Can We Talk About Race?

[TadOverdon]

She may be trying to be clever, but I (edit) don't (inserted) think she is.

White's may be able to play jazz or even write jazz, but blacks created it. Jazz and Blues are the creations of blacks in the United States. It was created from inside them, from suffering and oppression. I'm not being racist. But when whites moved into jazz it changed a bit, not for the worse, not for the better, just different. But still it was created by the Afro-American community.

Much as the Beatles built on the sound they heard from America, (Elvis Presley being one of their primary sources) Elvis and others, built on and changed Afro-American music into a hybrid with the roots of this new music springing from soul, jazz, and the style called rhythm and blues, r'n'b, and Evils and others morphed these styles into Rocky-a-Billy and Rock & Roll. So the R&R was born. The haters of the time, called Rock N Roll black music played by white performers, however it was hybrid and played by the best of both races.

But Jazz, the Blues, Soul and color has every thing to do with birth of Rock & Roll.

 

[Bramblethorn]

White's may be able to play jazz or even write jazz, but blacks created it. Jazz and Blues are the creations of blacks in the United States. It was created from inside them, from suffering and oppression. I'm not being racist. But when whites moved into jazz it changed a bit, not for the worse, not for the better, just different. But still it was created by the Afro-American community.

Much as the Beatles built on the sound they heard from America, (Elvis Presley being one of their primary sources) Elvis and others, built on and changed Afro-American music into a hybrid with the roots of this new music springing from soul, jazz, and the style called rhythm and blues, r'n'b, and Evils and others morphed these styles into Rocky-a-Billy and Rock & Roll. So the R&R was born. The haters of the time, called Rock N Roll black music played by white performers, however it was hybrid and played by the best of both races.

But Jazz, the Blues, Soul and color has every thing to do with birth of Rock & Roll.

Well, virtually everything you said here is musically and historically inaccurate about R&B, rock & roll, and the Beatles and Elvis, but I applaud the attitude.

This reads as unnecessarily patronising, and in itself not very accurate.

The Beatles' American influences (and in particular, Black American R&B) are obvious to anybody who's spent five minutes with their catalogue. Just from the singles: "When The Saints Go Marching In", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Sweet Georgia Brown", "Twist and Shout", "Ain't She Sweet", "If You Love Me Baby", "Matchbox", "Slow Down", "Rock and Roll Music", "Act Naturally", "Boys", and "Kansas City" are all covers of American songs, many by Black artists.

Both John and Paul acknowledged Elvis as a huge influence.

So, not sure what you think is "inaccurate" about what Millie wrote about the Beatles there. Most of the rest looks pretty accurate to me to, give or take the argument about just when rock 'n' roll reached White audiences. (Elvis wasn't the first there, but he was huge.)

 

[LAHomedog]

This reads as unnecessarily patronising, and in itself not very accurate.

The Beatles' American influences (and in particular, Black American R&B) are obvious to anybody who's spent five minutes with their catalogue. Just from the singles: "When The Saints Go Marching In", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Sweet Georgia Brown", "Twist and Shout", "Ain't She Sweet", "If You Love Me Baby", "Matchbox", "Slow Down", "Rock and Roll Music", "Act Naturally", "Boys", and "Kansas City" are all covers of American songs, many by Black artists.

Both John and Paul acknowledged Elvis as a huge influence.

So, not sure what you think is "inaccurate" about what Millie wrote about the Beatles there. Most of the rest looks pretty accurate to me to, give or take the argument about just when rock 'n' roll reached White audiences. (Elvis wasn't the first there, but he was huge.)

Thank you so much for schooling me on The Beatles. I didn't know any of that. Thanks. Maybe you can answer a couple of things I always wanted to know:

Where was McCartney living when he wrote "Yesterday." One of my favorite songs. And who did he sing it to for the first time? The first person on earth to hear it. I bet that was really cool. .

Thanks!

 

[CyranoJ]

Where was McCartney living when he wrote "Yesterday." One of my favorite songs. And who did he sing it to for the first time? The first person on earth to hear it. I bet that was really cool.

