[MD] Turning Point?

[Platt Holden]

[Arlo]
> 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.

So the popularity of rock and roll is evidence that people are not 
discriminating. You said it, not me.

> 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?

I thought you libs were against discrimination of any kind. We ought to 
celebrate, not judge as good or bad, our cultural differences and artistic 
tastes. Isn't that the moral thing to do? Isn't "diversity" where its at?
 
> 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.

Ah. I knew a paean to diversity would show up sooner or later. 

> 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...

Just love the way you say how low it is to take potshots and Manilow and in the 
next sentence take a giant potshot at him. 

> "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."

You said Manilow was one of the least Quality singers out there, meaning his 
singing is original--singularly bad.  Further, he created many of the songs he 
sang which, where I come from, means he was "original." 

> 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.'"

Good joke to those whose discriminating taste cheered the antics of Mick Jagger 
during halftime at the Super Bowl.

Platt