progressed” into self-decline and suicide, soon. All too soon.

    In short, neo and friends here, this worry about Chrissy Hynde who not many years back crooned about getting screwed in the dirt with random men (eg, “Night in My Veins,” 1994, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTOcUXDt4z0), comes off as both hypocritical and worse – short-sighted.

  40. Mark Knopfler is an incredible talent with a great appreciation for musical tradition and American roots music. Post Dire Straits, he did quite a bit of playing with the greatest guitarist of them all, and acquitted himself quite well. Here is an excellent example of the quality of their collaboration.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTVLIZaxMk
    Their second selection is made immeasurably better by the absence of the insipid lyrics originally penned for the song by its composer.

  41. Neo and Scott:
    Thank you for those Knopfler links; I always enjoy him. And wow, Chet Atkins really looks and plays great in those duets. There was great chemistry on display there (and a lot of mutual respect).

  42. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HROsqfsJkx8

    Tim Larkin is hosted by an independent Ted network. The lecture deals with some of the contextual background of violence, which crimes may be part of.

    The Leftist alliance and its propaganda or religious networks, often tout their moral superiority over others by the fact that they are advancing the Progress of the Race or the Species. That they are breaking open New Horizons, that we should be thankful to our masters in the elite halls of DC for throwing whatever crumbs come our way because “we didn’t build that”.

    In reality, the Left is lying. SJWs always lie is a now common theme or meme on the net. They are deceiving people when they talk about empowering women. When they get their hands on women, they put them into a cage where women are helpless except to rely on their Leftist religion or the social circle of conformity (universities and homo networks). That’s not independence, that’s not giving people individual power to affect their reality. Victimhood is their ability to lure people in and say that if you become a victim and embrace the rituals of the victim, you will have power over society and reactionaries. Power in which they did not have against the Democrat rapist, the violent black thug, or the deceivers.

    So when other people outside the Circle of Conformity talk about being responsible, having the power to change your circumstance, being at fault or not being at fault, this breaks the Circle of Conformity. Slaves are not responsible for what happens to them, because they have no power. And the Left considers women and minorities in the same place, but the reality is different as some of us may have noticed. Victimhood, totalitarian tyranny, and political force is its own power. A power used for evil.

    The women under the Left’s influence are not free and they are not independent. An independent ruler would welcome help from males or other factions, so long as they weren’t a threat to the ability to rule with reason or conscience. The women under the Left are controlled and weaponized, far more than the Democrats ever could have done using social controls in 1820 against women. So yes, I think the tightest social controls in human history, can be seen in the contemporary Leftist alliance’s modes of behavior. They are not the Advance of Reason or the Progress/Improvement of the Race. They are instead, a throwback, a regression, a retardation. An evil.

  44. WOW…… I can’t believe there’s this much drivel on this topic…

    Lizzy, got it right in the 5th post.

    We’ve all heard the marketing mantra of the 60’s and 70’s

    “Sex Sells”

    when the threshold for true genius, then true talent, (or even I guess in true value)….is lowered to where it currently resides then all sorts of artifice, gimmickry and technology is used to fortify the final product, to enhance its marketability….

    like, as in…..always…..

  45. Dittos x 1000 on Sultans, Knopfler and Dire Straits.

    That video (yikes, I am going to say it) is awesome.

    Is it my imagination, or was Knopfler doing a deliberate Dylan imitation (whatever, I loved it)? Have never heard him sound quite like that before (or maybe I am just showing my ignorance).

    Yes, Alan Parsons Project, Blue Oyster Cult … a lot of good stuff which probably still sounds good even not stoned.

  46. I was going to respond to Neo’s comments with a couple of links to well known “rock” tunes that I thought would in some measure contradict her assertion regarding the sexualization and vulgarization of popular – that is “popular” – music being in any way new.