I've got this!

William Shatner. Right?

I'm right, aren't I? The Shat. Nobody else it could be.

https://media.giphy.com/media/3oz8xDNG4fhijEKLra/giphy.gif

 

[MillieDynamite]

This may be blasphemy, but the song called Yesterday wasn't written or performed by the Beatles. Roy Clark's Yesterday is to me, deeper emotionally. The song is about life wasted in the pursuit of fame and fortune at expense of the one he loved.

I realize some will disagree, and that is perfectly understandable.

But sometime give the song a chance. The last verse sums up things nicely. I'd call Clark's Yesterday an example of Country Blues. And a lot of Country music is blues of a sort, minus the pickup trucks and concentrating on the cheating spouses.

"There are so many songs in me that won't be sung
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue
The time has come for me to pay
For yesterday when I was young"

 

[SimonDoom]

Where was McCartney living when he wrote "Yesterday." One of my favorite songs. And who did he sing it to for the first time? The first person on earth to hear it. I bet that was really cool. .

Thanks!

I'm not sure where he was but he came up with the melody before the lyrics and the first lyric he sang to it was not "yesterday" but "Scrambled eggs." I love that.

"Scrambled eggs

All I want to eat is scrambled eggs"

You're not 100% wrong about the Beatles. Paul and John in their early days playing together owed a big debt to R&B based rock n roll, as B said. They did a lot of covers of those songs. They were huge fans of those songs and learned their trade playing them. But when they started writing their own music in 1963-64 a lot of their music took off in a completely different direction, with novel and different chord changes that owed little to the blues/r&b tradition.

Still, for their entire career many of their songs continued to be based on the blues chord progression, which is the foundation for a huge part of blues, jazz, rock, and country music. Songs that followed that progression, more or less, included I Saw Her Standing There, Paperback Writer, Revolution, Get Back, Back in the USSR, Yer Blues, I Want You, etc.

 

[LAHomedog]

This may be blasphemy, but the song called Yesterday wasn't written or performed by the Beatles. Roy Clark's Yesterday is to me, deeper emotionally. The song is about life wasted in the pursuit of fame and fortune at expense of the one he loved.

I realize some will disagree, and that is perfectly understandable.

But sometime give the song a chance. The last verse sums up things nicely. I'd call Clark's Yesterday an example of Country Blues. And a lot of Country music is blues of a sort, minus the pickup trucks and concentrating on the cheating spouses.

"There are so many songs in me that won't be sung
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue
The time has come for me to pay
For yesterday when I was young"

You can't copyright a title.

BTW: I worked with Roy a lot. Great guy. Most think of him as the "Hee Haw" guy and don't understand what a world class guitar player he was. Buck Owens was a lot of fun too, and gave the world the Bakersfield Sound. My fav was Hoyt Axton. What a gem of a human being. He also really liked weed a lot.

 

[LAHomedog]

I'm not sure where he was but he came up with the melody before the lyrics and the first lyric he sang to it was not "yesterday" but "Scrambled eggs." I love that.

"Scrambled eggs

All I want to eat is scrambled eggs"

You're not 100% wrong about the Beatles. Paul and John in their early days playing together owed a big debt to R&B based rock n roll, as B said. They did a lot of covers of those songs. They were huge fans of those songs and learned their trade playing them. But when they started writing their own music in 1963-64 a lot of their music took off in a completely different direction, with novel and different chord changes that owed little to the blues/r&b tradition.

Still, for their entire career many of their songs continued to be based on the blues chord progression, which is the foundation for a huge part of blues, jazz, rock, and country music. Songs that followed that progression, more or less, included I Saw Her Standing There, Paperback Writer, Revolution, Get Back, Back in the USSR, Yer Blues, I Want You, etc.

Tomorrow when I am not so tired, I plan to write a long and detailed reply to Bramblethorn where unlike my response to the fabulous MillieDynamite where I was in my own way trying to be nice, I intend to be as horribly pedantic as he said I was.


