The horrific hunter murders in Northern Wisconsin prove that the NRA is right about one thing.
(I break the paragraph here to allow readers to cope with their shock at reading that sentence coming from me.)
And that one thing is: gun laws can never be a panacea for gun violence. One reason, of course, is that under pressure from that same NRA, communities and governments are loathe to write gun restrictions that might attract the NRA's attention. So, for example, here's a webpage from a self-described "gun nut" about the weapon the shooter used (or one close to it: I'm not an equipment geek). (Note that no mention whatsoever is made of using such a weapon for hunting.) Now, here's the interesting thing: even this gun nut (who, despite the obnoxious tough-guy right-wing bluster evident on this page, is actually a pretty thoughtful and intelligent guy) agrees that (a) those convicted of violent crimes involving firearms should not be allowed to own or possess guns, and (b) such persons should suffer the most severe penalties (he favors the death penalty, which I don't because - ironically, given Mr. GN's views - the judicial branch cannot achieve perfection and therefore inevitably will kill innocent people).
So here's a paragraph from an account of the killings (from the Los Angeles Times):
"Police in St. Paul and Minneapolis have had contact with Vang [the man accused of the killings] several times in recent years. In the last 18 months, they responded to two domestic disturbance calls to his house. And on Christmas Eve in 2001, he was arrested for felony domestic assault after his wife told police he had threatened her with a handgun. He spent two nights in jail but was released when his wife declined to press charges, according to Minneapolis Police Officer Ronald Reier.
"'We have nothing in our records that would ever indicate he was capable of the level of violence we saw in northwestern Wisconsin,' said Officer Paul Schnell of the St. Paul Police Department."
First: "nothing in our records"? So, a history of domestic disturbance, involving threats with a gun, doesn't constitute some sort of warning sign? I suppose for Officer Schnell, the key thing is that those actions couldn't have indicated such a "level of violence." But then again, what could - except for, in fact, that level of violence?
And perhaps the problem is this: Had Vang wandered into a liquor store waving his handgun and threatening people, with credible witnesses, I'm pretty sure (lawyers can correct me) that he's committed a crime for which he'd be arrested (and likely convicted) regardless of whether some of the witnesses, or some of the threatened victims, wanted to press charges. But somehow, domestic violence is treated differently, and requires such pressing of charges. To me, if you threaten someone with a gun, and there's sufficient evidence to establish via the legal system that you did in fact do so, you should go to jail - even if the victim doesn't want to press charges.
In other words, to return to my opening paragraph: maybe - and I say "maybe" - I might be willing to trade off my general support for (at the very least) gun registration if such restrictions were traded off for laws that made brandishing a gun in a threatening manner itself a criminal act (except in self-defense), independent of whether anyone so threatened wishes to file charges.
11.23.2004
11.22.2004
Sir? Your Monkey Has Arrived
About a month ago, I bepissed and bemoaned the fact that I was unable to come up with a clever, relevant, and devastatingly affecting post about the essential blogger's subject. I refer, of course, to monkeys.
Well, huzzah for me! Behold: a (Lancelot) Link.
Well, huzzah for me! Behold: a (Lancelot) Link.
11.18.2004
"minus the kingdom, minus the power..."
A sad day for progressive rock fans. I found this on a Dutch prog-rock website.
Obituary
STROTHCLYDE, Arthur Jamison, age 59, on October 25, 2004.
