Meditations on Flo Rida (or an angry regurgitation of a recent Sound Check)

Planting some jams we forgot in the trash heap out back the store today. I don't know what these are...tulips from Alice and Stu's wedding maybe? Also propagating more purple heart into old coffee cans.

Brother Neil [Young] recently said music has lost it's power to change the world. This statement was the calalyst for a recent edition of Jon Schafer's Sound Check titled Music and the Power to Change.

The show circuitously contrasts the music of 1968 (specifically Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel) with popular music of today. Pete Fornatale reads aloud the lyrics of the recent #1 song in America; Flo Rida's Low. "Apple-bottom jeans...boots wit tha fur..."

You know this song. You've been subjected to it inadvertently; it's driving down your block at 1am blaring from cars with 22" rims, it's on a mix CD your roommate brought home and casually put on during an innocent hand of rummy...and, at its 8th week at #1 on the charts, it is inevitably the back drop for countless local radio spots. Embedded in culture, my friends, is this:

-- MOM DO NOT WATCH THIS --

In 1968 everyone was listening to Simon and Garfunkel. Take the song America (my favorite) for instance...a song documenting the bus trip of two soul-searching friends looking to find AMERICA. Alas, what they see is drastically different than the America burned in their consciousness - I mean it's the New Jersey Turn Pike kids! What if Simon and Garfunkel rewrote that song today? The same kids would be on a Jet Blue flight to Miami un-communicating through their iPods.

What happened to music is clear to me; its sucking a bank roll somewhere in an LA corporate office tower trying to find the next nobody to rap lyrics that will be even more offensive to women. Ironically, young women will here this new song, think it's funny and post video's of themselves dancing to it on YouTube. I'm just saying..

Tune back in later for some pretty things with no ranting.

SR











Confluence of factors: popular taste and asethetic achievement