Maverick Philosopher

Here is a very good review by James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler is an interesting character in his own right.

From the English-major preciosity of

Yes we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theater really dead?

to social commentary wry and dry:

Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free.
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free.

The Biograph live version. Better than the Blonde on Blonde studio version? The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face, and this song give me chills today as much as it did in 1966.

Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield. For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with such heed. . . . And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

Frank Sinatra died a little over ten years ago, on 14 May 1998. Here we read:

. . . as Sinatra began to recover from [Ava] Gardner, he became more outspoken. In 1957, he denounced rock 'n' roll as "the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear. ... It manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the Earth."

That is about as fair as my judgment, back in the '60s, of the music of Sinatra and his fellow Rat Pack crooners: "lounge lizard music." Mesmerized as I was by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Sinatra's music struck me as so much booze-drenched escapist rubbish, devoid of reality content. Empty glamor and glitz, at home in the plastic fantastic fool's paradise called Las Vegas. But a booze-and-broads music of escapism was what Sinatra and his generational cohort needed, as mine needed a music of engagement. Different generations with different needs and sensibilities.

In the meantime, I've come to appreciate Sinatra's artistry. Angel Eyes. Only the Lonely.

In our sex-obsessed decadent society pornography is everywhere. Would you expect to find pornographic images cheek-by-jowl with a technical discussion of Gottlob Frege's dialogue with the Protestant theologian Bernard Pünjer on existence? Probably not. But take a gander at this site which I stumbled upon while looking for the aforementioned dialogue on the Web.

The proprietor of the site, Willis Domingo, seems at one time to have had some association with the University of Notre Dame. Anybody know anything about him?

The juxtaposition of philosophy and pornography is nothing new, of course; one finds it in the Marquis de Sade. But Domingo's side-by-side of philosophy of logic and porn may be a first.

As for the Marquis, he seems to have picked up some themes from old Callicles, as I document here.

We are a self-absorbed generation, aren't we?

Yet another couple of sides to the improbable, protean, many-sided Bob Dylan. Mary. Rain.

They are both covers. Speaking of covers, Jan Cover of Purdue's Philosophy Department is a Dylan fan. Here is his Dylan page.

Wild Bill's Saturday Night at the Oldies presents for your listening enjoyment two rare cuts, both from 1961, that you would be lucky to hear on any oldies show. Both were successful on both the Pop and Country charts. Bobby Edwards, You're the Reason. Don Gibson, Sea of a Heartbreak.

One more time.

An offbeat but satisfying rendition of the old Jim Reeves tune.

I never got around to Georg Simmel's Philosophie des Geldes. But I am familiar with Barrett Strong's views on money.

I suggest we distinguish calendrical and cultural decades. Calendrically, the decade of the 1960s began on January 1, 1961 (not January 1, 1960!), and ended on December 31, 1970. Culturally, I suggest it began on November 22, 1963, the day of the assasination of John F. Kennedy and ended on April 30, 1975, the day the last American troops left Viet Nam.

Aldous Huxley also died on November 22, 1963. Although one could not say he was "born posthumously" in the Nietzschean sense, one perhaps could say that he became more culturally vigorous in death than in life. I am thinking of his experiments with psychedelics and his outstanding anthology, The Perennial Philosophy both of which had plenty of '60s resonance. His Doors of Perception inspired the Los Angeles band, The Door's name. Give a listen to Break on Through, something of a '60s anthem, sexually, politically, and 'drug-mystically.'

Curiously, C. S. Lewis was another literary luminary who died on November 22, 1963.

The Byrd's "He Was a Friend of Mine" gives some indication of JFK's influence on the youth of my generation. This version is from the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

The best portrayal for my money. My favorite scene: the confrontation with Marley's ghost. "You are bit of undigested beef, a piece of underdone potato. There is more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are." The rattling of Marley's chains puts an end to Ebeneezer's doxastic voluntarism.

Don't expect any more 'eye candy' on this site, but now that I have your attention I want to make a serious point.

