Crossroads!

"Adult"? Spare me.

A mob, led by a drummer, rocking back and forth together in the certainty that they're all having a deeply meaningful experience due to the lyrics that nobody in the room can understand.

A tantrum designed to annoy one's parents, made even more ridiculous by being performed by people well old enough to know better. The distinction between that scene and a Nuremberg rally escapes me.

There oughta be a law, no rock and roll musicians be allowed to perform after they reach thirty years old. If they can't take their act into the Holiday Inn circuit they should stay home.

I won't disparage the Nuremberg rallies. Most religious movements and political dynasties throughout history have had one city that could be called the focal point, or heart, of the movement – Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople and so forth. For the Nazis, the heart of their movement was the magnificent medieval city of Nuremberg, symbolizing the link between Germany's Gothic past and its Nazi future.
And you won't see this kind of artistry and logistics again.
At Hitler's personal request, a 31-year-old actress and movie director named Leni Riefenstahl was filming the entire week-long Rally. Utilizing thirty film cameras and 120 technicians, she produced an extraordinary film record of the festivities, featuring many unique camera angles and dramatic lighting effects. Riefenstahl's finished masterpiece, Triumph of the Will, contains many impressive scenes, but perhaps none more powerful than the scene in which Hitler, Himmler, and the new SA leader, Viktor Lutze, walk down a wide aisle in the center of Nuremberg stadium flanked on either side by gigantic formations of Nazis in perfectly aligned columns.

Say what you want, the Germans did things no others were able to do.
And, yes, I am a vierkantkopf.

Triumph des Willens, exactly.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

With no disrespect to Mr. Bruce, his family, or friends:

God Almighty what a bunch of limp posers. Look at that bit of self-important theater, endure the thin vocals from Clapton's girlish pinched mouth then go have a listen to the influences. Muddy Waters, Big Boy Crudup, Sonny Terry, Elmore James, etc. and tell me which is mere commerce and which is real.

Clapton neve claimed to be a singer. His guitar has always been his voice. Jut enjoy it!

Ah yes, "authenticity...." the music guy's sine qua non.

Good God what a bunch of reactionaries you guys are in these comments!

OK, I get it, you've soured on modern life as it is turning out. Me too. But I'm not throwing the pop culture baby out with the bathwater like you folks. PS, I'm likely EVEN OLDER than any of you.

Also: Ginger Baker is still alive?

I apologize for the unkind ox goring.
Really.
As friend Sippican says "Like what you like; I don't care". I'll just add 'maaann' to that.

Hilarious when Clapton goes on about Black Bluesmen and such, he's always got something profound to say. I'm not sure when it all became very embarrassing, quite some time now...who get's into the Rock n' Roll hall of fame, vs. who doesn't. Jagger, Tyler, on and on and on.

Thanks, I hadn't seen that one. You know, you guys if the music's too loud......
and I'm 66 myself and its not too loud for me.

Point of Parliamentary Procedure: going from Godwin to "get off'n my lawn" is contrarian syntax for an internet argument. Please, observe the proper forms for curmudgeonly diatribes-- these youths wearing their togas halfway down their legs; O tempora, O mores!; &c.

More to the point (as well as to my liking): http://preview.tinyurl.com/ncqk7u4

No, I will not offer any profundities. As inarticulate as this fella is, unaccustomed to public speaking as I am, I will relate my own feelings and suggest that many others share similar.
I'm sixty-eight now, part of the Greatest Decade, the 60s, and I've stolen some horses, kissed some women, fallen off a few bar stools, survived some firefights.
When these bands, Cream, Hendrix, Santana, the whole San Francisco movement, supply your own very special favorites, when they were young and stupid as we were the music sounded great. We all have aged, those that survived, and I've had some comrades fall, and when I look in the mirror I don't always see the sixty-eight year old guy with gray hair and bald spots, I see the same guy I have always been. What? whatchoo lookin' at?

Hearing the music on the original recordings reinforces that dynamic. Seeing the bands, those that have survived the same ravages of time and substances and life style, seeing them forces me to look at myself more clearly and realize that "Holy shit, lookit Jagger or Clapton or whoever, he sure looks old" carries the sub-text "lookit me and you, we sure look old". That's because they are and we are.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child; I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
1Cor 13:11

For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.
For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
Ecclesiastes 9:4-5

One more quote, get a little perspective here:

"Death is only one stall in the marketplace." Paul Theroux

chas,

The only thing to which I object is the assumed "we," which has made my life miserable for over 50 years. Not everybody, even in the '60s, thought all that noise was the bees' knees, y'know - and I'm only a year older than you are. Pretty much all I've heard since the '50s is "you need to loosen up and appreciate different kinds of music."

Unfortunately, music came to me real early, so by the time rocknroll came along I already had symphonic music, opera from the Saturday afternoon Texaco broadcasts, big band music, various forms of jazz, real bluegrass from the Grand Ole Opry and Flatt & Scruggs on the local farm market shows - all of that and more in my head to compare to "I'm Jussa White Boy Tryna Sound Like A Negro" when it not only came along, but took over the culture. Rocknroll came off second best, to say the least.

By the time I was 15 there was virtually nothing else to be heard on the radio, which was almost completely consumed by the Top 40, and I assume television although I've never watched it much. the world ever since has heard America through the overwhelming screech of electric guitars, and drummers able to play only on the backbeat. When I was a kid Duke Ellington was writing symphonies that you could hear on AM radio. This is not progress.

To add to this absurdity, whole generations of people who bought into the myth that Pissing Off Your Parents Will Save The Planet are now moaning the same adolescent angst well into their 70's. Embarrassing.