Arthur Strothclyde, who spent the last twenty years tending a large catnip farm in southern Wales, played bass with a number of British progressive acts. His passing should prompt a look back at the best, but most unfairly overlooked, album Strothclyde ever played on, the milestone of progressive rock that is Queanswode-Manley Plough's Forever Endeavour a Man. Its 1973 release on Harvest Records was unfortunately overshadowed by the death of American chart artist Jim Croce that same week in a plane crash. QMP (pronounced "quimp"), as its fans called the band, began as the Cambridge-based folk ensemble The Merry Musketeers, which also featured QMP guitarists Roger Morton-Quinn and Clive Humber. Gradually incorporating rock instrumentation and a more aggressive instrumental attack (along the lines of the far-better known Fairport Convention), the Musketeers in late 1966 adopted their new moniker, yoking together two obscure cigarette lighter brandnames with a vague reference to Hexagram 7 of the I Ching. Their debut single (an adaptation of the Irish tune "Arthur McBride" led by electric sitar and layered crowd chants recorded at an antiwar protest) prompted mild controversy, which generated some sales and a bit of attention. A subsequent LP, Old Harvey's Neon Squaredance Hymnal, was released in February 1969, to little acclaim. Controversy having generated some sales with their first single, the band outdid itself with its next, a musically unremarkable bit of Kinks-influenced music-hall japery entitled "Sunny Jim." The sleeve, however, sported a montage of Princess Anne's head atop a fully nude male body drawn from Strothclyde's collection of vintage pornography. The single was banned, nearly all copies were destroyed, and the band retired to a Maoist ashram in the Outer Hebrides.
So it was that in early 1973, when word began filtering out that QMP was finally working on a new album, expectation lay with rather a light touch on the music scene of the day. QMP's previous releases gave little hint of the breadth and scope of Forever Endeavour a Man, a two-LP concept album drawing from the myths of Sisyphus and Oedipus, incorporating Christian symbolism, and built on a fourfold structure alluding simultaneously to the four seasons and the four classical elements. The album's narrative told the tale of Chris, a would-be rock star, who with his band Swollenfoot strives for artistic integrity in the face of a corrupt and uncaring music industry, a shrewish mother/manager, and a repressive legal system that frames Chris on bogus drug charges. After an unusually vivid dream featuring a sphinx-like alien god, Chris is beamed aboard a starship where he is told that he must pass a series of trials in order to be free to make music his way. These trials include being forced to work a three-day stint as studio tea-boy for a band of pimply bubblegum pop-stars (Prince Ponce and the Sky Pilots), a horrific nocturnal encounter with a disguised groupie and her terrible secret, and a surprising bit of comic relief in which Chris's attempts to deliver the Swollenfoot master tapes to the record company are repeatedly thwarted by his balky van's inability to climb a winding, icy roadway.
In its original LP release, the jacket unfolded into an enormous fourfold cross, each arm of which was graced with sumptuous artwork corresponding to the LP's four parts (one part per LP side), The Light of Summer Aire, Fall's Fiery Fury, The Frozen Earth of Winter, and The Springwater Suite. The band had by this time developed a distinctively polyglot mode of musical expression, as evidenced by the sackbut/dombek duet on "Third Leg Blues," the tremolo ondioline on the Prokofiev-influenced "A Derby Fishwife in Mushroom Lane," and the use of an Eskimo children's choir throughout Side 3. Notable guests included Gryphon's Philip Pickett, who overdubs a wild electric-krumhorn quartet on "My Diary’s Secret Diary," the band's Cambridge mate Robert Wyatt, who contributes a kazoo drone to "A Late Summer's Eve, Miss Roundheels' Fall," and the synthesizer programming legerdemain of Beaver and Krause on "Tra-La Tra-Lay The Bangpipes Song."
Perhaps the only contemporary critic who truly "grokked" Forever Endeavour a Man was Melody Maker's progressive-rock critic Roger Crump. Crump, also a Reader in Edwardian Literature at the Thropwick-Wartshire campus of The Open University, wrote the following encomium, which we reprint here in full:
Strothclyde is survived by his wife, Fiona (nee Hawkeshawe), by their two sons Arthur Jr. and Spike, by his father, Jamison "Jem" Strothclyde of Cockermouth, and by seven daughters and four sons from five previous marriages and other liaisons.
Obituary
STROTHCLYDE, Arthur Jamison, age 59, on October 25, 2004.
