Apparently I'm being slammed at Duncan's for what they think I'll do but which I've never done, criticized the late Chuck Berry because of what he was like off-stage. As I do a search term search on the blogs I write for or wrote for, I don't find that I've ever mentioned Chuck Berry before, I doubt I've ever commented on him or his music and I know nothing about his biography, legendary or real. Apparently his music never caught my interest sufficiently to lead me to know more than I heard on AM top-40 station I happened to hear when I was young and that's all. I have no opinion on it.
Apprently the morons at "Duncan's Brain Trust" (they really do call themselves a "brain trust") don't notice that the only person involved in this who claimed Berry was "an SOB" in his off stage life is their resident rock and roll journalist who got made redundant at the already quite redundant ad flyer he used to write for. I never said a word to that effect. But, then, Duncan's rump of regulars aren't much on reading comprehension.
He was 90, for crying out loud. Is it a surprise to them that 90 year olds have a tendency to, you know, die?
Update: Oh, and, though I generally dislike him and his blog for obvious reasons, good little post making a completely unoriginal point, Duncan. I remember when it used to be worth reading what you said even as your rump of regulars made the comment threads increasingly unreadable. Count me as one of the few who liked your infrastructure posts. No one else was doing it for a general audience of mid-brow college grads.
Update: Hey, all I did was point out that you're the one who called him an "SOB" not me. And then you accused me of being guilty of going to have been saying that. As I've pointed out in the past you don't quite get how time works so I don't think there's a tense in English that expresses what you said.
I didn't even give an opinion on his music because I have none. You, on the other hand, prove that like something else, everyone usually has an opinion and like that something, they often stink.
Update: Moron says what?
I think the only things I ever said about Guy Lumbardo was that he was one of Louis Armstrong's favorite musicians and that he had more musical competence than a lot of rock musicians. Or rock critics, though I don't think I said that. You can tell when Dopey is lying because his lips or fingers are moving. Louis Armstrong, by the way, is one of the greatest geniuses in musical history, Dopey isn't. Who would you suspect is more credible?
You have no opinion on one of the most influential and important musicians of the second half of the 20th century, but Guy Lombardo was better than the Beatles.
ReplyDeleteYou never fail to amaze, Sparkles.😀
You have no opinion on Chuck Berry and we're supposed to take your views on music seriously?
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAAH!
No opinion on Chuck Berry -- a musician whose music is now literally traveling to the stars via the Voyager 1 spacecraft?
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHHHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!
One of the "new regulars" came by my blog several months (a year now?) ago, led by the Svengali of Eschaton, apparently. Posted an out of context and bizarre comment accusing me of personal insult because of something I didn't say, but was supposed to have said, in a blog post.
ReplyDeleteReminded me of nothing so much as accusations that got hurled at me in my last few months in ministry, accusations that always came from nowhere, but made on-lookers think that where there was so much smoke, there must be some kind of fire. A "regular" at my blog even commented on the comment, and clearly assumed there was some backstory to it.
There wasn't; not from me, anyway. It was completely out of the blue, and if I hadn't experienced the same thing in ministry (where I dealt with people with diagnosed mental illnesses, and came to suspect there were many, many more among us who go undiagnosed and so seem "rational," but aren't), I would have been flummoxed. It's interesting how much energy people will spend defending themselves against imagined slights and opinions they find too disturbing to simply walk away from. I think that must be all the regulars at Eschaton are now: people with sad, sad problems and no treatment for it except to rail on the internet at imagined demons (which has replaced shouting at clouds and talking to yourself on street corners, I think).
I had suspected I knew who it was who regularly notified me when I got mentioned there, just about daily, and lied about, again, daily. I'm not surprised it was about something you never said and out of the baby blue.
ReplyDeleteMost of the lies told about me come either from Simels or JR-Freki, they seem to always instigate it. I've come to the conclusion that either they have very low reading comprehension or they are pathological liars, though they might be both.
