Posts by Simon Grigg
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Sure, all the minor revolutions Simon refers to were all about trying to fix the Dylan problem. But it never works, the genie was out of the bag, and 40 years later we have Bono.
I'm not sure if I'd describe Hip Hop, punk and elecronica as minor revolutions....and Dylan...all he wanted to be was Woody Guthrie fronting The Beatles, but I take your point.
No-one outside of Australia and NZ buys U2 records in 2007 anyway.
Beautiful young men and women with no brains sang the tunes. Life was good.
Avril Lavigne is number one in the US so you can relax
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It's also worth pointing out that U2 were signed and nurtured by an indie label, Island, which used to fly by the seat of its pants, driven by the vision of one man...Chris Blackwell. They were non-corporate indie renegades and are often regarded as a template for street driven A&R...very web 2.0 (damn I hate that phrase)
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Why does everyone hate Bono so much?
I don't...his second single was fine....but he's hardly a cultural signpost for the ages. U2 are not, in the scheme of things, important beyond being a cash cow.
Using Bono as his example was self defeating...a) he's a perfect example of a the revolution being driven by the, for want of a better word, kids. Without punk in 76 there would have been no U2...they were Irish post punk b) and they now provide a perfect example of why the media giants have lost their way. They're bloated, pompous and self important...and largely irrelevant...at least the Rolling Stones still make you smile.
The music industry started to loose it's way when they began to believe that they were in control, and forgot that they were being driven rather than being the drivers. Berry Gordy, Clive Davis, and David Geffen understood that...Edgar Bronfman doesn't.
Keene clearly doesn't understand his own theme, and grasp the irony of using Bono as an example.
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From the Wired Blog:
4. A particularly unfashionable thought: big media is not bad media. The big media engine of the Hollywood studios, the major record labels and publishing houses has discovered and branded great 20th century popular artists of such as Alfred Hitchcock, Bono and W.G. Sebald (the “Vertigo” three). It is most unlikely that citizen media will have the marketing skills to discover and brand creative artists of equivalent prodigy.
What twaddle....perhaps in film, but in my industry of interest, music, the five most important events of the past fifty years, being The Beatles, Motown, the UK Punk revolution , Hip Hop and the electronic transformation of the mid to late eighties, all of which changed the audio world, came from popular movements driven from the streets, or sharp innovators outside the system, and were picked up by media giants reluctantly. Innovation has rarely, if ever, come from the majors.And the branding is usually little more than urban plagiarism.
Bono?.....for fux sake......
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there are many aspects of 9/11 that don't add up.
I still can't get my head around that damned miraculously surviving passport
After being much reported, it seems to have almost disappeared from the official record.
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Back to loop de loop WMD theories, the NY Sun, which is mainstream conservative, gave Gaubatz the time of day, and quite some inches last year. And took him seriously:
Mr. Gaubatz's new disclosures shed doubt on the thoroughness of the Iraq Survey Group's search for the weapons of mass destruction that were one of the Bush administration's main reasons for the war.
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Well at least Japan has a constitution and a functional democracy
The Liberal Democrats' grip on power has also limited the dissemination of information. Here in one of the world's most wired countries, election law bars Web sites from promoting candidates for a specific election and candidates from renewing their home pages during the 12-day campaign period.
And when Japanese children are no longer taught that they were not at fault in the 1931-45 war, are instructed on the Nanking Rape, and are told the truth about the comfort women then I'll be more comfortable.
The LDP, who have ruled for five decades have links back to the same governing bodies who took Japan into that war, and were largely rehabilitated by the US during the Korean War...specifically the Seiyukai who governed Japan from 1900 to 1940 when they became compliantly subservient to the military.
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Craig....Putin's toast next year anyway, but with approval ratings around 80-85% percent he'll go out happy I think. I'm actually rather impressed with Russia's slow grind towards democracy over the past 17 years. Despite the backward steps it does seem to have taken root in a country which has never known enfranchisement at all before.
You can toss the re-militarization of Japan into that list of yours too....an issue causing a great deal unrest here in Asia, far more so than Sino military expenditure or loopy old Kim.
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So do you old guys get, like a pension or something at your age?
I hope so, it would be great to retire in 11 years time, and not the 20 I'd been expecting........
Well, here in Indonesia the grand old age of 55 is the official retirement age. There is no pension of course and nobody actually retires...apart from those hardworking souls who've made a small (unofficial) fortune working for various arms of the government, or anyone loosely related to Suharto...but you can get a retirement visa to live here at that age.
So, in five years....
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Yes Melanie Phillips' is crazy here but it doesn't look like it is being picked up by the usual suspects
Malkin's pretty close to the mainstream of the US right and the phrase "seems credible" is on her site (albeit tempered by a warning about "truthism") as a description of the source...have you seen his sites? The comments on Malkin's site are eyeopening too...I've yet to find that level of delusion on Truthout.