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Thursday, October 4, 2007

The Judgment

posted by on October 4 at 10:32 AM

The greatest artistic achievements to rise from the American experience are found only in two art forms: jazz…
1688.jpg
and cinema…
citizen%20kane%20SPLASH.jpg
No great work of literature, poetry, philosophy, visual art even comes close the the bottom of the best that exists in either jazz or film form. That is a fact. You must live with it.

RSS icon Comments

1

You seem set on this position the point that attempting to debate it with you would be pointless.

Posted by gee | October 4, 2007 10:46 AM
2

My younger nephew, when he was 13, used to say, 'That's a fact' when expressing an opinion. He's 16 now and seems to have grown out of the habit. Are you less mature than my 16 year-old nephew?

Posted by Secret Squirrel | October 4, 2007 10:49 AM
3

are not.

Posted by mason | October 4, 2007 10:51 AM
4

Charles Mudede is a fact. Deal with it.

Posted by The Baron | October 4, 2007 10:55 AM
5

secret squirrel, that is because your nephew stopped reading books, watching cinema, and listening to serious music. if he had done so, if he had continued down the path of serious learning, he would now know what is what and not be standing on the margins of (but fighting in) the great battlefield of ideas.

Posted by charles | October 4, 2007 10:59 AM
6

mark twain's huckleberry finn? doesn't count? alexander calder, the inventor of the mobile and all-round artistic genius? he's american too. seems like you conveniently forgot some amercian artists who work in other media. hey, what does one need to do to get a job at the stranger? just wondering.

Posted by ellarosa | October 4, 2007 11:01 AM
7

I'd almost agree with you if you hadn't selected a late Ellington, from after he'd been infected with the respectability virus and started getting all "Suite" and "Symphonic". The best Ellington, the Ellington that broke the world apart and put it back together again, was the early jungle stuff in the late 20s-early 30s, followed closely by his absolutely insane touring bands of the 30s and 40s. Compare the Blanton-Webster band, or the 1938 stuff on "Braggin' in Brass" (1938 is when Billy Strayhorn signed on), to the flaccid, dull "Far East Suite".

Only the immortal Louis Armstrong can touch him, and only because Louis could sing.

Posted by Fnarf | October 4, 2007 11:02 AM
8

Citizen Kane is soooo overrated. And by overrated, I mean I am part of the minority that dislikes it. But my opinions are fact, much like yours.

ROOOOSSSEEBUUDD!!!Pppptttshthshths.

Posted by Mr. Poe | October 4, 2007 11:03 AM
9

What Mr. Poe said. Everyone knows the best movie ever made was Airplane.

Posted by monkey | October 4, 2007 11:05 AM
10

"I am serious. And don't call me Shirley."

Posted by Mr. Poe | October 4, 2007 11:08 AM
11

kind of blue (1959) is the greatest jazz accomplishment, thus it should be miles instead of duke on that picture.

the birth of the cool (1949) is the announcement of the north american renaissance.

but, i will also argue that punk rock and blues and rock and roll are also enormous north american contributions to the arts. and please do not give this credit to the brits. theyre biters ( and thats a fact), always have been always will be.

Posted by SeMe | October 4, 2007 11:13 AM
12

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

Posted by Wilson | October 4, 2007 11:14 AM
13

opinion as fact. i love it! well they already said something to this effect on the simpsons so it must be true.

Posted by brandon | October 4, 2007 11:14 AM
14

Airplane was good, but it was a derivative work of The Ketucky Fried Movie. The Ketucky Fried Movie is the superior work.

Citizen Kane taught America and the world how to make movies. Orson Welles was a genius. He was the Mozart of film -- loved and hated and sometimes both.

Jazz is the greatest thing America will have ever brought to the world, and will outlast every other aspect of our culture.

Posted by TacomaRoma | October 4, 2007 11:22 AM
15

And similarly, Charles, these two American traditions were based on two of the greatest culture-bridging inventions: The movie camera and the phonograph.

The two world wars, coming on the heels of the invention of the phonograph - and the beginnings of the mixing of "race-based" recorded musical traditions in this country - exposed Americans to musical traditions world-wide.

I cannot think of Jazz without thinking also about Calypsonians and other Caribbeans and Cubans and other Latin Americans playing in and recording records in New York and Chicago in 30's and beyond. Sure, there was an American in Paris, but there were records flying back and forth in our hemisphere prior to that.

And interestingly as these inventions and the two wars 'opened up the world' to Americans, Orson Wells made the socially charged "It's All True" in Brazil instead of filming the Carnival in Rio like he was supposed to, as it was to serve the U.S. government as a propaganda tool to make nice with Latin America and keep its countries from lining up with the Axis.

Posted by Lloyd Clydesdale | October 4, 2007 11:24 AM
16

Seme, American punk was first but Brit punk was better. I'll see your Ramones and raise you Buzzcocks, who in 20 seconds outstrip every US punk band ever. American rock'n'roll is mostly a dead end on the trail of pop music (which is the only kind of music there is). The blues is just country music seen in a mirror (or vice versa), and doesn't really get interesting until has a baby with gospel and gets sucked into the pop machine and comes out the other end forty years later as SOUL music. Or something.

