April 29, 2007
IF I WERE A BELL
...elmo, spotted recently, rollin' with the changes...
big thrills of late...
outdoor jam at thudstaff's place, on his brand new deck, was an ear opener...the way that sound travels outdoors, no reflections...and the way an upright bass transfers vibrations through its metal stand into the floorboards...and the way that one can tacitly feel the listening ears of nearby neighbors, silently attending to invisible yardwork...there were no noise complaints to police, and a bird or two stopped by to listen....absolutely grand...
solo acoustic at my daughter's daycare center...two sets...the babies were challenging but the toddlers and up went bonkers for b.i.n.g.o. hats off to kiddie entertainers everywhere...it ain't easy...
two amps the cyber deluxe does very very well:
fender deluxe
vox
I think it's vox. or early marshall....with the extra gain stage it's basically resembling an early marshall circuitry anyway...sounds like a plexi to me....it has that great upper mid/presence snarl that, with a strat, only marshalls (or vox?) do (a stroke of wisdom to label the groups non-specifically--"british," "blackface," "tweed," etc.) ...and with the deluxe it does that thing where the neck pickup is fat and clean, then the bridge pickup gets overdive and snarl...I NEVER expected a digital amp to do THAT...
the white strat (trad config) is an absolute stunner with this thing. everything from stevie ray to jimi to rory g...with a univibe added I found myself right in the wheelhouse of that band of gypsys tone...
sunday morning with no tim russert, wolf blitzer or john mclaughlin ... life as originally intended...
we good.
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excerpted from downbeat...mr. (ornette) coleman answers a question about communicating with his musicians...I'm not entirely sure if he answered the question, but I do want to put him in charge of US foreign policy...
How do you relay your ideas to members of your ensemble? Do you choose people who fit a certain characterization for music or do you get people and allow their musicianship to manifest itself?
This is like, “How did you fall in love with something that you like?” Everyone has something that’s written in themselves, whether it’s sex, money, religion—whatever it is. If you like it that’s what you devote yourself to trying to relate to and represent. The only thing we should be concerned about is what is eternity without it? Everything in our life doesn’t have to feel like an eternity. That’s the kind of idea that’s different and it’s something that is difficult. Something has to go wrong with your body and brain and you die. Obviously, it’s not something you’re born with. It’s funny that you have to be erased in order to have identification, but you don’t need that to die. You’re void of race, of color. ...
Knowledge is taught but ideas are activated because of the quality of your interests and the quality of and the concept of what you’re going through—what you believe you’re trying to achieve, trying to relate to the people and things that you enjoy doing. When someone says mechanical or intelligent, it doesn’t tell you how to do it. It represents what it means in order to identify. The only thing you don’t have to worry about is sex. Predominantly, the emotions talked about living and dying are something called love. Love doesn’t die. People die. ... Imagine that you didn’t have to die to live, but you have to live to die. That’s crazy. But I guess life occurs before death. If death was before life then life wouldn’t be in existence.
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April 28, 2007
WE IS BAD
...realized that one of the files in megawaste was actually a solo improv, so I moved it...the hard way easy....what is megawaste? what temerity! what balderdash!
a high and hearty saturday rest to one and all......spring has sprung, and I cannot breathe....
a wayward strumpet dances nimbly on the tip of a pin...maidens of the livery cavort lasciviously under a black-sooted street lamp...sailors long at sea drag their shadowy caracasses toward the dark end of town...high john the conqueror and sally in the alley press their lips against the glass perimeter...swaying in slumber to waltzing matilda in the hollowing nightmist...a dying man's last words made green in sputtering echoes of a tenor saxophone...maplewood new jersey april two nine ought seven...exeunt the coxcomb...
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April 26, 2007
WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SAY IT AGAIN
Bill Moyers' new tv show is truly an achievement. He's done some great work producing programs on such fascinating topics as modern english poetry and the great mind of Joseph Campbell. But this is obviously where his real strength as a journalist resides. I sincerely hope that PBS puts it into heavy rotation for a while. If you can, watch it with your whole family. Nowadays we all need to be highly skeptical and contrarian if we wish to digest the corporate tv news in any kind of meaningful way. the ramp up to the current war is an excellent case in point, which "buying the war" makes clear very, very effectively.
time to ring some changes...
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April 25, 2007
JESUS HATES YOU
...the happy couple...aren't they just adorable?...
Here's an interesting point of view...the #2 man at the vatican (in charge of doctrine-scary!), archbishop amato (pictured above with ratzinger), just stated that homosexual marriage and abortion are equivalent to terrorism.
Since I left the church three years ago, here's the number of times I've regretted the decision I made: zero. Here's the number of times I've felt 100% righteously affirmed in my decision: daily.
