tempus est umbra in mente
Oh no.... what did Michael from Swans do? I'm not sure I want to know...
EDIT: I'm not the person who's going to say that I don't believe the accusations of a rape-survivor, but it's important to remember that these allegations, if untrue, can absolutely devastate a person's life and professional career. I'm not saying that she's making it up, but there's enough evidence on the table here to question the legitimacy of her claims.
Last edited by Jinsai; 10-11-2016 at 01:58 PM.
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The operative term being WAS and he realized that and then he CHANGED and WASN'T ANYMORE. Also, we are viewing this from the relatively modern perspective instead of from the events of nearly 60 years ago when our cultural norms were very different. For instance, when I was growing up there were paddles in schools that teachers and principals could use to spank students and this was totally legal and was considered valuable punishment. (Many states still allow it!!) Of course, this practice eventually fell out of favor in many states. Watch a movie like "West Side Story" and you'll see teenage angst and cultural clashes manifested as violence in the 1950s as a social norm. When my parents were going through a divorce in the late-1960s, each school year my brother and I were sent to the school counselors to be "evaluated" because it seemed that they believed that children of divorce would turn out to be ax murderers, yet parents spanking the shit out their children was the social norm and was not considered "abuse" at all. (Spare the rod ...) Viewing this from our CURRENT knowledge and social beliefs, it all seems crazy and odd; but back then, it wasn't at all. Gradually, we went through the "me" period of the late-60s and 70s with est, I'm Okay You're Okay, self-discovery, etc. and child-development as a focus and we figured out that we needed to change a lot of things, and we got to where we are today. But in Lennon's generation (and then my childhood), it was not yet that way. Then many of us got enlightened, later.Originally Posted by eversonpoe
Here's from the Playboy interview that is always scattered around out-of -context, where Playboy is throwing song titles at Lennon:
PLAYBOY: "Sabotage?"
LENNON: "Subconscious sabotage. I was too hurt... Paul will deny it, because he has a bland face and will say this doesn't exist. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about where I was always seeing what was going on and began to think, Well, maybe I'm paranoid. But it is not paranoid. It is the absolute truth. The same thing happened to 'Across the Universe.' The song was never done properly. The words stand, luckily."
PLAYBOY: "'Getting Better.'"
LENNON: "It is a diary form of writing. All that 'I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved' was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically... any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster."
PLAYBOY: "'Revolution.'"
LENNON: "We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting really tense with one another. I did the slow version and I wanted it out as a single: as a statement of the Beatles' position on Vietnam and the Beatles' position on revolution. For years, on the Beatle tours, Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn't allow questions about it. But on one tour, I said, 'I am going to answer about the war. We can't ignore it.' I absolutely wanted the Beatles to say something. The first take of 'Revolution' ...well, George and Paul were resentful and said it wasn't fast enough. Now, if you go into details of what a hit record is and isn't... maybe. But the Beatles could have afforded to put out the slow, understandable version of 'Revolution' as a single. Whether it was a gold record or a wooden record. But because they were so upset about the Yoko period and the fact that I was again becoming as creative and dominating as I had been in the early days, after lying fallow for a couple of years, it upset the apple cart. I was awake again and they couldn't stand it?"
PLAYBOY: "Was it Yoko's inspiration?"
LENNON: "She inspired all this creation in me. It wasn't that she inspired the songs; she inspired me. The statement in 'Revolution' was mine. The lyrics stand today. It's still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. That is what I used to say to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Count me out if it is for violence. Don't expect me to be on the barricades unless it is with flowers."
The LYRICS in "Plastic Ono Band" are some of the best lyrics in music history, I just don't understand HOW people can hate stuff like this, but to each his/her own.
Last edited by allegro; 10-11-2016 at 03:57 PM.
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See also this from the Playboy interview:
PLAYBOY: "Like Dylan, weren't you also looking for some kind of leader when you did primal-scream therapy with Arthur Janov?"
