Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Mon, 5 Oct 1992 15:05:48 EDT
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Monday morning sarcasm, round 2

On Mon, 5 Oct 1992 11:08:24 CDT Leonard Watkins said:
>Playing and saying are two different things in order to play the blues you
>have to have feeling and a love for the music and be willing to accept the

Are you trying to claim that everyone who plays the blues has feeling?
Are you trying to claim that no other genre of music requires feeling as part
of its interpretation?
I can't interpret your words any other way, and I can't quite believe you're
so clueless as to believe either one...

>fact that pimple-faced kids are going to listen to queensryche and assorted
>emotionless trash. Rock and Roll is not inferior donny osmond is not inferior

Queensryche is not real popular, their little subgenre of "progressive metal"
probably gets less airplay/media attention than blues, so if you're trying to
dump on Queensryche as symbolic of super-hyped sellout cheez-wiz music, you're
wrong.

And it happens they're real passionate about certain things, like the direction
the American polity is taking toward greater social control. Maybe it's not the
classic boy-meets-girl subject matter of your standard blues tune, but on the
other hand, let's talk about the sensitive sexual attitudes of your classic
bluesmen some time, and think whether maybe Queensryche promotes some healthier
thinking in their audience.

>for that matter it just sucks IMHO. If you get off on music the blues should
>move you, because it is music at it's purest form, and come straight from the

Now here is the point I was really trying to get to, so Leonard, read my lips:
      *** THE BLUES IS NOT THE UNIVERSAL YOU SEEM TO THINK IT IS! ***
It left the friend I quoted totally unmoved, it leaves me largely unmoved, and
there are entire countries full of people with a different aesthetic who think
it sounds like dogshit. And I monumentally dispute your pinhead notion that the
neural link from the heart to the blues is in any way more direct than the one
from the heart to Gregorian chant or Qawwali singing or piobreachd, or that the
blues link is less subject to tampering from other, less elevated motivations.
I absolutely deny the idea that sophistication is antithetical to feeling; I
believe that the more you know, the finer subtleties of feeling you're capable
of conveying.

>heart. I wasn't knocking any form of music i have my opinions and they

You most certainly were. You were knocking rock'n'roll-- unless pimple-faced
is a term of endearment in your lexicon.

>disagree with yours and if i ever agreed with you i would give up listening

From my perspective, you never *started* listening. You came on board with a
thick portfolio of prejudices like "only blues has feeling" and "white people
can't play/feel/appreciate that stuff anyway," and you carefully tailor your
musical environment to enshrine these opinions. Me, I wish I could get my ill-
conceived preconceptions threatened more often! I like it when somebody turns
me on to country or rap or opera that I can relate to, as opposed to clinging
to some fraudulent notion that it's inherently tacky and/or commercial swill.

>You obviously don't know anything about the blues or music for that matter
>You pissed me off....sorry.....I don't take ignorance lightly............

No, you certainly don't take it lightly. You live with it on very intimate
terms, chump.
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