Cosmopoetica

I like Dio. Really. And “Rainbow in the Dark” is a great metal song. And Vivian Campbell plays a crazy-good solo… but watching Ronny sing always makes me laugh… and the piping synthesizer riff in the context of such a rocking song makes me laugh even harder…

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From an interview with Jeff Tweedy in NYT Magazine:

Q: Although “Wilco (The Album)” was released on Tuesday, you streamed the songs free online in May after they surfaced illegally on the Internet.

Wilco: As a musician, I don’t want to expend any energy whatsoever preventing people from hearing our music. I think that’s antithetical to the idea of making it. Yes, we streamed it. Basically we set it up so people who felt guilty about stealing our music could donate some money to our favorite charity.

Oh, and he explains why the band is called Wilco, which you may have known, but I didn’t.

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…why is this so necessary, that sounds should be just sounds?

There are many ways of saying why. One: in order that each sound may become the Buddha. If that’s too Oriental an expression, take the Christian Gnostic statement: ‘split the stick and there is Jesus.’

–John Cage
from Silence

Posted in: Commonplace Book 1 Comment »

[photo by robotgraphy]

Sometimes connections can come at the most unexpected times. Today, while walking to the coffee shop and pondering my TTIX keynote^*, the Genius playlist on OwenMeany (my iTouch) played "Drive" by Incubus, with some very apt lines:

Sometimes, I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I can’t help but ask myself how much I let the fear
Take the wheel and steer

It’s driven me before
And it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal
But lately I’m beginning to find that I
Should be the one behind the wheel

So if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?

It’s driven me before
And it seems to be the way that everyone else gets around
But lately I’m beginning to find that
When I drive myself my light is found

And yes, this isn’t just me being maudlin, it actually connects to my talk…

^*Incidentally, I’m still waiting for that moment when the chaos in my subconscious comes into focus and becomes something real to talk about… which makes me nervous given my august keynote company. On the other hand, this clarification almost never happens until the night before I’m on stage (which is why being the "closer" is so painful– I’ll be agitated and nervous about my part for the duration of the conference), so I’m hoping that– at the very least– that trend continues.

Posted in: Art & Life & Politics, Ed & Tech & Productivity No Comments »

Thinking yesterday about Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” made me think of another surprising and amazing cover of a Tears for Fears song that is better than the original: The Bad Plus version of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”:

	The Bad Plus – Everybody Wants To Rule The World
	Found at skreemr.com

Of course The Bad Plus is well-known (amongst jazz fans at least) for their cool, unexpected covers of genre songs that nevertheless retain the spirit of the originals in essential ways… in other words, we aren’t talking about BeatleJazz! A few more of their best pieces:

	The Bad Plus – Life On Mars
	Found at skreemr.com

	The Bad Plus – Smells Like Teen Spirit
	Found at skreemr.com

	The Bad Plus – Iron Man
	Found at skreemr.com

Posted in: Art & Life & Politics 1 Comment »

Reading the news today revealed that a contestant on American Idol had done a cover of Gary Jules‘ cover/arrangement of the Tears for Fears song “Mad World.” The second generation cover was OK, but it reminded me how much I like the version Jules created (for the Donnie Darko soundtrack):

While on the subject, another Gary Jules song I listen to way too often (it took me a while to realize these two songs were the same artist)… “Falling Awake”:

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Chopin’s compositions have really been rocking my world lately. Chopin was quite a character… it’s sad to imagine all the music we’ll never hear due to his untimely demise.

For me, Chopin’s strength is in his concision and the fact that he never loses sight of the melody while at the same time creating incredible tone and texture… even an amateur listener like me can hear it. And I don’t get tired of even his most famous pieces. There are some great performances available online. Just a few quick favorites:

• My favorite Chopin piece: Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 in Ebm performed by Arthur Rubinstein or Yundi Li (Rachmaninoff played it pretty well too!)
• Nocturne Op. post No. 20 in C#m by Aldo Ciccolini (interesting to compare this to the same piece by Lee Mi-Young)
• For something a bit more energetic (and finger-twisting), try Horowitz playing Chopin’s Polonaise Op. 53 in Ab
  or the beautiful Martha Argerich performing Polonaise No. 6 in Ab “Heroic”
• Or the crazy Op. 25 N. 12 “Ocean Etude” performed by Valentina Lisitsa
• For a great showpiece played with intense emotion check out Valentina Igoshina playing Chopin’s Op. 66 in C#m “Fantasie Impromptu”

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Who knew Mario Kart was really a love story?

