Stevie Wonder to boycott Florida
In the wake of the George Zimmerman acquittal, the singer said he would not be performing in the Sunshine State until its Stand Your Ground law is “abolished.” He also said he would not be performing in any other state that recognizes the law, which some say contributed to Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012.
Who are these “some”? And where did these “some” geniuses come up with the feeling that Stand Your Ground was a factor when it was never mentioned, addressed, discussed or even hinted at during the trial?
As Andrew Branca explains on a NPR show in LA: That would be 33 states Stevie…including California!
But I can understand who you might have missed that. Fortunately for you Branca has an audio clip.
That who should be a “why” but it is okay because Stevie can’t read it. And yeah, SYG was not the issue in the Zimmerman trial anyway.
Of course Stevie probably can’t hear it either, because he is blinded to the truth.
In the main we can take the ignorant reactions to the Zimmerman trial verdict as yet another confirmation of the right reason of the founders and framers of the US when they held democracy in wary contempt. The problem as always is what to do about the moronic aspects of the form. The hope of the democrats is that the worse stupidities only arise in ultimately trivial or unimportant decisions, but of course, there could hardly be a bet more fraught with danger — a wager so thoroughly run through with risk that an assurance that very bad decisions will result in unnecessary damage to the interests of the nation may be assumed a priori. So they chose another path to the extent possible.
He also said he would not be performing in any other state that recognizes the law
Guess he’s decided he no longer wants to tour anymore, right?
I haven’t heard anything from Stevie Wonder in at least 15 years. I assumed he had retired.
It looks like he has, with that statement about Stand Your Ground laws.
I’d love to know where Andrew gets his numbers from, because the most expansive list I could find only has 32. The only common threads among the various sources I have found are the conflation of “Stand Your Ground” states (person has no duty to retreat if they are lawfully allowed to be in any public place) and “Castle defense” states (resident has no duty to retreat from their own home), and the fact that more than half of the States have one or both, but not as many as Andrew states.
I am not disagreeing with him (as he is the expert), I just want to know where he gets his data.
Wait – Stevie Wonder is still alive?
Well, that will certainly turn the tide.
What a silly has-been.
Stevie’s threat to not perform in Florida is the same as Alec Baldwin moving to Canada. It won’t be carried out.
I’m aware that George Zimmerman’s attorneys have been making their way around the various political talk shows scattered across the networks, and I wonder — have any of you all heard them explain their decision to forgo the Florida option (and if so, where?) to accept a so called Stand Your Ground hearing before the court, and instead to simply rely on a commonplace self-defense trial strategy?
I’ve heard plenty of speculation about that decision, but never heard of the decision directly from the decision-makers’ mouths, so to speak, and therefore wonder whether their actual thought aligns with the speculation about their thought?
I can’t find where I read it now (Legal Insurrection, I think), but in point of fact, during their closing, the Prosecution conceded that Stand Your Ground was not at issue in the case.
Of course, they thought they were arguing that point, not prematurely conceding it before the Left moved the goalposts.
Astroturfing the Revolution part two. OWS was part one.
Musical invention resembles in many respects other more specific sorts of mathematical invention, at least when we view it at its highest levels. It’s very often a young man’s game, and its gifts are observed to frequently fade with aging (though not always, as there are notable exceptions).
You’ll have to excuse Stevie – he didn’t actually see the trial.
sdferr – I have not seen a reference to the lawyers explaining why they didn’t use that defense, but I read that they didn’t because that judge had rejected such a defense in another trail earlier.
Kathy Shaidle (Five Feet of Fury) says Stevie Wonder is one of her top ten over-rated musicians. She said this months ago, btw, and asks if anyone seriously thinks he’d have a career if he hadn’t been a piano playing, blind black child when he was thrust upon the stage. A brief scan of his lyrics confirms that his talent is middling at best.
She’s a brave gal: she admits that she hates “The Boss”, too. I’m not alone.
A brief scan of his lyrics confirms that his talent is middling at best.
