Last summer, in preparation for hosting my relatives after my father's funeral, I had my sons move various piles of junk around the house, including hundreds of my old vinyl records from roughly 1976-1988. One of my sons cornered me a week later to ask why I had such lousy albums when there was all this awesome hardcore stuff emerging in SoCal at the time. "The only good record you ever bought was Black Flag's Louie Louie," he said, referring to the 79-second 45 rpm single from 1981, with Dez Cadena improvising new lyrics to the 1957 classic. "The rest is like ... the Go-Gos."
"Yeah, but, I saw the Go-Gos at the Whiskey six months before their first album came out, New Year's Eve 1980," I pointed out.
"New Wave," he replied.
"Well ... I was pretty cool for an MBA student."
He thought about that for awhile. "Okay," he said.
I was an MBA student at UCLA from 1980-82, while Obama, who is 2.6 years younger than me, was in L.A. from 1979-1981, which was a pretty happening period musically. But compared to Obama, I was practically Henry Rollins and Rodney Bingenheimer put together. Heck, Joseph Wambaugh's LAPD novel from 1981, The Delta Star, has the younger L.A. cops talking to each other about local bands a lot, like the Circle Jerks. When Wambaugh's 1981 cops get drunk enough at their cop bar, they play Black Flag on the jukebox.
Obama's musical tastes in college in L.A., however, ran toward whatever universally popular pop had won a Grammy Award five or ten years before, such as Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, or Earth Wind, & Fire. He could do a wicked impression of Mick Jagger at Altamont in 1969. From 1979-81, Obama was into Hendrix, who had died in 1971.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, Obama's most thorough biographer, David Maraniss is kind of weirded out by how boring Obama's musical favorites were. Barack Obama: The Story features long lists of all the bands that Obama's friends at Occidental College were into: "The Blasters, Los Lobos, and the Naughty Sweeties" ... "Germs, Sex Pistols, Ramones, B-52s, Specials, Flying Lizards, Talking Heads, Dead Kennedys, the Clash" ... "Ian Dury & the Blockheads ..." But, Obama didn't really like any of them. (Maraniss goes out of his way to document that Obama did once dance to Talking Heads' 1980 song "Once In a Lifetime.")
What Obama liked was black music, but The young Obama especially liked pop with a Social Message:
... they spent hours dissecting the lyrics to Bob Marley's 1979 album, Survival. ... Barry Obama could take or leave much of the music that he had heard most often in the Annex [his dorm at Oxy], from new wave to punk, enjoying some, tuning out some, but it was the musical language of Bob Marley, and Stevie Wonder, that stirred something deeper inside him. "Obama's consciousness, much like mine, was influenced by music, influenced by a recognition, an understanding of the world through music," Moore said. "Obama's sense of social justice ultimately comes from Bob, or comes from Stevie Wonder. You can't learn all that from a book."
Indeed.
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79 comments:
Rodney Bingenheimer was about as cool as Obama (and way less cool than you Steve) -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_GvYFj-iLA
I guess this is important to Obama voters?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km-sF4EAXpo
this crap is music?
Did you ever catch The Bangles during their early power-pop days? Here's one from their '84 debut --
"James"
BTW, in 1981 Earth Wind and Fire was still hot --
"Let's Groove"
It's like the bass line is patting you on the back and tugging on your hands, like Hey man, don't just stand there during this one. Great community-binding song, with no ideology.
That's always bugged liberals -- that body-moving music is what binds people together, not sitting-still music, which is more for private enjoyment, even if the lyrics are about loving each other, coming together, etc.
If you're not moving together -- even if only through the most minimal pogo -- you just don't feel lifted out of yourself and submerged into the greater superorganism.
The conga-line scene in Metropolitan, the disco scenes in Barcelona, the whole of Last Days of Disco... I'm glad there's proof that other conservatives get how integral dance is to communal bonding for the human animal.
