Saturday, May 07, 2005

Shock of the New

There has scarcely been a new phenomenon that transformed the culture which hasn't been relentlessly mocked at the outset. (That Dave Eggers was immediately accepted by the establishment showed he wasn't the genuine article.)

This includes Elvis and the Beatles, the last real wave of transformation.

I've given the example often of Elvis's first appearance on the Tommy Dorsey Show with the other two members of his combo (related in Last Train to Memphis) when they were still unknown in New York. Highly-skilled jazz drummer Buddy Rich looked with contempt at the ill-clad yokels. "These guys can't even play their instruments!" he howled. Yet within two years Dorsey and Rich were swept out of the picture by the tidal wave of rock n' roll-- which reached, better than they, strains of feeling and truth within the American people.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Um . . . yeah. Except that Elvis was a musical genius--could sing, dance, and was brilliant at arrangement--whereas you and no one in your group is not. It's not that your shock of the new theory is wrong. It's not it doesn't apply to you. More like the Shock of the Awful. The Shit of the Anus. Oh, and comparing the ULA to the arrival fo the Elvis and the Beatles is about 10,000 times more megalomaniacal and shitty than Rick Moody at his not incosiderable worst. Fuck you, King!

King Wenclas said...

That was quite an intelligent comment. Pretty bothered by us, aren't you?
Try actually reading some of our writers sometime. Unlike standard "lit" writing, the best work of Noah Cicero, James Nowlan, Joe Pachinko and the rest of our gang rocks.
(Beyond your comprehension I guess. Maybe a little too off the deep end, too wild, for the tamed ones. Catch even Frank Walsh's comments on this blog: pure genius-- someone who can use words without being uptight about it.)
Time for you to go back to what you do best, chump: sucking-up.