Adorno's "Theory of Pseudo Culture"

Adorno’s 1959 essay “Theory of Pseudo Culture” is in many ways a continuation of “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” chapter in his and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment; but it is also an attempt to think through in a more dialectical, and sociologically grounded, fashion than before the relation between those cultural processes and practices that Adorno thinks are truthful (i.e. instances of actual culture), and those that are products of the Culture Industry and therefore merely “pseudo.” Despite these differences, however, his overall pessimism as to the possibilities of socio-political progress remains as acute as before; he makes no attempt to achieve a Hegelian-like “synthesis” (actually a misnomer since Hegel never used the term and does not argue that antinomies are brought together and thereby reconciled, as synthesis implies; rather, that within both sides of a contradiction there exists a “higher” truth that encompasses and makes sense of both [Mueller 1958; Taylor 1975]), instead denying that any positive understanding (and therefore outcome) is possible because of the inherent complicity with domination that all attempts at progress share in: “The fact that antagonisms multiply signifies that all particular advances in the consciousness of freedom also participate in the persistence of unfreedom.” Although Adorno’s Negative Dialectics was not published until 1966 this article is perhaps best understood as an attempt to apply a “negative dialectical” approach in a less abstrusely theoretical manner.

Adorno begins by arguing that the existent “crisis in culture” cannot be solved by increased education; rather, the decline in culture then so apparent (and one can only imagine how dismayed he would be were he alive today!) is, in fact, a product of culture itself: “What has become of culture, now deposited as a kind of negative objective spirit…can be deduced from the laws of social movement, even from the concept of culture itself. Culture has become socialized pseudo-culture – the omnipresence of alienated spirit.” A lack of “true” culture is not the problem; instead, it is the very attempt to make culture autonomous from its socio-historical grounding, as the bourgeoisie has so insistently attempted to realize, that renders culture into its “pseudo” opposite: “Any culture…which posits itself autonomously and absolutizes itself, has thereby become pseudo-culture.” This is, for Adorno, because culture has an inherently socially adaptive functionality; it always says “that’s right!” to that which is and thus apologizes for that which should and could, in fact, not be.

Not only is cultural education for the “uncultured” classes not an answer to the problem of cultural decline, but neither is the search for cultural authenticity in the “folk,” given some notion that it is there that might be found some still true cultural expressions. (One can only wonder if Adorno here had in mind the Urban Folk Revival that became very popular in North America in the late 1950s.) For Adorno, there are no real folk left. Rather than seeing rural areas as having escaped the effects of capitalism and its attendant cultural industry machine, as many Marxists (most notably Mao) have hoped, Adorno argues that they are “breeding grounds of pseudo-culture” because the rapidity of the transformation from traditional (i.e. religiously based) culture to that which is a product of the culture industry left no time for the cultural autonomy of the bourgeoisie to develop there. For despite cultural autonomy’s complicity in its own “pseudofication,” autonomy remains, for Adorno, the only hope for the continuance of non-pseudo culture: “…the only way spirit can possibly survive is through critical reflection on pseudo-culture, for which culture is essential.”

There is so much more in this essay, but having raised some key points I turn to a reflection on what it all means for contemporary understandings of culture. As is usual in responding to Adorno’s writings, it is difficult to think (deliberately so on his part!) of what should be the practical desired outcome of his theorizing. He, of course, denies the premise that speculative thinking requires a use-value, some practical application or positive program. The very concept of a “negative dialectics” is itself the most obvious example of this denial since dialectics previously conceived (from Plato to Kant and Hegel) was always understood productively, as a process by which truth is attained. But for Adorno, such a hope can, at this point in history, only be delusional, a head-in-the-sand conceit of wishful thinking.

Yet one might wonder whether his use of empirical studies in the essay as evidence of his arguments (for example, the “ingenious study” that compared two listening groups) might not subtly contradict his overall pessimism. For if one accepts that valid truths as to the cultural value of individuals’ experience can be derived through such empirical research, then this would seem to imply that there is something positive that characterizes that which is more “true” (in this study a live musical performance over one listened to over the radio) compared to other possibilities. If so, then it would seem contradictory to insist that, to paraphrase Adorno, all truths lead to untruths. That is, if the live performance of music does lead to greater understanding and less shallow responses than radio broadcasts, then there would seem to be some hope in education as the response to cultural decline—in this case, that which comes from the promotion of attending live musical performances.

Ironically, Adorno’s seemingly greater acceptance of the value of empirical research in this essay might represent a welcome crack in his usually airtight theoretical pessimism. It is therefore of some interest that in his 1961 lecture at the Darmstadt New Music Conference, “Vers Une Musique Informelle” (published later in Quasi Una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music), he actually gives positive prescriptions as to how music of the avant-garde should be both composed and performed in order to facilitate comprehension by greater numbers of people. Although this “crack” would not have seemed to remain open for long, as his refusal to in any way engage with the student protest movement in the late 1960s demonstrates, that it existed for even a short while suggests how one might think Adorno against himself in order to realize that which he so often denied: the possibility of positivity.

Other Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor. 1998. Vers Une Musique Informelle. In Quasi una fantasia: Essays on

modern music. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. New York: Verso.

Mueller, Gustav E. 1958. The Hegel Legend of ‘Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis.’ Journal of

the History of Ideas 19 (3): 411-14.

Taylor, Charles. 1975. Hegel. New York: Cambridge University Press.

On Walter Benjamin's "The Author as Producer"

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In “The Author as Producer” (1934) Walter Benjamin sets out to diagnose the relation between artistic production and politics broadly conceived. He argues that there is a necessary connection between the techniques used in the production of a work of art and its political orientation and, therefore, the impossibility of a disinterested, autonomous or non-political art work. Interestingly, although Benjamin is now often thought of as a highly unorthodox Marxist (see Richter 2002, 12; Hafstein 2006, 13), here he displays a quite close alignment with orthodox Marxism in his insistence on the clarity of a work’s political tendencies, the dangers of “counterrevolutionary” acts, the inextricable link between one’s “position in the process of production” and one’s political identity, the valorization of Brecht’s explicitly “committed” theatre works and the extolling of the virtues, in ostensibly overcoming social antinomies, of cultural production in the Soviet Union. Whether such an interpretation suggests a wider transformation in Benjamin’s Marxism from the time this essay was written to that of his more well-known works from the later 1930s (e.g. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” “Theses on the Philosophy of History” and the unfinished “Arcades Project”) or, rather, that this essay is an idiosyncratic work in his overall oeuvre, perhaps reflecting an homage of sorts to his friend Brecht (who was much more consistently orthodox Marxist than Benjamin), is an interesting question to consider— although not, obviously, one that can be answered here.

