there  could  be  snakes  in  here

Herc is in hard times. But if you swim a certain depth of the music world, you'll see a dozen of these a year: benefit concerts for (usually) American musicians who can't pay their medical bills. It's chilling, and I refuse the idea that this is merely the chill of a spoiled European. This is the story of most people everywhere : but they're uncanonized, nor even are they mates with Billy Corgan. Instances: Victoria Williams . She later founded a pretty life-affirming musician's medical charity , so this is welfare investment... yeah. Vic Chesnutt recently went to his death $30000 under, despite a 1996 powow by Sweet Relief. Skip Spence's one was too late . Arthur Lee received a four-hour ordeal in 2006. Natasha Schneider's was also posthumous, and poses one of the all-time serious existential questions: would I allow Tenacious D to play in my memory ? Without trying to be too insensitive, there's real absurdity in this one , featuri...

© Roderick MacFarlane (2010) For Armands, wherever roaming. 1. Song For Aberdeen - Mando Diao " Well I was never meant to be the good boy I was never meant to go to school And it's guys like me who get somewhere, Cause everybody pity a fool. " 2. Aberdeen 1987 - Xcerts " Let the boys sing out their pain, Let the dreams just slip away, Let them all howl out at night, Under darkening lamp light." 3. The Misbegotten - Charlatans " I met a poet in a hotel Just the other night He said he lived in Aberdeen and, would I like to take his life ?" 4. The Northern Lights of Auld Aberdeen - Trad (honestly the least disgusting version I could find) " I've been a wand'rer all of my life and many a sight I've seen. God speed the day when I'm on my way to my home in Aberdeen ." 5. Another Seven Years - Aberdeen City " Cover yourself when you see them To be much safer when you meet again Greater numbers are greater judges (t...

" Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, this must be done ." - Yes, Minister An idea for a very lazy academic book: email a bunch of linguists & philosophers of language, polling their top 5 Worst Equivocations (in terms of: Whorfian damage to the world's consciousness, source of misunderstanding, or just plain distaste.) Everyone gets what they want: they to moan about polysemes, I to have a free book. Here's mine: "God" So vague - but the speaker always has a determinate cosmocrat in mind. This allows much smugness in otherwise sincere discussion. I'm sure other languages but English and other cultures have their own "real" deity name. There's no excuse for it, but veiled, self-superior syncretism ("Well, you mean my god when you say 'God'"), either: - Allah has loads! - But not as many as that one . - The African ones , rarer and rarer... - Hinduism makes long bloody lists and sings the...

What was Jaxx? Jaxx are/were superlatively anonymous multicultural garage. (In both the US neodisco and UK dub house senses). Their only signatures were exuberance and two big bags of Latino-techno hooks dumped on each track. But they were too song-struck for techno; too detailed for house; too camp, messy and again, anonymous for hiphop; and too ???? for real chart success. They're time-capsuled now, hence my past-tensing. And yet they keep on at it. The voices they use these days are a lot more faceful - Sam Sparro/Yoko Ono/Kelis. This maybe might just let em get a foothold in identity-obsessed American pop, but I doubt it. Now, "Good Luck" in particular: a compressed funk-rock operetta, all the generic frantic I WILL SURVIVE sentiment you could want for any 4 minute period of your life, layered with weapons-grade urbania: did you notice that the backbeat is all beatbox and claps? did you feel the sharp guitar bloom into the 2:27? did the wall-synths convince you to s...

"HEROD: Salome, Salome, dance for me, I beg you. I am sad tonight; dance for me! If you dance, you may ask of me what you want. I'll grant it. SALOME: (rising) Do you really want to give everything that I desire from you, Tetrarch ? HEROD: I give all you'll ask of me, even were it half my kingdom . SALOME: You swear it, Tetrarch ? HEROD: I swear it, Salome . [...dance...] HEROD: My riches are yours. What is it you want to have, Salome ? SALOME: (rising, smiling) The head of John the Baptist ." "Ah!" is the final scene in Richard Strauss' world-fucking opera of Wilde's world-fucking play Salome . Herein, after stripping for her stepfather Herod, Salome scares the shit into him by making out with a severed head. (Worse: the head of the prophet Jochanaan.) The supernatural world in which the action takes place is understandably upset; the moon disappears. A terrified Herod orders her killed. She's quite a creation; a strong, sexu...

(c) Halsmann with Monroe (1959) Am I a serious man? Do I take myself seriously? You can't quote Carnap in dialectic with Wittgenstein and not have some of that, can you? Or write poetry to people you love. (Or write poetry.) Or say things like "Shall we do a Shakespeare readthrough?" or "I can't stand Roger Scruton!" Or ask this question. ************************************************************** My native language is Sexist English . I have learned the thoughtful dialect of it, but some find it terribly jarring, still. Typical arguments against nonsexist language: (1) Arguments from cultural noncorrelation (" No evidence exists that cultures using a sexist language have more discrimination than those using a 'liberated' language. There's no evidence to suggest that nonsexist languages or dialects (e.g., Japanese, Eskimo, Turkish) result in equal treatment of the sexes .") But you don't need to be a Whorfian to o...