On Sun, 5 Mar 2006 11:44:57 -0500 "Dan Easley" <daneasley@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > certainly america has a culture; it's not one i'm particularly fond > of, but it's also so diversified that i must claim ownership and > alliance with bits of it, and lifelong enmity towards other parts. > still, judging its value as a whole or in part is so difficult as to > be misleading. let's say robert wyatt is my janet jackson - it would > be as rude of me to force others to listen to wyatt as it is of others > to make me listen to janet. Glad to hear that you have TV and radio music shows that plays more than the same run-of-the-mill payola without falling into the 'classic rock' trap. I understand then that you do not feel that a certain choice of music is imposed on you. But up here in the northern part of America there's none, even if you pay $100 per month for cable TV. I do not say that the four basic musc TV channels in Germany are a lot better, but at least when zapping you may hear interesting stuff from time to time (like Rammstein's 'Amerika' ;-) while up here it's 100% not interesting. > certainly i read this list and work with linux audio tools while my > roommates watch people shoot at each other on the tv. i don't think > i'm any better than those guys - in fact, i wish i were as easily > amused. Strange goal to attain... Especially since there are so many shootings in schools in the USA (I didn't say there are none elsewhere, I've just underlined the quantity). > i must take the canonized developer's attitude on this. don't like > our culture? submit a bug report, or learn to code a patch. Yes, a cabbage patch ;-) > yours in america, proud land of harry partch and kurt vonnegut, Vonnegut recently at a US campus (audience filled at 2,000 capacity) had quite a few strong words against the US government. Many intellectuals in the USA do. Take Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine (founded in 1850 something) who was doing a talk at Ottawa University recently. There's a good number of these fine people in the USA, but they are outweighted significantly and that's the second point I earlier mentioned: interest. General interest. When it lies in bing-bang shootings on the tube, what do you expect ? A strong democratic country with 4 or 5 strong political parties none of them having the same financial support background ? I don't think so, and that's the same everywhere in the world. The mass of people matters, not only individuals that you see once in a while, because it's after all the mass that makes the country. I think the mood is set for some 'Music for the Masses' ;-) Cheers.
