It just keeps getting sadder and sadder to pay any attention to these liberal folk. I really enjoy(ed) listening to Mellencamp and others' music and watching movies from the liberal hollywood elitists. It has gotten to the point that I don't want to listen to their music, watch their movies or basically give a darn about their liberal whinings.

I guess its time to shoot the tv and the home theatre and grow my garden.

He may not be too bright, but he's a real good dancer.

Nora Guthrie, Woody's daughter, once told me a story about a reception she was at where Bob Dylan was in attendance. The business people there were quietly commenting on how unsociable Dylan seemed to them, not what they imagined an encounter with Dylan would be like. When that observation about Dylan's behavior and disposition were mentioned to Nora, the response was very profound. She said that Bob Dylan was not put on this earth to participate in cocktail chatter with strangers. Bob Dylan's purpose in life is to write great songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A' Changin'." This sort of sums it all up for me. The artist is here to give the listener the opportunity to dream, a very profound and special gift even if he's minimally successful. If the artist only entertains you for three and a half minutes, it's something for which thanks should be given. Consider how enriched all of our lives are made by songs from "Like A Rolling Stone," a masterpiece, to "The Monster Mash," a trifle by comparison.

The pretentious ramblings of a has-been!  So disdainful that he should have to dirty his hands with something so distasteful as money.  I'm sure that he dirtied them only so long as to deposit those royalty checks; then, he went back to being an artiste....and a has-been.

I get so tired of hearing from our multi-millionaire "men/women of the people," who collect gazillions of dollars for performing.  Do the actors and actresses pass that fee onto the cameraman, the scriptwriter, the popcorn boy, the ticket girl or do they spend it on a new yacht or $50,000 outfit that will be worn only one time to a self-congratulatory awards event?

Don't shut up and sing;  just SHUT UP! 

All he's talking about is pop music. And while I agree that the pop music scene is crushingly boring, that's not all there is to music. I'll argue that if you're into different kinds of music, you have many more options now than you had before.

Mellencamp has definitely gotten crankier as he's gotten older. I still love Cherry Bomb, Check It Out, and others, but I don't really need to listen to his theories about the music industry.

Hey Cougar Boy.... when you learn that elusive fourth chord you might start selling albums again.

That's a whole boatload of stupid right there.

 Besides playing up all the obvious cliches, he demonstrates no knowledge of the industry that made him?

 Reagan's trickle down policy was responsible for the top-down corporate model? Did he ever hear of Alan Freed  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Freed ?

Surely Mellencamp-Cougar must have noticed that the liberal entertainment biz rejected Reagan's "Greed is Good" mantra and just pass on music for the love of it. I'm sure the RIAA was cooked up by Reagan to funnel money and Lonesome Jamboree CDs to the Contras.

I wonder if his small town would have him back?

-Dave

. .  .which includes liberals and leftists and the Demockacrats/Dementocrats in Congress as well as the current though likley illegitimate occupant of the White House, live in an alternate reality.

In it, water runs up hill.

And never a day passes that they cannot find out something else about which to whine.

Or a crisis cannot be manufactured to elevate them and depress the rest of us.

And blame on either a dead or living Republican or conservative.

I never knew that the whiners were such perfect, informed people.

But, then, how could I, as a conservative who's actually studied economics, history, etc.? And who's been mostly awake during the decades I've been alive? And who stopped long ago from getting news of any sort from the print and broadcast advocacy media?

So, John "Cougar" Mellencamp, as he liked to call himself in the 80's, thinks Reagan & big business ruined his career.

Actually, he was able to ruin his own career in spite of Reagan being President and the recording industry.

Hey JCM, remember way back in 1982, when the Who and Jethro Tull where the headline groups to play at Folsom Field in Boulder, on a nice August weekend?

You surly remember being the opening band. Remember playing only 4 songs because you had a cooler thrown at you and where literally booed off the stage.

JCM, you weren't booed off the stage because of Reagan. It was because somethings never change. You sucked!

Where does one begin to dissect thi load of manure.

First of all, Mr. Cougar (yes, you indeed played the game that you so disdain), who forced you to change your name when you couldn't sell crap in NY because your stuff SUCKED at the time?  Lucky you that some filthy, eeeeevil businessman wanted to make some money and had you change your name in a bid to sell your lousy stuff.  Yes, your stuff got better, but had it not been for the "filthy" music business and the way it takes nothings and gives them a chance to mature as artists (while paying the bills), you'd have left NY with your tail between your legs and headed back to the farm where you'd still be yankin' on cow udders at four in the morning.

