Sublunar fragments

Some recent excavations from the cave of wisdom imprisoning my so-called friend, Arthur Baudrim.

The past doesn't exist; we create it. The future doesn't exist; we invent it.

Fashion makes the arbitrary necessary. Or, more pretentiously: Fashion is the art of making the arbitrary necessary. Take that Jenna Lyons.

 Actually, the world is the arbitrary disguised as the necessary.

Jacques Unleashes Fake Porkpie

AP: Jacques Cendahl launches Fake Porkpie label

"This will be the first step in a portfolio of insurgent media properties founded on the principles of ruthless truth and hard beauty". Cendahl says he will be seeking artists who have singular vision and passionate dedication to the cause of the handmade, the analog, the silent, and especially those expert in squaring circles. Although Cendahl has been entangled in entropy of late, he has already signed guitarist/poet Baden Doulaire whom he has touted as a private language seer, qubit juggler and steel string bender.

Some have questioned the wisdom of starting such an enterprise in these unsettled times. Its true. No one in their right mind would start such an enterprise today. But Jacques wasn't in his right mind; never claimed to be. Maybe his left mind. But surely, a mind to wonder at, left, right or center. In fact, Jacques rightly asserted many times that a mind was in no place whatsoever. One insolent reporter put it straight to Jacques:

"What can you possibly hope to achieve in an age of digital music, iTunes, file sharing, wearable sound and infinitely mutable harmony? Do you have a business model or strategic vision?"

Jacques serenely shot back:

"Business models are for cretins; we don't have one, we don't need one. What was John Hammond's business model? How about Sam Philips? Money follows passion. And if it doesn't we'll still prevail."

The Jacques Dialogues: Ear Relevance

Is guitar playing lethal? Or is it genius that is lethal? Jacque's current list of the all time greatest guitarists includes:

• Baden Powell
• Django Reinhardt
• Ida Presti

Of course, he found it hard to omit Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Garoto, and Agustin Barrios.

He thought it strange that, with the exception of Barrios and Powell, none of them lived past 50. Is this just coincidence or just a question of selective perception? After all, Segovia lived to a ripe old age.

Juke Joint

Down at the juke joint
bartenders proclaim
antinomies of pure reason
dialectics untamed

A single light bulb
hangs to reveal
riots of meaning
in bourbon and beer

The telecaster twangs
A bottom E string
Bent to logical limits
of empirical swing

Turn Off the News

Marx had it wrong. Religion may have been the opiate of the people up to the 19th century, but today there is a different opiate. The so-called "News" is the opiate of the people. It is pervasive and invasive, 24/7, assaulting you everywhere and at all times. But who cares? Who cares about a crime committed thousands of miles away in a place you'll never see, concerning people you don't know? Who cares about a volcanic eruption on the other side of the planet? Who cares about the countless looming disasters, catastrophes, natural and man made? None of them will likely affect you. But yet, we are addicted to it, and anyone who ignores the "news" is a candidate for psychiatric treatment (ie., drugs).

It is clear that the news promotes neither knowledge nor happiness. It causes a more or less permanent state of vague anxiety which apparently serves to fill the terrifying void of silence. But like my hero, Jacques Cendahl, I am a disciple of silence; it is what I seek, it is my sustenance. And it is vanishing.

Instead we have a ceaseless onslaught of news. There is no room to think, to reflect, to independently assess one's place and one's time. Awareness is consumed by the irrelevant noise of the news, which is, by the way owned, produced, and dedicated to serving the needs of commerce.

But Thoreau said it much better than I in Walden

Hardly a man takes a half hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What's the news?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give direction to be waked every half hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night's sleep the news is as indispensible as the breakfast. "Pray tell me any thing new that has happened to a man any where on this globe", -- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls that a man had had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.

........I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. (Walden, chapter 2)

Time Flames

Time flies

no, it flickers

like a flame

now long, now short

burning days

and nights

The New Dark Age

America's great contribution to civilization is "freedom". Nothing is valued more highly; nothing is spoken of more reverently. Yet, it is obvious today that freedom has been reduced to nothing more than the freedom to consume. Yes there is freedom of religion; yes there is freedom of voting. But these are mere sideshows. The real action is consumption. We are, after all, a "consumer" society. Freedom is simply the freedom to consume.

