That pulsating lightning rod of noise I heard in the early 1970s burned itself into my sonic brainbank along with several million other short bits of music that would activate when heard again a year or ten years or forty years later.
It was just a guitar. I heard it again a few weeks ago during a radio tribute after its player passed.
The player was someone called Lynford Brown and the lightning bolt was the start of a Paul Simon song of that era, something about a reunion. I never particularly liked Paul Simon's work: my favourite Simon or Garfunkel song was the sorrowfully evocative Tim Moore minor hit Second Avenue that Garfunkel covered the same year. By comparison I found, for example, Simon's Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover to be the diametric opposite in sentiment; a lightweight collection of hardboiled rhymes. As for El Condor Pasa, I'd rather be a chimney than a sweep.
But that guitar on Mother and Child Reunion.
So they had a Hux Brown tribute on the serious music station*, and then one for Ennio Morricone a week later. You could listen to their vastly different combined output and never tire of it.
Then it was Charlie Daniels, a music everyman. However, a WSJ obituary for Daniels carried in The Australian noted: 'Over time, his politics made him a polarising figure for new generations of music fans ... '.
For new generations? Like a gift? Yes. They own your music and your opinions and your politics and they will object – they will be polarised, dammit! if they disapprove.
So watch it, musicians: if you were to have an opinion, you could polarise someone. So you may not have one, let alone several. You are a slave to your 'new generation fans'.
Just as they are pulling down statues and renaming confectionery, the 'new generations' - as identified by the Wall Street Journal - have embraced slavery.
*3PBS-FM
It was just a guitar. I heard it again a few weeks ago during a radio tribute after its player passed.
The player was someone called Lynford Brown and the lightning bolt was the start of a Paul Simon song of that era, something about a reunion. I never particularly liked Paul Simon's work: my favourite Simon or Garfunkel song was the sorrowfully evocative Tim Moore minor hit Second Avenue that Garfunkel covered the same year. By comparison I found, for example, Simon's Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover to be the diametric opposite in sentiment; a lightweight collection of hardboiled rhymes. As for El Condor Pasa, I'd rather be a chimney than a sweep.
But that guitar on Mother and Child Reunion.
So they had a Hux Brown tribute on the serious music station*, and then one for Ennio Morricone a week later. You could listen to their vastly different combined output and never tire of it.
Then it was Charlie Daniels, a music everyman. However, a WSJ obituary for Daniels carried in The Australian noted: 'Over time, his politics made him a polarising figure for new generations of music fans ... '.
For new generations? Like a gift? Yes. They own your music and your opinions and your politics and they will object – they will be polarised, dammit! if they disapprove.
So watch it, musicians: if you were to have an opinion, you could polarise someone. So you may not have one, let alone several. You are a slave to your 'new generation fans'.
Just as they are pulling down statues and renaming confectionery, the 'new generations' - as identified by the Wall Street Journal - have embraced slavery.
*3PBS-FM
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