requested #7
This one was left over from the last time I did requested writing, but I was unable to think of what to say and so I let it stew a bit. I still don't have anything, but I don't want it floating around in my head for the next two years...
Today's Topic - Michael Bolton
I recently read somewhere that music is the only vice that doesn't have a limit. You can listen to music forever and never tire of it. Sure, you may change what you are listening too, but music will still be loved and completely insatiable. Of course, as in all love affairs, there is a time and place for changes of heart, a time and place for variety and a time and place for doubt upon reflection. With music, that time was Michael Bolton.
Mr. Bolton appeared out of nowhere in the mid 80's. A time when life and culture were testing the "pre-packaged" idea on a global scale. Not since the expansion of the church in the dark ages, had man aggressively pursued to indoctrinate so many with dribble and fluff. The 80's were a time of self-indulgence and the abandonment of self-reliance. There was a huge push to be pampered and to live large and to avoid pushing our lives or ourselves. There were no challenges. It was becoming cooler and hipper to be part of the system, a cog in the machine and to avoid stepping out and being an individual. And when the few did step out it was pre-packaged and seemed contrived. So, within this atmosphere of blandness and accepting nothing as something, the music world gave us Madonna and Michael Bolton. Their fame would show the world that it doesn't take creative talent to be special. Their fame would show the world that all you need to be is marketable. Stronger talents were lost to history as their empty tanks rose to the heavens. (Cyndi Lauper, Terrence Trent D'Arby to name a few)
Michael Bolton started his musical career in the seventies (?) and started off as a rock-n-roller a far cry from the crooner we know today. He had the voice talent, but couldn't write the rock songs. According to VH-1, he even wrote a song for Kiss, which they recorded! Somewhere along the line, Mr. Bolton realized that he wasn't going to be the rock star, or maybe, he got too old for spandex, and he moved to soul. He had the voice and he there was a planet FULL of desperate, disillusioned, easily impressed women ready to hear what he had to sing about. These women with their shoulder pads and salads, with hopeless jobs and a social life that looked like a prison sentence, needed something "new". Mr. Bolton's deep, soulful voice, filled their heads with such thoughts and it kept them from thinking for themselves. Making it possible for sexual deviance, like me, to easily seduce them... (thank you Mr. B) Had any of these women ever went to a record store and looked at the old records and maybe listened to one or two of them, they would have heard the original versions of those Bolton tunes and would have made Mike a real estate salesman today.
Women ate him up. Men liked him because you needed to be able to tolerate him in order to fuck the lowly women who DID like him. It was a mess. Thankfully these women found other pre-packaged music like The New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer and were replaced with fresher models to play with.
To his credit, Mr. Bolton was only doing what he had the talent to do. He dated Ashley Judd. Played Softball and had a curly mullet. He drove race cars, he did... he did... what those people do... HEY! He was sued once, for a song that he didn't own. Which one it was, I have no idea. And Mr. Bolton survived, so that's not special. I know that he still tours today and was active in Republican party fund raisers during the election last year.
I never owned an album but I know I have heard several of his songs all the way through more than three or four dozen times.
In music, the pure vice, there are times when we all hiccup a bit. Sometimes that hiccup tastes like curly mullet.
Today's Topic - Michael Bolton
I recently read somewhere that music is the only vice that doesn't have a limit. You can listen to music forever and never tire of it. Sure, you may change what you are listening too, but music will still be loved and completely insatiable. Of course, as in all love affairs, there is a time and place for changes of heart, a time and place for variety and a time and place for doubt upon reflection. With music, that time was Michael Bolton.
Mr. Bolton appeared out of nowhere in the mid 80's. A time when life and culture were testing the "pre-packaged" idea on a global scale. Not since the expansion of the church in the dark ages, had man aggressively pursued to indoctrinate so many with dribble and fluff. The 80's were a time of self-indulgence and the abandonment of self-reliance. There was a huge push to be pampered and to live large and to avoid pushing our lives or ourselves. There were no challenges. It was becoming cooler and hipper to be part of the system, a cog in the machine and to avoid stepping out and being an individual. And when the few did step out it was pre-packaged and seemed contrived. So, within this atmosphere of blandness and accepting nothing as something, the music world gave us Madonna and Michael Bolton. Their fame would show the world that it doesn't take creative talent to be special. Their fame would show the world that all you need to be is marketable. Stronger talents were lost to history as their empty tanks rose to the heavens. (Cyndi Lauper, Terrence Trent D'Arby to name a few)
Michael Bolton started his musical career in the seventies (?) and started off as a rock-n-roller a far cry from the crooner we know today. He had the voice talent, but couldn't write the rock songs. According to VH-1, he even wrote a song for Kiss, which they recorded! Somewhere along the line, Mr. Bolton realized that he wasn't going to be the rock star, or maybe, he got too old for spandex, and he moved to soul. He had the voice and he there was a planet FULL of desperate, disillusioned, easily impressed women ready to hear what he had to sing about. These women with their shoulder pads and salads, with hopeless jobs and a social life that looked like a prison sentence, needed something "new". Mr. Bolton's deep, soulful voice, filled their heads with such thoughts and it kept them from thinking for themselves. Making it possible for sexual deviance, like me, to easily seduce them... (thank you Mr. B) Had any of these women ever went to a record store and looked at the old records and maybe listened to one or two of them, they would have heard the original versions of those Bolton tunes and would have made Mike a real estate salesman today.
Women ate him up. Men liked him because you needed to be able to tolerate him in order to fuck the lowly women who DID like him. It was a mess. Thankfully these women found other pre-packaged music like The New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer and were replaced with fresher models to play with.
To his credit, Mr. Bolton was only doing what he had the talent to do. He dated Ashley Judd. Played Softball and had a curly mullet. He drove race cars, he did... he did... what those people do... HEY! He was sued once, for a song that he didn't own. Which one it was, I have no idea. And Mr. Bolton survived, so that's not special. I know that he still tours today and was active in Republican party fund raisers during the election last year.
I never owned an album but I know I have heard several of his songs all the way through more than three or four dozen times.
In music, the pure vice, there are times when we all hiccup a bit. Sometimes that hiccup tastes like curly mullet.
posted by Daniel Loomis | 12:32 PM
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