throwingguitarsthroughTVs

As some of you may or may not know, I own two guitars which I own for making diffident stabs at learning how to play before getting distracted by something else.  One is an Art & Luthrie Amis, an acoustic guitar made in the parlour style with a compact body, which I have dubbed “Irene” after the famous Leadbelly song.¹  The other is “Carol”, my Tokai copy² of the Gibson ES-335…

(Pictured above, ‘Carol’, getting her beauty rest.)

…or what I at least thought was a Tokai copy.

Seems that my best friend was at Long & McQuade with her father recently and she happened to mention Carol.  However, when pressed for details, to her embarrassment, she could not remember the name of the model nor number for it.  I really didn’t know it either.  When I bought it about five years ago from the now defunct Mothers Music chain of stores they had advertised the model number, which I promptly forgot about, yet neither this number nor any similar identifying information is to be found on the guitar. We tried looking for a sticker inside one of the sound holes on the guitar yet there was none. The only identifying feature was the Tokai logo on the head stock and the lovely floral design in the centre that vaguely recalled the fleur-du-lis.

So my friend spent a considerable amount of time hunting around for it online. The lack of info might have been due to the fact that Tokai itself has never kept good records about their past models and apparently have an arbitrary numbering system for its models. After much searching we finally found pictures of it in an online forum dedicated to guitar discussion. However, what we were finding was increasingly troubling. Apparently they guitar I had purchased was not in fact a Tokai, but a fake. Was my Carol a fake? Well it turns it out…

http://www.tokaiforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=11240&highlight

…she is! She’s a counterfeit Tokai! Oh the shame and mortification of this all! That I actually paid for a counterfeit To—

My first electric guitar was a white-with-black-pickguard Stratocaster copy manufactured by Epiphone, Gibson’s budget line. I bought it from some guy I saw in an ad posted at the local University while I was attending there. I retrospect I paid way-too-much for what was a serviceable but ultimately crap entry guitar that started giving out after a few years.¹ I only got Carol because I was driving by Mother’s Music one day and it had a sign out stating they were having a clearance on Tokais. I played it and it sounded and handled a lot better than the Strat I had. My Dad, who has almost no experience with guitars, immediately noticed that the sound was better than on my old Strat. I’ve had friends and acquaintances with more musical acumen play it and were suitably impressed with it. I’ve seen at least one person on stage playing it. It may not sound as a good as an actual Gibson and I’m not sure what the quality is like compared to an actual Tokai, but in terms of sound its a perfectly good guitar for practicing and playing on that you could easily take on stage with a decent ampilifier. It resonates and rings nicely, and the neck is set well.

It’s simply not a Tokai. I’ve seen it retail at one store for about $600 Canadian dollars which is comparable to many mid-level electrics I’ve seen in other stores. I’m not sure what real Tokais go for in Canada, but apparently this counterfeit only exists because a Canadian distributor couldn’t get the Tokais it wanted, got greedy, and had a Korean manufacturer make several fake copies. This is a problem for Canadian Tokai fans. If you see a guitar like mine, or any Tokai that has different font that regular Tokai line and that appealing floral design on the headstock, with no other identifying info, it’s probably a fake. I’m not sure whether Mother’s Music knew this or not.

Personally I wouldn’t have bought it when I did if not for the fact that they were being cleared out at a price somewhere in the ball park of $290, about $330 after tax. So I got a decent sounding electric for a much lower price than I’d otherwise would have for a guitar of comparable quality. And the fact that it is a fake that, strangely enough, sounds good makes it all the more special to me. I call that a bargain.

The best I ever had.

1 Which you can learn more about here.  If you want a decent quality acoustic for a reasonable price, Godin’s Art & Lutherie line is surprisingly cheap compared to other brands for the quality you’re getting.

2  Tokai was one of the first Japanese companies to start building copies of American guitars, particularly Fender and Gibson.  It also known for building high quality copies as opposed to cheapo starter guitars.

night-people:

xharries:

Put a letter from A-Z in my ask and I’ll tell you 1 thing I love which starts with that letter.

THIS IS CUTE PLEASE

Repeat letters allowed ‘cause I’m crazy like that.

theobscurereference:

If you are non-religious and call religion “useless” or “stupid” without also accepting that atheism is a belief system that you have most likely become entrenched in, you are a bigot.