I wish I could ask the archbishop one question. If he thinks gay marriage is as evil as that, how does he feel about fucking kids?
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Thank you, Mr. Hitchens, for once again cutting through the cacophony of the bewailing masses and skewering the sturm and drang of our soap opera media. Some perspective will return eventually. We can only hope.
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April 24, 2007
REVEALED! THE SECRET OF LIFE
I've been missing my mother a lot lately. She had an unparalleled virtuosity in distilling things to their essence, and plain ignoring the negative, pessimistic half-empty nature of things. Also: great hugs.
By the same token, I'd have been honored to have made Alice Trillin's acquaintance. She's gone now too, of course, but her writer husband Calvin was nice enough to record the following anecdote, which I think should be posted in every maternity ward in America (from "Alice, Off the Page" by Calvin Trillin The New Yorker 03/27/06)...if my mother, nursery school teacher and pied piper of westhampton beach new york, had a governing credo, it would line up perfectly with this:
"Once, for the program at the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp gala, some volunteer counsellors contributed short passages about their experiences at camp, and Alice wrote about one of the campers, a sunny little girl she called L. At camp, Alice had a tendency to gravitate toward the child who needed the most help, and L. was one of those. "Last summer, the camper I got closest to, L., was a magical child who was severely disabled," Alice wrote. "She had two genetic diseases, one which kept her from growing and one which kept her from digesting any food. She had to be fed through a tube at night and she had so much difficulty walking that I drove her around in a golf cart a lot. We both liked that. One day, when we were playing duck-duck-goose, I was sitting behind her and she asked me to hold her mail for her while she took her turn to be chased around the circle. It took her a while to make the circuit, and I had time to see that on top of the pile was a note from her mom. Then I did something truly awful, which I'm reluctant now to reveal. I decided to read the note. I simply had to know what this child's parents could have done to make her so spectacular, to make her the most optimistic, most enthusiastic, most hopeful human being I had ever encountered. I snuck a quick look at the note, and my eyes fell on this sentence: 'If God had given us all of the children in the world to choose from, L., we would only have chosen you.' Before L. got back to her place in the circle, I showed the note to Bud, who was sitting next to me. 'Quick. Read this,' I whispered. 'It's the secret of life.' "
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A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of
time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
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"[Right before we began rehearsals], while the rest of our future company was enjoying their Christmas in London, Rex arrived three days before the holidays to begin work in advance with Fritz [Loewe, Lerner's partner], Moss [Hart, the producer], and me.
"It was another example of something I found to be true throughout my professional life. Every genuinely great star with whom I have ever worked is a star not only because of talent and that indefinable substance, but because he works harder than anyone else, cares more than anyone else and his sense of perfection, which is deeper than anyone else's, demands more of him.
"I remember when I was doing a film with Fred Astaire, it was nothing for him to work three or four days on two bars of music. One evening in the dark grey hours of dusk, I was walking across the deserted MGM lot when a small, weary figure with a towel around his neck suddenly appeared out of one of the giant cube sound stages. It was Fred. He came over to me, threw his arm around my shoulder and said: 'Oh, Alan, why doesn't someone tell me I cannot dance?' The tormented illogic of his question made any answer insipid, and all I could do was walk with him in silence. Why doesn't someone tell Fred Astaire he cannot dance? Because no one would ever ask that question but Fred Astaire. Which is why he is Fred Astaire."
Alan Jay Lerner, The Street Where I Live, Da Capo, 1978, p. 89.
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April 23, 2007
IT MUST BE SPRING BECAUSE THE GERMANIUMS ARE BLOOMING
...the tiny little magic things that live inside my favorite stompboxes...
this new world of digital amplification is just full of surprises...
one of the defining features that most distortion/overdrive pedals share is their propensity to "hit" the power tube section of the amp with a boosted signal, often a boosted signal that's been clipped to produce some sort of distortion or overdrive--moreover, the boosted signal causes the tube tone itself to clip as well, creating compression and sustain and basically a wonderful feel to the depressed fingertips...the very thing that keeps making tube amp lovers all gooey after all these years...
so, what is the result with an amp that has no tubes? pretty much hit or miss...and the opposite of what I'd expected too. first example: the delightfully marshall-y keeley ds-1, a revamp of a popular boss model, with the cheap internal components upgraded with audiophile replacement parts. it's a great little pedal if you want that crunchy, power chord satriani/vai/gods of california guitar sound. I thought I could re-purpose it to other things, but that's really what it does best. since the tone it produces is self-contained, almost like a sansamp, I thought it might be perfect with the digital amp. not so. it actually sounds even more artificial...not so the germanium-based pedals though...
