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September 14, 2009 - 4:48pm
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Does an artist's political ideology affect your listening?
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Never liked MJ, thought the Dixie Chicks were over the top, really, like Seeger and Baez's music, but can't stand their politics at all.
But the only person I've boycotted is Cat Stevens. I won't give money to Islamic terrorists.
There are lots of artists I won't buy music from, but it has nothing to do with their politics.
Of course, "Dirty Laundry" did warm me up to Don Henley more than a bit.
I never liked Cat Stevens, so boycotting him is no big deal. I usually don't care about an artists personal life. The Muslim thing I can't support in any way. To not speak against it is to inactively support it. Therefore, I'm speaking against it.
I think most people are weird in one way or another. The rich and famous get their weirdness published so the whole world knows. That's the only real difference between them and us.
Bullshit.
On the topic, an artist's ideology, political or otherwise, doesn't effect my listening.
I don't know any of these people personally and I'm not foolish enough to judge them based on some bullshit media report on them. And I do mean bullshit media. The only people I trust less than psycho killers are politicians and the media. Oh yeah-and the people behind the scenes who run them (run the media and politicians) - are even worse.
Yes...I will not fill an anti-Americans coffers with lucre...
Mahler is long dead...as is Wagner...
I prefer to draw the line on artists such as musicians and actors. In other words, SHUT UP AND SING! Alfred Hitchcock was right...
It often changes my opinion of them personally, but it doesn't keep me from enjoying their music, movies or whatever. If someone is good at what they do, I enjoying their performances. What I do take exception to is artists injecting their politics into their performances. If I go see a concert, I expect to hear music. If I go see a movie, I expect to see acting. I don't want to go to a concert and hear a diatribe of political angst any more than I want to go to a movie and have the leading actor pause the movie so he can trash our foreign policy.
I realize there is great temptation in using fame to advance ideology...and that's all well and good. But, show your paying customers enough respect not to do it on their dime.
I would extend this same criteria to non-political magazines geared to the enthusiast. If you want to push your ideology through your writing, start writing for a political magazine or shoot a letter to the editor of you favorite newspaper. I'm not paying to read your political musings, I'm paying to read your audio related musings.
Buddha, I understand your eclecticism, when it comes to art in general and music in particular. But, does "ideology" really provide a blanket large enough to be capable of covering Mahler, Nugent, The Dixie Chicks, and Alice Cooper?
Sinatra. Did he beat up chicks (non-Dixie, I will be so bold as to assume...) for political reasons???
Who says Mahler was anti-Semitic? Now, there IS a sloppy narrative going around that assumes this to be so. I thought he just wanted a better job, as a basis from which to pursue his necessary muse. After all, music IS music. And its production (as is the case with the production of ALL art) drives the producer, not the other way around. I think...
No. I listen to beauty. God only knows, there is little enough of it around outside the realm of art.
If anybody out there thinks the Dixie Chicks, Nugent, and Cooper produce beauty on the level of Mahler's please submit your respective defenses. Sinatra??? Yeah. I guess I can buy that one.
Ideology is ugly and divisive. Beauty merely emerges from the artists who produce it, and is the only unanimous "YES" the history of our miserable species has managed to utter. Vote early (and often, as Capone is famous for saying...), and by all means be prepared to defend your choices, with violence, if necessary, but merely enjoy beauty and be thankful for the geniuses who produce it, no violence necessary.
Coincidentally, I am currently listening to Lennie Bernstein's first recorded version of the Mahler 2nd, on blessed vinyl. And I don't give a friar's fuck who is the Jew and who is the Anti-Jew. I am just happy it got produced.
Happy tunes, all.
Actually, the only guy that REALLY pissed me off was Cat Stevens. That SOB came out publicly affirming, and helping to fund, the death threat against Salman Rushdie. WTF dude? What ever happened to "if you want to be free, be free"?
Otherwise, no I don't care that much. Nugent is a such a hoot, I love reading his back woods rants every few years. His music doesn't really have much relevance anymore though.
I had forgotten all about old Yusuf Islam!
I think it was the brain damage from the near drowning incident.
I'm trying to think of other examples where this sort of thing has affected my musical opinion of someone.
I was talking about Islam.