Universal Chat Thread

[Moonface]

Yeesh got COVID again, hope it doesn't take too long to get over it but the fact you had to go to urgent care doesn't sound good. Screw work though, the stupid Fs, apart from your coworker.

I think it might take most of the coming week to start feeling better because they prescribed me an $800 medicine to deal with it that I have to take for the next 5 days. I'm just glad I got a doctors note though because last night the manager I called to inform them I was out for the next week said I could come back in 3 days, which is not happening. Especially when I went to work suffering from the onset of COVID for two days in the first place.

Today was a really slow day though as nights overfilled and we didn't have much stock out the back, odd for a Sunday but there is the Euro tournament on and England are playing today.

I won't be surprised if England loses unless they're playing against a really shit team.

[Moonface]

About to spend something like two hours with my thumb up my arse at Detroit airport because I have a layover flight. No idea how long my sanity will last before I go insane from the likely inevitable boredom I'm about to endure...

[Mr EliteL]

Ahh, airports. Been a bit too long since I was at one.

I haven't been watching the Euros but somehow England got through against Slovakia, they scored twice at the very end and were about to lose 0-1. Has been a few days now since then.

Got a second-hand wardrobe for my tiny bedroom, the first wardrobe I've ever had as before my clothes were in drawers or hanging on a sort rack stand that got in the way of the door fully opening. There's a lot less space but it's better to be in than surrounded by a ton of stuff.

[Moonface]

I think the results of that match were being shown on a TV here when I was eating out on what I guess was the night of the day they had played. I forget who it said they're up against next but whoever it was I'm not expecting England to win, but then I've never expected them to win because it feels like expecting them to is asking to put on clown makeup.

I haven't used a wardrobe for clothes in so long I can't even remember when it actually was I last even had one. Nowadays I just store my clothes in drawers by folding them and then standing them in a way where you can just see every shirt in the drawer and pick what you need without digging. Although rolling is the optimal way to store clothes with the minimum amount of space used I find.

[Maniakkid25]

I have nothing to add to the discussion of football or wardrobes; I merely come to spread a thought that I sometimes think of randomly. One of the best-selling Reggae albums of all time is by a white guy who was literally and unironically calling himself "Snow". Sold 8 million copies (which doesn't make it the best-selling reggae album, but it is up there). Allegedly, its hit single "Informer" is the best-selling reggae single of all time, but I can't find any hard numbers to prove that.

You're welcome for that newfound knowledge.

[Moonface]

Huh, can't say I ever expected a white guy to be doing reggae but now that I think about it I also don't see any reason why not. Probably the same as what people may have thought when someone like Eminem first started doing rap music.

It would be funny though if Snow is from somewhere not remotely associated with reggae.

[Maniakkid25]

He's from Toronto, so you got your wish.

Yeah, after white people... I'm going to diplomatically say "co-opted" Blues, Jazz, and Rock, a lot of music styles are very defensive about the "whitening" of their music. It's not just an American thing, either; Bossa Nova was once decried as a "whitening" of Samba in Brazil. It's a very delicate thread to be walking when you are a white guy in a genre with a history outside of that ethnicity. And when Snow hit the charts, people were NOT HAPPY, let me tell you!

[Moonface]

Wait, Rock wasn't a genre associated with white people? I thought it was because of how dominated the genre seems to be by white artists.

[Maniakkid25]

Nope! Rock is a genre largely derived from the Blues, which is a largely Afro-American musical tradition. One of the big reasons why Elvis was so scandalous in the 50s was because he was trying to spread black music to the white masses, and people were MUCH more racist in the 50s! This is why of the people seen as pioneering the sound (Ike Turner, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley, just to name a few), the majority of them are black. Edit: it's also generally agreed that, had he not been black, Chuck Berry would have the title "The King of Rock and Roll", rather than Elvis. And the "getting arrested" bit, but I blame it on the race thing.

