Some more fluff to keep the blog going in between substantive posts:
I subscribe to the New York Times via Kindle. I like it way better than the physical item; newspapers are unwieldy and I hate the way articles are continued later on, and one has to flip back and forth. But I haven't had much time to read it lately. I wish I could just get the Sunday edition, which would be enough for the week.
I was perhaps hasty when I mentioned that 99% probably included some baseball players...apparently 1% of the population of the US is around 3 million, way more than I would have thought without thinking about it, so to speak. I still don't know how much one has to earn to be 1%.
Teaching logic is getting boring.
Today is Halloween. I don't like dressing in a costume. I'm too lazy and unimaginative.
OK, more philosophy content is coming soon.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Bands That Soldiered On
For some reason I was thinking of bands that continued after the main member died. I recall as a youngster trying a few times (and mostly failing) to listen to Full Circle, one of the two albums The Doors made after Jim Morrison died. These probably never made it to CD. All I remember about it now is that there was a song called "4 Billion Souls"; pretty astounding that another three billion have piled on since then, all in my lifetime.
Buddy Holly and the Crickets apparently never recorded as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets"--the music was released alternately under the name "Buddy Holly" and the name "The Crickets" (although they toured as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets"). Not only did the Crickets continue after Holly's death, but his replacement--Sonny Curtis--wrote and recorded a couple of songs with the band that many of us will still remember: "I Fought the Law," which more people probably know by Bobby Fuller or The Clash, and "More Than I Can Say," with which one Leo Sayer had a hit when I was a lad.
I think Bob Marley and the Wailers were just The Wailers until Bunny Livingston and Peter Tosh left the band, then after Bob Marley died they continued as The Wailers Band. But this wouldn't be too remarkable, were it not for the fact that at some point they recorded a song with John Denver, with a refrain that goes "Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, Jah." I just found that out via Wikipedia, with a Youtube chaser: the song is called "World Game."
The remaining members of the Grateful Dead flirted with this when they toured as "The Dead," but it was at least somewhat of a name change, anyway.
There must be a lot more, but that's all I've got tonight. I feel like I forget that The Doors recorded two more albums before they broke up right after I remember it again every time, so it's always a little surprising. I'm not really a Doors fan, but it's hard to think of them as The Doors without Jim Morrison.
ADDENDUM: According to Wikipedia, Sonny Curtis also wrote The Everly Brothers' "Walk Right Back." Everyone should know that song, it is one of the great ones. The riff was later copped by Neil Young for his 90s song, "Harvest Moon."
Buddy Holly and the Crickets apparently never recorded as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets"--the music was released alternately under the name "Buddy Holly" and the name "The Crickets" (although they toured as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets"). Not only did the Crickets continue after Holly's death, but his replacement--Sonny Curtis--wrote and recorded a couple of songs with the band that many of us will still remember: "I Fought the Law," which more people probably know by Bobby Fuller or The Clash, and "More Than I Can Say," with which one Leo Sayer had a hit when I was a lad.
I think Bob Marley and the Wailers were just The Wailers until Bunny Livingston and Peter Tosh left the band, then after Bob Marley died they continued as The Wailers Band. But this wouldn't be too remarkable, were it not for the fact that at some point they recorded a song with John Denver, with a refrain that goes "Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, Jah." I just found that out via Wikipedia, with a Youtube chaser: the song is called "World Game."
The remaining members of the Grateful Dead flirted with this when they toured as "The Dead," but it was at least somewhat of a name change, anyway.
There must be a lot more, but that's all I've got tonight. I feel like I forget that The Doors recorded two more albums before they broke up right after I remember it again every time, so it's always a little surprising. I'm not really a Doors fan, but it's hard to think of them as The Doors without Jim Morrison.
ADDENDUM: According to Wikipedia, Sonny Curtis also wrote The Everly Brothers' "Walk Right Back." Everyone should know that song, it is one of the great ones. The riff was later copped by Neil Young for his 90s song, "Harvest Moon."
