[MD] Turning Point?

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

I thought Quality was not a popularity contest. Seems to me that the Manillow
album's success is simply evidence that people are not discriminating.

But, of course, since you've long advocated (1) a return to the Good Old Days,
and (2) superior ability to discern Quality in music, I'm sure you take this as
evidence that somehow the great undiscerning masses, the great stupid masses
that in their base inadequacy in seeing Quality actually LIKE Mick Jagger, are
maybe, just maybe finally "getting it" by "being more like Platt". I mean,
people are only "not discriminating" when they discriminate differently than
you, right?

Me, I take it as evidence that art is gloriously diverse, and if you like
Manillow, if he sings to you, then that is fine, buy it and enjoy it. But
personally, to me Manillow is one of the least Quality singers out there, to
the point where making fun of him is like taking potshots at someone who is
already down on the ground. I would rather hear fingernails on a chalkboard
that to listen to his sappy, prefabricated prostituion of music in line with
Pirsig's sentiment of the sappy boat singer...

"Yeah. It's all taking the customer's money and giving him exactly what he wants
and then leaving him poorer than when he started. That's what that singer was
doing with those songs. She could have sung something original and left them
richer, but she didn't want to do that, because if she sang something they
never heard before they might not like that and might ignore her or turn on her
and she'd lose her job and she wouldn't get her money any more. And she knew
that and that's why she never sang anything that was really her own, did she?
She was just imitating some kind of person she was sure they liked and they
went along with it. That's why she's a hustler. They were paying her to imitate
someone making love to them."

I'm also reminded of Conan O'Brian's recent joke, "When asked why he made a
compilation album of songs from the fifties, Manillow proclaimed 'Because I
already ruined the seventies and eighties.'"

Arlo