Released on this day in 1969.
Hot Rats’ genius lies in the way it fuses the compositional sophistication of jazz with rock’s down-and-dirty attitude — AllMusic.
Hot Rats
Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (22)
A reputation for cleverness was very useful. For one thing, many came to seek his counsel, bringing him the latest news, while he gave them the most helpful advice, confirmed by experience accumulated ever since the Middle Ages. At times he happened to gain, along with the news, the possibility of selling some merchandise. Finally – and here he started shouting because he felt he had at last hit upon the argument that should convince me – to sell or to buy profitably, everyone seeks out the most clever man. From the fool they could hope for nothing, except perhaps to persuade him to sacrifice his own interest, but his goods always cost more than the clever man’s, because he has already been swindled at the moment of purchase.
A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (22)
Mr. I. Abelman, Mongoloid, Esq.,
We have received via post your absurd comments about our trousers, the comments revealing, as they did, your total lack of contact with reality. Were you more aware, you would know or realize by now that the offending trousers were dispatched to you with our full knowledge that they were inadequate so far as length was concerned.
“Why? Why?” you are in your incomprehensible babble, unable to assimilate stimulating concepts of commerce into your retarded and blighted worldview.
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COSMOS+TAXIS: Next Issue
Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (21)
When I admire someone, I try at once to resemble him. So I also imitated Malfenti. I wanted to be very clever, and I felt that I was. Indeed, I once dreamed I was smarter than he. I thought I had discovered a flaw in his business organization: I decided to tell him immediately in order to win his esteem. One day at the Tergesteo table I stopped him when, in a business argument, he was calling his interlocutor a jackass. I told him I thought it a mistake for him to proclaim his cleverness far and wide. In my view the truly clever man in business matters should take care to appear foolish.
The Future Isn’t What it Used to Be
The marketing catchphrase used by RCA forty years ago, “Often Copied, Never Equalled” has much truth to it. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) marked the culmination and close of the most sustained attempt to inject high artistry and radical individualism into popular music, while still maintaining the dirtiest of 70s funk riffs. Robert Fripp’s guitar work is stellar. In lesser hands, electronic music became the ubiquitous derivative and effete pap that has come to dominate. Here is a decent enough article on SMSC.
Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism
A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (21)
So we see that even when Fortuna spins us downward, the wheel sometimes halts for a moment and we find ourselves in a good, small cycle within the larger bad cycle. The universe, of course, is based upon the principle of the circle within the circle. At the moment, I am in an inner circle. Of course, smaller circles within this circle are also possible.
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Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (20)
The few ideas that stirred in his immense head would then be expounded with such clarity, examined so thoroughly, and applied to so many new situations every day, that they became part of him, of his limbs, his character. I was quite lacking in such ideas, and I hung on to him, to enrich myself.
He soon became aware of my admiration and repaid it with a friendship that immediately struck me as paternal. Can he have known at once how things were to end?
He was more than willing to instruct me, and in my notebook he actually wrote in his own hand the three commandments he considered sufficient to make any firm prosper:
1. There’s no need for a man to know how to work, but if he doesn’t know how to make others work, he is doomed. 2. There is only one great regret: not having acted in one’s own best interest. 3. In business, theory is useful, but it can be utilized only after the deal has been made.
I know these and many other axioms by heart, but they were of no help to me.
Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (19)
My deeply felt desire for novelty was satisfied by Giovanni Malfenti, so different from me and from all the people whose company and friendship I had sought in the past. Having gone though two university departments, I was fairly cultivated, thanks also to my long inertia, which I consider highly educational. He, on the contrary, was a great businessman, ignorant and active. But from his ignorance he drew strength and peace of mind, and I, spellbound, would observe him and envy him.
manwithoutqualities 