I'll confess to being a sarcastic dick with my question. The answer is during the height of Beatlemania, Paul lived in the London family home of his girlfriend Jane Asher, the actress. The family had a music room in the front of the house and Paul wrote "Yesterday" on the piano there. (Scrambled eggs was his "placeholder lyric.") When her was finished, he asked Jane's brother Peter Asher -- of Peter and Gordon fame who went on to become one of the greatest music producers of rock and folk, still active today) to come into the room, and Peter sat on the couch and was the first person on earth to hear Paul McCartney sing "Yesterday."

He also was sitting on the same couch and watched John and Paul actually write "I Want To Hold Your Hand." What a life this guy has had!

 

[Bramblethorn]

Thank you so much for schooling me on The Beatles. I didn't know any of that. Thanks. Maybe you can answer a couple of things I always wanted to know:

Where was McCartney living when he wrote "Yesterday." One of my favorite songs. And who did he sing it to for the first time? The first person on earth to hear it. I bet that was really cool. .

Thanks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday_(Beatles_song)#Origin

 

[Bramblethorn]

Tomorrow when I am not so tired, I plan to write a long and detailed reply to Bramblethorn where unlike my response to the fabulous MillieDynamite where I was in my own way trying to be nice, I intend to be as horribly pedantic as he said I was.


I'll confess to being a sarcastic dick with my question.

Thanks for the warning. Given how patronising your "trying to be nice" was, if you're going out of your way to be an asshole that sounds like a good time for me to put you on ignore.

 

[LAHomedog]

Thanks for the warning. Given how patronising your "trying to be nice" was, if you're going out of your way to be an asshole that sounds like a good time for me to put you on ignore.

Go wild.

 

[LAHomedog]

Thanks for the warning. Given how patronising your "trying to be nice" was, if you're going out of your way to be an asshole that sounds like a good time for me to put you on ignore.

And if you haven't put me "on ignore" yet, please allow me to point out that you were actually the person who started this by jumping in to a comment I made to someone else.

I never posted, addressed or said anything to you. You punched first. And rather than responding harshly, I asked you a simple couple of questions that you never responded to.

Isn't digital communication fun? You can have a hissy fit with someone you've never met on the complete opposite side of the world. Whoopee!

 

[CyranoJ]

So... no love for The Shat, to be clear? Y'all just gonna leave The Transformed Man hanging like that?

Damn. Cold galaxy, bro. I guess I'm just gonna have to hang in the sky, with Lucy and her diamonds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB3uVARNhmM&ab_channel=OikocOylj1

 

[Bramblethorn]

Paul and John in their early days playing together owed a big debt to R&B based rock n roll, as B said. They did a lot of covers of those songs. They were huge fans of those songs and learned their trade playing them. But when they started writing their own music in 1963-64 a lot of their music took off in a completely different direction, with novel and different chord changes that owed little to the blues/r&b tradition.

Oh absolutely. American R&B/R&R was never their only influence, and in later years they made the most of the creative freedoms/opportunities that their early fame allowed them. But like you say, the US influences were still there even to the last track of "Let It Be". It's reasonable to describe that as "built on the sound they heard from America"; nobody's claiming that's where they stopped.

 

[Bramblethorn]

So... no love for The Shat, to be clear? Y'all just gonna leave The Transformed Man hanging like that?

Damn. Cold galaxy, bro. I guess I'm just gonna have to hang in the sky, with Lucy and her diamonds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB3uVARNhmM&ab_channel=OikocOylj1

It's okay, but it's no "Common People" or "Incubus".

And it's definitely no "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins".

 

[CyranoJ]

It's okay, but it's no "Common People" or "Incubus".

And it's definitely no "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins".

Harsh... but fair.

 

[LAHomedog]

Thanks for the warning. Given how patronising your "trying to be nice" was, if you're going out of your way to be an asshole that sounds like a good time for me to put you on ignore.

Gosh darn it. I hate it when someone picks a fight and turns out to be pussy and runs away.

