Category Archives: Art

A Song For Sunday

These days, popular “musicians” can riff about themselves aplenty, but they can’t write music, play their instruments proficiently or come up with lyrics as intense as these. Here’s “Still Loving You,” an achingly beautiful, classic rock ballad by The Scorpions.

With a happy birthday to my dear sister.

Time, it needs time to win back your love again
I will be there, I will be there
Love, only love can bring back your love someday
I will be there, I will be there

Fight, babe, I’ll fight to win back your love again
I will be there, I will be there
Love, only love can break down the wall someday
I will be there, I will be there

If we go again all the way from the start
I would try to change the things that killed our love
Your pride has built a wall, so strong that I can’t get through
Is there really no chance to start once again? I’m loving you

Try, baby, try to trust in my love again
I will be there, I will be there
Love, our love just shouldn’t be thrown away
I will be there, I will be there

If we’d go again, all the way from the start
I would try to change the things that killed our love
Your pride has built a wall, so strong that I can’t get through
Is there really no chance to start once again?

If we’d go again, all the way from the start
I would try to change the things that killed our love
Yes, I’ve hurt your pride, and I know what you’ve been through
You should give me a chance, this can’t be the end

I’m still loving you
I’m still loving you
I’m still loving you
I need your love
I’m still loving you
Still loving you, baby

Still loving you
I need your love
I’m still loving you
I need your love

I’m still loving you
I need your love
I need your love

(The Scorpions – Still Loving You Lyrics | MetroLyrics)

UPDATED: Pimping The Culture (No Nirvana)

Art, Barack Obama, Celebrity, Human Accomplishment, Music, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

Below is an excerpt from the current weekly column, Pimping The Culture, now on WND.

“The marketplace doesn’t adjudicate the quality of art or pop culture—it does no more than offer an aggregate snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences acted upon by consumers. That snapshot, in 2013, tells us that when it comes to “Bread and Circuses,” Rome and its provinces wallow in the same lowbrow popular culture.

Incidentally, to judge the quality of a cultural product is not to begrudge the preferences of the people who purchase it. It is simply to apply timeless, objective standards in assessing these products. …

… By and large, when it comes to entertainment, the people and the elites are on the same empty page—most of the musicians whose products they patronize, or with whom they fraternize, can’t read music, much less play it.

‘Grammy and Academy Award winner’ Jennifer Hudson, to whose primal screams the president and first lady attempted to dance, doesn’t sing; she screams. Voice coaches once considered the Hudson brand of ‘vocal wobble’ a deficiency in technique and talent. But then, ‘Why be a musician, when you can be a success?’ Such cacophony currently plays to full houses. It is to their credit that the First Couple smoothed the noise over with some smooth moves. …

… More sounds that curdled the air were those of Alicia Keys pounding on the piano keys. …

… I’d rather listen to the dodecaphony of twelve-tone music than sit through the guttural battle cries emitted by today’s entertainers. …”

The complete column is Pimping The Culture, now on WND.

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UPDATE (Jan. 24): No fan of mine (or my column), the writer below, says the in-house studio musician, is “Obviously a nirvana fan…”

From: Daniel G
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 9:59 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: anywho

“Typical prog fan, putting other people down because their favorite musicians don’t use 20 sided dice to choose their time signatures.”

HERE’S the good (non-nirvana) stuff:

‘Les Misérables’: Lessons Lost, Great Literature Defiled

Art, Celebrity, Film, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment, Intellectual Property Rights, Literature, Pop-Culture, The State

The musical is a loathsome form of entertainment. To debase a great literary work like “Les Misérables” by putting Victor Hugo’s words to catchy, schmaltzy jingles, belted out by Hollywood starlets—this reflects on the miserable state of the culture.

Not that I follow the Golden Globes Hollywood awards itself, but I believe the production called “Les Misérables” was nominated in the “best musical or comedy” category.

It’s quite probable that the self-reverential (and self-referential) crowd involved in the “Les Misérables” production had not read or understood the book.

One Fox News anchor mentioned that this song-and-dance was based on a book written in the 1600s. “Les Misérables” was published in 1862. I doubt Victor Hugo was 200 plus at the time of publication.

As a child, I read “Les Misérables”; Harry Potter type literature was not around (or rather, not in-vogue) to contaminate the mind and the imagination with poorly written phantasmagorical folderol. There is nothing like an historical novel penned by a master, to both teach and excite the imagination.

I do not recognize the book I read way back, in the gush and tosh being disgorged in pixels and on paper about “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo. I’m sticking to the version I remember.

The “Les Misérables” I read as a kid was about France’s unfathomably cruel and unjust penal system, and the prototypical obedient functionary who worked a lifetime to enforce the system’s depredations.

A similar power (Uncle Sam) and its enforcers recently hounded Aaron Swartz to death. (As a lefty, Swartz would not have defended my rights to be left alone by government, but then we libertarains are not like them. And more of us (libertarians) than them (leftists) understand that “Patents And Copyrights Undermine Private Property.”)

UPDATED: Sweet Sounds Of “Seven” Vs. Primal Screams Of Sanchez

Aesthetics, Art, libertarianism, Music, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

The cultural gulf that separated the 2012 Republican National Convention from the Democratic equivalent, now underway, is glaring.

The disparate artistic sensibility is expressed in the rendition of the national anthem, the words to which were written, as few Americans probably know, in the aftermath of the Battle against the British, at Fort McHenry. “The Defence of Fort McHenry” ended in American victory on September 14, 1814.

The opera group “Seven” sang the National Anthem during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 30, 2012.

Appreciation of musicianship being what it is, these days, I could not locate online a rendition by “Seven” sans the ceremonial clap trap. So, to listen to their glorious sound, please fast froward 2:00 minutes into the proceedings:

Contrast Seven’s harmonization and controlled use of the human voice (only 778 YouTube views, so far) with the popular, brutal-sounding primal screams of one Jessica Sanchez, who is scheduled to ululate at the Democratic National Convention, tonight.

So discordant and jarring are the Sanchez yelps. How has such crass screaming come to be considered musical?

UPDATE: From Facebook thread. This post was meant as cultural critique. Tough concept, I know, as some insist on reducing all commentary on things cultural to the libertarian law. So sooner does this paleo-libertarian address the matter of cultural standards—in this case, what goes for singing these days—and another will step in Soviet style and command her to stick to her mandate: whittling it all down to the non-aggression axiom. Don’t you find that boring? A tad lazy?

The same transpired when I commented on the “Bump ‘N Grind Britannia” of the Olympics. Such cultural commentary was, apparently, verboten, because the Olympics were a display of statism. illogical. Lazy. Bad reasoning, as the one does not flow from the other.

Over the years, I’ve commented a great deal on cultural standards, or lack thereof. If you can’t address the topic, don’t prevent me from so doing; don’t limit the discussion.