Random Music Thoughts


Julian Copes riffs on Van Halen (from 2003)
I am still parsing this sentence-paragraph, which starts with a conjunction and ends with a preposition.

And yet here was a man who’d spent his whole career giving the impression to the public that to have been seen to have been emitting anything less than a truly transcendental shallowness at all times would have meant appearing before the Great Wazzir of the Things that Creep Guild and having his ‘License to Drywank’ revoked, a man whose determination to haze the line between womaniser and woman molester allowed almost no-one with their own IQ to even approach his band’s music without severe Inner Questioning; whose Bound & Chained Godself (photographed by Helmut Newton, no less – Ross Halfin who he!) appeared on a 3’ x 2’ poster in all copies of WOMEN & CHILDREN FIRST, and whose slavish commitment to his whole deplorably self-serving Dave TV schtick got him ejected from the group he so obviously adored playing with.

It's apparent that I need more drugs.
 
I am still parsing this sentence-paragraph, which starts with a conjunction and ends with a preposition.

And yet here was a man who’d spent his whole career giving the impression to the public that to have been seen to have been emitting anything less than a truly transcendental shallowness at all times would have meant appearing before the Great Wazzir of the Things that Creep Guild and having his ‘License to Drywank’ revoked, a man whose determination to haze the line between womaniser and woman molester allowed almost no-one with their own IQ to even approach his band’s music without severe Inner Questioning; whose Bound & Chained Godself (photographed by Helmut Newton, no less – Ross Halfin who he!) appeared on a 3’ x 2’ poster in all copies of WOMEN & CHILDREN FIRST, and whose slavish commitment to his whole deplorably self-serving Dave TV schtick got him ejected from the group he so obviously adored playing with.

It's apparent that I need more drugs.

Mr. Cope has written at least one book that was lavishly praised by historians.
 
"Excuse me, but do you know how to get to Grand Central Station?"
"No, but hum a few bars and I'll see if Google recognizes it"
 
"Excuse me, but do you know how to get to Grand Central Station?"
"No, but hum a few bars and I'll see if Google recognizes it"
Oh, goody. Now I can find that drone-y, ambient, 20-minute tune I've been looking for.
 
I know you've all been breathlessly waiting to find out what Jon "Bowser" Bauman has been doing in his spare time (i.e., old age).


Older voters are blowing the political establishment’s collective mind. If you’d gone to a Washington, DC cocktail party just before the COVID pandemic and predicted that Donald Trump would lose older voters by nearly 30 points, you’d be laughed out of the room. Yet, according to recent polling, that’s exactly what’s on track to happen.1

Since 2004, I’ve been speaking to roomfuls of older voters—many of whom remember me as “Bowzer” from Sha Na Na—as a surrogate for progressive Democratic candidates. This year, all of my events are virtual.
But even over Zoom, I’ve never seen older voters this enthusiastic about voting (and volunteering) for Democrats.
 
This is heartrending. I only saw him perform once, at D.A.R. Constitution Hall in D.C., and it was wonderful.

So many of those with whom he has played in ensembles have passed on.

Ima gunna go to bed now.
I'm glad you got to see him perform live. I bet it was a kick-ass memorable show.
 
I'm glad you got to see him perform live. I bet it was a kick-ass memorable show.
It was. I was sitting in an left center aisle seat about 20 rows back from the stage. Some clown came hustling down the aisle with a camera, crouched, and clicked a picture. Jarrett slammed a dissonant chord on the piano and stopped playing. I remember he stood up and started shouting (no mic) on him to remind us not to do that.

When you consider that he was improvising at the piano the whole time, it is understandable that he is playing off the vibe of the audience. A shutterclick or flash would disturb that. He was back at the piano in about three minutes, though.
 
Each time I listen to Ill Communication by Beastie Boys, I appreciate what a rich album it is. It’s one of the best deep funk albums out there(not surprising as they were influenced by Miles 70 albums during this time like On the Corner)

on a related note, the Beastie Boys documentary on Apple + is really good
 
For some reason, I am always struck by the way Kurt Cobain says “That was a David Bowie record” after “The Man Who Sold the World” on their Unplugged Album. I suppose he could just be giving credit where credit is due in a detached grungy slow drawl, but it always seems to have some attitude kind of like “That was a David Bowie record, which I shouldn’t have to explain to you, you pedestrian MTV Unplugged crowd”
 
Speaking of MTV Unplugged, a liitle Wiki rabbit hole reading mentions that MTV recorded over 101 Unplugged performances and yet though I’m sure i saw several, few stick in my mind (again I blame the hazy craziness of the 1990s

there are somewhere in the 20s of Unplugged albums released which would May an interesting (though suspected disappointing) listening series. For every Nirvana or Paul McCartney there were subpar releases by Dylan and Alice and Chains. Even Springsteen’s was done “plugged” after one acoustic song and featured his 90s E Street Band replacement band (meh)
 
Speaking of MTV Unplugged, a liitle Wiki rabbit hole reading mentions that MTV recorded over 101 Unplugged performances and yet though I’m sure i saw several, few stick in my mind (again I blame the hazy craziness of the 1990s

there are somewhere in the 20s of Unplugged albums released which would May an interesting (though suspected disappointing) listening series. For every Nirvana or Paul McCartney there were subpar releases by Dylan and Alice and Chains. Even Springsteen’s was done “plugged” after one acoustic song and featured his 90s E Street Band replacement band (meh)

The Alice In Chains is considered to be great by many people and it's known by audiophiles to have excellent sound quality.
 
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