The Chopping Block, Ep.2----- Music and the world around it.

On the Chopping Block today?
Music, and how the world wraps itself around it.

Where would the world be without music?
I would be smoking pot, my friends wouldn't.
I would have about 600 dollars to my name, due to the fact I didn't get any instruments, or anything to listen to them on.
Jimi Hendrix would just be a name, so would Eddie Van Halen, so would Johann Sebastian Bach.

Music has done a lot of wonderful things to our world. It gave us a means of expression, a way of reaching out and touching the other side of the world.
do you know what else touching the other side of the world from your chair needs?
Imagination.
It made me think I was a hotshot fighter pilot in third grade, it made me think I was killing bad guys with a sword of the ancients, while my parents saw me whacking weeds in our yard. This is what separates music from toneless noise. Without an artist's imagination, we could not use ours to take us elsewhere. Without an MP3 player, study hall would have been just a creative way to say "nap." I wrote many papers in my study hall, blissfully ignoring my math, my social studies, everything else, I would write in study hall because that was when we could listen to music, and music adds fuel to the fire of my imagination. So you see how I didn't go insane in High School.

A guitar lick can say many things. What does the guy want to say? What does it make you want to say? As a musician, It makes me want to go home and play, if I'm not home to begin with. To sit in my room playing random notes until I find that one note the guitar player used and I would use logic and what I already know about music to figure out the rest. From this little "phrase" or "lick" I can make my own "phrases" or "licks." This is why music is going to last forever, we learn how to talk by listening to others talk, then we figure out our own way to do it. We learn to play music by listening to others do it then by doing it ourselves. But there is always the antithesis.
Rap.
We all know it's brainwashing garbage, and many listeners will complain that, Owen, it is music.
It's not. Simple as that.
Okay, then, imaginary fiend of stupidity, tell me how I can listen to one guy rap about his friends getting shot, then attempt to rap about my friends getting shot? Or how about how his party was the one event in the world better than New Year's Eve? Any party I create will barely cause a dent in how we all live our lives. Many can, anyone with an elementary sense of how to rhyme and a deep inner pain can become an overnight Rap sensation.
Wonder why music is failing?

Because there are about 12,000 rappers for every good guitar player on the face of this planet.

Dime-a-dozen rhyming idiots are taking up all the shelf space reserved for musicians who put real effort into their work. Rap is just a further extension of hormones. This is why it sells, because the only people who buy it are pubescent children or adults who never grew up. Well, looky here, every rhyme this sunglassed guy with a scowl makes about having wild group sex, the girls will shake their asses because they want to know what kind of guy they can pull in with it, and the guys, driven by his natural instinct to reproduce fervently as soon as he's able, will be pulled into this jiggling magnet, and soon enough he will have six kids, no money, and no way to do anything with his life.
Okay, that was extreme, but I've seen it happen. Rap promotes promiscuity. Promiscuity leads to overpopulation and needless rape and pillage. It's happening, all around you. Believe it or not.
"But Owen, How do you know everything?"
I don't, and I don't claim to. I'm just observing the world I see with the eye of a scientist and a logical, level-headed person. You would be surprised to see how quickly logic can turn you into a person with an ounce of sense.
But.
Back to music.
Does rap require imagination? No. Basically, rap music (I hesitate to call it music, but it's a popular term and it flows well with my thought process) is a play-by-play account of a person partying with the rich and famous. Or it's a play-by-play account of someone getting their paycheck.
I don't need imagination to think of a party!
I don't need imagination to think of getting a paycheck!
I need imagination for things like epic battles with swords and shields!
I need imagination to think of angels fighting demons!
Notice the dramatic shift in subject matter. Parties, Paychecks. Battles, Fights. We all have a youthful aggression.
Maybe instead of using that energy to transform kids into brainwashed zombies flashing 44's on TV, we should use that same energy to....oh, I don't know, make more doctors, make more EMT's, more....airline pilots....more.....anything but these gangs of black people shooting each other because they crossed the wrong street!
Will anyone realize how stupid and futile it is to fight one another like this? This is what's happening in Africa! Look what's going on over there!
Malaria!
AIDS!
Senseless killing over what?!
WHAT?!
Property.
To the people of the world, look around you and see what this junk is doing to us. I can't stop it. A lot of us can. But I can't. It pains me when I seem to be the only one who can see what's happening in a world where people can't take a second glance at what's happening around them when they are so intently focused on what's in front of them.


I'm not a god, nor will I ever be, but I want you to stop, look at what's going on in the world. and try to do just that. Try to just....look. It's like watching two dogs fight behind plexiglass. They can't hear you. They never will. It hurts don't it.

Welcome to my side of the table.