Something that recently penetrated my headspace, somehow, is the tiff between Moby and the Davies brothers, caused by the former Richard Melville Hall calling "Lola" (deep weary sigh here) "a gross and transphobic song."
Now it must be said that this characterization was part of a Guardian feature, and one of their prompts was "The song I can no longer listen to." If you give it some thought, it should be fairly obvious that at least some of their interview subjects were going to use that part as an opportunity to virtue signal. And here we are.
Dave Davies has jumped in to defend his big brother, and there have been other rebuttals. But justifications for "Lola" aren't what's needed. What is needed is for more people to tell the HR regime to take a hike. Ray Davies's songs reflect the thoughts and emotions of a human being, which is what music should do. Take it or leave it, but don't try to hector it over Zoom.
2 comments:
I don't know who Moby is or what he's done to have any notice taken of him at all by anyone. But whoever he is he must be a baseline idiot to criticize such an early anthem to non-heterosexual attraction by calling it a 'gross and transphobic song'. The Kinks are one of the greatest bands of all time and Moby is a nobody hoping to be relevant by insulting Ray Davies.
I guess I'd have to say though that anything that gets Ray and Dave on the same page (or stage) is a good thing. I wonder if next time he wants some attention Moby will listen to 'Walk on the Wild Side' and find something in that to complain about.
The problem with the Guardian is it's virtually free for anyone to write an article because it doesn't have to be printed. This results in every other person who considers themselves to be a journalist spreading their message to the world at large. Almost all of the MSM is the same now.
Moby is reasonably good at piecing records together, moreso than writing actual songs. As far as relevance goes, his probably peaked when we were in a different stupid war with a different country starting with the letters I-R-A. But there are bigger questions. "What do you believe?" "Whose interests do you serve?" How do you determine what's right and what's wrong? There are a lot of people who don't even ask these questions of themselves anymore, which is why they don't have good answers.
It is heartening to see the Davies brothers sticking up for each other. Lou Reed is no longer around to rebut idiots who have a beef with his music, but it would be funny if he found a way to do so anyway.
The collapse of the media has a lot of dire downstream effects. What's especially unfortunate is how many local stories go undercovered or completely uncovered, leaving a lot of subjects without context. If the Guardian is going to replace news with entertainment they could at least be more amusing.
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