The Smiley Smile Message Board

I've been listening to Dust Bowl Ballads by W and I'm still blown away at his amazing talent as a songwriter. Makes me yearn for simpler times.

One of the artists I like more for their influence than for their actual work, but no doubt a great writer and figure in musical history.
Any one who had This Machine Kills Fascists on his guitar is a friend of mine.

I think it's a bit condescending to think the times were simpler then than now, if that's what you're saying.

I used to hear stories of life in the early 1940s from my grandmother and believe me, my ears don't lie and neither did she. Times WERE much simpler in 1940 than they are now.

But no better or worse.
See/read The Grapes Of Wrath for that. Or Triumph Of The Will.

Been there, done that.

In this era of networking and internets and expanding global conglomerates, I can't help but be amazed at my grandmother's stories of life during the 30s and 40s.....the paranoia was still there, but the extra baggage wasn't, since it had yet to be invented.

Well, my grandfather was a constantly beaten-up-on-the-streets immigrant, who had to do terrible jobs for nearly no pay just to eat enough to survive. My other grandfather saw nearly all his friends die in World War 2.
So, while I would dearly love to have seen that generation's art while it was happening, I doubt any of us would have survived a day in that climate/society.

My grandmother came from a poor upbringing, she never went to college, and she was out of high school and married to my grandfather, who spent the better part of the early years of their marriage in the Navy during World War II (he was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed, but managed to escape on his carrier, on which I believe he was lieutenant). According to her there were no televisions, everyone made their own fun, and everyone was happy to wake up the next morning to face another day. Maybe it's a cynical way to look back on one's youth, but like I said before, my grandmother, God rest her soul, never lied to me or sent me down the wrong path.

Well, I think that's pretty much a wonderful attitude, but I think it says more about the greatness of your grandmother's character than it necessarily does about the times.

Agreed (with Ian). That there is a different world, or even more complex organizations in it, doesn't make the times more complex. What makes "the times" is human reaction, and humans have the same general thoughts, problems, fears, ambitions, greed, hatred, etc. as they always did. Rearranged, redirected, but still not so different. And no more complex.

Speaking of inspirational grandparents, I was lucky enough to spend many late nights in long conversations with my late grandmother while I was in college (she was my only family in town then).  And hearing her tell about the Depression, growing up as an abandoned girl trying to provide for her brothers and sisters as a young teen, and so on...those were not simple times. If ever the human mind or spirit is tested, those are not simple times. And they're always tested.

Yep, run the notion of "simpler times" past someone who made it out of Bergen-Belsen, or maybe Emmett Till's family, or the parents of some bobby soxer who died with a coat hanger between her legs in a stairwell. Every generation, like every human being, faces it's own self-made horrors. People get murdered, people get raped, there is racism, alcoholism, child abuse, infidelity, war, disease, unemployment, corruption, poverty, on and on forever. Human relationships have always been full of deception and betrayal, life has always been punctuated by the deaths of loved ones, the pressures of school, the pressures of the workday, the pressures of parenting. The scenery gets updated, but the play's the same and it's a complicated piece of work.

And God's great gift of music has always been there to express our innermost thoughts and feelings, bringing us up when we're ready to lay down and die.

Well said, absolutely. Music is transcendence.

I feel like I ought to run through the little Zappa quote from Joe's Garage here. But I only remember the last bit, I'm ashamed to admit. "Music is the best."