Mumford and Sons

Well, just Coldplay for rustics.

The Stones at Glastonbury

I've always thought, at least since those first doses of Gimme Shelter or Street Fighting Man, fought out across suburban living rooms at seventeen wafting long scarves and doing Jagger's moves and colliding with G-Plan; that the Stones told you how to do just about everything, even if it ended up a house extension in Clapham.
I think this is still the case.
One of the loveliest things about staying up to watch them this evening was that image of Keef not unlike a wonky building with a paunch, unconcerned for anything but his own little moments, the parts he knew how to play so well and those moments (and they are just moments) he gets to play on top and under and all through and those moments he doesn't play at all (which appears, rather delightfully, to be quite a lot of the time). That man knows the meaning of architecture alright, he understands the feel of it,  the way it can piece together, when to play and not to play. He once said; 'If I'm dancing it's either going very well or very badly'. Too right. Anybody who takes to the stage with any passion understands that one.
I LOVED watching the Stones tonight, I loved the fact that they cared but did not, that Mick Taylor came in, and that it was all....well what you might expect, but they deserve it. They stand for stuff that is not so much 'dope', as 'gas'! Above, Ronnie Wood, from his Twitter or whatever.
Meanwhile I also loved Primal Scream, or rather Bobby Gillespe's excellent version of the Stones as the warm up. I thought his perfect puce suit was, well, sort of affectionate, very smart.

On Method

They always ask you about your methodology, they always do. And it always makes me ill to admit I haven't got one. It gives me a pain in the neck. To admit that my method might approximate more to rummaging around in the attic, or to a delight in spontaneity, or to the rather tricky business of sticking together words on paper or sentiments from the rostrum to make effective stories (which means so many of my students lecture notes are haunted by expletives) might be bad. Weirdly I know it isn't.
One student told me the other day; that she had found a set while rummaging in her attic, and had kept them, just for the expletives. I found some joy in that, it eased the pain in my neck.
It's all a search for something. I never give out those 'unit evaluation forms' either, that's a bit embarrassing too. If I was to be asked by those with furrowed brow, I would just have to admit that I just don't think they are very rock'n'roll; that it's a bit peculiar to ask an audience after a couple of hours of attempted inspiration: well can you all go off now and evaluate exactly just how inspirational I was! In general, after performances which are any good, even those which are a bit duff, such stuff is embarrassing. That of course, to many an academic ear, is very arrogant indeed. Personally I reply I'm sick and tired of a culture which has decided you can't even buy anything on Ebay without having to state you enjoyed the experience.
I've got a morning off between examinations and meetings and I need to nurse my pain in the neck, so I read the poems of Emily Dickinson, and I look carefully at the sketchbooks of Le Corbusier and I wrestle with the pain of Louis Sullivan all in the hope my pain will go away. All of them hated the academy, and all of them were brilliant.

The Tabloid Press

For the benefit of Daily Mirror readers who today believe that a young Maths teacher killed his fifteen year old lover, he didn't. If anybody killed anybody it was the mother who 'killed' her relationship with her daughter by setting the forces of Interpol or whoever in a pan European hunt for a daughter who skipped off with her lover in a way that lovers have done for centuries.
One of the interesting things about the tabloid press is it tries very hard not to say anything. In this case it makes out the mother to be reasonable. In general you can't easily work out, for instance, if Murdoch is interested in politics or not, despite his enormous influence. That's the trick. For millions of readers the appearance of balance lets them rest safely back on their own preconceptions with nothing to worry about. In fact, the British press tries very hard to make sure nobody thinks at all, or reassures them that if they are for a moment caught out by events, their preconceptions are just fine. Since the preconceptions have been built up steadily via decades of misinformation this might be seen as a problem.
Certainly in this case, the baying of the masses for what might as well be the lynching of the unfortunate lover is callous beyond belief, and anybody who thinks things are ever going to work out in that particular family after this ridiculous episode is an idiot.
However, in the USA things may be even worse. I read last week that viewers of FOX news (a Murdoch channel) are deemed more stupid than people who don't watch the news at all.

Giving the Game Away

There are particular phrases of insouciant evil or just plaintive agony that hit between the eyes. Here's one from the Nazis:  'We are going to shoot you now, in family groups'.
Here's another, not quite a phrase, but a story unbearably true, that of the seventies Hollywood film director who decided one day to commit suicide by swimming out to into the Pacific, but couldn't find the right trunks to buy when he went out shopping. How desperate and brilliant and all encompassing is that!
PS: How about this? Can any dictator be taken seriously after calling his eastern headquarters 'The Wolf's Lair'? Surely those commanders must have made many jokes at Hitlers ridiculous 'look I'm a wolf!' posturing, it sounds like a very bad Iron Maiden album.

Please Excuse the Lack of Posts

It's the end of year, and therefore politic to shut up and carry on; you get aches and pains, your stomach knots up, all because those bastards confused knowledge with money, in fact they confused everything with money. That was a really bad idea. Soon be back.

How to Understand Work vs Product

I was thinking some more about The Eagles and some more about Steely Dan, and I ended up figuring, suddenly awake at around four thirty this morning; what if I tried to apply the theories of the Production of Space as espoused by Henri Lefebvre, to the music of these particular groups; a Marxist criticism of MOR! (See post below)
The division, if there is one (it is somewhat unclear) between work and product is something that Lefebvre tries to work out. Coolly, I have a simple illustration. We should think of the music of The Eagles as product, it reproduces itself, it enjoys competition, it excels, but we might still think of the music of Steely Dan as work, for whilst the mechanisms for it's production were peculiar and indeed obsessively repetitive, they are certainly not to be confused with repetition itself.