Posted by Fnarf | October 4, 2007 11:30 AM
17

I'll see your buzzcocks and raise you a patty smith and one new york dolls. careful i am holding a social distortion. flush!

*dont let me bring some velvet underground into this*

robert johnson started it all. crossroads baby!!

the brits gave us elton john, george michael and the spice girls.

Posted by SeMe | October 4, 2007 11:40 AM
18

I view Kentucky Fried Movie as a warm-up, practice run (Zinc-oxide & You was comic genius). Airplane is where the Zuckers took all they learned from KFM and made it sing.

"Look Betty, don't start up with your white zone shit again..."

"Oh really, Vernon? Why pretend? We both know what this is really about... you want me to have an abortion"

Posted by monkey | October 4, 2007 11:40 AM
19

@14: wrong. Plastic will outlive every other aspect of our culture.

Posted by Levislade | October 4, 2007 11:47 AM
20

abstract expressionism.

thesis rejected.

Posted by maxsolomon | October 4, 2007 11:48 AM
21

so lately you have been pointing out stereotypical sexist images of women (again) and then showing successful accomplishments of men (again).
It is a common tread to your posts.

Posted by -B- | October 4, 2007 11:58 AM
22

this is total hogwash. what about hip-hop, techno, house, soul, funk? the list goes on and on. and they're all distinctly american genres. i would also say that all of europe are biters cause they copped every single one of them.

Posted by reckoner | October 4, 2007 12:04 PM
23

I'd pretty much agree with this (though I also appreciate many other art forms).

The only way to judge the value of art form that even approaches objectivity is to look at its influence. For example, someone can say a John Coltrane or Charlie Parker (or Robert Johnson or the Beatles or whoever) are great musicians, but the only way to even begin to prove this is to look at the amount of influence they continue to exert on all music. I believe that Charles Mudede pretty much nailed it here. A thousand years from now I imagine that America will pretty much be remembered for jazz and cinema.

Posted by Peter | October 4, 2007 12:24 PM
24

I'd expect nothing less from a Marxist. ;-)

You think that art and subjectivity can be objective, can be managed, and that all points toward some perfect, Platonic form, that you, in your wisdom, can interpret for the rest of the masses.

Posted by Timothy | October 4, 2007 12:25 PM
25

You forgot slavery. If we didn't perfect the shit out of that thing, nobody did - and that's a fact.

Posted by Fyodor Zulinski | October 4, 2007 12:27 PM
26

The region's most kickass jazz festival comes to town in just two weeks, with shows all over the city (and beyond) and a film run at the NWFF. Gotta be there.

Don't fear, EARSHOT is here: www.earshot.org/Festival/festival.html

Posted by iluvplumbing | October 4, 2007 12:46 PM
27

I think you mean Patti Smith, SeMe, not Patty!

She was great stuff (I saw her several times back in the day), but more by the force of her personality than by the quality of her music, much of which was half-baked slush. The New York Dolls were loads of fun thrash, but really, heroin, makeup only go so far. Bowie was ten times more interesting (back when he was interesting), and so was Marc Bolan.

The Velvets, OK. And Jonathan Richman -- the only real (white) American original (after Brian Wilson, at least).

Elton, George Michael, etc, were all good-to-adequate pop stars; I don't see what your problem with them is. They're not REO Speedwagon by any means. The only real injustice when it comes to pop music is the inexplicable failure of the United Nations to destroy Australia over their production of Air Supply.

Which has little to do with the superiority of jazz as an American art form. Unlike rock music, or film for that matter, no one EXCEPT Americans can produce acceptable jazz, with the exception of those Brazilians who came up with Bossa Nova. But the idea of an English or Swedish jazz player being able to truly dig out the deepest nuggets, to get REALLY down in the pocket, is laughable.

Posted by Fnarf | October 4, 2007 1:04 PM
28

one of the most amazing accomplishments i've seen an american man acheive is to lecture me for 45 minutes on the glories of jazz after i expressed my lack of taste for it on a first date, and then not put out. to string me along anough to suffer for no reward? evil genius.

Posted by erin | October 4, 2007 1:46 PM
29

Enough, though it is interesting-looking and a challenge to pronounce in a kind of fun way as "anough"

Posted by erin | October 4, 2007 1:48 PM
30

Comic books.

Posted by Kiru Banzai | October 4, 2007 2:11 PM
31

Charles, you don't know my nephew and yet you presume to know his intellectual acuity because, after all, all 16 years olds are vacuous video game addicts.

Well, for your information, my nephew is a top student at a top Jesuit academy in NY. He argues with Jesuit priests, any one of whom would run you through the intellectual meat grinder.


Posted by Secret Squirrel | October 4, 2007 2:15 PM
32

@27

can i still use the "english is my second language" defense? =)

Posted by SeMe | October 4, 2007 2:24 PM
33

Wow Chuck, Channel Ellsworth Toohey much? (You’re such an arbiter of opinion!) When will Dan have his Gail Wynand moment and save the Stranger from becoming The Banner?