ONO: "I think Janov was a daddy for John. I think he has this father complex and he's always searching for a daddy."
LENNON: "Had, dear. I had a father complex."
PLAYBOY: "Would you explain?"
ONO: "I had a daddy, a real daddy, sort of a big and strong father like a Billy Graham, but growing up, I saw his weak side. I saw the hypocrisy. So whenever I see something that is supposed to be so big and wonderful, a guru or primal scream, I'm very cynical."
LENNON: "She fought with Janov all the time. He couldn't deal with it."
ONO: "I'm not searching for the big daddy. I look for something else in men... something that is tender and weak and I feel like I want to help."
LENNON: "And I was the lucky cripple she chose!"
ONO: "I have this mother instinct, or whatever. But I was not hung up on finding a father, because I had one who disillusioned me. John never had a chance to get disillusioned about his father, since his father wasn't around, so he never thought of him as that big man."
PLAYBOY: "Do you agree with that assessment, John?"
LENNON: "Alot of us are looking for fathers. Mine was physically not there. Most people's are not there mentally and physically, like always at the office or busy with other things. So all these leaders, parking meters, are all substitute fathers, whether they be religious or political... All this bit about electing a President. We pick our own daddy out of a dog pound of daddies. This is the daddy that looks like the daddy in the commercials. He's got the nice gray hair and the right teeth and the parting's on the right side. OK? This is the daddy we choose. The dog pound of daddies, which is the political arena, gives us a President, then we put him on a platform and start punishing him and screaming at him because Daddy can't do miracles. Daddy doesn't heal us."
PLAYBOY: "So Janov was a daddy for you. Who else?"
ONO: "Before, there was Maharishi."
LENNON: "Maharishi was a father figure, Elvis Presley might have been a father figure. I don't know. Robert Mitchum. Any male image is a father figure. There's nothing wrong with it until you give them the right to give you sort of a recipe for your life. What happens is somebody comes along with a good piece of truth. Instead of the truth's being looked at, the person who brought it is looked at. The messenger is worshiped, instead of the message. So there would be Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Marxism, Maoism-- everything-- it is always about a person and never about what he says."
ONO: "All the 'isms' are daddies. It's sad that society is structured in such a way that people cannot really open up to each other, and therefore they need a certain theater to go to to cry or something like that."
LENNON: "Well, you went to est."
ONO: "Yes, I wanted to check it out."
LENNON: "We went to Janov for the same reason."
ONO: "But est people are given a reminder..."
LENNON: "Yeah, but I wouldn't go and sit in a room and not pee."
ONO: "Well, you did in primal scream."
LENNON: "Oh, but I had you with me."
ONO: "Anyway, when I went to est, I saw Werner Erhardt, the same thing. He's a nice showman and he's got a nice gig there. I felt the same thing when we went to Sai Baba in India. In India, you have to be a guru instead of a pop star. Guru is the pop star of India and pop star is the guru here."
LENNON: "But nobody's perfect, etc., etc. Whether it's Janov or Erhardt or Maharishi or a Beatle. That doesn't take away from their message. It's like learning how to swim. The swimming is fine. But forget about the teacher. If the Beatles had a message, it was that. With the Beatles, the records are the point, not the Beatles as individuals. You don't need the package, just as you don't need the Christian package or the Marxist package to get the message. People always got the image I was an anti-Christ or antireligion. I'm not. I'm a most religious fellow. I was brought up a Christian and I only now understand some of the things that Christ was saying in those parables. Because people got hooked on the teacher and missed the message."
PLAYBOY: "And the Beatles taught people how to swim?"
LENNON: "If the Beatles or the Sixties had a message, it was to learn to swim. Period. And once you learn to swim, swim. The people who are hung up on the Beatles' and the Sixties' dream missed the whole point when the Beatles' and the Sixties' dream became the point. Carrying the Beatles' or the Sixties' dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or the Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It's not living now. It's an illusion."
