[hate the music] different strokes

There came a time in the late 60s or early 70s when popular music [not in the sense of "pop" but of music people listened to and enjoyed] fragmented.

I don't know when you'd date it from but the situation which had existed where a new song was released in either America or Swinging Britain and every teenager in the world discussed it seemed to … well … fragment.

Woody

Now some people listened to Uriah Heep or Ten Years After and some didn't. Everyone still listened to Zep, Floyd and Deep Purple and even had time for JJ Cale and the Eagles. But coming in from the edges were John Cale, Lou Reed, Nazareth and of course - punk.

Now some wouldn't give Wings airtime and others loved it. Deutsch Kosmik Musik and Hawkwind left many cold. We probably didn't realize how bad it had got until the late 70s when, if you went to a party, someone would put some track on and expect everyone would dance to it but some other guy would go over, take it off and put on another genre and so on.

Woody

My first inkling was around 1980 in London when I'd play Selecter and the Specials, the Beat and Bad Manners, Splodginessabounds and other garage groups hawked about by musicians on the street plus, strangely, Fairport Convention - a vibrant time but not everyone's cup of tea.

And there was music I wouldn't sully my player with. So when I read this article yesterday, though I didn't agree with his targets necessarily, I had to chuckle at his sentiments:

I consider myself a fairly pluralistic cosmopolitan fellow when it comes to music … but there are some musics and sounds that I find unendurable and I actually resent the fact that they even exist. So here's Part One of an ongoing series of Crimes Against Music.

Dixieland/Trad Jazz image: Code words for white guys with moustaches, straw boaters, bowties and striped shirts pretending to be playing a rudimentary form of New Orleans jaunty jazz. Banjo, trombone, tuba and clarinet all in one band and all playing at once! Hand me a blindfold and earplugs please.

Woody

The Piano Accordion: [I]t's a contraption from hell that sounds like an emphysemic portable home organ and when played looks like a fat man having a difficult bowel movement and playing with his own nipples. Oh yes, and smiling at us while he does it!

White People Playing Faux Reggae: Eric started it all [and] performed it as if he was anaesthetized from the neck down … It's not simple, it's subtle, it's not in the beat it's in the spaces in between, it's not rhythm it's riddem.

Wordless Choruses: The last resort for lazy uninspired songwriters who insult people's intelligence by singing baby talk instead of using coherent language. Sting's De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da. I rest my case.

Woody

Prog Rock: [I]n the early 70s, a bunch of otherwise useless Art College and University bearded white boy wannabes abandoned song, melody, meaning and purpose for pretension, pomp and meander, often over a whole side of an album! With frequent, frightfully clever, time changes and Year 10 poetic doggerel castratoed above it all, they often consorted with symphony orchestras to legitimize their own plunkings.

Jazz Fusion: [O]ften with too-clever-by-half "complex" time signatures, rhythmic patterns, and extended track lengths … draining all character and integrity out of both. Don't you hate virtuosos? They never shut up and play the music but instead are full of "Gee Wiz Hey Mum Look At Me!" tricks and technique. Once they got hold of synthesizers there was no hope, it was like giving whisky to the Indians!

Woody

And so on.

A good article but it makes me wonder what your own pet hates are. For the record, mine include saccharine sweet 60s, three piece, thin combo songs, bland super-serious Yes or ELR, bland Billy Joel whom we're told is the last word in cool, Gary Glitter and that whole 70s yuk, Sweet and that ilk, Supertramp and Supergroups, ageing rockstars, Wings, boring, thumping clubbing music [except for some trance] and my pet hate - those 90s and 00s stars who think they have to throw the voice about and hack up good songs to impress. These last you always see "singing" at superbowls in some sort of "how long can you yodel the one word" contest.

Tinny

I s'pose my pet hates come down to any singers with giant egos or chips on their shoulders for no genuine reason and my pet loves are those who are genuine, humble and consistently high quality.

[world cup] one last time, promise

[meon valley] this is england

Meon Valley Railway

May I introduce to you one of my favourite blogs and you'll possibly wonder why, with Higham not being a particularly party-political beast.

It's because of the innate decency I see running through this simply but cleanly presented site. The only slight thing I'd question is the dated Blogger template which is at odds with the other pages which can be accessed from the front page, e.g. the constituency map, the biography and his stance on the issues.

This latter has given me ideas on how to format my own site.

Map of the general setting of Meon Valley - click to zoom

Who am I talking about? George Hollingbery, perhaps the next MP for Meon Valley and a chap I'd wish to have representing me.

Where is Meon Valley? See right for the general map and then zero in here.

For me, this is a slice of the England it's a pleasure to know and also, incidentally, a source of homesickness.

[male and female] ne'er the twain shall meet

The tragic case of Robert Farquharson is best not explained in a newspaper by a female journalist who, as a woman of that particular type, can never feel as a man feels. She quotes Professor Paul Mullen, psychiatrist and clinical director of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health:

"Obsession deprives people of a sense of proportion to such an extent that, in the end, they can countenance their own death and the death of others they love in pursuit of that obsession."

