Alexander

I'm thinking about Prometheus stealing fire from the Gods. I'm thinking about Eve making Forbidden Fruit salad. I'm thinking about Rabbi Loew and his big clay friend. I'm thinking about Mary Shelley's ghost story. I'm thinking of Einstein, Marie Curie, and Robert Oppenheimer unleashing armageddon. I'm thinking about a big sign that says, "Do NOT pass this point." Don't say we haven't been warned. There's a reason that so much of our mythology deals with forbidden knowledge and the consequences therein. Paradise Lost, indeed...

Can't wait to see it! I saw Dylan in concert last night, and I kept thinking that this film is taking the right aproach to dealing with a figure as mercurial as Dylan. It is absolutely true that there have been several Dylans over the years, and each one looks and sounds very different from the rest. It's always interesting to hear Dylan in his various incarnations as he tackles the music of his past. Last night he performed a version of "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" that bore no resemblence to the one he recorded on "The Times They Are A-Changing." His voice, his delivery, everything about this Dylan is different than the one who recorded in the early 60s, which is also completely different from the "Blood On the Tracks" era Dylan, which is again different from the "Slow Train Coming" Dylan. Not to mention the "Nashville Skyline" Dylan! How could a filmmaker depict so many different sides of one man? And what actor is equal to the task of embodying all of these different Dylans?

I saw the Costello/Dylan concert last night. Excellent! I can see how some might be put off by Dylan (he's hard to understand, even if you know all the words to his songs), but having seen him at his touring nadir in the late 80s, I found his show to be very entertaining. The Costello set was even better! Here are the set lists for both performers: Costello Set List October 6, 2007 1. (The Angels Wanna Wear) My Red Shoes 2. Blue Chair 3. Either Side of the Same Town 4. The River in Reverse 5. Oliver's Army 6. Down Among the Wines and Spirits (new song, debuted 9/19/07 in Nashville concert) 7. From Sulfur to Sugarcane (new song, written with T-Bone Burnett for the film “All The King’s Men,” but not used. Debuted at 9/27/07 concert in Charlottesville, Virginia) 8. Veronica 9. Radio Sweetheart/Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile) 10. (What's so Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding 11. The Scarlet Tide Dylan Set List October 6, 2007 1. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob on electric guitar, Donnie on lap steel) 2. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Bob on electric guitar, Donnie on lap steel, Stu on acoustic guitar, Tony on standup bass) 3. Watching the River Flow (Bob on electric guitar, Donnie on lap steel) 4. Simple Twist of Fate (Bob on electric keyboard and harp, Donnie on pedal steel, Stu on acoustic guitar) 5. Rollin' and Tumblin' (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on electric mandolin, Stu on acoustic guitar) 6. When the Deal Goes Down (Bob on electric keyboard and harp, Donnie on pedal steel, Stu on acoustic guitar, Tony on standup bass) 7. 'Til I Fell In Love With You (Bob on electric keyboard and harp, Donnie on lap steel) 8. Workingman's Blues #2 (Bob on electric keyboard and harp, Donnie on pedal steel, Stu on acoustic guitar) 9. Things Have Changed (Bob on electric keyboard and harp, Donnie on violin) 10. The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll (Bob on electric keyboard and harp, Donnie on electric mandolin, Stu on acoustic guitar) 11. Highway 61 Revisited (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on lap steel) 12. Ain't Talkin' (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on viola, Stu on acoustic guitar) 13. Summer Days (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on pedal steel, Tony on standup bass) 14. Masters of War (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on lap steel, Stu on acoustic guitar, Tony on standup bass) (encore) 15. Thunder on the Mountain (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on lap steel, Stu on acoustic guitar) 16. All Along the Watchtower (Bob on electric keyboard, Donnie on lap steel, Stu on acoustic guitar) Band Members Bob Dylan - electric guitar, keyboard, harp Tony Garnier - bass George Recile - drums Stu Kimball - rhythm guitar Denny Freeman - lead guitar Donnie Herron - violin, viola, electric mandolin, pedal steel, lap steel

Check out albanyjazz.com. The site was started by Capital District musican Brian Patneaude.

Ronson's remix of Dylan's "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" works REALLY well. Almost insanely so. Check it out! Bob Dylan and the Dap-Kings!

Got it on Tuesday. Haven't listened to it yet. (This is becoming the story of my life.) Did anybody see the article on Sharon Jones in the NY Times? Seems she's got some choice words for Amy Winehouse for swiping her band.

Bought it on Tuesday. Haven't listened to it yet, but looking forward to it (haven't listened to the discs I bought LAST WEEK yet).

Hey man, my wife is an ex-Catholic girl! I've got NO problem with ex-Catholic girls!

