Bill in Portland Maine (or BiPM to those in the know) has a series where he “grills” the front page editors and subsequently the prominent diarists on Daily Kos, including questions about whether they prefer dogs or cats and what they like to cook. I do think BiPM is pretty funny sometimes, so I’m not trying to impugn. But today’s response (from KarateExplosion) about music, coming after the orgiastic debacle that is the Grammys, was not a good one:
What kind of music makes you feel invincible to the GOP horde?
I actually rarely listen to music and prefer NPR. When I do listen to music, it’s mellow folks like Joshua Radin, Michael Bublé, Jason Mraz, Brad Paisley, Ingrid Michaelson, Five for Fighting, Richard Buckner and David Gray.
VOMG! Do we want progressives listening to that kind of aural meconium? Jesus Christ!
The rest of the list isn’t much better. I’ve ranked them from best to worst. Truly egregious choices have been highlighted.
Jerome:
Musette and Drums, by Cocteau Twins.
Cool!
Trapper John:
Late ’70’s/early ’80’s punk—Circle Jerks, DK, the Damned, the Clash, and so on. There’s plenty of other music that I like just as much—but when I need a shot in the arm, the old-school punks are my remedy.
Meteor Blades:
Early Patti Smith. Oh, I thought you said invisible. This week it’s Clifton Chenier and Ani DiFranco.
Pastor Dan:
What shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of the MC5, Merle Haggard, Iggy and the Stooges, the Clash, X, Husker Du, the Ethiopians, Israel Vibration, any old dread reggae and roots rock riddim. Through faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, received promises, shut the mouths of lions, put out raging fires, escaped death by the sword, found strength in weakness, became powerful in battle, and routed foreign armies. Or burned out some amps. It’s all good.
But above all else, little children, remember this: Marvin Gaye was a prophet and an apostle. Listen to him, and all will be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things will be well.
Depressing when a minister has some of the best taste. Even if his praise makes my rectum cringe.
Adam B:
When it’s time to hammer out a brief, I like what I’d call “comfort music”—anything I was listening to while I was a dj in college still works for me now—Superchunk, Pixies, Pavement, Bettie Serveert, Liz Phair, A Tribe Called Quest.
bonddad:
Little known Bonddad fact: a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—actually, Austin, Texas—I was a professional musician. I went to GIT in Hollywood and I played jazz and rock guitar for a living—if you can call it a living. Any really good guitar playing gets me going. Here is a smattering: Jeff Beck, Hendrix, Joe Bonamassa, Rory Gallagher, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Billy Gibbons, Keith Richards, Slash, Dean DeLeo, Pat Metheny, Joe Pass, Mike Stern, John Scofield, George Van Epps, Mark Whitfield, George Benson, Jim Hall, Alan Holdsworth, Steve Morse, Scott Henderson—I could go on. I’m also a huge fan of acoustic jazz like, Michael Brecker, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Miles, Dizzy Gillespie, Ernie Watts, Michele Petrucciani, Monk, Bill Evans, Roy Hargrove, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock. And there is on final person who is beyond label: Frank Zappa, genius extraordinaire and one of my true heroes.
OK, I admit to not knowing who most of those people are. But I reserve the right to cringe at any litany of guitar-rockers’ rockers.
One Pissed Off Liberal:
Anything by the MC5, John Lennon, Bob Dylan or Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
LithiumCola:
Laurie Anderson. In addition to being my favorite musician, she and her longtime boyfriend (now husband) Lou Reed are the Single Coolest Couple on the Face of the Earth.
ct:
Wagner. Lots of Wagner.
Granny Doc:
J.C. Bach, Jan Garbarek, Bob Dylan, Leon Redbone, Willie Nelson, Henry Purcell, The Kingston Trio, Keith Jarrett, The Eagles, and of course, The Grateful Dead. There’s more, but this list is making me self-conscious!
Dem from CT:
Talking Heads, Judy Garland, and any swing music from the 30’s and 40’s. By the way, Louis Armstrong was a genius. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy ain’t bad for contemporary stuff
Actually, yes, he/they is/are.
noweasels:
I still love the music I loved during high school: The Byrds; Buffalo Springfield; The Youngbloods; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Bob Dylan; Joan Baez; the Beatles; John Lennon and George Harrison. I was at the Concert for Bangladesh and would have been at Woodstock had my parents not sent me to a convent/summer camp in Maine to keep me from going. This music still makes me feel optimistic and energized to work to get good things done.