If you are religious and insult atheists or agnostics or what have you without also acknowledging the problematic elements of having a faith, you are also a bigot.

Don’t justify or excuse bigotry because it’s in a flavour you can stomach.

Exactly.  My giant gripe with the “New Atheism” that has coalesced around certain authors like Sam Harris is that they manage to replicate the thought patterns of the religious fanatics they criticize.  Particularly the bigotry that casts anyone outside of a narrowly circumscribed tribal identity as the enemy and the intellectual dishonesty required to sustain it. 

Personally, I wouldn’t argue that “atheism” in general is a “belief system”.  From my perspective as it doesn’t resemble what we see happening in religion where a group creates a mythology for human experience to provide an organized framework for group identity and morals.  To be atheist to accept a broad proposition about deity that can be held by both the totally irreligious and even certain religions (like certain versions of Buddhism).  However, to the extent that some people try to turn it into a marker of tribal identity the way Sam Harris does or Christopher Hitchens did, the similarities in terms of behaviour and patterns of thinking to say…the likes of Jerry Falwell or Osama Bin Laden…start to become eerily apparent.

(And apologies if that was esoteric and overly dry.  I tend to wantonly commit sociology when I feel like it.)

theartden:

The prices displayed are starting prices. The final amount will depend on the complexity of the character’s design, amount of clothing, pose, and how many changes have been made. 

PRICES (Canadian):
Bust line art: $20+

Full body line art: $25+
(Choice of line quality: hard round or pencil/chalk/gritty)

Bust flat colour: $30+
Added tone: $5+

Full Body flat colour: $40+ 
Added tone: $10+

Fully painted bust or full body: $80+
(Choice of paintbrush: hard round or chalk/gritty )
(Keep in mind the prices can get rather high with these)

*Anything $50+ will require a 50% payment once it is half-finished.* 

     I am able to do a wide variety of subjects, excluding anything illegal. 

     At this time, I do not do tattoo designs, portraits of real people and pets, complicated scenes, environments, or mechanical objects. This may be subject to change in the future. 

     If you wish to commission me, please send a message to rachelr_commissions@yahoo.ca that includes a detailed explanation of what you want, as well as a clear, large reference image of your character. It’s not necessary, but greatly appreciated if you include reference photos of the pose you want your character to be in. Feel free to throw in any other sort of reference images you may think will help me.

*More important stuff under the break.* 

Read More

Signal boosting for an artist whose work I really respect.  She’s amazing guys.

Earlier I had written an article critiquing Ali A. Rizvi’s thoughts on Islamic radicalism in the Huffington post. I would like to return to that article since I left certain matters unaddressed. Ali A. Rizvi thinks that those who label thinkers like Sam Harris as “Islamophobes” are simply avoiding debate about certain uncomfortable truths about Islam. Not only is he wrong it makes his declarations of the awareness that most Muslims are peaceful seem rather hollow, even if this is not what he intended. And certainly the man has more day-to-day interaction with practicing Muslims than I do.

However, in his desire to claim that there are certain fundamental things about Islam that lead to it terror and authoritarian violence he makes a mess of the facts. His article begins by looking at the First Barbary War that was conducted between the United States and then Vilayet of Tripolitania,¹ or Kingdom of Tripoli. In the article he quotes Thomas Jefferson’s conversation with the envoy of Tripoli in 1786 who claimed that the Kingdom’s piracy activities were happening because, “all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners.” The language and reasoning is remarkably similar to radicals like Osama Bin Laden. Mr. Rizvi then asks: “So where did Abdul Rahman Adja’s bin Laden-esque words come from?”

“They couldn’t have been a response to American imperialism (the start of the conflict precedes the presidency of George Washington), U.S. foreign policy, globalization, AIPAC or Islamophobia. Yet his words are virtually identical to those spouted ad nauseum by jihadists today who justify their bellicosity as a reaction to these U.S.-centric factors, which were nonexistent in Adja’s time.

How do we make sense of this? Well, the common denominator here just happens to be the elephant in the room.”

The common denominator, Mr. Rizvi makes clear in his article, is Islam, something that many people are reluctant to acknowledge.

Yet the further you go into history of the war the less the comparison seems to work. The ruler of Tripoli at the time, Yusuf Karamanli, was jealous of the monies Algiers was receiving from the United States to ensure safe passage of their ships. When a larger payment was not forthcoming, he declared war on May 10, 1801 by cutting down the flagstaffs in front of the U.S. consulate.

