Musically Talented or Mentally Unbalanced

Ceili_whistle_man · Post by **Ceili_whistle_man** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:18 am

The quote was 'More popular than Jesus' not 'More popular than God'.
The exact wording of the controversial quotation by John Lennon on 4th March 1966 was this;
"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink, I don't know what will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. We're more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."

Brian Wilson is a musical genius.

jemtheflute · Post by **jemtheflute** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 6:49 am

"God" does seem rather unduly popular in the USA just now, especially judging by some of the recent threads here on church music!

scheky · Post by **scheky** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:51 am

Let's just leave that one as an observation and let the fighting continue in the rubber room.

pancelticpiper · Post by **pancelticpiper** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:06 am

About the joy of unexpected and spontaneous music-making, I work at "the happiest place on Earth" where we have an area called "adventureland" that has a shop which sells various African and Polynesian etc things, including ukeleles. Image my suprise when I walked by this shop one day and the guy working there was playing one of these ukes and singing in Hawaiian! He was quite good. Turns out he's Hawaiian and by chance happened to be working in that shop that day. That was, as they say, priceless.
(This shop also used to sell bamboo whistles from India. I tried all of them and bought the best one, which plays great, in the key of B.)
I play in a Scottish pipe band and recently we've done a couple evenings where we go from bar to bar. We just march into a bar and the place goes wild. One guy passes around a tip jar while we play for around ten minutes, and then we go to the next place. It's tremendous fun for us and 99% of the people in the bars love it. (You always will have the one guy trying to talk on his mobile phone who hates it.)

anniemcu · Post by **anniemcu** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 10:10 am

kkrell wrote:"Musically Talented or Mentally Unbalanced" - not mutually exclusive.

Kevin Krell

One of the main guiding principals of my life.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:10 am

more often hand in hand, eh

CranberryDog · Post by **CranberryDog** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 12:29 pm

pancelticpiper wrote:About the joy of unexpected and spontaneous music-making, I work at "the happiest place on Earth" where we have an area called "adventureland" that has a shop which sells various African and Polynesian etc things, including ukeleles. Image my suprise when I walked by this shop one day and the guy working there was playing one of these ukes and singing in Hawaiian! He was quite good. Turns out he's Hawaiian and by chance happened to be working in that shop that day. That was, as they say, priceless.
(This shop also used to sell bamboo whistles from India. I tried all of them and bought the best one, which plays great, in the key of B.)
I play in a Scottish pipe band and recently we've done a couple evenings where we go from bar to bar. We just march into a bar and the place goes wild. One guy passes around a tip jar while we play for around ten minutes, and then we go to the next place. It's tremendous fun for us and 99% of the people in the bars love it. (You always will have the one guy trying to talk on his mobile phone who hates it.)

Good one! I too am a piper. It was 1967, I was in my first pipe band, the Houston Highlanders. I had been playing in the band for about a month when I was invited to a band party.

The water of life was flowing. The PM was sitting next to me, and gestured to me for my attention. He then produced two Clarke whistles from his pipe case and inserted a whistle into each nostril and proceeded to play a duet of "Mary's Wedding".

Everyone watched as they had seen this act before and it usually indicated that the party had progressed nicely. When the PM finished, he dipped the head joint of one of the whistles in his glass of scotch; shook it off and handed it to me. "It's yours", he said; "have a go!". My first whistle lesson. Best, Cyril.

wvwhistler · Post by **wvwhistler** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 5:47 am

I would think that (looking back through history) that a lot of the "greats" in music (pick the genre of your choice) had something fundamentally wrong with them! Perhaps it is some sort of a pre (co ?) requisite or simply the force that drives us to be obsessed with our chosen instrument.

WyoBadger · Post by **WyoBadger** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:33 am

The point of music is to have fun and add beauty to the world.
Sounds like Elmore (and lot of others!) is out there doing it! Keep it up!

T

CranberryDog · Post by **CranberryDog** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:03 am

It was in 1968, when I was a DJ at KFMK FM Houston that I interviewed many rock greats to include Jim Morrison, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, Grace Slick, Spirit, Iron Butterfly; the list goes on.

Were any of them unbalanced or "different"? You can bet your blank they were!

For example; Jim Morrison, an admiral's son, was very introverted and soft spoken. He sat in with me for on an entire show and "played" DJ with me. He did a great show. Quite different from his stage personna.

Jeff Beck, on the otherhand, was a very scrappy and in your face kind of guy. When asked if white men could or should play the blues, he responded, "sure, you could too if you had had the blank bombed out of you in WWII". On stage, he was often introverted and off in space.

Anyway, just a couple of anecdotes. Cheers, Cyril.

A-Musing · Post by **A-Musing** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:41 pm

Making sweet music calms ALL SORTS of savage beasts.

johnnyboi · Post by **johnnyboi** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 6:37 pm

My girlfriend made me a hooded elven cloak and it has a row of whistle pockets inside

It's great fun going to medieval fairs and highland gatherings and being a travelling minstrel from a forgotten realm.

My friends thought I'd lost it but I thought it was just cool. I don't think there is anything wrong with me..

A curious question: do crazy people know they're crazy? I don't mean crazy like tortured genius, but crazy more like those insane cackling old ladies that throw cats. Muaahararar-caats!

mutepointe · Post by **mutepointe** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:03 pm

some do, some don't. i know all kinds of people with mental illnesses. i'm a social worker, it's part of my job.

i know a man who has a mental illness. he'll tell anyone "I know i'm crazy because the government pays me good money to be crazy." he receives ssi benefits. one of my friends went on a crisis call once. the person she saw believed that he was dead. seeing as how he knew he was dead, he saw no need to take his medications. he had to be hospitalized.

CranberryDog · Post by **CranberryDog** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:04 pm

mutepointe wrote:some do, some don't. i know all kinds of people with mental illnesses. i'm a social worker, it's part of my job.

i know a man who has a mental illness. he'll tell anyone "I know i'm crazy because the government pays me good money to be crazy." he receives ssi benefits. one of my friends went on a crisis call once. the person she saw believed that he was dead. seeing as how he knew he was dead, he saw no need to take his medications. he had to be hospitalized.

So ...I guess they were/are musicians?

mutepointe · Post by **mutepointe** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:11 pm

not that i know of but if you really want to see musical and mentally ill in west virginia, this guy is the pinnacle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesco_white

pics at this site and the video is temporarily unavailable.

http://www.juliescoggins.com/dancing_outlaw_page.htm