I don't think so, no. Declaring faith irrational is (again) telling you what I think and what I believe, not telling you what you SHOULD think or believe. I certainly would never claim that I am somehow a member of some elect group that will get cash and prizes while the rest of you languish in agony. Ironically enough, that's exactly what is implied when a person claims Jesus as his/her personal savior ("I'm going to heaven, you're going to hell"). I believe that the same fate awaits the believer and non-believer alike: Nothing. Look, you say that belief is a personal choice, and you're right. Bopping yourself on the head with a hammer is a personal choice too, but I don't think anyone would take umbridge if I said, "You know, bopping yourself on the head with a hammer is a pretty silly thing to do. You might hurt yourself." All I'm saying is that I think that believing in a Magic Invisible Man who take care of you to be a very silly thing indeed. And I think, personally, that believing in silly things will do more harm than good in the end (it was, after all, fervant believers who carried out the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, the 9/11 attacks, etc.). I believe that religion is bad for mankind. Think about it. During ancient Greece and Rome we had great advances in the sciences and the humanities. Then we had a thousand years (a THOUSAND YEARS...think about that) of dominion by the Catholic church during which absolutely DICK got done. In fact, people FORGOT HOW TO DRAW IN PERSPECTIVE. How fucked up is that? After a THOUSAND years, people started throwing off the church's silly rules ("Don't point telescopes at the sky. Don't cut up cadavers to see how the body works. God doesn't like that"), and what happens? A REBIRTH of culture. Doesn't that tell you something? Yeah, yeah...the Bible provided all sorts of cool subjects for paintings and sculptures during the Renaissance, but the church did far, far more to HINDER mankind's advancement than it has to help it along. I don't know. It seems like the personal comfort of a few people kind of pales next to a THOUSAND YEARS of ignorance and cultural stagnation. Maybe that's just me. As for George Cables thing...look, I CAN'T pray because I don't believe that there's anything to which to pray. But that doesn't mean that I wish the guy ill. I really do hope gets better. Unlike those who believe in the power of prayer, I don't think that my good wishes actually cause things to happen. I just hope he's not an amputee. God hates amputees, you know.

Yikes! Of course, if you're going to shoot a guy over porn, you're going to have to shoot a LOT of guys.

I notice that you continue to harp on this and fail to address any of my other points. So I'll try to settle this once and for all. I will not stop being a "dick," as you put it, on the subject of religion in that I will not stop pointing out the irrationality of faith whenever I see it. I will also continue to take offense when people do or say things that I find offensive. This is my right just as it is your right to take offense by the things that I say or do and to voice your opinion. I never said that Clem "cannot" be a dick. Clem can be a dick. He will be a dick, because he IS a dick. And I can say, "Clem is a dick" if that's how his behavior seems to me, just as you can say "Alexander is a dick" if that's how I seem to you. I will close with every Christian's favorite quotable author, Aleister Crowley: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." So, Paul, Clem, everybody...do what thou wilt.

I don't pray, but I send him my best wishes for a speedy recovery!

well, actually... anyway, I didn't mean to get all theological on anyone. I was just trying to point out that Alexander has no business EVER trying to complain about someone picking on him, his tastes, beliefs or anything of the sort. Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. Such absolutist talk is nonsense, of course. That's like saying, "That guy is a drug dealer and a burgler. He has no business EVER complaining that someone is breaking into his house." I've been a rude jerk in the past. That doesn't give people the right to be rude jerks, even towards me. Didn't Jesus tell you that? Been a while since I logged in. Surprised to see the same old shit. I just had to comment on the absurdity of Alexander's line, "Such absolutist talk is nonsense, of course. That's like saying, "That guy is a drug dealer and a burgler. He has no business EVER complaining that someone is breaking into his house." What else is that like saying? Maybe you could tell your students what Duchamp's pipe means, and make sure that they understand there is no room for interpretation. Maybe you could tell the Christians here that there is no GOD, there was no SON, and there is no other way to interpret it. Unbelievable. *I am neither overly "Christian", nor do I enjoy tobacco from a pipe. Everyone else, please feel free to do either, or both. Thank you. While I appreciate your comments, I have to say that the meaning of the second part here escapes me. Are you saying that I've been an absolutist? I don't consider myself to be an absolutist. In fact, I'm very much a subjectivist (or existentialist, if you want to be percise) which is part of the point here. I'm not a big fan of "objective reality." Since reality, from our human perspective, consists solely of our subjective perception of said reality (and we need only look to Heisenberg to see how our presence as perceivers can effect that which we hope to objectively observe), it's really impossible to make broad statements on the nature of what we perceive. Is the sky really blue? It looks blue, but that's really just because our eyes interpret the visible spectrum in a particular way. What color is the sky to someone who's perceptions are not determined by light bouncing off of objects? The very concept of "light" and "dark" only has meaning to us because our eyes depend on light to see. What if your perception did not depend on light? What are we NOT seeing because our level of perception does not exceed the visible spectrum? What do things REALLY look like? How do I know for certain that any of you are really out there? That all of the responses I read on the screen are not generated by a computer program? How do I know that ANYTHING is really happening? If I were a brain in a jar being subjected to electronic stimuli, might I not see, hear, smell and taste the same things that I do now? If they weren't really happening, but I THOUGHT they were happening, would it really make a difference? When you realize how uncertain your perceptions are, doesn't faith seem kind of irrational and, well, absurd?

