The Second-Best Stonemason I Know Of In England
December 31, 2014
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Oswald Spengler Would Understand My Affection For This Video
December 30, 2014
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Spengler thought civilizations, and little bits of civilizations, had a trajectory. They’re not a ferris wheel. They’re a moonshot. They are born, mature, and wither. The withery generation blames kids these days for what’s going on, but it was always inevitable. Kids only live in the world we make for them.
These people are making music live in front of other people. Those sounds are coming out of Al Green’s mouth. The drummer doesn’t follow a metronome. No one even had an electronic tuner back then. Someone had an A440 tuning fork, struck it, listened to it, tuned their instrument to the tone, and then everyone else painstakingly tuned up to them. They’re all listening to each other and producing the sounds together. This is an artifact of the high summer of pop music made in this manner.
Spengler’s almost completely misunderstood, even by his devotees, and I’m sure I’ll be misunderstood, too, like I always am. He mostly said that the action in important affairs didn’t die, exactly; it moved to other arenas. Music might matter a lot for a while, but then it would go overripe, and everyone important would go and ruin architecture or something else next. I must admit that I haven’t got nearly as much idea where the action is right now, and in many arenas I just don’t give a fig, but I can assure you I have an intimate knowledge of nearly everyplace it isn’t happening.
Nostalgia for bad things makes you a Philistine and a reactionary. Affection for things that used to be better isn’t nostalgia; its the only refuge of a sensible person.
You Might Think This Was The Most Maine Thing Ever
December 29, 2014
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Well, it’s right up there, but I have serious doubts whether this is the most Maine thing ever.
For starters, the plow is shiny. Shiny, people. This plow is obviously new, or stolen. Maine people don’t own anything new, or steal. They rescue all the copper pipe out of your camp house if it’s empty for more than a month, and they borrow grandma’s Oxycontins to use as currency in Bangor until their medical marijuana prescription comes around again, but they don’t steal. If that was a true Maine plow, it would be rusty, and leaking hydraulic fluid all over the road.
I notice that the headlights are working properly. That is also suspicious. He’s straddling the lanes nicely while yammering on the cellphone, and the skin on his porcine arm looks like a sausage casing that’s about to burst, and those are marks in the photo’s favor. It would be slightly more Maine-ish if it was a single mother in a Dodge Neon with an unbelted baby in the back seat, texting while driving 70 on a road last paved in the 1960s to get to a party being held in a single-wide trailer, but the lobster traps do keep this one in the running. Besides, in all the pictures I have of Dodge Neons, the car is upside-down, and they’re not as interesting to look at.
This could very well be Maine, don’t get me wrong. But all the door and body panels on the truck are the same color, which gets my Charlotte’s Web spider sense tingling. That reeks of Rye, New Hampshire, which is like another planet.There’s no way to see if the guy is wearing jorts and shower shoes in the wintertime, which would settle this thing once and for all.
The Strangers: The Upside-Down Beatles
December 28, 2014
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The Strangers were a pop/rock cover band in Melbourne, Australia in the 60s and 70s. They were the house band for a sorta Australian version of a Hullabaloo/American Bandstand/Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert-kinda thing called The Go!! Show, which shows the early predilection for exclamation mark abuse in the teen set, which would metastasize into full-blown emoticon leprosy when the Intertunnel finally showed up.
This version shows a few thing admirably. It’s an excellent cover, overall, but brings nothing new to the proceedings. Back then, access to music was much more limited, and cover bands had to deliver the payload precisely. Just like the record was the grail. You were stand-ins for the bands.
Nowadays, no one wants to call themselves cover bands, though. They’re tribute bands, and they play just like the record, forevermore. The actual bands that played the songs in the first place get old and become cover bands of themselves, playing at state fairs and whatnot, trying to sound like themselves even thought four out of five original members have died by choking on vomit by the time they play at the Waterfront Concert for Balding Hair Metal Bands.
No one knows whose vomit it was. You can’t dust for vomit.
Hank Mobley Comes Up The String
December 27, 2014
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You don’t need your mind blown every minute, do you? Sit in the sun in the kitchen. There’s a round table by the tall windows, and the snow shines like the wing of an airliner when you look out the window. You’re flying high over the back yard. There’s a cap of snow on the birdhouse. The birds have gone to Miami for the winter, missing all the fun of not being cold for a few minutes.
Put on a pot of coffee and listen to Paul Chambers swing a bit. The occasional thunderstorm on the snare. Hank Mobley won’t make you wonder what’s going on, so you can wonder what’s going on in your house, instead. We gave the little one a yo-yo for Christmas. He loves it above all things. A yo-yo. He makes it go up and down, and that’s it. It’s sublime. It goes down the string. It comes up the string as if by magic if you snap your wrist just right.
Hank Mobley makes the morning come up the string.
Month: December 2014
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
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