On Junk Food for the Soul - Revision history

Jason.Kreitzer at 13:25, 11 August 2021

2021-08-11T13:25:37Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 12:27, 21 July 2021

2021-07-21T12:27:09Z

Spider of Destiny at 20:43, 19 November 2020

2020-11-19T20:43:49Z

Spider of Destiny at 22:53, 13 December 2010

2010-12-13T22:53:14Z

Propellerkuh at 21:10, 14 February 2008

2008-02-14T21:10:01Z

Propellerkuh at 21:05, 14 February 2008

2008-02-14T21:05:20Z

Propellerkuh at 20:58, 14 February 2008

2008-02-14T20:58:45Z

Propellerkuh at 20:54, 14 February 2008

2008-02-14T20:54:38Z

Propellerkuh at 05:40, 12 February 2008

2008-02-12T05:40:57Z

Propellerkuh at 05:39, 12 February 2008

2008-02-12T05:39:12Z

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 <blockquote>''Music is the soul's primitive and primary speech ... without articulate speech or reason. It is not only not reasonable, it is hostile to reason ... Civilization ... is the taming or domestication of the soul's raw passions ... Rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire – not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored.'' </blockquote><div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
-This is a puff pastry version of the belief that music is the work of [[The Devil]]: that the nasty ol' Devil plays his fiddle and people dance around and we don't want to see them twitching like that. In fact, if one wants to be a real artist in the United States today and comment on our culture, one would be very far off the track if one did something delicate or sublime. This is not a noble, delicate, sublime country. This is a mess run by criminals. Performers who are doing the crude, vulgar, repulsive things Bloom doesn't enjoy are only commenting on that fact.
+This is a puff pastry version of the belief that music is the work of [[The Devil (CC)|The Devil]]: that the nasty ol' Devil plays his fiddle and people dance around and we don't want to see them twitching like that. In fact, if one wants to be a real artist in the United States today and comment on our culture, one would be very far off the track if one did something delicate or sublime. This is not a noble, delicate, sublime country. This is a mess run by criminals. Performers who are doing the crude, vulgar, repulsive things Bloom doesn't enjoy are only commenting on that fact.
 In general, anti-rock propositions began when rock n' roll began, and most of these were racially motivated. In the 50s, petitions were circulated which said, "Don't allow your children to buy Negro records." The petitions referred to the "raw unbridled passion" of screaming people with dark skin who were going to drive our children wild. Some things never go out of fashion in certain ideological camps. They are like tenets of the faith.

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:27, 21 July 2021
Line 4:		Line 4:


−	''[[Frank Zappa]] and the [[The Mothers\|Mothers of Invention]] were one of the strongest influences on early rock n' roll. In recent years, Zappa has publicly defended rock from cultural conservatives like [[Tipper Gore]] and her group, the [[Parents' Music Resource Center]], which seeks greater parental control over what they consider the inordinate influence of sex and violence in rock music.''	+	''[[Biography\|Frank Zappa]] and the [[The Mothers\|Mothers of Invention]] were one of the strongest influences on early rock n' roll. In recent years, Zappa has publicly defended rock from cultural conservatives like [[Tipper Gore]] and her group, the [[Parents Music Resource Center]], which seeks greater parental control over what they consider the inordinate influence of sex and violence in rock music.''

	''We asked Frank Zappa to respond to selected passages from ''The Closing of the American Mind,'' in which [[wikipedia:Allan Bloom\|Allan Bloom]] laments "Parents' loss of control over their children's moral education,' and provocatively labels rock music "junk food for the soul."''		''We asked Frank Zappa to respond to selected passages from ''The Closing of the American Mind,'' in which [[wikipedia:Allan Bloom\|Allan Bloom]] laments "Parents' loss of control over their children's moral education,' and provocatively labels rock music "junk food for the soul."''

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:43, 19 November 2020
Line 100:		Line 100:

	[[Category:Articles by Zappa]]		[[Category:Articles by Zappa]]
		+	[[Category:1987]]

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 <blockquote>''Music is the soul's primitive and primary speech ... without articulate speech or reason. It is not only not reasonable, it is hostile to reason ... Civilization ... is the taming or domestication of the soul's raw passions ... Rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire – not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored.'' </blockquote><div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
-This is a puff pastry version of the belief that music is the work of the Devil: that the nasty ol' Devil plays his fiddle and people dance around and we don't want to see them twitching like that. In fact, if one wants to be a real artist in the United States today and comment on our culture, one would be very far off the track if one did something delicate or sublime. This is not a noble, delicate, sublime country. This is a mess run by criminals. Performers who are doing the crude, vulgar, repulsive things Bloom doesn't enjoy are only commenting on that fact.
+This is a puff pastry version of the belief that music is the work of [[The Devil]]: that the nasty ol' Devil plays his fiddle and people dance around and we don't want to see them twitching like that. In fact, if one wants to be a real artist in the United States today and comment on our culture, one would be very far off the track if one did something delicate or sublime. This is not a noble, delicate, sublime country. This is a mess run by criminals. Performers who are doing the crude, vulgar, repulsive things Bloom doesn't enjoy are only commenting on that fact.
 In general, anti-rock propositions began when rock n' roll began, and most of these were racially motivated. In the 50s, petitions were circulated which said, "Don't allow your children to buy Negro records." The petitions referred to the "raw unbridled passion" of screaming people with dark skin who were going to drive our children wild. Some things never go out of fashion in certain ideological camps. They are like tenets of the faith.
@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 '''What Makes Music Classical'''<br>
-<blockquote>''Rock music ... has risen to its current heights in the education of the young on the ashes of classical music, and in an atmosphere in which there is no intellectual resistance to attempts to tap the rawest passions ... Cultivation of the soul uses the passions and satisfies them while sublimating them and giving them an artistic unity. [[wikipedia:Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]]'s religious intentions and [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]]'s revolutionary and humane ones are clear enough examples.''</blockquote>
+<blockquote>''Rock music ... has risen to its current heights in the education of the young on the ashes of classical music, and in an atmosphere in which there is no intellectual resistance to attempts to tap the rawest passions ... Cultivation of the soul uses the passions and satisfies them while sublimating them and giving them an artistic unity. [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]]'s religious intentions and [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]]'s revolutionary and humane ones are clear enough examples.''</blockquote>
 <div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
@@ Line 97: / Line 97: @@
 When I was in school, we could go into a room and they had records there. I could hear anything I wanted by going in there and putting on a record. I won't say I enjoyed everything that was played for me, but I was curious, and if I had never heard any of that music I wouldn't know about it.
-Once we're out of school, the time we can spend doing that type of research is limited because most of us are out looking for a job flipping hamburgers in the great tradition of the [[wikipedia:Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] economic miracle. When all is said and done, that's the real source of America's barren and arid lives.
+Once we're out of school, the time we can spend doing that type of research is limited because most of us are out looking for a job flipping hamburgers in the great tradition of the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] economic miracle. When all is said and done, that's the real source of America's barren and arid lives.
 [[Category:Articles by Zappa]]