There are, however, undoubted continuities with his later work (especially the aforementioned “Work of Art” essay) in his arguments for the transformational status of the newspaper. In strikingly McLuanesque manner (or, given Benjamin’s antecedent status, perhaps rather McLuhan’s later “Benjaminian” ideas), Benjamin (curiously quoting himself without attribution) points to the effect of the newspaper’s disjointed, never-finished quality, i.e. its medium, on its readers. “[T]he fact that nothing binds the reader to his paper as much as this avid impatience for fresh nourishment every day, has been used by editors, who are always starting new columns open to his questions, opinions, protestations. So the indiscriminate assimilation of facts goes hand in hand with the similar indiscriminate assimilation of readers, who see themselves instantly raised to the level of co-workers” (Benjamin 1934, 3). And this breaking down of the barrier between author and public, producer and audience is, Benjamin argues, a revolutionary action in its breaking of social hierarchies that place the laboring classes beneath the literary, artistic, bourgeois class.

            

 What is obvious, however, is how much Benjamin here differs from Adorno’s views on the relation between artistic production and politics. For both, there is an intimate connection between artistic quality and “correct” politics; but whereas the former argues that the autonomy of the artist should ultimately give way to “plac[ing] himself on the side of the proletariat” (1), the latter insists that the only way to safeguard the possibility of a truthful, non-compromised artistic practice is precisely through the work’s insistence on its autonomy, as that which resists commodification and is thus best able to “crack…established patterns of self-evidence” (Goehr 2004, 235). Nowhere are their differences more obvious than in Benjamin’s discussion of Eisler’s comments on the relation of absolute (non-lyric) music with capitalism: “Words alone can…bring about the transformation of the concert into a political meeting” (Benjamin 1934, 5). There could, in fact, be few things more abhorrent to Adorno than insisting on the necessity of words for music or the subsuming of the autonomy of music (or art more generally) to the inherent heteronomy of a political gathering. Only through its absolute otherness from such prosaic demands can art, according to Adorno, be of any positive political value.

            

 Despite Benjamin’s more obviously orthodox Marxist position in this essay, however, there is a way in which one can see Adorno as, in fact, more true to Marx—at least the older, more structuralist Marx of Das Kapital. This is in terms of their respective views on voluntarism. Benjamin, following Brecht, writes that intellectuals should not “simply transmit the apparatus of production without simultaneously changing it to the maximum extent possible in the direction of socialism” (4). Adorno, on the other hand, does not see genuine, truthful artists as able to will their art in the direction of socialism or of any other; artists, rather, follow the immanent logic of the artistic medium wherever it takes them. In the case of music, Schoenberg did not simply decide to begin writing atonal music around 1908; instead, he realized the next step from what the musical materials post-Wagner and Brahms had bequeathed him. This wasn’t in the direction of socialism, capitalism or any other “ism,” but rather in the direction of art. Although the voluntarism of Benjamin’s position is far more common among Marxists both then and now, such stress on the value of individual volition is in strong tension, if not outright contradicts, the older Marx’s own insistence on the necessarily structural determinations of individuals.

            

 From my understanding of Benjamin’s later texts, he did move closer to Adorno’s position through the 1930s without ever sharing Adorno’s pessimism as to the potential value of mechanical and electrical technologies in liberating the proletariat. The opposition between these two sides of leftist aesthetics—elitist autonomy vs. mass heteronomy—is still alive and well, although because of Benjamin’s tragic early death it was the elitist-autonomy of Adorno that would come to dominate the Frankfurt School’s own variety of unorthodox Marxism.

           

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. 1934. The author as producer. New Left Review 1 (62):

http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=135 (accessed February 14, 2011).

Goehr, Lydia. 2004. Dissonant works and the listening public. In The Cambridge

companion to Adorno, ed. Tom Huhn, 257-85. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hafstein, Vladimar T. 2007. Spectacular reproduction: Ron’s angels and mechanical

reproduction in the age of ART (assisted reproductive technology). The Journal of Medical Humanities 28 (1): 3-17.

Richter. Gerhard. 2002. Benjamin's ghosts: interventions in contemporary literary and

cultural theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

On jazz

The Montreal Gazette published an opinion piece I wrote responding to an earlier piece about what is and is not jazz: "Don't Discount the Evolution of Jazz" (not my title though). Unfortunately, but hardly surprising, it's not exactly what I intended so here's the real thing.


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Jonathan Goldman’s recent Gazette opinion piece (“Montreal International Jazz Festival: This isn’t jazz”) reflects a common perspective among contemporary jazz musicians that some of what is now called jazz fails to meet various definitional criteria. Based on his “nearly 15 years…of instrumental practice, listening sessions and reading, plus two music degrees,” Goldman attempts to define jazz according to three requisite characteristics: the blues, swing rhythms and improvisation. “The fewer of these elements a musical style has, the more distantly related it is to jazz. Thus, R&B is closely related to jazz, in that it contains elements of blues and swing, though it lacks improvisation. Rock ’n’ roll is even farther from jazz, having in common only elements of the blues vocabulary.”

One must wonder how he can be unaware of the plethora of improvisation in R&B from Louis Jordan to Mary J. Blige and that of improvisation and swing in such rock groups as the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. However, on the basis of these qualities he then goes on to exclude the group She & Him from consideration as jazz claiming that the group’s inclusion as a headlining act at the Jazzfest “shows that, for all intents and purposes, jazz is dead.”

What is interesting about such jeremiads is how common they are in jazz’s history. In the 1930s, fans of the older Dixieland style lamented what they saw as the crass, watered-down commercialism of the-then popular Swing bands. In the late 1940s, the debate shifted to the innovations of Bebop with partisans of Swing attacking Bebop’s technical difficulty and resistance to audience dancing. Around 1960, Free Jazz’s abandonment of traditional chord-scale relations aroused no shortage of controversy with Down Beat magazine proclaiming Goldman’s very own hero John Coltrane as seemingly “bent on pursuing an anarchistic course…that can but be termed anti-jazz.” And in the 1970s-80s, Jazz Fusion divided musicians and critics with some seeing its incorporation of rock and funk elements as the wave of the future, while others, such as Wynton Marsalis, argued that such influences, together with its lack of swing, placed it outside the jazz tradition.

This short detour through jazz history shows that any presumption to defining a trans-historical essence of jazz is a fool’s errand. Jazz has been many different things to many different people. Guy Lombardo, for example, made far less use of the blues, swing and improvisation than many R&B and Rock groups have. But despite these limitations, his group was among the favorites of jazz legend Louis Armstrong. And though many bossa nova songs are now considered jazz standards (think “Girl from Ipanema”), they have even less of a connection to the blues and, furthermore, don’t use swing rhythms.

