I’ve never had so many flashbacks to the TEFL classroom — or had such pleasant ones — as when listening to My Little Airport. I am so sorry I have no time to call you. I’ve been so busy recently and I don’t want… Good band, on top of it:
Category: MUSIC
John Coltrane and the Pulp Connection
Arguably one of the most significant musicians in American history (and unarguably one of the most significant saxophonists and jazz musicians ever), John Coltrane grew up in High Point, North Carolina. It might be a weird thing to bring up — where he grew up, that is — except that, when we think about major artists, we so often imagine them having sprung into being fully-formed, if not in technique or approach, then at least in their essential selfhood. This is also often how we tell their stories: for example, in Coltrane: Story of a Sound (a book I’ve just …
“Contemporary Music” for Traditional Korean Instruments
I don’t know how much of this is going on in Seoul, but I was pleased to run across a channel on Youtube featuring a bunch of it. Now, when I say “contemporary music” I don’t mean people playing Beatles songs on traditional instruments. I especially don’t mean “fusion” music where people on traditional Korean instruments try to play in a jazz-fusion or rock-fusion setting, something I think rarely works. (Though I have heard tracks by a few indie bands that made great use of some instruments — haegeum in one song by 3rd Line Butterfly, and samul nori in …
Some Stuff to Check Out
Stories: That New Yorker story about the AD&D gaming group… what? Yes, really, and it’s pretty good, too. (Thanks for the link, was it Ben?) Some MP3s narrated by Miette: Alfred Jarry’s “The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race” and the story it inspired, JG Ballard’s “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race.” Okay, this is just a book review, but I loved this book, and have had it in my mind often lately, for reasons obvious to those who are in the know, but which those who don’t know might guess wrongly about. …
Traneing Up…
Some John Coltrane-related links, because yes, I’m working on that story that involves him again: John Coltrane, Avant Garde Jazz, and the Evolution of My Favorite Things is a thesis by Scott Anderson which he has generously (and stylishly) put online. It traces the development of the Coltrane Quartet/Quintet’s handling of the tune “My Favorite Things.” Also a wonderful example of how a project-focused website should look. A link I discovered on the above site, which is also amazing, is to Improviz, a project by Jon Syndal to render visual representations of jazz improvisations. There are links to various PDFs …
Jazz and SF
I’ve heard people, time and again, compare jazz to SF in terms of them both being very “American” artforms, and, along with the cowboy movie, among America’s original contributions to the common human repository of art and culture. The cowboy movie, I’m afraid, has roots that go way deeper than American history, which is why it resonates so powerfully with other forms of literature and narrative. I see a lot of the Gothic novel in the Western, and a lot of the Bible too. As for SF, let’s be honest: it didn’t really begin in America: the historian/theorists can fight …
As Promised: Gorgeous Renaissance Music
The other night, I was saying how the world is so full of beautiful things that one could hardly spare the time to be interested in all of them. (It was really my over-stated reason for not having managed to read any of Kelly Link’s stories yet; the real reason is just there are too many books, and SF pushes my buttons more than fantasy, even good fantasy.) I made some comment on how Renaissance music is utterly beautiful but almost nobody listens to it, and ended up promising to play some for the people who were over at my …
Jah Wobble on Balance, Another Lovely Subway Encounter, and a Countdown
I was listening to Jah Wobble’s album of William Blake-inspired music, which starts with this track: Doing a little more investigation, I found a neat interview with Wobble from around the time he put that out. He talks a lot about the struggle to balance anger and integrity with the mental, emotional refreshment and grounding that one needs in order to be creative: He’s right: a certain degree of anger and honesty is energizing, but too much of it will just embitter you, and I know I’m certainly on the unbalanced side of it — and I know how it …
Bad Luck Comes in From Tampa…
It turns out jbrandt was right. The Mountain Goats… very much my thing, and inspiring in a writing-wise sense: Also, tangentially, for some reason, this is the song I imagine Kenneth from 30 Rock starting his shows with when he starts going out and singing in smoky bars and clubs after he becomes fallen in New York City, takes to deep atheism and hard drink and crazy women, and then exiles himself to some shack in the depths of New Mexico for a few years till he can wean himself off nanodrugs and sexbots, and then finds the only thing …
Someday We’ll Find It
Still on a Henson kick. Here’s a very interesting version of one of his songs: