Extra-Stupid - Stupy Trolls Me With A Comment About Brian Wilson's "Genius"

I WILL ADMIT that it is something that gave me a bit of fun on days I wasn't busy enough to make fun of Steve Simels' repetition of the common received "wisdom" of pop music scribbling.  One of those surrounds the ridiculous inflation of the Beach Boy's Brian Wilson into a "genius" who Stupy, along with other cretinous "critics" of bubble-gum music have compared favorably with George Gershwin and, yeah, right, Mozart.

I would imagine some Daughter of the Confederacy falling on the fainting couch when someone desecrates the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest or Henry Clay is no more melodramatic than Simps going into a lather when I mock the pretentious claims made about commercial pop music icons. 

This time, waiting for the morning dew to dry up so I can go do my garden chores I decided to look to see if I could find who first designated Brian Wilson as a "genius" for Simps and the simple minded scribblers of rock "criticism,"  a line for them to  dutifully repeat for the next six decades, what that profession is made of.   I found out it was none other than Brian Wilson and his publicist at the time, Dereck Taylor who declared his "genius" to the world.  It seems to have stemmed from Wilson whining about the wholesome American boy image that had made him rich but was confining and perhaps something he'd outgrown,  that he didn't get nearly the respect that his "genius" earned him and, it being the most commercial and least genius ridden genera of music there is per billion dollars in revenue in the history of human music making, yeah, it got him what he believed he wanted.  

Temporarily believed he wanted.   He soon found being declared a "genius" to pad his ego was far more of a burden to him, one that led to everything from his backing away from the Beach Boys to inhibiting him from song writing, to turning to drugs to try to inspire his "creativity" to whatever else ailed the guy.   That, in the world of pop music is so monumental an issue that it generated a ridiculously long wikipedia page on the topic "Brian Wilson is a genius."  Something which, until I read Simp's taunt, I'd likely never have seen to mock his assertion with. 

I don't really care if Brian Wilson writes songs or music or performs it or if his fan boys and gals, most of them in the cootster cohort, lap it up.  His music doesn't offend me as long as I don't have to hear it.  I doubt he'd like much of the music I like.  People have a right to their own taste.  I don't care if they call him a "genius" though apparently that was something that brought the guy lots of grief.   The lesson is beware of getting what you can buy yourself into getting because you might find it comes with a bigger price than you find you're willing to pay or can handle.  

Mozart.  Really.  Mozart. 

UPDATE:  I decided to post this performance by Wim Winters of one of Mozart's most over-played and abused sonatas, the K332 F Major.  I might comment about it if I get flack.

 Direct link to the youtube

 

Update 2:  Leonard Bernstein was quite able to say some pretty silly things about music.  Especially when it was his attempt to be kewel with the kiddies.  I won't go into some of the truly stupid things he said in his disastrous Norton Lectures which did so much to alter my view of him, though he was never anything like my favorite conductor or composer.  

Hey, Simps, go read the wikipedia article and weep.  Brian Wilson was the one who ended up resenting the folly of getting himself declared a genius and who suffered due to the consequences of his own publicity campaign.  I am sorry he had to suffer but the way he got into it wasn't any evidence of genius, it was what you do, PR and salesmanship.