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Explaining just why you have to love Journey…

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[Ben Folds pic by deovolenti]

Through a chain of circumstances too complicated to recount, I discovered a Paper Cuts Blog playlist by Nick Hornby, perpetual resident on my “reliable favorite authors” shortlist, in which he alluded to collaborating with a favorite musician of mine: Ben Folds:

4) Jen and Justin, Ben Folds. You can’t hear this song at the moment, and I’m hoping you never will. … One of my side-projects this year (and it’s been more fun than I want to admit) is to attempt lyrics for Ben Folds’s next album, and even if nothing comes of it, I have learned more about the craft of songwriting from the e-mails I’ve been getting than from just about anything I’ve ever read. Most of the time I’ve been sending over words that he’s going to try to set to music; occasionally we’re working the other way around, and I’ll try to fit a lyric to an existing melody. This tune has one of Folds’s most heart-melting choruses, which, considering his melodic gifts, means it’s as pretty as a pop song can be.

I do hope to hear some of these songs. A bit of searching and I ended up at Hornby’s blog (I had no idea he had one!), where he confirmed that the collaboration continued:

…I’m writing the lyrics for a Ben Folds album, which he’s recording in Dublin in December. I wasn’t going to mention this, on the presumption that it will never happen, but my writing partner seems confident enough to have talked about it already, and if he thinks something will come of it, then (deep breath) so do I.

Hornby goes on to answer those who might wonder why Folds wants anyone to write lyrics for his next album:

Ben, as you may know, is quite capable of writing his own lyrics, but I think he fancied a rest, and anyway he, like me, wants to have as much fun as he can in his chosen medium while there’s still fun to be had. Ben got in touch after I’d written about Smoke in 31 Songs/Songbook, which is how I ended up contributing a song to ‘Has Been’, the mad and great William Shatner album he produced.

I’ve never heard of Songbook, but after a quick perusal it went right on my “must get ASAP” list– Hornby writing from the heart on music is second only to Hornby writing about books (am I the only one who read The Believer primarily for Hornby’s– and the Polysyllabic Spree’s– “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column?).

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[art by mikem1115]

This is a late update; I finished the “Sirens” section of Ulysses almost three weeks ago and have finished two more section since. As a result, I have only my marginal notes and poor memory to work from and what sticks in my mind most is the style and structure.

In “Sirens” the internal monologue and stream-of-consciousness remain only as artifacts– stylistic tics. There are strange interjections of various kinds: Stephen Dedalus’ internal thoughts appear out of nowhere, as do other, unknown, semi-objective viewpoints that bring to question any accuracy of portrayal or description.

But it’s the structure of this book that is most fascinating even in my relative ignorance. The section opens with 60+ fragments, all(?) of which recur in context later. Some recur in a slightly modified form, as in the first line:

Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing, steelyringing Imperthnthn thnthnthn.

Which shows up later split into two different pieces:

Bronze by gold, miss Douce’s head by miss Kennedy’s head, over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing steel.

[...]

—Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she threatened as he had come.

The annotations indicate that this chapter has as its structural foundation the “Fuga per canone” or “A fugue according to rule,” which:

…has three classes of subject: 1) Andamenti, a complete melody, beautiful in itself; 2) Soggetti, a short passage with a characteristic interval; and 3) Attaco, a short figure, usually staccato.  In the opening section of the fugue the subject is presented together with the answer and a repetition of the subject in a different key (if there is to be a countersubject it is introduced in this section).  The next section, the exposition, is a complete statement of the subject(s) and/or answer(s) by all the voices.  This is followed by the “free” middle section; the climax then presents the subject in its most exciting aspect; and the coda concludes the fugue with the “desire for home.”

I get, then, that the opening lines are presented and then repeated later in a different key. But the rest really eludes me. In fact, I find the explanation quoted to be a bit problematic in itself!

Other aspects of the musical motif, reflecting the music of the sirens, did make themselves known. The section is heavy on musical voices: trilling, giggling, jingling, bells, singing, bells, drumming. Joyce even goes so far as to inject stage directions in the vein of musical direction:

She laughed:

—O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots?

With sadness.

The symbol of the Sirens has gotten a bad rap in our culture, where they are usually represented as women luring men to their doom with a carnal song. In fact, though, what the Sirens tempt those who pass with is actually knowledge– the ultimate knowledge of all things that have been and will be. The moldering bones beneath them aren’t victims who’ve been used up by the Sirens and cast away, but the remains of those who gave in and were given exactly what they wished for and rotted away, entranced, as people would starve to death in front of the television consuming the Infinite Jest in David Foster Wallace’s book. This allure is much more significant and troublesome than mere physical beauty.

In this section of Ulysses, the Sirens are indeed beautiful barmaids who are watched closely by the patrons who come near, but as their profession warrants they are privy to many secrets and thus possessors of many different kinds of knowledge. Miss Douce practically erntrances Bloom; Miss Kennedy plugs and unplugs her ears in a clear echo of Ulysses’ actions. But Cowley and Dollard and the rest are Sirens as well, who– despite their being old and used up and disenchanted– beguile everyone in the bar with their love songs, making Bloom wish for more whenever they stop. It isn’t the beauty of the songs or the singing, but the promise of knowledge of true love that is enchanting. Ultimately Bloom has to escape from each of these siren songs, watching Miss Douce for a measure too long before escaping form the bar altogether.