That place did so much for the development of my suspicion that once you stop believing in sin that you will no longer believe it's a sin to tell a lie. I don't think all atheists have lost or never developed a "sense" that it is a sin to tell a lie but none of the regulars who go to Eschaton seem to much care if they're being lied to. I can say it has cooled me on several of those I used to be friendly with.
It really makes you wonder how anyone can depend on what any of them say, which I don't think I do, now.
"Most of the lies told about me come either from Simels or JR-Freki, they seem to always instigate it."
DeleteYes and why?, is the question. Sometimes I think it's evil. Sometimes I think it's mental illness. Sometimes the line between those two is rather faint, except the former exacts a penalty of responsibility, and the latter, to some extent, doesn't.
I'm quite convinced, whatever the source, it is a problem for them to struggle with.
Chuck Berry was an SOB by even the most generous and modest views of his life. But, his upbringing, as a proud, gifted black man in an exceptionally racist region of the country during the Great Depression could not have been easy.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, his artistic genius is equally undeniable as measured by influence and ability. Dylan called him "the Shakespeare of Rock 'n' Roll," which is not far off. As Bob Weir would frequently say before covering "Johnny B. Goode," "This is where it all began."
Indeed.
I literally knew nothing about him except his name and a few of his songs that I heard on the radio when my sisters were teenagers. And I still don't. I'm not interested in rock, not everyone is. I don't fault people if they aren't interested in jazz or classical or ethnic music.
DeleteWhat's really funny, given your Dylan quote, is that once, when I posted "Al-Atlal" by Uum Kultum, who Bob Dylan praised in the highest of terms (as well as a huge number of other musicians Western and elsewhere) the same liar and idiot, Simels, made some racist, slighting comments about her, someone he'd never heard of or heard before I posted it. I remember when she died the huge, really greiving crowd that went to her funeral.
Early in his regime, Abdul Nasser found out that some people in his government had banned her music from the radio because she'd been close to King Farouk, he ordered them to let it be played saying they were crazy that he could be driven out of power by her fan. Somehow, I don't think Chuck Berry was ever that big. I never heard him playing long format music, maybe he was able to do something that so many in rock aren't. I just don't know.
I'll point out that I didn't pick the fight and I haven't been fighting except to point out that I didn't say a word against him, Simels is the one who called him an SOB. I didn't say a word about him or his music, at all.
I do find it hilarious that these same atheists who, no doubt, would accuse religious people of being afraid of death go into paroxisms of lamentation when celebrities in their late 60s through, literally 102 (the late Irwin Corey recently) die of natural causes. It's as if they don't know that old people have a disturbing tendency to die. That old age is uniformly fatal is something they don't seem to have ever noticed, before.
I will note, that, reading what Charles Pierce at Esquire linked to, I had no idea that Chuck Berry did things at least as bad as what Simps and the Eschatots and, well the entire blogopshere, figured damned everything about Bill Cosby to eternal damnation. Funny how inconsistent they are when it's a matter of their teenage nostalgia.
DeleteI do think Pierce went a bit over the top, apparently he doesn't read much poetry. Simps wouldn't know poetry from potato chips. Love Pierce but he went a bit over the top on that one.
I like Stephen King's take, "Chuck Berry died. This breaks my heart, but 90 years old ain't bad for rock and roll. Johnny B. Goode forever."
ReplyDeleteYes, sir. And Pierce's praise does go over the top, but Berry's inventive use of language is impressive, so concise and wry and universal, who knows what he could have accomplished in different circumstances?
Not a nice man but that's not really relevant to his aesthetic accomplishments. Besides, compared to some artists he's a damn lightweight.
His lyrics are in the blues tradition that is incredibly inventive.
DeleteI literally knew nothing about the child rape, photographing women in bathrooms etc until I clicked on that link at Charles Pierce's blog.
I do have to wonder why when it's him it's OK and he gets all the love but Cosby gets all the hate. I suspect the difference is that Cosby gave a number of lectures disapproving of youth culture, if he hadn't done that I doubt the vitriol in his case would have been far less.