Is your heart filled with a love of music, or something else?

Bdp24-

Thought I'd drop a comment here, as I thought you would appreciate it. A neighbor had a BBQ yesterday. One of those "should have been at the right place" kind of talents.  

He had a good friend over- drummer Harold Brown-original member of War with Eric Burdon.

Not very familiar with the band ,and just familiar with their radio hits from the 70's, I quickly realized I'm a  step closer to R&R history.

Harold was the LAST dude to jam with Jimi before his untimely passing.  He had some VERY fascinating stories that went from Big Mama Thornton to a gig he was supposed to be doing with Tupac Shakur.

A very fortunate, genuine guy who experienced the scene as it was once was. Also shared a bit about the even more interesting scene that was going on in SoCal at the time. Discovered he grew up in Long Beach, attended the same H.S. as myself.

He is now just enjoying his life and appears relatively healthy.

It really is a small world. A former co worker was a schoolmate with Mick in England. Now I've come close as I'll ever get to the legends.

I made sure I shook his hand with a VERY firm grip and with the other a handful of shoulder.

If the situation would have permitted, I would have invited him over for a listen and asked endless questions about his experiences.

Great story @tablejockey! If I had been at the Bar-B-Q, Harold and I would have been discussing Earl Palmer, the New Orleans drummer whom I and others credit with creating Rock ’n Roll drumming (okay, D.J. Fontana deserves some credit too ;-).

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Harold had gone to Chadney’s Restaurant in Burbank in the 1990’s to hear Earl’s jazz band, as I and many other drummers did. Living, breathing Rock ’n’ Roll history, right there in front of me onstage. It was surreal!

I took an old friend of mine from San Jose (now making a living playing bass in Los Straitjackets, his first instrument was drums) to hear Earl, and he later brought him in to his studio (16-track analog) to record with a Rockabilly singer he was producing. Earl had not received a demo tape of the material, just came to the session "cold". All three songs, first takes, perfect.

frogman:

"Re: “frictions that arise”: I also agree, but would temper that sentiment with the idea that it is not always inappropriate to know and be confident in being right on a particular topic or issue. Being confident in being right is not necessarily driven by “the need to be right”. Relativism is appropriate only up to certain point. How we deal with and treat each other is the key.

You make excellent points. 

I certainly didn't mean to imply that "the need to be right" is always operating in every case-- only that it's one factor that, acting as an uncoscious driver of behavior, has the capacity to lead to unneccessary friction-- or, as you might put it--  to people not "treating each other" well.

Music, for me, is by far the best artform that exists. 

Nothing surpasses it for: variety, depth and range of emotion, and its ability to be appreciated after so many 'viewings'.

Movies, TV, visual art, plays, etc, can all be great, but even the best of them can only be viewed a limited number of times before they become too well known to be fully enjoyed after a certain point.

But I've lost track of how many times I've listened to music by: Chic Corea, Stravinsky, King Crimson, Univers Zero, Magma, Elliott Carter, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, and an uncountable list of others, and they still reveal new subtleties each time I listen.

There were a number of folks who were dismissive, even derogative, of this genre of music. It was said that rap is not ’real’ music, whatever that’s supposed to mean. I wish these folks can see how rap is becoming the universal language for people around the world, especially those trying to survive in tough environments and circumstances. And it’s not just limited to the United States. Whether it’s Dharavi (Asia’s largest slum in Mumbai, India) or a tough neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, rap music cuts across languages, cultures, and geographic boundaries. It has become the musical language of choice to express not just frustration and angst, but also aspirations and hopes of a better life, a better world.

I can fully appreciate it for these above attributes. Giving voice to so many people that have not historically had one, is a noble attribute.

But I do not judge music on that level. Music for me to enjoy music, it has to have certain attributes, the most important being: very high level of musicianship, musical complexity, wide and deep ranges of emotion conveyed, (usually) long form, with a lot of changes.

Unfortunately for me, Rap has none of those things. It is usually played by mediocre musicians, it is musically simple (basic melodies, simple time signatures, simple chord structures, etc). And those are the main reasons I do not like it. 

As others have said, Rap for me is much closer to spoken word art forms, than musical ones. And since I am not really a fan of spoken word art forms, I am not the best judge on its merits in that regard. I can only judge it on its musical merits, and for me, it fails on that level.