I would hardly qualify She & Him as strong representatives of jazz today although at least one of their songs, “Never Wanted Your Love, does use swing rhythms. But as my historical survey has shown, whatever the presence of Goldman’s three criteria might be, they are hardly sufficient for defining jazz given its variety over the last century. It is often forgotten that until the late 1940s, jazz was popular music—intended for the entertainment of listeners and dancers with little artistic pretention. Since this is clearly what She & Him intend as well one could reasonably argue, contra Goldman, that they are in fact more true to the original meaning of jazz than those he thinks properly define it today.

More valuable, however, is asking why debates about jazz have aroused such controversy. Balanced between the high art values of classical music and the explicit entertainment of pop, jazz musicians have desired both the artistic respectability of the former and the commercial success of the latter. But unwilling to choose they fight all the more to protect their proverbial turf from popular music interlopers.

As a sometime jazz musician myself, well aware of the difficulty in making a living as such, I don’t blame them for doing so. But instead of lamenting whom the Jazzfest books, musicians such as Goldman should use their supposedly superior skills to create better music with the same popular appeal as those ostensibly non-jazz groups they decry. If people like She & Him’s music then who are we as musicians to argue over labels? Perhaps we need to make a greater effort to play music that more people might enjoy so that we’ll be the ones performing at future Jazzfests.

For jazz will only die when musicians stop creating music that challenges and appeals to an ever-changing musical audience.   

Contacting MPs about Bill C-38

(I just finished writing the following letter that I then sent to all Conservative Party MPs.)

Dear Member of Parliament,

You are now considering Bill C-38 about which I feel I must express my strongest objections. It constitutes a radical attack on Parliament's constitutionally-mandated job to examine and vote on new pieces of legislation in a manner that allows consequences to be properly examined and weighed. To be clear: my opposition to this bill does not reflect a partisan objection to the Conservative Party; I have voted for the Conservative Party in the past as I have on other occasions for the Liberal, New Democratic and Green parties. I am, however, appalled that a so-called "Conservative" party can be attempting to push through Parliament this omnibus bill that is antithetical to Parliament's vital role within the Westminster Parliamentary tradition. 

Writing about the French Revolution, Edmund Burke (in many ways the father of modern conservatism) spoke directly to such radical legal reformations and the danger that they represent to our inherited freedoms:

"These opposed and conflicting interests, which you [Conservative Party MPs!] considered as so great a blemish in your old and in our present constitution, interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions [like Bill C-38!]; They render deliberation a matter not of choice, but of necessity; they make all change a subject of compromise; which naturally begets moderation; they produce temperaments, preventing the sore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified reformations [such as Bill C-38! my italics]; and rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, for ever impractical. Through the diversity of members and interests, general liberty had as many securities as there were separate views in the several orders; whilst by pressing down the whole by the weight of a real monarchy, the separate parts would have been prevented from warping and starting from their allotted places." (Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J.C.D. Clark [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001],  p. 187)

That even opinion writers in the right-leaning National Post (such as Kelly McPartland, John Ivision and Andrew Coyne) can see this bill as the horrendous attack on Parliamentary Privilege that it is reveals how far the present government is here departing from actual conservative principles. 

To those MPs who are opposing this atrocious bill I wish you all the best in your fight.

To those Conservative MPs who have meekly acceded to the Prime Minister's dictates to vote for this bill or else — you should be ashamed of yourselves for your craven subordination. That Stephen Harper in 2005 stated that a Liberal omnibus bill was "a contradiction to the conventions and practices of the House” only proves his mendacious hypocrisy. 

Where are the Conservative MPs who will put country ahead of personal ambition, right before might? I wait to be surprised.

A concerned Canadian citizen,

Melvin Backstrom

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If you also don't like Bill C-38 perhaps think about writing a letter and sending it to all Conservative MPs. Below are all of their email addresses formatted so you should just have to copy and past into your email address box.