Monday, October 24, 2011
Object Oriented Sallis?
Is John Sallis a speculative realist? His talk at SPEP seemed curiously object oriented.
The gist is as follows:
There are some decisive turns which thinking cannot refuse without falling back into nostalgia or irrelevance, and one such is what Sallis calls "the cosmological turn." Cosmological discoveries over the ages have shown the limitedness of terrestrial thinking. (Sallis dismissed as myopic those who might argue that scientific discoveries express a pre-given theoretical projection, insisting "There really are billions of galaxies" etc. )
Phenomenology studies manifestation to the point where it recoils on itself and displays the unmanifest, i.e. the various adumbrations of a thing that form its horizon but are not actually seen in any view of the object. But there is a new kind of object (or at least relatively new), a black hole, which displays a new kind of unmanifestness, one that is not partial or temporally conditioned but absolute. Light cannot escape from a black hole, it is invisible as such and absolutely.
This (relatively) new kind of object demands a new ontology, the old kinds are inadequate. Such a new ontology will break with the roots of ontology in Plato because a black hole, being absolutely invisible, has no eidos.
The upshot of it all, philosophically, is kind of vague and uncertain just on the basis of Saturday's talk, and I'm not sure that it's adequate for an ontology not to be eidetic to be new, or that there aren't non-eidetic ontologies already, or that the eidos can't be extended to pure intelligibility without reference to the literal "look" of something. But I did find the talk remarkable in that it wasn't what I expected to hear from Sallis.
The gist is as follows:
There are some decisive turns which thinking cannot refuse without falling back into nostalgia or irrelevance, and one such is what Sallis calls "the cosmological turn." Cosmological discoveries over the ages have shown the limitedness of terrestrial thinking. (Sallis dismissed as myopic those who might argue that scientific discoveries express a pre-given theoretical projection, insisting "There really are billions of galaxies" etc. )
Phenomenology studies manifestation to the point where it recoils on itself and displays the unmanifest, i.e. the various adumbrations of a thing that form its horizon but are not actually seen in any view of the object. But there is a new kind of object (or at least relatively new), a black hole, which displays a new kind of unmanifestness, one that is not partial or temporally conditioned but absolute. Light cannot escape from a black hole, it is invisible as such and absolutely.
This (relatively) new kind of object demands a new ontology, the old kinds are inadequate. Such a new ontology will break with the roots of ontology in Plato because a black hole, being absolutely invisible, has no eidos.
The upshot of it all, philosophically, is kind of vague and uncertain just on the basis of Saturday's talk, and I'm not sure that it's adequate for an ontology not to be eidetic to be new, or that there aren't non-eidetic ontologies already, or that the eidos can't be extended to pure intelligibility without reference to the literal "look" of something. But I did find the talk remarkable in that it wasn't what I expected to hear from Sallis.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Heidegger and Realism Part II
The idea behind the clearing is that we cannot speak of beings, and thus of being (in the sense of the prevailing meaning of beings, what Heidegger calls "the being of beings") without some pregiven sense of what we are talking about. But we cannot give an account of the genesis of this sense without at the same time relying on it to justify our account, in other words there is something ungrounded at the root of our account, or, in philosophy parlance, an event, i.e something that just happens without being able to be grounded in any existing norms without fear of circularity, or, if you like, something which provides its own conditions.
It should be noted that our sense of what beings are is not, for Heidegger, just a theory we cook up, as if from nowhere, because, even in spite of ourselves, any explicit thesis we can formulate about being expresses a position we already occupy, in other words it is formulated against a background of assumptions emanating from the way we live, the way in which we interact with beings before we come to theorize about them. In this sense, any theory is in fact a symptom, something that expresses an underlying condition. As we are, we speak, which is why Heidegger does not think that we have a special relation to being because we have language, but rather that we have language because of our involvement in being. We live our relation to being before we formulate it.
