Ah, pop music. There’s serious money in unserious music. And wherever there’s money, people sense importance.
After a professional football game, which involves around one hundred illiterate and innumerate neanderthals, looped on steroids and ADHD medicine, shoving each other on a striped lawn over possession of a malformed basketball for a few hours, dozens of likewise illiterate and innumerate sportswriters and TV hair farmers push microphones into the players’ faces and ask them their opinions, more than occasionally about topics outside their field of expertise — said expertise solely consisting of fooling a piss test. Such is the end result of lots of money applied to trivial things.
People ask pop singers who should be president, which is much the same. And if a person has a million-seller, you can be sure some intellectual holding down a chair and a sinecure at a university or a magazine will invest that success with the veneer of seriousness. Lady Gaga’s meat dress means something, I can assure you. It wouldn’t mean something if she was playing Debbie Boone covers at the Ramada Inn, but a vapor trail of zeroes makes Goofy into Laika.
I have suffered from the syndrome myself, when I was much younger. I thought pop songs were important. You can get your fun out of taking all the fun out of things if you try. All-night arguments about whether the Dave Clark Five were superior to the Monkees can fill your life with meaning. It’s sad and pathetic meaning, like worrying over a State Senate election, or arguing on the Intertunnel, but it is meaning.
If you see it as just fun, you can make more fun out of it, without worrying overmuch. Mashing E.L.O. and The Supremes together isn’t going to cure cancer, but hey; it isn’t going to cause it, either. Enjoy.
15 Responses
I'm trying to imagine having enough time to pull together a video like that.
Of course, by Junior High School, I could visually identify every aircraft up through WWI and tell you about the engine and armament. So I guess that answers that question.
-XC
I rather did enjoy that. Thanks!
Dave Clark Five
Thanks for not mentioning Michael.
I don't know why that worked, but it did.
Sad we have to link Laika but that's just the way it is.
Guilty as charged, when younger I Knew it meant something, now?
The Monkees, no doubt about it. They were as obnoxious with only four of 'em.
Bubblegum music we called it.
Monkees. Absolutely. If only for being maybe the best fake-a@@ ersatz TV band that ever was.
There was nothing ersatz about Daydream Believer.
If my memory serves me well, The Monkees was a group put together to act in a TV series. The band members didn't need musical ability and probably not much acting skill either. The show's creators selected four guys they figured would appeal to the target audience of bubble gummers. They were intensely taught/trained to play and sing. A lot of money went into the music, so songs like "Daydream Believer" and "Last Train to Clarkesville" were provided. They would have been successful songs no matter which group performed them. Nice tunes, had a good beat, you could dance to 'em. The popularity of the show prompted the producers to put these guys out there on real tours. The fantasy became the reality, sorta.
Bread and circuses. The government prefers that the populace focus on grown men playing GAMEs with a little ball.
Joseph
Better it should be hockey, the sport of kings. I think the Monkees did a song about that.
The show's creators selected four guys they figured would appeal to the target audience of bubble gummers. They were intensely taught/trained to play and sing.
While The Monkees was a group created for a TV show, there were some competent musicians in the group.Peter Tork played several instruments, and was a regular in the Greenwich Village folk scene. Michael Nesmith was also a skilled musician. He wrote Different Drum, which Linda Ronstadt made famous.
Mikey Dolenz fits your description, as he had never played the drums before the TV show. But he had played guitar in some garage bands. He had also previously acted on TV.
Davey Jones had performed on Broadway.
While they were picked off the street to be in The Monkees, they weren't a bunch of nebbishes.
So you're saying this video is not important? Really? E
Gringo, thanks for the info and gentle correction. Folks tell me I talk faster than I think. Heh, I always took that as a compliment until I started listening to myself.