An Ingenious Sophistry "Refuted"

Samuel Johnson was celebrated for his encyclopedic knowledge, literary and lexicographical feats and singular ability to distill his vast learning into pithy quips and memorable remarks. The trove of Johnson’s wisdom is captured in Boswell’s epic Life of Johnson which, like many classics, is undoubtedly referenced more than it is read. I boldly and confidently embarked on a reading of the classic, only to emerge after a mere 600 pages, if not defeated, somehow stymied. I still intend to finish it. But for now I am happy that I got most of what I was after: a healthy dose of Johnsonian sagacity with its characteristic ingredients of brevity, 18^th century formality and a certain vehemence of expression. I was most in search of the exact incident in which Johnson “refuted” Berkeley’s Idealist metaphysics. As an ex-philosopher, I had often chuckled over this famous formulation, and always wanted to examine the actual passage in full and in context. Here is Boswell’s account of the conversation:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that everything in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus." (Life of Johnson, Unabridged, Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 333)

Johnson, like some strange British incarnation of a Zen Master, does not respond to Berkeley's metaphysical puzzles with logic. He simply and suddenly exposes the "sophistry" through a physical argument, the kicking of the stone, much as the Zen Master would shock his pupil to awareness through a sudden blow to the head.

The Raw and the Cooked: Part 1

I’m doing this post solely because of this photo. Well, I like the music a lot too, but the photo has always cracked me up. Who is it? A truck-stop Elvis? A psycho-billy rocker on parole from San Quentin? No, it’s just Sonny Fisher, one of the legion of obscure, forgotten rockabillies from the 1950s. This little EP, packaged and distributed by the English “Ace” label, brings together sides he recorded for the Starday label in 1955.

Sonny’s voice is nothing special and if you are looking for a polished production and flashy guitar work you won’t find it here. What you will find is a sound that perfectly encapsulates early rockabilly: loose, chaotic, spontaneous and yet somehow relaxed. On these sides, Fisher’s band manages to achieve a potent and primitive blend of blues, hillbilly, and Texas swing.

Everything falls into place on “Pink and Black”. Starting with a sizzling ride cymbal, the slap bass and guitar kick in and the song takes off. The band generates an irresistible rhythm and the sound is huge, just with these three pieces. The drummer propels the song forward with some wonderfully sloppy rolls and rim shots that tease us with their unsteady relation to the beat. Same with the guitar player, Joey Long; he’s no Cliff Gallup, but he has a wicked distorted tone and blues-bending style that works perfectly. He bends some notes that seem to twist in space indefinitely, threatening to dive-bomb into disaster. But just when it seems he is about to fall out of time with the band he somehow recovers, a “technique” (was he drunk? were they all drunk?) that lends some nice tension to the proceedings. And then there is Sonny himself. No slouch, he summons one of the all time great screeches in rock and roll history on this track.
Check it out:
Pink and Black.mp3

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. I always prefer the unschooled, the primitive, the spontaneous and the chaotic to the polished, produced and professional. On these sides, Fisher’s band sounds completely natural, relaxed, rudimentary and artless. But somehow these qualities animate the music and keep it vital. 50 years later it still sounds alive!

The power of the raw and the spontaneous seems to be largely forgotten in our current age of digital perfection. It is a pity. But it is completely understandable when you realize that what we call culture is nothing more than mass-produced standardized product, owned and distributed by global entertainment conglomerates. (It is Warhol’s Tomato Can. Or maybe Duchamps urinal.) In the music segment of the culture industry the big labels churn out artists and product like so many Big Macs, and with the same pathetic unhealthy results. The sad part is that people seem to be quite happy with these choices.

