Policy Parochialism

Just about a month ago, I closed out a strong year of concert-going. PCE (post-COVID-Era), with the realization that both I and the bands I've been listening to for decades ain't getting any younger, I promised myself I'd see more live music. Ten concerts, twenty bands, with the year's "finale" being the band Yes on a 50th anniversary tour for their album Close To The Edge.

Setting aside the question of how many original members a band requires to remain that band and not just a cover/tribute act... well, let's talk about that for a moment. I'd seen Yes twice before, but not “officially.” In 1989 I saw 4/5 of the band (Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford, Rick Wakeman, and Steve Howe, touring, oddly enough, as Anderson-Bruford-Wakeman-Howe), with a different bassist (Tony Levin of King Crimson, since you asked). But, since the other fifth (Chris Squire, the band’s original bassist) owned the name, that 4/5ths wasn't touring as Yes. In 1991 I saw 8/5ths of Yes, the "Union" tour that combined the original lineup with several of the second-iteration-Yes members, so that show “counts” for list-making purposes (those who make lists understand. Those who do not never will).

The 2022 iteration has one original member: Steve Howe (guitar). Setting aside the fact that music is a business and that band name ownership is a legal matter, the question as to whether a band is still "the band"after roster changes becomes a bit metaphysical.

Some have argued that the singer is the tell-tale, but there are numerous examples of replacement singers in bands that rose to even greater success and impact. Bruce Dickinson, Phil Collins, Steve Perry, David Gilmour, and Michael McDonald are just a few who outshone their predecessors. Then there are bands who had great success with two (or more) different vocalists. Sammy Hagar replaced David Lee Roth, Brian Johnson replaced Bon Scott, Deep Purple's Rod Evans was followed by Ian Gillan, David Coverdale, and Joe Lynn Turner, and Ronnie Dio replaced Ozzy Osbourne, and that's just in the rock and metal genres that constitute my prime fandom.

Others suggest having a “critical mass” of original members is necessary, but even then, some bands didn’t become big until they swapped out some of the original lineup. When does a band become the band you love? How many who love Pink Floyd can name the seven albums before Dark Side of the Moon? Is Rush not “original” because they replaced their first drummer (John Rutsey, who played on their debut album) with Neil Peart?

As I said, metaphysical, and a great barroom topic.

Yes, pun totally intended, I'd argue that I've seen Yes 3 times, given that the songs I heard were played by some of the artists who actually laid the tracks on their albums.

That little bit of navel-gazing aside, the 'tickler' for today's musing is the bit of irony in listening to fifty year old "progressive" rock. Prog rock's origin is generally considered to be The Moody Blues' 1967 album "Days of Future Passed." The genre includes many seminal acts, including King Crimson, Genesis, Rush, ELP, Pink Floyd, and one of my favorites, Jethro Tull, and while the genre has had many big bands in ensuing decades, mentioning prog elicits a list of septuagenarians. Insert obligatory Bernie Sanders shout-out here.

In pondering the genre amidst some political blogging, up bubbled from the depths of my memory a lyric from one of Tull's greatest (or, if you're of a different view, most self-indulgent) songs, the nearly 44 minute long Thick As A Brick.

The doer and the thinker
no allowance for the other...

As a younger man, I was rather parochial about the music I'd listen to (or, at least, admit listening to). Rock, and later heavy metal, were "my" genres, and so I actively eschewed pop and country and easy listening and disco and whatever else was not considered rock or metal at the time. I convinced myself I was musically cosmopolitan, because I did go beyond the Beatles-Stones-Who-Led Zeppelin quadrumverate that dominated rock radio in NYC in the 70s, but it still took me decades to truly unshackle myself and accept that I could like songs simply because I did, no matter that they were of an "alien" genre. I've since read that this shaking off of musical parochialism is a mark of maturity. Whether that's actually true, I leave to you to decide.

So, what does this have to do with this blog's mission, you might ask?

I harken back to last week's offering, The Policies, Or The Person, where I suggested that we cast our support for candidates based on what they do or promise to do rather than who they are. Expand that notion to our tribal loyalties, to our "identifying" with a particular party rather than aspiring to a particular passel of policies. Just as you don't have to limit yourself to bands and songs from "your" genres," you're not obligated to restrict yourself to the planks in "your" party's platform.

That's easy for small-l libertarians, because we are political orphans, but it is an unfortunate reality that way too many people allow party origin to affect their opinions of certain policy ideas. We see it most readily of late in the current administration's "if Trump did it, we must undo it" guiding principle, but the behavior FAR, FAR predates Trump, and is endemic to Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives.

How many policies are embraced by a faction simply because those policies are of their party? How many won't listen to an idea simply because it's associated with the other genre team side of the aisle?

Is it fair to deride an athlete simply because he's playing for one of your team's rivals? Many, if not most, sports fans love to shout that their rivals' stars are [redacted], but show me a Red Sox fan who'd have objected to in-his-prime Derek Jeter or Bernie Williams playing for Boston, or John W. Henry writing Aaron Judge a monster check?

So it goes with politics. How often do we see ideas hated because the wrong side came up with them? Trump's Operation Warp Speed produced COVID vaccines in a remarkably short span of time, but because it'd have involved giving Trump credit, we had a long list of Democrats and lefties casting aspersions upon them. And, almost farcically, the moment the Democrats came into power, the aspersions turned on a dime, with the Left embracing the jabs while the Right turned skeptical. With objective assessment of the vaccines and the pandemic itself thoroughly defenestrated.

Another Jethro Tull lyric comes to mind. From the lovely but little-known Wind-Up:

How do you dare tell me that I'm my father's son
When that was just an accident of birth
I'd rather look around me, compose a better song
'Cause that's the honest measure of my worth

Labels, associations, provenance, history, and the like are secondary to our individual cogitations, considerations, and conclusions. We should not subordinate our views to whatever our team tells us they should be. Nor should we limit ourselves to ideas that are of our preferred genres. While we are social animals, and while there is strength in numbers, we are ultimately individuals. If an idea is good, we shouldn't let its source color our support for it, and we should not let our team preferences crowd it out of our consideration.

A good song is a good song, no matter if it's of a genre you've declared against.

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Peter