diane.ablonczy@parl.gc.ca, Eve.Adams@parl.gc.ca, Mark.Adler@parl.gc.ca,
leona.aglukkaq@parl.gc.ca, Dan.Albas@parl.gc.ca, harold.albrecht@parl.gc.ca,
Chris.Alexander@parl.gc.ca, mike.allen@parl.gc.ca, dean.allison@parl.gc.ca, Stella.Ambler@parl.gc.ca, rona.ambrose@parl.gc.ca, rob.anders@parl.gc.ca, david.anderson@parl.gc.ca, scott.armstrong@parl.gc.ca, keith.ashfield@parl.gc.ca, Jay.Aspin@parl.gc.ca, John.baird@parl.gc.ca, Joyce.Bateman@parl.gc.ca, leon.benoit@parl.gc.ca, maxime.bernier@parl.gc.ca, james.bezan@parl.gc.ca, steven.blaney@parl.gc.ca, kelly.block@parl.gc.ca, ray.boughen@parl.gc.ca, peter.braid@parl.gc.ca, garry.breitkreuz@parl.gc.ca, gord.brown@parl.gc.ca, lois.brown@parl.gc.ca, patrick.brown@parl.gc.ca, rod.bruinooge@parl.gc.ca, Brad.Butt@parl.gc.ca, paul.calandra@parl.gc.ca, blaine.calkins@parl.gc.ca, ron.cannan@parl.gc.ca, John.Carmichael@parl.gc.ca, colin.carrie@parl.gc.ca, Corneliu.Chisu@parl.gc.ca, michael.chong@parl.gc.ca, rob.clarke@parl.gc.ca, tony.clement@parl.gc.ca, Joe.Daniel@parl.gc.ca, pat.davidson@parl.gc.ca, dean.delmastro@parl.gc.ca, dean.delmastro@parl.gc.ca, barry.devolin@parl.gc.ca, earl.dreeshen@parl.gc.ca, john.duncan@parl.gc.ca, rick.dykstra@parl.gc.ca, julian.fantino@parl.gc.ca, ed.fast@parl.gc.ca, Kerry-Lynne.Findlay@parl.gc.ca, diane.finley@parl.gc.ca, jim.flaherty@parl.gc.ca, steven.fletcher@parl.gc.ca, royal.galipeau@parl.gc.ca, cheryl.gallant@parl.gc.ca,
shelly.glover@parl.gc.ca, Robert.Goguen@parl.gc.ca, peter.goldring@parl.gc.ca, gary.goodyear@parl.gc.ca, Bal.Gosal@parl.gc.ca, jacques.gourde@parl.gc.ca,
nina.grewal@parl.gc.ca, stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca, richard.harris@parl.gc.ca, laurie.hawn@parl.gc.ca, Bryan.Hayes@parl.gc.ca, russ.hiebert@parl.gc.ca, Jim.Hillyer@parl.gc.ca, randy.hoback@parl.gc.ca, candice.hoeppner@parl.gc.ca, ed.holder@parl.gc.ca, Roxanne.James@parl.gc.ca, brian.jean@parl.gc.ca,
randy.kamp@parl.gc.ca, gerald.keddy@parl.gc.ca, jason.kenney@parl.gc.ca, peter.kent@parl.gc.ca, greg.kerr@parl.gc.ca, ed.komarnicki@parl.gc.ca, daryl.kramp@parl.gc.ca, mike.lake@parl.gc.ca, denis.lebel@parl.gc.ca, Ryan.Leef@parl.gc.ca, Kellie.Leitch@parl.gc.ca, pierre.lemieux@parl.gc.ca, Chungsen.Leung@parl.gc.ca, Wladyslaw.Lizon@parl.gc.ca, ben.lobb@parl.gc.ca, tom.lukiwski@parl.gc.ca, james.lunney@parl.gc.ca, peter.mackay@parl.gc.ca, dave.mackenzie@parl.gc.ca, colin.mayes@parl.gc.ca,
phil.mccoleman@parl.gc.ca, cathy.mcleod@parl.gc.ca, Costas.Menegakis@parl.gc.ca,
ted.menzies@parl.gc.ca, larry.miller@parl.gc.ca, james.moore@parl.gc.ca, rob.moore@parl.gc.ca,
rob.nicholson@parl.gc.ca, deepak.obhrai@parl.gc.ca, gordon.oconnor@parl.gc.ca, bev.oda@parl.gc.ca, Joe.Oliver@parl.gc.ca, tilly.oneillgordon@parl.gc.ca, Ted.Opitz@parl.gc.ca, christian.paradis@parl.gc.ca, lavar.payne@parl.gc.ca, Peter.Penashue@parl.gc.ca, pierre.poilievre@parl.gc.ca, joe.preston@parl.gc.ca, lisa.raitt@parl.gc.ca, brent.rathgeber@parl.gc.ca, scott.reid@parl.gc.ca, Michelle.Rempel@parl.gc.ca, blake.richards@parl.gc.ca, lee.richardson@parl.gc.ca, greg.rickford@parl.gc.ca, gerry.ritz@parl.gc.ca, andrew.saxton@parl.gc.ca, andrew.scheer@parl.gc.ca, gary.schellenberger@parl.gc.ca, Kyle.Seeback@parl.gc.ca,
gail.shea@parl.gc.ca, bev.shipley@parl.gc.ca, joy.smith@parl.gc.ca, robert.sopuck@parl.gc.ca,
kevin.sorenson@parl.gc.ca, bruce.stanton@parl.gc.ca, brian.storseth@parl.gc.ca,
Mark.Strahl@parl.gc.ca, david.sweet@parl.gc.ca, david.tilson@parl.gc.ca, Lawrence.Toet@parl.gc.ca, vic.toews@parl.gc.ca, brad.trost@parl.gc.ca, Bernard.Trottier@parl.gc.ca, Susan.Truppe@parl.gc.ca,
merv.tweed@parl.gc.ca, tim.uppal@parl.gc.ca, Bernard.Valcourt@parl.gc.ca, Frank.valeriote@parl.gc.ca, dave.vankesteren@parl.gc.ca, peter.vanloan@parl.gc.ca, maurice.vellacott@parl.gc.ca, mike.wallace@parl.gc.ca, mark.warawa@parl.gc.ca, chris.warkentin@parl.gc.ca, jeff.watson@parl.gc.ca,
john.weston@parl.gc.ca, john.weston@parl.gc.ca, rodney.weston@parl.gc.ca,
David.Wilks@parl.gc.ca, John.Williamson@parl.gc.ca, alice.wong@parl.gc.ca,
stephen.woodworth@parl.gc.ca, lynne.yelich@parl.gc.ca, terence.young@parl.gc.ca,
Bob.Zimmer@parl.gc.ca,

Contra Sterne and Davis: Another take on the Manifs Casseroles

Professors Jonathan Sterne and Natalie Zemon Davis’ piece in Thursday’s Globe & Mail (“Quebec’s manifs casseroles are a call for order”) manages the rare feat of being both informative and disingenuous. As a McGill PhD student (and, in fact, former student of Professor Sterne), working on (among other things) understanding various elements of popular culture as continuations of older practices, finding a discussion of the now-for-the-most-part forgotten practice of charivari in the Commentary pages of the G&M made for an initially welcome morning surprise. Unfortunately, the essay’s details fail to live up to my high expectations of two such distinguished scholars.

The authors strive to portray the manifs casseroles as joyful expressions of communities united in opposition to the ostensibly oppressive provincial government while (somehow) bringing order to the streets. But this is not at all the case. I (along with many other Quebec citizens) do not support the casserolistes or the seemingly never-ending protests against tuition hikes and find the nightly rounds of pot-banging to be a sonic assault on my rights to have a reasonable expectation of privacy and silence – and I’m certainly not the only one who feels this way as the content of letters pages to Quebec newspapers since it began make abundantly clear. Instead of recognizing the diversity of opinions that exist within Quebec, and therefore the illegitimacy of attempts to force one’s opinion on others outside of any democratic accountability, the authors imperiously proclaim the casserolistes as rightfully “enforc[ing] community standards.” But whose standards are these (they’re certainly not mine) and what legitimacy, beyond that of mob-rule, do they have to enforce them?

And here lies the real disingenuousness in the authors’ characterization of the history of charivari as “an alternative to violent exclusion” that “often [resulted in] a payment of money that allowed everyone to go down to the local inn for a festive drink or meal.” Sometimes this peaceful result did occur (as Professor Davis has amply documented [1975]) but then such enforcement of community standards were often of a very frightening if not violent kind. Anthony Fletcher (1995) writes, “Charivari could be intended as a warning and no doubt many offenders were subsequently left alone and were terrorized into greater conformity with communal values. But the intention could also be to drum out an offending couple, as happened at Burton-on-Trent in 1618 when William and Margaret Cripple, suspected of living together unmarried, subsequently left the town” (272) [my italics]. Bertram Wyatt-Brown (1995) notes, “The charivari included a range of crowd activity, from wedding-day jest to public whipping and tar-and-feathering” (192) [my italics]; furthermore (2007), charivaris in combination with lynch law “ensured the permanence of popular white rule” in the American antebellum South (436). And John Cashmere (1991) points to the diverse historical array of charivari activities countering Sterne and Davis’ assumption “that a typical charivari begins in a mood of laughter and derision and ends in expansive revelry, and that the manifestation of violence means that the charivari has somehow ‘gone wrong’ or not been played out according to plan…the outcome could all vary, and often violence was an integral part of the processual nature of the performance” (301-02) [my italics].

I by no means wish to suggest that the casserolistes have engaged in overt violence; thankfully they have not (although the student protesters certainly have!). But as a scholar of sound studies such as Professor Sterne certainly knows, sound can function very well as a weapon on its own—as some US Marines demonstrated when they blasted hard rock music into the Panamanian Vatican Embassy in 1989 to drive out Manuel Noriega or as the broadcasting of classical music in public areas in order to “encourage” teenagers not to loiter plainly reveals. The casserolistes are not the benign social bringers-of-order that Sterne and Davis make them out to be; rather, they are a mass of people convinced of their own righteousness, with obviously little concern for what their neighbors who disagree with them might think as their nightly riot of noise acutely shows. Sterne and Davis are correct: the manifs casseroles are descended from the charivari—but this is a relation to be troubled by not celebrated.