The background of the war provided in Wikipeida² notes that piracy had previously been committed against U.S. ships by Algeria and hefty sum was paid to put an end to this. Prior to that, the U.S. had offered Algiers a treaty similar to the one it signed with Morrocco to avoid piracy. Algiers rebuffed this offer because, “Algiers was much more dependent than Morocco on the fruits of corsairing — captured goods, slaves, the ransoms they brought, and tribute.” For all of the professions of religious devotion by the envoy it is clear that the primary purpose for such aggression was to make money through coercion and black-mail. In that sense the pirates of Tripoli had less in common with Al Qaeda, than modern organized crime (or the explorers of the age of Discovery who were willing to kill and line their pockets in the name of Christendom).

And therein lies the problem with Mr. Rizvi’s argument. The Barbary Pirates of the 18th and 19th centuries were not that era’s equivalent to Osama Bin Laden, since their motivations were not politics tied up with religion. They were simply getting wealthy off of thuggery. The problem with this approach is that it sets aside any deeper examination of events to pin everything on Islam, as though there was something essential to it that led to such violence.³ Even the present-day examples he gives of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh prove problematic in this regard. I had discussed, Saudi Arabia at length in the previous piece I wrote, pointing out it is an authoritarian state whose existence is tied to its allegiance with clerics of the Hanabli school of Sunni Islam.⁴ Similarly, in Pakistan we are given an example of leprous blasphemy laws at work and mob burning down a school over “blasphemy”. The proceedings have a tragicomic feel to them when we learn that it was the result of a teacher, herself a devout Muslim, incorrectly copying down certain passages of the Q’uran which led to misinterpretations of the text and allegations of blasphemy. Yet the article that Mr. Rizvi posted points out that the religious issues merely provided kindling for a conflict over by class divisions within the country with the school being targeted by the lower class as a symbol of their resentments. As it stands Pakistan is a country hobbled by poor education and huge economic inequality due to never having a proper land reform in the post-colonial era. Again the role of Islam as somehow being fundamental to this all is brought into question as the underlying issues of poverty and lack of education remind me of the rise of Communism in the third world during the Cold War due to poverty and the lack of reform in places like Guatemala and Vietnam.

As for Bangladesh the article Mr. Rizvi cites mentions that secularists organized strikes against hardliners, but still leaves out much information. Professor Juan Cole points out that the protest in question were organized by Jama’at-i Islami and:

…the Jama’at-i Islami in Bangladesh opposed the 1971 secession of that country from Pakistan. In that bloody struggle, Pakistani troops committed atrocities and some Jama’at leaders were accused of aiding them. A vital youth movement of critics of the Jama’at has been demonstrating for months demanding trials for those accused. The sentencing this week of leading Jama’at figure Delwar Hossein Seyedee for his role in 1971 atrocities satisfied the critics of the Muslim religious Right in that country, but provoked Jama’at riots that left dozens dead.

More detail is provided by the Christian Science Monitor which gives evidence of a conflict between rising younger generation who is seeking more religious freedom and to turn back the influence of Jama’at-i Islami on Bangladeshi life.

It is profoundly mistaken, and I would argue irresponsible, to argue in all of these cases that Islam is simply the underlying cause. As they make clear, even when it’s a rallying cry for a particular group or act, how people practice that religion is clearly shaped by the political, social, and economic events surrounding it. The problem is that men like Harris and Dawkins excise these factors from their understanding of the religious factors and end up merely misdiagnosing the problem while promoting a bigoted view of Muslims. In contrast, people like Glenn Greenwald argue that extremism, be it religious or not, must be understood in the political reality around it. I would also argue that any proper understanding of religion should do likewise. Otherwise, attempts to address matters in places like Pakistan and Bangladesh will simply fail.

1The Kingdom of Tripoli, as well as Algiers and Tunis, in that period all constituted separate political entities that were provinces of the Ottoman Empire, but effectively operated as separate states all on their own. Morocco, which was entirely separate from the Empire, was also involved in piracy.

2Which are backed by citations to reputable sources. I just need something I can post online.

3And if he’s not explicitly arguing this, it’s certainly the conclusion that his argument is implicitly asking us to draw.