Arthur Strothclyde, who spent the last twenty years tending a large catnip farm in southern Wales, played bass with a number of British progressive acts. His passing should prompt a look back at the best, but most unfairly overlooked, album Strothclyde ever played on, the milestone of progressive rock that is Queanswode-Manley Plough's Forever Endeavour a Man. Its 1973 release on Harvest Records was unfortunately overshadowed by the death of American chart artist Jim Croce that same week in a plane crash. QMP (pronounced "quimp"), as its fans called the band, began as the Cambridge-based folk ensemble The Merry Musketeers, which also featured QMP guitarists Roger Morton-Quinn and Clive Humber. Gradually incorporating rock instrumentation and a more aggressive instrumental attack (along the lines of the far-better known Fairport Convention), the Musketeers in late 1966 adopted their new moniker, yoking together two obscure cigarette lighter brandnames with a vague reference to Hexagram 7 of the I Ching. Their debut single (an adaptation of the Irish tune "Arthur McBride" led by electric sitar and layered crowd chants recorded at an antiwar protest) prompted mild controversy, which generated some sales and a bit of attention. A subsequent LP, Old Harvey's Neon Squaredance Hymnal, was released in February 1969, to little acclaim. Controversy having generated some sales with their first single, the band outdid itself with its next, a musically unremarkable bit of Kinks-influenced music-hall japery entitled "Sunny Jim." The sleeve, however, sported a montage of Princess Anne's head atop a fully nude male body drawn from Strothclyde's collection of vintage pornography. The single was banned, nearly all copies were destroyed, and the band retired to a Maoist ashram in the Outer Hebrides.
So it was that in early 1973, when word began filtering out that QMP was finally working on a new album, expectation lay with rather a light touch on the music scene of the day. QMP's previous releases gave little hint of the breadth and scope of Forever Endeavour a Man, a two-LP concept album drawing from the myths of Sisyphus and Oedipus, incorporating Christian symbolism, and built on a fourfold structure alluding simultaneously to the four seasons and the four classical elements. The album's narrative told the tale of Chris, a would-be rock star, who with his band Swollenfoot strives for artistic integrity in the face of a corrupt and uncaring music industry, a shrewish mother/manager, and a repressive legal system that frames Chris on bogus drug charges. After an unusually vivid dream featuring a sphinx-like alien god, Chris is beamed aboard a starship where he is told that he must pass a series of trials in order to be free to make music his way. These trials include being forced to work a three-day stint as studio tea-boy for a band of pimply bubblegum pop-stars (Prince Ponce and the Sky Pilots), a horrific nocturnal encounter with a disguised groupie and her terrible secret, and a surprising bit of comic relief in which Chris's attempts to deliver the Swollenfoot master tapes to the record company are repeatedly thwarted by his balky van's inability to climb a winding, icy roadway.
In its original LP release, the jacket unfolded into an enormous fourfold cross, each arm of which was graced with sumptuous artwork corresponding to the LP's four parts (one part per LP side), The Light of Summer Aire, Fall's Fiery Fury, The Frozen Earth of Winter, and The Springwater Suite. The band had by this time developed a distinctively polyglot mode of musical expression, as evidenced by the sackbut/dombek duet on "Third Leg Blues," the tremolo ondioline on the Prokofiev-influenced "A Derby Fishwife in Mushroom Lane," and the use of an Eskimo children's choir throughout Side 3. Notable guests included Gryphon's Philip Pickett, who overdubs a wild electric-krumhorn quartet on "My Diary’s Secret Diary," the band's Cambridge mate Robert Wyatt, who contributes a kazoo drone to "A Late Summer's Eve, Miss Roundheels' Fall," and the synthesizer programming legerdemain of Beaver and Krause on "Tra-La Tra-Lay The Bangpipes Song."