The well-endowed lass a picture of whom you see to the left has a name as beautiful as her body, Mayra Veronica. She was a guest on the O'Reilly Factor last night. She supports the troops in Iraq by going there and meeting with them, hugging and kissing them (that's what she said!), signing photographs and posters, and distributing calendars. The 'pin-up girl' is of course nothing new — our fathers and grandfathers gawked at Grable — but one has to ask how much we have to teach the Iraqis. Islamic culture is in many ways benighted and backward, but it is not clear that our trash culture is much of an improvement. If they think that our decadent culture is what democracy is all about, and something we are trying to impose on them, then we are in trouble.

. . . Jeff Hodges of Seoul, Korea. John Prine, Souvenirs. Looks like Wild Bill's Oldies Show is now in the business of taking requests.

I have been listening to Dylan's music since the early 'sixties, but I believe today is the first time I've heard this one. Seems modelled on the old folk song, 500 Miles. An excellent production job, this clip features photos I have never seen before. There are about ten shots of Dylan's quondam lover, Suze Rotolo. They occur right before the last two shots which depict Dylan with Joan Baez.

Here is an amateur but very good version of this lovely old tune played on a Fender Stratocaster. Our man shows off his chops before getting down to work.

They work well together. Here is Mose in fine form without Van.

This strange Peggy Lee number is a candidate for the office of philosophically deepest popular song. If memory serves, it made the charts Stateside in the late 1960's. But it is the sort of song one would have expected to hear in a cabaret in Berlin in the decadent 1920's. 'Ockham' tells me that it is a Leiber and Stoller composition, and indeed it is. Surprising, given the other songs they wrote. It smacks of Weill-Brecht more than of Leiber-Stoller.

Eric Clapton live.

Enjoy. Lenya bio.

We are here for orison, not Orbison. But can a little of the big 'O' of a Saturday night hurt? I don't want to lose my focus, but I don't want to lose my fringe either. See what David Lynch does with the same song.

And here is arguably the best R & R song of them all, combining as it does the Dionysian and the tender. This live version features a couple of dueling Telecasters, one manned by Bruce Springsteen, the other by the legendary sideman, James Burton. He is the one responsible for those great riffs and fills on the early Ricky Nelson records.

Look closely, that's Tom Waits tickling the ivories.

It's not always the devil's music. A great live version with the best in the business.

A jazz version featuring Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis

A rock version featuring Paul McCartney

Red House.

How are 'hook up' and cognates used today by people under the age of thirty? If X hooks up with Y, does it follow that X has sexual intercourse with Y? As I use 'hook up' there is no such implication. 'I hooked up with my old friend Tina the other day' does not mean that I had sex with her or even that anything of an amorous nature transpired between us. It means that I made some sort of verbal contact with her via phone or e-mail or whatever.

The times they are a-changin.' And not necessarily for the better.

Here is Alanis Morisette's wonderful rendition of Bob Dylan's great civil rights anthem. Uploaded by our very own williamofocham. This version by PP & M is no slouch either.

That is a line from Charles R. Jackson's 1944 novel, The Lost Weekend. A few years ago I decided to read the main American 'booze novels' ending with the grandpappy of them all, Jack London's John Barleycorn, some notes on which are here. On the list was Jackson's The Lost Weekend. A movie based on Jackson's book starring Ray Milland came to the silver screen in 1945. Here are some scenes from the movie.

As the purple haze of the '60s lifted, leaving the wreckage of Jimi, Jim, Janis, and countless others behind, my musical interests turned to jazz and classical. But some rockers made it into my brain. I rather like the following Warren Zevon numbers: Werewolves of London; Mohammed's Radio; Carmelita.

. . . for it is the best in the land. I'll put a nickel in the jukebox, and play The Truck Drivin' Man. Long before the Riders of the Purple Sage, long before Leon Russell, the original version by Terry Fell.

. . . but a black cat just crossed my path.