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[photo by abbyladybug]

While browsing Brian’s trove of links, a pointer to an Esquire article caught my eye. It tells the story of the discovery, attempt at authentication, and subsequent wrangling over the ownership and authenticity of what might be a new photo of Robert Johnson. It’s a fascinating article that not only prompted me to listen to Johnson’s Complete Recordings for the millionth time, but reminded me of a couple of good books I’ve read about (or that involved) Johnson.

The best book I’ve come across so far is Peter Guralnick’s Searching for Robert Johnson. It’s short, readable, and covers pretty much all the facts available at that point about Johnson with very little mythologizing. Not coincidentally, I greatly enjoyed two of Guralnick’s other books on music and musicians: Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock ‘n Roll (includes pieces on Skip James, Muddy Waters and Johny Shines, the latter of whom figures into the Esquire article as well) and Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians, which focuses on roots music including pieces about Bobby Bland, Big Joe Turner, Hank Williams and Storey Edwards. Guralnick’s work is personal rather than academic, so no footnotes and he’s unafraid of conjecturing beyond the known facts… which is why his writing is interesting even when it involves musicians I’m not otherwise dedicated to.

Gayle Wardlow’s Chasin’ That Devil Music has some interesting bits, including Wardlow’s search for Robert Johnson’s birth certificate, and many interesting short essays/articles on Delta Blues– and only Delta Blues– history.

Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture is a drier, more academic book that attempts to sort the myth from the “objective” facts in service of examining the cultural symbol that Johnson has, in many ways, become. I enjoyed it, but I’ve been soundly indoctrinated into the academic tradition.

If you read any of the above, you can stay away from the very recent Robert Johnson: Lost and Found, which adds nothing new, though it is readable enough. It’s clear that many discoveries have been made in the last few years… unfortunately this book doesn’t include them.

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A single that might be on Ben Folds’ new album, due out at the end of the month: “You Don’t Know Me At All”

While not necessarily a track I’d recommend as representative to someone who’s never heard Ben Folds before (he is one of the few artists who can, in the space of a single album, make me laugh out loud, cry, and feel envious that he seems to have so much damn fun making music), I can’t help but enjoy a new song of his featuring Regina Spektor.

A couple of Ben’s tunes (“Late” and “Still Fighting It” among others) are on the shortlist of my favorite songs of all time.

And Regina Spektor… well, not only is she working her way onto that same list, but she makes my poor heart pound harder than is healthy.

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I discover music at my own pace, relying mostly on the serendipity of social connections and recommendations… which means I’m usually late, but not as often disappointed.

So, I was surprised to learn that Panic! at the Disco is now just Panic at the Disco and, after enjoying their “new” album Pretty. Odd., I was also surprised that it is getting pretty roundly slagged for being a little too Beatles-like.

The comparison isn’t misguided since they are paying obvious homage to Sgt. Pepper, but musically what I hear is the kind of music that My Chemical Romance romance would make if they idolized Jeff Lynn and E.L.O. rather than Queen and The Smashing Pumpkins.

“You could ’cause you can so you do” will be in my head for a while!

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Rarely, lyrics are interesting enough that they can stand on their own… but with the Internet Tubes they don’t have to. I’m quite taken by these:

Deep in the belly of a whale I found her
Down with a deep blue jail around her
Running her hands through the ribs of the dark
Florence and Calamity and Joan of Arc

I love the way she looks in her underwear
I lose my page in the book then the plot then I swear
She makes the most of her time by loving me plenty
She knows there’ll come a day when we won’t be getting any

Stain of the sepia of the butcher Crimea
Through the rack of a brass band I thought I could see her
In a cake walk she came through the dead and the lame
Just a little bird floating on a hurricane

I was flat on my back my feet in the thorns
I was in between the apples and the chloroform
She came to me often I was sure I was dying
It was always hard to tell if she was laughing or crying

I thought I heard somebody calling in the dark
I thought I heard somebody call

Joan never cared about the in betweens
Combed her hair with the blade did the maid of Orleans
Said Christ could walk on water we can wade through the war
You don’t need to tell me who the fire is for
Oh bring me a love that can sweeten a sword
A boat that can love the rocks and the shore
The love of the nice but reaching out for the wreck
Can you love me like the crosses love the nape of the neck

Was is Casey Jones or Casey at the Bat
Who died out of pride and got famous for that
Killed by a swerve laid low by the curve
Do you think they ever thought they got what they deserve
Don’t pity the bullet and pity the man
Who both find their place in the same sad plan
We’re both like the barrels going over the falls
Crying all the way down I never asked to be involved