The later Heidegger gives the name "thinking" to that discourse concerned with this sense-enabling timespace called the "clearing" of being, and with the event which gives the clearing (which Heidegger calls "Ereignis"). If we keep this in mind, we see that he is not being dismissive but is precisely correct to say that "science as such does not think"; science is concerned with the real genesis of things, which can only be accounted for within the parameters of (the/a) clearing; science must operate within certain norms of truth. Thinking is not concerned with real genesis at all, but with how we can come to understand beings such that we can account for their real genesis.
Since Heidegger is not a dialectical thinker, he has no way to talk about real genesis and the genesis of sense as in any way intertwined. However, it is possible that with his later turn to the interplay of world and thing, rather than the ontological difference, as the matter for thinking, he points the way to a new kind of thinking which he himself would reject, one which keeps both sides in play, playing each off against the other. This would of course need to be developed in much greater detail than I can provide here, I just want to mark it.
What's more immediately important for the conversation about realism is to understand the sort of claims Heidegger is making when he divides discourse into thinking and technical discourses. Any discourses that pursue results along a pregiven path without addressing the event of the genesis of sense are deemed "technical." That Heidegger sometimes sounds dismissive about these needn't distract us from the real thrust of what he is saying, which is that the clearing is the space within which truths can be formulated. Heidegger is not saying that the truths of science are only true "for humans," or that the Earth couldn't have really accreted 14 billions years ago (or however long it is), or any of that stuff. What Heidegger critiques about science is not that it doesn't think the clearing, but that it actively forgets the clearing, so that technical discourses come to colonize all of human existence and all non-scientific questions are deemed meaningless or, at best, "fun." (I wish I knew how to do that slick thing where the word "fun" is a link): http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/why-i-am-a-naturalist/
It should be noted that our sense of what beings are is not, for Heidegger, just a theory we cook up, as if from nowhere, because, even in spite of ourselves, any explicit thesis we can formulate about being expresses a position we already occupy, in other words it is formulated against a background of assumptions emanating from the way we live, the way in which we interact with beings before we come to theorize about them. In this sense, any theory is in fact a symptom, something that expresses an underlying condition. As we are, we speak, which is why Heidegger does not think that we have a special relation to being because we have language, but rather that we have language because of our involvement in being. We live our relation to being before we formulate it.
The later Heidegger gives the name "thinking" to that discourse concerned with this sense-enabling timespace called the "clearing" of being, and with the event which gives the clearing (which Heidegger calls "Ereignis"). If we keep this in mind, we see that he is not being dismissive but is precisely correct to say that "science as such does not think"; science is concerned with the real genesis of things, which can only be accounted for within the parameters of (the/a) clearing; science must operate within certain norms of truth. Thinking is not concerned with real genesis at all, but with how we can come to understand beings such that we can account for their real genesis.
Since Heidegger is not a dialectical thinker, he has no way to talk about real genesis and the genesis of sense as in any way intertwined. However, it is possible that with his later turn to the interplay of world and thing, rather than the ontological difference, as the matter for thinking, he points the way to a new kind of thinking which he himself would reject, one which keeps both sides in play, playing each off against the other. This would of course need to be developed in much greater detail than I can provide here, I just want to mark it.
What's more immediately important for the conversation about realism is to understand the sort of claims Heidegger is making when he divides discourse into thinking and technical discourses. Any discourses that pursue results along a pregiven path without addressing the event of the genesis of sense are deemed "technical." That Heidegger sometimes sounds dismissive about these needn't distract us from the real thrust of what he is saying, which is that the clearing is the space within which truths can be formulated. Heidegger is not saying that the truths of science are only true "for humans," or that the Earth couldn't have really accreted 14 billions years ago (or however long it is), or any of that stuff. What Heidegger critiques about science is not that it doesn't think the clearing, but that it actively forgets the clearing, so that technical discourses come to colonize all of human existence and all non-scientific questions are deemed meaningless or, at best, "fun." (I wish I knew how to do that slick thing where the word "fun" is a link): http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/why-i-am-a-naturalist/
Heidegger and Realism Part I
I will not of course try to say all that (I think) there is to say on this topic, and I am having difficulty finding the time to put into formulating thoughtful blog posts about philosophy, so I will assume some background on the part of my readers here in the interest of brevity. In any case, I just want to try to orient this question in the way I think is proper, and hopefully in doing so I will make a small contribution to the ongoing debates about realism we find in blog world nowadays.
