A clear case of misguided hyperbole. Come on — as much as I respect the good Dr. he ain’t in Pops’ league — nobody is!
Dr. John will help close out the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell on Sunday with a tribute to a New Orleans legend just as renowned as he is: Louis Armstrong.
This in The Philosophers’ Magazine
The unmistakeable early master of the power chord born on this date. This year also marks 10 years since he died.
See the sheer delight and appreciation that Jimmy Page displays:
Happy people were worse off in their happiness in museums than anywhere else, he had noticed sometime ago. In here the air was thick as mustard gas with ravenous particles which were stealing the substance from painting and viewer alike. Though the light was technically good, illuminating the paintings in an unexceptionable manner, it nevertheless gave the effect of descending in a dismal twilight from a vast upper region which roared like a conch shell. Here in the roaring twilight the engineer stationed himself and watched people watch the paintings. Sometime ago he had discovered that it is impossible to look at a painting simply so: man-looking-at-a-painting, voilà!—no, it is necessary to play a trick such as watching a man who is watching, standing on his shoulders, so to speak. There are several ways of getting around the ravenous particles.
. . .
Yet the young man, who was scientifically minded, held himself sufficiently detached to observe the behavior of other visitors. From his vantage point behind the pillar he noticed that the people who came in were both happy and afflicted. They were afflicted in their happiness. They were serene, but their serenity was a perilous thing to see. In they came, smiling, and out they went, their eyes glazed over. The paintings smoked and shriveled in their frames.
New York Review of Books November 2, 2000.
My point here is not to reinstate the distinction between the work and the man, which I have already said is not a helpful device in Wagner’s case. The point is just that one cannot decide in advance, either positively or negatively, what facts about the man, his views, and their history may be relevant to responding to a given work.
Compare the quality of the writing and subtlety and depth of analysis here to the new breed of smug, shrill and self-righteous wannabe public intellectual hack whose stance is merely functional to professional aggrandizement, the innumerable outlets complicitous in their relentless quest for content and click-bait and most importantly knowing how easy it is to tap the vanity of the self-branded “intellectual”. On this, Richard Posner’s Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline might be worth taking a look at. Part of the blurb:
. . . commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene—one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals—compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse.
Any new book by Andy Clark is, so far as I’m concerned, a notable event. Clark speaks to a general audience without ever being condescending or very jargony and he has a superb turn of phrase. Here is a curtain raiser, a talk on the topic.
The wonderful Gilbert Ryle in discussion with James Urmson from 1972 (in 5 parts). Also see Jerry Cohen’s take-off of Ryle in the final video:
I’m a chili-head and have so been for a good 50 years. By chili I usually mean bottled sauces as well any hot cuisine typically Indian, Indonesian, Thai, Mexican and so on – bring it on.
Regarding the bottled sauces, I’m often asked which I rate as the best. Having tried literally dozens over the years my day-to-day chili sauce is Endorphin Rush (Scoville 33,390). Endorphin Rush, surprisingly hailing from Chicago, has a beautiful balance of flavorful richness and depth (not the overpoweringly brutal pepper as many are) with a nice lush viscosity, and is still up there in strength though hardly anywhere near the strongest.
Tips:
Possibly the most informative chili online resource is Scott Roberts.
Despite my (highly qualified) HEC commitments, I love reading people like Ken Aizawa (and Fred Adams) and others such as Rob Rupert who are really HEC’s best fiends. Yes, I said fiends (a nudge and a wink to Herzog’s superb documentary). These three are meticulous and fair critics, meticulous without ever resorting to point-scoring or being trivial. HEC in all its variants (to a greater or lesser degree) must be taken seriously and we are lucky to have critics such as Aizawa, Adams and Rupert as HEC’s best fiends.
I guess the name couldn’t have been more prescient — THE band! IMHO this is the greatest band of all for many reasons as nicely set out in this documentary (yet another excellent installment to the Classic album series). The three primary and inextricably linked markers of their greatness:
1. indifferent to mainstream musical fashion;
2. no egos;
3. supremely talented individuals.
As Carol Caffin puts it:
The Band were not derivative. The Band was soul music, in that it came from the soul, and spoke to the soul. They culled from music of the country. They culled from American music, but they did not take it and water it down. They took it and made it richer, and they made it their own. It was real and timeless.
And since it’s just over three years since Levon’s passing, here’s a recent memoir which seems to catch what one would imagine the man to be like. See the comment by Sandra (Levon’s widow).
manwithoutqualities 