Coals to Newcastle

This Thursday afternoon timeslot, supposedly a break from world issues, can also by definition not be a break … as reactors to music videos “back in the day” bring their own upbringing and socialisation into their calls, especially when Gen X to Zoomers.

On top of that, readers and contributors at N.O. also bring quite different life histories to the table, as was seen in the Protestant Catholic issue last evening, let alone the atheist rationalist normie perspective … meanwhile, armies of fighting age men pour in to exploit the division … not even awaiting the word but already stabbing and raping, burning old churches or forcing them to convert to mosques.

Charming. Really great situation. In the midst of all this is music and my aim just currently, not for much longer, is to find music, even popular songs, which stand the test of time … that is, they appeal across generations, cultures, nations, genres … to many.

“To many” is the crucial part here because even within, say, classical, we saw the division between harpsichord hardliners and piano hardliners. My contention, within a given “classic” is that key, tone, notes, mood must all meet expectations of the ear, that ears are remarkably similar across blacks, whites, old, young … I’ve seen it over and over and over in reaction videos:

… plus many more from America to eastern Europe. Today’s begins with what’s regarded as a rock/pop “classic” by Santana … Evil Ways … and how completely different cultures all see something in it as special … why? Some written reviews described Santana as blending jazz and blues with Latin and African rhythms, plus that guitar work.

All right, said I … let me find an actual African reactor and an actual Latina reactor and see how they take it … preferably a younger person, tabula rasa, hearing for the first time, remembering of course:

https://www.loudersound.com/features/borrowed-notes-the-complicated-cross-atlantic-evolution-of-black-magic-woman

Those are quite some reactions.  

For part two below, my aim was not cross-cultural, except across generations … it’s a younger English man (as he explains) and an English Scottish woman (itself quite a crossbreeding) reacting to a classic concert … Dire Straits’ Alchemy performance in London in 1983:

I’ve already run the performance in cross-pond reactions here and it’s been universally admired by classic rock aficianados as a gem of collaborative playing by masters of their own instruments, somehow gelling into a tour de force where everyone in that hall was having a blast:

My final look is at the “chick” in this last reaction herself. Of the four, that Millennial displays all the things we’ve written about … good and bad … almost impossible to marry but if married, almost impossible to stay with, being so openly into herself, subject to all sorts of ailments … the sort of thing that resulted in those previous vlogs:

But there are also plenty about today’s broken and pussified boys … and the evil which has been perpetrated upon entire new generations. Nuff on that.