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Home » Open thread 10/20/21

Open thread 10/20/21

The New Neo Posted on by

Young people who do reaction videos to this song on YouTube have no idea what it’s about, although they usually like it. But even after they look up what it’s about, they still don’t what it’s about. How could they?:

Comments

Open thread 10/20/21 — 72 Comments

  2. I remember, the next day, sitting in band class, our first class off the morning, and the girl who sat next to me started crying and then she told me about the the plane crash and Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the “Big Bopper” were dead. Being 14 years old and not real aware of who was who singing rock and roll I kind of knew who the “Big Bopper” was. My friend had to explain to me that the neat songs I listened to on the radio were sung by Buddy Holly and his band. What an incredible musician Buddy was and what a loss.

    As the years went by and in 1971 when I was in my mid 20’s the song “American Pie” became a favorite for awhile. It was a great drinking song, good to sit around being quiet with memories of our youth, 12 years later, and feeling sad and blue. The lyrics were kind of rambling silly but the sure did the job ‘saying that’ll be the day when I die’.

  3. Interesting juxtaposition in my mind: I have never really like that song, I always find it a bit insipid, however all it takes is for me to hear “Bye Bye Miss American Pie….” and I immediately fill out the rest of the chorus. Definite ear worm.

  4. It’s about a world that no longer exists.

    Hell, it was about a world that didn’t exist anymore when it was written.

    I’m a late Gen-Xer so I still encountered the cultural touchstones necessary to have some nostalgia for that lost world. I had a Norman Rockwell painting (“The Runaway”) on my wall growing up.

    Kids today can’t imagine a world without the internet, let alone the concept of driving a Chevy to a levee or what purpose that could have served.

    Incidentally, was surfing a bit on the topic and the first comment here https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/45363/drove-my-chevy-to-the-levee-but-the-levee-was-dry is AMAZING.

    “It is a line from the song American pie by Don McLean. It is — I believe — a song about the death of John Lennon.”

  5. Kids today can’t imagine a world without the internet, let alone the concept of driving a Chevy to a levee or what purpose that could have served.

    They don’t even know what a “Chevy” is.

    Song could even be about today’s world. What we had is gone, not to return.

    I too remember the Day the Music Died. I was 13.

  6. I first heard the song 50 years ago this Autumn when I was starting college and I liked it for the first 50 times they played it but after awhile I was completely sick of it.

  7. Buddy Holly was one of the earlier rock & roll artists who both wrote and performed most of his own songs. Of course all of his significant successors (The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles… and pretty much everyone after) were writer/performers, although many of them started out only playing covers of course. It’s kind of interesting that more people didn’t attempt to write their own material up until the 60s. There were obviously good monetary reasons to write your own stuff beyond just the joy of being creative.

  9. To be fair, when I heard “American Pie” at 19, I needed a roadmap. I was pretty vague on those 50s rockers. The references to 60s icons weren’t all that obvious either.

    I liked Don McLean’s explanation best. He was asked the meaning of the song and he said, “It means I never have to work again.”

  10. One of my fondest memories of the old tonight show was when Carson or Leno (probably Leno)–maybe Letterman– had Don McLean on as a guest to perform “American Pie.” This was years, if not decades, after the song had been a Top Ten hit. You could tell the studio audience was liking it, and even I–a non-rocker–was caught up in it. When the song closed, with the chorus sung softly and slowly (and I believe some of the audience singing along), the audience exploded into wild applause and cheers. It must have been a gratifying moment for McLean.

  11. I would rate Garrison Keillor’s memoir piece on the death of Buddy Holly as the best thing he ever did on the “News from Lake Wobegon.”

    –Garrison Keillor, “Buddy Holly and the Pharaohs of Rhythm”
    https://soundcloud.com/andrew-crowley/buddy-holly-and-the-pharaohs

    Yeah, I know we all hate him now after his hate-filled rants for us, but this is from the previous century. In those naive, halcyon days I thought “Prairie Home Companion” represented the possibility of a whole America.

  12. I heard the news of the crash while 3 of us were riding to school in my friend’s Chevy (actually his mother’s non-hotrod 57). My low seniority had me in the back seat, near that audio breakthrough of the day– the rear speaker. I was 15. “American Pie” was yet to be written. I’m the sole survivor of that trio of that day.

