Category Archives: Music

A Glorified Lap Dancer Is Not a Musician

Gorgeous, entertainer, great dancer, great beauty, well-coordinated, fabulous at twerking, a glorified lap dance: Beyoncé is all those. A musician she is not.

At last, someone who is a musician calls it as it is. Carlos Santana stands firm (no apology tour, maestro), insisting that Beyoncé is no musician:

“With all respect to our sister Beyoncé,” he said, “Beyoncé is very beautiful to look at and it’s more like modeling kind of music—music to model a dress—she’s not a singer, singer, with all respect to her.”

What a lovely analogy! The girl models a song. All the video vixens act and model their “numbers.” Without the indispensable aid of the almighty Auto-Tune, Katy Perry would sound even more like a chipmunk. That’s fine. There’s a market for this. But please don’t call it music.

Santana stands against decades of pop-porn marketed as “music.” He knows that definitions matter. We need to know the difference between Santana’s playing and the two-chord wonders in most bands today.

And Santana’s not the best. This unknown neoclassical guitarist isn’t famous, but he’s far and away the superior player: exquisite compositions, stunning virtuosity (not sure Santana could play “Mushrooms of Fire.” It’s effing impossible. My fav. The short samples don’t upload in the Fire Fox browser. Try Microsoft Edge.)

“Dealer” from my favorite Album, “Inner Secrets”:

“Well All Right”:

UPDATED (2/14): Heavenly Al Jarreau, Rest In Peace And Rock The Heavens

America, Art, Human Accomplishment, Music

Al Jarreau retired from performing last week. And then he died. Poetic.

Al Jarreau was perfection. A giant of music, in general, and of the soul-jazz genre, in particular.

By comparison, Gaga (who is indubitably the best in a bad bunch), Beyonce and Madonna are circus animals—nothing more than crass entertainers, who more often than not assault the ear.

You realize how rotten popular music is when you listen to this man.

Young in Spain:

Older in Spain. Al Jarreau is still perfection, as is Steve Gadd, both are sublime, better than anything that ululates and twerks on stage these days, and is nothing without the almighty Auto-Tune.

What a sweet sweet soul.

UPDATE (2/14): Facebook thread.

UPDATED: Abdelhamid Abaaoud As Belgian As … Jacques Brel

Art, Europe, Music, The West

To listen to the Moron Media and their political masters, The Beast, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, architect of the November 13 attacks in Paris, was as Belgian as composer Jacques Brel. The gifted Brel, a manly man who died at a respectable age of 49 of lung cancer, gave us the achingly beautiful “Ne me quitte pas” (“If you go away”), sung sublimely by Dame Shirley Bassey.

UPDATED: Jacques Brel: What an intense musician. The male version of Édith Piaf. In Israel of my youth, these musicians were as popular as they were in Europe, back before The Beast.

Marieke:

Donald Trump Will Regret Ghastly SNL Act

Affirmative Action, Music, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

Donald Trump will regret his appearance on the rubbishy Saturday Night Live show. The whole hour was ghastly; the stuff of “losers.” There was no talent to speak of. No satire. No humor. No edginess. Crap writing and acting, and sound seriously shitty, courtesy of an apparition called “Sia,” who brought with her a palsied pantomime who writhed on the floor. I haven’t watched SNL for years, but it has clearly adopted the fool Jimmy Fallon’s juvenile school of giggles.

Would that the skits were risque, they were not; it was just all … garbage.