America is Great!

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

I love America. I love where I live, New York City. I love California, where I used to live. I love Baltimore, Maryland, where I grew up. I think Savannah, Georgia, is one of the greatest towns in America. My family is from South Carolina and Texas, I love them too. I love the Jersey Shore!

I'm glad that I never have to eat crappy food from some chain joint like McDonald's - the mega-corporations haven't killed Honest American Business yet. I'm glad we still have a public library in every town, community colleges in almost every county in every state. I'm glad that I can get food from every nation and people on earth within 10 blocks of me.

As a Democrat, I love America - a lot. After all, our party, the Democratic Party, was founded by Thomas Jefferson. We wrote the Bill of Rights. We fought for equal rights, equal representation for all, and we have by far the best track record of economic growth and prosperity.

I'm glad there are so many things to do in America besides watch television advertizements.

And I LOVE Las Vegas!!!

[jpgray]

1. Damn straight!

This country created the Ramones, Television, the Doors, Robert Johnson, John Coltrane, rock, the blues and jazz. American culture may be on a downward swing, but just as for every Pat Boone there was a Dylan in the 60s, there is still good stuff out there to be found today.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

3. Johnny Cash, Miles Davis

America invented jazz, which probably surpasses the classical music from Europe two centuries ago. :)

[Dirk39]

14. HHmmm good old europe is on orange alert!!!

There is no kind of competition between classical music from Europe - whatever that means, you Yankees never got it, anyway:-) - and the music that was invented from americans, who were victims of - hmmmm - America?
Ask Miles Davis, ask John Coltrane. Or ask the men in rather black than blue, white and red...
Oppress and exploit and enslave them for centuries and give the world one Reagan after the other Bush - and as the latest entry into my hall of fame: Wesley Clark.
And then tell me, you're proud of America because of Coltrane, Davis or James Jamerson:-)
Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

17. It was you people, the Europeans, who oppressed us.

I believe it was the Europeans who enslaved Africans. I believe it was the Europeans who imported their sick aristocracy into the US.

We all came here to get away from you people oppressing and persecuting us. Then, we had to keep you from completely destroying each other and everybody else.

You're going to lecture us about oppression? Please! Besides, you've been copying our music for 100 years now.

[K-W]

31. Yikes, a little too much nationalism here

We were europeans. Slavery was actually started by africans, but expanded and exagerated by europeans including those europeans who lived in America. The difference between Europe and America is that Europe didnt use slave labor to the degree of the US and ended slavery much earlier than the US.

But deviding people by nationality is just rediculous on the face. People arent different because of the borders drawn on the maps of the place they are born.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

36. Well some of those borders are oceans

and they mean a lot more to the development of our culture than just lines on a map. It's Europe that hasn't been able to integrate their states, we can travel freely without going through Gestapo patrolled borders every few hundred miles - can Europeans?

[K-W]

38. Give me a break.

I would hope I wouldnt have to deal with nationalism like this on this forum. Yes, there are different cultures around the world. They all have thier good and bad points depending on your point of view.

That does not mean that people who juat happen to be born into one culture are better than people who just happen to be born in another culture. Even if you think that the US culture is the best in the world, which seems a fairly ignorant stance on its own. (Its impossible not to be biased in such a thing, and how many cultures have you lived in?) but even if you say that it doesnt logically follow that people who live in other cultures deserve to be chastised because of it or that we should be congratulated.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

41. I didn't say Americans were better than Europeans

I do have a certain degree of tact. I just said that our music is better, and I'd rather live here, since our society is more free, the most free in the world. That's a bad thing?

[K-W]

44. Saying something with tact doesnt mean that you didnt say it,

it means that you said it in a way that was softer or vague.

You are far more likely to enjoy the music in your culture than another culture. That doesnt make your music better. There is no such thing as better music. It is completely and totally subjective and strongly dependent on culture.

Our society is not more free than many, many parts of the world. There are many countries with similar or better levels of human and civil rights.

[Q]

54. You mean a kinder, gentler form of corporate slavery?

- Are we really any more 'free'...or is it that our cage is a bit larger?

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

55. our cage is larger

if you want to pine away for a smaller cage, have at it :)

[K8-EEE]

18. Jazz!!

Well alright another DU Jazz Baby! Hey here's a recommendation: Get drummer Earl Palmer's memoires, "BackBeat!" IT IS AWESOME -- he travelled with the Negro Vaudeville as a kid in the 30s, enlisted in WWII in the 40s, and in the 50's avoided lynching in his native New Orleans by running off with his white girlfriend to Los Angeles. A TOTAL PAGE TURNER!! Earl is 80 now and still a dapper lady's man; you can meet him at my local jazz haunt, Charlie O's, here in the San Fernando Valley!

