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What modern invention/innovation do you wish had *never* been developed?

Say that after you've watched the opening walk-around of the Hollywood Review of 1929.

Tell it to Lew Docksteader.


In the 20s they didn't use the tambourine like hippie music though. Hippie music tambourine in overly jangly and nearly throughout it.

Docksteader used it as a kind of background effect not some ridiculous solo instrument.
http://youtu.be/s32YZfLYjgM
 

Stearmen

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I just heard of a new dance craze that's sweeping Europe. Seems, the dancer swirl around in a sexual frenzy, and rub bodies together in the most explicit fashion imaginable. And, if that is not enough, women are now showing way to much skin while participating in this new dance. I am completely shocked beyond belief! We must stop this dance before it is to late, and people are doing it around the world! This is the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it? I am sure you all know the dance I am speaking of, The Vienna Waltz! /QUOTE]

I think you all missed my point above. This is what the old fogey critics in the late 18th century said about this form of young people dance. Now, it is considered a beautiful form of dance, very conservative. How does that old saying go? "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
 
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LizzieMaine

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I don't think anyone has thrown out that sort of a criticism in this thread. My own distaste for sixties music is that it's *bad music* -- written on an elementary-school level, manufactured more by studio technique than by actual talent, and most of all, sounding like a trunk full of broken glass being pushed down six flights of stairs.

People can go ahead and dance the Batusi or whatever all they want. It's the music I can't stand. If that makes me an alterkacker, so be it.
 

LuvMyMan

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Is San Francisco still the hippie capital, or did they move elsewhere?
There is little doubt that San Francisco has a variety of wonders that bring or attract people from around the World. We do also have some very well loved loungers that abide and reside in the Bay area....but....it is very true a major part of the population seems to have become what most people could describe as "strange bedfellows" to say the least. There is very little that could come from the news about San Francisco that could be shocking any more, not sure it it is true but you never know, as I have heard they want to have a flag all for themselves, to make it known about some "rights" movement, a flag that is lavender and pink with a main logo of a jock strap covered in sparkles...something that would make Truman Capote proud of. Do they have a statue of Richard Simmons dancing to the oldies outside the main city office building? lol!
 

LuvMyMan

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I don't think anyone has thrown out that sort of a criticism in this thread. My own distaste for sixties music is that it's *bad music* -- written on an elementary-school level, manufactured more by studio technique than by actual talent, and most of all, sounding like a trunk full of broken glass being pushed down six flights of stairs.

People can go ahead and dance the Batusi or whatever all they want. It's the music I can't stand. If that makes me an alterkacker, so be it.

There is not one thing wrong with your opinions, as it is that you do not view what many millions do and each and every one of us has a right to like, or dislike what we decide to.

I have thought about the "music" and even the "arts" connection to our life and history as humans. Perhaps each person has interactions with music in relationship to personal events that remind them of something connecting a passion or positive event in their personal life.

It is easy for some to love the masters in art works, and as such some would appreciate cubism, or abstract art while others would view it as being done by a monkey that was let loose with a squirtgun full of paint.

There is to the masses, some very wonderful and genius works done by the music industry in the 1960's. I would tend to think not all of it would be rendered to be great or fantastic, but to rule all of it out, as being unworthy just does not make sense. It is however, a personal choice for any one person to decide. In ways it may not be much different that a person's like or dislike to a type of food they would eat or not. In the end, to respect the individuals choice is important.

I had to add to my opinions as stated, in no way is it my intentions of being critical towards anyone that may not like rock and roll, pop, or any other music made in the 1950 through the present day time period. I can understand and respect that some will not like it, the same as they would understand I have NO room to hear "RAP" music.

Some beautiful music in my opinion, that I listen to , the song, "unforgettable" done by the 101 strings orchestra.
 
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LizzieMaine

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I have thought about the "music" and even the "arts" connection to our life and history as humans. Perhaps each person has interactions with music in relationship to personal events that remind them of something connecting a passion or positive event in their personal life.

It is easy for some to love the masters in art works, and as such some would appreciate cubism, or abstract art while others would view it as being done by a monkey that was let loose with a squirtgun full of paint.

There is to the masses, some very wonderful and genius works done by the music industry in the 1960's. I would tend to think not all of it would be rendered to be great or fantastic, but to rule all of it out, as being unworthy just does not make sense. It is however, a personal choice for any one person to decide. In ways it may not be much different that a person's like or dislike to a type of food they would eat or not. In the end, to respect the individuals choice is important.