I think James Taranto might be uniquely qualified to assess that presidential conundrum
compared to Obama, I was practically Henry Rollins and Rodney Bingenheimer put together
^^^That's classic
Barry rocking out to "Reasons To Be Cheerful, Pt. 3"--somehow I cannot see this
That's always bugged liberals -- that body-moving music is what binds people together, not sitting-still music
I was listening to a radio interview of the NeuroPop guy in which he explained the (FAIK conventional) idea that group singing originated as a way of coordinating work. Like, we just killed this mammoth and let's whistle to each other to move the carcass as a team.
Sounds legit.
In case he loses? Much as I'd enjoy not having to hear about Obama every day, as much as I'm completely sick of the topic, I do expect him to win narrowly (maybe w/o popular vote) while realizing it won't matter either way. We'll be cursed with hearing about him all the time, everywhere, including if he wipes out disgracefully. If he then would try to withdraw in depression it'd only excite the international media infrastructure even more. The barrage of electronic megaphoned soul-searching would be truly suffocating. Take how Bill Clinton has lingered on, and imagine that 1,000x worse.
Obama liked Hendrix! He's not all bad after all.
I bet Obama has his opinions about Miles Davis, Sly Stone, the Stones, Prince, whatever. He wasn't sleepwalking through his late adolescence. It's just his every move is so painfully focus-grouped ("That Kanye West, man, what a jackass!"). By contrast a Republican, especially THIS one, can reveal a preference for something as weak as Yes, Cyndi Lauper, or Cat Stevens and somehow parlay that into microscopic coolness. On second thought, maybe not Cat Stevens
If Mitt Romney professed a fondness for Herman's Hermits or Strawberry Alarm Clock that story would write itself. Repeatedly, for several weeks
Obama always struck me as a closet Devo fan, maybe mixing in some Kraftwerk or Brian Eno.
"It's no fun being an illegal alien" --Genesis
This gives me the image of a young Obama dancing around his dorm while singing "And you may say to yourself 'This is not my beautiful house!'" and dreaming of someday yelling that at the White House.
I wonder if he's fufilled that dream.
Forget the political stuff. Give Obama some credit.
Bob Marley and Stevie Wonder are millions of times better than that other stuff you mentioned.
I mean as music. Forget the politics stuff. Politics has no place (or should have no place) in music.
Obama: You may ask yourself, how did I get here?
Hey, I am pretty conservative but Marley's Survival is one of my all time favorite albums... I guess I have more in common with Barry than I thought.
I am sure if I met him back in the day we would have had a lot of common ground talking about that album... big Hendrix fan too at the time...
Wasn't that much into new wave but the Go Gos were okay and the Police and Talking Heads and Dolby were great. Saw TH in L.A. in 1982 or 83 at the Greek ... they were great should have married the girl I took to the show ...sigh time flies
Usually listen to instrumental music, jazz and classical, but no question music can be a uniter... even of people of different idealogies or backgrounds.
What's wrong with the Go-Gos?
Obama's musical tastes are actually quite similar to my own, and I don't see why a preference for music of proven quality and longevity should be 'lame'. EWF and Wonder are truly great artists who created music of long lasting value.
The tendency of many younger blacks to look with disdain upon older music (especially if it is still popular with whites) has a long history; in the swing era, classic New Orleans jazz was played by older blacks and by whites; same with swing in the bebop era, etc.
Younger blacks tend to focus on what is hip at a given moment, and a few of the most creative individuals among them actually help create new musical styles, which is great; but the majority are just followers (as is only normal, not everybody can be innovative).
But carrying on an established musical tradition is also worthwhile. As for the Black Flag version of Louie Louie, I think it can't hold a candle to Richard Berry's 1957 original.
SWPL (the actual website) says that SWPLs like black music that black people no longer listen to. That makes Obama a mulatto SWPL.
I was also in SoCal in that time range: I was in the navy in san diego -- navy nuke (nuclear reactor operator/electronics tech) aboard a sub at the point loma base there.
I went to see a lot of punk bands in LA at that time. Maybe we crossed paths....
-signed, your trueleftist nemesis of 1000 pseudonyms.