Works Cited

Cashmer, John. 1991. The social uses of violence in ritual: Charivari or religious

persecution? In European History Quarterly 21: 291-319.

Davis, Natalie Zemon. 1975. Society and culture in early modern France: Eight essays.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Fletcher, Anthony. 1995. Gender, sex, and subordination in England, 1500-1800. New

Haven: Yale University Press.

Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. 1995. Honor and violence in the Old South. New York: Oxford

University Press.

———. 2007. Southern honor: Ethics and behavior in the Old South. New York: Oxford

University Press.

Why I love Isaiah Berlin

"The French Revolution was founded on the notion of timeless truths given to the faculty of reason with which all men are endowed. It was dedicated to the creation or restoration of a static and harmonious society, founded on unadulterated principles, a dream of classical perfection, or, at least, the closest approximation to it feasible on earth. It preached a peaceful universalism and a rational humanitarianism. But its consequences threw into relief the precariousness of human institutions, the disturbing phenomenon of apparently irresistible change; the clash of irreconcilable values and ideas; the insufficiency of simple formulae; the complexity of men and societies; the poetry of action, destruction, heroism, war; the effectiveness of mobs and of great men; the crucial role played by chance; the feebleness of reason before the power of fanatically believed doctrines; the unpredictability of events; the part played in history by unintended consequences; the ignorance of the workings of the sunken two-thirds of the great human iceberg, of which only the visible portion had been studied by scientists and taken into account by the ideologists of the great Revolution."
Isaiah Berlin, "Herder and the Enlightenment," sec. XI.

And it's still true today.

Searching for the Sound—An Analysis of the Electric Bass Style of Phil Lesh

I've been meaning to write something to this effect for a while, but in the Fall '08 semester I took an analysis of popular music class/seminar for my MA in musicology at McGill University and I finally got it done for my final paper. Unfortunately, the transcriptions referred to are not here, but I'll work on getting them scanned and posted. Also, the numbers in the text originally referred to footnotes but because of formatting problems they're now endnotes at the end of the essay preceding the bibliography. Hope you enjoy! Any comments would of course be appreciated.

Searching for the Sound:
An Analysis of the Electric Bass Style of Phil Lesh

In the world of pop-rock music, the Grateful Dead have long been recognized for, and by, the highly idiosyncratic nature of their musical style. Although sharing certain characteristics with various other bands that were part of the mid-to-late 1960s San Francisco music scene, the Dead stand out on account of their longevity (1965-1995), their stylistic diversity and the thoroughness of their collective improvisations. While they were by no means the only pop-rock musical group from the 1960s till the present to “jam” (colloquial for collective improvisation) they were the among the first to make it a, if not the, primary constitutive element of their musical practice and to pursue its consequences in each one of their performances.

But while collective, their improvisations, as well as studio recordings, were of course themselves constituted by the playing styles of the individuals that made up the group throughout its 30 year career: two guitarists, an electric bassist and two drummers.1 A complete analysis of the Dead’s style would therefore necessarily involve analyzing each individual’s style in order to understand how it fits into the whole that it is but a part of. Given that such a project is far beyond the scope of this paper, however, I would like to instead proffer a beginning of such an effort through an analytical investigation of but one member—their electric bassist Phil Lesh.

I have chosen him as my focus on account of how frequently the uniqueness of his bass playing, and its importance to the overall sound of the Dead, has been remarked upon. For example, in an interview with Lesh for Bass Player magazine Karl Coryat states “Your style is so different—it seems there’s a standard way to play bass, and a Phil Lesh way.”2 Furthermore, Lesh has repeatedly stated how little he was influenced by other electric bass players claiming to have instead have instead been inspired by the acoustic bass playing styles of Charles Mingus and Scott LeFaro. For him, this meant trying to “play the bass in a melodic way, in a contrapuntal way, which derives ultimately from Bach.”3 Elaborating on this concerning his initial approach to the instrument Lesh writes that:

I soon reached a saturation point with the prevalent style of bass playing which was to stick to the root and always play on the downbeat...I wanted to play in a way that heightened the beats by omission, as it were, by playing around them, in a way that added harmonic motion to the somewhat static chord progressions of the songs we were playing then. I wanted to play in a way that moved melodically but much more slowly than the lead melodies sung by the vocalists or played on guitar or keyboard. Contrast and complement: Each of us [i.e. the band members] approached the music from a different direction, at angles to one another, like the spokes of a wheel.4

While somewhat overly simplistic, “stick to the root and always play on the downbeat” does describe fairly well the conventional approach to harmony by bass players in most pop-rock groups. This is on account of its arguably most important function besides setting up the rhythmic groove in conjunction with the drums and percussion: to define “vertically,” through metrical and harmonic accentuation, the harmony which the various pitches at a particular moment all relate to.5 Accentuating the root of the appropriate harmony on downbeats is therefore important, in these terms, in order to clearly delineate the music’s harmonic movement.6

Having analyzed a number of recordings on which Lesh plays, his style, in comparison to that of most electric bassists, is best understood as emphasizing, to provide a contrasting spatial metaphor, a horizontal approach. Instead of focusing primarily on defining the harmony by emphasizing the roots and fifths of the prevailing harmony on metrical downbeats, his bass lines often function, as the above invocations of Bach and counterpoint would suggest, as independent lines in relation to higher pitched melodic material—sometimes, in fact, superseding them in importance. The problem with such an approach, and the justification for the conventional emphasis of roots on downbeats and, along with fifths, more generally, is that it leads to harmonic instability. By not clearly enunciating roots of chords they lack the definitive grounding that properly informs listeners as to the music’s harmonic movement, which, in most kinds of pop-rock music, is of significant importance. I would argue, however, that in the music of the Grateful Dead, as well as that of his own continuing Phil & Friends ensemble, this harmonic vagueness is not a fault, but instead plays a primary role in facilitating the extended improvisationally-structured playing that is such a stylistic hallmark of both groups.7

What is crucially important to understand about such an approach is that it involves not merely the extemporization of melodies, i.e. soloing, over a pre-established harmonic structure, but also, and more significantly, the collective, in-the-moment invention of all musical elements—melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, dynamics, timbre etc. This most often takes place as a way of bridging distinct, pre-composed musical structures, but on occasion as distinct entities of their own. Given the uncertainty that must necessarily accompany such a musical practice in which musical “destinations” are not preordained but are rather the outcome of decisions made in the course of the performance, harmonic certainty would be not necessarily a virtue, but, quite possibly, a hindrance to its successful realization. Thus, on this account, the ambiguity created by Lesh’s avoidance of root accentuation plays an important structural role in enabling the overall success of this style of music by “opening up” the music to the possibilities that the musicians are then able to realize through the process of collective improvisation.