Perhaps the only contemporary critic who truly "grokked" Forever Endeavour a Man was Melody Maker's progressive-rock critic Roger Crump. Crump, also a Reader in Edwardian Literature at the Thropwick-Wartshire campus of The Open University, wrote the following encomium, which we reprint here in full:
Queanswode-Manley Plough are the sine qua non of a certain au courant scene that threatens the status quo with its blinding, shattering, visionary attempts to transcend the paltry mise en abyme of contemporary society caught in flagrante delicto betwixt a sentimental fin de siecle romanticism and a daring but sadly declassé Modernism. Rather than fearfully bury itself, ostrich-like, in the sands of a false rapprochement and thereby exposing its ample and tasty hindquarters as quivering allurement for the jaded yet starving cognoscenti of the cultural elite and their withered nostalgie de boue, QMP boldly stands erect in the face of the coruscatingly evanescent moonlit decadence of our detumescent age, flinging a freshet of frank, potent, daringly pungent, yet engagé critique athwart the pallid, soft white underbelly of what so feebly passes for contemporary mores. Let us bow, even unto our knees, and savor the flavor of their names and their most skillful equipment as they tickle our tongues: Roger Morton-Quinn (guitar, vocals, santur, trumpet), Clive Humber (guitar, vocals, piano, organ, harpsichord, celesta, bass drum, violin, toy piano, and electric double-bass saxophone), Arthur Strothclyde (bass, vocals, sousaphone, banjo), and Milton Peter Wolfstein (drums, percussion, xylophone, nose flute), the doughty men of Queanswode-Manley Plough.
Strothclyde is survived by his wife, Fiona (nee Hawkeshawe), by their two sons Arthur Jr. and Spike, by his father, Jamison "Jem" Strothclyde of Cockermouth, and by seven daughters and four sons from five previous marriages and other liaisons.
11.16.2004
a rant (with a foamy mouthful of links)
You know who I'm mad at? Abraham Lincoln, that's who. Abe had the chance to just let the damned South go - but no, he had to be all idealistic and preserve-the-Union and fight to keep 'em in. What he should've done is say, okay, fine, go ahead and form your own little pretend country - and then invade the Confederacy, free all the slaves (who'd emigrate under armed protection to the USA, because in this counter-history Lincoln's even more enlightened than he was...), and sit back and laugh: "Ha - good luck with yer feudal economy now. Oh - and since you can't spell, I'll help you out: 'feudal economy' - that's spelled 'f-u-t-i-l-e.'" So there'd be a third-world nation whose chief export is korn likker (they'd evolve their own spelling, I'm sure) and rusted-out pickup trucks - instead of the same people being part of the US and voting for their favorite idiot. Too bad no one thought to put in Dale Earnhardt on the ballot - yeah, I know he's dead, but they'd probably've voted for him anyway. Plus, fewer divorces after shotgun weddings at which the groom realizes, hey, yer pappy is my pappy too!
You know who else I'm mad at? Willis Carrier. Who's that? Willis Carrier is the guy who invented the air conditioner (contrary to popular rumor, air conditioning was not invented by three guys named Max, Hi, and Norm). Yes, on the handful of stupid-hot days we get around here, which invariably feature equally stupid, shirt-liquifying humidity, I'm grateful for A/C...but it made possible the further peopling of the South, since otherwise everyone would be too tired to do anything down there except sit on their porches and drunkenly shoot their guns into the heat haze.
You know who else I'm mad at? Henry Ford, the anti-Semitic bastard... His damned assembly lines and cheaper, mass-produced cars allowed anti-social people who hate everyone who isn't like them to move out to gerrymandered suburbs and into the middle of deep nowhere like the huge, depopulated Red Zone stretching from deepest Nowhere, Texas, all the up to North Nowhere, Idaho, where it's no wonder Ernest Hemingway blew his skull to bits what with all the nothing there. Oakland? Gertrude Stein never tried driving across Montana.