This culture, this "freedom" is darker and more debased by far than the so-called dark or middle ages. At least in that unjustly maligned time humanity had humility and reverence for something higher. But scientific thought and rationalism has forever condemmed that era with this misguided pejorative. 

These are indeed the dark ages today. They are dark because only that which can be counted and consumed is valued. And consumption is the using up, the incineration of all things. To consume is to kill-- an overstatement? 

The brilliant, prescient, Max Weber, summed it up in his "iron cage" metaphor. The rational, western world has created an iron cage of secular values which regards all that is not quantifiable and empirical as dead and exploitable. All Weber missed was the evolution of the industrial world to the information age; today it is a digital cage in which we have imprisoned ourselves.

I wonder if there are others who see from this perspective? Perhaps Wendell Berry? Maybe J.M.G. Le Clezio, whose excellent "Le Reve Mexicain" clearly tends towards the same view after meditating on the destruction of pre-columbian civilization.

Calling Steve Jobs: Please Save Me From My Blackberry

I got the email message a few days ago: my Blackberry was ready to be picked up! I took the elevator up to the IT department, stumbled through the aisles tangled with circuit boards, blown monitors and random wires, and found my personable IT guy. Hunched over his desk, screwdriver and soldering gun in hand, he grunted towards the brand new Blackberry. I picked it up and mumbled "anything I need to do special to set it up"? He emitted a sound of disgust that seemed to contain words to the effect of "you're an ass, there's nothing to do".

Back in my cube I opened the box and beheld the splendor of multiple "getting started" guides. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the letters "AT&T" on one. I had expected some confusion. I understand that Blackberry is a device, and AT&T is a service provider and that they are independent companies with little in common. But I wasn't prepared for the complete incoherence of what they presented in their package. Where is the power cord? Is there an on/off switch? Which documentation really should be read first? Oh, is the battery already installed? What about the memory card? And of course, the ubiquitous CD labelled "tools" or something to that effect.

The way this product is packaged and presented is a disgrace. I finally put the paperwork down and just started fumbling with the device. I got it working within 30 minutes, but it was maddening trying to work through the "menus" on the device; and the "wizard" set-up is a joke, provided you can even find it.

The device itself is a human factors nightmare. The track stick, or whatever they call it, is crude and imprecise. The keypad is tiny--difficult to see and even worse to "type". Which is striking since I have rather small fingers.

My theory: The engineers solved the "difficult" problems: the wireless air interface, the protocol support, the integration with enterprise email systems. As for the human interface, well, they basically don't care.

I am stunned that this thing is so widely adopted. It is a piece of garbage. But, I guess it could have been worse-- like if Microsoft had designed it.

Morning Coast Line

breast in sweater slope
auburn hair
cut
pointless longing

even black sneaker and white socks
rocks the bock
beer in the frigo
on dainty feet with rolled up pants
on the platform, cold
frozen empty face mask
while the train squeals
cracking morning air
splitting silence

Don Helms: R.I.P

There was a time when I thought country music was beneath contempt. Then I heard Hank Willams and everything changed. I loved Hank from the minute I heard him. It wasn't long before I was soaking up all the Honky Tonk I could find: Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzel, Faron Young, then Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and so many others (not to overlook Jerry Lee, who is for my money the greatest country singer of them all). But back to Hank. Any time I listen to him the music sounds fresh, alive, and urgent;and that unforgettable voice--unadorned, harsh, cutting and drenched in the blues. And Don Helm's steel guitar was the perfect foil.

The Helms tone -- piercing and stark -- was completely distinctive and thankfully devoid of the syrupy, bathetic sound of so much steel guitar. It was ideally suited to Hank and the Drifting Cowboys. And while I'm at it, the sound of the Drifting Cowboys itself is under-appreciated. The jazzy guitar, driving acoustic rhythm and Helms's steel guitar codified an unforgettable, genre-defining sound. In their own way, and in the country genre, the Cowboys were just as perfect an ensemble as, say, Little Walter's Jukes, Muddy's early bands, Django's groups with Grappelli, even Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie's early bands (I am partial to the sessions with Big Sid Catlett on drums, but it's hard to argue with Max Roach).