I can only imagine what you must think of the Ramones.
I distinguish between lyricists and musicians. George Gershwin was a great musician. His brother, a great lyricist. Occasionally the two arts are seated in one person, but this isn’t the rule.
sdferr, regarding the SYG defense v. simple self-defense, by guess is based on watching most of the trial. Simply, it would have injected an issue not really pertinant to the defense’s case, i.e. that GZ was getting pummled on the ground when he shot. SYG has no relevence if you can’t retreat and GZ’s statements indicated that retreat was not an option. As it was, the prosecution tried to argue (impermissably in my view) that he shouldn’t have followed and all the rest of the nonsense for which there was really no evidence. SYG might have given the state more ammo. Your mileage may vary, of course.
As I say, I’ve heard much (reasonable) speculation about the decision, and that is a good reiteration of some of what I’ve heard Sherm. But I just haven’t heard from O’Mara or West on it, and wondered. I presume, of course, that the path not taken would afford an opportunity to the claimer (Zimmerman) to not have to undergo a full trial on some form of murder charge, should his claim have been taken seriously by the court as a truthful account. Nor, I take it, would an earlier hearing have negated his rights to a fair trial in the sequel, should his account not have been so construed by the court.
I distinguish between lyricists and musicians. George Gershwin was a great musician. His brother, a great lyricist. Occasionally the two arts are seated in one person, but this isn’t the rule.
Better said, sdferr. This is what I was going for.
I’ve rethought my position about Stevie Wonder. Let’s just not tell him he’s in Florida. It’s not like he can see the palm trees or anything.
Must be so wonderful to be on the Left where you can say any stupid shit that comes into your head and a week later you’ll never be asked about it ever again.
It does seem odd that SYG could have averted a trial, but somehow self-defense didn’t.
It would have, had politicians not overruled the actual cops.
SoS, all states are different. In mine, self-defence, must be injected by the defendant and then proven by the defendant. It’s different than Florida where the state bears the burden of proving a negative, i.e. that the homicide was not in self-defense. In my state, self-defense almost compels a defendant to testify because the right of SD exists only when the Defendant believes he’s in danger. The only way that evidence gets in, is if the Defendant says so. Once that’s proven, SYG becomes irrelevant.
As for Florida, my guess is SYG is similar to SD here. That is the defendant bears the burden of proof. The defense may have not wanted to tip their hand until the trial where the burden of proving absence of SD in general was on the State.
SYG would only have averted a trial if Zimmerman won the SYG hearing. If he lost, then you have that all over the media poisoning the juror pool.
I get the impression a lot of prosecutors and judges don’t like SYG because they seem to think it gives people license to act out in a “wild west” manner.
You know, like concealed carry.
Was Gershwin a great musician? A great composer? Or both? I seem to remember reading somewhere once that great composers tend not to be great musicians because they two creative acts require entirely different skill sets and use different areas of the brain. Of course, it is undeniable that occasionally someone can be extremely good at both.
Oy, I didn’t intend to begin a parsing inventory, but having begun, I guess I should fill in, if only sketchily. But yes, I think George Gershwin a great musician. And it does happen that he was great both as a writer and as a performer (and those conditions may each be rare things in themselves, apart from one another, so presumably rarer still in combination). But I don’t count it that he had to embody both in order to be a great musician, for I take musician to be the wider category containing the various subdivisions mentioned (as well as others, perhaps). So Ravel, for instance, could be a shitty pianist by his own admission and yet still be a great musician as a composer, at least by my lights if not by his.
So, what’s a musician (who invents) as intended above? A composer or songwriter or such. Or, if he’s inventing as he plays, like a jazzman, say Louis Armstrong, or a Bach at the keyboard, an improvisationalist (so an informal composer, in that sense).
What’s a distinguished instrumentalist, sometimes called by the name virtuoso? Still a musician, though not necessarily an inventor in the same sense, as he or she plays a work of another with manifest intelligence or understanding. But does music, as a recognizable thing, an entity, change when we move from one particular example of it to another? In some ways no, and in others, yes. In general though, I think we tend to recognize music as distinguished from other arts (say, sculpture or painting) without too much trouble.
