The Rough Guide to Highlife/Electric Highlife

Returning to a topic covered earlier on in this thread. I wanted to post this earlier but I couldn't for some reason.

If I don't buy insurance, then the government takes money out of my pocket.  I have the freedom to choose not to drive and ride the bus or ride a bike.  On the gun permit, I would never buy a gun.  Maybe archery.   

Then don't buy it. 

 

Being forced to get a driver's license or a gun permit isn't very rock and roll, either.  But then again, I was never much for Hagar or the Nuge.

Oddly enough today, ran across a fascinating (and enlightening) (and repellant) example of primeval African borrowing/hokum -- "African Etude" -- from "Road to Zanzibar" (Crosby and Hope, 1941). The Uses of the Other indeed. (Interesting enough, parts sound more authentic than much "Exotica.")

I always thought the lengthening pop tunes of the '80s were one sign of disco, with its exended workouts, crossing over as mainstream-hit influence.

Although not blatantly stupid, Che is ignorant about many musical things, African music especially. He just knows nothing about it, including how much of it gets played on NPR, where as it happens I do some reviewing..
On the other hand, I believe I got rid of post 121 on the previous thread (which of course I'd never seen, because it came in after I last looked down there) with my administrative powers, which don't always work so good. So that was a contribution.

"promoting Rough Guide and similar product suggests, at best, musicians in all countries piously joining hands to sing "We Are The World" and, at worst, NPRism invading Xgauistan with a full forced march to plant its odious tricolor smack dab in the heart of rock and roll. We have met the enemy, and it is National Public Radio; it is Starbucks Coffee Company; it is the New York Yankees."

I find long track lengths more bothersome when they reflect a certain kind of bloat - excessive repetition of the refrain in the outro, that sort of thing - rather than having some kind of principle that songs shouldn't exceed a certain length.  This bloat was often apparent in pop songs in the '80s, with mean lengths getting longer without any noticeable innovation in song structure.  Meanwhile, if a track sustains some kind of groove, then track length at 6 minutes and upward is often a bonus rather than a problem.  Qualitative examples from my listening today: The Jacksons' Triumph (a few at 5 minutes and over) and Electric Wizard's Black Mass (most songs 6 to 8 minutes long).  

For whatever it's worth, I've paid sales tax on Amazon purchases for many years -- ever since Amazon set up a distribution center in Coffeyville, KS. When they did so Amazon didn't insist on a sales tax exemption like they recently did in South Carolina. I figure one reason they did the latter was that SC had given Boeing about $1 billion in various incentives to move their 787 assembly operation from the Seattle area, where Amazon is based. Crass move, but SC practically begged for it.

In the meantime (well after Amazon got socked with the sales tax) Wichita's big box bookstore coverage has dropped from four to one, and the remainder has less than 50% of its floor space used for books -- seems well on its way to becoming a toy store. Bookstores have always been my favorite hideouts, and as recently as a few years ago I would visit a couple times a week. Now it's more like once every other month, and a disappointing experience at that. Blame the internet if you like, but those now-closed stores were more often than not plush with customers. I don't know what killed them, but the main interest of investors these days seems to be in looting their businesses.

For several decades now we've let ourselves be seduced and defrauded by the mantra that businesses exist solely to profit their owners -- i.e., that customers, employees, and the public have no stake in their operation. Unions used to provide some form of check on this greed, and their destruction has gone hand-in-hand with the looting. For a counterexample, see Thomas Geoghegan's book on Germany -- at least see my excerpts at http://goo.gl/pHlP8 -- Germany has become the world's largest net exporter because it keeps its jobs at home, and it does that because the unions have a stake in every company. There are some problems with Germany, including that they're too successful -- that's a big part of the Eurozone crisis right now. But one thing that bummed me at the bookstore recently was the latest load of books warning of Obama's sinister plot to turn the US into "a European Socialist State," as if vacations, retirement, education, and health care are such bad things (not to mention as if Obama had the slightest such inkling).

Oh, for Christ's sake. Of course someone will have to pay for it: the vastly increased number of people paying into the system--do the words "Individual Mandate" ring any bells? But if you're really worried about cost-containment, expanding Medicaid into an all-embracing single-payer health system and nationalizing the rapacious (and inefficient) insurance industry would be two steps in the right direction.