  13. I’d not known “reaction videos” were a thing until about a month or two ago. I like them to watch someone discover a song/artist I’ve liked and known of for awhile or for many years. Which is I suppose the reason they’re made, even if the people making them are perhaps faking it at times.

    Not all of them making these videos are the young, some are at least in their 30s-40s or even more.

  15. A year after “American Pie” Ricky Nelson released a somewhat similar hit, “Garden Party,” in his new country-rock style with coded references to rock stars.

    It was about Nelson’s performance at a Madison Square Garden concert with other 50’s stars, when he was booed for playing the Stones song, “Country Honk.” Or so the story goes.

    “Garden Party” was a hit in 1972 and deservedly so. I don’t know if Nelson was influenced by “American Pie.” It seems likely but the song stands well on its own.
    __________________________________________

    But it’s all right now, I’ve learned my lesson well
    You see, you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself

    –Rick Nelson, “Garden Party”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60XTeHM9iLQ
    __________________________________________

    I was too young to catch Nelson in his heyday. I just knew him from the syndicated TV show, “Ozzie and Harriet.” Still, I was pleased that he made a comeback and I was sad when he later died in a plane crash (shades of Buddy Holly!).

  16. Having grown up in a county seat small town with a good airport, lots of private aviation and I know a lot more people who died in plane crashes than in car wrecks. Aviation is no hard until it is and years later when I thought about learning how to fly one of my good friends who was a corporate jet pilot gave me a lecture about safe flying, maintenance, and keeping enough hours current to be proficient and then he mention the Beechcraft Bonanza, the Buddy Holly plane and known to professional pilots as the V-Tail Doctor Killer. Doctors and lawyers with a lot of income used to buy these twin engine planes and learn just enough to fly they around but they never had time to become proficient with twin engines, same with very young pilots without a lot of twin engine hours and so it was with JFK Jr. that terrible day years later flying beyond his capabilities, not a Beechcraft but a nice twin engine plane.

  17. geoffb:

    You don’t think 30s-40s is young? 🙂 . I certainly do.

    Most of the reactors are even younger, though, I think. Some are older, but not the majority – although I’ve never done a study. At any rate, it’s a fun genre.

    But for “American Pie” even a person of 50 would struggle to get the references unless they were a rock music historian or had read an explanation.

  18. Speaking of the meaning of songs, consider John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

    If one did not know any better, you would think the lyrics were written by Karl Marx or Lenin.
    This song is probably the favorite of Bernie Sanders and AOC, among others.

  19. huxley,
    I saw the band “Tommy Tutone” get booed and harassed completely off the stage in Albuquerque. I’m not sure what the promoters were thinking, but everyone was waiting for ZZ Top and Aerosmith. I believe it was mid or late afternoon and many in the audience were stoned.
    _____

    My home town is not far from Clear Lake, IA. I’ve spent many a summer day at Clear Lake, and my father took a few dates to the Surf Ballroom in his youth. Those visits to the Surf were well before the Holly era.

  20. Neo;

    Well yes they are much younger than I am but they’re still well into adulthood unlike the teens/early 20s that do most of the videos. The reactions, to me, bring back memories of when I first heard the artists/songs myself.

    I was 10 when Buddy Holly died and at time had never heard of him or that he died. It was only when I got to 7th grade Jr. High that I discovered music other than the big band things and church hymns my parents occasionally played.

    Sitting here listening to blues on my headphones while typing.

  21. Neo: Good point about matching age with events, I think those of us born between 1940 and 1950 really experienced the 12 years from 59 to 71 as teenagers, that strange word teenager which was a driving force in the 1960’s. We were there and we were of an impressionable age, even when we got to wear green clothes and take and all expense trip paid for by our Uncle Sam overseas while some stayed home in college protesting. Very different times.

  22. TommyJay:

    A cafe friend of mine tells the story of Linda Ronstadt playing in Albuquerque and getting booed for not playing more Mexican mariachi music. (She had released two such albums.)