But back to Don Helms. I was saddened to hear of his passing today. R.I.P Don and say hi to Hank for me.
Times Obituary

Click Wheeling

Mechanical things are easy to understand because they are physical and visceral. You turn a steering wheel, and tires actually turn. You can feel the resitance in the wheel. Visually, too, the steering wheel echoes or reminds us of the thing it controls. Like the tire, the steering wheel is a circular object that turns in space. In other words, it is an inversion or transposition of the tire. We can simply call it a type of metaphor, one that visually and viscerally signals its meaning to the driver.

Digital things are harder since they are abstract and incorporeal. And that is why the iPod ClickWheel is brilliant. It blends the mechanical domain with the digital domain. It connects the user in a physical way to the aac encoded bits and bytes that are the sound files on the iPod. Today the wheel interface looks like the obvious choice. But I’m sure it was risky and controversial when first floated by the Apple design team.

E sarà mia colpa, Se cosi è*

The false, the evil, and the ugly are everywhere presented as the true, the good, and the beautiful. That is how things stand. One who sees this way is said to be depressed, which is, of course, a distortion and trivialization. Then, with glib pseudo-science, our medical community reduces the "depression" to a serotonin deficiency. It is comforting to know that the pharma companies have solved this "disease" and have convinced their vast sales force (ie., doctors) to prescribe their drugs so eagerly. Why, just fill in the 10 question quiz in the waiting room to see if you are "depressed" and qualify for a Zoloft prescription. What a pathetic farce this entire health care system has become. As for the false, the evil, and the ugly, that is how things stand today. The only question is whether this has always been the case.
*And will it be my fault, if things are so? Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir, Chapter 4, Book 1; apocryphal quote attributed to Machiavelli

Desolation Angels

It is not writing, it is typing. This famous put down has haunted me forever, spoiling my enjoyment of the flawed, but still wonderful, Jack Kerouac. The fact that it was tossed off by the lisping sycophant, Truman Capote, only makes it worse.
But, I have to admit there is a grain of truth to the put-down. I just finished "Desolation Angels" and it pains me to say that the writing does not really stand up to scrutiny. It reads like a shapeless, half-hearted chronicle of a man's disenchantment with the world and his creations. I can find no art, no beauty, in it. But, in the final analysis, it is not really writing that we are looking at when we view Kerouac's ruined life and oeuvre. It is his attempt, in my view, to find redemption, nobility, spirituality, something beyond the mean and barren materialism he saw all around. At times this quest seemed simple hedonism; unthinking, glib and adolescent. But to me, underneath it all there was a seriousness and desperation. The drugs, drinking and debauchery were all pathetic attempts at self-medication for Kerouac. For the transcendence he was after is impossible in this world. His response to this disappointment was to numb himself.

Bop Prosody? Spontaneous Prose? I don't buy it. Charlie Parker studied, worked, practiced endlessly to perfect his musicianship. The long, high-velocity lines improvised in real time were only possible because of craft and technical mastery. So how can this be applied to literature? For Jack, it apparently meant, just write without a filter; first thought, best thought. Dispense with grammar and literary artifice. But is this really a literary equivalent to bop improvisation? Isn't it more the case that one needs to master language somehow to be able to blow freely a la Yardbird? And isn't this actually impossible given the difference between verbal concept and a musical sound? The latter exists as a pure entity without conceptual content (without denotation and connotation in the ordinary sense; ok, a musical note could be said to denote a sound wave oscillating at a certain frequency and amplitude; this would be a "scientific" explanation of its denotation; the connotation on the other hand is murky.). But verbal concepts are inescapably tied to meaning; and the manipulation of meaning is part of what a creative writer does or should do. Merely spewing the contents of your immediate perception does not permit this artistry.

It' a little sad to see Jack acknowledging Capote's put down in Desolation Angels:" ..But so won't no Truman Capote think he's only a typewriter" (p. 346 Desolation Angels). This fractured prose, far from reflecting spontaneous composition, just comes off as illiterate and crude.