Pop music seems like a wasted life to me. When I was about nineteen I discoverd Mozart. I planned out my musical listening life then. It took a while to understand Verdi, longer still to understand Strauss. Hindemith was a pleasant surprise but I never quite got Berg.
Listening to music on a life long schedule seems to me the only way to assure that you don't miss something important. That's the way I have read history too. Each year I have picked a area to read. Doesn't everyone else do it this way?
I often fallen short of my goals. The year I resolved to read ten books on Chinese history, I only read five. The year I resolved to study the late quartets of Beethoven, I listened to none of them.
So I'm sadden that you have all those unplanned pop records cluttering your life. No one should buy an LP that isn't part of their life's plan.
Albertosaurus
"I was listening to a radio interview of the NeuroPop guy in which he explained the (FAIK conventional) idea that group singing originated as a way of coordinating work."
Dunno about the primordial origins of group singing as such, but sea shanties obviously come from that, as did the work chants of gandy dancers and I'm sure many other gang-workers. Still, wouldn't the origin of group singing itself just as likely be religious?
Anyway, I agree with agnostic about "Let's Groove," and it must be said that Stevie Wonder in the period from, say, "Talking Book" through "Songs in the Key of Life" tended to be the diametric opposite of lame.
Then again, if Obama was listening to the Stevie Wonder stuff from the time he was at Occidental--the execrable "I Just Called to Say I Love You," e.g.--that's just pathetic.
Gogos were punk once.
I began my rec collection in earnest in 1981 and 90% of all I bought were from 60s and early 70s.
Obama like older music because of his friendship with Frank Marsshall Davis. Davis was into poetry and jazz.
We don't know much of anything about him when he was at Occidental. No one really bothered to find out--still don't.
The Dez lineup was Black Flag's peak.
Anonydroid at 7:18 said: your trueleftist nemesis of 1000 pseudonyms
Hunsdon replied: Sir, you should try harder,then, to use one of your many noms de plume. I don't advise one of the many superficial leftist pseudonyms---no Che, for instance, no Stalin. Iossif Vissiaronovich has a slightly subtle appeal. Fabian? Gramsci, although maybe "Sausage slicer" would be better.
1000 pseudonyms, and yet you post as a mere anonydroid. Buck up, man! (Um, person.)
Obama has one real gift for leadership, which is the ability to think conventional and tedious thoughts, repeat them, and then repeat them again, at length and with an air of solemn, deliberative authority. It's not as easy as you think. I would guess that most successful politicians have boring taste in music. The people who do have good taste in music tend to have very poor judgment. I disagree with Obama, but I can't fault his political judgment, which is so good that it's driven most of his opponents to spluttering rage (McCain and Clinton, for instance).
The young Obama especially liked tasteful black music with a Social Message.
What does that mean - Marvin gaye's "The Ecology"?
This gives me the image of a young Obama dancing around his dorm while singing "And you may say to yourself 'This is not my beautiful house!'" and dreaming of someday yelling that at the White House.
More like:
I wouldn't live there if you paid me.
I couldn't live like that, no siree!
I couldn't do the things the way those people do.
I couldn't live there if you paid me to.
I keep expecting to find a passage in "Less Than Zero" that features a mysterious, golfing-obsessed MBA student with a new Honda Accord that spends all his time at the Whiskey.
Gogos had three good songs: Our Lips Are Sealed. We Got the Beat. And Vacation. And they went away at the right time. So did Cyndi Lauper, who had a several good songs. Mudonna was also good for several good songs but she stayed around forever. It goes to show hype and packaging works for all the fools out there. I guess it helped that she became the inflatable sexdoll of the NBA, therefore marketable as postergirl for interracism by the media cabal.
But consider the irony. The biggest female rock star in the world, and her biggest shtick was acting like a groupie.
What do you think Romney listened to? Lawrence Welk would be my guess.
"this crap is music?"
Hey Bro, you can still catch the Lawrence Welk show, weekends on PBS.