I thought I heard somebody calling in the dark
I thought I heard somebody call

General Jones began the day by taking pink little pills
Sent his men to the top of some hell of a hill
Through the whisper of trees came artillery breeze
Said I love the way the wind comes a’tickling my knees
Jane shot the apple right between the eyes
I thought of her when you came outside
Lemonade on your breath the sun in your hair
Did I mention how I love you in your underwear

Deep in the belly of a whale I found her
Down with a deep blue jail around her
Running her hands through the ribs of the dark
Florence and Calamity and Joan of Arc

I thought I heard somebody calling in the dark
I thought I heard somebody call
I thought I heard somebody calling in the dark
I thought I heard somebody call

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Talk of the Coen brothers films last week reminded me of the Gipsy Kings version of "Hotel California" (featured in The Big Lebowski) and, as usual, YouTube provides. Bear in mind that I consider "Hotel California" — despite being played to death– one of the greatest rock songs of the era and the lyrical solo by the Joe Walsh/Don Felder duo remains one of my favorite guitar solos of all time. In other words, I wouldn’t praise another version lightly (and, indeed, most of the cover versions are terribly). But not only do the Gipsy Kings do a great job of re-interpreting the song while retaining what makes it great, but the video makes me want to go watch The Big Lebowski again. The Dude abides.

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OK, so this is just awesome– William Shatner, Ben Folds and Joe Jackson perform “Common People” live…

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From the Pop!Tech conference archive of audio and video Pop!Casts comes this amazing performance by Zoë Keating. Their description is as good as any:

Canadian-born cellist Zoë Keating layers the sounds of her cello with live electronic sampling, as if she were an entire string ensemble condensed into one woman. Watch and listen to her infuse the Camden Opera House with wave after wave of beautiful and diverse rhythms.

I was unaware of the Pop!Tech media until now… if it isn’t related to the incredible TED conference (Pop!Tech appears to be similar to TED, though a bit more, well, populist in orientation), then one of the two sites owes the other some thanks for allowing the “homage” in their design, right down to their chiming video intros.

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A sequence from today’s shuffle, with excerpts:

“Young Shields” – Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

there’s a shield around us
tell me how is it you’ve found us
cause we hide our tracks & watch the ground
our footfalls they don’t make a sound
we’ve cursed the names of our hometowns
we’re compassless & nowhere bound

“Guiding Light” – The Veils

I’m fine from within
Just better without
This noose around my neck
Is counting me out

[...]

I fought my way in
But I can’t find a way out
Of this weightless regret
Surrounding me now

“New Monkey” – Elliott Smith

Look at your hands unoccupied
Look at the lengths you’ll go to hide
You’re under the veil
Pretending to fail
Gotta whole lot of empty time left to go
Now you’ve gotta fill it with something
I know what you can do don’t you know
Anything is better than nothing

“How Far We’ve Come” – Rob Thomas

I’m waking up at the start of the end of the world,
but its feeling just like every other morning before,
now i wonder what my life is going to mean if it’s gone,
the cars are moving like a half a mile an hour and I
started staring at the passengers who’re waving goodbye
can you tell me what was ever really special about me all this time

[...]

i think it turned ten o’clock but i don’t really know
then i can’t remember caring for an hour or so
started crying and i couldn’t stop myself
i started running but there’s no where to run to
i sat down on the street and took a look at myself
said where you going man you know the world is headed for hell
say your goodbyes if you’ve got someone you can say goodbye to

“Gravedigger” – Dave Matthews

Little Mikey Carson ‘67 to ‘75
He rode his bike like the devil until the day he died
When he grows up he wants to be Mr. Vertigo on the flying trapeze
Oh, 1940 to 1992–

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain

“Rain When I Die” – Alice in Chains

Is she ready to know my frustration?
What she slippin inside, slow castration
Im a riddle so strong, you cant break me
Did she come here to try, try to take me

Did she call my name?
I think its gonna rain
When I die

“This is How I Disappear” – My Chemical Romance

To un-explain the unforgivable,
Drain all the blood and give the kids a show.
By streetlight, this dark night, a séance down below,
There’s things that I have done,
You never should ever know!

And without you is how I disappear,
And live my life alone forever now.
And without you is how I disappear,
And live my life alone forever now.

“Late” – Ben Folds

When desperate static beats the silence up
A quiet truth to calm you down
The songs you wrote
Got me through a lot
Just wanna tell you that

But it’s too late
It’s too late
No, don’t you know
It’s been too late
For a long time

“You Made Me Forget My Dreams” – Belle & Sebastian

You made me forget my dreams
When I woke up to you sleeping
There was blood on the sheets again
And the view outside the window
Of gardens in bloom
Obscured by all the trouble we had
I think I better make a move

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One of my favorite songs with one of my favorite guitar solos… too bad these guys didn’t do the whole song!

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