Here is Jack commenting on another poet in Desolation Angels
"...I hear and don't want to hear more, because in it I hear the craft of his carefully arranged thoughts and not the uncontrollable involuntary thoughts themselves, dig.."
(p. 210, Desolation Angels).

But maybe these thoughts are uninteresting, incoherent, and redundant. And whether these uncontrolled thoughts could ever bear the stamp of logic, inspiration, and emotive resonance that marked Bird's horn is not likely. In the end I think Jack's idea rests on a flawed understanding of language and consciousness. We apply language as a tool to organize experience; the tool is itself structured and there is no direct flow from sense experience through the mind to linguistic expression, much less written or literary expression.But this is a large topic for another post.

In the end, it doesn't matter: I will always love Kerouac.

Distant Music, Part 3

Written and recorded by yours truly. The title says it all; if only I had carried through on it. Personnel: JB on guitar and vocals, Bob Guida, Bass, and ?? I can't remember the guy's name on drums. Anyway, Pas mal du tout, non?

JB Lenoir: A Natural Man with an Unnatural Beat

There's nothing in the blues like JB Lenoir's Natural Man. You can go through all the Chess, Excello, VeeJay, Sun, sides that you want, and I really doubt you'll ever hear a beat like this. Where did it come from? Lenoir turns the beat inside out and upside down. Breaking all conventions, the drummer smacks the snare on the 1 and the 3 while the rest of the band plays on the usual 2/4. It is chaotic and wonderful.

JB himself is playing a boogie bottom with a horn section riffing along. As for the bass, I'm not sure what is going on there. But somehow it works and hangs together, how, I don't know. Everyone is pretty much playing in a different time signature.

But this was no screw-up. There's many more of these "inside out" 1/3 blues by Lenoir. He must have wanted it this way, and you know, he was right. No one and nothing else sounds like him.
Natural Man

Cleveland: Home of Rock and Roll?

I was just in Cleveland and once again began to ruminate on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Putting it in Cleveland is really a joke. I know that christening the birthplace of any style is less than an exact science. Where is the birthplace of jazz? What about blues? There's lots of reasonable candidates. But for Rock?? There is room for debate, but the last place I would pick would be Cleveland. Especially when it is very, very clear that Memphis is unquestionably more suited to this dubious honor. Memphis had Sun Records and Sun had Elvis, Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, Howlin Wolf, Jackie Brenston/Ike Turner. Sun had the slapback echo, brilliant brainchild of the real genius of Rock and Roll: Sam Phillips. So, lets set the record straight. Memphis is the home of Rock and Roll.

Then again. Who really cares? Really, the sight of these Rock and Roll geezers slapping each other on the back is nauseating.

Google's Christmas Present

Thank you Larry Page and Sergey Brin, thank you Google! The renewable energy initiative you've announced is the most encouraging piece of news I've heard in quite a while. It is bold, forward thinking and, yes, even courageous, since you are risking ridicule from the bottom line vermin of wall street ("where's the ROI"??). Good luck, forge ahead, and forget about the critics.

Distant Music, Part 2

Back in the 80's and 90's I played guitar in a bunch of blues and rockabilly groups. I guess the best band I played in was The Excellos with Steve Guyger on harmonica. We did plenty of gigs in the NY/Philadelphia area. At one point we went into the studio. Here are a few tracks I've recently unearthed. These were recorded live in the studio for the most part, with a couple of guitar overdubs. Personnel was Steve Guyger, harmonica/vocals, Joe Buzzanga, Guitar, Rich Yescalis, Bass, John Kennedy, Drums.
Real Gone Lover
Joe Smokes.mp3
West Helena Blues.mp3

The Tavern Dialogs: Whitman and Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and Walt Whitman (1819-1892) were not contemporaries and lived in very different ages. But if their lives had overlapped, perhaps a dialog such as the following could have occurred.

Place: White Horse Tavern, NYC
Time: Circa 1880

Whitman: Thanks for making the trip up from Philadelphia, Ben. It’s great to see you. Please join me for a drink. Can I order you a glass of beer?