"Knock, knock on door, Mrs. Bramblethorn, can Bramblethorn come out to play? Oh, they can't? Hiding under the bed. Gosh. Oh my. Sorry. Thanks."

Darn.

Oh well, I guess I'll save my Beatles post for another thread, especially since this one is about racial references and not rock and roll. Then again, the so called 5th Beatle was Billy Preston, who was black, even though the actually 5th Beatle was Stu Sutcliffe.

Having said that, there was always the early, under appreciated Guitar God Don Peake who at 16 was the lead guitar player for the Everly Brothers who when they toured England in the early '60s everyone went crazy for. Keith Richards even mentioned him in Keith's biography. The Beatles adored him. George especially along with Chet Atkins, the country guitar great.

Don, a member of the Los Angeles famous Wrecking Crew, went on to be the very first white player in Ray Charles's band. He is mentioned in the movie. Now we are back to race. A white guy in one of the ultimate black bands.

Knock, knock, Mrs. Bramblethorn, can Bramblethorn come out to play?

Chicken shit.

 

[LAHomedog]

You are off point. Please go back to the top of the thread.

Thanks.

 

[LAHomedog]

As this thread shows, in general, yes. But some people seem to have other issues, and shouldn't bother the AH with their childish behaviour.

Thanks for the thought. Appreciate it.

 

[LAHomedog]

As this thread shows, in general, yes. But some people seem to have other issues, and shouldn't bother the AH with their childish behaviour.

Gosh, I'm sorry. Do you object to a true and authentic discussion on here? Somehow are you bothered by fair argument and discussion?

Why is having a a disagreement or an argument "childish behavior?"

You sound like my mother.

Reasonable adults are allowed to disagree. Newsflash! It is not childish behavior. As long as it is civil and polite, it is actually adult behavior.

Grow up.

 

[Deleted member 3041612]

Race in this text may not be an easy one, but is worthy of discussion. Conversations are beginning. Thoughts are being shared. Comfort levels are different for each one of us. I’m saying this as a Black female.

LAHomedog, I commend you for opening up this dialogue. I’m not the only Black person commenting, I hope. I’m letting you know ideas can’t be shared if attention is not put out there to speak on it. Truths and myths can’t be known if everyone keeps quiet.

 

[XerXesXu]

Well I'm glad music still arouses passion here, even if it's just flag-waving passion

Back to willy-waving briefly, if I may. I feel I’ve unfinished business. Allow me to clarify. You’ll need to read between the edited highlights.

Years ago I was engaged to do research on the disappearance of chattel slavery under English common-law. In brief, it didn’t disappear, but the villeins did.

The 1619 project, and the narratives it fuelled, piqued my interest.

The problematic legal status of these bonded Africans at common-law prompted legislation. Importantly, it didn’t simply reproduce villeinage. The child of a free man and a villein was free (a child out of wedlock was presumed that of a freeman). The child of a freeman and a statutory slave woman was a slave. After many generations, if you had but one drop of African blood, without intervening manumission, you'd remain a slave.

Move now to the 1850s. The Enlightment had passed into the Age-of-Science. In a few years Charles Darwin would publish The Origin of the Species, which proposes a credible mechanism for evolution. In the meantime the world’s bio-scientists speculated about catastrophic extinctions and speciation; they measure and compare fossils of extinct and living creatures, they measure and compare the features of living species, they measure and compare the features of living races. There was no clear conceptual distinction between a race and a species. They measured and compared the differences between Europeans and Africans, nose and lips, legs, gait, penises, bumps on the head etc and matched that to manifest behaviours. Africans’ bodies and brain size were said to be clearly more adapted to servile work that Europeans, and their large penises more adapted to animalistic rutting.

Horses and donkeys produce mules and hinnies, there are Ligers and Tigons. Someone created a word to describe a cross between a person of African descent and a person of European descent – a miscegenation.

Dred Scott (SCOTUS)
To give a flavour of the long, and comprehensive judgement, it ruled that, imagine, the words ‘All men’ in expressions like ‘All men are created equal’ could not be construed so broadly as to include persons of African descent. That very notion would have been morally repugnant to the Founding Fathers (whose generation they called Daddy and Granddad and who bounced them on their knee, then taught them at school and university- so they would have known).