It could be too that the inventor finds himself burning with desire to hear his invention, and in some circumstances has little choice but to master some form or other through which to attain his desire, so he goes to an instrument. Or, it could be that the reverse might happen, where he’s already in possession of some facility with an instrument playing other’s music and only then discovers that he’s got musical ideas of his own in his head which he then can learn to express in composition. And the permutations of these might be of n sorts? Who knows?
Now I’m curious to hear Jeff’s take on the role of the performer as an interpreter of a composer’s “text.” Let’s take it as given that To Anacreon In Heaven is surely a Living Document.
Squid says July 16, 2013 at 10:04 am
A brief scan of his lyrics confirms that his talent is middling at best.
I can only imagine what you must think of the Ramones.
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I’d tell ya squid, but I’d have to be sedated.
Who wants to read this to Stevie?
I refuse to repeat the suggestion that they just tell him he’s in Louisiana when they book Florida shows for him.
The advertisement choppers from the Ancestry commercial have had their way with poor Ravel’s String quartet in F, 2nd movement, and not to the better. Rewriting: that’s not the way to do it, we might say.
Didn’t Stevie Wonder used to be a singer or something?
Oh, and you’re definitely not alone, Leigh. Springsteen ranks right up there with the Beatles as among the most overrated acts ever.
sdferr, good points and good questions, always good to be clear on terms first.
I don’t recall anyone ever saying that Beethoven was an accomplished performer or instrumentalist, and IIRC he was functionally deaf when he composed his ninth symphony. Historically, I’ve always thought of Beethoven primarily as a composer and the people who play his works as the musicians, but I am open to correction. I can’t recall anyone ever referring to Beethoven as a musician. But then again, there’s always Bach and Mozart, so what do I know?
It is interesting to note that even in the world of orchestral performance, interpretation is important even when there is no semantic disagreement about the text. But digging into significations, identifiers and intentionalism in music is way beyond my pay grade.
FWIW, you are free not to like Stevie Wonder’s music or his comments on the Zimmerman verdict, but the latter isn’t a good reason to espouse the former. If I disdained artists for saying stupid things, I’d have to stop listening to about 95% of the music I own today.
IMHO, Stevie Wonder did produce some outstanding music, though it has been quite a while. Songs in the Key Of Life remains one of my favorite (double) albums.
Beethoven began his musical career as a prodigy of both the piano and the violin. He was a touring performer in his teens before he was a noted composer of any distinction as he passed into his twenties.
Thanks for the update. Considering the economics of their respective times, I wonder who the first composer was that didn’t start out as a virtuoso performer?
Depends on the era, I guess. More than a few of our western type composers (at least in the earlier days of Europe) began their musical careers as little kids in church choirs, and if showing some facility, got lessons from their adult overseers. Beethoven, however has another distinction to his credit: he’s sometimes been cited as one of the first, if not the first musician to find an independent means of support apart from church or state. His publisher found he could make money selling Beethoven’s compositions!
Frédéric Chopin. ‘Nuff said.
I feel like most of the most hyped performers are pretty mediocre at best. I was pretty abrasive about artists I didn’t like when I was younger, but now I’ve rephrased it to being “puzzled at their popularity”. I still trash the current pop-stuff though, almost without exception, current pop performers represent to worst excuse for talent in the years I’ve been alive and paying attention. Terrible…
Was Gershwin a great musician? A great composer? Or both? I seem to remember reading somewhere once that great composers tend not to be great musicians because they two creative acts require entirely different skill sets and use different areas of the brain.
Joshua Homme is a GREAT (rock) composer, but even he knows he’s not the greatest guitar player, and usually has someone else play lead. He’ll do solos, and stuff. But his genius is in songwriting.
Backwoods … Superstition … Stevie had some good songs.