    Tough audiences out here. Tough. How tough? Let me tellya… (Insert Rodney Dangerfield joke here.)

  23. “…probably the favorite of Bernie Sanders…”

    Um, perhaps, but I doubt it.
    After all, the man’s an unrepentant, raving Bolshevik (not some Fabian flower child).
    https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/10/07/bernie-sanders-buries-the-knife-into-kyrsten-sinema-n453063

    IOW, James Hodgkinson was no accident.

    Here, try this:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWW2SzoAXMo
    (or if you have a soft spot for U2…)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLdvK7KuMcc

  24. OldTexan,
    My dad had a Mooney when I was very young and later a Cessna Skyhawk. We flew into Washington National at night once in the Skyhawk. I was 7 or 8. I had never seen anything like it before. In the ’80s after I was married, my dad had a Super Skymaster (the push-me pull-you twin). There was one day he and I had gone up to play with the navigation equipment (Dad was VFR only). We were returning to Renton. At that time Renton was home to the 707 line (for E3 AWACS), the 757 line and the 737 line. There also was a lot more general aviation at Renton back then. We were in the pattern when we saw this plane coming right at us from the right. We could hear traffic control telling this guy “the Skymaster is right in front of you!” and the other guy’s saying “I don’t see him”. I swear Dad pivoted that plane on one wing. Biggest scare I ever had in a light plane. You can see the Skymaster in action in the movie Bat21

  26. Today’s lesson? Young people indoctrinated by educrats discover that presentism isn’t enough to appreciate older gen’s nostalgia — nor even their own?

  27. OldTexan, Chases Eagles:

    Here’s a fun scene from “Almost Famous” about a rock band which has switched from a bus to a plane to get to concerts.

    Naturally, they fly into an electrical storm, the lead guitarist is singing the chorus to “Peggy Sue” and everyone starts making their final confessions.

    Based on an incident in writer/director Cameron Crowe’s life, when he was flying with the Allman Brothers.

    –“Almost Famous” (2000)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sKroV76i5Q

    Cute film. It would be impossible to make now on account of the groupies subplot.

  28. I am driven, perversely, to register myself as a dissenter/heretic on this song. Never did like it, and I did/do remember the Day referred to, though I was only ten years old. Call it a matter of taste, except for one thing: “…but the levee was dry…”. Makes no sense, but I guess he just needed a rhyme. Levees are supposed to be dry. That’s kind of the point. And if water had been flowing there–i.e. if it had been wet for any reason other than it was getting rained on–you couldn’t drive your Chevy to it. In fact the whole Chevy/levee figure never seemed to me to have much point, just a way to get driving a Chevy into the song as a cultural marker. Maybe he had something in mind there that’s not obvious to me.

    Your pedantic gripe of the day.

  29. NEW ITEM: THE Elephant in The Room for The Next Year’s economy: will Chinese property recession (or collapse) tank the world economy? Will the new US inflation cycle be the cushion the world economy needs?

    These are the two tough to ponder issues that concern the investment world and real world leaders at the moment. The ‘X-factor’ is the opacity of the Chinese economy.

    The importance of these questions is set by inflation hawk James Grant who notes that 53% of global GDP turns on the Chinese property market.

    Chines people place 70% of their savings into property – yet 22% of homes are unoccupied.

    What happens to Chinese consumption spending when the value of savings plummets by half? Will GDP growth stall and reverse? (Morgan Stanley estimates property market spending accounting for 20 to 27% of Chinese GDP.)

    The Evergrande Property imbroglio is the start of what could become China’s version of the Great Recession (2008-9) in the US.

    And what happens to CCP ruling stability when legitimacy is challenged by failure?

    More hard data: “…since 70% of China’s net worth is parked in housing, and since Chinese citizens have not encountered a drop in home prices since 2015, falling prices may fuel a vicious cycle by further weakening demand, worsening the cash shortage at builders and forcing them to offer bigger discounts.

    In September, “residential sales tumbled 17% by area, investments slid for the first time since early 2020, and the rate of failed land auctions climbed to the highest since at least 2018.