Just recently came across that one myself. I'm still puzzling over "A laugable instance of linguistic ignorance..." Time to have a drink, perhaps? Oops. In my defense, I was at work while I wrote this. I was sitting in the computer lab waiting for one of my students to finish typing a paragraph and I was called away several times. That's why this misspelling got past my keen eye.

Yes, very well done. And I agree that it demonstrates how the practice of "covering" songs has changed over the years, and with it the meaning of the word itself. My question is this: When did the word cover enter the lexography and what was its first printed use? This is where the OED would come in handy, if they include words like "cover."

I'm looking forward to this, as I am a Radiohead fan. I'll do the download and voluntarily pay for it. Not too much, though, as I am somewhat broke.

I picked this up last week when it came out (along with the new Herbie), but I have yet to spin it. I've been holding off, mainly because I'm kinda broke and I want to have some new CDs that I haven't listened to yet to look forward to. I've basically stuck the new CDs at the bottom of a pile of stuff I'm listening to right now, and my attitude is "all get to them when I get to them," but the temptation is strong. Threads like this don't help either!

Warren G. Harding, one of the worst presidents in American history and man who's mangling of the english language rivaled even Dubya's (Harding's english was described by Mr. Twain as the aural equivilant of "a hippo struggling in a pool of molasses"), famously described his administration as a "return to normalcy." He meant to say "normality" since "normalcy" was not a word, but people still say "normalcy" today and it is now included in many dictionaries. A laugable instance of linguistic ignorance became the coining of a new word. It is possible, in a hundred years or so, that people might well say "misunderestimated" and mean it. Chris says that "being under 42 is no excuse for sloppy language," but the fact is that language does change with the passing of time, and it may well be that those of us under 42 are essentially speaking a different language from those over 42. Look, during the 1600s, for instance, the second-singular took a singular conjunction - "You is." "You are," which we use today, would have been wrong in the 1600s. Earlier still, the second-singular pronoun wasn't "you" but "thou." There are several words in use today, perfectly acceptable words, that were once considered errors or egregious slang by usage authorities in the past. Words like "clever," "fun," "banter," and "prestigious." "Silly" once meant "useless" (as in Coleridge's "silly buckets"). I'm still somewhat annoyed that the word "dork" appears to have lost its original meaning (it was a synonym for "penis"). Today, teachers call their students "dorks" (as a playful form of "nerd" or "geek") who would get fired if they called the same students "pricks" or "peckers." I hear it all the time, and I have to bite my tongue.

well, actually... anyway, I didn't mean to get all theological on anyone. I was just trying to point out that Alexander has no business EVER trying to complain about someone picking on him, his tastes, beliefs or anything of the sort. Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. Such absolutist talk is nonsense, of course. That's like saying, "That guy is a drug dealer and a burgler. He has no business EVER complaining that someone is breaking into his house." I've been a rude jerk in the past. That doesn't give people the right to be rude jerks, even towards me. Didn't Jesus tell you that?

Does that mean that you have "whitedar"?

For me, this discussion comes down to a dispute in the grammar and usage world that has been going on for some time. One camp is usually called the "prescriptivists," the other is the "descriptivists." Prescriptivists seek to define language as it *should* be used. Descriptivists seek to define language as it *is* used. Dictionaries (to which most of us defer as a neutral and authoritative arbiter of language) are, in fact, written with a very definite bias (prescriptivist or descriptivist). Chris and MG are showing themselves (in this case, anyway) to be prescriptivists. The word cover has a meaning and that meaning has been ignored, and even perverted, by the people who use it. Others have shown themselves to be descriptivists, arguing that the meaning of the word "cover" has changed because the way in which the word is used has changed. Prescriptivists essentally believe that people should walk where paths are laid, descriptivists believe that paths should be laid where people walk. Both are valid ways of looking at language, and both have their place. For myself, I think that if the way "cover" is used has changed, then the meaning has changed as well. The function of language is that we may understand each other. If we don't keep up with the changes, we may as well speak Anglo-Saxon.

I should also note that I have ALWAYS found "Piss Christ" to be uncommonly beautiful (I love the colors). It looks like a picture taken through a golden filter. I don't see that as offensive.