@@ Line 71: / Line 71: @@
 '''The Rock Business'''<br>
-<blockquote>''The family spiritual void has left the field open to rock music ... The result is nothing less than parents' loss of control over their children's moral education at a time when no one else is seriously concerned with it. This has been achieved by an alliance of strange young males who have the gift of divining the mob's emergent wishes – our versions of Thrasymachus, Socrates' rhetorical adversary – and the record-company executives, the new robber barons, who mine gold out of rock.''</blockquote>
+<blockquote>''The family spiritual void has left the field open to rock music ... The result is nothing less than parents' loss of control over their children's moral education at a time when no one else is seriously concerned with it. This has been achieved by an alliance of strange young males who have the gift of divining the mob's emergent wishes – our versions of [[wikipedia:Thrasymachus|Thrasymachus]], [[wikipedia:Socrates|Socrates]]' rhetorical adversary – and the record-company executives, the new robber barons, who mine gold out of rock.''</blockquote>
 <div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 '''The Nature of Music'''<br>
-''Music is the soul's primitive and primary speech ... without articulate speech or reason. It is not only not reasonable, it is hostile to reason ... Civilization ... is the taming or domestication of the soul's raw passions ... Rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire – not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored.'' <div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
+<blockquote>''Music is the soul's primitive and primary speech ... without articulate speech or reason. It is not only not reasonable, it is hostile to reason ... Civilization ... is the taming or domestication of the soul's raw passions ... Rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire – not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored.'' </blockquote><div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
 This is a puff pastry version of the belief that music is the work of the Devil: that the nasty ol' Devil plays his fiddle and people dance around and we don't want to see them twitching like that. In fact, if one wants to be a real artist in the United States today and comment on our culture, one would be very far off the track if one did something delicate or sublime. This is not a noble, delicate, sublime country. This is a mess run by criminals. Performers who are doing the crude, vulgar, repulsive things Bloom doesn't enjoy are only commenting on that fact.
@@ Line 26: / Line 26: @@
 '''Music and the Dark Forces of the Soul'''<br>
-''To Plato and Nietzsche, the history of music is a series of attempts to give form and beauty to the dark, chaotic, premonitory forces in the soul – to make them serve a higher purpose, and ideal, to give man's duties a fullness.''
+<blockquote>''To Plato and Nietzsche, the history of music is a series of attempts to give form and beauty to the dark, chaotic, premonitory forces in the soul – to make them serve a higher purpose, and ideal, to give man's duties a fullness.''</blockquote>
 <div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 '''What Makes Music Classical'''<br>
-''Rock music ... has risen to its current heights in the education of the young on the ashes of classical music, and in an atmosphere in which there is no intellectual resistance to attempts to tap the rawest passions ... Cultivation of the soul uses the passions and satisfies them while sublimating them and giving them an artistic unity. Bach's religious intentions and [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]]'s revolutionary and humane ones are clear enough examples.''
+<blockquote>''Rock music ... has risen to its current heights in the education of the young on the ashes of classical music, and in an atmosphere in which there is no intellectual resistance to attempts to tap the rawest passions ... Cultivation of the soul uses the passions and satisfies them while sublimating them and giving them an artistic unity. Bach's religious intentions and [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]]'s revolutionary and humane ones are clear enough examples.''</blockquote>
 <div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
@@ Line 58: / Line 58: @@
 '''The Difference Between Classical Music and Rock Music'''<br>
-''Rock music provides premature ecstasy and, in this respect, is like the drugs with which it is allied ... These are the three great lyrical themes: sex, hate and a smarmy, hypocritical version of brotherly love ... Nothing noble, sublime, profound, delicate, tasteful or even decent can find a place in such tableaux.''
+<blockquote>''Rock music provides premature ecstasy and, in this respect, is like the drugs with which it is allied ... These are the three great lyrical themes: sex, hate and a smarmy, hypocritical version of brotherly love ... Nothing noble, sublime, profound, delicate, tasteful or even decent can find a place in such tableaux.''</blockquote>
 <div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
@@ Line 71: / Line 71: @@
 '''The Rock Business'''<br>
-''The family spiritual void has left the field open to rock music ... The result is nothing less than parents' loss of control over their children's moral education at a time when no one else is seriously concerned with it. This has been achieved by an alliance of strange young males who have the gift of divining the mob's emergent wishes – our versions of Thrasymachus, Socrates' rhetorical adversary – and the record-company executives, the new robber barons, who mine gold out of rock.''
+<blockquote>''The family spiritual void has left the field open to rock music ... The result is nothing less than parents' loss of control over their children's moral education at a time when no one else is seriously concerned with it. This has been achieved by an alliance of strange young males who have the gift of divining the mob's emergent wishes – our versions of Thrasymachus, Socrates' rhetorical adversary – and the record-company executives, the new robber barons, who mine gold out of rock.''</blockquote>
 <div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
@@ Line 88: / Line 88: @@
 '''Retaining Classical Music'''<br>
-''Classical music is dead among the young ... Rock music is as unquestioned and unproblematic as the air the students breath, and very few have any acquaintance at all with classical music ... Classical music is now a special taste, like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand.''
+<blockquote>''Classical music is dead among the young ... Rock music is as unquestioned and unproblematic as the air the students breath, and very few have any acquaintance at all with classical music ... Classical music is now a special taste, like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand.''</blockquote>
 <div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 ''[[Frank Zappa]] and the [[The Mothers|Mothers of Invention]] were one of the strongest influences on early rock n' roll. In recent years, Zappa has publicly defended rock from cultural conservatives like [[Tipper Gore]] and her group, the [[Parents' Music Resource Center]], which seeks greater parental control over what they consider the inordinate influence of sex and violence in rock music.''
-''We asked Frank Zappa to respond to selected passages from ''The Closing of the American Mind,'' in which [[Allan Bloom]] laments "Parents' loss of control over their children's moral education,' and provocatively labels rock music "junk food for the soul."''
+''We asked Frank Zappa to respond to selected passages from ''The Closing of the American Mind,'' in which [[wikipedia:Allan Bloom|Allan Bloom]] laments "Parents' loss of control over their children's moral education,' and provocatively labels rock music "junk food for the soul."''
@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 In general, anti-rock propositions began when rock n' roll began, and most of these were racially motivated. In the 50s, petitions were circulated which said, "Don't allow your children to buy Negro records." The petitions referred to the "raw unbridled passion" of screaming people with dark skin who were going to drive our children wild. Some things never go out of fashion in certain ideological camps. They are like tenets of the faith.
-Music's real effect on people is a new field of science called psychoacoustics- the way and organism deals with wiggling air molecules. Our ears decode the wiggling air molecules, and that gives us the information of a particular musical sound. Our brain says, "This is music, this is a structure," and we deal with it based on certain tools we have acquired.
+Music's real effect on people is a new field of science called psychoacoustics – the way and organism deals with wiggling air molecules. Our ears decode the wiggling air molecules, and that gives us the information of a particular musical sound. Our brain says, "This is music, this is a structure," and we deal with it based on certain tools we have acquired.
 I personally make music because I want to ask a question, and I want to get an answer. If that question and answer amuse me, then statistically, there are a certain number of other people out there who have the same amusement factor. If I present my work to them, they will be amused by it, and we will all have a good time.
@@ Line 44: / Line 44: @@
 One, during the time these composers were alive and writing they had patrons who liked what they did and who therefore paid them money or gave them a place to live so that the composers could stay alive by writing dots on pieces of paper. If any of the compositions these men wrote had not been pleasing to a church, a duke, or a king, they would have been out of work and their music would not have survived.
-There is a book called Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, with thousands of names in it. You have never heard of most of the people in that book, nor have you heard their music. That doesn't mean they wrote awful music, it means they didn't have hits.
+There is a book called [[Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians]], with thousands of names in it. You have never heard of most of the people in that book, nor have you heard their music. That doesn't mean they wrote awful music, it means they didn't have hits.
 So basically, the people who are recognized as the geniuses of classical music had hits. And the person who determined whether or not it was a hit was a king, a duke, or the church or whoever paid the bill. The desire to get a sandwich or something to drink had a lot to do with it. And the content of what they wrote was to a degree determined by the musical predilections of the guy who was paying the bill.
@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
 The other reason the classical greats survived is their works are played over and over again by orchestras. The reasons they are played over and over again are: 1) all the musicians in the orchestra know how to play them because they learned them in the conservatory; 2) the orchestra management programs these pieces because the musicians already know them and therefore it costs less to rehearse them; 3) the composers are dead so the orchestras pay no royalties for the use of the music.
-Today, survivability is based on the number of specimens in the market place- the sheer numbers of plastic objects. Many other compositions from this era will vanish, but Michael Jackson's Thriller album will survive because there are 30 million odd pieces of plastic out there. No matter what we may think of the content, a future generation may pick up that piece of plastic and say, "Oh, they were like this."
+Today, survivability is based on the number of specimens in the market place- the sheer numbers of plastic objects. Many other compositions from this era will vanish, but [[Michael Jackson]]'s ''Thriller'' album will survive because there are 30 million odd pieces of plastic out there. No matter what we may think of the content, a future generation may pick up that piece of plastic and say, "Oh, they were like this."
 I suppose somewhere in the future there will be other men like Bloom certifying that the very narrow spectrum of rock n' roll which survives composes the great works of the later half of the 20th Century.