4And the symbiotic relationship between the Ruling House of Saud and Hanbali clerics who provide it with a certain amount of legitimacy.

Recently in the Huffington Post, Ali A. Rizvi wrote a piece that claiming that the taboo against criticizing religion is a alive and well. In this case he sees critics of the so-called “New Atheist” thinkers - Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris – as labelling these men Islamophobes in order to shut down debate the way the term “anti-semite” is carelessly used to shut down criticism of Israel. Of course Mr. Rizvi also agrees with Sam Harris that Islam poses “an unique threat” due to the religion’s, “greatly increased influence on (and integration into) world politics.” However, Mr. Rizvi never really explains this point. Moreover, he never really directly addresses what the critics are taking issue with. Following the links in his piece I found the three critics that he mentioned take issue with the following:

NATHAN LEAN: “Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death,” writes Harris.

MURTAZA HUSSAIN: “While one could cite Richard Dawkins’ descriptions of “Islamic barbarians” and Christopher Hitchens’ outright bloodlust towards Muslims - including lamentations of the ostensibly too-low death toll in the Battle of Fallujah and his satisfied account of cluster bombs tearing through the flesh of Iraqis - these have been widely discussed and are in any case not the most representative of this modern phenomena.”

GLENN GREENWALD: “The key point is that Harris does far, far more than voice criticisms of Islam as part of a general critique of religion. He has repeatedly made clear that he thinks Islam is uniquely threatening: “While the other major world religions have been fertile sources of intolerance, it is clear that the doctrine of Islam poses unique problems for the emergence of a global civilization.””

If these are misrepresentations of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris’ views then of course one could point out why.¹ Yet Rizvi never does. Frankly, the statements that these critics are reacting to are simply patent bigotry of the sort of alarmist nature we’d expect from people raving about the international Jewish conspiracy.²

The greatest problem with Mr. Rizvi’s article, and in fact is a the great problem with many critics of Islam in the west: treating the religion as homogenous and treats different facets of it as homogenous to the point that it completely removes the things that Mr. Rizvi talks about from the wider events that shape them. At point he declares:

“I also understand that extremism in any ideology isn’t a distortion of that ideology. It is an informed, steadfast adherence to its fundamentals, hence the term “fundamentalism.”

Is it now? The term “fundamentalism” is actually very imprecise and can refer to multiple things in this case. It was coined with respect to a specific movement among certain protestant Christians in the United States in the late 19^th century who sought to reinforce what they saw as the “fundamentals” of their faith against certain modern innovations. The term was subsequently applied to Islam following the Iran Hostage crisis as the media used Christian fundamentalism as an analogy.

Yet far from informed, steadfast devotion to a religion’s fundamentals, Christian fundamentalism let to the development of biblical literalism, which ran contrary to much of the traditional Christian interpretations of the Bible up that point. And that’s not getting into the out-of-context misinterpretations of the text that are rife among fundamentalists in order to justify their bigotry.

Similarly, when Mr. Rizvi speaks of fundamentalism in Islam, he speaks of it in terms of terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, and examples of religious persecution in the Muslim world. In the case of Hamza Kashgari, the man is facing possible execution in Saudi Arabia for two tweets that are considered blasphemous. Yet it must be remembered that the Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council of Saudia Arabia condemned the 9/11 attacks harshly and called them contrary to Islam. He of course is a religious scholar, while in contrast other so-called “Islamic Fundamentalists” like Osama bin Laden have shown a questionable knowledge of the Q’uran, often misunderstanding the text and selecting quotes well out of context to justify violence such as the 9/11 attacks. This difference is reinforced by a studies conducted by British intelligence and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service which found that those who commit terrorism while professing allegiance to radical forms of Islam are often not very knowledgeable about their religion nor do they practice it regularly.

Not that this changes the facts regarding Saudi Arabia and that country’s particular brand of “fundamentalism,” but again the term proves to be a problem. Saudi Arabia’s laws are shaped by the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence. It is one of four schools of Islamic law within Sunni Islam, being the most conservative and hardline of the four, and seems only to predominate in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and traces the history of its establishment back to the 8th and 9th centuries of the Common Era. If Saudi Arabia represents “fundmentalism” the division of Islam into distinct schools of jurisprudence begs the question: fundamental to what?