(Thanks to TomDispatch, from which I cribbed most of the map links.)
You know who else I'm mad at? Willis Carrier. Who's that? Willis Carrier is the guy who invented the air conditioner (contrary to popular rumor, air conditioning was not invented by three guys named Max, Hi, and Norm). Yes, on the handful of stupid-hot days we get around here, which invariably feature equally stupid, shirt-liquifying humidity, I'm grateful for A/C...but it made possible the further peopling of the South, since otherwise everyone would be too tired to do anything down there except sit on their porches and drunkenly shoot their guns into the heat haze.
You know who else I'm mad at? Henry Ford, the anti-Semitic bastard... His damned assembly lines and cheaper, mass-produced cars allowed anti-social people who hate everyone who isn't like them to move out to gerrymandered suburbs and into the middle of deep nowhere like the huge, depopulated Red Zone stretching from deepest Nowhere, Texas, all the up to North Nowhere, Idaho, where it's no wonder Ernest Hemingway blew his skull to bits what with all the nothing there. Oakland? Gertrude Stein never tried driving across Montana.
(Thanks to TomDispatch, from which I cribbed most of the map links.)
11.14.2004
post-mortem
A thoughtful column by Josh Marshall notes, among other things, that Democrats need to stop kicking themselves and stop worrying about gaining votes among demographics that are highly unlikely to prove fruitful for them. Instead, the Democrats need to worry about clarity, the kind of clarity that will draw more voters from the party's base to actually vote. And even lacking that clarity, the election results show they didn't do as poorly as some of the more apocalyptic rhetoric flying about might suggest. Yet another problem with the Electoral College is the way it misrepresents the distribution of voters in the nation, since its winner-take-all format makes red or blue states out of varying shades of purple. Only five states (Idaho, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming - and note the limited geographical reach of these states) gave Kerry less than 35%, while only eleven states (add Alabama, Alaska, Indiana, North Dakota, and Texas - and again, we're primarily in the same geographic region) gave Bush more than 60%. (Here's a link with detail.) Two places - Massachusetts, and Washington D.C. - gave more than 60% of their vote to Kerry. And of course, the overall results, with nearly half the voters favoring Kerry, deny any such thing as a mandate.
(On the issue of election fraud: here's an article that gets to the key question; note particularly this internal link.)
(On the issue of election fraud: here's an article that gets to the key question; note particularly this internal link.)
11.12.2004
sleeping is a gateway drug to being awake
Okay, please spin your postmodern head completely off its axis...(scroll to the discussion of the article in this week's Onion).
11.11.2004
The Poppies Are In the Fields
On this Veterans Day, I salute those who, whether I agree with their reasons or not, choose to serve in our nation's military. And on this Veterans Day, to those in good health under thirty or so who have not served in the military, but who support Bush's immoral, illegal, ill-planned and ill-executed war in Iraq, I quote our Vice President's words to Sen. Patrick Leahy. I think you know which ones.
Read this (scroll down to "The Costs of War") - and, if you're in that second group, know just what you so selfishly support at no cost to yourself.
Read this (scroll down to "The Costs of War") - and, if you're in that second group, know just what you so selfishly support at no cost to yourself.
11.10.2004
Hopkin Green Preservation Society
Courtesy of everyone's fave editrixie: someone with much time on their Photoshop-crazed hands. And how many screens are there? Douglas Adams would have known...
11.07.2004
"find the words to feed the ghost"
This may or may not be the first in a series of entries about overlooked CDs in my collection. (It might not be the first either because I never get around to writing the second, or because I've probably already written such an entry...) Some of them may have been passed over in the general music buzz, others might have been overlooked by me no matter how buzzed about.
James Angell Private Player (2001)
I'll start at the beginning of the alphabet with James Angell's Private Player, from 2001. Already there's a bit of confusion, see...because although my edition (on Portland's Psycheclectic Records, which apparently no longer exists, judging from its missing website) came out in 2001, apparently the album was reissued in 2002...and digging around the web, I see this article, which refers to the album as "new" even though the article dates from February of 2003.
