(Roughly) Daily

Your correspondent is headed (way) west again– this time to the tundra-like steppes of Mongolia– where it’s so cold that electrons just sit around shivering in copper and photons don’t even try to traverse fiber…  Consequently, regular service will be interrupted until on or about February 11.  Meantime, a blast from the past…

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From 1978, a full hour of cable access staple Efrom Allen’s Underground TV– featuring the Ramones.

[TotH to Pop Loser]

As we wanna be sedated, we might whistle jaunty birthday ditties to Stephane Grappelli; he was born on this date in 1908.  In 1934, Grappelli founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, one of the first all-string jazz bands (and probably the best), with guitarist Django Reinhardt; they disbanded in 1939, as World War overtook the continent.  After the war, Grappelli did session work with Jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson, with pop artists like Paul Simon and Pink Floyd, with classical musicians including Andre Previn and Yo Yo Ma, and with Indian classical violinist L. Subramaniam.  He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, and was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

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One can click on the rapper of one’s choice at The Rap Board to hear that artist’s signature catch phrase (or cry or grunt or whatever)…

As we rework our rhymes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1778 that Captain James Cook became the first Caucasian/European to visit the Hawaiian island of Maui.  He was, of course, by no means the last.

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 Click here to watch full-screen (at least some of) the history of Western dance music unfold

Music tourism (visiting a city or town to see a gig or festival) is on the rise. But why stop at gigs and festivals? Why not visit the birthplace of your favourite genre and follow the actual journey various music genres have taken as one style developed into another.

To make it easier to trace the threads of music history, we’ve created an interactive map detailing the evolution of western dance music over the last 100 years. [It's actually from the late 18th Century to the present...] The map shows the time and place where each of the music styles were born and which blend of genres influenced the next…

One can (and surely should) quibble with the map-makers’ bias to Afro-Carribean-based dance music (what about the Virginia reel, and its antecedents?  Or Latin dance music?)  But then, that’s fun of artifacts like this– the challenge to make them “better,” to make them one’s own…

Watch the interactive history unfold and read the full background at Thomson Travel’s “Evolution of Western Dance Music.”

And lest one doubt that music is in fact contagious, consider this evidence from the PRC:

As we tap our toes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1990 that producer Frank Farian publicly admitted that the voices heard on the recordings of Milli Vanilli were not the actual voices of the duo (Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus).  Shortly thereafter, the “Best New Artist” Grammy that the group had won earlier that year was recalled…  In this age of wide-spread lip-syncing and Auto-Tune, it all seems so quaint…

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Twenty-four more valedictions at Buzzfeed’s “The Last Words Of 25 Famous Dead Writers.”  And many more parting shots– like Oscar Wilde’s “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go”– at Wikiquote’s Famous Last Words.

As we rehearse our final scenes, we might spare a tuneful thought for trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Miles Dewey Davis III; he died on this date in 1991.  Davis was a pioneer of a number of jazz forms– bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion, among others– but was perhaps even more influential for the musicians he launched in his bands (an extraordinary roster that includes Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Elvin Jones, and Jack DeJohnette) and for the bands and musicians he influenced (and equally amazing list that includes Lalo Schifrin, Tangerine Dream, King Crimson, Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, Duane Allman, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Lydia Lunch, Jerry Garcia, and Prince).

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From Flavorwire, “Vintage Photos of Rock Stars In Their Bathing Suits.”

(Special Seasonal Bonus: from Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton to Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, “Take a Dip: Literary Greats In Their Bathing Suits.”)

As we reach for the Coppertone, we might might wish a soulful Happy Birthday to musician Isaac Hayes; he was born on this date in 1942.  An early stalwart at legendary Stax Records (e.g., Hayes co-wrote and played on the Sam and Dave hits “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Coming”), Hayes began to come into his own after the untimely demise of Stax’s headliner, Otis Redding.  First with his album Hot Buttered Soul, then with the score– including most famously the theme– for Shaft, Hayes became a star, and a pillar of the more engaged Black music scene of the 70s.  Hayes remained a pop culture force (e.g., as the voice of Chef on South Park) until his death in 2008.  (Note:  some sources give Hayes birth date as August 20; but county records in Covington, KY, his birthplace suggest that it was the 6th.)

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Your correspondent is headed for his ancestral seat, and for the annual parole check-in and head-lice inspection that does double duty as a family reunion.  Connectivity in that remote location being the challenged proposition that it is, these missives are likely to be in abeyance for the duration.  Regular service should resume on or about August 16.  

Meantime, lest readers be bored, a little something to ponder:

Depending who you ask, there’s a 20 to 50 percent chance that you’re living in a computer simulation. Not like The Matrix, exactly – the virtual people in that movie had real bodies, albeit suspended in weird, pod-like things and plugged into a supercomputer. Imagine instead a super-advanced version of The Sims, running on a machine with more processing power than all the minds on Earth. Intelligent design? Not necessarily. The Creator in this scenario could be a future fourth-grader working on a science project.

Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that we may very well all be Sims. This possibility rests on three developments: (1) the aforementioned megacomputer. (2) The survival and evolution of the human race to a “posthuman” stage. (3) A decision by these posthumans to research their own evolutionary history, or simply amuse themselves, by creating us – virtual simulacra of their ancestors, with independent consciousnesses…

Read the full story– complete with a consideration of the more-immediate (and less-existentially-challenging) implications of “virtualization”– and watch the accompanying videos at Big Think… and channel your inner-Phillip K. Dick…

Y’all be good…