Thursday, April 25, 2024
I think about Richard Nixon quite a bit. We are living in a landscape that was shaped by the culture wars that he created, and those wars came out of a weird, twisted sense of inferiority, even though he was probably the last Republican President who could legitimately claim to be an intellegent man.
This piece gets it, I think.
Remember the Silent Majority? You probably do: they haven’t shut up since. Gore Vidal was the first to note that Nixon’s coinage had been Homer’s term for the dead. Truculent was the word for them. Nixon diehards often seemed moved to support him out of pure spite, relishing how he stuck in liberal America’s craw. They didn’t really act as if they liked him any better than we did; they just enjoyed the perversity of rooting for him anyway, because they knew that liberal America scorned them as much as it scorned him.
Thursday, February 29, 2024
I had a fine day today, and I am wanting to remember it. A few weeks back my collegues in the Buffalo State Political Science Department asked if I would paricipate on a panel on Presidential Eligabiltiy under the Insuraection Clause of the 14th Amendement. Just to be asked is why I love my department. I argued that the Supreme Court should overturn the Colorado descision, and I did it as an example of how advocacy work in theis setting. "Look," I said, "Effective advocacy with these judges means giving them intellectual cover for how the are going to rule." John Henry Schlegel, I owe it all to you. Then a affirming conversaton with my department chair, followed by dinner with my Buffalo State Mock Trial students, a charming group. Noe to pack, and get real.
Friday, February 23, 2024
Miles Davis pretty much invented jazz fusion and for my money took it about as far as it could go. I've never found, e.g. Weather Report very engaging, but
this set is pretty good.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Monday, February 19, 2024
This piece is what got me back on the Dylan train. Fittingly I was on a train when I read it- back then I was traveling several times a month from Buffalo to New York. In those pre-Jet Blue days I tried to pack as much work into a NYC week as I could, and I usually took Amtrack because the flights were prohibatively expensive. I'd load up on magazines and newspapers for the trip. The New York Observer was a good value- dense, literate and topical. Ron Rosenbaum's Edgy Enthusiast column was a special treat.
I've said before that the Dylan Bootleg Series are some of my favorite Bob recordings, because they offer a sort of alternate universe Bob Dylan, one in which the songs aren't worn smooth by familiarity, and still have the ability to startle and astonish that the old stuff has somewhat lost. Thanks to this essay I went out and bought Bootleg Vol. 1-3 and fell back in love with Dylan's music.
UPDATE: My timeline is wrong. The article I am thinking of was earlier.
Here's more Ron on Bob
Sunday, February 11, 2024
Monday, February 05, 2024
To the Diego Rivera Quintet yesterday at the AKG Art of Jazz. I love a
saxophone/trumpet quintet, and this was a terrific example of what makes
this particular combination of instruments so pleasing to me. Rivera
mostly works the mid-to-lower register of his horn, while his trumpet
player, Etienne Charles plays at the mid-to-higher end. Rivera plays
longer lines on his solos, and Charles is a bit more staccato in his
approach (although he also showed impressive ability holding notes). The
rhythm section likewise complemented each other, with Art Hirahara on
piano, Boris Koslov on bass, and Rudy Royston on drums bringing the
swing and complementing each other. Koslov was particularly notable, I
thought. Rivera himself was personable and charming, and have I
mentioned lately what a great room the auditorium at the AKG is?