@Tomorrow & Slumber:
Another origin of group singing is probably warfare. As late as WW2, Russians and Germans were known to sing patriotic songs in the middle of battle to maintain unit cohesion. Even today, marching cadences are used during training.
Obama always struck me as a closet Devo fan, maybe mixing in some Kraftwerk or Brian Eno.
Id almost guarantee he has never even heard of them let alone heard them. OK possibly Devo, but not the others.
What do you think Mitt was listening to 35 years ago?
I know how Obama probably felt. I never liked pop or rock; more of a classical/film score man. To fit in, I had to profess my liking for some of it. A teacher even made us write an essay on our "favorite music," and woe betide anyone who wrote about a Brahms string quartet (this is rural Tennessee in the 1970s). In desperation, I picked a name at random. My essay was about how I liked "Kenny Rogers." Even now, thinking of this turns my stomach with humiliation.
Remind your son that it was a lot harder to discover interesting music prior to MTV and Creem magazine if you weren't actively seeking it out. My sister graduated high school in 1979, and she listened to soft rock as well as most of the same crap music as Obama. I was in middle school back then, listening mostly to hard rock and whatever harder edged modern British music that was interesting until my freshmen year in high school, when I discovered hard core punk/industrial, college radio, all-ages shows, MRR fanzine and mail ordering obscure records. Black Flag's less punk "My War" and The Minutemen's "Double Nickel's on the Dime" were my soundtracks.
I can't even count the numbers of time I saw Rodney Bingenheimer tooling around LA in his vintage Pontiac convertible or at Denny's in the mid-2000's. Rodney's influence went far beyond the LA basin, breaking bands whose music was eventually made it's way to backwater places like where I lived in the 1980's.
this crap is music?
Remember that Darby Crash died for your sins, my son.
Lawrence Welk would be my guess.
Anna one...anna two....anna....!
Perhaps the Prez found Laurie Anderson's 1981 album Big Science inspiring as a guide to the benefits of government planning? The title track:
Hey Pal! How do I get to town from here? And he said: Well just take a right where they're going to build that new shopping mall, go straight past where they're going to put in the freeway, take a left at what's going to be the new sports center, and keep going until you hit the place where they're thinking of building that drive-in bank.
You can't miss it. And I said: This must be the place.
[...]
Big Science. Hallelujah.. Yodellayheehoo.
You know. I think we should put some mountains here.
Otherwise, what are all the characters going to fall off of?
And what about stairs? Yodellayheehoo. Ooo coo coo.
And surely Barry's favourite, O Superman:
And I said: OK. Who is this really? And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the
hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.
They're American planes. Made in America.
Smoking or non-smoking?
And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom
of night shall stay these couriers from the swift
completion of their appointed rounds.
'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me,
Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms.
In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.
" they spent hours dissecting the lyrics to Bob Marley's 1979 album, Survival."
No they didn't. No one spends "hours dissecting" song lyrics. They might discuss them for a few minutes, here and there, now and then, but that's all.
Every piece of pretentious fiction purporting to be a part of Obama's life story is so calculated and cliched, it makes me cringe.
Re Truth & "What do you think Mmitt was listening to 35 years ago?": Probably Ann gasping,"Oh God YES!!YES!!YES!!!"
I guess Steve was all impressed when Howard Dean said he liked Wyclef Jean.
I was an MBA student at UCLA from 1980-82, while Obama, who is 2.6 years younger than me, was in L.A. from 1979-1981, which was a pretty happening period musically. (This was when KROQ in Pasadena emerged as the most influential radio station in the country.) But compared to Obama, I was practically Henry Rollins and Rodney Bingenheimer put together. Heck, Joseph Wambaugh's LAPD novel from 1981, The Delta Star, has the younger L.A. cops talking to each other about local bands a lot, like the Circle Jerks. When Wambaugh's 1981 cops get drunk enough at their cop bar, they play Black Flag on the jukebox. Obama's musical tastes in college in L.A., however, ran toward whatever universally popular pop had won a Grammy Award five or ten years before, such as Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, or Earth Wind, & Fire.