    “The downturn has continued into this month, with existing-home sales crashing 63% from a year earlier in the first 17 days of October, according to a Nomura note Monday.”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-home-prices-drop-first-time-2015-existing-home-sales-crash-63

    A deep recession in China, the world economy’s number two largest, will affect the rest of the world — even the US.

    But could the wild and dangerous spending of Biden and Democrats have a silver lining benefit for the world? Cushioning the possible coming China recession?

    I know this calls forth a very different kind of nostalgia. An old decade, and hardships from then and much earlier times.

    But these questions shape my fall season. What’s shaping yours?

  30. I knew most of the references in American Pie the first time I heard it and it can be a fun song but McLean’s dismissal of Bob Dylan never sat well with me. McLean wrote two songs that were commercially successful and made some kind of cultural impact, American Pie, and Vincent, his maudlin song about Van Gogh. He’s lived off of American Pie for half a century. How many albums has Bob Dylan released, particularly from the ’60s to the ’80s that don’t have at least two or three significant songs? Between January 1964 and June 1966, just 30 months, Dylan released five albums of songs that will be in the American songbook for as long as there is an American songbook: The Times They Are A Changin, Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde (every one RIAA Gold or Platinum). Any one of those releases would have made a career.

    If Bob Dylan is a “jester”, Don McLean is a clown.

    In a 2017 interview, Dylan was asked about his portrayal in American Pie. Bob is well aware of where he sits in the pantheon of songwriters. “A jester? Sure, the jester writes songs like ‘Masters of War’, ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’, ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ – some jester. I have to think he’s talking about somebody else. Ask him.”

    For what it’s worth, Don McLean, age 75, has a 27 year old girlfriend named Paris Dylan. Apparently no relation to Bob, but some folks might read something into that.

  31. The importance of these questions is set by inflation hawk James Grant who notes that 53% of global GDP turns on the Chinese property market.

    Grant needs to show his work.

  32. I’m very seldom the youngest person in the room. Then there’s today.

    It’s a handsome piece of music, but perhaps prone to being over-interpreted. Here’s a hypothesis: the lyrics are largely nonsense phrases strung together without any allusions at all in them.

  33. We used to sing ‘American Pie’ at our Catholic Church. It was a very popular song that won a lot of awards. Even as a child the lyrics were powerful and I felt sad. It is a great song.

  34. Johann Amadeus Metesky:

    Regarding the term “jester“:

    In literature, the jester is symbolic of common sense and of honesty, notably in King Lear, where the court jester is a character used for insight and advice on the part of the monarch, taking advantage of his license to mock and speak freely to dispense frank observations and highlight the folly of his monarch. This presents a clashing irony as a greater man could dispense the same advice and find himself being detained in the dungeons or even executed.

    From “American Pie” here’s the part about the jester:

    Now, for ten years we’ve been on our own
    And moss grows fat on a rollin’ stone
    But that’s not how it used to be
    When the jester sang for the king and queen
    In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
    And a voice that came from you and me
    Oh, and while the king was looking down
    The jester stole his thorny crown
    The courtroom was adjourned
    No verdict was returned…

    I believe that McLean is using “jester” there in that literary sense.

  35. Buddy Holly was one of the earlier rock & roll artists who both wrote and performed most of his own songs. Of course all of his significant successors (The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles… and pretty much everyone after) were writer/performers, although many of them started out only playing covers of course. It’s kind of interesting that more people didn’t attempt to write their own material up until the 60s.

    Jo Stafford interviewed not long before her death was critical of this. She said that writing, performing, and other aspects of producing music were distinct functions requiring distinct skills and properly kept separate. She said that prior to 1955, there were usually several versions of a song circulating at once and ‘a song had a chance to find itself’ as the public honed in on a preferred version.

    She also said it did not bother her that traditional pop was displaced; she was making a living (well enough to retire at age 49, as it happened). She did say she was puzzled by it as during the earlier part of her career, popular music had been growing more sophisticated in its phrasing and rock-and-roll was a notable regression. (What she did not say was that however sophisticated it may have been, a great deal of traditional pop was schlock).

  36. Art Deco:

    You ARE young if you don’t see the obvious references in nearly every line.

    Just to name the easiest and most obvious, ““That’ll Be the Day” was a Buddy Holly song that American Pie quotes, and Dylan wrote “Like a Rolling Stone” and also had an album cover where he posed in a James Dean-like pose and coat.