And just who do you think would be there to get the "art" out, were it not for the people who figured out how to make money off this stuff?  Or do you believe that we should be all taxed to death so that anyone who calls himself an artist can suck off the rest of us?

And let's go back before Ronald Reagan and ask how the Beach Boys or any other astist from back then made it?  They had a product that someone figured out how to sell.  Pity us, it isn't up to Bob Dylan standards, huh?  Well, not all of us wanna listen to him whining about whatever social cause he sees as unjust.  Some of us just want to be entertained, not enlightened by music.

YOU POMPOUS ASS!!! 

And another thing you simpering twit...if the music business is so evil because it's based around making money, why don't you and some of your too-rich-for-your-own-good navel gazing, no talent spoiled Hollyweird whiners get together and create a record label with your own money?  Yes, what a great idea!  You can promote artists and give them contracts even if no one wants to listen to their crap!  Oh, wait, that wouldn't work, because the logic of the marketplace would sooner or later bankrupt the company without some other idiots constantly feeding more and more money into it, with little to no financial returns.

Of course, we can't expect that YOU would invest YOUR money into it...my guess is that you would expect the American taxpayer to foot the bill, you stoooopid skidmark. 

I can go into a whole diatribe about the music industry, especially radio.  Suffice it to say I do not listen to the radio all that much.  Classic rock stations play the same songs that I have been listening to since the mid 70's when I became aware of music beyond the AM stations. (I lived in Long Island by the way). And there are few if any stations that will play rock music by new artists.  I have turned to the Internet and word of mouth to find artist's and music that I like. Bands like Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, Ayreon, Dropkick Murphy's and Joe Satriani are not played on any radio station I know of in New York, instead the local stations play the same lame stuff over and over and over again.

"The wrOng ONE was elected"

"Sound quality was supposed to be one of the big selling points for CDs but, as we know, it wasn't very good at all."

That's senility setting in.  Poor John Cougar.  CDs were a quantum leap in sound quality, and to this day are still the best in terms of this (iPods employ lossy compression and thus have degraded sound quality).

And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.   -- Edgar Allan Poe

He does a lot of good work for charity, Farm Aid and such.  Ol' Johnny's definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed, though.

I do get tired of the constant "shut up and sing" refrain.  Celebs have as much right to voice their stupid opinions as the rest of us, the only difference is that when they do, somebody shoves a microphone in their face, so we all end up hearing it.  If the simple fact that they're celebs disqualifies them to speak out on politics, then how about someone tells Ted Nugent to "shut up and sing".

She said that Bob Dylan was not put on this earth to participate in cocktail chatter with strangers

Dylan was a strange bird, but Melloncamp is stranger still.  I seem to remember Dylan saying he was in it for the money and he wrote songs to sell.  Mellonhead is a few quarters shy of a dollar and he needs to shut up and sing.  I guess he needs to feel relevant.

To believe that a band has to make money to get their message out is ludicrous.  Remember Devo in the 80's, they were not in it to be famous or make money but just trying to make a statement.  It resonated with pop culture and they were instant MTV stars.  Of course MTV made a lot of stupid bands overnight sensations.

As always throughout time the world revolves around money, always has always will.  Even the hippies of the 60's learned this lesson and became yuppies, and some became teachers.

Nuke em til they glow then shoot em in the dark.

Forget all about that liberal shit, and learn how to play guitar.

And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.   -- Edgar Allan Poe

Before there was BDS there was RDS very virulent strain that Melonhead the washed up singer is taking asinine swipes at. I'm quite sure that Mr. Melonhead when he got Reagan's trickle down tax breaks, did not call Treasury and say, there is some mistake, I've been given back too much money as a result of these horrific lower tax rates. Please Treasury Chief find a check for not only the difference but ten percent more, cause I'm a patriotic American, and government can never have too much of my money.

It's sad that the only way Melonhead finds to be relevant is a stupid attempt to trash Pres. Reagan. He doesn't even understand the genesis of the present financial crisis, so as Dan Quayle stated, what a waste it is for John to lose his mind. But maybe he'll get a couple of invites from the libtard intelligentsia. They love artists who beat up on republicans. It would probably beat those meals at the Senior Center he's been living on.

 all the cash he made from those damn Chevy commercials to those strugglin singers?  