What a buffoon…

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me | October 4, 2007 2:24 PM
34

The greatest artistic achievements to rise from the American experience are found only in two art forms:

monster trucks,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_truck

and Roscoe's,
http://www.roscoeschickenandwaffles.com/


so sayith the hipster, so it is so.
in a ironic, detached way, natch...

Posted by hipsterlite | October 4, 2007 2:26 PM
35

#23 is the closest to a reasonable defense of this hypothesis. the only trouble with that rationale is that being the first indigenous american art form, jazz by default has the most influence on all subsequent genres of music. even if that influence wanes with each passing generation, it will always be the godparent of virtually all contemporary forms of music.

but that's beside the point. anyone claiming to state an objective, defensible truth about art either has no understanding whatsoever of what art is, or is completely bloated with pretension. or perhaps some combination thereof.

Posted by bubba baBOOM | October 4, 2007 3:19 PM
36

As I often do, I agree with Charles here. You can't name any other American music that has contributed so much to world culture as jazz - with Ellington being the pinnacle example. Pretty much all American music that followed - from Aaron Copland to hip hop - took the path that jazz laid down. That is, wildly improvisational measures and melodies inside of strictly rigid forms.

American film, on the other hand, was never revolutionary in the same way. Many many nations have developed their own equally powerful language of film which owe little to the American idiom. You can't imagine Kurt Weill without George Gershwin. You can imagine Sergei Eisenstein without Orson Welles. Where America film proves to be most influential is in its commercial face. For much of world, big-budget Hollywood blockbusters DEFINE cinema. There simply ain't nothing else.

Of course there are a million examples of powerful American artists who have contributed to world culture- Mark Twain, Alexander Calder, Patty Smith - all exemplary American artists. But none of these individual artists have had anything like the impact of jazz and Hollywood on world culture.

Posted by Gurldoggie | October 4, 2007 4:11 PM
37

Although I will go out on a limb here and say that Blues, another American music form, also had a tremendous impact on the music that followed. I'm not a big fan of rock and roll, but you can't deny that rock and rock culture- for all of it's ugliness and inherent conservatism - were spawned by blues music.

But to be sure, even the geniuses of the Blues, like Leadbelly, can't hold a candle to the glowing sun that is Duke Ellington.

Posted by Gurldoggie | October 4, 2007 4:16 PM
38

Charles Mudede is a dope-smoking tool who gets paid by the stranger to make sophomoric statements on SLOG. That's a fact, and until the folks at the Stranger wake up and say "What the fuck are we paying this guy for? All he does is post wanking material on SLOG and make vaguely oracular statements that don't even make sense when you're fucked up on BC bud, adderall and oxycodone." we must live with it.

Posted by wile_e_quixote | October 4, 2007 4:39 PM
39

Enough with the "Patty" Smith! Her name's Patti!

The importance of what we think of as "blues" today on rock and roll is hugely overstated and oversimplified. It's part of the "Rolling Stone" version of rock history, which is mostly a load of old cobblers.

Rhythm and blues, a very different genre from "blues", and which has its roots as much in the degeneration of the swing bands as in anything your average rock listener would recognize as "blues", is what rock and roll came out of, but not the rock and roll that most people have heard of. THAT stuff is as much country music as anything else. Rock is 46.35% country, 39.97% R&B, and the rest is the Holy Ghost.

It is a polluted, bastardized product, which is what makes it interesting and valuable. So is jazz, and everything else that's good about America.

Posted by Fnarf | October 4, 2007 5:34 PM
40

I usually don't agree with you about music Fnarf, but I pretty much agree with that^^^.

But I don't believe for a goddamn second that most anyone here really enjoys Patti Smith, I think they just enjoy who she is.

Posted by Dougsf | October 4, 2007 6:09 PM
41

i'll go on record as enjoying patti, past and recent output. but yeah, i like "the idea" too.

Posted by ellarosa | October 4, 2007 6:36 PM
42

@40, are you out of your mind?!?!

Patti Smith is BRILLIANT, man! NOBODY gives you punk as smart and as raw as Patti Smith! No one in their right mind can deny the fucked up genius of Patti Smith. And THAT'S a fact.

Posted by Gurldoggie | October 4, 2007 8:18 PM
43

Umm. Frank Lloyd Wright.

Posted by architecturer | October 5, 2007 10:34 AM
44

I wasn't questioning Patti Smith's merit, I love WHAT she does, but I can't honestly say I can get through her records. I don't think anyone's insane for disagreeing with me... AND speaking of her and film, I can recommend the Amos Poe (sp?) film The Foreigner. It's got some great early footage of Patti as one of the scenes is in CBGBs.

I did have a chance to meet Lenny Kaye recently and was as starstruck as I've ever been. He's had a profound an impact on my taste in music as anyone.

Posted by Dougsf | October 5, 2007 1:46 PM

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