As usual AllMusic gets it. The deeply funky grooves are down to Chaz Jankel, quite possibly the UK’s greatest funkmeister. The Sly influence is palpable and as a consequence this is solid party music to ring in the new year.
There is humor in this music in bushels. But all of that humor points to the heart of a cultural malaise, and at what crap it is to be lonely and brokenhearted and broke in an age of abundance while questioning what that abundance is.
I highly recommend Penrose’s classic The Emperor’s New Mind and the follow-up Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. I had the pleasure of meeting Penrose via an Imperial-based collaborator/chum of mine at an Imperial College lecture soon after the release of TENM. It’s quite extraordinary that Rogan as the proverbial geezer on the Clapham Omnibus so easily engages someone of such distinction. With almost 800,000 views in two days this is clearly irking the IYI clerisy when guests of the calibre of Eric Weinstein and Penrose appear on Rogan and Rubin.
Born on this day — the radical individualist that was FZ. Look out for the forthcoming Who the Fuck is Frank Zappa? movie and also The Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa hologram tour. Also well-worth a read is Barry Miles’ excellent biography reviewed by the redoubtable Camille Paglia in the NYT.
Born on this day. Toole’s life and times is brilliantly set out in this bio on which a forthcoming bio-pic is being based. I also have an edited volume in the works dealing with several aspects of the novel and that should be published next summer or autumn.
Born on this day: here are his SEP and IEP entries. Oddly enough neither lists Noël O’Sullivan’s nice little book, an overview by Max Teichmann here.
“Catholic freethinker” was the playful label Bertrand Russell affixed to George Santayana, and a back-handed tribute to the readiness of the Spanish-American to examine, respectfully, many other systems of thought – Eastern as well as Western – systems quite different from his own Catholic position. And an equal readiness to examine Catholic doctrine itself, its philosophy, its history and his own religious point of view.
The very excellent Josh Rust won the publisher’s prize for his chapter.