I, too, am capable of feeling moral repugnance, and there are many things about White Supremacy which are morally repugnant to me, and measuring penises to determine if you can be embraced by the term ‘man’ as a description of a species is repugnant to me.

But words and ideas become detached from their histories. The N word has been reclaimed. Maybe the BBC trope has also been reclaimed. If the worst insult you can sling at a man is “You’ve got a big dick”, then that’s a mark of progress.

 

[lovecraft68]

Right. Post nr 197 is your idea of 'not childish', 'civil and polite', and 'adult behaviour'?

Not how I teach my children.

I'd like to remind you of how the target of #197 spewed nothing but childish abuse at someone in another thread and forum for making a joke that was probably funny years ago, but you shouldn't tell now.

Your comment on that thread was there was no attempt at a conversion, just abuse. And you were right, it was a bunch of self righteous asshats ganging up on someone to show how woke they are, no attempt to explain what that stuff isn't funny anymore or who it could hurt...

This thread is so of shit its not funny, so many people tiptoeing around what they really thing as opposed to god forbid they say something one of the phonies here can construe as ignorant or the dreaded R word.

Childish is on full display here because only childish adults are afraid to say their true piece because demonstrated here, truth gets you snark, but when snark is countered with snark, then that's what's called out

Passive aggressive bullshit from the type so obsessed with saying what they've been led to believe is right, they can't be honest, even with themselves.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'll throw some into meltdown and talk about how in my more serious works-nothing on here-I use racial, sexist and homophobic slurs. I don't use them often, just here and there and in books that touch the 450 page mark, nothing is effective if its overused.

In other words, I'm not Tarantino who slings the N word like its a joke and of course never hears a word about it just like he doesn't about being a rape enabler because you phonies like his movies so its cool he's a POS

I have characters who are total shit stains old mobsters-and let me tell you, as someone married to a Sicilian who has uncles who prove there are few groups more "ist' than an old Italian guy-its accurate they have those ignorant views and sling them.

I've already dealt with a couple members of the professionally offended calling me a racist because I'm writing characters who are. I write about killers, hookers, abusers and other types of people, and I'm none of those either.

This sanitizing of writing, and movies and everything else going on today is censorship and takes us down a dangerous path when a group of whiny make believe dogooders try to control what we can and cannot say, because as we all know, it starts with one thing and just keeps going.

If you have a desire to portray realism in your work, you are going to show the worst type of people and they have to act that way...or are we now going to have PC antagonists?

Funny though how the people who complained about the one racial slur in the section of the book they read had no issue with the use of the word cunt or the guy slapping his wife around.

A fickle lot, the woke are. DA is nowhere near the amount of self righteous points crying about race gets them.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I think most writing is a reflection of the attitudes we see. We incorporate whatever we want to achieve those reflections. It doesn’t mean they are reflections of our attitudes. Race as issues and attitudes is so complicated in society. While many stories are stilted to stereotypes, archetypes, and filled with tropes (that work), it doesn’t mean a person who writes showing or using racism is racist.

I don’t beat up writers for racism in stories, and yes, I do use racist and racism in some stories. I’m considering stopping writing fans requests. The following is from an email I received recently.

>>>>

“I have two ideas. Let me know if either sounds like something you would be interested in doing.

Unpopular guy tries pledging to frat in college and gets tasked with getting a video of sorority girls making out. He goes to his lesbian cousin for help and she agrees but she has her own agenda.

Eighteen year old white high school senior gets bullied by the star black football player and one day gets pantsed by him and the entire school sees his small dick. He has enough and goes to complain to bully’s mother. She turns out to be a very sexy black milf and tells him she won’t punish her son but she will take his virginity to make up for the bullying instead.”

<<<<

These are crap straight from porn videos, and I’m not about to write this shit the way he has asked me to. As you can see, I didn’t edit his email.