Private Player, which features some trumpet from Eric Matthews, and production and playing from ex-Heatmiser drummer Tony Lash, has certainly received some attention, and from some rather high-profile folks (as the "In Music We Trust" article reveals). But it hasn't found a critical or commercial niche - most likely because it's anything but a straightforward listen. Even when you've become familiar with it, it doesn't slot readily into any particular genre. Angell's main instrument is piano, and moments are slightly singer-songwritery - but other moments are electronic (in moods both atmospheric and crunching), some textures and chord voicings are rather jazz-like (somewhat in the manner of early David Sylvian), and the song structures don't really fit into any of those genres, in some cases being nearly through-composed in the manner of art songs. Yet it feels heartfelt, not overly "artistic" or analytical - even though it's plenty smart.
The opening track, "Ooh Love," is probably the album's most conventional, in that it has a clearly identifiable chorus. It begins with a backing chordal piano pattern and a slinky, string-like ascending synth pattern. But then Angell twists the beat up with a tricky syncopation, and the verses and choruses ebb and flow into one another, so it's often a challenge defining the line where they meet and separate. Angell's voice here almost reminds me of Mark Linkous's (from Sparklehorse), and indeed that band's warped electro-folk is a reasonable comparison, except that Angell's music sounds far less rooted in any tradition. "Ed Blue Bottle" begins with a slinky, jazzy acoustic bass rhythm, and Angell's low-register vocal calls to mind a Tom Waits before the whisky and cigarettes did their work - but then the song seems to be submersed in odd buzzing and whining noises. "Call Off the War" is one of my favorite tracks here - it begins with murky synth strings and atonal space tones, as Angell hazards the vocal melody line, before suddenly the band enters as the melody launches in to a peculiar modulation that, in fact, proves to be the song's chorus. Tony Lash overlies a few odd-sounding rhythm loops, and those synth strings and space tones prove to be the song's verse, although the changes they outline seem almost impervious to conventional chordal analysis. And then there's "Picture Perfect," which begins with what sounds like electronically altered fragments of a blues song played on an old Victrola: these prove to be fragments of the song itself, which actually is a blues. Kind of... "Dear Dying Friend" takes a distorted, mechanical loop and gradually surrounds it with levels of increasingly crushing noise, while the song itself somehow marries a fairly delicate piano-based verse melody to a stomping, robotic chorus that could be a sentient stamping mill's interpretation of a Slade song. This, by the way, isn't any fun at all: it sounds less like release and more like onrushing terror, alleviated slightly by a very pretty middle section featuring wordless female background vocals. And have I mentioned that the last track features Angell's daughter reciting from a textbook on quantum physics in a voice that makes it sound more like "Alice in Wonderland"?
So yeah, it's kinda hard to figure out what's going on here. What holds it together, though, is Angell's talent for arranging and allowing songs to emerge, however gradually, from the rather dense production. Angell also gives you the sense that his lyrics, more suggestion than declaration, mean something to him, even if the specifics of those lyrics are often less than clear. And that, finally, I think is what makes Private Player so powerful: even though it's often difficult at any given moment to know why this note, this sound, this lyric is where it is, each is placed both intensely and with intention (however blurred from our perspective). The gap between that intensity and the uncertainty of our reaction to it creates a sense of (literally) wonder, a space of suggestion, that creates a landscape for the listener's imagination, a landscape which surrounds and grows from Angell's music and lyrics.
James Angell Private Player (2001)
I'll start at the beginning of the alphabet with James Angell's Private Player, from 2001. Already there's a bit of confusion, see...because although my edition (on Portland's Psycheclectic Records, which apparently no longer exists, judging from its missing website) came out in 2001, apparently the album was reissued in 2002...and digging around the web, I see this article, which refers to the album as "new" even though the article dates from February of 2003.