The key Heideggerian notion that has to be addressed by anyone asking the realism question is "the clearing."
For the Being and Time era Heidegger, the manner in which human beings exist is called Dasein. This means that humans are involved with the world in such a way that they are inseparable from it, and their involvement is temporal (and spatial, but above all temporal for Heidegger at this point). To speak in a little more Heideggerian manner, Dasein is involved in a world in such a way that it projects itself forward and retrieves itself from the past, in other words unlike objects that perhaps just bang into one another and have repercussions, Dasein's interactions with beings are conditioned by a temporal projection forward and a temporal retrieval backward. This can be seen any time I preheat my oven; I involve myself with the oven in such a way that I project that it will shortly be hot enough to put something in it, and I retrieve the meaning of 'preheat' and 'oven' in a more or less preconscious way, furthermore I may be fat as a result of things I've put in the oven before (retrieval) and want to lose weight (projection) so I am putting a diet meal in the oven, etc. No other beings do this--except (maybe) animals (to a certain extent), who naturally give Heidegger fits as a consequence. That is a whole other topic.
This projection and retrieval, or "thrown projection," is due to the primordial structure of Dasein, or Dasein's 'temporality,' the way it always exists outside of itself, returning to itself and projecting ahead of itself. This leads to the odd situation, which Heidegger apparently didn't notice, that what, for Heidegger, grounds ordinary sequential time--the aforementioned temporality of Dasein--also seems to rely on ordinary sequential time in order to make sense. But this is also a digression.
Dasein's involvement with beings provides them with a horizon, in other words it bestows meaning on them. In other words, Dasein opens up a space within which beings can meaningfully be. This space is called "the clearing" (die Lichtung). This doesn't exactly mean that beings were meaningless before people existed; it just means that they can only appear as they were before Dasein in the space opened up by Dasein's involvement with them, particularly in the mode of science. Science asks questions of real genesis, and this always leads us back to before there were beings who existed in the manner of Dasein. Heidegger says Newton's laws didn't exist before Newton, but the phenomena they describe did; in other words, Newton's laws are themselves part of the space Dasein opens up, they are themselves in fact a cleared space within which beings can present themselves. It is a confusion to say the laws existed before the clearing, because the laws are clearing (although of course they are not exhaustive of it).
Heidegger in Being and Time says that Dasein is the clearing. In his later work, however, he is more likely to say that Dasein, or, increasingly, Mensch, stands in the clearing. The clearing does not constitute beings, it simply gives them a space in which they can meaningfully appear (I'm not claiming that any of this satisfies everyone's realism requirements, by the way). In the later Heidegger, the clearing is no longer seen as constituted by Dasein's projects, but is rather given to Dasein in an event-like way, as will be seen in the second part of this post.
The key Heideggerian notion that has to be addressed by anyone asking the realism question is "the clearing."
For the Being and Time era Heidegger, the manner in which human beings exist is called Dasein. This means that humans are involved with the world in such a way that they are inseparable from it, and their involvement is temporal (and spatial, but above all temporal for Heidegger at this point). To speak in a little more Heideggerian manner, Dasein is involved in a world in such a way that it projects itself forward and retrieves itself from the past, in other words unlike objects that perhaps just bang into one another and have repercussions, Dasein's interactions with beings are conditioned by a temporal projection forward and a temporal retrieval backward. This can be seen any time I preheat my oven; I involve myself with the oven in such a way that I project that it will shortly be hot enough to put something in it, and I retrieve the meaning of 'preheat' and 'oven' in a more or less preconscious way, furthermore I may be fat as a result of things I've put in the oven before (retrieval) and want to lose weight (projection) so I am putting a diet meal in the oven, etc. No other beings do this--except (maybe) animals (to a certain extent), who naturally give Heidegger fits as a consequence. That is a whole other topic.