    But it occurred to me that the examples I was going to use, old tunes like “Go all the Way” by the one hit wonders the Raspberries, [https://youtu.be/ULL7apmAJTE?t=1] or a couple of famous ZZ Top hits, don’t quite fall to the level of a near nude Satan worshiping Christ-mocking Whore of Babylon Wannabe thrusting her pelvis and flicking her tongue out on stage.

    And regarding (Vegas) Elvis, (who I could not stand as a kid) among his early covers, I found out many years, later, were Blue Moon of Kentucky, You’re a heart breaker, and Old Shep – ( the last a song my own father with his J-45 guitar sang to me when I was a small boy; probably not much more than half a dozen years after Elvis released it in ’56.) – these are hardly suggestive works.

    Harbor lights, Blue Moon, I Love You Because, are all old pop or country songs Elvis covered. Not as popular as That’s Alright, or Trying to get to you, but whatever Elvis was, in retrospect, he was not a mere bag of hip moves.

    And yes in truth, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, Trying to get to you, My Baby left me, and One Night, do have something more to be said for them. At least as far as I am concerned. But the point is that Elvis was not just about youthful lust.

    That said, I never in my younger life would I ever have imagined I would eventually have anything positive to say about Elvis. But there it is.

    Be sure and post a note when Madonna releases a collection of her favorite hymns …

  47. Something odd about this blog’s visitors. Run by a New England city girl with roots in eastern Europe, and nonetheless half the people here not only know who Chet Atkins is, but have actually listened to him.

    Saw Atkins a couple of times, as I’ve mentioned before. One in Galveston, where he signed a record album I had gotten in the lobby for my uncle during the intermission, when my brother grabbed it, and disappearing worked his way backstage in the time-out remaining.

    The second was when he played with Stanley Jordan in Charlotte. I still don’t know how I wound up at his concerts with all those “squares”, but I screwed up my courage and did; and in retrospect am glad I did. Guess I thought I was seeing a piece of history.

    Wasn’t deaf for three days afterward either.

    A final note on Atkins, he was a gracious man as the album signing would indicate. He later signed a guitar for this same uncle – not an expensive piece, just a blond Sheraton. But he went out of his way to do it all the same. It was one of my uncle’s most valued personal possessions, right up to the time he died a couple months ago.

  48. You can read all about the effect of Elvis’s appearances on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 here — an excerpt:

    Elvis’ swiveling hips and gyrating body movements had caused a massive stir from these first two appearances, not to mention his concerts and other TV guest shots. TV critics, public school teachers, priests, ministers, and terrified parents all railed against this menace to the world’s youth.

    You can watch the second appearance which caused much of the fuss here. The uproar was so great that he was only filmed from the waist up for his third appearance.

  50. Andy Kaufman always made me feel uncomfortable, but that Elvis impersonation is just brilliant; I’d never seen it before. Thanks for the link.

  51. Andy Kaufman deliberately tried to make people uncomfortable. It was funny.

    In his own way, Kaufman was Trump.

    But Kaufman was funny, deliberately self-defeating and self-contradictory.

    Kaufman could look real.

  53. In a modified spirit of Parmenides (or of Heidegger following him), who could seriously ask “why something and not nothing?”, we ought perhaps to ask “Why sex?”, as in, why sex rather than a strictly a-sexual reproduction?

    With the origin of sex we witness the origin of the arms race of life, and so of all arms races to follow. It ain’t about music, Chrissy’s perplexity.

    But then, music ain’t about spectacle either.

    As to Professor Bloom: it’s notable that he restricts mention of his own great teacher Leo Strauss to one idea in The Closing. Bloom has chosen very carefully. There’s a reason for that, in other words. Go look and see.

  54. R]ock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire — Bloom

    How does he explain Bob Dylan then? Bruce Springsteen? For that matter, one of my least favorite bands ever, the Grateful Dead? Joy Division? Nirvana? Ellie Goulding? Camille? Cat Power? Fiona Apple? Bjork? Gilian Welch? Patti Smith? I could list many more artists with ongoing successful careers. None of these sing songs to incite lust.