I have a germanium boost (ala dallas-arbiter rangemaster circuit) which my brother-in-law built for me...and it's probably my very favorite guitar pedal ever...and I have quite a few, believe me. but I was skeptical of its usefulness, given that it's really designed to act as a first stage before a tube amp. but it sounds quite gorgeous in front of the cyber deluxe...also, my own hand-wired fuzz face sounds awesome! and it's not even what I'd consider a top-notch fuzz, it's a bit too much of the woofy/woman tone for my needs. however, it sounds really nice with the fuzz backed off a little, almost like a good overdrive in a bad mood...
the blackstone mosfet, however, was disappointing. as great as it is in front of a tube amp, and I mean GREAT, with the CyDlx it's only ok at subtle settings, and with the gain higher, it's just pure crap. the designer once told me that he had so much confidence in the circuit that he'd run it into a PA system by itself, but not me. it's a great interlocuter between telecaster and class A tube amp, but for now it's back to collecting dust.
honorable mention goes to the other bro-n-law booster, the clean boost he made me is very good on some guitars for adding a little sparkle. saves me from having to create presets for specific guitars--if a given setting doesn't sound quite as lively on this or that guitar, this is a good pedal to restore some of the articulation without having to fiddle with knobs on the amp...
and while we're on pedals, there is absolutely no way that the amp's built-in compression is going to replace my barber tone press...ditto the built-in tuner...
a series of misfires prevented the trio from reconvening this weekend, but hopefully there will be an opportunity to place the amp into a real band situation before too very long...
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April 21, 2007
WARM SHALLOW SEAS
new solo improv file added today, a little dronetone that I slapped together while waiting for bandmates...and waiting...and...
first recording with the new amp...one channel mic'd and the other with the speaker emulation line out...next time maybe we'll try a little, um, guitar playing...
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April 20, 2007
EXPLODE AND MAKE UP
...like cake...
Day 2 of fender amp ownership went well. I programmed the 4-preset controller, and after re-reading the manual and a "tips" sheet I found online, delving into the internal workings became a bit more transparent. there is still something clinical and unfun about tweaking via sub-menu in the digital world. I think this is why there are so many tube snobs out there. it's like driving a stick. there's something visceral and satisfying about feeling the controls' direct link to the engine. so far, I haven't felt much of a need to explore that submenu aspect yet...but perhaps when I hook it up to a computer and manipulate these things with.... a mouse....!!!
that's right--big unexpected bonus feature numero uno: it has a cakewalk-based controller...not pro tools, not logic or digital performer...cakewalk. and since I am a cakewalk sonar user, that ought to work out great. and then maybe I can do something about the teensy tiny bit of hiss I'm hearing...all amps make noise, I'll get used to it, but let's just say that if I paid full price for it, or worse, if I blew a grand on a cyber-twin, and heard the hiss, I'd be pissed.
however, totally not pissed. it's a computer, after all, and I've yet to definitively evaluate the degree to which this is noise coming from other nearby electrical devices (such as the giant computer screen directly across the room). the love is growing--all of what I've read about the blackface and tweed presets are hereby confirmed...yowza! very crispy, fat, clean, ballsy tones...and I'm actually quite pleased with a plexi-type lead tone I twonked in a matter of minutes. I wouldn't say it sounds just like a marshall, but it bangs on the same basic frequency as a cranked marshall circuit, and with that result, one's fingers react appropriately without judgment...
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the sunshine has returned to the great northeast...let us rejoice and be glad...
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April 19, 2007
PARADIGM SHIFT
...more than meets the eye...
last night I made what will probably be my last gear acquisition for quite some time...a "used" fender cyber deluxe amplifier...I add the quotes because the amp's condition would suggest that it's been kept inside an airless, dust-free isolation tank since it was first purchased. the footswitch is still in its original shrink wrap packaging. it would seem that the original owner played it much like one would play an amp at the store--just meandering around the presets...
ok by me. I'll certainly be dusting it up and getting underneath the hood in a big way...features-wise, this amp is DEEP (also loud. and heavy. it took some doing to get it home from the bronx last night. the elevated trains are not particularly well-designed for travelers who are laden). once I got it home, I removed the acoustasonic, mesa boogie and tech 21 amps from my studio space and installed the CD on an amp stand next to my dr. z 18W tube head...shiny.
