RTP-area local music and culture

[Chris Rossi <nospam AT spacelabstudio.com>]

So, in college one time, I was taking this course that was just a high 
level survey of Japanese history.  One day the professor, a Japanese 
man, brings in this music for us to listen to: really super sugary sweet 
Japanese pop music, with female vocals.  At some point he asks the 
question, "Why do you think this isn't popular in the United States?" 
I'm normally pretty quiet and non-confrontational, so I'm not sure what 
possessed me to raise my hand on this day and say, "Well, we already 
have plenty of our own bad pop music, I'm not sure why we'd import more, 
in a foreign language."  It turns out that was the wrong answer.  The 
real answer: racism.  Go figure.  With the entire class clucking in 
agreement, I did my damnedest to turn myself invisible.  I got an A (I 
think) in the course, but the professor wasn't nice to me at all after 
that.

So yeah, apparently my distaste for bubble gum pop revealed my hatred 
for the entire Japanese people on that day.  My enthusiasm for other 
Japanese music notwithstanding.  I also have a pretty strong dislike for 
both Italian and American forms of contemporary pop music.  Which means 
I hate myself, I guess.  And everyone like me.  Of course, I think what 
I really revealed was a profound lack of social skill and poor judgement 
in a group setting.

So, yeah, I guess, what I'm saying is, this "debate" is kind of like 
this war protest 323 and I went to in New York one time where we 
bombarded pretty much the entire time with about a dozen or so different 
communist and socialist groups each griping about how the other 
communist and socialist groups weren't communist or socialist enough.

Somehow, I just can't bring myself to care.  Good time waster, though, 
if you're bored at work.

chris



grady wrote:
> Probably already discussed to death on that other, hipper music list 
> you're all on, but it's Friday and I got precious little to do at work 
> at present:
>
> http://www.slate.com/id/2141421/
>
> Steve Albini sez: 
> http://www.electrical.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=223811#223811
>
> Jessica Hopper claims that it's not Stephin's embrace of "Zippity Doo 
> Dah" *nor* his distaste for Beyonce (um, OK), but rather his "unconcern 
> for the last 50 years of black music"  ( 
> http://tiny.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007762.html  ) that calls his 
> racial politics into question.  (Simon Reynolds elucidates further here: 
>  
> http://blissout.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_blissout_archive.html#114668681783360454 
>   )
>
> So: how many records by artists of races other than one's own does one 
> have to own/listen to in order to escape charges of racism? And does one 
> have to keep the collection current? I mean, a majority of the black 
> people in my record collection are either dead or at least really old, I 
> suspect, though I haven't exactly done a census.
>
> I find a lot of the current hip-hop that I'm exposed to, via TV & radio, 
> to be pretty boring, repetitive, and derivative. Those exact same 
> adjectives could also be used to describe my feelings about most music 
> of most other genres as well, though. Go figure. Pop culture can be 
> boring. Who'd a thunk it? I also know that there's a tiny subset of 
> current hip-hop that's consistently pushing the envelope & is every bit 
> as exciting, presumably, as the tiny subset of indie-rock that's still 
> interesting. I don't really buy much/any indie-rock anymore, either. The 
> last 3 CDs I bought were that new Candi Staton (meme collision: the best 
> song on it was written by Will Oldham), that Pyramid album from last 
> year, and Muddy Waters' "Hard Again." (the half-dozen before that were 
> either local [indie-rock] bands or the Rhino Doo-Wop and Girl Groups box 
> sets, depending on how you count to six).
>
> So I may not be a racist, but rather just a terminal square? Whatever 
> happened to just gleefully mocking peoples' musical tastes themselves?
>
> Ross
> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
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