    When you’re talking about Miley Cyrus or Rihanna you’re not talking about music; you might as well be reviewing a Vegas show. Madonna started this, but she was coming out of disco and Donna Summer, her videos overpraised as “empowering” by everyone from Camille Paglia on down. Naturally she’s had imitators, and this sort of pop (not rock) music for 13 year old girls always has an audience, going back to Lesley Gore and the Supremes.

    This is just not a field anyone here seems remotely qualified to comment on.

  55. miklos:

    Obviously, Bloom is generalizing. As I indicated, when I first read that part of his book I found it odd. I don’t agree that what he says is true of all rock music, for example. But I think there is some basic truth there about rock music (that is, as opposed to “pop” music or “folk” music—and recall that Dylan was originally considered a “folk” artist, and later when he electrified it was considered “folk rock”). I think that Bloom was talking about what we might call hard rock.

    My point in quoting him is that rock music has gone more and more in the direction he specified (including rap and including pop).

  56. My point in quoting him is that rock music has gone more and more in the direction he specified (including rap and including pop).

    That’s probably the result of Hollywood and organized talent profiteers more than anything else. While cultural instability can be produced by heretics and dissidents at the individual level, they cannot compare to the destabilization effects of a large organization like the Leftist alliance. That is something people in the past underestimated or merely glossed over, having prioritized such ephemeral values such as “equality” and “democracy” over anything else relating to common sense.

  57. so really deep down inside every woman wants to be sexually objectified, abused, and left abandoned to her own idiocy… .

    cant wait to see what the NEXT 50 years of feminism will bring…

    look to performance art where a teachers shoved a knife handle up her vagina, threw tomatoes at it, and then showed the films to kids in her classes! you go grrrrrls.

    personally if this was what women thought was better than family, children, a home and such, then good riddance… hating men for not letting you screw everyting that moves and denying the female form of the lilberation of pedophilism, and carving up your baby for profit (as blobs of flesh dont have parts to harvest but babies do), and wearing your underwear on the outside of your clothing…

    was something men were wrong to do..

    we are contrite and spending the rest of our sentences in the nintendo prisons where most males no longer want to be married, have a family or even bother. why should they?

    self extermination, it isnt just for buddist priests and suicides any more, come to todays feminism, exterminate your billion year life legacy of your families survival of desease, nature, deprivation, starvation, accidents all to get to the modern era where an idea did you in cause your too damn stupid to say its a bad idea…

    stuck on stupid – feminism

  58. Who wants to drink from a dirty glass – What lenin supposedly said to Kolontai

    todays feminists, harmonites from a failed commune that later went soviet thinking a soviet state will give them death on the battle field they crave (And can have)…

  59. I prefer Early and Medieval music, & there’s a fair amount of sexual music in that – or maybe it’s in the ear of the beholder?

    Anyway, I skipped to the “orgasmic” part of the music video. Life is short!

  60. Some young people–proportion not clear–go through a stage of wanting to shock the old folks. Finding themselves as an individual or something, I suppose.
    Somewhere in the culture is the Big Idea they can all glom onto, all prepared and Out There.
    Problem is, the harder it is to shock/surprise the old folks, the more outrageous The Kids have to be to get the ol’ thrill.
    I recall “How Green Was My Valley” when the young rebels wore a kind of scarf instead of a tie.
    Got the old folks stirred up, or so they thought, I suppose. No harm done. That was then.

  62. Here’s the Real Reason Why So Many Women are Single
    http://mic.com/articles/125191/the-man-shortage-isnt-the-real-reason-why-so-many-women-are-single

    Beware! There’s a man shortage currently sweeping the nation, claiming innocent straight women and damning them to a life of eternal spinsterhood.

    At least, that’s the idea you might get if you perused Jon Birger’s Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game, which argues that the real reason why so many college-educated young women are single is because of a nationwide man deficit.