By mistakenly conflating these things within the simplistic label of “fundamentalism”, Rizvi ends up claiming that Glenn Greenwald has, “joined a chorus of denialists convinced that jihad and religious fervor had nothing to do with the Tsarnaev brothers’ motive, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary.” However, reading Mr. Greenwald’s thoughts on the matter and the source the source for this claim:

The 19-year-old suspect [Dzhokhar Tsarnaev] in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials familiar with the interviews.

This is given along with a litany of examples of other figures who cited policies like the invasion of Iraq as the reason for them turning to terror. Even a pro-American figure explained that Al Qaeda’s membership has swelled in Yemen due to drone strikes there terrorizing the population and making them believe that they are at war with America. Greenwald’s piece isn’t so much about saying religion is no factor, as pointing out that the exclusive focus on Islam as somehow inherently leading to terrorism is in fact wrong, dangerous and delusional. And it only produces more terrorists.

1Then again based on Mondoweiss’ profile on Harris written by a former Salafi turns atheist, it’s obvious that the man’s views on Islam are quite distorted and he is a bigot.

2 Rizvi tries to change the contours of this by pointing out all of these men have been critical of all religions. Though to be blunt those criticisms quite often descend into bigotry and caricature as well.

Sooooo, back in 2010 the Government of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper axed the mandatory long form census - a source for vital statistics across the country - to the opposition of political parties, professional statisticians, business groups, thank tanks, and just about everyone but a handful of advocacy groups - namely the National Citizens’ Coalition, the Fraser Institute, and the Canadian Taxpayer’s federation.  Instead it was replaced with the National Household Survey, an entirely voluntary census survey.  What are the results?

Weeeelllll…

The agency is cautioning its voluntary National Household Survey, released Wednesday, contains significant gaps in data for a number of geographic areas and groups, including aboriginals, languages, immigrants and visible minorities.

Low response rates and resulting unreliable information in many areas means data were not reported for approximately 25 per cent of Statistics Canada’s 4,567 census subdivisions, or municipalities.

And this just isn’t a caution, but an outright disclaimer being put on the NHS results.  The first link I posted points out that because of the problems with how the survey was conducted, some of the data, usually for smaller population centres, has not been published.  It has been included in the national results however, which means that overall data is still skewed.

When the Conservatives announced this move in 2010, it led to the resignation of Statistics Canada’s chief statistician, Munir A. Sheikh.  He’s weighed in with his own assessment as the problems with the National Household Survey: 

 ”Another problem is data comparability over time. Given the magnitude of change from the 2006 census, it is not clear whether the NHS data reflect a real change in outcomes or simply a statistical artifact due to the change in methodology. For current and future researchers, the gap in 2011 census information will be a major headache.”

Yup.  As pointed out in the original link much of the problem with underreporting is in rural municipalities, with Saskatchewan having the lowest reporting rate of 57.4 per cent.  Saskatchewan by the way is much more rural in its character than many other Canadian provinces

On the other hand Philip Cross of the Financial post opines:

One of the criticisms of the NHS is that the data for Tinytown, Manitoba will be poor. Presumably, this is not a problem for the people who run Tinytown, who only have to drive down the main street to see what the problems are as well as emerging new trends.

At this point I’m inclined to wonder what reality Mr. Crosse is living in.  As the first article I posted points out, communities are actually worried about this because the household survey data collected in the census is used for planning, “public programs and projects, such as transit routes, hospitals, schools and social services.“  Tinytown, Manitoba, as he condescendingly paints rural communities in Canada, may not get money it needs for schooling and roads if the NHS data isn’t as useful as past census data.  Of course Cross used to work at Statistics Canada, and acknowledging this problem he says:

“Let’s assume the critics are right, and the NHS data is worthless. Then what? Should we just abandon informed decision-making and start sliding back to the stone age? “

What?  Again on what planet is he living?  His argument then goes on to cite economic data is often obsolete by the time is released.  While me makes a valid point there, his arguments regarding population data and municipalities basically boil down to declaring that the municipalities should collect their own data.  With Canadian municipalities declaring that they are facing an infrastructure shortfall of several billion dollars there is no other way to describe Mr. Cross’ views other than shockingly stupid and short sighted.

Moreso, because with inaccurate data on rural communities in Canada means that that the core base of Conservative voting, particularly in Saskatchewan will likely suffer the most from errors in this data.  As Michael Den Tandt of the Calgary Herald points out, “For a party that plants its flag on sound economic management, this was always an irrational reform.”