A Little Fun With Kipling

If Riffs and Inversion
Mezzoforte

If you tear the tapestry of lies that enfold
And still hear music from flesh and fingers

If you daily descend into cubicles of despair
But emerge with a soul fierce and free

If you rip the pavement from highways of mammon
And seek the throbbing trunks of truth

If you shake the savage torpor from plastic minds at play
And wear a hermits wisdom without display

If you place a single Sancho above a million Gates
And Homer’s swineherd over Trump

If your razor slashes the price tags enslaving freedom’s fools
While you pluck the strings of the sublime

If you treasure solitude to contemplate the eternal
And shield your soul from noisy assault

If your words walk on water with names aflame
And answer not to corporate cadavers

If you slim your harpo in the muddy water
But bow to your howling wolf

If the pouring sun fills your eyes
With the blinding rain of grace

Then you shall walk alone in truth without country or comrades

Joe Buzzanga, May 2006

For Shelley: Mont Blanc Re-mix

Mont Blanc Re-Mix
For Percy Bysshe Shelley

The everlasting universe of things
Lies crushed under killing microscopes,
Debauched by digital machinery
Consumed by bottomless greed

Of wonder devoid,
No awe to be had,
Scorned by man who reveres nothing,
Save that which is numbered and sold

In esteem the Albatross slayer we hold
And teach as virtue his murderous eye,
Oblivious to his warnings
We welcome the death sleep of his mates

If Shelley, Coleridge and Keats
At nature gazed today
Their mouths an unspeakable horror would voice
Their pens would fall from frozen fingers
Paralysis would grip them, despair would destroy them

The river Arve reduced
A tame diversion for sale
Mont Blanc conquered and humbled
Merely a theme park
Bottled, packaged and for a price consumable

Joe Buzzanga, March 2006

Fillmore East

I'm so glad I saved some of these programs from the old Fillmore East. Bet you wish you were at this show! Check out the date at the bottom: June,1969. The Who were at or near the peak of their performing career. Keith Moon was still alive and Tommy had just been released. They put on an inspired, incendiary show. But the supporting acts were tremendous in their own right. It may be hard to fathom today, but Chuck Berry at one time was more than a perfunctory, self parodying oldies act. I recall him giving a vital, exciting performance. And Albert King, one of my favorites, was commanding and riveting. They weren’t in the least awed by opening for the Who.

They don’t put together shows like this anymore, do they? And you have to give at least some credit to Bill Graham—unreconstructed, unapologetic capitalist lout that he was— for these exceptional, genre-defying lineups. When I began writing this, my intention was to heap more scorn on the already vilified Graham. But after doing a bit of research I’ve reconsidered. (check out fillmore east history.html for Graham's letter announcing his closing of the Fillmores; it sounds almost idealistic compared to today's excessively commercial and corporate music scene).

Graham certainly was not simpatico with the hippie ethos. But he was not a rip-off artist either. He cared about the audience; he cared about the music. And he worked hard to produce exciting shows. I recall the shows at the Fillmore as being well run, and they were certainly incredible buys. You got 3 acts, the Joshua light show, and excellent seats in a moderately sized theatre.

But that’s not all. Flip through some of the Fillmore lineups and you come across all sorts of wildly inventive programming. Psychedelic rockers, obscure folk artists, sitar players from India, the occasional spoken word artist, jazz artists, blues players — Graham booked them all, often in surprising combinations. Today I suppose we would use the word “diverse”, to describe some of the Fillmore’s programming policies, but back then Graham was just reacting to the cultural Zeitgeist. In the “do your own thing” flower power decade the Fillmore audience was open to just about anything. And Graham was happy to oblige, and even push the boundaries. And he did a lot to open doors for black soul, blues and jazz artists, many of whom had been confined to the “chitlin circuit”. Putting Albert King with the Who? That had to be huge for Albert!

Nevertheless these were charged times and the mere fact that Graham was making money off the hippies was unforgivable to some. Take the Merry Pranksters for example. Here is the legendary Neal Cassady describing his encounter with Graham to Ken Kesey in The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test:

“He was out on the street checking tire treads to see if they’d picked up any nickels. I says, “Bill…” and he says, “Look, Neal, we’re in two different worlds. You’re a hippie and I’m a square. (p. 344 The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test)

Square he was, but he sure knew how to produce a show — at a price and for a profit, admittedly. But maybe that's not such a horrible thing after all.

Prime Number: Choros #1

I fell in love with Brazilian guitar when I heard these pieces: Paulinho Nogueira’s Bachianina #1, Baden Powell’s Euridice and Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Choros #1. After several years of study and practice I still cannot play any of them fluently. But I’m getting closer.

