America's Exorcism

American popular music used to be a big thing.  American popular music at one time made more money than Hollywood movies.  At one time American music performers were the conscience of popular culture.  It is plausible also they influenced mainstream thought, habits, and consciousness.  American Rock 'n' Roll, of which I missed, apparently was the soul of America.  It was not just the music for young people, it became the heartbeat of America.  We know so little about our own gifts.  2020 perhaps is the most shallow and ignorant generation of all time, but we have had a lot with which to contend.  2020 aside modern cultural ignorance has been in the making since the turn of the century.  I feel 2000 was the turning point.  Shit took a hike at the turn of the century.  Watch a movie made before 2000 and most likely you will see a story and filming of substance.  It will engage you, and often it will enhance your perspective.  2000 was like a lightswitch that got flipped off.  No matter how much I ignore it the issue of "pop" keeps rearing its ugly head.  It is huge.  As I was watching Austin City Limits last night, the label for the band was Texas soul.  Okay.  I understand that.  Then I listened to the bass player.  The sole defining aspect of this Texas soul was what the bass player played, and it was not soul.  It was "pop."  I have defined "pop" before, and I will define it again.  It is not just a shortened version of the word popular.  A more accurate definition would "poppy."  Fluffy.  Fluff.  Onomatopoeia is a good way to define "pop."  Puff.  Pop.  It is fluffy and undefined.  It weakly blows in your ear.  When I first discovered this style of music while working on cruise ships, I discovered that the bass is the major defining element of "pop" music.  It is the rhythmic placement of the bass notes and what comes in between the major pulses or quarter notes.  In essence one can play the "pop" style without having to feel time.  What!  There you have it.  You could play music without having to feel or count the time in your mind, heart, or soul.  There it is.  It is a shortcut or a cheap way of performing what should be authentic music.  If you don't have to internalize a tempo or a feel or groove, then you are not a musician.  You are a hack.  Pop musicians, but not all of them, adhere to this principle.  You can get drunk, get high, and fuck off on stage and make your fingers move in a particular way you have learned by rote.  It is nothing.  I was not particularly waiting to feel any Texas soul, but it was not possible because the bassist was playing the "pop" pattern.  It is a pattern that mimics the strumming of the guitar.  At some point in American popular music, all testicles were castrated, masculinity was discarded, and music was transformed into an insipid, tepid, worthless milieu.  It has been for the last twenty years.  As such the experience, education, and training needed to play popular music with integrity has been forfeited.  Welcome to 2020, the year of....  The year of?  The year the American president lies to the public every time he opens his mouth.  It is the year of fraud.  It is the year of mockery.  It is the year that God no longer can stand what is happening on earth.  The most disconcerting thing is "pop" musicians are like corrupt politicians.  They also will lie to your face.  They will disparage you.  They will build themselves up.  They will slander real music with nary a care in the world.  "Pop" musicians I feel may be the biggest threat on the planet, because they can be in a position to effect societal perception.  I quit complaining about "pop," but it keeps rearing its ugly head.  Jazz 24, the streaming internet radio station, plays quality music, but a good deal of it really is pop jazz.  It, like any music, can be retooled to exist in a "pop" format.  When this happens, the original feel of the music is lost.  The feeling of the music is absent and also impossible, because this simplistic pattern a bassist plays is not capable of producing a rhythmic feel.  It is a string of puffy, square, quantized notes devoid of any human emotion.  It takes no emotion, soul, or energy to create such a line, and that is why they play it.  It is easy.  It is a deception.  I would characterize all music as "soul" music.  Who would want to listen to or experience any kind of music without soul?  It would be called noise, and this is to what we listen most of the time.  It is all over television.  It is in our stores while we shop.  It is everywhere, because businessmen discovered that this worthless concoction of noise makes people buy.  It is so disconcerting and aggravating, people buy things to appease their ill feelings.  What a tool.  The only reason I can assume musicians would adopt such a practice, is because we as Americans have forgotten what real life experience is and feels like.  It is called education.  Education is learning from one's experiences.  You have to experience something to learn from it.  For example I read two wrong wiring schematics on the interent for the Leslie 122 amplifier, and consequently installed a resistor in the wrong circuit.  It blew my fuse and otherwise caused mayhem in my life, but it also was the catalyst for better things such as addressing the real issue that was affecting my Hammond organ.  Without the process of having installed this part and it blowing the fuse, I would not have discovered the real problematic issue.  It takes time for the realization to become known.  You have to be bold enough to make the mistakes, because, "Evil proliferates when good men do nothing."  Instinctively I knew installing this resistor was going to cause a problem, but it also opened an avenue for a better outcome.  I can't watch any band on television these days. First the "musicians" are not playing anything.  They fake it with prerecorded tracks.  Tracks are the basis of the product.  No one seems to mind.  Often times it is one rapper cavorting about to a track.  This is not music.  Jimi Hendrix is music.  John Coltrane is music.  Amy Winehouse was music.  America in my estimation is tired of the fraud.  We are tired of the Donald Trump charade.  America, if she is to sustain, must spew this filth from her mouth and anus.  Those who choose not to participate in this exorcism are no better.