The journo then adds:

A man [note the change from "people" to "man"] who has become obsessed with revenge against his partner and who is pathologically jealous of her can allow his children to become caught up in his delusions. His feelings about her fidelity can morph into doubts about the paternity of the children.

Bollocks. Another shoddy, female, PC, gutless* journalistic polemic against men. The moment she changed "people" to "man", she started writing of "his delusions". Subtle shift but heavily indicative and deeply dishonest of her as a journalist.

As for the issue, it's doubtful the kids even knew what was going on.

I don't blame women for completely misunderstanding the wrong they do and for steadfastly refusing to accept responsibility for their part in breakups. They're biologically not wired to accepting responsibility in matters involving men. To be fair, the mother is quoted as well in the article:

Cindy Gambino told the court that her ex-husband had been a good father and was a "softie" who always agreed to do what she wanted over matters such as whether to have another baby.

So what would drive a "softie" to kill his kids? You really want to know? Seriously?

I can completely understand not wanting my kids brought up by another man whom my ex had sold herself to and this feeling would be so strong, the thought would definitely flicker through the brain of how to make her truly understand.

Women will never, ever, understand what a man puts into his family emotionally and spiritually though society as a whole, both men and women, accept what she puts in - the eternal mother figure is a powerful icon.

When she decides to move on because he fails to satisfy or she has a better offer, this is the calculating nature of the female who sees the kids and herself as one unit and the man as just some poor sod who brings home a little over half the bacon and therefore interchangeable with someone else.

It all comes down to mental sets and I've surveyed this with the women I know so often that the correlation is indisputable. Women are never concerned with "state of being". If they marry, it's for advantage but this advantage alters with time and with changed circumstances. For her, the initial flame is replaced with the primary bond of the children with herself and society supports this bond against the man in the divorce courts.

If he doesn't spend enough time on his family [in her eyes] and on her [they might both happen to be out working for money most of the day to pay the credit debt which is a consequence of the "onwards and upwards" mindset], if he starts drinking to blot out her constant carping and shopping list of his faults, if the Camelot he envisaged and worked hard to set up now seems to have been built on a swamp rather than on a rock, if she decides he's now surplus to requirements and in true neanderthal fashon moves onto another mate - then, in her eyes, she's moved "onwards and upwards" and everyone should be "mature enough" to just move along with her but in their own separate directions.

Men are justly accused of being territorial but their territory is the whole show - the wife, kids, property, plans, dreams - it all goes with the territory. If there's one thing he's never, ever, ever going to accept it's her upping sticks, shutting the gate on him and inviting another man in to share the spoils of their joint labour of love.

It's a measure of a woman's mind if she could imagine for one second that he's going to just sit back and accept that and here's the rub - the less responsible the father, the more chance he'll just drift off and "move along" with her but the more he is, in wife Cindy's words, "a good father and … a softie who always agreed to do what she wanted", the less likely he would ever be to accept her shacking up with another man.

So yes, evil obsession consumed him, as it has countless people, male and female, whom it comes to and in these circumstances, the children were the victims. Totally wrong and the killing unjustified, no question, as killing is never justified and he must pay the price for what he did.

But to lightly skip over her own culpability in this and in all the other points of dispute in their marriage and for the journo to subtly shift all culpability onto the man and champion her would be an equal travesty.

Women MUST accept responsibility for the consequences of their snide actions, must understand, in a marriage, a dedicated father's mindset, just as he must be willing to move onwards and upwards with her. Any woman who truly loved her man would never have allowed such a situation to have arisen in the first place.

Jason and Medea - I'm afraid, despite her terrible crime in killing the children, that I'm on her side in this one. There is never any justification in the other partner taking up with someone else unless there was real, sustained and gratuitous abuse, with no extenuating circumstances.

* Just an endnote - isn't it interesting that this newspaper usually offers a "comments section" where I would most certainly have left the above text but on this issue there is the journo's opinion and only her opinion, with no right of reply whatsoever. The only conclusion to be drawn from that is that the editorial staff simply do not wish to allow the man's point of view to be expressed.

Thank goodness for true blogs, as distinct from the MSM. Grrrrrr!

[terrorist attack in ny] not this time

[lizard queen 2] the paul allegations

I've been contacted by Peter Paul [see photo with the Lizard Queen herself], who features significantly in the Hillary matter.

Now fair's fair - this is a very biased campaign against the LQ and Peter Paul clearly has an axe to grind and now he's chopping wood with a vengeance. Who wrote of a woman spurned? A man betrayed is just as dangerous in a lizard's eyes.

Despite this, it's difficult to gainsay a man with facts on his side and I really can't see how she can refute them. In fact she doesn't. Paul notes:

The historical significance of a presidential candidate defending herself, in the midst of a presidential campaign, from videotaped evidence capturing felony violations of federal law has been lost on the Mainstream Media. They have consistently refused to report on this case since the California Supreme Court denied the Clintons’ appeal to dismiss the fraud and coercion case.

Apart from hearing vague feminist noises, this blogger is still waiting to see real evidence that Hillary Clinton possesses the integrity required to lead the United States, as the sovereign United States, into the next few really worrying years in the international arena.

Every new day only seems to throw up another reason to stop her unreasoning juggernaut.