As the preceding discussion of composed structures suggests, however, this improvised, free-form kind of playing by no means constitutes all the music that the Grateful Dead played or that Lesh’s own group continues to perform. Both groups are characterized instead by a quite exceptional degree of stylistic multiplicity encompassing genres as distinct as country & western and non-tonal sonic explorations whose closest descriptive appellation is perhaps musique concrète.8 Not surprisingly, Lesh adapts his playing to these differences. For while harmonic ambiguity may be advantageous in those improvisationally-structured sections already described, it would be obviously less so, and in fact quite problematic, for other more tonally regular, and therefore harmonically stable, styles of music.

The goal of this paper will be therefore two-fold. First, to make sense of how Lesh reflected this diversity in his playing in order to better understand the overall musical style of the Grateful Dead and, as they were its originators, of arguably the entire jamband genre. Second, by making explicit the intricacies of his idiosyncratic technique, suggest, and explain how to realize, an alternative way to think about realizing bass lines in pop-rock music for those who might be so interested.

Of all the songs of the Grateful Dead, as well as of Lesh’s current group that continues to perform it, “Dark Star” is the one most closely associated with their improvisationally-structured performance style. Discussing the song, Rob Bowman writes that, “the idea of bass/guitar counterpoint was intrinsic to the stylistic alchemy of the Dead in general. That said, it was perhaps nowhere more in evidence than on ‘Dark Star.’” He quotes Lesh concurring that, “Some reviewer described the way I play as being ‘Like a sandworm in heat wrapped around Garcia’s [the Dead’s lead guitarist] guitar line’...I try to do that all the time but “Dark Star” is supposed to do that.”9 [Italics in original] What makes “Dark Star” particularly appropriate in this regard, and what Lesh is referring to, is its harmonic simplicity and essentially modal character. Although three chords recognizably appear in it—A, G and E minor—the mode of A Mixolydian is predominant with an arguable occasional shift to E Dorian.10 This modal, as opposed to tonal, approach to harmony is, of course, not at all unique to the Dead, but it is a musical technique they used frequently to facilitate a less structured, and more improvisationally based, type of playing. By not being limited to a particular harmonic progression the group could instead improvise as long as they might want within a particular modal “space.” And although not limited to such contexts, it is in such moments that Lesh’s contrapuntal approach is particularly advantageous. For these reasons “Dark Star” is a particularly good candidate for an analysis that intends to understand this aspect of his playing.

Furthermore, in his admirable transcription-analysis of unarguably the most famous performance of “Dark Star,”11 Graeme Boone supports the above stated understanding of Lesh’s playing by noting that “[lead guitarist] Garcia is usually the melodic leader in instrumental passages…[while] Lesh’s bass provides harmonic support, but that role is tempered by a strong tendency to melodic and rhythmic exploration that often results in an independent lead, or counterpoint to Garcia.”12 Though the focus of Boone’s article is on the overall performance rather than Lesh’s playing specifically, this statement provides even more evidence for this song, and this performance of it in particular, as a relevant example to be analyzed for this paper. And indeed an examination of his transcription bears this out.13

As Boone points out, “Dark Star” doesn’t technically begin until 1:24 (1 minute and 24 seconds) into the released recording up to which point the group is engaged in a collective transitional improvisation strongly suggestive of D Dorian.14 But as such bridging passages, while not essential to the song, call into question the notion of clear beginnings and ends and are constitutive of a listener’s experience of it, I will follow Boone by considering at least the latter section of this transition part of “Dark Star” itself.15 His transcription in fact begins at 0:56 of the released recording which he labels as measure 1.

Immediately, various characteristics of Lesh’s playing in line with what has been stated above stand out. In the first measure, he offsets the overall implied root of D by an eighth note by playing C on the downbeat. Then, from the pickup to measure 3 through the end of measure 8 the bass is the dominant melodic instrument in the ensemble as the two guitars play quite static harmonic and melodic figures behind him. The lead guitar then begins to assert itself to become equal in importance to the bass, but not until measure 16 (1:17 into the track) does Lesh finally play D on a downbeat after joining in with the lead guitar on the three eighth-note figure (B, A#, B), first heard in measure 12, that, repeated twice more, leads into the “Dark Star” introductory eighth-note line in measures 18 and 19.

That it is only at this point that Lesh fulfills the conventional role of the bass by playing the root of the prevailing harmony on the downbeat is significant given that it is here, for the first time, that a sense of harmonic stability is arguably desirable as the group shifts away from its improvisational wanderings and prepares to begin the song’s composed form. Avoiding such clarity before this through the avoidance of any downbeat articulation of the root and the emphasis of other notes such as the repeated A downbeats in measures 5 and 7, the sustained B in measures 8 and 9, and the syncopated G in measures 9 through 11, makes sense not only of Lesh’s statements concerning how he approaches playing the bass, but is also an instance of the “tonal and expressive ambiguity” invoked by Boone in the name of his article.

In the song “Help on the Way” Lesh shows a similar balance between sections of harmonic support through the downbeat articulation of chord roots, and those in which his melodic lines dominate.16 The latter is particularly notable in the first four bars as his syncopated melodic line played above the bass’s 12th fret is accompanied by the guitars and keyboards sounding unambiguous F minor chords. Lesh begins on a high Ab on the downbeat of the first measure and then leaps down to a Bb that then resolves up to a C, rises briefly to an F, before lowering again back to C. This pattern is then repeated again with a minor variation to end on a Db that stands in contrast to the D natural in the same measure held over from the previous bar. This implied modal shift to an Aeolian mode creates a degree of harmonic tension that is then resolved in the following measure as the vocal line enters with the ensemble playing again a definitive F minor chord. Lesh then takes on a more conventional supporting role yet remains extremely rhythmically active not once repeating himself in subsequent measures and only rarely repeating the same rhythm, but never with the same notes, as far as the fifth bar of A2 where the guitar solo begins.

Another one of the Dead’s more improvisationally-focused songs is “Birdsong.” Though its chorus unambiguously expresses E major, the rest of the song (with the exception of a pre-chorus made up of major triads descending in fourths starting on C and ending on E) is in an E Mixolydian modality. I have chosen to transcribe and analyze the introduction to a September 9, 1972 performance on account of it demonstrating quite well the explicitly contrapuntal nature of Lesh’s playing while also showing when, and why, he uses a more conventional approach.17

Its first seven measures find the band setting the rhythmic feel and harmony of the song and Lesh thus sensibly supports this by very simply holding the root after a preliminary dropping down from the fifth. In the 8th measure, however, the first surprise occurs as he leaps up two octaves and a perfect 4th (!) to begin a descending line that outlines a B minor 7th chord, but that, on account of the E major modality, also suggests an E dominant 9 suspended 4th sonority. This seems to act as a point of transition, as on the downbeat of measure 9 the main riff of the song, played in harmony by the two guitars, is heard for the first time. At first Lesh plays a very understated role—returning to E (still the root of the prevailing harmony), although not on the downbeat and an octave higher than before. Two variants of the earlier descending line—both also starting on a high A—are then played before he returns to a steady emphasis of E to accompany the 3rd repetition of the main riff that then leads towards the entrance of the vocal melody.