  37. neo:

    Nice rundown on “jester.” I don’t imagine Dylan would object to the title.

    What Dylan didn’t wish was to be called the “voice of a generation.” He loathed that.
    ___________________________________

    I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of… I wasn’t a preacher performing miracles. It would have driven anybody mad.

    –Bob Dylan, “Chronicles”
    ___________________________________

    Once one gets that straight, Dylan’s life makes more sense.

  38. You ARE young if you don’t see the obvious references in nearly every line.

    I’m not young, just skeptical of English teachers and people who think like them. I actually remember the song playing fresh on the radio; I just wasn’t a college student at the time.

  39. We used to sing ‘American Pie’ at our Catholic Church.

    Which should have induced the congregation to run screaming across the state line.

  40. Art Deco:

    Well, if you’re old enough to remember the song when new, and if you don’t know the references, I’ll just repeat that they are many and obvious, and add that they have zero to do with English teachers.

  41. Which should have induced the congregation to run screaming across the state line.

    Fortunately, most people, even Catholics, have greater senses of fun and humor than Art Deco. (Admittedly, a low bar.)

    It’s a well-kept secret that Christians often find ways of making church life fun. That’s not all that Christians are up to, of course, but I swear to you: I have seen it.

  42. Fortunately, most people, even Catholics, have greater senses of fun and humor than Art Deco. (Admittedly, a low bar.)

    The Mass is not the time and the place for ‘fun’ or ‘humor’. This isn’t that difficult.

  43. Well, if you’re old enough to remember the song when new, and if you don’t know the references, I’ll just repeat that they are many and obvious, and add that they have zero to do with English teachers.

    No, but manufacturing allusions out of one’s imagination is the work of English teachers.

  44. I was 14 when it was release and had no idea what he was talking about. It was fun to sing along, especially with a group of friends. Otherwise it meant nothing to me. Which is not a criticism, just the reality of that time at that age.

  45. Heh. And all this time I thought the ‘jester’ was John Lennon. Boy am I a dummy. Not that it matters…

  46. Art Deco:

    (1) The allusions in the song are not manufactured or imagined. In fact they are extremely obvious and easy to see for most people who were around at the time and who paid any sort of attention to popular music.

    (2) It is not the business of English teachers to “manufacture allusions out of imagination.” That is the work of very bad English teachers (who certainly do exist).

  47. My high school was in the SW corner of New Orleans, about a block from the levee protecting that area from the Mississippi River overflowing. As a member of the track team, we used to go up on the levee to train for longer distance running, as it provided a long uninterrupted path in an otherwise heavily urban area. Every time I hear the “Chevy-levee” combo I think of that experience, although I also never really understood the lyrics, etc. at the time or much since, until now (sorta).

    I tend to agree with Art Deco and his “manufactured allusions”, as my only real liberal arts education was what we did in HS English. I can see that creating the symbolism used in some respected works of literature (Scarlett Letter, Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, et al.) was a significant creative accomplishment by the author. But as a guy oriented to science and engineering, I never saw the merit in that type of creative effort over a straightforward and clear prose exposition covering the same issues. I suppose the counter argument is that “art” generates a deeper response at multiple levels of the mind, over the purely logical or rational. In pursuing a predominantly technical education, perhaps I has missed more than I know, but otherwise I don’t have any real regrets from my career and life path (so far).

  48. The allusions in the song are not manufactured or imagined. In fact they are extremely obvious and easy to see for most people who were around at the time and who paid any sort of attention to popular music.

    I was around at the time.

    The allusions which are recognizable consist of the author free-associating.

    (2) It is not the business of English teachers to “manufacture allusions out of imagination.” That is the work of very bad English teachers (who certainly do exist).

    No, that’s the work of standard-issue English teachers.