This is a rare recording of Villa Lobos performing his fantastic composition, Choros #1:
Choros #1

I do not feel competent to really comment on the piece since my knowledge of Brazilian musical styles and traditions is still rudimentary. But, just a little context: Villa Lobos was one of Brazil’s greatest “classical” composers. He blended classical European elements with the indigenous Brazilian folk and popular music, which he loved. The term “Choro” refers to a musical style that flourished in Brazil in the early part of the 20th century. It was played by street musicians and featured elements of improvisation—some say it bears a similarity to jazz.

Although Villa Lobos never pursued a career as a professional guitarist, in his early days he studied the instrument and became quite an accomplished Choro player; his command of the guitar was considerable as evidenced by this recording. I have heard that Villa Lobos deliberately accelerated the tempo when recording it in order to make it fit on a roughly 3 minute recording.

Villa Lobos composed Choros #1 in 1920. I do not know when or where this recording was made, but the poor fidelity certainly indicates it must have been done using very early recording technology.(The Villa Lobos museum in Brazil http://www.museuvillalobos.org.br has not been
especially helpful in this regard. They haven’t responded to email inquiries and their posted Choros #1 file has never worked.

Prime Number: Charlie Parker

Ko Ko is rightly regarded as one of the first definitive recordings of modern jazz. It ushered in a new era, one in which jazz became non-representational, something like an aural equivalent of Cubism. Today, 60+ years later it still sounds fresh, contemporary and jarring.

Bird makes no attempt to “represent” or “picture” Cherokee, the warhorse swing era tune whose chord changes underlie Ko Ko. The melody is ignored.


He just takes the chord changes as his source code and recompiles in real time, at high speed, using extended tones and harmonies. In the fragmentation and phrasing he employs, there is perhaps a hint of the multi-perspectivism of the Cubists, though this may be taking the comparison too far.

Musicians were overwhelmed when they heard Bird, and it is easy to see why. No one else had played with such a fierce improvisational logic at such a high velocity. Well, no one except his comrade in subversion, Dizzy Gillespie. Bird’s playing—urgent, fragmented and harsh on the surface—provoked the old timers, at least the more narrow-minded among them ("We don't flat our fifths, we drink them"--Eddie Condon); but it also spawned an entire generation of bop apostles who emulated everything about him, including, regrettably his self destructive habits. Bird’s preeminence among jazz musicians was unquestioned within a few years.

It is harder to understand how the open minded lay person might respond to this new music. You can’t hum it, dance to it or easily identify its source material. It is neither decorative nor easily consumable. You can marvel at the virtuosity of the performance. But this wears off pretty quickly. Ultimately, appreciation of it is much like appreciation of the cubist art mentioned earlier. In a sense, it demands active participation of the listener.

You really are challenged to match wits with Bird and cohere his improvisations. Through careful listening and study one can identify the logic, the private language that is in operation here. So, this is partially an intellectual exercise, one that you need to be willing to undertake. I don’t mean to make it sound like labor, but for the casual listener, the one that wants “easy listening” or wants pleasing background music, it is labor. Others though will be challenged and gratified by Bird’s music. They’ll get inside and understand the private language. And they’ll be able to enjoy countless hours of listening pleasure as they follow Bird in his endlessly creative use of his singular musical language, full of passion, logic, ecstasy and tragedy.
Play Ko Ko

This post originally accompanied a recording of Ko-Ko, but since I cannot seem to find a decent file hosting/streaming service, and the fascist thieves at Warner Music refuse to let me post it on a You Tube video, the audio will have to be imagined.

Tip on In

One of my favorite album covers, totally classic. You've got the classic black face Fender amp (looks like a Twin Reverb) and nice ES335 on Slim's lap. Then there's Slim himself, resplendent in blue shiny silk suit, tie and matching harp rack. The music's not bad either!

Slim is such a genial sinner:
"Aw... lay it on me baby
Don't stop now
Let your hair down baby
We ain't goin to heaven no how
I'm ready to burn baby
Right here and now"

Click on the link to play "Tip On In"
Tip On In.mp3

A Note On Primes

Blog entries bearing the title "Prime Number" are to be understood as fundamental building blocks of a private language under construction. Stated less pretentiously, they are the building blocks of my perspective or angle on the world.

Prime Numbers: Irreducible elements of my private language presented in a spontaneous sequence of blog entries.