I'll post and review the various aspects of this product as time goes on (no doubt it will make itself heard in the mp3 section before long). it has built-in fx, and--no surprise--it's main claim to fame is its emulation of fender models (yes emulation, not modeling--it's a slightly different beast than a line6 pod, albeit with similar results). I've yet to save a preset or tweak an effect setting, but that will come in short order I expect. thus far, the two main weaknesses are the tuner--which I've now read works better with the guitar volume turned down halfway (which is annoying, both in practice, and also because I had to learn about it in an online forum and not from the manual), and the fact that the "trim" knob, which maximizes the input to compensate for differing output levels of various pickups, isn't a save-able preset (all other variables can be saved but this...how inconvenient!). theoretically, you'd want to adjust this even when switching pickups of differing output levels (like on my telecaster) on the same guitar...quite impractical...
but I won't be chiseling away at its lack of features for long. for one thing, I got it for such a reasonable price that I can't really complain too much. for another thing, I'm actually quite happy that it doesn't have more bells and whistles. in essence, it is a computer...a digital device designed to sound like a tube amplifier. as such, the learning curve is a bit different...I'm reading manuals and digging up tidbits on the user forums and so forth. and on some levels, that can be fun, and interesting. but for the most part, all that stuff is gravy. last night I dialed up one of the blackface settings, made it loud and clean, added some reverb, and dialed back the tone knob on my ibanez...jazz tone deluxe...the rest is gravy...
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john podhoretz is summoned to comment on the life of kurt vonnegut? that's like asking michael moore to eulogize ronald reagan....and yet the voice-over (james rosen, why do they keep you hidden?) "reporter" has several uncharitable (and unfounded) things to say about the man's work and legacy...the usual cowardly scumbag approach from Fox News...
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April 18, 2007
NEW ROSE
...mmmmmmm....that's the one I like....
could be a new chapter. but it's craigslist so I don't want to jinx it...knock on wood...on paper: versatile, solid state, logo-appropriate amp for the clean scene jazzbo tone kitchen...in reality: the ears and fingers will tell...
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p.s. ...I got it home, after an invigorating journey through the Bronx...it's bigger than I'd expected...heavy too...but it works...someone over at Fender has an evil sense of humor: when you turn it on, beware having the master volume at anything above zero, because the default setting it powers up with is one of the high-gain marshall or rectifier settings, and it is loud and roars like a harpooned mastodon, just as you're leaning over the thing to turn it on and tune up...right in the face, right in the ear...surprise!...my opening user tip would be, when done playing, to return the master volume to zero no matter what, like zeroing out a mixing desk...more later as I explore the inner workings, but right now I'm pretty pleased with the big clean blackface twin sound...
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April 17, 2007
SONNY
this has certainly been a week with its ups and downs...therefore I've been trying to get at least 20 minutes of free playing in after work, to chili this pepper out...using the samplers regularly now to create sonic textures...
inspiration: last week I heard Sonny Rollins perform in person...
tonight, I plugged in a telecaster and recorded a 20-minute improv, one take, based on a 4-note loop...it was somewhere between the translation of african tribal rhythms with the elegance and sass and strut of nyc street sax honk...the language...that's what I was thinking about, not that this sounds like that...hence, "thoughts on sonny"...the file is available under the new 'solo improv' header...perhaps as a tonic for some of you insomniacs out there...
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you might have noticed that I rearranged the layout of the right-hand column...woo hoo...I just figured, archives and links and so forth, move 'em on down the line...better feature on the audio content now...I like it better...
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THE RED PRIEST
Enrique de Castro, known locally as the "red priest," runs a parish in Madrid. He doesn't wear the traditional priest frock. He drinks the occasional beer, smokes, mingles with his parishioners as one of them.
His church services are overflowing. Attendance spills out into the street.
He calls it a "church of the poor"...and he is in danger of being defrocked and removed from pastoral duties.
This is my biggest beef with the Catholic Church...even to a secularist like me, the message of Jesus to help the poor, help the sick, do good works etc. is a good one. But when a man like Father Castro actually does this, he gets into trouble over issues of style. He won't wear the frock! Fire him...the bishops and cardinals, imbued with power, value acts over appearances, style over substance, politics over piety...
There is a video of this guy over at CNN.com. I don't know about you, but I'd never seen the front door of a church overflowing with people. obviously whatever is happening inside must be fantastically awful...
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as our national media apparatus goes into overtime with saturation coverage of the VA Tech shooting, be sure to keep an eye on all the other little stories that are going down...especially out of the white house...it's times like these when they like to release touchy information to a distracted press and citizenry...
not that this even doesn't have something in common with those "other" stories...30 innocent murder victims? young people cut down? imagine this happening every single day, all over the country, with no effective police response and you've got a hint at what it's like in Iraq right now. every day.
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April 15, 2007
JUST THIS
...at least...
I switched the "sidewinder" mp3 with another take, the second half of the second run-through...jazz with a strat...I'm still a bit rough on the head, but that's being remedied...the reason I'm putting this one up there is because the bass/drums sound absolutely full-on tits...
heavy weather coming...be safe...
