Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Ain't This America What is distinctive about American art and letters

Might hanging out with the likes of us evoke faint feelings of nostalgia?

Your concern for our welfare is appreciated. But you could also just sit back and enjoy us from a distance. We do have fun, in our own base ways. After all, life is short and, in the end, none of what we artistically value...or don't value...matters. Creating and choosing from the heart does.

No worry, numan
Much of this collection is old and the rest is...old too (and been through other hands).
We listen to it often (last night) and have no plans to exchange it for something else.
We enjoy what we enjoy.

thankfully LPs are making a comeback. record companies have been expanding their offerings by producing LPs recently and you can find more and more of them for sale just about anywhere. you can also find great turntable set-ups on e-bay.

Yes, I suppose LPs are makining a comeback. It is nice if only for the nostalgia of it. But, it will reamain a niche market. Very few people have the motivaton or discernment to explore the sonic benifits of the LP.

It is obvious that record companies could ude dvd, or HD DVD to pack huge amounts of information onto a High def. audio recording. And I guess there actually is a format to release high def. audio recordings. But again, the demand is trivial. A playing CD is seldom more that background music to one's life.

And, in the end, there is no recording that can replace a live performance for those who are truly interested in appreciating music.

absolutely
we love our albums and enjoy them with an intensity
but as most of you know, we go to music concerts too....a lot.

and im sure you athens folk get some good shows your way.

BULLS..T! Everyone, great artist or not, has the right to expose himself to whatever he wants--as long as he doesn't drag anyone else--even a barbaric and uncouth American--along with him.

That is true up to a point.

A really good LP recording, played on those very few properly configured sound systems which exist, can reproduce sound with a clarity, linearity, and dynamic range that most people never experience on garden variety sound systems. Listening to a great artist on such a system is far superior to listening to a mediocre performer live.

Just as it is true that the American public has been dumbed down by advertising and other forms of propaganda, so has the tolerance for bad sound reproduction been increased by worse and worse sound recording and penny-pinching motives.

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Many persons have been mentioned on this thread as paladins of American culture.

Almost all of them are deriviative, or superificial --- or both. [One person even brought up the name of John Wayne! Let me forget that as soon as may be possible!]

Frank Lloyd Wright, Jackson Pollock, the Wyeths, Mark Twain, e e cummings, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Aaron Copland, Alan Hovaniss --- these few are artists who are worthy of deep respect, but beyond them the pickings become slim indeed.

Moreover, European culture has seen many creative revolutions in art, for example, Impressionism. America has been extremely derivative and uninventive, with the exception of jazz and its satellite, rock-and-roll. A rather shaky case might also be made for motion picture technique.

However, if America had produced many times the number of the artists whom I have mentioned, ranking with them in quality, it would still be as nothing compared to the brilliance which has shone forth into the world from Europe.

Starting no earlier than the era when the ill-begotten American Republic was formed, one might mention Mozart and Beethoven in music, and Goethe in literature, who by themselves outshine the whole pantheon of American practioners of their respective arts.

But many Americans, being ignorant, may not have the knowledge to make a just assessment of Goethe. Let us then, almost at random, throw in Shelley, George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, W. B. Yeats, and Dylan Thomas. They tip the balance decisively in favor of Europe.

As for painting, no one in their right mind would ever rank America's productions with those of Europe! Picasso alone eclipses everything American!

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Numan, you have missed one of the greatest accomplishments ever in American culture and that is the invention of High Frequency Trading. In my mind that is the pinnacle of American art, combined with science.

Enjoy reading the article while you quaff a pint of International Phoenetic Alphabet. Sounds delicious.