I don't think you're being honest with yourself. This may be how you want to see yourself, but do you think that's how you come across? You openly mock Christians and Christianity on this board regularly. You post Piss Christ pictures, with your own admitted purpose to "tweak" Christians or something, that it should be no big deal to them. Remember this: If that's not mocking others for their beliefs, what is? Realizing that matters of artistic taste are entirely subjective, I should point out that "Piss Christ" is a legitimate work of art that makes a valid comment on a matter of some importance. It has to do, as I believe I pointed out before, with symbols and our unfortunate tendency to conflate the symbol with the idea symbolized...in otherwords, the siginfier and the signified. I'm sure I also brought up Magritte's classic painting "The Trechery of Imagies." For those who have forgotten the painting, or have never seen it, here it is: The French text reads, "This is not a pipe." I often show this to students and ask them to explain it to me. I've heard some very creative interpretations, but only a few have hit it on the head: It's not a pipe. It's a picture of a pipe. The same could easily be said of "Piss Christ": "This is not a Christ." It's not. It's a picture of a Christ. Or a little statue of a Christ hanging from a piece of wood. Magritte's painting warns us: "Do not confuse the thing with the idea behind it." In this modern age, I should hope that we've moved past the Platonic Ideal (the idea that somewhere, somehow, there is an ideal Pipe after which all pipes are imperfect representations). I say that a flag or a cross (or a star of David, or a crescent moon) is nothing more than a symbol. A symbol can be destroyed (or dipped in urine) but the idea is untouched. Ideas, as Alan Moore once noted, are bulletproof. Pointing that out doesn't seem to the same as mockery, but I may be in error. The "where's your Messiah now" line was, of course, a quote from "The Ten Commandments." It was intended as a joke, and I recognize that to some it was in poor taste.

this might be true, but... You're aggressive about proclaiming your belief system. You always tell people what they should or shouldn't believe in, when the subject comes up. And you try to make people who believe differently than you feel that they're foolish for doing so. Face it, you're EXACTLY the kind of asshole that you proclaim Clem to be, and you're simply getting what you deserve, IMHO. edited for grammatical idiocy. Thanks for reading. I see a difference between me and Clem, but if you don't, that's your hang-up and I can't do anything about it. I don't tell people what they SHOULD believe, I just tell them what I believe. I would never presume to tell you that you cannot or should not believe in God if that is your personal choice. I can tell you that I don't agree with that choice, but that's not telling you that you or your choice is "stupid." I have no problem with Clem disagreeing with me. I have no problem when he tells me that he doesn't like the things I like. What gets under my skin is when Clem says things like: "Y'all have been DUPED" regarding Dylan's "Modern Times." Calling me a dupe is insulting. I'd never call you a dupe for believing in God (even if I believe it, I'd never say it).

Well, I certainly take exception to being characterized as having "the musical taste of a suburban thirteen year old," and I certainly don't think that I'm the only one who would. Nor do I think I'm being particularly agressive about it. My contention is, and always has been, that I like what I like and no one else has the right to judge me or tell me that I'm wrong to like it (which Clem does, time and time again). I certainly don't come around telling other people what they SHOULD or SHOULD NOT listen to/enjoy. I've never told anyone (to my knowledge) that they are foolish for liking what they like. I might say that they seem a bit closed-minded, but that doesn't seem (to me) to be the same thing at all. You might disagree. I should note that for many, many years (pretty much from my early 20s until my late 20s), I was as much of a stick-in-the-mud as any purist jazz fan on this or any other board. I had abandoned the rock and roll of my youth (with a few exceptions, such as the Beatles, about whom I was an even BIGGER purist) and embraced jazz wholeheartedly. Circa 1997, I considered pop/rock music to be the immature ramblings of idiots. I certainly wouldn't consider rap or country music. Blues was important, but it was too simplistic for my taste. Then, right around late 1997/early 1998, I began to rediscover much of the pop music I had loved as a young person. I began to realize that there was a lot more to it than I had given credit for. In fact, I credit this change to the jazz I'd been listening almost excluisively to for the past eight years or so. Jazz had opened my ears to instrumental details I had failed to notice before. I also began to explore hip hop, country, and blues. I began to realize that if I didn't like something, it was MY problem and not the music's. The music wasn't immature. I was immature for being so closed off to it. Ever since then, I have been as big a fan of pop music as I am jazz (as well as folk, country, hip hop, etc). My ears are wide open to EVERYTHING, yes, including the stuff being churned out by the big media machine. Just because it's put out by greedheads who only care about money doesn't mean that the artists themselves share their priorities. Kayne happens to put out highly entertaining albums. What the hell is wrong with that? Isn't that the first duty of a popular musician? To entertain? Isn't that why we listen to jazz? Because it pleases us? You don't know jack about my tastes. You don't know what I have among the 3,000 discs of my collection. Believe me, it's beyond the imagination of even the most precocious thirteen year old, suburban or otherwise. But I'm not here to prove my hipness quotient. Every CD in that collection pleases me. And that's all they need to do.