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 This article was commissioned from the New Perspectives Quarterly as part of an issue on America's Cultural Decay.<br>
 <br>
@@ Line 30: / Line 29: @@
 <div align=right>-- A. Bloom</div align=right>
-This is a man who has fallen for rock's fabricated image of itself. This is the worst kind of ivory tower intellectualism. Anybody who talks about dark forces is right on the fringe of mumbo jumbo. Dark forces? What is this, another product from Lucasfilm? The passions! When was the last time you saw an American exhibit any form of passion other than the desire to shoot a guy on the freeway? Those are the forces of evil as far as I'm concerned.
+This is a man who has fallen for rock's fabricated image of itself. This is the worst kind of ivory tower intellectualism. Anybody who talks about dark forces is right on the fringe of mumbo jumbo. Dark forces? What is this, another product from [[wikipedia:Lucasfilm|Lucasfilm]]? The passions! When was the last time you saw an American exhibit any form of passion other than the desire to shoot a guy on the freeway? Those are the forces of evil as far as I'm concerned.
 If there are dark forces hovering in the vicinity of the music business, they are mercantile forces. We meet the darkness when we meet the orchestra committees, when we get in touch with funding organizations, when we deal with people who give grants and when we get into the world of commerce that greets us when we arrive with our piece of art. Whether it's a rock n' roll record or a symphony, it's the same machinery lurking out there.