[Rick Myers]

4. The Ramones and Television

You must have been there too!!!

Television, The Voidoids, Ramones... IT'S A GOOD COUNTRY!!!!!

:beer:

[Kathy in Cambridge]

7. Yay Ramones! I Exercise to them Everyday!

Punk Rock Aerobics! ;-)

[Rick Myers]

2. Love it!!!

Great little RANT, my friend!

I'm currently stuck in my hometown due to a family illness, and I've lived everywhere... LA, NYC, Minneapolis, Ft. Lauderdale, Colorado, Indianapolis and points in between... And I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!!!!

I love Youngstown, OH!!! If God wanted to give the planet an enema, He'd stick the nozzle in Youngstown, but I LOVE IT!!!

:toast:

[pasadenaboy]

12. there was a great article in the sports section of the LA times on Young

town and the Stoops brother who still coaches there. People are very loyal to Youngstown. One of my coworkers went to Youngstown State and still talks about it.

[WillyBrandt]

5. The Best Literature in the World

Bar none. Only Russian Literature pre-USSR comes close.

[Dirk39]

15. Willy!

Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, Robert Musil, Goethe, Beckett, Joyce. There was something special about american literature long, long ago, but the best literature in the world???
Without Hitler and the stupid millions and millions and millions of Germans - you're an exception Willy - who followed him, people would just ask: Americans still write novels, too? Common admit it!
You did chose this name, now: pay the price!
Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Kathy in Cambridge]

16. I Have To Agree With You, Dirk

American Literature, while there are some great works, reflects a young society.

I would add Gunter Grass to your list, Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Koestler, Thomas Mann, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Flaubert, Ibsen, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, The Brontes, Emile Zola, Bertold Brecht, Checkov, Heinrich Boll, and countless others. I am ignoring the great medieval works.

There are great works of literature from other continents but alas I am only familiar with the US and Europe.

[RandomKoolzip]

21. No, but the best MUSIC in the world is definitely American.

Chuck Berry could not have happened in Germany. Little Richard could not have happened in Spain. Boots Riley would have nothing to say. Chuck D. would have no material to write about. Robert Pollard would be just an eccentric shoolteacher. Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Richard Meltzer, Chuck Eddy, John Mendelssohn, Nick Tosches, Byron Coley, etc. would be just ugly guys with odd hobbies. God Bless America for giving us the spark of love and pain and sex and creativity and fire that is rock and roll.


The Blues, Rock and Roll, Jazz, Lo-Fi, Indie, Punk, Funk, Hip Hop, N'awlins, R&B, No Wave, Power Pop: these are AMERICAN musics and I am DAMN proud of the cultural miasma which spawned them.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

25. the Beatles just copied Elvis and Chuck Berry

and their "pinnacle" album was just a rip-off of the Beach Boys! Europe has been playing catch-up to American music for a century at least. Have you heard French pop "music", if you want to call it that? Or for God's sake that German depressing computer shite? The Germans haven't done anything good since Kraftwerk. "Who Let the Dogs Out" - please!

I'll put Mark Twain against any European novelist anyday, and Charles Bukowski against any snobby modern Euro author too.

[WillyBrandt]

6. The best Media Whores, AND Mediawhoresonline

Check it out: http://www.mediawhoresonline.com/

What more could we want? :)

[Kathy in Cambridge]

8. I Love My Country

I love that I don't have to eat in crappy fast food joints because I can get delivery from Tibetan, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Thai, Vietnamese, Tunisian, Moroccan, French, Portuguese, Brazilian, Salvadoran and various gourmet restaurants.

I love the fall in New England-there's nothing like it!

I love that I am less than 200 miles from New York City-the greatest city in the world, even if I don't like their sports teams.

I'm glad I live near several world-class universities because I can benefit from their museums, film series and lectures.

There are several independent bookstores in Cambridge, so I don't have to go to Borders or Barnes and Noble.

I love the Charles River in the spring, summer and fall. Memorial Drive is closed off on Sundays to make exercising and strolls by the river more pleasant.

I love going to a Sox game on a warm summer evening.

I love that for now I can speak my mind politically, and not face any ramifications. For now.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

10. Ever hiked the Appalachian Trail?

That's America.

[leftofthedial]

9. and AMerica loves you too, WCTV!

Man, I'm tearing up.

'Scuse me.

[101 Proof]

11. I love America!

I hate Bush and all Republicans!

[K8-EEE]

13. Me Too!

I love my mom's home town Winnemucca, NV; I love my home town, Los Angeles; I LOVE NYC!!