You make a good point here. I think a lot of the reason baby-boomer music is so fetishized in modern culture is simply because it's baby boomers' music -- they grew up with it, it's the music of their formative era, it's what they know. Which brings us back to the fact that one specific generation has an inordinate influence on modern culture, simply because of its sheer bulk.

I'm considered a boomer myself -- I just squeak under the chronological wire for that one -- but I have no identity at all with boomer culture because we didn't have it in my home when I was growing up. We lived in the sixties but we weren't *of* the sixties at all. All I know of sixties-seventies music is what I picked up by casual, occasional exposure to it. It's no more my culture than the drumming of a tribe of Papuan headhunters is my culture, so I feel no particular loyalty or emotional obligation to it. And that being so, all I can hear in it is what I hear in it for the simple fact of itself, not any connection it might wake up in my memories. So I judge it on that basis.

I think we live in a time where the great mass of people assume something is "art" because experts tell them it's art. I live in a town that's staked its entire economy to that particular bit of sham, but I don't buy into it myself. Calling a cacaphonous din "art" doesn't make it any less a cacaphonous din to my ears, and I don't feel any particular obligation to pretend otherwise.
 
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Edward

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You make a good point here. I think a lot of the reason baby-boomer music is so fetishized in modern culture is simply because it's baby boomers' music -- they grew up with it, it's the music of their formative era, it's what they know. Which brings us back to the fact that one specific generation has an inordinate influence on modern culture, simply because of its sheer bulk.

Mn. There's a lot of the Sixties music I love, and some of the fashion I can appreciate, even if it's not for me. The problem I have with it, for the most part, is less the Sixties, and more the mindset of uncritical Sixties revivalism. I feel much the same about the Eighties, really. Maybe I'm a hypocrite - I look back to and keep alive elements of the forties and fifties that I love, knowing full well those are not times I'd want to live in, or of which I'd like to revive every aspect. Maybe my objection to eighties revivalism is the unconscious nature of the selectivity intrinsic to it... [huh]
 
Mn. There's a lot of the Sixties music I love, and some of the fashion I can appreciate, even if it's not for me. The problem I have with it, for the most part, is less the Sixties, and more the mindset of uncritical Sixties revivalism. I feel much the same about the Eighties, really. Maybe I'm a hypocrite - I look back to and keep alive elements of the forties and fifties that I love, knowing full well those are not times I'd want to live in, or of which I'd like to revive every aspect. Maybe my objection to eighties revivalism is the unconscious nature of the selectivity intrinsic to it... [huh]

80s revivalism is a direct result of the same thing Lizzie describes...familiarity. The kids today's parents are products of the 80s. It's a pretty clear progression...in the 80s, we latched on to the 50s, as our parents did... the 90s "grunge" was simply repackaging the early 70s...an so on.
 
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I think we live in a time where the great mass of people assume something is "art" because experts tell them it's art.

That's exactly the problem: we are being experted to death. My Dad used to say that an "expert" is merely somebody who knows just a little bit more than you do about a given subject. :doh:
 
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LizzieMaine

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And the result of that is people who are afraid or unwilling to trust their own judgement. "Dr. Joseph H. Blow, PhD says this painting/sculpture/musical composition/film/public performance is GREAT ART, and gee, all I am is somebody with a small-town high school education, so if I don't get it, then obviously there's something wrong with me."

I've seen people nod their heads and stroke their beards and mumble about "profundity" coming out of movies that are nothing but three and a half hours of tedious visual onanism to me. (Anything by Terenece Malick comes to mind here.) And then they ask me if I can tell them what happened in the last reel because they "didn't get it."

I get it just fine. All it means is that Terence Malick just mulcted you out of eight-fifty, just like the King and the Duke did with the Royal Nonesuch. ART ART ART!
 

nick123

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The way I see it, take two VERY different paintings.
A) being of Renaissance quality and detail
B) being a black dot on a white background

A) is naturally seen as the product of talent, creativity, time, and energy
B) being seen as primitive and lacking artistic merit

But both invoke thoughts and emotions of the viewer, therefore art. There are profound elements within simplicity, it's just not obvious at surface level.
 

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