This projection and retrieval, or "thrown projection," is due to the primordial structure of Dasein, or Dasein's 'temporality,' the way it always exists outside of itself, returning to itself and projecting ahead of itself. This leads to the odd situation, which Heidegger apparently didn't notice, that what, for Heidegger, grounds ordinary sequential time--the aforementioned temporality of Dasein--also seems to rely on ordinary sequential time in order to make sense. But this is also a digression.
Dasein's involvement with beings provides them with a horizon, in other words it bestows meaning on them. In other words, Dasein opens up a space within which beings can meaningfully be. This space is called "the clearing" (die Lichtung). This doesn't exactly mean that beings were meaningless before people existed; it just means that they can only appear as they were before Dasein in the space opened up by Dasein's involvement with them, particularly in the mode of science. Science asks questions of real genesis, and this always leads us back to before there were beings who existed in the manner of Dasein. Heidegger says Newton's laws didn't exist before Newton, but the phenomena they describe did; in other words, Newton's laws are themselves part of the space Dasein opens up, they are themselves in fact a cleared space within which beings can present themselves. It is a confusion to say the laws existed before the clearing, because the laws are clearing (although of course they are not exhaustive of it).
Heidegger in Being and Time says that Dasein is the clearing. In his later work, however, he is more likely to say that Dasein, or, increasingly, Mensch, stands in the clearing. The clearing does not constitute beings, it simply gives them a space in which they can meaningfully appear (I'm not claiming that any of this satisfies everyone's realism requirements, by the way). In the later Heidegger, the clearing is no longer seen as constituted by Dasein's projects, but is rather given to Dasein in an event-like way, as will be seen in the second part of this post.
Monday, October 17, 2011
A Quick One
I don't really lack things to say, just time to say them in. Anyway keep coming back for the blog roll, and philosophical content is coming soon. In the meantime, some fluff:
Girls here at my school say "thenks" when you hold the door, sometimes even "thenk yo." Is that a regional thing? I hate it.
I dislike it when I'm trying to call someone and there's a little scraping noise on my cell phone, which makes me think they're picking up, and then it rings again. Does that happen to anyone else?
"Slumdog Millionaire" may be the stupidest movie I've ever seen.
I've been watching "Breaking Bad," and it's really entertaining.
Gasoline is too expensive.
I'm not a big fan of rice as a soup ingredient.
OK, I'm running out of fluffy bits. Until next time...
Girls here at my school say "thenks" when you hold the door, sometimes even "thenk yo." Is that a regional thing? I hate it.
I dislike it when I'm trying to call someone and there's a little scraping noise on my cell phone, which makes me think they're picking up, and then it rings again. Does that happen to anyone else?
"Slumdog Millionaire" may be the stupidest movie I've ever seen.
I've been watching "Breaking Bad," and it's really entertaining.
Gasoline is too expensive.
I'm not a big fan of rice as a soup ingredient.
OK, I'm running out of fluffy bits. Until next time...
Thursday, October 13, 2011
A More Realistic Approach to Numbers
Although I was surprised that a little Googling showed their estimate of 100 million gun owners to be fairly accurate. But these folks are clearly more math-y than liberal arts-y, judging by the mangled figure of speech at the end:
If you see these guys coming, make like a tree and split...
During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King's tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came.
Three Percenters today do not claim that we represent 3% of the American people, although we might. That theory has not yet been tested. We DO claim that we represent at least 3% of American gun owners, which is still a healthy number somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million people. History, for good or ill, is made by determined minorities. We are one such minority. So too are the current enemies of the Founders' Republic. What remains, then, is the test of will and skill to determine who shall shape the future of our nation.