Private Player, which features some trumpet from Eric Matthews, and production and playing from ex-Heatmiser drummer Tony Lash, has certainly received some attention, and from some rather high-profile folks (as the "In Music We Trust" article reveals). But it hasn't found a critical or commercial niche - most likely because it's anything but a straightforward listen. Even when you've become familiar with it, it doesn't slot readily into any particular genre. Angell's main instrument is piano, and moments are slightly singer-songwritery - but other moments are electronic (in moods both atmospheric and crunching), some textures and chord voicings are rather jazz-like (somewhat in the manner of early David Sylvian), and the song structures don't really fit into any of those genres, in some cases being nearly through-composed in the manner of art songs. Yet it feels heartfelt, not overly "artistic" or analytical - even though it's plenty smart.
The opening track, "Ooh Love," is probably the album's most conventional, in that it has a clearly identifiable chorus. It begins with a backing chordal piano pattern and a slinky, string-like ascending synth pattern. But then Angell twists the beat up with a tricky syncopation, and the verses and choruses ebb and flow into one another, so it's often a challenge defining the line where they meet and separate. Angell's voice here almost reminds me of Mark Linkous's (from Sparklehorse), and indeed that band's warped electro-folk is a reasonable comparison, except that Angell's music sounds far less rooted in any tradition. "Ed Blue Bottle" begins with a slinky, jazzy acoustic bass rhythm, and Angell's low-register vocal calls to mind a Tom Waits before the whisky and cigarettes did their work - but then the song seems to be submersed in odd buzzing and whining noises. "Call Off the War" is one of my favorite tracks here - it begins with murky synth strings and atonal space tones, as Angell hazards the vocal melody line, before suddenly the band enters as the melody launches in to a peculiar modulation that, in fact, proves to be the song's chorus. Tony Lash overlies a few odd-sounding rhythm loops, and those synth strings and space tones prove to be the song's verse, although the changes they outline seem almost impervious to conventional chordal analysis. And then there's "Picture Perfect," which begins with what sounds like electronically altered fragments of a blues song played on an old Victrola: these prove to be fragments of the song itself, which actually is a blues. Kind of... "Dear Dying Friend" takes a distorted, mechanical loop and gradually surrounds it with levels of increasingly crushing noise, while the song itself somehow marries a fairly delicate piano-based verse melody to a stomping, robotic chorus that could be a sentient stamping mill's interpretation of a Slade song. This, by the way, isn't any fun at all: it sounds less like release and more like onrushing terror, alleviated slightly by a very pretty middle section featuring wordless female background vocals. And have I mentioned that the last track features Angell's daughter reciting from a textbook on quantum physics in a voice that makes it sound more like "Alice in Wonderland"?
So yeah, it's kinda hard to figure out what's going on here. What holds it together, though, is Angell's talent for arranging and allowing songs to emerge, however gradually, from the rather dense production. Angell also gives you the sense that his lyrics, more suggestion than declaration, mean something to him, even if the specifics of those lyrics are often less than clear. And that, finally, I think is what makes Private Player so powerful: even though it's often difficult at any given moment to know why this note, this sound, this lyric is where it is, each is placed both intensely and with intention (however blurred from our perspective). The gap between that intensity and the uncertainty of our reaction to it creates a sense of (literally) wonder, a space of suggestion, that creates a landscape for the listener's imagination, a landscape which surrounds and grows from Angell's music and lyrics.
11.06.2004
two varieties of bullshit
1) "Mandate": Bush and his cronies (including noted moral exemplar William "Casino Billy" Bennett) are crowing about the "mandate" they seem to think their election has given them. They won the election (maybe: see this article), but 49% of voters - nearly 56 million people - prefer that someone else would lead the nation. John Kerry's vote total is higher than that of any other Presidential candidate in U.S. history...except, alas, George W. Bush's. This is not a mandate: it is a bare acquiescence on the part of the electorate.