    While there might be some merit to Birger’s theory that a lopsided gender ratio might help account for contemporary hookup culture, there’s one thing the book doesn’t quite acknowledge: Straight women aren’t single because there aren’t enough men for them. They’re staying single simply because they want to be.

    actually, the men dont want them…
    from the UK to germany, to the USA to canada, the men dont want the women any more, not worth the trouble, risk, desease, etc…

    however, the very left liberal press that also tells white men to die…
    [sit down and watch us abolish you]
    http://moonbattery.com/graphics/against-straight-white-male-publishing-3.jpg

    just as they wont tell the girls that their fertility starts to decline in the mid 20s, and that birthcontrol pills change who you want to be with, and on and on… they are not going to tell the girls that they are and have been made VERY undesireable to the lads for marrying… but if you want a warm wet place to put your johnson, thats fine…

    The so-called “man shortage”: According to Birger’s research, a daunting surplus of women – 5.5 million college-educated women between 22 and 29 in the United States, versus 4.1 million college-educated men in the same demographic – has brought about a culture in which men are confronted with an endless buffet of sexual partners, while women are left single and unwed.

    yes, no matter how horrid they are, everything has to be told to be an advantage to men… when women were decent wifes, men got slaves… now that women have turned marraige into prostitution, and kicked men out of school so they cant earn, they dont want the boys they have to support… (And chinese ladies are poaching their rejects till they are done screwing around)

    now that women dont want men, and men are not allowed to go to school, and have jobs, and get assistance, and buy homes, and so on. whooo hooo… they are having the time of their lives selecting desease laden sex partners, which is why the uk wants to make sex robots illegal…

    yeah
    either way ladies, the family exterminated is your own and its in favor of the people who advise you, like pelosi who hae five kids while you have none and scratch your herpes.

    ha! too funny.
    ERGO MGTOW [the movement i helped create]

    MGTOW is basically the statement of self-ownership and saying that only you have the right to decide what your goals in life should be.

    It is saying that, as a man I will not surrender my will to the social expectations of women and society, because both have become hostile against masculinity.
    Male 1: Dude, why don’t you have a girl friend?

    Male 2: Its not for me bro, I’m a MGTOW.

    The unfortunate results of this nationwide “man shortage”? “The broad social and psychological effects of lopsided gender ratios … [are] more emphasis on courtship, romance and monogamy when women are scarce, versus looser sexual mores and women treated as sex objects when men are scarce,” Birger said. In short, it’s the perfect climate for men to swipe through Tinder and treat it as their own private, sexual playground.

    yeah… liberating women into sex fiends and they didnt decide to all become lesbians… so the eveil men win again… hated us for white picket fences, two kids and so on… now hate us for porking you when you want too… ha ha ha ha ha

    only wacko delusional nut jobs who think they are normal will find this true… as they are the only idiots that can think this way… men dont, only women do… so fixated on the penis envy, they envy the men when they had families, they envy the men when they dont. they envy the men when they are working hard and getting killed in war, and when they sit around playing nintendo.

    if it wasnt the extermination and genocide of two groups, it would be hysterically funny…. (just think of thw word root on that one!)

  63. “I know lots of single men,” Cara, 26, a resident of Brooklyn, New York, told Mic. “It’s just… most are of little or no interest to me as anything other than a hookup.”

    and

    “When women’s life choices were highly constrained, they had little negotiating power,” Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington, wrote for CNN. “They had to marry or were seen as damaged … It’s different now. While most women still want marriage, they don’t want it at just any price. They don’t want it if it scuttles their dreams.”

    they sure dont want it to continue their famlies who they take their fathers name so they dont take their husbands name…

    “I don’t think hookup culture is damning for long-term commitment,” Lisa, 27, said. “I think it’s a response to the large obsolescence of marriage as an institution for women. We don’t need to be economically or socially dependent on men.”

    and the final nail in the coffin:

    There are plenty of men – they’re just not that great: There’s an oft-retweeted quote by writer Madeleine Holden that dismantles the idea that a shortage of men is creating a generation of frustrated single women: “Dick is abundant and low value.”