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Is there anyone who Kendrick Lamar WON'T collaborate with? maroon 5? Eugh
http://www.stereogum.com/1904559/mar...paign=timeline
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Holy crap that's awfully awful.
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It's like Kendrick Lamar has it written into his contract with Interscope that he has to supply a rap verse to every shit band on their books
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Inspired by the new Elvis thread. I don't want to shit all over their parade in there. so i guess thats what this thread is for.
Seriously. this dude is a pile of white trash shit. I can't get past that aspect of him.
He tried to infiltrate and take down a culture because he was losing sales to the new hippy youth.
That would be like Jon Bon Jovi telling Reagan he will infiltrate the punk rock and grunge scene and subvert from the inside. Because he's losing album sales to the new sound.
And on top of it... he ripped off better black artists.
But mostly im just mad because everyone always has told me I have elvis hair. and what i really had was early 90's david gahan hair.
But thats just like my opinion man...
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Elvis didn't like the counter-culture of the late 60's/early 70's, but he was old-school, from a conservative, small town. Plus, he was on a lot of drugs when he made that trip to visit Nixon at the White House. He mostly just wanted a badge, anyway.Inspired by the new Elvis thread. I don't want to shit all over their parade in there. so i guess thats what this thread is for.
Seriously. this dude is a pile of white trash shit. I can't get past that aspect of him.
He tried to infiltrate and take down a culture because he was losing sales to the new hippy youth.
That would be like Jon Bon Jovi telling Reagan he will infiltrate the punk rock and grunge scene and subvert from the inside. Because he's losing album sales to the new sound.
And on top of it... he ripped off better black artists.
But mostly im just mad because everyone always has told me I have elvis hair. and what i really had was early 90's david gahan hair.
But thats just like my opinion man...
Watch the 1968 comeback. After abdicating the thrown with a string of shitty soundtrack albums and becoming safe, complacent, he showed the world that the king was back and could compete with the likes of Jim Morrison.
Calling him "white trash" just isn't fair. From what I have read, he was very respectful.
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I know you were being hypothetical, but grunge didn't do a damn thing to Bon Jovi.
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I was never a big Bon Jovi fan, but I have to give them credit for being the only pop-metal/80's rock band that wasn't either killed off by grunge or implode.
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Yup, true story (and ironic considering that he was on prescription drugs but was against recreational drugs)
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Such a waste!
she/her/hers
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Def Leppard did okay too, they had a big album in America after Nirvana hit, and "Two Steps Behind" was a respectable hit the following year. What killed them off was trying to ape the Bryan Adams power-ballad formula in the mid-90's, to the interest of no-one.
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Adrenalize was huge. It is arguably the last really big pop-metal album. It sold millions and was released in 1992, sharing the charts with Pearl Jam and Nirvana. That said, this album sucks, big time. Def Leppard died with Steve Clark. It was Hysteria-light. This was cock-rock's last bright, shining moment...it was all down from here after that.
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Never liked Bob Dylan. Never cared for his music or lyrics. An old man grumbling with a mouth organ, big deal: I find him tedious, too self-serious, uninteresting musically and lyrically, one-dimensional, all social outrage - but, in my very limited experience listening to him, because I've never been interested enough to get close, always been alienated by this preachy, judgy voice of condemnation - no real sense of who Dylan the man is, what are his vulnerabilities, motivations.
tempus est umbra in mente
I give them credit for the most ridiculous lyrics of all time. I don't understand how anyone could write the lyrics to Bed of Roses and then think "hey, this isn't hilariously cringe-inducing." I know we've all been having a good time being baffled by Corey Feldman lately, but nothing that guy has done yet comes anywhere near as preposterous as that song.
Have you listened to Blood on the Tracks?
Captain Rustleboots
I miss radio friendly, skrillex style dubstep and every pop song incorporating it in their songs (I.E strange clouds)
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I think that Bon Jovi suck and are super lame, but they have been successful for their entire career...good for them.