I love that we can still say what we want and here's what I want to say: WE NEED REGIME CHANGE IN 2004!!

[K-W]

19. How can you love america?

I love people.

[RandomKoolzip]

20. I fuckin' love America!

Because we invented Rock and fuckin' Roll, motherfuckers.


Who wants to bet we'll see THIS post on Little Green Footbals or Rush Limbaugh's show? Nah, it's too positive.

[markses]

22. How thoroughly unsurprising

Unreflective absolute condemnation of American culture in one thread met with reactionary absolute celebration of American culture in this thread.

Mind-numbing, all of it.

[jpgray]

23. LOL! Read the thread next time

There's good and bad in any culture. But we're so fortunate to have your unique viewpoint here, no matter how many times it was expressed above in the thread.

;-)

(no offense meant, but damn that was funny!)

[markses]

28. Oh, I read it

From the sublime to the absurd of it, I read it.

Because we mistake various cultural movements for nationalist possessions.

Because we then turn this first mistake into a second mistake by insisting that any celebration include a competition.

A sickening display, to be sure.

[RandomKoolzip]

32. Oh cheer up, you gloomy gus!

n/t

[markses]

34. Oh. You're right.

What was I thinking?

YEEEAAAAHHHH, Beee-atch. We got COLTRANE, bitch. How you like us now? I'll put my boy Bill Gaddis next to your Italo Calvino anyday, MUTHERFUCKER!!! YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH! America! YEAAAAH! Thai food, kid. What!

Better?

[RandomKoolzip]

35. Yeah! That's the spirit!

If it made YOU smile, that's all that counts....

[markses]

40. As Buzz Aldren said to Stuttering John

I'm not laughing.

[jpgray]

37. You're seeing something that isn't there

There can be no country to country comparison of cultures, but people in the USA have created some amazing things. It makes no sense to focus on the crappy things people have produced here and to ignore the great things. Robert Johnson wouldn't have played the blues as he did anywhere but here, because this was the only country with Son House, Charlie Patton and Willie Brown. Talent doesn't exist in a vaccuum--the environment has a large part to play, and this country as an environment has created some incredible (and shitty) things.

edit: Does this mean "oh, we fuckin OWN that Czech Republic"? I don't think you can make that comparison.

[markses]

39. It's definitely there in this thread

And of course there can be no country to country comparisons, and of course the complex cultural environment plays a huge role in any specific cultural production. That Robert Johnson wouldn't have played the blues anywhere but here is also clear, though what gets to be a troubling point is what exactly "here" means in that context. And certainly, to elevate "here" to a nationalist possession in fact misses the concrete and complex cultural environment that actually produced Robert Johnson and replaces it with an abstract term.

Look. I'm the first to acknowledge, and in fact celebrate, the incredible cultural configuration that produced blues, jazz - and even the international currents that are producing techno (and that produced punk, contrary to a poster above who even claimed that for America, like sticking a friggin flag in the moon). What I don't like is the first move that takes a vibrant cultural life and reduces it to a national possession for the purpose of NATIONAL, rather than cultural, celebration, and the second move that is then able to celebrate only by negating some other "national" production.

Now it's time for you to read this thread again and tell me if that ain't happening.

[Name removed]

42. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jpgray]

43. Yeah, it's probably in there

:)

Mostly I was speaking for my own post somewhere above.

[Name removed]

45. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[markses]

47. I've read Carducci

It's a nice piece, and teaches you (perhaps against Carducci's intention) that many of these emergences are local (i.e., scene-based) and class-oriented, rather than national in any real sense of the term, though he certainly has it in for the Brits and what he considers "transplants" (hence the nationalist flavor of your own post, I expect). It should be read in conjunction with Dick Hebdige's "Subculture: The Meaning of Style" and maybe Simon Frith's "Performing Rites," in any case, if only to broaden the perspective. Point being that even "punk" is not just one thing that can be laid claim to.

Once again. I have no problem celebrating these various cultures. What i don't like is the childish nationalism and dissing of others that seems to go along with that celebration.

[RandomKoolzip]

50. Well, he certainly gets it right that

Music is rarely judged on it's own merits (music qua music), but placed in some sociological context, which opens up all sorts of possibilities for amateur cultural vampires to make false, extravagant claims to high art pretention and fashion. Thus, Techno is called rock, hip hop is called the "new rock," etc. Ultimately when rock is viewed and analyzed the way Hebidge likes (fashion+harshsounds=downfall of western civ) it robs it of its vitality and turns it into political mill grist, which the music neither asks nor deserves to be. I believe Carducci can stand alone here.