  50. Durham revisited…

    “New details on the scope of John Durham’s investigation –
    “He has provided Michael Sussmann w/ 81K pages of documents.
    “These are from ‘grand jury subpoenas’ issued to 15 people/entities/orgs – including Fusion GPS and likely the DNC.”
    (Yes, you read that right: 81 thousand pages of documents.)
    https://twitter.com/Techno_Fog/status/1450945231440986114

    Slow and steady wins the race?
    (Gosh, let’s hope it’s still true…)

    As a result, we can—of course—expect more Democratic Party/ABC/Christopher Steele-type “distractions”….

    + Related:
    And things DO appear to be be moving…
    “…from the latest Alfa Bank filings in Florida case…. David Dagon, who was part of Joffe’s crew, intends to invoke his privileges against self-incrimination.”
    https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1450954426798256131”

    Invoking the Fifth?
    (Ah, the old “innocent-till-proven-guilty” trick—but is that still allowed in the US? Guess we’ll have to wait and see. Anyway, as one commenting wag put it: At least someone around here is following the Constitution…)
    – – – – – – – – –
    And what’s this?
    Michael Cohen rising from the dead….
    “Michael Cohen calls Christopher Steele “mentally unstable” and says he’s considering a defamation lawsuit…”
    https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1450930584423960576

    Bring.It.On

  51. BTW, re: Hans Mahncke, this guy is a MUST.

    At the moment, he has some essential information on Durham, on Steele, and also on the COVID scandal surrounding the NIH/Francis Collins/Fauci/ EcoHealth Alliance…
    https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/

    E.g.,
    “Gonna go out on a limb and suggest Durham has all the chips and is in control. At this point he’s just letting people know they can make it easy or make it hard.”
    https://twitter.com/Larry_Beech/status/1450997553760292864

    (And one really has gotta love that “EcoHealth Alliance” moniker—Soros must be giving master classes in how to gild lilies….)

    + (unsurprising if still scandalous) Bonus:
    “OSHA Isn’t Tracking COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects Because It Doesn’t Want To Undermine Biden’s Shot Campaign”
    https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/19/osha-isnt-tracking-covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-because-it-doesnt-want-to-undermine-bidens-shot-campaign/
    H/T Blazingcatfur blog.

  52. “Although the fire was started by an act of arson, the ship was lost due to an inability to extinguish the fire,” the investigation report said.

    The report said that the crew on the ship lacked a basic knowledge of firefighting, there was ineffective oversight by commanders and the ship did not have proper heat detection capabilities.

    On the morning of the fire, the report said, 87 percent of the ship’s fire stations were in “inactive equipment maintenance status”.

    “The loss of this ship was completely preventable,” Admiral William Lescher, the vice chief of naval operations, said.

    https://news.yahoo.com/series-failures-fire-led-destruction-181928794.html

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmGuy0jievs

  53. Neverending [ever-changing] story:
    Not news to anyone who’s actually been following, but apparently it’s now OFFICIAL (i.e., at least for now!):
    “NIH changes story, confirms it funded Wuhan experiment that made bat coronavirus more dangerous”
    https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/nih-confirms-it-funded-gain-function-virus-research-wuhan-calls-it

    (Wonder when they’ll “change” the Biden-won-record-electoral-vote fairytale….)

  54. Re Art Deco — “And thus endeth the lesson ” Badly.

    Do you have a substantive complaint?

  58. My old flight instructor called the Cessna 310 light twin “the Doctor-Killer,” for the reasons cited. He bopped me up ‘side the head while I was making the turn from base onto final at the Perry, Ga. airport once. (He was an Air Force Captain and not averse to tactile emphasis of Truly Important Points.) “You didn’t check for traffic making a straight-in approach. You just collided with a [obscenity] dentist flying a [obscenity] ‘310.”

  59. I think I was probably 15 (so 1980) when someone told me “American Pie” was about Buddy Holly. My first reaction was “Who?” and my second reaction was “Oh, him. Okay, and?” All that stuff was ancient history already, and it’s only as I’ve gotten older and learned more about the ’60s that I can even begin to understand why the references and allusions were meaningful. That said, it’s still a giant earworm.

    I never understood why “the levee was dry” made any sense. If it was wet, you’d be having a flood and wouldn’t be driving anywhere anyway.

    I guess a song in that style that might make sense to my generation would be about Kurt Cobain or something (although I never thought he was the huge cultural icon everyone else seemed to think he was).