But that was a LOOONG time ago. He hasn’t done anything interesting in the last … 25 years?
Do you guys want me to start discussing Tool? I can do that.
Strange too, mondamay, is the transition — accomplished only a couple of centuries ago — when artists’ esteem in the public view moved from something on the order of the esteem one would accord a butler or haberdasher, to the esteem one would accord a prince, and “creation” became a touchstone of honor. Time was (for eons) it just wasn’t so.
. I still trash the current pop-stuff though, almost without exception, current pop performers represent to worst excuse for talent in the years I’ve been alive and paying attention.
*golf clap.
The reason for this is bigger than the music industry. It, as has hollywood, and politics, etc, has become to be dominated by those with connections. Daughters and cousins, etc, of people in power. While Mom may have had talent, that doesn’t always transfer, so we get what we now have.
Also – Marketing. We don’t have talent anymore. We have marketable products.
That’s why no one has heard some of the greatest songs coming out now-a-days. Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf4L_OQOZsk
Have you seen Stevie Wonder’s new piano?
Springsteen ranks right up there with the Beatles as among the most overrated acts ever.
Ain’t it the truth? I can’t change the channel quick enough when either of them is on the radio.
Springsteen ranks right up there with the Beatles as among the most overrated acts ever.
FU.
And Springsteen. Twice
You too, Oklahomo.
The Beatles were genius, so whatever. I never cared for Springsteen.
Beach Boys >> Beatles.
Beatles didn’t have Brian Wilson.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Jane’s Addiction… ’nuff said.
Carin.. How can you be so devoted to Tool but not APC?
Though I’ll add that the best Springsteen album of the last 20 years is The ’59 Sound. Never mind that it’s not by Springsteen.
It was in the jury instructions, Darleen.
Because I like the entire band of TOOL, not just Maynard. I don’t mind APC. It’s ok. But I much prefer the much more layered, complicated – dare I use the word sophisticated? Yes I dare – sound of Tool.
Maynard is a superb vocalist. But the drums … guitar … etc. Cannot be found outside of the collaborated group.
If it makes you feel better, guins, my youngest is a devotee of the Beatles.
He rightly hates Springsteen, so one out of two ain’t bad.
No, and in my defense I will refrain from finishing the punchline.
Years ago I dredged up an old Ronnie Milsap lyric for some unPC laughs: “Stranger in my house — somebody here that I can’t see…”
Ebony, on ivory(hispanico!)
If you can’t pound a cracka head
Then are you even free?
Why would a fake cop shoot at that?
Don’t he like tea?
Oh is this 2nd degree?
Fuck you Stevie. First the demand was that he at least be arrested. Well they did that. Then it was a fair trial. they did that. Then it was bring the most serious possible charge. Done. Now it’s ‘well, he should have been convicted”. Well fuck you. Mob justice is nothing to support you rich, insulated, jet setting, naive jackass.
I love Stevie Wonder. But I wouldn’t go out of state to catch one of his concerts.
Sounds to me like a whole bunch of undeclawed cats trying unsuccessfully to climb up a steep incline made of chalkboard.
Fixed.
Everybody Else is Wrong
I think the Beatles (and possibly Springsteen) can’t be fully appreciated unless you were there when they were first putting out their stuff. I’m not a Springsteen fan, but the Beatles were very cutting edge in their day, and produced very well crafted tunes, though they don’t translate well to todays vulgar and cynical world.
I think a lot of todays musical talent suffers from the same problem as intellectual talent. Technology. Natural genius has a hard time competing with mediocre talent and a computer program.
I like Tool, and loved Alice in Chains, but the last band I really got excited about was Godsmack, and that was soooo long ago.
How sad.
Welcome to The Narrative©
Fucking Chopin.
Me?
I’ll be choppin’ at the Woodchopper’s Ball.
Eric Clapton is the world’s greatest guitartist.
He’s the Buddy Hayes of his generational field of expertise.
Cracker, please.
Et tu, cranky?