[Dixielandjazz] How not to perform our National Anthem

[Charlie Hooks]

on 10/23/02 8:25 PM, JimDBB@aol.com at JimDBB@aol.com wrote:

> Soul singers and Country singers have befouled these treasures almost beyond
> recognition.  How can we protest this and stop it?

    Why, you can't stop it, Jim!  No way to.  We have now approached and
then passed the point where rational thought is considered.  It is now
condemned as "racist," as "bigoted,"  as "hate speech,"  as--hell, you know
the drill.. Everyone knows.

    Sheer idiocy can now prevail, so long as it is black, or Muslim, or
blessed with some "minority" label.  This entire business has far far passed
sanity.  We now have so many "victims" of live white males that almost no
one is excluded!   Dead white males, who built this country that everyone
wants to sneak into and then condemn, are the Great Oppressors of Humanity!

    You can't--we can't, none of us can--prevent this process from going
forward.  Thank God for the scientists--the chemists and physicists--who
just don't give a damn what color you are or where you came from and cannot
sing H2SO4 (for the non-chemical: sulfuric acid) into a beneficent-liquid
political statement.

    Saving the music?  Well, maybe the music will have to save itself.
Those who love Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, and Bix ("the 4 Great Bs") will just
have to keep on listening and playing and hope for the best.  I, personally,
think that the music is well capable of saving itself!  The Yahoos have come
and gone for years, although not, I'm aware, formerly supported by TV.

    There is now no silence for the young to experience.  Think about that.
For all of human existence, silence was the norm.  You walked along and
looked at the landscape and heard the silence. Intelligence and peace...

    No more.

        "The faces along the bar
        Reflect the average day:
        The lights must never go out,
        The music must always play..."

            --quoted from Auden's poem, "1939"

    How can you ever yearn for, say, a sound like Mendelsson's "Spring
Song"?  For Vivaldi's "Spring" from the Four Seasons?   You can't.  Not even
Vivaldi could.  He couldn't have HEARD it in Chicago, 2002!

    So how can we stop Yahoos crooning politically correct idiocy from the
ballpark?  We can't, man.  We can't.

    But maybe the music is down there, like the green shoots after the
forest fire, and is somehow perennial.  I hope it is.

Charlie