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April 13, 2007
PASS IT ON
'nuff said...
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TONIGHT: Sonny Rollins at NJPAC. !!!!
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OK, Sharpton. You got what you wanted. Big bad whitey is shit-canned. Now whatcha gonna do? Wait around in your track suit for an angry white cop to screw up? Or do something new: be pro-active.
This obviously comes from the right side of the aisle, but the man makes some excellent points...
money quote:
"In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?
I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?
When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim."
Just for the record, I am totally against celebrating black men shooting each other randomly.
If we are to follow this black pundit's argument to its conclusion, however, we might ask just what it is that gangsta rap and prison culture have in common...and it's a totally white issue--the white paper upon which diplomas are printed, is largely absent from both groups of people...
and why is that?
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April 12, 2007
GOODNIGHT SWEET PRINCE
...probably the best writer since Twain at merging humor with social consciousness...
Another of my heroes is gone.
Kurt Vonnegut
1922 - 2007
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in his own words...an excerpt from his recent memoir:
"Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, five hundred years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.
The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.
We've sure come a long way since then. Sometimes I wish we hadn't. I hate H-bombs and the Jerry Springer Show
But back to people like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, each of whom have said in their own way how we could behave more humanely and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favourite humans is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana.
Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:
"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.
"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?
When you get out of bed each morning, with the roosters crowing, wouldn't you like to say. "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the US Constitution.
But I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'état imaginable.
I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale".
George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, published in 1941. Read it!
Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything.
PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!
And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage.
So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.
They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilise the reserves! Privatise the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.
The title of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.
While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on.
I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published in early 2004, that humiliating, shameful, blood-soaked year.
In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African-Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appallingly powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed.
In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as Nazis once were.
And with good reason.
In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanised millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want.
Piece of cake.
In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanised our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.
Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything.
Piece of cake.
The O'Reilly Factor.
So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times.
Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed there were weapons of mass destruction there.
Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the first world war. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the first world war so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.
Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?
Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too. I am a veteran of the second world war and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.
My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."
Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas
Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations, and made it all their own?
© 2005 Kurt Vonnegut Extracted from A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America
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so it goes...
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April 11, 2007
RE: SPEW
Today's Word of the Day...speaks for itself...
vomitorium (vom-i-TOR-ee-uhm) noun, plural vomitoria
A passageway to the rows of seats in a theater.
[From Latin vomitorium, from vomere (to discharge).]
Vomitoria in ancient amphitheaters helped the audience to reach their
seats quickly and then, at the end of the performance, leave at an equal
speed (hence the name). Thousands of seats could be filled in minutes.
The suggestion that a vomitorium was the place for the ancient Romans
to vomit during a feast has no basis.
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AN 11 ON THE MANLY SCALE OF ABSOLUTE GENDER
We love JC Christian, that wingnut character created by the inner frenchman who so skillfully skewers the right via his eloquent sycophancy and baiting via friendly missive. once in a while he drops his pretense and blogs it straight no chaser...easily the best imus-related web piece I've seen yet...combined with their class and eloquence at the rutgers news conference yesterday, it's easy enough to see why these women's families would be so proud of them.
their character shows through for all to see. since moving to new jersey three years ago, this is the first time I've actually felt pride in the state where I live. because of these women. and it has nothing to do with basketball. I'm not a fan.
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JANE SMILEY'S RESPONSE TO THE POPE'S EASTER MESSAGE
I didn't tune in to Ratzinger's Easter speech, but I think this is brilliant...She beautifully delineates the essential problem that many of us have with institutional religions who get away with murder (or rape, or fraud, or...) because of the professed purity of their "faith"...kind of like Imus calling himself a "good person"...I'm pasting it here for later reference when HuffPo removes it from sight...
The last time I wrote about religion, I got put on an enemies list by someone whose name I don't know. I was the 87th greatest enemy to America! My mother and uncle were worried that I was going to be shot, but my own view was that if I was America's 87th worst enemy, then
America had nothing at all to worry about. The thesis of my offending article was that the mental effort of reconciling all of the contradictory events and statements of Scripture is so confusing to those who believe in the literal truth of the Bible that eventually they simply have to give up trying and let ignorance prevail. This seems logical to me, not incendiary, but incendiary is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. I did not refer to the fact that any translation of the Bible is an interpretation, and in fact, the Bible in English cannot possibly be literally true, since it wasn't originally written in English, but this brings me to my present subject.