None of the preceding 6 or so are bad, so much as they seem not to acknowledge that music of high quality has been created post-1973. Vote like Russ Feingold, rock out like centrist Nebraskan Ben Nelson.
Scout Finch:
Well, for inspiration, the old classic rockers…..John Lennon, Neil Young, The Grateful Dead. For motivation, Eminem, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Mary J Blige, U2, and Mary J Blige with U2.
Jeff Lieber:
Punk-ska. Or Ska-punk. Either one, but never Spunaka. Truth be told, I’m a sucker for singer-songwriters, which is why I went off and married one.
Plutonium Page:
Mambo Kurt
Smintheus:
Jazz. Count Basie is a guy you want in your corner in this fight.
McJoan:
I gravitate more toward artist than type. Liz Phair. Steve Earle. Wilco. Outkast. But my favorite is James McMurtry–best road trip music ever.
2nd Liz Phair mention. Odd.
Georgia10:
I love rock and alternative music, everything from to The Doors to Serj Tankian. Passive by A Perfect Circle is my “writing” song. That or Requiem for A Dream. Whenever I get writer’s block or feel so frustrated by the GOP shennanigans I can’t see straight, those songs always help clear my head.
occam’s hatchet:
I loves me some Alison Krauss and Union Station. Otherwise, Talking Heads, Beatles, Isley Brothers, Stones, and blues and bluegrass in general. Also, with two teenage girls in the house, I’ve gotten a chuckle out of Katy Perry—“I Kissed a Girl” isn’t new (thanks, Jill Sobule), but evidently liking it is. And after being subjected to Kid Rock pimping for the Army National Guard while my wife and I were sitting through the trailers before a movie recently, I can’t wait to find out which branch of the service he’s enlisted in.
I like my politics progressive and my music inoffensive to the max! Yeah! Crank it up to 11 on the inoffensiveness dial!
Jotter:
Oh the usual stuff, Corelli, Motown, Tom Petty, John Coltrane, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, that sort of thing. And of course almost anything that Land of Enchantment drops off. Here’s a book recommendation or two: This is your Brain on Music and Musicophilia.
TeacherKen:
I like a broad range of genres of music. I was trained as a classical musician (piano, cello and singing), have made money doing rock, folk, cocktail, and have conducted a capella church choirs. Depending upon my mood, it could be Anne Murray, Willie Nelson, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Chanticleer, Sviatislav Richter playing Brahms, Andras Schiff playing Bach or Schubert. I suppose if I really wanted to feel invincible, it would be listening to the final three piano sonatas by Beethoven, Opus 109, Opus 110, and Opus 111.
Professing love for any kind of music–never a good sign.
Miss Laura:
I wrote my dissertation on a form of participatory harmony singing called Sacred Harp (no harps involved). It’s been an ongoing tradition in the southern US since before the Civil War, and I often go to Alabama and sing this music with people who include many quite conservative Republicans. One of the things my dissertation (and now book manuscript) focuses on is that people can find a meaningful community in this singing despite those political differences, and equivalent religious ones. So I guess I rarely feel more invincible than when I’m in a little country church on Sand Mountain, singing about God with people who I might see as part of the GOP horde if I didn’t know them and love them dearly.
Sacred Harp isn’t really listening music, though, and I listen to country, rock, folk. I most like voices with texture and depth. Probably my two favorite voices belong to Kasey Chambers and Tim Eriksen. In a small folk club once, I swear to you I felt the pressure on my skin from the sound waves of Tim’s unamplified voice.
One song I could listen to for hours at a time is “Easy Silence.” The Dixie Chicks version is great, of course, and then recently I found the version by Dan Wilson, who wrote the song with them, and now I can just alternate between them.
I bet that’s probably interesting, but it sounds boring.
Eddie C:
I love that classic rock but for feeling invincible Bruce Springsteen‘s “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions” makes my desert-island disc list.
“What I really like best is arena rock and music made by black people but–you know, the white people version of it.”
Kula2316:
I’m weird in that I generally only listen to music when I’m running, and that is not a playlist I’d like to share! Very cheesy stuff. At home, I’m more likely to be listening to Air America podcasts. But if I had to listen to music at home it would probably be Thievery Corporation, Poe or Faithless.
That’s what she’s willing to admit to. The rest is too embarrassing. Yikes.
DavidNYC:
This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but just the other day, I was at the gym and, while I was on the elliptical trainer, the Faulkner Howard Dean Remix came up on my iPod. Listen to it if you haven’t yet. I swear that I got seriously charged up and totally upped my pace. The good doctor was good for my cardio workout! Otherwise, there’s nothing like Elvis Costello for pumping me up.
