Omg, what did you do? (Lol).
It is very convenient and extremely easy to have a position on people that got their beats in the past, rightfully or not. But let’s face it: what are we going to to if one day someone finds out anything about Macca? I, for myself, would never stop listening to his music, that is for sure.
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It’s hard to know where to draw the line.
Perhaps part of the issue is that some of the great music of the past was made by people who were lauded on high. The industry put people on a pedestal (“Clapton is God”) and most of them went off the rails, indulging in entitled and destructive behaviour, to their own detriment let alone that of others.
I’m not saying this to excuse their actions - ultimately people still make their own choices - but if you are told by your fans, peers and bosses that you are a genius and that rock bands always do unsavoury things (girls! drugs! trashing hotel rooms!) then it’s not surprising they end up doing this and take it too far. My favourite film, The Blues Brothers, supposedly had a cocaine budget and look what happened to John Belushi.
Perhaps (hope springs eternal) these days the industry is less preoccupied with screwing every last cent out of a star’s potential with zero regard for their welfare.
I was a big Ryan Adams fan. I love his music, songs, amazing output. I am uncomfortable listening to his music now. In some small way, supporting his music in the early days probably contributed to the sense of entitlement he presumably harboured as a result. But it’s still great music. My view is that listening to it with the knowledge of what is behind it helps, and it contributes to a desire to explore/support music by artists from marginalised groups. Better to know and act than to pretend it never happened.
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A very thoughtful and reasonable comment. I continue to listen to Bowie despite his fascination with Nazi Germany and fascist posturing. Snopes had a recent article examining this. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rock-star-david-bowie/
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Bowie was happy to admit that in his 1970s cocaine years he was not a good person. In fact it took an incident during the filming of the Ashes to Ashes video to turn him from that path and into the beloved superstar he became in the 1980s.
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Bowie’s German fans tended to be leftist alternative types who hated their father’s / grandfather’s generation. I’ve read a lot of Simon Critchley (referenced in the Snoops article), but didn’t know he had written on Bowie. The aesthetics are genuinely fascinating, Riefenstahl’s Olympia and Triumph of the Will are revealing, but the cult of fascism is still able to influence young people unfortunately in many countries. The classical conductor Herbert von Karajan was a party member as was the philosopher Martin Heidegger. I have their recordings and books respectively. Karajan seems to have wished to advance his career, while Heidegger was an early believer and to my mind made no public retraction or apology. My aunt attended Mosley rallies in Birmingham, because she was keen on soldiers. Fortunately she got frightened by the violence and took no further part. So Bowie comes to this as a latecomer and an outsider. It is a complicated matter and each listener or reader will need to make up their own mind.
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I’ve certainly seen versions of The Ring where Mime and Alberich have been seen as Anti-Semetic .
I’ve also seen some appalling Ring Cycles , it re-interprets to whoever is mad enough to take it on.
I must admit that given the recent utterances of certain people like Daltry, Starr etc - they are people I do not want to give money to by supporting them.
Wagner receives no royalties and I am happy to pay to see the Flying Dutchman or Twiglet Of The Gods
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Twiglet is a wonderful typo Ian! Hitler banned Parsifal as too Christian. I’ve never been to Bayreuth for the full-on experience. But I do listen to the music.
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I see some parallels here with the sport and politics debate over apartheid.
In my youth I thought that they were separate, but as I got older I began to see the sense of the sports ban. With art and music, IMO, whilst individual pieces may be appreciated, the wider picture of authorship and morals perhaps takes on more weight.
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This is exactly what makes me feel ok about him and his music.
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I thought he was cr%p in the 80s.
imho of course.
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This isn’t about his music more his behaviour and attitudes. I think a lot of people would feel that perhaps his ‘80s output wasn’t as good as his earlier records. Perhaps the devil really does have the best tunes?
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[quote=“Ian2001, post:68, topic:22360, full:true”]
I’ve certainly seen versions of The Ring where Mime and Alberich have been seen as Anti-Semetic . strong text
Certainly, Mime and Alberich can be portrayed this way, but that is just the producer’s interpretation, I am pretty sure it was not Wagner’s intention.
There are good and bad characters in most operas if a producer decides to portray the bad ones in Wagner’s operas as Jews you have to wonder who is the antisemitic here.
In any case I do not let these things concern me. My wife and I are off to see Siegfried at Longborough Opera this afternoon and Opera North’s Parsifal next week.
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Hope you have a good time.
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Concept free ?
The stage hasn’t been converted into a petrol station?
Thank The Lord for that
and Brunhilde isn’t built like a twenty stone lady wrestler?
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