Philistines.
And to think that you could have been going to Carlo Maria Giulini concerts - at either Dorothy Chandler, or out at The Bowl.
Sigh.
I weep for my country.
I've got to burn through my unused Obama material in case he loses and then nobody ever wants to hear of him again.
Here's hoping. I think he'll probably lose by a comfortable margin, but it's hard to know for sure.
Fond as I am of SoCal hardcore, I like Obama more after reading that. Music was simply better during the late 60s/early 70s.
"I've got to burn through my unused Obama material in case he loses and then nobody ever wants to hear of him again."
you were under the impression anybody wants to hear about this guy for one more minute? i have barack obama on auto ignore, and it's amazing to me the number of people who also have him on auto ignore as well. even a few liberals i know simply tune him out now. the signal to noise ratio whenever he is talking is zero.
i continue to think your deep analysis and exploration of this guy is laughable. akin to analyzing the thoughts and dreams and private, innermost desires of some random double A baseball manager who was suddenly, inexplicably, elevated to commissioner of MLB. deluding yourself, kidding yourself that there's anything worthwhile studying or understanding in this profoundly mediocre person's mind.
most people long ago moved on from "What brilliant ideas does Barack Obama have for America?" to something more realistic and resigned, like "How much longer do we have to put up with this guy. I'm gonna just keep grinding away day to day on my crappy life and job and hope someday the scenery changes in the White House, because this guy is boring and uninteresting."
you might as well, for example, pick out a dentist at random and then give them the justin bieber treatment. paparazzi his every move and every word he says, then ascribe some deep important meaning to it and pretend we can glean some valuable insight.
oh, what does the dentist think about dancing with the stars? oh, what are the dentists important thoughts about NCAA football this year? let's follow the dentist around and hang on his every word about the latest book he is reading. the dentist purchased a new sensible midsize sedan this week, what does this tell us about his TRUE thoughts on israel and iran? GMAFB.
"Hey Bro, you can still catch the Lawrence Welk show, weekends on PBS."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9GBuciv20A
Nope, I gotta stick w/ my top 3: Pink Floyd, The Doors, & The Who
Re Obama "dissecting lyrics from Marleys "Survival": Well heres some lyrics form the first song,a ditty called,ironically,in light of recent events,"So Much Trouble In The World": Bless my eyes this morning/Jah sun is on the rise once again/The way Earthly things are going/ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN" (emphasis mine). More:"So you think you have found the solution/But its just another illusion/So before you check out your tide/Dont leave another cornerstone/Standing there behind".I can see Obama,with a little help from ganja,spending many hours puzzling out these cryptograms...
"A teacher even made us write an essay on our "favorite music," and woe betide anyone who wrote about a Brahms string quartet (this is rural Tennessee in the 1970s). In desperation, I picked a name at random. My essay was about how I liked "Kenny Rogers." Even now, thinking of this turns my stomach with humiliation."
Hey, Coward of the County is a classic, and Gambler was good fun. And then there's the great film Six Pack.
On the other hand, if you want to deepen your humiliation, look Kenny up and see what he's done to himself with plastic surgery. He's become uncanny valley material.
"Every piece of pretentious fiction purporting to be a part of Obama's life story is so calculated and cliched, it makes me cringe."
No kidding. After four years of watching this guy read off teleprompters -- or when he goes off script, being predictably racist and clueless, it's amazing that people are still trying to credit the guy with some deep story or destiny. There's just no there there, no matter how much you want there to be. The only interesting thing about him is the question of how such a desperately uninteresting man could be elected.
"Re Truth & "What do you think Mmitt was listening to 35 years ago?": Probably Ann gasping,"Oh God YES!!YES!!YES!!!"
Yeah, probably. How well do you think he knew the guy who was making her say it?
"i have barack obama on auto ignore..."
Oh, so that's why you write a post on him everyday.
Rodney Bingenheimer was about as cool as Obama
Watch it, pal. Don't step to Rodney.
