Klarinet Archive - Posting 000034.txt from 2009/01

From: "Kevin Fay" <kevin.fay.home@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Re: If Mozart Were Alive Today...
Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:31:31 -0500

Peter Gentry posted:

<<<You have been reacting to my posts without really thinking about what to
say. Your quote from Eminem makes my point quite clearly, it is shallow
poorly written and lacking in any art. Just what you can hear anywhere after
a few drinks when maudlin indulgent thoughts take over.>>>

Wow.

I'm a bald, over-middle-age curmudgeon, and don't much like or listen to
eminem. He's an angry young man with too many tattoos for my taste.

To say his poetry is "lacking in any "art" is wrongheaded, I think. There's
lots and lots of art I personally do not care for; this doesn't mean that it
has no artistic value, only that I personally do not like it. For example,
I personally think it silly to pay good money for Jackson Pollock's
splatterings or an Andy Warhol depiction of a soup can. Others pay
millions. Rather than condemn those who shell out the cash as shallow or
stupid, though, I'm humble enough to realize that perhaps it's me that just
doesn't get it.

Michael Minn and Scott Johnson note: "[t]he jazz of Louis Armstrong was
derided by the establishment as noise and its sexual energy was feared by
the self-righteous. Although Armstrong could never have realized it, his
true musical heirs didn't play something called 'jazz', they played
something called 'Rock and Roll'."

While I suspect that history will not hold eminem in the same high esteem as
Satchmo, I'm totally wrong matters of visual art, so could well be wrong
here too. I certainly won't present my personal opinion as some Universal
Truth.

Back to the thread - what would Mozart do if alive today? Let's see - a
child prodigy who spent the rest of his life chasing women and the next
patron's commission, hmmm. This sounds more like Britney Spears or Justin
Timberlake than Julian Bliss I'm afraid.

kjf

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