“One is the lonliest number that you’ll ever do,” sang Harry Nilsson on “One” who seemed to have been talking about himsef given the story of his life. However, the lyrics could have just as easily been applied to the musical been singing about the musical career of Al Kooper who also covered “One.” Kooper’s career was an unusual one that often brushed with success but failed to become household name alongside the Beatles, Hendrix, Dylan, and Marvin Gaye. It first came in 1964 with the pop hit “This Diamond Ring” for Gary Lewis & the Playboys, though Kooper had meant it as a R&B song for the Drifters and wasn’t happy with the arrangements that hit the Chart. He played organ on Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”, which landed him a spot with influential psych band the Blues Project, though he left it amid creative differences. Kooper then founded Blood Sweat & Tears only for the band to fail to get any attention. Kooper got the boot and Blood, Sweat, and Tears became successful by tweaking his formula. He signed the Zombies to Columbia records just as they were about to cut Odyssey and Oracle and it’s hit single, “Time of the Season.” Then in 1968, he cut two top selling LPs Super Session and The Live Adventures of Kooper and Bloomfeld, which were soon followed by his solo debut, I Stand Alone. It failed to make any commercial impact.

A shame really. As far as electic sixties rock LPs go, I Stand Alone fits into the musical zeitgeist of the late 60s which gave us the Beatles’ White Album, the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed,andDylan’s Blonde on Blonde (which Kooper also played on). Across twelve tracks Kooper tries his hand at psychedelia, baroque pop, R&B, and even country-western. It’s ambitious project, so much that the least ambitious cut is his cover of Nilsson’s “One” where Kooper merely augments’ the original’s spar instrumentation with a fuller string section and backing vocals. Yet even with this modest approach, and the fact that it draws more “Eleanor Rigby” comparisons, it works. Kooper sings with a sensitivity that better invokes the feeling of Nilsson’s original than the bombastic version by Three Dog night. More than anything it shows his skills as an arranger what works for a song.

This certainly aids him throughout the album. “One” is sandwhich in between “Camille”, an exuberant pyschedelic pop rave-up that he co-wrote, and a cover of Traffic’s “Coloured Rain” that goes further off the deepend. Between the gospel style backings and horn sections of “Camille” and “Coloured Rain’s” echoed vocal tracks and hallucinogenic organ solo, one acts as an effective breather in the running order. It also fits effortless between the two as “Camille” fades out to a heartbeat that opens up “One”, which itself fades out to sampled storm sounds, that break as “Coloured Rain” starts up like a sun breaking through the clouds. Weirdly, it somehow works that he covers bluegrass standard “Blue Moon of Kentucky” - complete with banjo and acoustic guitar played at rapid fire pace against a rockabilly track – his piano and use of flange echo on his voice (a 50s rockabilly staple) against all the pysch pop and R&B numbers.

In some ways Kooper has better pop instincts than some of his peers of the era. While John Lennon jumped into the use of sound collages with “Revolution 9” Kooper uses it punctuate the songs and add a bit of light humour. The opening number “Overture” starts out with snippets of dialogue before a recording of a symphony cuts in and then weird warbling noises before a proper string section shows up following a melody before being punctuated by congos and quoting various melodies, including “One”. It’s both a tongue-in-cheek nod to pysch bands of the era adopting tape collages, and at the same time it’s far more successful than “Revolution 9” in the context of a pop record by providing an enjoyable, ear-catching musical experience.¹

Another unifying element of the album is Kooper’s deep love of R&B. His familiarity with the song form, keyboards, and horn charts help to connect together the disparate elements of the album. The title track, which follows “Overture”, borders on Baroque pop territory with its lush arrangements and piano melodies, but the horn charts and gospel-style female backing vocals constantly pull it over to soul music territory. “I Stand Alone” quickly follows, pushing closer to R&B territory in its groove and feel while its torch song elements make it play nicely agianst the baroque pop leanings on other parts of the albums. Maintaining this kind of subtle cohesion is a remarkably difficult feat. Hence when he gets the deepest into his first love, R&B, Kooper’s takes “Toe Hold” and “Hey, Western Union Man” slide naturally into place. Yet while the instrumentation on these is impeccable these cuts that reveal Kooper’s biggest limitation: a thin reedy voice that strains when attempting R&B numbers. Sometimes the material can threaten to overwhelm that voice as on “Toehold”, though it’s also strangely endearing in that it gives his professions of love on that song an awkward, earnest quality, like the next door boy trying to proclaim his love through song no matter. Of course being a white rocker in the 1960s, attempting R&B and blues with a an all-too thin voice was practically de rigeur, and Dylan got much further in practically honking and weezing out his lyrics.