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Blonde on Blonde!
But, yeah, Blood on the Tracks is Bob's best album and probably the best representation of his "self" (going through a brutal divorce) dealing with the pain of loss.
Last edited by allegro; 10-14-2016 at 10:31 PM.
tempus est umbra in mente
Not a bad way to let Lennon defend himself on point for his former transgressions. This is the thing with heroes though: They aren't who you think they are, and nobody will ever come close to that standard. Heroes aren't real. I believe in concepts like relative decency, and I'll never get so far out there as to imply that there's no blatant distinction to appreciate the relative quality of a "good person" vs a total asshole, or at least in fundamentally simple distinctions.
I've never done the things we're talking about here... I've absolutely never come close to hitting a woman, and I can't even imagine a sane situation where I could fathom doing that. I've been in stupid, meaningless fights with men, almost all of which I'm not proud of. I've said and done idiotic and selfish things, too many times at the expense of the feelings of others. I've willfully said and done things that I knew would hurt people that I cared about simply because I was angry with them, and on some occasions I am embarrassed to admit I was wrong and my reasons for being angry are pathetic in hindsight, especially when viewed alongside my reaction. I've made an utter fool of myself on several occasions. I've lain awake at night wishing I could take back a stupid thing I've said. I've been wracked by guilt that's eaten away at me for long stretches until I finally realize that my transgressions didn't warrant it.
That's a weird realization... that for all the things you regret and all the cruelty you admit you're guilty of... functionally, at the end of the day, you need to be just as resentful and ashamed of the way that you poorly treat yourself, and if you're constantly beating yourself up for being awful to others, you're doing the opposite of learning from it. You're perpetuating a cycle of abusive behavior; just now you're deflecting it at yourself and pathetically making yourself a stand-in whipping-boy for the part of yourself that refuses to apologize sincerely. That's the side of yourself that won't face the consequences for your actions, and you'll instead attack yourself rather than work on fixing yourself.
I really do believe, more so than with any other musical cultural figure in the past hundred years or more, Lennon truly embraced a perceptual change and encouraged others to do the same, and nobody since has embodied the sentiment so entirely or sincerely. He freely admitted he was a flawed man, and that he had done things he was ashamed of. Still, the emphasis there was that he was a changed person - almost as if he viewed the person he was criticizing and confessing to have been was someone who was gone, but lived on through him because he'd learned a lesson from him, and that lesson had everything to do with steering clear of being that kind of person. I can appreciate the skeptics, but I believe he took that as a priority in his personal life and art. Whether or not you believe in the hippy-dippy optimism and idealism that he is now characterized with, or even if you believe it was a distracting costume to cover up for his deepest flaws... That's why I try to separate the art and the artist. Sometimes it really is work to forgive that aspect of something you appreciate and think has value. Maybe he was smirking and thinking "fuck you all" while he was singing the harmony in "All You Need is Love." Maybe, if that was the case, that weird and dark juxtaposition in his head was satisfying in a cruel and malicious way. Maybe his main goal was to make something that he thought was so insipid and candy-coated that his primary goal was to silently mock the stupidity of the people moronic enough to fall in love with it. None of that intention would change how brilliant I think it is as an isolated work removed from its creator, which is where it lands as an end result... and maybe I actually would find an appreciation for the devious and misanthropic disdain that was secretly coded into music which seems to overflow with optimism.
I would think that anything that ornate would be impossible though, so I'm satisfied with the more predictable and boring conclusion: John Lennon was a genius songwriter, and an incredibly complex human being with a long list of shameful character flaws. Unlike most deeply flawed people though, this is a genius we're talking about, and his business trade was soul searching to make art. Maybe it sounds kind of ridiculous, but I actually look at John Lennon's progression as both an artist and as decent human being to be an inspiring part of the "whole package."