As I read various articles defending or attacking religion (they have them all the time in the Guardian), one thing I've noticed is that no distinction is made between faith and religion, when in fact they are not the same thing at all. Faith is a subjective experience of a relationship and a state of mind, while religion is a set of institutionalized forms and doctrines, and religious organizations are often in the business of making money, owning property, and making social policy. Religions depend upon individual professions of faith, but faith remains a private matter, akin to love or any other state of mind.
With these distinctions in mind, I think it is possible to understand how secularists such as myself can find religion off-putting and even dangerous. Over at Salon this week, there is an article about Elaine Pagels and the newly translated Gospel of Judas. Professor Pagels has written very clearly about the formation of the Catholic Church as we know it (and Christianity, too, in some sense) through the inclusion and exclusion of various accounts of Christ during the Councils of Nicaea and other Christian assemblies of the Fourth century AD. At that time, certain beliefs were codified and others excluded. This was an argument that had real world consequences--when the doctrines became codified and taught, the Church was on its way to becoming a force in the world. When, 1100 years later, the Reformation took place, in many places in Europe, the wealth and power of the Catholic Church was as significant as, or more significant than, notions of faith. Henry VIII of England, for example, took over the English monasteries almost immediately after he broke with Rome, and once he had distributed their wealth to his allies, there was no going back, whatever the beliefs of his subjects. Humans, whatever their faith, use religion to accumulate power. Ironically, many holy figures, including Buddha, including Jesus, and including Francis of Assisi, begin their ministries by arguing against such an accumulation of wealth and power in God's name, and reasserting the claims of faith over those of religion. But religions always supersede faiths--there is too much lucre at stake for vows of poverty to endure. In some societies, the governing elite simply annexes the religious elite, or vice versa, and complete power is established over the people of that society. In the case of fallen empires, such as ancient Egypt or the Inca Empire, we don't question why this is so, or even that it is so. It does seem to be the case though, that the natural human arc of religion is toward empire, and therefore toward temptation, corruption, and the enslavement of some groups for the benefit of other groups. When I am asked by various religious organizations to "respect" them, I always wonder why I should respect them any more or less than any other wealthy and powerful institution. Be wary? Yes. Watch my step so that I don't incur some sort of punishment? Yes. Stay out of the neighborhood so that I might not make some foolish mistake that would lead to me getting hurt? By all means. By the same token, were I to voluntarily engage with this institution, of course I would observe their accepted forms of human courtesy. I would attempt to ascertain them and then abide by them. When I was a child learning the Nicene Creed (thinking it was a poem, not a promise or a declaration) I wore a piece of lace on my head inside the Church because not to do so would be to flout the norms of the group and the place. But I don't understand what the word "respect" means in this context. If the institution does not act in an honorable fashion, if it has a history of cruelty and inhumanity, it may arouse my fear, but not my respect. Most of the religious institutions of our day DO have histories of cruelty and inhumanity, and, in some cases, crime, but they ask me to respect them anyway, because of faith.
Faith is an entirely subjective experience. If I don't feel faith toward a particular doctrine or figure, then there is no way that I can be made to feel that faith. The strongest demonstration of this reality was the Protestant Reformation. Luther, Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley, and the others showed by all their activities that they could not be made to share the subjective experience of Catholic faith as described by the Church. When I am asked to respect other people's faith, I actually cannot do that, because I can have no idea of what they are talking about--it is their experience, not mine. The closest I can come to respecting their faith is to respect whatever they say or demonstrate that their faith is, as well as respectng their right to have that subjective experience. Nevertheless, faith, like love or obsession, is a very powerful feeling that sometimes impels people who are having it to attempt to impose it on others by, for example, "witnessing" or "testifying". To witness or testify is to enter into a social interaction. In most cases, both parties to a social interaction, such as a conversation, agree to it. With social interactions based on faith, though, there can be an element of coercion. Someone who constantly witnesses to his or her subjective experience of faith is like a stalker in that he or she is imposing his or her emotions on others. This is why I am so suspicious of Evangelicals--first, they want you to share (supposedly for your benefit) their subjective state of mind (an impossibility), and then they want you to give them money--to enter into the religion part of the faith/religion duo.
The most interesting thing about this, to me, is the fact that my subjective experience of faith or no faith is considered threatening by many of those who profess faith. This effect is certainly understandable when religious leaders are protecting their worldly assets, but it is not morally defensible--it's just human. When the US was founded, there was a reason that the framers of the Constitution declared that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". They were not talking about faith--they had, however, seen what religious wars did to Europe, and they also knew that they themselves held a variety of faiths.To wed the government to a particular religion was, I suspect, simply too dangerous and unwise given the passion of faith and the power of churches.