It’s also striking that songs like “Toehold” are more common on this record. While Kooper might have elected to cover Nilsson’s “One”, he ends up writing and singing a song on this album with almost the exact opposite and approach and sentiment. “I stand alone/Can’t nobody make me change my mind about my love,” he sings on the title track. Later he elaborates, “I tried so very hard to win her love for me/Can’t nobody take me where I don’t wanna be.” Whereas’ Nilsson suffered loneliness when it comes to love, Kooper is instead determined to pursue his love and stand alone confidently rather than allow the world to drag him down. It’s an affirming statement, and he could just have easily been talking about his musical career too. He pursued several other excellent albums throughout the 1970s with a similar musical orientation as I Stand Alone, again to little success or attention. However, judging by the results on this album, we all the richer for him doing so.

{I Stand Alone is currently out-of-print along with most of Kooper’s solo catalogue, so you’ll have to do some hunting, or pay for expensive Japanese imports. He does have an album out called White Chocolate which is supposed to be good and you can find out more about him at: http://www.alkooper.com/ }

1To anyone who immediately wants to cry “philistine!” bear in mind that John Cage and Iannis Xenakis are among my favourite composers. I simply think that Lennon’s bit of misplaced diletantism sucks.

donnys-boy:

All writers are self-absorbed, and all writers endlessly tell stories about our own lives.

Good writers tell stories that our readers believe are actually about their own lives.

Well I am reminded of two things:

In high school, though I was a callow young thing then, I genuinely believed that The Stone Angel was based on the life of its author, Margret Laurence.  Though I was quite naive then, we watched a documentary on her in class where Laurence said that quite often she gets people believing her work is autobiographical, even though she said it’s not.

Similarly, I totally believed that Naked Lunch was somehow based William S. Burroughs’ experiences with drugs and the gutter.  However, I had seen the Cronenberg film before and the first edition of the book I got had ‘the Atrophied Preface’ at the beginning.  Turns out it was but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Two of my favourite writers, J.G. Ballard and William S. Burroughs, are self-absorbed, while at the same time looking outwards:

Ballard is essentially a surrealist writer who has used genre fiction as a vehicle for his ideas, starting with SF at the beginning of his career, moving into outright unclassifiable stuff and then into crime fiction in the twilight of his career, all attempting to diagnosis the psychosis of modern man or something like that.

Among other things Ballard is actually quite a visual writer.  His novels are suffuse with descriptions of the land scape and buildings, usually written with a clinical eye (he had training as a doctor) and a strong attention to geometry.  He can make the everyday sound alien (which he used for great effect in Crash).  Ballard wrote his autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun when his themes and style as a writer were already well established.  So it’s not clear if he’s merely looking back on his experiences in Shanghai after it was invaded by the Japanese and his subsequent internment in a prison camp through the lense of his own work.  One also gets the distinct sense that this is where he developed this perspective, and Ballard himself certainly feels he did.  So his experience in seeing parts of Shanghai abandoned, the cheapness of life in that time, and the experiences in the prison camp all feed into his work whether it’s the eco-disaster of The Drowned World, the bizarre techno-death sexuality of Crash, or the social criticism of his late crime fiction like Super Cannes.

I should note that Ballard shares a similar perspective on his own writing as fellow English authors Brian Aldiss and Michael Moorcock (another favourite of mine).  Both had formative experiences in London during and after the Blitz, Moorcock in particular discussing how the sudden disappearance of buildings due to the bombings and reconstruction played with his sense of geography.

I didn’t realise how much Naked Lunch was based on Burrough’s life until I read Junky.  I knew that the novel was based on his experiences with heroin addiction and his subsequent clean-up.  I also knew that the endless descriptions of lurid sex were, at least in part, him being honest about his own obsessions. (The other part was taking a look at how people are slaves to their own addictions, which having been a junkie, I’m sure he could appreciate.)  Still it wasn’t until I read the book that I realized how much of the imagery and characters he used were based on his own personal experiences.  The bizarre creatures known as Mugwumps literally come of out of his description of experiences he had with Chinese dealers who seemed to live on sweets.  Even Burroughs’ subsequent writings wouldn’t have existed without these formative experiences.