This 8 bar section beginning in measure 9, in fact, encapsulates in miniature Lesh’s playing style. He at first affirms the song’s key/modality by playing its root, although by here delaying its appearance till the “and” of the 3rd beat he subtly undermines it at the same time. Having done this, however, he moves away from the expected towards the unexpected by creating ambiguity in various ways such as the use of an unusually high instrumental tessitura, unexpected rhythmic emphasis (or, through silence, the complete lack thereof), and the accentuation of chord tones other than the roots and fifths that so pervade most bass lines. Then, in order to provide a stable transition into whatever section is coming next (and in this case to also support the unexpected change of meter to 2/4 in measure 16), he returns to a more conventional approach. In other words, beginning with stability (perhaps mixed with some doubt to foreshadow what is to come), moving to instability and then back to certainty; as musical metaphors, consonance followed by dissonance that then resolves to consonance; or even tonic moving to dominant and back to tonic.

Interestingly, this approach, whether conscious or not, seems to parallel on a small scale the overall form that came to characterize Grateful Dead concerts from the late 1970s onward, and that continues to be used by Lesh’s group and many other groups influenced by the Dead. Whereas the songs in the first set of a performance are, for the most part, relatively short with generally clear divisions, and sometimes lengthy pauses, between them (segues do frequently occur here at least once however)—i.e. consonance—the second set is made up of a continuous, unbroken sequence of music as songs are connected with improvised passages or immediate transitions that gradually become increasingly explorational. As the set proceeds, tonality gives way to modality, then to atonality, that finally arrives at a point where discrete pitches themselves become lost in a mælstrom of “noise”—made up of feedback, synthesizers and low-pitched percussion—that serves as the space of extreme dissonance. The group then slowly improvises out of this seeming sonic chaos to slowly coalesce around a key or mode of a song—i.e. the resolution of the dissonance—that is then followed in continuous succession by 3 or 4 other songs to end the set, and, with an inevitable encore, the concert.

In his late essay “Vers une musique informelle,” in which he (finally!) offers a positive account of the progressive and emancipatory music that he critiqued so many others for not realizing from the 1920s on, Theodor Adorno describes something intriguingly similar:

This throws some light on the category...of equilibrium, the generation of tensions and their resolution through the total form. This norm was the apotheosis of the traditional notion of the organic. In Schoenberg the totality becomes for the last time what the pure particularity of the dominant-tonic succession once was...A composition as a whole creates tension and resolution, just as used to happen in the tonal idiom with its primal model, the cadence. This shift to totality, however, has stripped the parts of their power. In order to become equal to the task, then, which at present remains hidden, it would be necessary to construct down to the last detail the entire texture of the composition…Relationships have to be established between events which succeed each other directly and indirectly—and this applies to events within simultaneous complexes—relationships which themselves provide the necessary stringency [my italics].18

Although not completely applicable given Adorno’s singular, and not surprising, focus on Post-war serialist composition, it does seem to suggest both the substance of Lesh’s style within a composition, as well as the Dead’s, and other groups influenced by them, overall concert form—if understood in its entirety as a composition. Consonance, dissonance and resolution, then, do not solely describe tonal relationships, but are rather, in this wider sense, applicable to the dynamic interaction of all aspects of music.

Thus, as I have shown, not only is the rhetoric surrounding Lesh’s bass playing justified on account of his relatively unique, in pop-rock music, melodic/contrapuntal style, but, reflecting the whole that it is a part of, it is a crucial component in the creation of an entire improvisationally-based performance form, encompassing the most basic tonal musical forms as well as the most abstract sonic cacophonies. That this arguably realizes something Adorno, for the most part, denied was possible post-Beethoven’s Middle “Heroic” period—the bringing together of music both popular and artistically progressive— signifies that an understanding of Lesh’s style might, then, not only be of interest to other pop-rock bassists, but to all those curious as to how such a practice might be possible.


Endnotes

1 Significantly, however, from 1965-67 and 1971-74 they had only a single drummer. They also had at least one, and sometimes two, keyboard players, but as this position was filled by 6 different people in the Dead’s 30 year career any analysis involving them would be made either considerably more limited or complicated by taking their differing styles into consideration.

2 Karl Coryat, “Lesh Is More! Portrait of An American Beauty,” interview with Phil Lesh, Bass Player (March 2008), http://www.bassplayer.com/article/lesh-more-portrait/mar-08/3433 (accessed Dec. 7, 2008).

3 Phil Lesh, “All in the Music,” interview by T. Virgil Parker, College Crier Online 7, no. 3 (Sept. 2008), http://www.collegecrier.com/interviews/int-0042.asp (accessed Dec. 7, 2008). The influence of Bach, and of counterpoint more generally, is invoked repeatedly in discussions of his playing style. The Wikipedia article on him, irrespective of its truth, being perhaps the most obvious example. “Lesh had never played bass before joining the band, which meant he learned ‘on the job’, but it also meant he had no preconceived attitudes about the instrument's traditional ‘rhythm section’ role. Indeed, he has said that his playing style was influenced more by Bach counterpoint than by rock or soul bass players.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Lesh (accessed December 20, 2008).

4 Phil Lesh, Searching for the Sound (New York: Back Bay Books/Little Brown and Co., 2005), 57.

5 An extensive discussion and explanation of this is found in, among many other places, Robert Hodson, Interaction, Improvisation, and Interplay in Jazz (New York: Routledge, 2007)—especially pages 57-60.

6 In a book on bass technique that proclaims its having been endorsed by a number of well-known bassists on its cover, Chuck Sher writes, “[p]laying bass on tunes often involves nothing more than...hitting the root of each chord as it occurs and then playing around with the basic scale, leading you to the root of the next chord.” The Improviser’s Bass Method (Petaluma, CA: Sher Music Co., 1979), 6. His notated examples concur with this in nearly every case (with the notable, and understandable, exception of the section on soloing) as do those found in Chuck Rainey, The Complete Electric Bass Player—Book 2: Playing Concepts & Dexterity (New York: Amsco Publications, 1985), although in the latter this is notably never made explicit, but rather delineated solely through the musical examples.