2) "Reconciliation": One thing the Republicans know well is that it doesn't matter how many votes a polarizing candidate like Bush loses - so long as he ends up with more than the other candidate. The Democrats, on the other hand, seem deathly afraid of losing any voter - and so forget that the first order of business is to gain votes. (I almost think the Democrats would have done better with a candidate who fired people up, like Howard Dean, than with Kerry who, despite his intelligence and statesmanship, comes across like a well-meaning college professor. And yes, I know the type well.)
That fear of losing any voter is evident in the pathetic cries to "reach out" to the evangelical vote...give it up - you're no more going to appeal to feverish Bible-beaters who think Osama bin Laden and John Kerry are going to outlaw heterosexual marriage and start up a fried-fetus fast-food franchise than Dick Cheney is likely to grow dreads, wear tie-dye, and play the Incan flute with a traveling jam band.
Furthermore: "reconciliation" with a man and party apparatus who hold in utter contempt many of the Constitutional principles Americans have fought and died for? A man whose party tried its damnedest to disenfranchise whole swaths of the electorate (on the obvious grounds that that demographic was unlikely to vote for them - an act which reveals further contempt for the concept of democracy)? A man so out of touch with reality and so monumentally unselfaware that he can pronounce that "a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief" - and do so within weeks of multiple reports from committees appointed by his own administration establish that he himself did exactly that regarding Iraq?
No: we don't "reconcile"; we push to win over another two or three percent of people and bring them back into the "reality-based community," and make damned sure that Bush knows we're watching him.
2) "Reconciliation": One thing the Republicans know well is that it doesn't matter how many votes a polarizing candidate like Bush loses - so long as he ends up with more than the other candidate. The Democrats, on the other hand, seem deathly afraid of losing any voter - and so forget that the first order of business is to gain votes. (I almost think the Democrats would have done better with a candidate who fired people up, like Howard Dean, than with Kerry who, despite his intelligence and statesmanship, comes across like a well-meaning college professor. And yes, I know the type well.)
That fear of losing any voter is evident in the pathetic cries to "reach out" to the evangelical vote...give it up - you're no more going to appeal to feverish Bible-beaters who think Osama bin Laden and John Kerry are going to outlaw heterosexual marriage and start up a fried-fetus fast-food franchise than Dick Cheney is likely to grow dreads, wear tie-dye, and play the Incan flute with a traveling jam band.
Furthermore: "reconciliation" with a man and party apparatus who hold in utter contempt many of the Constitutional principles Americans have fought and died for? A man whose party tried its damnedest to disenfranchise whole swaths of the electorate (on the obvious grounds that that demographic was unlikely to vote for them - an act which reveals further contempt for the concept of democracy)? A man so out of touch with reality and so monumentally unselfaware that he can pronounce that "a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief" - and do so within weeks of multiple reports from committees appointed by his own administration establish that he himself did exactly that regarding Iraq?
No: we don't "reconcile"; we push to win over another two or three percent of people and bring them back into the "reality-based community," and make damned sure that Bush knows we're watching him.
11.01.2004
last pre-election political post (thank god)
We've heard much about "negative campaigning." But I think there's a clear distinction to be drawn between "negative" speech that highlights the truth, however harmful it might be to a candidate, and negative speech based on speculation, insinuation, or falsehood. The first is necessary and ultimately positive: how can people judge if they're unaware of the facts? The second, of course, is truly mudslinging.
The media does the public a disservice when, in service of a false ideal of objectivity, it treats each kind of negative speech with equanimity - as if it's simply a matter of "he said, she said" writ large. Truth is more important than objectivity.
The media does the public a disservice when, in service of a false ideal of objectivity, it treats each kind of negative speech with equanimity - as if it's simply a matter of "he said, she said" writ large. Truth is more important than objectivity.
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