  60. Chases Eagles —

    My dad had a Mooney from 1963-1971. He flew it all over southcentral Alaska, and even all the way from Anchorage down to Cabo San Lucas with me and my mother. I vaguely remember him letting me “take the controls” once when I was four or five.

  61. To my way of thinking American Pie is one of those against the grain songs that in its welcome departure from standard pop templates, creates a wave that carries many people of rather different tastes along with it. For awhile, at least.

    I first heard it as an adolescent one late night while about to drift off to sleep with a radio on – during those treasured between semester days after Christmas. I even recall the DJ introducing it as a new song that was very unusual; and in essence, asking the midnight audience to bear with it and give it a chance.

    It was certainly unlike anything I had heard before, unless you construct a class container to hold, say, Hey Jude, or My Sweet Lord, and maybe the excreable twerp duo abomination Bridge Over Troubled Waters. No doubt you can add your own candidates.

    To say I enjoyed the song would not be quite right. I was glad to have heard it and felt as if I had heard something refreshingly new, catchy in parts, and, if not ground breaking in style, then almost one of a kind in presentation, at least.

    It seemed a kind of event to have heard it that midnight or three before New Years.

    I had no idea what it was about, if anything.

    In the ensuing decade, the almost unrelieved badness and brainless idiocy of AM radio music was intermittently broken by more story or long form songs of this type; which seemed to me, to emerge from nowhere.

    Elton John, who I came quickly to despise, seemed to have done this with Tiny Dancer, I think it is called. Where did that come from? A couple of tunes from James Taylor, then Harry Chapin, and Jim Croce left similar impressions.

    Though I preferred Rock, and would sort through albums and bands to find the then current but worthwhile stuff for play on the home system, the appearance of these other songs on pop stations was welcome relief from the mindless, eternal recurrence of the same, when FM radio was not available.

  62. Re the loss of the Bonhomme Richard.

    That billion dollar ship was in essence a special aircraft carrier, in length and displacement comparable to the famous WW II carrier Saratoga, and larger than the even more storied Enterprise.

    The 40,000-ton, $1bn (£716m) USS Bonhomme Richard was commissioned in 1998 and was one of the few vessels from which an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter could take off.

    It is a major loss. To arson,no less.

  63. Bryan Lovely:

    A couple of things.

    First of all, the levee was dry because it rhymes with pie, rye, and die. And because it’s part of what drives the earworm quality of the song. We can perceive an earworm as annoying, but it’s also often a reflection of the part of the song that’s the “hook,” and hooks are part of what makes hits.

    Secondly, although the “day the music died” does indeed refer to Buddy Holly’s death, that’s only a symbol of a transition (IMHO) that occurred in the mid-20th Century. The song is about the transition from the 50s to the 60s to the 70s for the generation that grew up in that time. Popular music both symbolized and reflected those times. The song deals with Vietnam and the assassinations of the 1960s, and also the change from the seemingly innocent “sock hop” 50s to the flower-power protest (and relatively idealistic) 60s to Altamont and the Manson murders, all of which are referenced in the song lyrics. To me, the song’s poignancy has to do with the cultural whiplash and disillusionment experienced by many in my generation.

  64. The Left mob of violence and persecution is hounding Senator Sinema, as the progborg – mightily funded by billionaires, I’m sure – polices heresy.

    Sinema joins Senator Manchin in becoming an object of hatred for the far Left. As Neo notes elsewhere, the far Left deserves it’s hegemony. They believe.

    Thus, they act accordingly.

    I’m sure there are other roundups of the mayhem and threats. Here’s the one I’ve encountered.

    Apparently, True Believers on her staff have quit in sympathy either the righteous cultists.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/5-sinema-advisors-quit-accuse-her-selling-out-big-donors-left-wing-backlash-intensifies

  65. Back in the day, I did not “get” many of the musical or historical allusions from hearing the song, because I was not a “fan” of popular music growing up in the sixties (b. 1952, to be properly placed along the Salon’s age axis).
    I knew some references from hearing the radio occasionally, but did not play it often myself nor did the rest of my family, and never went to dances or pop/rock concerts. (However, I was a fan of DNW’s “excreable twerp duo” FWIW.)