Obama pondering over Bob Marley lyrics! Oh to have been there for that!
If O had been hip he'd have been into Parliament-Funkadelic, Grandmaster Flash and other pre-hip hop stuff. He could have kept his Authentic Negro pretense,too.
being predictably racist and clueless
The predictableness really is depressing, isn't it?
And it serves to re-inforce the point that I've tried to make around here, which is that guys like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Clarence Thomas really are one-in-a-million personalities.
Maybe even one-in-ten-million.
This is music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLXQltR7vUQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30tXnk8Mfn4
Bunch of westerns have great scores:
Searchers, Shane, Big Country
"Fond as I am of SoCal hardcore, I like Obama more after reading that. Music was simply better during the late 60s/early 70s."
Like him all you want. He still doesn't like you. Or the rest of us.
I'm Obama's age -- and like most I still go with Hendrix over the crap coming out of LA in the late 70s early 80s
AC/DC is what was happening in 1979. And van Halen.
And Led Zep was still as popular as Hendrix.
The music didn't get better in the late 70s and early 80s, it got worse.
Fashionable LA music is rarely all that. It's a subculture not a lastin musical contribution.
@Paul Mendez
Good point.
"And it serves to re-inforce the point that I've tried to make around here, which is that guys like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Clarence Thomas really are one-in-a-million personalities.
Maybe even one-in-ten-million."
Well, it seems there are three of them, and 40 million black people, so I guess there's still one seat open.
SWPL (the actual website) says that SWPLs like black music that black people no longer listen to.
Please. The music in question is black music that ... MOST ... YOUNG ... Blacks don't listen to. But a lot of older Blacks listen to it. You ever been around Black people?
Shouting, I'm a fan, but c'mon! Politics has no place in music, but Marley was great? Do you know the lyrics to any reggae? There's nothing that ISN'T political.
For those dissing the GoGos, they opened for the Police at the old Boston Garden and blew them off the stage. The Police's set consisted of Sting channeling Harry Belafonte. Dey-o indeed, moonbat asshole.
Finally, the LA punk/hardcore/New Wave thing didn't get going until the East Coast versions had already wound down, which is why it got attention all out of proportion with its influence.
'lame' = swpl
The best new thing at the time was the Pretenders.
I find it interesting how, on the Wednesday night before the election, that Steve still thinks Obama might lose.
Obama the White Sox fan who did not know who these guys White Sox World Series winners were.
Well, it seems there are three of them, and 40 million black people, so I guess there's still one seat open.
Dude - you keep hanging around with us Paleocons, and the seat'll be yours for the taking.
"Fitz Gibbons said...
I find it interesting how, on the Wednesday night before the election, that Steve still thinks Obama might lose."
Yeah, with all those voting machines defaulting to Obama when the voter chooses Romeny, it'll be interesting. North Carolina, Ohio, and some other states found Obama set voting machines ready to go. Apprently the area of the button for Obama is much larger than the Romney area and bleeds into the Romney button. Unless you press Romeny directly on the name, you get Obama.
Before Youtube and Google, expanding a record collection required going to neighborhood record shops, sampling artists or genres somehow related to the ones you liked, and talking to knowledgeable record store employees. Passive music consumers just lived in the world of the top 50 rotation.
Truth said:
>Well, it seems there are three of them, and 40 million black people, so I guess there's still one seat open.<
Ahem, Truth... time to step up and assume your destiny.... That empty seat has your NAME on it, man!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGIXrziSLCQ
catchy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Pavone
"It is said that Elvis Presley made a painting of her after she went to Memphis and he met her at a recording studio."
"My essay was about how I liked Kenny Rogers."
Always thought this was brilliant.
79-81 was IMHO a pretty ropy couple of years musically - but then so were pretty much all the years, by comparison, after 65-67.
Annie Lennox v Janis Joplin ?
Many younger people don't understand that much of the music from 30 years ago that is critically acclaimed now had a very, very small audience at the time.
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