Franklin: I shall have one Walt, just to demonstrate my good fellowship. But I must say I am a bit uneasy about meeting in this lowly tavern, and as to alcoholic spirits, these are to be imbibed very sparingly, if at all. Of course, I am quite fond of beer! That reminds me, did you read the letter I sent last week? It contained a description of my excellent scheme for attaining virtue. To refresh your memory, my method recommends compiling a matrix of virtues and maintaining a daily tabulation of successes and failures in achieving them. Temperance is one of the prime virtues and I would prefer not to tempt it by drinking a beer. Beer, wine or any other spirits will quickly run ruin over a person and their plans. I shall order a single glass of beer and no more.

Whitman: Truly Ben, I do not see how a single beer can hurt you. If you prefer, feel free to order a glass of milk. It is all one to me. As for your table of virtues, well, I must say they appear to me to be more suited to a machine than a man. I cannot see myself submitting to such an unyielding and mechanical grid. Must I monitor and watch myself through each day, rather than open my eyes to the raw rush of the world and the beauty of each moment? At any rate, my inclinations are probably evident to you from my Leaves of Grass. Have you taken a look at it? I sent a personally signed copy to you some time ago.

Franklin: Regrettably Walt I did look at it. I must say it appears to me to be a work of anarchy and licentiousness. To begin, what is your intention with the form? Poetry must be strictly metered and rhymed. I see none of that in your so called poem. Further, as to meaning, I believe a poem should be edifying and instructional. I can make out nothing in your poem other than mystifying philosophy, vain self-glorification and useless detail.

Whitman: I am sorry you feel that way. Perhaps I can offer some explanation to assist you in grasping my meaning, although I truly believe that my poem should sing out to you without need of editorial comment. In the first place, the country has changed quite a bit since your time. To reflect these changes and make our mark upon the world, we literary men are above all seeking to establish a uniquely American voice. We are not, as in your time, interested in following British and continental models, great as they are. I have created a style which is, I believe, original and stamped with the greatness of our country.

Franklin: Excellent. I applaud your intentions if not results. We do need a new literary language in this country. It should be one of efficiency and practical instruction and should be free of the extraneous literary and historical mannerisms of the old world. But whether it should resemble your strange versifying is another matter.

Whitman: I agree we should dispense with old world mannerisms and contrivances. However, I cannot reduce my art to efficiency and practical instruction. Do you not feel the wonder of the world? Do you not see the holiness of the moment? This is what I am trying to reflect in my free flowing verse.

Franklin. Yes, but to me your “Leaves of Grass” appears to be a shapeless mass of words and where it is comprehensible, it is scandalous or dubious. I take a simple example: why do you include this long section (lines 276-325) detailing the homely observations of the daily activities of the common man? What is your purpose here?

Whitman: Ben, do we not live in a democracy? Are not all men created equal? So then why is the bricklayer inferior to the senator? Or why the carpenter less than the judge? Are they all not fit subjects for poetry? But forget politics and the common man. Does not nature value all things equally? Is the ant less than the lion? And what about the very cosmos itself? Isn’t a leave of grass the equal of a planet, nay an entire galaxy?

Franklin: When you speak of democracy I can see your point Whitman. After all, no one believes in Democracy more than I. Furthermore, we are all sons of Adam and Eve, so perhaps the common man is a worthy of subject of poetry. But methinks your comments about nature and the cosmos are just idle speculation. To my mind, this is the domain of the scientist, not the poet. And the worthy English scientist, Newton, has proved that nature is a machine. Surely, you are familiar with his theories?

Whitman: I too value the work of Newton and all scientists; but science cannot explain everything. The universe may be described as a machine, Ben, but surely there is something behind the machine, or perhaps embedded in it as an animating force. What is behind that lightening bolt you tried to capture? Can you not see that there is a power behind it? A power that is identical to that which propels our heart beat, thrusts the shoot upward from the ground and hurls the lava from the earth. This is not simply a machine Ben. There is something else. But this “something else” defies scientific explanation and cannot be sensibly described in ordinary language. It is felt and intuited. It can perhaps be glimpsed indirectly through the work of the poet and I humbly submit to have attempted this in my Leaves of Grass.

