And I thought bloggers were bad.
Ain't that YouTube a kick in the pants, though? The Protestant Reformation enabled every man to be his own pope. YouTube enables every man to be his own Bob Dylan. (I'd add "every woman" as well, but Cate Blanchett hasn't rung in on this yet, bless her heart. Besides, she has other fish to fry.)
What is the matter with people? Can Stanley Kleppelman in Canoga Park really think that I want to hear him do Visions of Johanna in his goddamn living room?
Apparently he does. Because Stanley's out there, and thousands upon thousands of his confreres in the wannabe business. This very morning I had a hankering to hear Visions of Johanna. I had several hundred Dylan tracks on my computer, but they all vanished somehow. So I went to YouTube looking for this particular one, and found just about everybody in the world EXCEPT Dylan singing it.
I want to hear Bob Dylan sing Visions of Johanna, preferably the version from the so-called Royal Albert Hall concert of 1966. It's nowhere to be found. Stanley Kleppelman's version is there instead.
Stanley must get a woodie (no relation to Guthrie) every time he watches himself a-croonin' and a-snarlin' on YouTube. Forget the woodie, Stanley. GET A LIFE!
It's become a commonplace in recent years, with all of our slicked-up, wired-in gadgetry, from iPhone to iPod to Wetware, that if people are enabled to do something stupid, they'll do it. And they do. When I see people driving down the street steering with one hand and cellphone-jabbering with the other, I'm annoyed. But when I see them steering bicycles and motor scooters down the street with one hand and yakking with the other, I'm appalled, but not surprised. It might be possible to steer a car effectively with one hand, but nobody is in control of a two-wheeled vehicle when they're steering it with one hand. Still, I have seen this particular bit of moronity. When I was in China I used to see it every day. The Chinese may not be about to take over the world's economy, but they definitely have the market cornered on certain flavors of what Frank Sutton, in the old Gomer Pyle TV series with Jim Nabors, sometimes called "stupidness."
YouTube is a very handy gadget. I love it. You can see things there that you can't see anywhere else. I have found YouTube very convenient for such things as posting a homemade, two-minute video of myself talking about my English-teaching abilities as a leg-up to landing a teaching job in an overseas school. As a music lover I equate my discovery of YouTube with my first visit, many years ago, to now-defunct Tower Records. Just about everything I could possibly want to hear is available for the listening and watching on YouTube, from Wilhelm Furtwaengler conducting Beethoven's Ninth with the Berlin Philharmonic to Sam Huck in Gary, Indiana conducting Beethoven's Ninth with an antiquated boom-box and a knitting needle.
Well, I'll pass on Sam Huck's version and go straight to Willie the F. But that's my point. Both are available. On the other hand, if I went looking for Beethoven's Ninth on YouTube and found that Sam Huck's version was the only one available, or the one conducted by Sonny Schlupp in Sioux Falls with the local volunteer fire department band, or Homer Bedloe's realization, from down there in Clearwater, FL on tissue-paper-and-comb kazoo, I think I'd be seriously ... let me think of a clean word ... frustrated.
In the years following World War II, when home movies became the rage, it was common for new parents to bore their friends to death after dinner with Kodak 8mm footage of their offspring. A generation later, everyone acquired camcorders and everyone-his-or-her-own filmmaker became ubiquitous. Camcorder narcissicism was instantaneous: no developing process at the drugstore was required. Ditto homemade "demo tapes" of music performances, right? In the right hands, this do-it-yourself stuff could be effective. Anyone who remembers Bruce Springsteen's album Nebraska can attest to that. Bruce recorded this bunch of rough sketches on his own equipment, and then, for whatever reason, decided not to take it into the studio for polishing up. He just released the tape and it became a bestselling album.
Yes, but he was Bruce Springsteen, everybody. He could get away with that, just as Henri Matisse could get away with throwing a handful of drawings on the wall which were supposed to be sketches for something more ambitious, and people would come. I wouldn't seriously compare Springsteen with Matisse, but I'm trying to make a point here. Not everyone can be Bruce Springsteen. Not everyone can be Stanley Kleppelman either, thank God. But with YouTube, Stanley can throw his drawings on the wall alongside those of Matisse (or Springsteen.) It's good for Stanley's ego, and a giggle to his friends, no doubt, but for the rest of us it's just one more clump of brush we have to hack through in our search for what it is we're really looking for.
I know that YouTube's pitch-line is "broadcast yourself." No problem there: go broadcast yourself. But, although blogging is another means of "broadcasting yourself," nobody is going to go looking for Thomas Pynchon, William Gass or Annie Dillard and find me instead. I offer what I offer in addition to and in tribute to the greats, not instead of them.