    What Holden is essentially saying is that, contrary to Birger’s argument, there’s actually no shortage of single men on hookup apps like Tinder and Hinge. (In fact, on Tinder men outnumber women 2—1.)

    But with their tendency to send dick pics, slut-shame women and ask for nudes right off the bat, single men on these apps are just, well, kind of awful.

    [and they have no idea that many women in private respond to such and find it edgy, or else the guys wouldnt do it… duh… its funny]

    “I spend my 20s focusing on what I can control: my health, education, career and independence, one day buying my dream home by the sea, traveling,” Sandra, 28, a resident of Michigan

    good luck with that…
    [right now my neighbor keeps calling my wife as she cant get rid of waterbugs when they come in the window, cant change a lightbulb, and sits around at night getting drunk by herself… but she does sit in a room of her own looking out the window with a cigarette and slowly turning into baby jane look alike while bragging how good at business she is… ]

  65. I seem to recall Camille Paglia writing a column a few years ago where she declared the current overt sexuality in pop music/culture was empty and no longer arousing because there was no more “bourgeoisie” left to “epater.” Today’s poptarts grew up on Madonna and Sex and the City, so they have nothing establishment from which to rebel, not unlike a jazz musician who wants to improvise without learning the fundamentals of music first.

    * * *
    One other angle that no one has mentioned that to me seems relevant is that a lot of these young gals started their careers as children, and numerous stories have seeped out about the sexual abuse of minors in Hollywood for decades, from actors like Corey Feldman, and more recently, the singer Jewell (said she was hit on starting at age 8!). Too many young stars – Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, etc. – have descended into an overtly sexual persona paired with signs of mental instability. I wonder how much of this dysfunction can be attributed to sexual abuse and/or direction from sexual predators managers, music producers, and others in their entourage.

    In addition, Miley Cyrus in particular embarked on her porno exhibitionism at the same time she announced her love of marijuana. Rihanna, too, is an open drug user. I’ve used Miley’s descent to illustrate to my son that drug use leads to poor decision making, which leads you down the wrong path.

  66. VDH, at Pajamas: “Walsh writes both authoritatively and angrily. And he is right to be furious since 21st century America is branded with a highbrow nihilism, sarcasm, cynicism, and falsity, from the one-second pause of Jon Stewart to a David Letterman smirk. Walsh’s survey of art, music, literature, and history recalls much of Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind [2]. But as we creep up to the 30th anniversary of that book’s appearance, you put the The Devil’s Pleasure Palace down with the depressing sense that we have done a lot more damage and lost a lot more of what we were since Bloom’s warning of 1987.”

  67. John Heilemann was a rather reluctant witness. But when called on to testify, so to speak, Heilemann confirmed a stunning fact: that during the 2008 presidential race, it was Hillary Clinton who started the rumor that Barack Obama might not be a Christian.

    The matter arose when on today’s Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough ripped Hillary’s hypocrisy on Face the Nation yesterday for criticizing Republicans who question Obama’s religion, “when it all started with her and her campaign passing things around in the [2008] Democratic primary.” When Steve Rattner asked Heilemann, in his role as inside-campaign-baseball expert, to confirm whether Joe’s allegation was true, Heilemann tersely said “it was the case.”

    [Blasio, Obama, Hilllary, etc… these are the leadrs taht women prefer most… lincoln, washington, reagan, etc. are the ones men like]

  69. “Lizzy Says:
    September 21st, 2015 at 11:04 am

    I seem to recall Camille Paglia writing a column a few years ago where she declared the current overt sexuality in pop music/culture was empty and no longer arousing because there was no more “bourgeoisie” left to “epater.” Today’s poptarts grew up on Madonna and Sex and the City, so they have nothing establishment from which to rebel …”

    Yes, good point. All that is left is to become ever more grotesquely nihilistic in search of an outrage yet to be committed.

