4/18 (anything): notes regarding my globalization paper

Just figured I'd take the time to respond to some of your notes on my paper. I may as well: the paper was, after all, basically a piece of amateur music criticism. Regardless of all the ridiculous consensus-building "canon" stuff in magazines like the getting-more-obsolete-by-the-moment Rolling Stone, music criticism should be more about creating open discourse than settling arguments (despite what Ronald Thomas Clontle might think).
OF COURSE the Pogues were better than Gogol Bordello; I didn't mean to imply otherwise, though I can see how it might read that way in the paper. I probably shouldn't even have mentioned them, just leaving the Flogging Molly comparison. Both are more overtly "punked-up" than the Pogues, and less songwriting-oriented. But yeah, just to clear that up: Pogues, one of the best bands ever. Shane MacGowan's one of the greatest songwriters of his generation--with a uniquely Irish sense of coal-black gallows humor and emotional resonance, as well as an acute awareness of the Irish literary tradition and a punk-informed political sensibility. Their musicianship is always incredibly tight, they reinvented traditional British/Celtic folk music in the coolest way since Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band in the 60s. The use of the word "gimmicky" in the paper wasn't to describe them, but rather the entire subgenre of bands who've come about in the years since Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash made them a big deal. But they were less less globally-oriented than GB, therefore not as key to that paper.
Yeah, those first four Eno vocal albums (and his work with Roxy Music!) were monumentally great. If Another Green World were to come out today it would still be mindblowing; when I first heard that album a few years back, Eno's legacy had already become about as huge and widespread as any single artist's can be, but it was still an incredible record in its own right. Unlike a lot of old "technologically innovative" albums--I like Kraftwerk a lot, but Trans-Europe Express still sounds like a very clear-cut product of its time--it's barely aged a day.
It's weird that I didn't mention the Clash's cover of "Pressure Drop," since Funky Kingston was one of the reggae albums I was listening to while writing the paper. Incidentally, reggae's another one of those genres like the blues, where the more "good stuff" I hear the more convinced I am that mainstream perception of the genre is lethally flawed. GUYS THERE'S MORE TO IT THAN LISTENING TO fucking SUBLIME WHILE STARING AT YOUR POSTER OF BOB MARLEY SMOKING A SPLIFF. Lots of that 70s stuff in particular is some of the most passionate, groovy, and surprisingly diverse music out there. But to end that digression, maybe Toots's voice is too great? It's awfully hard to remember anybody else's version of that song when you're listening to the original. Similarly, Toots and the Maytal's version of "Let Down" on that Radiodread album (I know the concept is absurd but just about everybody on there really knows what they're doing) is just about as good as the original. Toots Hibbert: there's a man what knows how to sing.
On the sixties: yeah, there were a lot of global influences in 60s rock, especially in the Eastern tonalities of just about every psychedelic band of the era. I guess they figured there was something "trippy" (or in George Harrison's case, I guess something genuinely spiritually fulfilling) about droning raga stuff, and they were kind of right about that. I'm not sure to what extent most of them were really directly influenced by Eastern music--I know John Coltrane was hugely influential on most of those bands, especially the Byrds and the Grateful Dead, and he got really into Eastern philosophy and music around the start of the decade--but the sound is still really obviously "exotic." Not to mention the really obvious Latin influences in Santana's music, duh, and the rise of the tiny handful of worthwhile jazz fusion acts.
I just figured I would never be able to get the paper finished if I didn't narrow down the scope a whole lot, specifically to punk and alternative (and even then it hurt to leave out PiL, the Ruts, the no wave scene, the Specials, Camper Van Beethoven, Boredoms, etc., etc., etc.).