////an argument about certain genres being intrinsicallly superior (e.g. blues is superior to hip-hop) versus a more nuanced view that there is good stuff in all genres if you take time to find it. I would incline to the latter viewpoint.////

I just don't like rap. I heard it when I was still pretty young and didn't like it then. And I'm too damned old to listen to it now. If I saw a guy my age listening to rap, I'd think he was an idiot. Pathetic. Trying to be young again. Rap is a one-hit-wonder factory where you'd better hope you can go into acting after you have your hit. It's really a subset of the teeny-boppers. No matter how good you are, you start getting a bit of age on you and you lose your fan base. You ain't cool no more. I have no use for that. In blues, age is respected as it ought to be.

And Lady Gaga seems to me to be a total basket case. When you see people who have to act bizarre in public to get attention it's because they can't get it any other way. But I agree that Justin Bieber is a vapid schmuck although that's being too kind.

////Josepp, you should stop reading the headlines and listening to the superficial stuff, and understand that in England alone there is a rippling, babbling, current of music that never makes the 'news'. You could attend the annual Bury Blues Festival, the annual Rockabilly Rave at Camber Sands, numerous folk festivals at venues all over the country, acoustic and electric sessions in pubs and clubs, the Donington Park heavy metal-fest...////

Yeah, we have the same stuff in America--blues festivals, folk festivals, ragtime festivals, rockabilly festivals and that's all fine and dandy but the public as a whole could case less what happens to these genres. They want to listen to the worst crap you can think of and pay good money to do it. Fat Possum Records should be a major player in the record-buying market but it will never be anything more than what it currently is. I commend those who founded and run it, obviously people with taste and a vision, but the public is just too stupid to listen in any thing resembling great numbers. One Justin Bieber CD will, in 6 months, outsell their entire repertoire over a 10-year period.