Pete Emslie finally Found his article

BILLIE HOLIDAY

Blogger Pete Emslie said...

All right! I'm just honoured to find myself in the same camp as ol' Fontanelli, that rascal! Though I'm just not sure I understand your "conservative vs. liberal" distinction here either. I consider myself a liberal, yet I'm only slightly to the left and actually a bit more to the right on some issues. In regard to music, however, I would have assumed that my love of Sinatra, Dino, Bobby Darin, Peggy Lee, and Nat King Cole, etc. would have qualified me as having conservative tastes. I always figured those who like rap are more on the extreme left, not the extreme right.

What I find particularly interesting these days is that, by today's standards, I'm really more of a "non-conformist" than any of the rap-lovin' kids. They seem to like all of the so-called music today that has such a sameness to it that it sounds like it was all created from the same basic template. I swear that every rapper sounds exactly the same, as does every contemporary rock band, as does every girl pop/rock singer. Whereas the glorious music of the 1940s through early 1960s is so incredibly diverse and unique in terms of melody, rhythm, instrumentation and vocal quality.

Incidentally, I agree with you John in regard to dancing as well. I've been into social ballroom dancing for about twenty years now, and there is a real skill in learning to dance to the various smooth and latin rhythms of the glorious past. Anybody can just get up and move around mindlessly to today's idiot music in the clubs, but there is a real discipline to learning how to waltz, foxtrot, rumba, samba or jive, etc. Ah, if only I could go back in time! Instead, I'll just skulk away quietly back into my Cartoon Cave...



BOBBY DARIN

Blogger JohnK said...

Hi Pete,

I'm not talking about being a liberal or conservative in today's political sense.

I mean in the literal senses of the words.

Very imaginative people who don't rely on dogma and formula are liberal thinkers.

People who are afraid to tamper with tradition are conservative thinkers.

The difference between Bob Clampett and Friz.


It was a much more liberal thinking age in the 1st half of the 20th century. - The age of progress - when everyone believed in the future. As you said, things changed fast and there was much more invention and variety and much higher standards for everything.

For the last 30 years we have stagnated and worse-slid backwards, because we are in a conservative age - like the Dark Ages in Europe, when time slowed down and forward change and knowledge was considered the work of the Devil.

A real song with real rhyme, great lyrics and meter and a virtuoso performer with extreme feeling


JUDY GARLAND