[lbo-talk] Regression to Adolescence [was lumpen]

[B.]

Well, that guy at Ramparts is a dick for saying that.
"Blue Suede Shoes" is a great song, written by Carl
Perkins - FYI, from a sharecropping family in a public
housing project in Jackson, TN, who really did learn
to play guitar -- his first guitar was made from a
cigar box, broomstick, and baling wire -- from an
older black guy who worked in the cotton fields near
him. In its own way it's class music (written about a
poor guy whose only expensive possession was a pair of
blue suede shoes he'd agonizingly scrimped and saved
for). Maybe it's adolescent, I dunno, but it's also --
harmless fun. Even MC5 did a cover of Little Richard's
"Tutti Frutti" while they also did more, uh, "serious"
stuff about the war in Vietnam. Who cares, there are
good things about cutting loose and acting
"adolescent" sometimes. The criticism of hip hop a la
Wojtek's is is just way overwrought/overblown.

-B.

Michael Hirsch wrote:

"Quite right. A writer for Ramparts Magazine back in
the day observed that the quintessential line in Rock
music even then was 'Don't step on my blue-suede
shoes.'"

Joanna wrote:

"This regression to adolescence only appears as a
regression relative to other eras. In fact, the
mindset of the adolescent captures the capitalist
gestalt perfectly and represents its highest goals:
you want what you want when you want it, never mind
the cost, and fuck everybody. No sense of
responsibility to anything except gratifying the
instinctual or conditioned impulse of the moment. This
is veiwed as 'freedom.' Pathetic and dangerous."