    Who will be the first “pop stars” to flirt with bestiality, pedophilia, necrophilia, and rape homicide?

  70. >>So what Lizzy is saying is that Cosby should have given the girls a job…. heh heh…

    The opposite: Cosby is not alone, not by a long shot, and these other Cosbys likely have a hand in encouraging these young gals to keep pushing the envelope. For example, Britney didn’t write her first hit “Baby, Hit Me One More Time” nor did she likely come up with the porny Catholic schoolgirl costume for the video.

  71. Female employees in California are poised to get new tools to challenge gender-based wage gaps and receive protection from discrimination and retaliation if they ask questions about how much other people earn.

    A bill recently passed by the Legislature and that Gov. Jerry Brown has indicated he will sign won’t suddenly put all women’s salaries on par with men’s or prod employers to freely disclose what every employee makes, which could make it easier for workers to mount pay discrimination claims.

    Gender wage gap: Women make more than men in 22 U.S. cities, including one in NY

    “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women,” actress Patricia Arquette said at the 2015 Oscars.

    But believe it or not, the gender wage gap actually favors women in 22 cities in America. And one of them’s in New York.

    According to Forbes, recent U.S. Census data shows women make 78 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s up from 2005, when the median annual income for full-time female workers was 76.6 percent as much as a full-time male employee.

    The tide has shifted even more in some parts of the country, though.

    A new study by personal finance website NerdWallet analyzed the few places (out of 492 cities nationwide) where ladies earned more in 2013, including No. 4 Albany. In New York’s capital, where the median income is $29,814, women make $1.11 for every dollar men earn.

    However, most of the cities that favor women are poorer. Top-ranked Inglewood, California, sees women make 120.6 percent of what men do, but median income is $25,749, a whopping $4,705 below the U.S. median.

  72. Supporters of the bill cite studies showing that on average, full-time female workers in California earn 84 cents for every dollar that a man makes, losing out on roughly $33 billion a year.

    That’s a collective figure and doesn’t mean, for example, that all female workers at a company earn less than their male colleagues who do the same work. It does mean that women as a group earn less than men for a variety of reasons – because they may have taken time out to raise children or they’re overrepresented in lower-paying jobs or perhaps they weren’t as aggressive as their male counterparts in seeking a raise.

  73. How Can I Convince My 3-Year-Old They’re Transgender? — Go Ask Jane

    Every Woman Weekly
    http://everywomanweekly.com/how-can-i-convince-my-3-year-old-theyre-transgender-go-ask-jane/

    Dear Jane,

    I’ve been in such a state of perpetual turmoil ever since giving birth. My child, pronoun “they”, is now 3-years-old. I have been mired in a heinous state of chronic depression because “they” do not want to play with girl’s toys. It destroys me that “they” might be another white CIS male, and another future agent of the patriarchy. That’s just not the type of lifestyle I can support or agree with. “Their” father has also been deeply despondent over our child’s reluctance to conform to our stance and ideals on gender. My husband identifies as gender neutral, and whenever “Xe” (my husbands current pronoun) witnesses our child playing with toy trucks and trains, it triggers “Xer” so hard that “Xe” crumbles into a quivering pile of inconsolable PTSD jitters.

    My question is, how can I persuade my child to blossom into the fabulous transgender individual that I know in my heart “they” truly are?

    All I’ve ever wanted was a trans child, and the fact that “they” seem so drawn to boys toys and refuse to don the lovely dresses I so painstakingly choose for “them” just crushes my soul. What can I do to make “them” understand the harm that they inflict on our family through their identity as a CIS-gendered white male?

    Please Jane, help us, it’s tearing our family apart.