I saw the movie Harry and Tonto (1974) a while back. Starring Art Carney as Harry, it is the story of an elderly man who travels across the USA with his cat Tonto. Tonto’s aversion to riding in buses prompts Harry to buy a clunker in which they continue their journey. Various adventures ensue until they arrive at land’s end in Venice, California. There Tonto dies and Harry begins a new life.

It is a movie of real humanity unlike so much of the robotic crap cranked out by Hollywood. No race and chase, no explosions, no gratuitous sex and violence, no special effects.

Whenever I hear a movie praised for its special effects, I suspect the praiser to be a lunkhead capable of being roused from his stupor only by rude assaults upon his senses. What were the special effects in Fellini’s classic La Strada (1954), or in that other cinematic immortal, Zorba the Greek (1964) based on the great Kazantzakis novel of the same name? How about a story? How about some human meaning? How about some decent dialogue?

In a great old TZ episode. I, II, III.

Thus spoke Hendrix. Well, try on this version of Pipeline for size. Here is the original version, rather less energetically presented on, believe it or not, the Lawrence Welk show. Amazing the sound the sound they get from their electric guitars without even plugging them in.

Well, I don't want to brag, but I'm gonna ring your neck
When all else fails I'll make it a matter of self respect
Someday baby, you ain't gonna worry po' me any more.

A clip of Thelonious Monk tickling the ivories in his inimitable way from April, 1966.

I always thought she was black, judging from her voice on her two hits, Hurt (1961) and What's the Matter Baby? (1962), the latter a rousing Phil Spector production. But I just now learned that she's white, of Mediterranean origin. What a voice!

Got. Not.

By day I make the cars
By night I make the bars.

Yes and yes.

It's an old story. You love her, but she doesn't love you. Tonight was your last date. Back at the shack, you pour yourself a stiff one and throw this old Floyd Cramer tune from 1960 on the box.

From hunks of bronze to a hunka hunka burnin' love. Can we let the 30th anniversary of the death of 'The King' pass unnoticed? It must have the been the late 'fifties. I mentioned him to my Italian mother. "That jackass!" was her contemptuous response.

But she listened to histrionic Italian crooners like Mario Lanza. And didn't Elvis do as much as anyone to popularize old Italian melodies? Compare Surrender to Torna a Sorrento, and It's Now or Never to O Sole Mio (check out the cutie in this one!). Here is a more traditional rendering by three well-known tenors.

Truth is, love makes a jackass of every man jack of us.

David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina, 2001, p. 147:

Dylan nestled his guitar on his lap and began strumming a C chord in three-quarter time. He repeated it until the small room hushed, then he slid into the opening of "With God on Our Side." By the end of the song's nine verses, Joan Baez was no longer indifferent to Bob Dylan or irked by his crush on her sister Mimi. She was startled by the music she heard and fascinated with the fact that the enigma in the filthy jeans had created it. "When I heard him sing 'With God on Our Side,' I took him seriously," said Joan. "I was bowled over. I never thought anything so powerful could come out of that little toad. It was devastating. 'With God on Our Side' is a very mature song. It's a beautiful song. When I hear that, it changed the way I thought of Bob. I realize that he was more mature than I thought. He even looked a little better." Social consciousness as an aphrodisiac? [. . .]

Dylan played a few more of his topical songs, including "The Death of Emmett Till," "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," and "Masters of War." They astounded Spoelstra, who had not kept up with his old Village cohort's development as a songwriter, and they seemed to overwhelm Baez. (In one interview, Baez recalled "The Death of Emmett Till," not "With God on Our Side," as the Dylan song that changed her view of him and prompted her to take up protest music; "I was basically a traditional folksinger," she said. "I was not 'political' at that time. When I heard 'Emmett Till' I was knocked out. It was my first political song. That song turned me into a political folsksinger."

A haunting Dylan tune sung by PPM.

Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Marian
Send them all my salary
From the waters of oblivion.

Peter, Paul, and Mary sing the Gordon Lightfoot song. From 1965.