Lesson 6 Sociology of rock music

These are some really interesting sites this week!
I printed out a few things to read from the first site, I got to an article called Getting Dumber and Dumber: MTV's Global Footprint by Simon Philo which had some fascinating points in it. Mr. Philo states, correctly I think that "In its world-wide context, MTV has triggered debates in which the fear of possible cultural imperialism mixes with concerns over the debasement of culture and the merits and de-merits of mass or popular culture". MTV is such a great catalyst for this because it has been so far reaching. There are some statistics later in the article that give numbers of households that MTV touches in staggering numbers. Who can forget the power of their "Rock the Vote" campaign. This was MTV flexing muscle demonstrating the hook they had in the youth, not of America, but the world. I found this article interesting probably most because I really felt I could relate to it.

Then, I enjoyed some of the parental advisory highlights of the recent past.
These were great.
Some of them were just absolutely absurd.
Did the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence really forbid "Danny Boy" during funerals?????
and then it says in the 1990's that a Nebraska radio station led a boycott of k.d. lang for her anti-meat beliefs.
Is that a joke???
The station didn't even play her music, but, let's boycott it. I mean, she's a raving lesbian (not that I care about that) but you mean she's a vegitarian!!!!!
Honestly, I laughed so hard I hurt. You should really warn us first.
The other thing that I thought was so funny in all these censorship highlights, was how many times Wal-Mart popped up in them.
You know, let's just put this out there. Wal-Mart has no sense of humor at all.
They just don't work and play well with others.
If you haven't, you should check out wal-mart sucks . whatever (Wal-Mart keeps making them change it anyway, so it jumps around.). I never knew Wal-Mart had so many dastardly evil policies and their hatred of free speech extends to music.
Boo.

on to the next site::
music map- This is interesting, but,, how is this comprised? It didn't seem to make a lot of logistical sense to me, but I dutifully wrote down the names of groups that I have never heard of that were close to the ones I searched (Rob Thomas, Kings of Leon, Muse (I think)). It would really matter how they set this up, is it album sales? I went to the creators site but apparently he is German. Back to German again. I told you I don't speak it yet!!

Where music will be coming from- This was interesting and well written. I don't know who this is though. The three stages of copydom were thought provoking (perfection, freeness, and liquidity). At least it was a great deal more optimistic than some of the articles we have been reading.

noise- now this was really fascinating, I bookmarked it for future perusal.
I like the philosophical aspect, it feels more right somehow than all this talk of money, etc.
I liked several of the major points that the author made here, that music is a mirror and a prophecy (very true I would say, and well put), music gives structure to noise (but does that mean that nature itself is music?), If we can see where music is headed, we can see where all of society is headed (interesting, but what about your authors and artists also, I consider musicians poets so I don't include them- but what about your other artists?), and then,, noise is violence, which is murder (basically). Interesting thought. Rather extreme, and I think, completely wrong. Music is like any other art, it is what you make it. If it symbolizes violence to you, then I would say that is your subconcious speaking and you should get to a therapist quickly :)