BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?

Subject: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: *daylia*
Date: 03 Feb 06 - 09:51 AM

K folks, I've really hit rock bottom today and I know I'll feel better if I drag you all down with me. Ready? Here goes ...

After a lifetime of hearing, playing, studying, practicing, teaching and enjoying all manner of music, I see now that I've been most diabolically misguided. I have, in effect, fallen in love with and devoted my entire most miserable life to the immortally and monstrously evil time-waster called music. The evidence is simply overwhelming. Just ponder these points, for starters --

* Countless innocent birds and animals died absolutely horrible, vicious deaths to provide early humans with bones and skins for making the first musical instruments. Obviously, all the negative karma accumulated by our ancient ancestors in their bloodlust for music-making still infects music and musicians today. Hence, the appearance of such genres as "death metal", "atonal", "traditional folk".

* Music has been used throughout history to march the soldiers off to slaughter;

* Even the most pathetic specimens of humanity have been crowned as monarchs to the evilly sweet and majestically deceptive sounds of music;

* The most notorious and ignoble of human infants in history have been lulled off to sleep with music. For instance, I bet even Dracula's mother sang him lullabyes and soothing little nursery rhymes to ease all that teeeeeeething!

* Music is so awful an influence on humans it wastes them, quite literally. Those who become hopelessly obsessed with it pay for it with their lives. Just look at the evidence -- every musician in history has ended up dead!   No kidding! And the end is never, never easy. Oh no! Look what happened to Beethoven's ears! Or Schumann's pinkie on his right hand, or Chopin's lungs, Janis Joplin's larnyx, Michael Jackson's sex appeal, Elton John's waistline ...

* Just yesterday, one of my students had an awful experience on the way to his music lesson. The windshield on his mom's van suddenly smashed to smithereens, for no apparent reason. I kid you not. No doubt it was the work of a host of vicious unseen entities gathered around him as he prepared for his piano lesson. Music attracts all manner of entities, after all -- and imperfect music, such as what is typically produced by students like him, draws the most vicious and evil of them all.

Oh, the pain and horror of s miserable life wasted teaching this most ignoble of arts is almost too much to bear! But my musical habits are so entrenched by now I really need your help giving it up. So please, post any evidence and/or flaming attacks against music and musicians right here. Don't concern yourself about whether your arguments are flawed or even completely fallacious-- in the spirit of a similarly-titled Mudcat thread of surprising longevity, just go right ahead and vent.

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Feb 06 - 11:34 AM

awww..shucks! There in the last lines you prohibited the only thing I do well! Can I vent about that? ☻

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 03 Feb 06 - 12:33 PM

Was it Loyola who said "It doesn't matter who writes the speeches as long as I can write the sings."?

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: GUEST,Blind DRunk in Blind River
Date: 03 Feb 06 - 01:36 PM

Well...FLIP me! I ain't sure if yer right or not, eh? But I do know this: Music has flippin' caused a lot of, like, propitty damage and teen pregnhancies too. I can flippin' vowhch for that. Music makes people go crazy, man. I seen it enuff times to know, eh? Some of us like that. I know I do. But I admit it has caused a lotta trouble and it might be the flippin' downfall of cilivization as we have knoen it. Maybe.

- Shane

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 03 Feb 06 - 01:48 PM

I knew that Bodhrans and banjos were bad!

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: *daylia*
Date: 05 Feb 06 - 08:46 AM

Shane ole buddy ole pal! Good to hear from ya! Whatcha doin tonight? Give me a call ok? Lets go drink a whacka brewskies and talk fullashitty fullosophy eh?

Bill please go right ahead and VENT about whatever u like. No holds barred on this thread! Besides, you can't pull the wool over my eyes y'know. I've seen you do other things well. Like speaking from the heart. Only very special philosophers can do that    ;-)

Researching this topic over last couple days, I find myself very confused. There's such contradictory evidence out there, for example, from the BBC Jan 30th
Music is as vital as the three R's

Learning to play an instrument boosts intelligence and general well-being and should be a central part of the school curriculum, a study says.

Professor Susan Hallam at the University of London's Institute of Education said playing music together also taught children to work as a team.


Sounds good huh? HA!! Don't be fooled. Just check this out --- Evil music blamed for suicide

The father of a heavy metal rock singer who killed himself has blamed the band's "dark and evil" music for his suicide.

Gareth Bonetto, 29, was known as Mad Eddie Richards in his role as singer with Pontypridd band Blood Retch.

He hanged himself in March after weeks of hospital psychiatric treatment.

His father Lawrence told an inquest in Merthyr Tydfil it was as though his son was "two different people" when he was in the band ... "His music was dark and evil and it did for him."


But then again, here's a study hot off the press at the University of Toronto, indicating that even just a couple months of private music lessons boosts children's IQ and enhances performance in all areas of life:

Music Lessons Enhance IQ (pdf file)

Music lessons involve long periods of focused attention, daily practice, reading musical notation, memorization of extended musical passages, learning about a variety of musical structures (eg. intevals, scales, chords, chord progressions) and progressive mastery of technical (ie., fine motor) skills and the conventions governing the expression of emotions in performance. THis combination of experiences could have a positive effect on cognition, particularly during the childhood years, when brain development is highly plastic and subject to environmental influence.

... Music lessons cause small increases in IQ but comparable nonmusical activities do not ... by contrast, drama lessons had favorable effects on social behavior that were not evident in the music groups.

See?!? Music students do not excel in social skills! Makes 'em smart but gives no heart, huh? THat's it --- do the whole human race a favour. Repent thy evil ways! Throw away all your instruments, smash your CD players and abolish music once and for all I say!

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: The Shambles
Date: 05 Feb 06 - 09:27 AM

Is it is only with folk - that you get good people making bad music?

Is it only with blues - that you get bad people making good music?

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Feb 06 - 10:14 AM

Take two aspirin and come back in the morning.

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: harmony
Date: 05 Feb 06 - 01:33 PM

All is perverted at some point. But there is real beauty in music. I listened to Emmylou's michaelangelo today and who can deny the beauty in that song?

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: autolycus
Date: 05 Feb 06 - 04:47 PM

*daylia*

I'm sorry you're very down. It's obviously an unpleasant/horrible place to be.

To go along with you,one vent first.

   I take heart from E.Presley allegedly saying,"I don't know anything about music. In my line of work you don't have to."

   Couldn't have put that better - so,E.P., bloody go awaaaaaaaaayyyy.

   BUT I don't believe music is the real difficulty, anymore than it was for the "metal suicide". Music's just the scapegoat. *daylia*, I bet your downness, for which commiserations is about other things, tho' I'm too much the Gestalt therapist to start surmising or guessing, and, in a way, it's none of my business.

   Music can't MAKE people do this or that. When we say that, where is our taking OUR responsibility for ourselves. Blaming lets us off the hook.

Maybe , *daylia*, you are finished with music;maybe not. I don't feel music is the problem,(except, maybe for Wagner, Schoenberg and rock 'n' roll)as such, any more than money, drugs, war, lack of money, religion,or other targets.

Life is hard, and all we've got.

Wishing you the best,

Auto.

Subject: RE: BS: Music = good folk doing bad things?
From: GUEST,Shimbles
Date: 05 Feb 06 - 06:39 PM

Shambles is responsible for this, so don't blame Daylia. Shambles is a canker sore that will not go away.