[Moonface]

I never knew Elvis had anything scandalous associated with him; I only ever hear of how big of a deal he was and that he played a part in making rock a big genre, but that's about it. I'm surprised he managed to get big knowing what you shared in your post, since my impression of racism in that period of time was anyone white associating with black people positively would just get them hated by the majority of white people. It's weird to imagine swaths of women fawning over the man when I doubt most of them were against things like segregation and such.

[Maniakkid25]

Yeah, everyone talks about how Elvis' dancing causing a moral panic, but it wasn't the only thing at play. But people loved it, and honestly, given the popularity of Blues-based music throughout history, its funny to think that so many racists were willing to put that aside for good music. Because make no mistake: Blues is probably the most influential genre in music in the last 150 years. Almost all modern-day popular music all over the world has a lineage tied to it. It's crazy how much we owe to black Americans for the music we listen to, and it's a genre whose history is lost to time simply because of the racism that plagued the world against the African peoples. You could probably ask a Mozart scholar what he would eat for breakfast, and get an answer, but Robert Johnson? We still haven't pieced together what exactly killed him. And that's probably one of the most influential Blues players there is. His works have become Blues standards, though one could make an argument over which ones he wrote (not to say he stole them; its just that the music grew out of a more oral tradition, rather than written works).

[Moonface]

Because make no mistake: Blues is probably the most influential genre in music in the last 150 years. Almost all modern-day popular music all over the world has a lineage tied to it. It's crazy how much we owe to black Americans for the music we listen to, and it's a genre whose history is lost to time simply because of the racism that plagued the world against the African peoples.

Dang, this makes me wonder how vastly different the world of music could be if the slave trade had never occurred back then to bring so many black people to America in that time period. Would blues have just formed from them elsewhere, or no because the environment for it to form in just wouldn't exist (such as lack of the instruments used for it, influences from things only found in America, etc.)?  Also this is more of a hypothetical question type thought rather than something I expect an answer to, so don't feel pressured to actually answer this.

[Maniakkid25]

It probably wouldn't have formed. At least, not in a form we would recognize. See, aside from the African Diaspora, there's another key factor to the creation of the Blues: the modern guitar. While instruments that we would recognize as guitar-like have existed for millenia, the modern guitar doesn't appear until the mid-1800s... in Spain. Without the guitar, we do not have the Blues, and without the Blues, the guitar would be an almost unrecognizable instrument in comparison to its usage today. These two are forever entwined; you do not have one without the other. So, no, I don't think the Blues would have ever existed without the African Diaspora, simply because it requires an instrument that, historically, is European.

[ShiraNoMai]

Coming from working with a modern blues artist, I've learned SO much about the history of blues and how even just keeping the genre alive today has done wonders for music. I think one of the coolest things about my former boss is he goes out of his way to not just collect vintage gear (guitars, amps, pedals, etc) but he continuously keeps it alive by utilizing it in his live and studio sets, keeping that old sound available to be heard through modern output and not just through compressed 8-tracks and such.

[Moonface]

It probably wouldn't have formed. At least, not in a form we would recognize. See, aside from the African Diaspora, there's another key factor to the creation of the Blues: the modern guitar. While instruments that we would recognize as guitar-like have existed for millenia, the modern guitar doesn't appear until the mid-1800s... in Spain. Without the guitar, we do not have the Blues, and without the Blues, the guitar would be an almost unrecognizable instrument in comparison to its usage today. These two are forever entwined; you do not have one without the other. So, no, I don't think the Blues would have ever existed without the African Diaspora, simply because it requires an instrument that, historically, is European.

Interesting, so without the Spanish making one of the original American colonies the guitar may have not entered the picture until after the original creation date of the Blues if the slavery part of history remained unchanged (or at least unchanged outside of anything involving the Spanish since they wouldn't be in the picture there now). Kinda neat to imagine butterfly effects like this in historical contexts where even if A happens, it also requires B (or beyond) to still come to fruition at the time it does in the way in which we know it.


Finally got 90% of the files on my old laptop off onto a portable SSD so I can start bringing them over onto my new laptop. Setting up new computers has to be one of the most tedious things that never feels like it gets easier unless you just don't really have any files to transfer across.