7 And of the jamband genre, that the Grateful Dead first defined, in general.

8 For examples see http://www.archive.org/details/GratefulDead and http://www.archive.org/details/PhilLeshandFriends—both have extensive recordings of live recordings that can be either listened to online and/or downloaded. One notable example is the Grateful Dead’s September 14, 1974 performance in Munich, Germany (http://www.archive.org/details/gd1974-09-14.28353.sbeok.flac16) in which nearly 18 minutes at the end of the first set is taken up by a musique concrète-like piece that is then followed by a cover of the Johnny Cash song “Big River” at the beginning of the second set (accessed December 21, 2008).

9 Rob Bowman, “Dark Star,” Grayfolded [CD Booklet]. Toronto: Swell/Artifact.

10 The G and E minor chords can, of course, be understood as being not independent harmonies, but rather collections of chord tones over an essentially unchanging A Mixolydian pedal: G major’s G, B and D being respectively the 7th, 9th and 11th; E minor’s singular different note of E being the 5th. The only note of caution is D as it cannot exist as a chord tone simultaneously with A major’s C#, but can replace it to produce a suspended sonority.

11 Recorded Feb. 27, 1969 at the Fillmore West in San Francisco and released on their 1969 live album Live/Dead.

12 Graeme Boone, “Tonal and Expressive Ambiguity in ‘Dark Star,” in Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 176.

13 It is important to note that although Boone does not obviously notate the drums or percussion given his focus on the relationship of melody and harmony, there is an organ being played in this performance as well. As it only rarely plays a role of any importance within the ensemble during the performance, however, its exclusion is of little import to Boone’s overall thesis.

14 Indeed in the performance that the recording is taken from the song “Mountains of the Moon,” which is in D minor, precedes “Dark Star.”

15 Especially in this instance as the entire 23:07 track is specifically referred to as “Dark Star.”

16 This analysis is of the studio recorded version off the 1975 album Blues for Allah, but though often extended in its live performance Lesh’s style remains consistent.

17 Grateful Dead, “Birdsong,” Grateful Dead Live at Hollywood Palladium on 1972-09-19 (Soundboard), 11 min., 39 sec.,; streaming audio; from Internet Archive, Grateful Dead Collection, http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-09-09.sbd.popi.14086.sbeok.shnf (accessed Dec. 28, 2008).

18 Theodor Adorno, “Vers une musique informelle,” in Quasi una Fantasia (London: Verso, 1992), 311.


Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor. “Vers une musique informelle.” In Quasi una Fantasia. London: Verso, 1992.

Boone, Graeme. “Tonal and Expressive Ambiguity in ‘Dark Star.” In Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Bowman, Rob. “Dark Star,” Grayfolded [CD Booklet]. Toronto: Swell/Artifact.

Coryat, Karl. “Lesh Is More! Portrait of An American Beauty,” interview with Phil Lesh, Bass Player (March 2008). http://www.bassplayer.com/article/lesh-more-portrait/mar-08/3433 (accessed Dec. 7, 2008).

Hodson, Robert. Interaction, Improvisation, and Interplay in Jazz. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Lesh, Phil. “All in the Music,” By T. Virgil Parker, College Crier Online 7, no. 3 (Sept. 2008). http://www.collegecrier.com/interviews/int-0042.asp (accessed Dec. 7, 2008).

———. Searching for the Sound. New York: Back Bay Books/Little Brown and Co., 2005.

Rainey, Chuck. The Complete Electric Bass Player—Book 2: Playing Concepts & Dexterity. New York: Amsco Publications, 1985.

Sher, Chuck. The Improviser’s Bass Method. Petaluma, CA: Sher Music Co., 1979.



Discography

Grateful Dead. “Birdsong,” Grateful Dead Live at Hollywood Palladium on 1972-09-19. Soundboard; 11 min., 39 sec.,; streaming audio. From Internet Archive, Grateful Dead Collection, http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-09-09.sbd.popi.14086.sbeok.shnf (accessed Dec. 28).

————. “Dark Star.” Live/Dead. Warner Bros., CD B000002KB0 ℗ 1990; originally as LP in 1969.

————. “Help on the Way.” Blues for Allah. Arista. CD B000002VJH ℗ 1995; originally as LP in 1975.

On choosing to believe

In Pierre Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice I recently came across a reference to Bernard Williams’ essay ‘Deciding to Believe” that I find perfectly encapsulates the mind of many religious believers. Bourdieu writes that, “even if is possible to decide to believe p, one cannot both believe p and believe that the belief that p stems from a decision to believe p; if the decision to believe p is to be carried out successfully, it must also obliterate itself from the memory of the believer.” (Bourdieu, P., The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Polity Press), p.49.) A little convoluted, but it’s pretty much a perfect retort to what is for Mormon missionaries their rhetorical trump card, Moroni 10: 4 from The Book of Mormon: “(4) And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

The problem with this passage, of course, is that it’s as near perfect a statement of circular reasoning as one can imagine. If you are at the point where you're “ask[ing] God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ…with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ” whether the BOM is true then you've already decided to believe what it is you’re ostensibly asking to find out! As Williams and Bourdieu point out, however, for this to work requires that the initial choice to believe in it be excised from one’s conscious memory.

As luck would have it, only a day or two after I found this passage in the LOF two Mormon missionaries rang my doorbell. Being the friendly person I am I invited them in for a chat—I do like a good debate after all! After finding out that most of family are members and that I grew up one they of course wanted to know why I am no longer. The reasons are many, but what I told them is the point of this post: given the lack of archaeological, linguistic, anthropological (etc.) evidence of the BOM; given the reactionary political views of LDS Church leaders ever since its inception (polygamy and general subordination of women, support for slavery then merely not allowing blacks the priesthood, entrenched homophobia etc.); given the absurdity of the Word of Wisdom as a moral code; given the highly repressive and, therefore, guilt-inducing attitude towards sex that is promulgated by the Church; given that while I was a believing member I never felt like I belonged or, indeed, was ever really happy (and I could go on)—for what possible reason would I want to choose to believe in it so that I could pray about it with any of the qualifications that the text of the BOM itself demands to confirm my requisite pre-existing belief?

As one would expect the missionaries didn’t stay very long after they realized that I wasn’t going to be bowled over by their protestations of supposed knowledge and truths.

How incredibly informative

I'm in the midst of doing some research work for a musicology professor at McGill (where I'm now in the first year of a Master's in Musicology program) copying song rating lists from Billboard magazines from 1939 to 1945 and in the process have come across many strange, funny and sometimes rather disturbing exhibits of North American culture of the time. Not wanting to keep them just to myself I thought I'd post them here for others to enjoy.

First one up is from the August 12, 1939 issue of Billboard magazine.


Who would have thought that "cigarets" could be so important?

October already

I haven't posted anything in months yet again and thought I might apologize yet again I might as well accept my own frequency of blogging as the reality that it is. I did want to finish posting the videos I took this summer anyways so here's another one...