I've read the Hebidge and the Frith...neither of whom excited me or rang as true to me as Carducci. And Frith...god, that fucker needs an enema!

I don't consider myself a nationalist, but I do consider myself a fan of rock music as Joe Carducci has defined it. He's right when he says that it's the Europeans who have turned rock (read: punk) from a music into a form of Marxist sociology. And I'm not a Marxist, either.

You know how long I've waited to find someone else who's read Carducci?!? That book is one of the touchstones of my life.

[markses]

51. While I agree with the assessment of Hebdige

qua music, as it were, he is producing, after all, a cultural study. I read Carducci as doing much the same, but perhaps without a coherent theory to ground it, so it ends up as too biographical or too formalist in many cases (and this formalism then gets read as a study of the music qua music?). Those who study subculture and music in cultural studies produce cultural studies, and of course, cultural studies as a field is often marked by "marxist sociology" (or at least a mix strongly influenced by Gramscian cultural theory), but - since music emerges in a cultural formation which it is not wholly independent of, and since it in turn affects cultural formations - I don't really see anything wrong with that approach. Punk - like hip hop - is a cultural phenomenon as much as it is a musical phenomenon, and you don't need to shortchange one to examine the other.

You'd also have to make a distinction between the music itself and the studies of the music. I can see the claim that the British scholarly tradition comments on punk through cultural studies methods (with apologies to Lawrence Grossberg!), but that hardly means that those playing the music and mixing in the scenes are doing the same thing. In this sense, the beef would not be with the music but with the scholarship, yes?

[RandomKoolzip]

52. Hmmm....

When the clothes get more column inches than the music, I tune out. If that makes me a rube, then I'm a rube. Sorry.

As far as cultural studies is concerned, ask yourself: who creates the music? Did Charley Patton know why Wilfrid Mellers was important? Did Muddy Waters study Marx? Bo Diddley: bulwark of wealth redistribution, or musician? The art under the microscope glows with a ruddy vitality precisely because it escapes (in fact, denigrates) self-conciousness.

The CREATORS of the art being studied here exist outside the life-sucking realm of "Essentialist" analysis in order to create vital art. The minute artists betray their muses and start listening to cultural studies is the minute artists become self-conscious, and their art suffers for it. The paradox of cultural studies: art must exist independent from analysis to remain worthy of analysis.

Cultural? Musical? Carducci's contention is that the scribes drawing their paychecks from riding the rock caravan have done the music a disservice by asexually birthing a hybrid form of music scholarship, one that merges the European ("cultural," high brow) approach with the American ("political," borne of the folk movement), when the music is calling for a "purebred," lowbrow analysis. What is needed for limning music of such heat and sweat is a study of the approaches of the musicians to their art alone that is just as hot and sweaty. Stuffiness should be avoided. This path is neither American nor European, but independent of both. In my opinion, Byron Coley, Chuck Eddy (although Carducci hates him) and Martin Poppoff (and a few others) do best by the music. And Frank Kogan, although I read him more for the cranky contrariness than any cultural seasoning I might taste.

If you want to view The Sex Pistols as a cultural product or a political event rather than a group of musicians producing an unconcious, localized art, fine. But I'd rather read about the intentions of the artists; did Steve Jones read Walter Benjamin?

Yes, my beef is indeed with the scholarship, not the music, although I see the two linked (against the will of the music).

As a former music critic, I found Carducci's take on this subject so damaging to my former worldview that I gave up that profession. And although I'd love to continue this conversation, I really have to go to bed!

BTW, you are a great writer.

[RandomKoolzip]

48. No, Punk is American.

Just ask Legs Mcneil or Sky Saxon. The Americans invented it as music, the British turned into sociology (and drained all the Blues out of it.).


Really, I think you should lighten up a bit.

[corporatewhore]

49. if it werent for TEXAS

we wouldnt beable to enjoy Robert johnson.A little while befor he was killed (poisened by jealous husband i believe) he made his only recording in San Antonio

[Forkboy]

24. America! It's So-So!!

[Kathy in Cambridge]

26. That's 'cause you're from Fitchburg

one of the armpits of Massachusetts. ;-)

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Forkboy]

30. We wear that term with pride

scary,ain't it? :D

[Forkboy]

46. Just for the record

I wasn't insulted by you calling me a Masshole.Apparently someone else was though :shrug:

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

53. the mods didn't get it

I got one of those moderator warnings :) My Mass friends would be laughing I'm sure :)

[Kathy in Cambridge]

33. Ah..ya bleepin' Nooo Yawkah!

:P

[Forkboy]

29. I'd like to say you're wrong

but I'd be lying :)

[mmonk]

56. The question is

Does America as we've known it exist anymore?