I didn't think so.

The Cougar is a joke, a hypocrite, and his music sucks. I change the station anytime any of his songs come on.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

Don Marquis 1878-1937

I always thought John Mellencamp was over-rated.

Cry me a river John

http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/16905/

Get back to me when a welfare recipient starts buying CD's as we build the economy from the bottom up.

Never trust a 'rocker' who ONLY plays acoustic guitars.

"When that observation about Dylan's behavior and disposition were
mentioned to Nora, the response was very profound. She said that Bob
Dylan was not put on this earth to participate in cocktail chatter with
strangers."

I am currently reading "Atlas Shrugged". Last night I read the part where Lillian Rearden has a cocktail party and the "intellectuals" in attendance are all saying nasty things about the industrious while eating canapes off the silver trays provided by the industrious Hank Rearden.

Ayn Rand knew what she was writing about and comments like this prove it.

It's sad when a site about mainstream liberal media bias has to go to a left wing website to prove it's point.

I blame bands who suck for ruining the music biz, as well as publications like Rolling Stone who insist on putting 70s and 80s acts on the cover week after week, while ignoring any and all new bands.  

Reagan isn't responsible for either.  

First let me say I loved JCM's stuff up to around 1993-94 and the Dance Naked album. First concert I went to "officially" was the Scarecrow tour, one of the first cassettes I remember getting from my parents at Christmas was "Uh-huh" and I proceeded to seek out his back catalog.

By the sounds of things, this post has combined two of his favorite things to complain about: The record business and Reagan. Going back to his 1980 album Nothin' Matters and What If It Did he had a song called "Cheap Shot" that took the record companies to task for price fixing and the mergers that were starting around that time. (It also went after Rolling Stone magazine for selling out.) Kind of a gutsy move at the time since his albums weren't really selling and his big claim to fame at that point was Pat Benatar having a minor hit with one of his songs.

Come 1982, he's a big pop star in his own right and, after Pink Houses is a hit, feels he can start injecting messages into his music. That brings us to the Scarecrow album. If there was any doubt that he had been a Carter/Mondale Democrat it was erased when promoting the album. The songs, while carrying a message, were general in casting blame for the failure of so many family farms. In concert introducing them, he went after Reagan. Nevermind the Ag, trade and foriegn policies of the Carter Administration setting things in motion. That album being a hit, he was free to be more pointed on the next two albums, including the line "Thank God he went back to California" in the song Country Gentleman.

The impression I always got from him was he exceeded any level of success he thought he would have...and now has a degree of guilt about it. Especially in that Uh-huh/Scarecrow period. It was one thing to move back to Indiana from LA when you're topping out at #43 on the charts. When you're back home, the new album has gone to #1 and the bass player from your first band is still pumping gas, at least until those self serv pump go in, you might have more than a twinge. Can't help things when you sing about how you "Married an LA girl/Brought her to this small town," and then dump her for the hot New York model you hooked up with on a video shoot. 

When it comes to Mellencamp, I have to just ignore to the politics and accept that he's a Bloomington-area liberal and will never change. I just hope somewhere along the line he appreciates the irony that he once wrote a line that said "Hypocrite used to be such a big word to you/And it don't seem to mean anything to you now." I doubt he will.

Wow, so, trickle down economics doesn't work, and cd sound quality isn't very good, Cougar-boy? How insightful. Next you'll be telling us it's impossible for musicians to make a lot of money, lol.

To me he is one of the worst, most boring song and dance men ever.

Thank God I found other musicians to listen to when the RIAA's payola was getting him and other non-talents all over the radio and MTV.

One of the 34% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 61% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory (yep...approval for Congress now at 39%...do you believe that!?).

John Mellencamp has raked it in for years and never had a problem out in the open about the corporate nature of music and how bad it is.  He seems to be more upset that the times have passed him by and his type of pop rock doesn't click anymore with the information age crowd. 

 The type of music I listen to is not an easy money maker and the bands generally like the internet to get their music out there for they really only make a living off of live shows and t-shirt sales.  Guns N Roses once said that after everyone gets their "cut" the band only makes about 6% off of every album sale.

 If Mellencamp was all about the music and the purity of the whole artistic element...the next time he goes on tour, check to see if he takes on an obscure, unknown punk band as an opening act who have the "artistic" vibe or will he take on a band that has commercial value that will help generate more ticket sales for his shows?