Now of course you'll argue that it's not a fair comparison. Writing is writing. Unless you're the late Spalding Gray, it is not performance art. And blogging involves just as much narcissism as taping; all art does -- the poet W.H. Auden (who was gay, by the way) drew a parallel between "gayness" and interest in the fine arts, insofar as both, he maintained, involved a higher-than-usual element of narcissism. Fair enough, but as Goethe said, in order to do something, it is first necessary to be something, or as my friend Charles Berigan put it, "You can't put in what God left out."
So for heaven's sake, YouTube Nation, exercise a little discretion. It's getting too easy to "get it out there." Go develop something to PUT out there first, especially if you're going to try and elbow Bob Dylan aside.
Ain't that YouTube a kick in the pants, though? The Protestant Reformation enabled every man to be his own pope. YouTube enables every man to be his own Bob Dylan. (I'd add "every woman" as well, but Cate Blanchett hasn't rung in on this yet, bless her heart. Besides, she has other fish to fry.)
 |
| The real deal. |
Apparently he does. Because Stanley's out there, and thousands upon thousands of his confreres in the wannabe business. This very morning I had a hankering to hear Visions of Johanna. I had several hundred Dylan tracks on my computer, but they all vanished somehow. So I went to YouTube looking for this particular one, and found just about everybody in the world EXCEPT Dylan singing it.
I want to hear Bob Dylan sing Visions of Johanna, preferably the version from the so-called Royal Albert Hall concert of 1966. It's nowhere to be found. Stanley Kleppelman's version is there instead.
Stanley must get a woodie (no relation to Guthrie) every time he watches himself a-croonin' and a-snarlin' on YouTube. Forget the woodie, Stanley. GET A LIFE!
 |
| The real deal once removed. |
YouTube is a very handy gadget. I love it. You can see things there that you can't see anywhere else. I have found YouTube very convenient for such things as posting a homemade, two-minute video of myself talking about my English-teaching abilities as a leg-up to landing a teaching job in an overseas school. As a music lover I equate my discovery of YouTube with my first visit, many years ago, to now-defunct Tower Records. Just about everything I could possibly want to hear is available for the listening and watching on YouTube, from Wilhelm Furtwaengler conducting Beethoven's Ninth with the Berlin Philharmonic to Sam Huck in Gary, Indiana conducting Beethoven's Ninth with an antiquated boom-box and a knitting needle.
 |
| Gimme a break. |
In the years following World War II, when home movies became the rage, it was common for new parents to bore their friends to death after dinner with Kodak 8mm footage of their offspring. A generation later, everyone acquired camcorders and everyone-his-or-her-own filmmaker became ubiquitous. Camcorder narcissicism was instantaneous: no developing process at the drugstore was required. Ditto homemade "demo tapes" of music performances, right? In the right hands, this do-it-yourself stuff could be effective. Anyone who remembers Bruce Springsteen's album Nebraska can attest to that. Bruce recorded this bunch of rough sketches on his own equipment, and then, for whatever reason, decided not to take it into the studio for polishing up. He just released the tape and it became a bestselling album.
Yes, but he was Bruce Springsteen, everybody. He could get away with that, just as Henri Matisse could get away with throwing a handful of drawings on the wall which were supposed to be sketches for something more ambitious, and people would come. I wouldn't seriously compare Springsteen with Matisse, but I'm trying to make a point here. Not everyone can be Bruce Springsteen. Not everyone can be Stanley Kleppelman either, thank God. But with YouTube, Stanley can throw his drawings on the wall alongside those of Matisse (or Springsteen.) It's good for Stanley's ego, and a giggle to his friends, no doubt, but for the rest of us it's just one more clump of brush we have to hack through in our search for what it is we're really looking for.
I know that YouTube's pitch-line is "broadcast yourself." No problem there: go broadcast yourself. But, although blogging is another means of "broadcasting yourself," nobody is going to go looking for Thomas Pynchon, William Gass or Annie Dillard and find me instead. I offer what I offer in addition to and in tribute to the greats, not instead of them.
Now of course you'll argue that it's not a fair comparison. Writing is writing. Unless you're the late Spalding Gray, it is not performance art. And blogging involves just as much narcissism as taping; all art does -- the poet W.H. Auden (who was gay, by the way) drew a parallel between "gayness" and interest in the fine arts, insofar as both, he maintained, involved a higher-than-usual element of narcissism. Fair enough, but as Goethe said, in order to do something, it is first necessary to be something, or as my friend Charles Berigan put it, "You can't put in what God left out."
So for heaven's sake, YouTube Nation, exercise a little discretion. It's getting too easy to "get it out there." Go develop something to PUT out there first, especially if you're going to try and elbow Bob Dylan aside.
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