  74. Artfldgr:

    I am pretty sure, although not 100% sure, that the “Ask Jane” column you reproduced here is a satire site. The reason I say this (in addition to a sort of tongue-in-cheek quality that I perceive) is the bio of the author. If you check it out, it cites her as author of a book entitled “The States Of Shame: Living As A Liberated Womyn In America” which is described as an Oprah selection and a bestseller. However, there is no such book. In addition, her bio says that she writes for a periodical called “National Report.” That’s a relatively obscure spoof site.

  75. neo-neocon, what makes you think i thought it was real? though i CAN show you real examples of such… want to see? there are photos out there of transgendered children whose parents are doing that to them… but the article is tongue in cheek along the lines of whats coming…

    Jacob’s Journey: Life as a Transgender 5-Year-Old
    http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/transgender-kids/jacobs-journey-life-transgender-5-year-old-n345131

    and if you go to this site:
    5 Tips for Raising Gender Nonconforming Children
    http://www.transactiveonline.org/resources/family/five-tips.php

    and of course your aware of
    Jazz Jennings is an advocate for transgender children and has written a book, I Am Jazz , detailing her experiences as a transgender girl.

    and

    6-year-old Coy Mathis, who first identified as a girl at 18 months, was barred from using the girls’ restroom at Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain, CO in December 2012. Prior to that, Coy, who dresses as a girl and is recognized as female on her passport and state I.D., had no issue with using the girls’ bathroom.

    and

    Bobby Montoya was born a male, but lives life as a girl. She dresses in girl’s clothes and plays with girl’s toys. When she wanted to become a Girl Scout she was turned away by a pack leader because she had “boy parts.”

    Bobby and her mother, Felisha Archuleta, appealed the decision, and the Girl Scouts Of Colorado admitted a mistake was made. “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout,” said the Scouts. They let Bobby join the group.

    you will find that lots of parents are actually thinking the way you think its a joke… but i guess thats the point of the joke..

    i mean when you can read lots of articles that are telling white men that they are evil, to be killed, we can do without them, cant get jobs, and so on… why wouldnt a child not want to grow up and be that if that is what the culture from childrens shows and onward is telling them?

  76. Kim Petras
    is a German singer and songwriter who creates pop music and various covers in an a cappella style. She has been the subject of extensive worldwide news media reporting of her gender transition medical history in the context of her young age.

    think a boy like bieber becoming a miley

    but at least she is now a celebrated person and not just a horrid rapist, cause feminists do claim all men are rapists…

  77. Artfldgr:

    The way you posted it, with no disclaimer or explanation or note, indicated to me you probably thought it was real. In case you did, I indicated that it wasn’t.

    Many successful spoofs are only slight exaggerations of the truth, of course,

  78. no, neo… i did not think it was real, i thought it was tongue in cheek averaging out what was going and would grab attention to the subjecvt of what is now normal…

    what difference does it make, no one died in bengazi when i baited people to focus on things

    here is another focus point
    but this one is not a lie, spoof, etc.

    what women are now going to miss out on
    this kind of love

    Love that will break your heart: 92-year-old man serenades his dying wife with a love song in tear-jerking video

    Howard, 92, is seen singing the love song You’ll Never Know to his dying wife, 93-year-old Laura, as she lies on a hospital bed in hospice care
    The couple’s granddaughter, Erin Solari, captured the tender moment in a Facebook video, which has earned 3.6 million views
    ‘I love you,’ Laura tells her husband of 73 years as he sings to her

    too bad… sucha man is an evil person…
    dont ya know… a CIS patriarchal evil person
    probably beat his wife and sang like that to fool the public… (if you hang out at a few feminist places this is the kind of thing women say and promote… i have yet to hear them promote other things… though there are a few old women who do defend them, but they have no idea what their contemporaries in youth are actually doing… )

  79. I wonder how much of this dysfunction can be attributed to sexual abuse and/or direction from sexual predators managers, music producers, and others in their entourage.

    From my research, which ties in with some of the same data points you mentioned, there’s a significant amount of influence from that dysfunction. And the Isla Vista killer was one of them.

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