John Lennon wasn't Jesus, but the most boring thing about Jesus is that there's nothing wrong with him. He's perfect. He's the only one in the crowd with the piety to admonish everyone else for throwing stones. He has the cartoonish representation for all that is wrong with us as humans tempt him in trying circumstances, and he passes with flying colors.
The artists we love are never going to be saints. They express themselves in beautiful ways because they're introspective and struggling with flaws. It works because it's earnest. The listener finds something powerful there because the flaw is something they resonate with. That's why the catharsis functions between the expression and the experience of the listener (or whatever artistic medium): they share a vaguely common emotional experience, even if it is completely unrelated on a literal point to some other narrative.
We appreciate hearing songs about pain because we identify with via our own pain, and strangely it makes us feel better; maybe because it makes us feel less alone to hear someone articulate and echo a sentiment that feels personally familiar and unique to your own narrative. Maybe we love flawed people who are able to express themselves to the masses; all of us flawed in some way and hiding our shame. We all hopefully know what shame is, and it's more than an unpleasant moral conflict where we feel regret and sadness for looking like a fool or making a mistake. It's also a primer to get us to improve ourselves, and avoid that feeling. The shitty people out there in the world learn to turn off those sorts of feelings. I'd think the majority of the truly inspirational people out there do something courageous like expose their shame on a public stage for scrutiny... for all of his flaws, the ability to do that is more emotionally honest than you will see if you were to look for it. People own up to their failings on a public stage because they're forced to, not because they want to better themselves. Wherever we draw the line in the sand, I think it's unfair to disregard that aspect of his struggle to be a good person. Unlike most people claiming to be all about peace and love, he admitted that there's ugliness in the messenger. We all know what shame is because we've all (hopefully) been ashamed of something in our lives. I don't trust perfect people, and a story without conflict sucks.
We forgive the people in our families for things we wouldn't ever forgive as easily with a stranger. It's how we're programmed. I'm not a religious person, but I like the notion behind the virtues of confession, forgiveness, and absolution. Maybe John Lennon was a "bad person," but if so he was still a bad guy dedicating his life to becoming a good (or at least better) person.
And, as has been said here, Plastic Ono Band and Blood on the Tracks are about as good as music gets on a confessional or personal level... but that's why it's great. Nobody wants to hear the bored, lazy expression of indifferent self-satisfaction. Or maybe they do... someone's buying all those fucking Jack Johnson albums.
Last edited by Jinsai; 10-15-2016 at 05:05 AM.
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Thanks, @Jinsai , your above post was really well-written.
This is a REALLY good fairly short documentary that I think everybody should watch:
Last edited by allegro; 10-15-2016 at 11:38 PM.
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What do people think of Sixx AM?
The jury is still out for me.
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There was a book about it, December 8, 1980: The Day John Lennon Died by Keith Elliot Greenberg about everything going on in New York City that day and especially surrounding the time he was shot. Pro wrestler Rick Martel said he was working a match in Madison Square Garden when it happened because he knew what time it was because of the arena's clock.
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I prefered Antrax with John Bush, over Joey Beladonna.
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avoided the obvious SoWN stuff since barely anyone disagrees about that album being killer even if you prefer Joey over John. And for the record, the Joey stuff is really good too. I like both Anthrax era's for their own reasons.
Last edited by bobbie solo; 11-01-2016 at 03:03 PM.
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Yeah. I mean, most people would probably agree that the definitive version of Anthrax is when they had their initial run with Joey, and that he is their definitive lead singer, and that stuff is great, but as a personal preference, I like their 90's work better. Have you heard Armored Saint? That's John Bush's pre and post Anthrax band.
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Thank you!
I think the exact same thing, letting Bush go was a huge mistake.
I always thought that Beladonna is the "wrong singer" for their current sound and i wish they had recorded "Worship music" with John.
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Listening to them makes quite the impact. An impact...that one could say...is like...A Left Hook From Right Field.
I'm sorry.
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Okay, I'm stupid. I don't get it.
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