The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act. Three Percenters say quite explicitly that we will not obey any further circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked. We intend to maintain our God-given natural rights to liberty and property, and that means most especially the right to keep and bear arms. Thus, we are committed to the restoration of the Founders' Republic, and are willing to fight, die and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic.
We are the people that the collectivists who now control the government should leave alone if they wish to continue unfettered oxygen consumption. We are the Three Percent. Attempt to further oppress us at your peril.
To put it bluntly, leave us the hell alone.
Or, if you feel froggy, go ahead AND WATCH WHAT HAPPENS.
If you see these guys coming, make like a tree and split...
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Inspirational Quote
I found this hilarious quote on the blog "Enowning," but I never could find it's source:
Philosopher Martin Heidegger stated that human beings live existentially (Das Wesen des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz). Reading is one way to experience our own existence and better understand the lives of others. Reading is also a habit of successful people.
OWS and Optimism
I feel like I should say something about the "Occupy X" phenomenon, but I don't have too much to say about it. One line of thinking seems to be that the protests have yet to mature enough to settle on some specific demands. On the other hand, there's the perspective formulated in this recent post from "I Cite":
I can see how people can get carried away and start bloviating about "class war" and "constituent power," but what function does this optimism serve? Does it help the movement, a movement that doesn't even explicitly see itself as being about class war and constituent power? If you feel the need to comment on these things, is this sort of cheerleading really helpful? The biggest favor we can do any social movement, however we wish to define the latter, is to be as critical as possible. If people march in the streets against the rule of finance, arrant speculation, and undue political influence on Wall Street, at least when they take to their computer keyboards it should be time to adjure all advertising, bandwagoneering, and demographic vagueness. In other words, less cheerleading, more critique.
The general assemblies are--or are becoming or can become--a power based on the direct initiative of the people from below. The Russian word for these councils is "soviets." An American version is being created by people from all over the country.
They are not based on "a law enacted by a centralized state power."
They are their own source of power--again, a direct initiative of the people from below.
In NYC, they are discussing their own security, in effect or potentially replaceing the police and the army. Yes, they still rely on the police to an extent, but this is an ambiguous, ambivalent, and partial reliance.
In the US, a strong majority (over 80% ) has little to no confidence in government. As the general assemblies grow and endure, they become a second power, a new source of collective self-governance.
At the beginning of the 1990s, we all witnessed a spectacular collapse in power--a government that seemed almost invincible (even as it was decrepit) crumbled. It can happen here.
We already know that there is no faith in government--our statistics tell us this regularly; our media report it--the right hates government and says it doesn't work; the mainstream condemns the stalemate; the left (2 or 3 people on msnbc) worries in a bizarre, schizoid fashion. The thing is---it is already common knowledge--everybody knows--that the political and the economic system is broken. The only thing that is left is thinking that change is impossible-but Occupy Wall Street has broken that barrier.
They can go to through the motions--and a new power is being constituted, all over the country in the different general assemblies. It will be tremendously exciting as the occupations spread to corporations--Occupy Tyson Foods; Occupy Verizon; Occupy News Corporation; Occupy Pepsico; Occupy GE; Occupy Microsoft. I wonder which companies will be the first to occupy themselves, becoming people's corporations before it's too late.
This seems wildly optimistic. The slogan, "We are the 99%," encourages this sort of optimism, even as it leaves the class character of the movement as vague as possible, preferring to identify a tiny segment of the population as villains and allowing just about anybody else to identify with the movement. At the same time, the movement itself is comprised of a much smaller segment of the population than even the 1%, although if we include all those with vaguely sympathetic feelings the number would admittedly be considerably higher. And for me, there's something creepy about "We are the 99%."
