Anyone see this interview? Apparently Rosanna has made a rocumentary
where she talks to her favorite artists with the basic tone of the
thing being how back in the good old days (Tom Petty and Steve Tyler
are two of the people in the clip they show) they made real music etc
and that todays music, which was being implicated as rap and Brittany
Spears stuff, was crap and the record companies didn't develop real
artists yada yada yada. In one of the clips Steven Tyler whines how
the Aerosmith catalog was worth millions and is now worth nothing
becausd of illegal downloading.

The thing is, I am listening to her explaining this and It it making me
sort of uncomfortable because it could be racially construed but at the
very least it comes off as super thumbing of her nose at all genres
except her brand of rock.

What really got me was when Tavis chimed in with what to me seemed
unoquivocally racist.

He suggested that Elvis and the rest of his rocking gang had stolen
their material from blues people like Muddy Waters and other artists
and that maybe the popularity of Rap was payback for their dirty deeds.

I've gotten pretty tired of this racist dribble that any white artist
who incorporated any influence from black artists is a thief. The very
essence of the creative process is when you take two or more
ingredients and combine them to create something new. Anything creative
will have input from previous influences no matter who creates it.

Let's take the Elvis example. I was born in 1958. When I was growing up
the music I liked was in the rock and roll genre of the sixties and the
seventies. I wasn't particularly into Elvis and found him mainly
humorous; A bit silly or cartoonish. I Thought he had a few decent
songs. One reason I saw him this way was my dad sang and played guitar,
writing many of his own songs, in the true old country vane of artists
like Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams. I thought my dad was
pretty corny. Well I heard some of that same cornyness in Elvis.

What that says is that Elvis's music had two distinct influences. One
was the R and B/Rock of black americans of the fifties etc, and the
other was country music of white american. He was one of several who
put the two together and that is BINGO!!! What they call CREATIVITY.
It later became known as Rockabilly!

Even Chuck Berry, a seminal black rock and roll artist freely stated he
combined country music and black rock for the novelty of it.

I could go on and on. Is anyone else tired of this crap?

Mike http://www.mmmeproductions.com