In our own time, we see the arc of the power dynamic in the Evangelical churches. Once more or less peripheral in relation to the established churches, they have, in the last fifty years, become very wealthy and very powerful, and not by accident. Now they want to dominate because they suspect that they might be able to. When the established churches had more money and more adherents, the Evangelical churches didn't make the claims on the government that they now do, and their doctrines have changed, too--they have embraced the worldly goods they once disdained.
It seems obvious to me that globalization and religion are on a collision course. The world we live in is the thirteen colonies writ large, but our leaders don't have the good sense that the founders had. Fundamentalists of all religions keep announcing to the rest of us that they want to attain more and more earthly power--the Pope wants to re-Christianize Europe; Islamic clerics want to Islamicize Europe; American Evangelical missionaries were busy immediately after the the first phase of the Iraq war attempting to convert Muslims, Anglican prelates in Africa think they can get rid of more liberal American Episcopalians. None of these efforts demonstrates the "respect" toward others that all of these religions demand for themselves. But their common enemy is us secularists. Our attempts to get the faithful and their religious superstructures to simply back off and leave some blank public space where daily life can proceed without coercive "faith" or greedy "religion" are seen as the ultimate insult. But the Founders were prescient. They saw that forcing a diverse (and well-armed) citizenry into a single religious mold would be an impossible task. How much more impossible today, with six billion even better-armed world citizens! If there is a "salvation", then the secular world is it. But maybe there is no salvation; maybe what our era will prove is that monotheism must fail as a human experiment, given the inability of individuals to see past their passions, and the inability of institutions to inhibit their own expansion. I am sure whatever religious group or faithful follower it is who explodes that big bomb and kills all those innocent people will have some excuse, some reason why in spite of all appearances, that individual or group is innocent or holy or pure. God will have told them to do it. Oh, I mean, the ego-mania they call "God" will have told them to do it.
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April 10, 2007
RACIALLY INSENSITIVE COMMENTS
...is that a real poncho or is that a sears poncho?...
media-centric types, like myself, have now been subjected to, how many days? three? four?...indeed it has been 17 weeks of non-stop noise about the Imus nappy-headed ho's comment...at least it feels that way.
I've always been on the fence about Imus. He can be an entertaining voice of intelligence and wit in the morning, and then sideswipe you with the most kneejerk reactionary viewpoints this side of Dan Quayle. But that's probably about as good as it gets on radio nowadays. Part of it I understand...he's a dry drunk, which seems to be a contemporary qualification for show hosts with some political complaining, i.e. "commentary" to offer the populace. Bill Maher certainly has that self-righteous, niggling tone when he gets into it (not to mention the tell-tale expressed fondness for cannabis sativa). My point is that dry drunks (myself included) tend to get into circles of negativity that can lead to spontaneous behavior which is ill-advised. They also tend to maintain strong loyalties to those who stuck with them throughout the experience of rehab and recovery. I'm referring to the fellow who's been behind the glass on the Imus show for years now, whose sole job function it would seem to be to ejaculate nassau county long island-style ignorance and pithy comments in the archie bunker tradition. I'd always wondered why Imus, who seems to be able to get anyone from the DC punditocracy on his show, even needs this staff of neanderthal howard stern-style throwbacks to the golden age of small-minded cruelty humor.
the current scenario being debated is a classic example. listening back to the comment of offense, it is clear that this staffer, Bernard McGuirk, was the one who offered the "ho's" comment, before imus chimed in with "nappy-headed." (also on the line was the voice of sid rosenberg, a man who couldn't even keep a job at WFAN, a new york media outlet designed specifically to report information that its listeners already know. example: if the yankees lose a game due to poor pitching, the following day there will be 8 hours of programming describing the bad pitching, replete with phone calls of listeners who claim to also have seen the bad pitching. to this intellectual challenge, mr. rosenberg was not fit. yet his input is welcome on the Imus program, lord knows why... )
You can all continue arguing over the appropriate severity, or not, of the 2-week suspension. I do hope that it changes the "tone" of the program, since the comedy of Imus is not why I tune in at all. it works much better as an alternative meet the press, with Imus interviewing those who interview. he also features some not-so-mainstream musical artists from time to time, with the reason being that he likes them personally. I'm not quite as keen on Vince Gill myself, but I respect that.
But regardless of what fate awaits the millionaire philanthropist Donald Imus, the real bone I have to pick here is with the apparent coronation of Reverend Al Sharpton as the arbiter of who or what is racially correct in this country. Who are the people who believe that the fat man in the track suit is the prime minister, media-appointed or not, of black america's conscience?