The problem is I have no idea what the 99%/1% thing actually means or whom it's meant to identify; it just seems like a vaguely catchy advertising slogan. But "Lenin's Tomb" certainly goes way over the top with this assessment:
This isn't east coast-west coast. It isn't red state-blue state. It isn't north-south. It isn't Democrat-Republican, Cheech-Chong. It's class war, the 99% against the 1%.If the 99% were waging class war against the 1%, it would be over already. On the other hand, if all this means is that the 1% are waging class war against the 99%, this breakdown is not even marginally perspicuous as far as class divisions go. 99% includes the vast majority of the bourgeoisie, the working class, the lumpen poor, farmers, bankers, policemen, politicians, Obama, me, you, and even a few baseball players. So what the hell are they talking about?
I can see how people can get carried away and start bloviating about "class war" and "constituent power," but what function does this optimism serve? Does it help the movement, a movement that doesn't even explicitly see itself as being about class war and constituent power? If you feel the need to comment on these things, is this sort of cheerleading really helpful? The biggest favor we can do any social movement, however we wish to define the latter, is to be as critical as possible. If people march in the streets against the rule of finance, arrant speculation, and undue political influence on Wall Street, at least when they take to their computer keyboards it should be time to adjure all advertising, bandwagoneering, and demographic vagueness. In other words, less cheerleading, more critique.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Too Tough to Die
This is the Ramones album I've been listening to lately. It's the Ramones 8th studio album, and also their 8th best studio album. A lot of people think it is their 6th best, but Pleasant Dreams and Subterranean Jungle are both underrated. On the other hand, since it is their 8th, and 8th best, album, it is also better than any of their subsequent albums, although Mondo Bizarro and perhaps Animal Boy are probably close.
The only real classic is "Howling at the Moon." Although I've always loved "Mama's Boy," it probably wouldn't be quite as great for someone not already a fan. "Chasing the Night" is very catchy but probably not quite a great song. Some of the lyrics on the album are awful. For example:
The jails are filled to the max
Discrimination against the blacks
and
People talk behind your back
Most of them drive a Cadillac
always seemed pretty bad to me too. "I'm Not Afraid of Life" is a wretchedly bad song. The rest of it is pretty solid, although bad lyrics ("All alone in the danger zone" is a terribly weak tag line) mar a lot of it. It's more heavy metal-ish than any of their previous albums.
This won't be strictly a music blog, that's just how it's starting out. Stay tuned...
The only real classic is "Howling at the Moon." Although I've always loved "Mama's Boy," it probably wouldn't be quite as great for someone not already a fan. "Chasing the Night" is very catchy but probably not quite a great song. Some of the lyrics on the album are awful. For example:
The jails are filled to the max
Discrimination against the blacks
and
People talk behind your back
Most of them drive a Cadillac
always seemed pretty bad to me too. "I'm Not Afraid of Life" is a wretchedly bad song. The rest of it is pretty solid, although bad lyrics ("All alone in the danger zone" is a terribly weak tag line) mar a lot of it. It's more heavy metal-ish than any of their previous albums.
This won't be strictly a music blog, that's just how it's starting out. Stay tuned...
A Few Remarks on Wilco
I always thought Uncle Tupelo was kind of boring, and the same with Wilco. I recently watched the Wilco movie. I always thought if I did I'd get it with the music a little more, since the way the music is dramatically presented in movies can make it more engaging. But, I found the music kind of boring, and found myself eager for the songs to end. Usually I hate the way songs are always cut off in movies nowadays, even documentaries about the music, but in this case I'd lose interest before the songs ended. So, Wilco is boring.
If you watch "Superfly" you will see they play "I'm Your Pusherman" all the way through TWICE in the movie. Nowadays you never, ever hear a song played all the way through even once, unless it's a music documentary, and even then they cut into a lot of the songs or cut them off early.
If you watch "Superfly" you will see they play "I'm Your Pusherman" all the way through TWICE in the movie. Nowadays you never, ever hear a song played all the way through even once, unless it's a music documentary, and even then they cut into a lot of the songs or cut them off early.
Blogging
I will be blogging here. My intention is for this to be partly for the purposes of putting certain ideas forward, but also for writing whatever I feel like at the time, so don't get mad if you don't like it.
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