Franklin: Whitman, I do not see the point in these mystical whimsies. Let us bring the discussion back to earth. What exactly are you recommending when you write about “loafing” and “admiring” yourself. Surely you must be familiar with my “Poor Richard’s Almanac” (it is, after all, a best seller). In it you will see idleness excoriated as one of the worst of man’s vices.

Whitman: I too do not endorse idleness. But neither do I endorse ceaseless and endless industry such as you seem to be recommending. The “loafing” I speak of is metaphorical and is not inconsistent with good labor. Think of it, perhaps, as a state of mind that opens itself up to the wonder of nature.

Franklin: Again, this is mysticism to me. Whitman, you should follow my example and write works such as Poor Richard’s Almanac. It is read and comprehended by the masses. And it offers good instruction and useful teachings. Many have profited by it. I fear there is little profit in your poetry.

Whitman: Ben can you conceive nothing greater than mere pecuniary profit? There are profits of a different sort in my long-limbed lines. Indeed, I dare say that a prophet stands behind them!

Franklin: Whitman your teachings are dangerous. Someday, if taken seriously they will lead to all kinds of mischief.

Whitman: This is starting to get interesting Ben. Are you sure you can’t dally long enough for one more beer? You will be neither idle nor tipsy at the end, I assure you, and your daily virtue log will remain unblemished.

Distant Music (JB Archive Series)

Here's one from the archives. An extremely low-fi recording of my little band from some years ago. When I say "low-fi" I'm not kidding. This was recorded using a little $30 cassette player with built-in microphone. It was just sitting on the floor running during this rehearsal.

Anyway, there's 3 pieces going here: myself on guitar and vocals, a bass player and a drummer. The tune--Young Fashioned Ways-- is one I learned from the rockabilly legend Sleepy LaBeef.

The Lonely Tenor Poetry of Lester Young

Lester Young aka Prez. Angel headed hipster of the Kansas City night. Porkpie hat, tilted horn, floating lines behind and ahead of the beat, but always on time. What I would have given to sit in just once with Count Basie's little sextet and have the chance to back him up on rhythm guitar. Or better, chop chords for him when he was leading his own sad little group.

Ezra Pound defined literature as language charged with meaning; maybe music is sound charged with meaning. And if so, Prez' horn carries a devastating, haunting meaning. Kind of like Joyce's invocation of the enveloping invisible presence of the departed in "The Dead", the sound of his hermetic horn is like "distant music" echoing a spectral world behind our "real world". It is a world where the tenor blows a line of blue notes over the void, impossibly forlorn and solitary.

Wittgenstein denied the possibility of a private language. But Prez had one. In his words, in his tenor, in his style. While the rest of the tenormen huffed and puffed to outdo Coleman Hawins, Prez saw another way. He bracketed and transcended the entire battle, redefining the terms of engagement. So dig Prez

My Current Instrument

My current axe. It’s a Giambattista G6, spruce top, rosewood sides and back. I got it back in 2003 from Robert Page, proprietor of the Classical Guitar Store in Philadelphia, PA. He is an honest, very knowledgeable guy, and his shop is a joy for anyone interested in the guitar. If you are on the east coast, I would definitely recommend a pilgrimage to the shop. http://www.classicalguitarstore.com

Since purchasing the guitar, I’ve played it on average, 3-4 hours per day. The sound still knocks me out. While it is a “factory” made guitar, it seems to feel much more like a luthier’s instrument than the typical Yamaha or other entry level nylon string instrument. I would like to think it is because the guitar is made in Paris by French/Italian craftsman, old world guys with a rich heritage of guitar building. But, maybe I’m just imagining it. In any case, for under $2,000 it is an excellent, beautifully made instrument pleasing to both eye and ear. The spruce top helps set it apart from most "student" guitars and is largely responsible for the wonderful clarity and definition of tone. Projection and sheer volume are very good as well.

One of the things I like most about guitars is the fact that, unlike most other material things, they actually improve with age and use. I am looking forward to many more years of intense playing on this instrument. I hope to post a sound file here soon so you can hear it.

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.