<div>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."  </div> <div> </div> <div>Mike Hirsch  </div> <div>On 1/26/06, joanna <<a href="mailto:123hop@comcast.net">123hop@comcast.net</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">> > >Woj writes: >My beef is not really with the genre itself, some of which seems >interesting, especially when it fuses with reggae, but with how it is being >used in this country's culture: a silly regression to adolescence that seem >to dominated the US pop culture and use music (not just rap, but rock in >general) for its in-your-face shock value - as an obnoxious noise and an >expression of male aggression rather than an art form. > 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. Joanna ___________________________________ <a href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk">http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</a> </blockquote></div> -- ________________________________________ `And these words shall then become Like oppression's thundered doom Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again -- again -- again-- `Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number-- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you-- Ye are many -- they are few.' --------Shelley, "The Mask of Anarchy: Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester" [1819]