So yeah, I can see what you’re getting at.  Particularly with the self-obsession part, but then all creative types need to have a certain amount of self-absorption to drive them.  Also since I’m done school and chomped through two music biographies I’m now taking the time to read some prose fiction.  This probably jumped out at me because I grabbed the massive The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard off of my shelf to peruse.

I just found out that George Jones died today.

For those of us whose understanding of country music is shaped by the 1950s, George Jones was one of the greats.  The man’s early style was hardcore Honky Tonk in the vein of the great Hank Williams, as evidenced by songs like “Just One More” (which is uncomfortably close to the man’s real-life struggles with alcoholism) and “Why Baby Why”, the latter of which reached #4 on the country charts in 1955.  Oddly enough his first number one was a countrified version of a Big Booper song called “White Lightning”, a paean to home made moonshine.

He continued to have lesser hits across the country charts until 1961 when he made a shocking move to “the Nashville Sound” a.k.a. Countrypolitan:

Adopting a smoother singing style, with arrangements bolstered by string sections, Jones repositioned himself as a ballad singer alongside other Nashviller crooners like Johnny Horton and Jim Reeves.  Strikingly his number 5 single of that year, “Achin’ Breakin’ Heart” which featured his crooning style of singing, but was backed by a Honky Tonk, rather than countrypolitan arrangement.  Indeed, his ability to score a number one hits with “She Thinks I Still Care” (1962) and “Walk Through This World With Me” (1967) that featured stripped-down arrangements more akin to the Bakerfield style of the 1960s and more Countrypolitan flavoured numbers like “The Grand Tour” (1974) spoke well to Jones’ versatility.  In his latter career, he made a full on return to Honky Tonk.

Jones of course is also famous for his marriage to Tammy Wynette, with whom he duetted with on various songs including the following…

Frankly, there’s a bit of eeriness to these lyrics.  While reading up on Jones I discovered he was also notorious for his addictions, particularly to alcohol and cocaine, which left him penniless by the end of the 1970s and caused his relationship to Wynette to dissolve in 1975.  At one point he had earned the nick-name “No Show Jones.”

Given what I’ve heard about the extent of excesses, (even in 1959, his bassist on “White Lightning”, Buddy Killen threatened physical harm due to Jones’ drinking) it’s probably all the more remarkable that he lived to be 1981 without being taken early by some of the lingering problems that hit recovered addicts.  Perhaps even moreso that he kept touring until the end of his life, even after a near fatal car wreck. 

A life well-lived indeed.

Good god.  It’s only 9:17 am and I’m ready for bed…

SO.  OLD.

Ooooooo!  Angsty Twinkie Pie fic where Twilight being an Alicorn leads to break-ups titled, “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)”…

…wait, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” WOULD be more angsty.  ARGH.

Drunk and listening to Dylan.

I wonder if there should be an angst-ridden fic where Rarity thinks she finds true love but her paramour just wants her for her Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat.

Iz done exams…

*WHUMP!*

askhighbrowmaggie:

iamkickingtelevision replied to your post: HS Liveblog #20

Why? Why you do this to yourself? :(

Because in order to hate something properly you have to know what you’re talking about.

…

GO FORTH!  PILE YOUR HATE ON THIS OBSCENE IDOL!

Would like to congratulate Eric Clapton on graduating from making glossy, souless dad-rock that’s utterly insufferable to making inoffensive, rootsy dad rock that’s boring and merely tolerable.  For all those who followed his career this is surely a monumental achievement.

askhighbrowmaggie:

xbluemetgreen:

somanythingsunknown:

There is no official High School Musical fandom, we are all the High School Musical fandom.

we’re all in this together

Well I’m fucking not.

They were appalling sugar-steeped kittenshits made entirely of peppy people, Autotune and the death-knells of our so-called civilisation. Between this festival of Epsilonnery and My Super Sweet Sixteen, I feel like dropping to my knees and praying for a nuclear apocalypse.

THIS!  THIS IS THE APEX OF MUSIC SNOBBERY!  WE WILL NEVER TOP SUCH AN AWESOME PUT-DOWN!

• A compliment 
  
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