[and just where, pray tell, is this reverend's church? when was the last time you heard this phrase: "during sunday's sermon, rev. sharpton extolled the virtues of..." you haven't, because he didn't.]
not me. I think he's just terrific with a megaphone when the cops misbehave, but aside from that, I would be gravely insulted and completely demoralized, were I a black person offended by the Imus episode, and looking for leadership. Is Sharpton the best available? He just got finished milking the James Brown and Strom Thurmond media stories...how nice that he can make himself available to arbitrate this event in his even-handed, classy way...
I bring this up because there is now an opportunity to raise the standards significantly. His name is Barack Obama and he's running for President. Whether or not he succeeds to attain the high office he seeks, I have a feeling that he's going to be around for years to come, and one can only hope that his presence will supplant the megaphone with the microphone, the shouting with articulate rhetoric, the naysaying with eloquence and inspirational calls to participate and aspire to something better...because listening to a self-aggrandizing demagogue on the radio, whether he's black white or purple, is the exact opposite of civic participation--it is the navel-gazing of a bewildered subject.
Time to rise up.
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April 09, 2007
VARIABLES VS CONTROL GROUP
...at the hop...
new music posted. right-hand column...scroll down, under "party tricks":
sidewinder: the lee morgan chestnut, harmonizing effect achieved by arraying a four-octave sympathetic resonance avatar near the speaker and gleaning the frost...
canteloupe island / song for my father: any combination of tunes in F works...
walter melon man: he ain't playin' no autumn leaves jack...
these files are large. best bet is to right-click and save as...
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April 07, 2007
SIGNAL PATH
...click the pic...
time for a geek post. since playing more regularly with the jazz trio, I've reconfigured my pedalboard to adapt to the fact that I'm not using the tube gear right now, nor am I seeking to emphasize overdrive aspects....it's mostly clean tone, with varying amounts of subtle gain adjustments...toward that end:
fulltone clyde wah (out of frame)->
fedronas germanium boost
blackstone mosfet overdrive (internal gain trimpot set low)
barber tone press compressor
fedronas clean boost
digitech jamman sampler (with channel selector in middle)
line 6 delay/sampler
songworks little lanelei spring reverb
(out of frame)
line6 modulation fx
danelectro dan-echo
pedalboard powered by voodoo labs pedal power 2...
all that and it still sounds pretty much like a guitar...provides ability to manipulate subtleties ad nauseum, as well as construct a colorful racket of cacophony and tripadelica with the sampler/looper devices...true bypass where it needs to be...
at the moment I'm running this into a fender acoustasonic, then a tech 21 trademark 10 combo...super pristine solid state sanctity...in mono...
tube snobs would hate it! who cares; it works...
for now...am currently shopping for an all-in-one solid state amp, louder than the acoustasonic, which can handle both mag/pickup electric and piezo/pickup acoustic inputs...
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April 06, 2007
HIPPITY HOPPITY
...it's a funny way to celebrate a fertility festival...
if you happen to be hopping down the bunny trail this weekend, please observe all traffic signals, and don't eat the peeps...
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April 05, 2007
JAZZ DEFINED
...pluck you...
The mercurial and brilliant Matthew Shipp drops the science:
"I think at its best, jazz is "fuck you music". I think that is what they share. They share a similar energy. To me, jazz is at its best, when it has completely gone against the status quo. Of course, we want to all get accepted and make money. I think the energy from jazz has to be outlaw energy or it is just not vital. It shares the same "fuck you" attitude as punk if it is good. If you are trying to conform, you might as well forget it. "
He's right.
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April 04, 2007
MACKEY'S BACK
...Vic's back, and this time he's really pissed...
How cool is this? across the vast wasteland that passes for tv entertainment these days, in just a few days, two things that I love to watch have returned: yankees baseball and 'the shield' on fx...
I've gushed in this space before about the excellence of this show...suffice to say that if you're not catching it now you're missing out on one of the most compelling hours of tv viewing you'll ever see. the good guys aren't all good; the bad guys aren't all bad; you the viewer must sort it out for yourself...
and this season they've upped the ante even more...want to see what I'm talking about? tune in to fx this week...
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with easter approaching, and lots of probable squawking about peace and hope and rebirth for the thousands around the world who still subscribe to make-believe, you might have noticed that the two head gangsters over in ireland--gerry adams and ian paisley--recently sat down to announce some sort of power-sharing arrangement...murderers talking peace, how nice. christopher hitchens gets it just right in his slate piece this week...
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holding off on the new jazz trio mp3s until we get together again this weekend and record more (better?) takes...
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April 03, 2007
April 02, 2007
OPENING DAY
A DAY OF EXPECtations.
also: new music.
sloppy rehearsal takes perhaps, but probably the best sounding recordings I've done yet of a group in the basement space...the upright bass is an amazing obelisk of wooden tones...it records beautifully...
will upload as time permits...
Play Ball!!!
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