To blog or not to blog, that is the cliched, rhetorical question.

So, first, I figure I should welcome my good friend, the Dwainker, to the blog. He's the one who really kind of pitched the whole "let's make blogs" thing to me recently, so you can blame him for getting your daily requirement of sarcasm and rock and/or roll music analysis.
Second, the title for this obviously comes from Billy Shakespeare's work Hamlet, which has been the center of discussion in my Shakespeare class of late. I'm going to go ahead and say that the majority of Shakespeare is crap. I do like Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, King Lear, and Richard III, with a few things from Hamlet and Macbeth here and there. However, the rest? Yeah, crap. I mean, seriously, why do we pound this into people? "Because they're good stories?" someone might ask. I'm gonna point to Midsummer Night's Dream with the turning of Bottom into an ass who then has sex with Titania as a prime example of shitty plots. "Well, maybe because of the verse? Iambic pentameter is impressive, right?" No, sorry, that just means that Shakespeare had a lot of free time on his hands that could have gone to making better plots. "What about Romeo and Juliet? Everyone loves that one." Nope, sorry, starcrossed lovers just ain't my bag, baby. They get together, marry, and then kill themselves because their families are feuding. Whoop-dee-doo. Plus, I pretty well summed up the play in one sentence. If Shakespeare had done that and left it at that, I'd be happy. Of course, my beef with Shakespeare extends to how he is taught, too. Note that these works are plays, not novels or short stories. Therefore, they should be watched, and only actors should read the plays so they can put together a performance. If you expect high school or even college kids to read these plays for the story, you are going to be sorry. By preparing to perform it, the reader will actually get something more out of the characters. By just reading it to take a test over it, they're just wasting brain cells and time. After all, if all you want is for the student to know the story, give them the Cliff's Notes. No, these are plays. They should be watched and will be easier to comprehend with a human face and voice giving meaning to those verses.
That's kind of where I am in terms of songs. These days, I've been considering how songs are poetry read aloud to music. They often stand alone on paper, but with a voice behind them, they come alive, much like the SotP from last time. Clarence Carter's Slip Away is a poem. I can look up the lyrics on any number of websites and read it and understand it. Yet, when I listen to the song, it works even better for me. I actually have two versions of the song done by Carter in a studio, a very rare thing, but I understand why. The original recording is basically Carter singing the song with a decent range of notes and some sadness. The second recording, which was actually the first one I got, is just amazingly sad. Carter puts real pain and sadness into his voice, which makes it a very powerful piece, and one that I could identify with a lot easier. Oddly enough, this relates back to the Shakespeare rant. I could read the lyrics and get the basic idea behind the song, but that might be a waste of time. I can listen to the first version of the song and get a little bit of emotion, but not much else. Or I can listen to the second version and have a moving experience. I could read Shakespeare and it seem like I'm having teeth pulled. I can watch a high school production where the kids really don't get the whole gamut of emotion behind the piece. Or I can watch Ian McKellen and Kenneth Branagh play the shit out of old Billy and really get the experience as it was intended. I think we all know which I prefer.

Song of the Post: "Gettin' paid by the hour and older by the minute, / My boss just pushed me over the limit. / I'd like to call him something, / but I think I'll just call it a day."