    That said, from just listening to the lyrics in the abstract, my first impression of the contested phrase “but the levee was dry” meant that the driver, in despair, had intended to commit suicide and was foiled in the attempt.

    YMMV.

  67. @ Walter > “Fabulous new rendition of American Pie by Don McLean and the acapella group Home Free:”

    I gave it a try.
    It is fabulous.
    Don McLean sounds wonderful still (at 75ish), and unaccompanied voices are my favorite of all vocal ensembles. Plus great visuals.

    Also, brought up on the sidebar of suggestions, last year from Australia:
    Don McLean On The Meaning Of ‘American Pie’ | Studio 10
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwRuInx6fSU

    “The whole thing came in one piece, like a genie out of a bottle.”

    Not much more than that, so the speculations are not resolved here, but there are some nice clips from his concerts 50 years ago, and his feelings about writing music.
    Teases a 2021 documentary, which may be out by now.

    Trivia from the host: the hit “Killing me softly with his song” was written about McLean’s voice.

  68. Excellent review of Crazy Uncle Ted’s Manifesto here:

    https://theworthyhouse.com/2021/10/22/industrial-society-and-its-future-theodore-john-kaczynski/

    You might find the bit I highlighted with asterisks interesting. I know I did.

    “Industrial Society and Its Future contains one primary theme and one secondary theme. The primary theme is that industrial-technological civilization, that is, what we live in today and have since the Industrial Revolution, is very bad for mankind and therefore must be ended. That’s no surprise if you know any of Kaczynski‘s story. But the secondary theme is that leftism is the biggest obstacle to accomplishing this goal, and to human flourishing generally. That is a surprise. I must admit that before I read this book, ******I had no idea that Kaczynski regarded leftism as the driver of evil. (It’s amusing that a thinker as different as René Girard came to the same conclusion through a totally unrelated chain of reasoning.) This largely ignored fact no doubt explains much of the animosity of the regime against him—after all, the very many leftist bombers of the 1970s were lionized then and rarely, if ever punished, and after were in fact often rewarded, most notably the execrable Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Kaczynski got life in the Supermax, where he is today.******”

  69. @ David Riceman > “See Scott Alexander’s fictional take”

    The Internet Auditors didn’t like the Hebrew letter in your URL.
    Go to the book’s table of contents and look for the interlude between chapters 36 and 37.
    I am now going to have to burn the week-end reading the whole thing.

    https://unsongbook.com/

  70. neo —

    Yeah, I had to be instructed in all the allusions: this one was Mick Jagger, that one was Kent State, etc. I get that all those were very meaningful to a certain set of people who happened to be the right age range during that period, but a mere nine years later it was completely dated.

    It reminds me of when I read the Illuminatus! trilogy ten years ago, and while a lot of it was fun esoteric-conspiracy stuff, a lot of it was very ’60s-specific cultural stuff that just fell flat for me. Like, I get that the Chicago ’68 DNC riots were a big deal, but the books read like the author thought they weren’t the most important event in all world history up until then.

  71. Brian Lovely:

    Each generation has its own major formative events that are particular to that generation, and I wouldn’t expect other generations to share the same feeling about the same events. The 60s were a time of tremendous cultural upheaval happening very fast, though, and they made a deep mark.

  72. @ Neo > “Each generation has its own major formative events that are particular to that generation, and I wouldn’t expect other generations to share the same feeling about the same events.”

    I have been a great fan of the British mystery writers Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers since middle school (and sometimes I still put a “u” in colour, regardless of its shade of teal). Obviously, the major formative events of their generation had no personal relevance for me, not only because of the generation gap in time, but the cultural gap between America and England, but that did not detract from my reading pleasure.
    I am also a fan of the specifically-denominated historical fiction genre, whether set in Renaissance Europe, or ancient Egypt, or somewhere in between.

    Quite a few years ago, I realized that I was implicitly putting the Christie & Sayers books into the same “bucket” as the explicitly historical works, and thus was relating to them in much the same way.

    However, it does seem odd to realize, as Bryan did, that a story set within the nearer boundaries of our own lives, in both time and place, is still historical fiction.

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