That’s right, he likes listening to the “Dean Scream” speech while working out. Puker!
clammyc:
You mean I need music to feel invincible? Actually….I’m partial to classic rock (Beatles, Stones, Black Crowes) and jam bands like Phish and the Grateful Dead, although a little old school rap like Public Enemy or NWA probably works better in scaring the GOOPers off this election cycle.
Actually, you’re scaring off the left.
RenaRF:
Either the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or maybe Alanis Morisette. Thinking of the GOP horde makes me want to sing/scream “You Oughta Know” in their face. But some good funk or R&B puzzles the Goopers and is equally successful in its own way in keeping them at bay.
I’m certain Mitch McConnell is conversant with Alanis and quakes at the mere mention of bloggers crooning anything off Jagged Little Pill.
Jill Richardson:
I love all of the stereotypical liberal stuff. “Eve of Destruction,” “For What Its Worth”… or for something written during my lifetime “Let’s Impeach the President” and “Not Ready to Make Nice.” The Republicans might have their own TV channel and they might own the entire talk radio medium (almost) but compared to us, their music sucks. Those songs keep that in perspective.
Boring. Good music is generally apolitical.
thereisnospoon:
60’s folk music. When all else seems dark and soulless, it reminds me of how far we’ve come, and of the sacrifices that people have made for justice and equality in this country. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it does bend toward justice so long as people remain committed to it.
Ewww! How about naming something, you dork.
SusanG:
Steve Earle’s The Revolution Starts Now. Dixie Chicks’ Not Ready to Make Nice. Jackson Browne’s Lives in the Balance. Anything with John Coltrane.
Hmmm…it’s as if she winnowed all of musicdom down to People Who Protested Bush. And then went with the lamest. At least she cited albums.
WineRev:
Beethoven for power, Vivaldi for hope, Holst’s “Planets” for glory. “Glory Days” by Springsteen, “Would I Lie to You?” by Eurythmics, “25 Miles” by Edwin Starr, “Fortunate One” by Credence (THE anti-GWB song; the subject could be him); soundtracks from “Patton”, “Glory” and “Lord of the Rings—all 9 hours.”
Subtract the Eurythmics (and Holst, actually) and I want to diarrhea in my mouth. Who listens to music based on anachronistic jabs at Bush? Or to anything for “hope”? Seriously! Especially with an affinity for a fascist modern composer like Holst.
Devilstower:
I am, as anyone who has ever heard me sing will testify, nearly tone deaf. So there aren’t all that many songs I can identify this side of John Phillips Sousa. However, I’ve been to six Indigo Girls concerts and recently bought a couple of K. T. Tunstall CDs. Apparently this means I’m a 15 year-old lesbian. That should scare the horde.
I love this answer. Even if he mistakes “tone-deaf” for “ignorant about music.”
nyceve:
I’m very patriotic so I’d say the National Anthem. I also love Woody Guthrie’s This Land is My Land, Bob Dylan Blowin in the Wind, John Lennon singing Imagine, Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven and Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World.
“And when I go to a wedding and I hear ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T’ or ‘We Are Family’ I start hooting with joy. Don’t get me started on what happens when I’m in a Starbucks and I hear Norah Jones.”
Kagro X:
I’ve seen you ask others this question, and I’ve never had an answer to it. I know a lot of people who couldn’t live without their music, and who can really feel inspired by it, and who play it around the house all day long, but I’m not one of them. I like it just fine, but sitting around the house, I almost never say to myself, “Hey, I’m gonna put on some music.” I guess if I had to choose music to play as I rushed in to take on the GOP horde, and wanted some chance of actually feeling invincible, it’d that music from the scene in Last of the Mohicans where they’re racing up the mountain in their final fight. I Googled it, and it turns out it’s called “Promontory.”
Eek. “I also don’t really like eating, or sex. I saw this thing once. I googled it and it turns out it’s called ‘cunnilingus.'”
Jeffrey Feldman:
Eddie Vedder could floss his teeth and the sound would make me feel invincible to the GOP horde.
Vomitorious!
Number of Johnny Cash, Radiohead, Beck, Gang of Four, Flaming Lips, ABBA, Magnetic Fields, Roxy Music, Bjork, Belle and Sebastian, Dolly Parton, Kate Bush, Tina Turner, David Bowie or Animal Collective mentions (aka, “Great Music That’s Totally Accessible”): 0.
Number of Stones mentions: 2, both of which are to “The Stones.” It’s hip to omit Rolling.
Suck the Rainbow 