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What Music Shit Are You Watching? (videos, interviews, docu's etc)


Len Cnut

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On 4/15/2018 at 4:08 PM, Len Cnut said:

The Searcher, new two part HBO documentary on Elvis

Did you like it? I watched it last weekend and thought it was really entertaining. I don’t think I really learned anything I didn’t already know, but there was a lot of interesting rare footage and stuff. And lots of interesting quotes and comments from the people actually there in his life.

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6 minutes ago, Fitha_whiskey said:

Did you like it? I watched it last weekend and thought it was really entertaining. I don’t think I really learned anything I didn’t already know, but there was a lot of interesting rare footage and stuff. And lots of interesting quotes and comments from the people actually there in his life.

I just think it was really really really REALLY important that he was explored as an artist...and thats what this documentary did.  It made one point I think that was intensely valuable, not that anyone will take heed but that he wasn't just this thief of black music, its so reductive to say that.  Sure he took from blues but he's as much to do with gospel and hillbilly music and melding that to the blues, completely organically.  This idea that he took it and just commercialised it, like watered it down is bullshit.  Thats a REALLY important point that demanded to be made and I'm glad its on record somewhere substantial.  And i love in general the focus on gospel too.  Theres a distinct anti-religious bent in popular culture and rock music and its completely ignored that the entire concept of the charismatic frontman comes DIRECTLY from religion, I love ugly little truths like that that make people uncomfortable :lol:  Its no accident that the creators of the frontman archetype, Elvis, James Brown, Little Richard, ALL come from a religious background, a gospel background, a fuckin' rural hick church background.  There's a delicious irony to that, these leaders of fuckin' counterculture like Jagger and them...and they're taking from exactly the thing that the culture like...wants to brush under the carpet and is kinda...embarassed about in themselves. 

Anway, I digress, yeah, although its nothing I personally didn't know its nice to be fuckin' agreed with somewhere.  The value of Elvis Presley is kinda forgotten because he just considered a fuckin' pretty whiteboy that kinda bumbled into playing black music, didn't write his own songs and then hey presto, he's famous as fuck.  He's a legend but artistically he doesn't quite get all the respect cuz they feel its fuckin' like some kinda happy accident.  But then at the same time they wanna call him the racist fuckin' exploitative thief of black music well the way I see it is you can't have it both ways, he can't be the bumbling accidental champion on one hand and then be the fuckin' exploitative arch-manipulator on the other.  The real is that none of that shit is true, he was just a man that fuckin' felt music and played it like he felt it and in doing that he created a sound that was UNIQUELY his own.  He was a perfect coming together of blues and hillbilly music and gospel and RnB and folk that created this mad mongrel music that, to me, in and of itself and in relation to the specific sound he made, is almost entirely unique, nobody made rock n roll sound quite like that, it don't really sound like blues, it don't really sound like country, it don't really sound like gospel and it don't really sound like fuckin' RnB.  What country star out there ever sounded like Blue Moon of Kentucky?  You can't name him cuz he don't exist. 

Its about fuckin' time that the music got some serious serious serious respect...and not just for givin' some English boys a boner in the fuckin' 1950s, REAL respect for what it was.  The truth is that Elvis was a bad motherfucker and a singular artist that, far from being a fuckin' racist or any of these fuckin' 21st Century condemnations, put his neck on the line, albeit accidentally, bringing black influenced music to the fore in INTERNATIONAL culture with absolutely no fuckin' ego and no contrivance and no fuckin' desire to be made out to be some kinda champion of this, that and the other, it was completely fuckin' organic on his part and thats a fuckin' beautiful thing and a fuckin' world apart from what his music was accused of being. 

But most importantly though is the fuckin' music, its brilliant that like people are pointing to the discography and goin' 'y'know what, Elvis Is Back is a great album!'.  This is a great album, thats a great album.  Sure the movies sucked and those albums were lightweight and the Vegas residency shit weren't the best idea etc etc but you need to cut the boy some slack also in that like, there weren't no fuckin' blueprint for this guy to follow, he didn't have no fuckin' pattern or no true support network, how could he even have, how would they know what they were doing even if there was one because there was no prescedent for this guy.  So, y'know, forgive his failings maybe for the absolute mind-blowing fuckin' power of what he did create and the knock on effect that had because, lets be clear about this, the man created, single handedly, international youth culture.  We would not be here on this forum discussing pop music like high art if there had not been an Elvis Presley to fuckin' explode on the world scene and prove that there was an international market of youth for this shit to cater to.  And that is the greatest pop culture contribution that anybody ever made and it will never be topped.  I mean how can it be, whats someone gonna do to top that?

And if this documentary is anything, any little drip of a contribution towards bring a little of some of the aforementioned into the public conciousness then its been a fuckin' invaluable thing, people need to set the fuckin' record straight on this guy.

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Pretty good Flying Dutchman - good set design. This uses the earlier (darker) text, 

Three incredibly pompous Englishmen discussing the respective merits of the two greatest Romantic opera composers. Worth a watch if you're bored,

 

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I got a new Tristan on DVD, £2ish second hand Amazon market place. Levine at the Met, 1999. I cannot find any clips but here is the cover,

7156moq9q8L._SY445_.jpg

Pity Levine is up on sexual misconduct charges haha but that is the way of the world I suppose.

PS

This is rather Tristan for BBW lovers. I don't want to be cruel but my idea of Isolde, ''mein Irish Kind'', I should point out is,

tristan_iseult_k.jpg

''Celtic alluring sorceress'' vibe.

This production's Isolde,

Spoiler

maxresdefault.jpg

This is made more amusing by some of the lines in the libretto, 

Quote

Isolde sinks gently...on to Tristan's body.

and,

Quote

The ship is in harbour!
Isolde - ah,
with a single bound
she is leaping ashore!

The production actual has to accommodate the leads' tremendous bulk!

Edited by DieselDaisy
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Another Tristan,

This is sublime - finally a (filmed) Tristan I love.

PS

This is the one I'd recommend by the way - forget the versions I posted above. Watch this! I'll continue viewing more Tristans however (I hope to see it live one day also).

Edited by DieselDaisy
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