Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Bewitched was also v popular in 60s Japan especially among girls, who loved the idea of living a normal life but secretly having magic powers.
this directly led to the creation of "magical girl" shows for girls, a huge subgenre e.g. Sailor Moon, and shows are still being made to this day.

so I found an old thread where I said "run the gamete of emotions" and someone was laughing, thinking I was making a pun, and today I realized it's spelled 'gamut' and although I knew "gamete" also meant reproductive cell, I thought it had a secondary meaning and not that I was, like, well, spelling another word wrong.

Holy shit

Introduced to musique concrete pretty young, like Davidovsky age 10 or something. Have typed and spoken the term upwards of 100k times in my life, have some 75 records on vinyl that could be classified as musique concrete. I’m a fan.

I realized this morning that “musique concrete” is a literal description of the immovability of the material. I have thought until just now that the “concrete” was a broader aesthetic descriptor. “The sound of asphalt”, that is. God I am dense

I thought it meant the use of "concrete" sounds, as in sounds that exist in the real world as opposed to electronic sound.

I tried reading Pierre Schaeffer's book on it but gave up half way through.

it arrives a little after max bill's concrete art and a little before the brazilian concrete poetry movement, so even when the practical analogies (of material, of method) are not necessarily easy to draw between these different artforms, the word was clearly in the air in the late 1940s, meaning as a minimum "this thing we're doing now"

it also (maybe slightly retroactively?) is in opposition to 'abstract music', which was for Schaeffer the Germans doing sums on their calculators and fiddling around with how to organise notes without, says he and other common criticism, much concern for what was going on sonically.

my understanding is basically identical to yours. i guess i've always understood it in the sense of "concret" = tangible, palpable. so it's like a music of textures that to some extent compels the composer to make decisions based on the sounds themselves, rather than from a theoretical formulation about a relationship between intervals (i.e., "abstract" music, like you say)

... I always understood it like Tom D.

This is Schaeffer from his second journal (1950-51), as published in A la recherche d'une musique concrete in 1952, when he was still setting out his stall. Electronic music and Darmstadt ultra-serialism were not at that point the juggernauts they would become over rhe nest few years.

(also adding: the entire text of recherche was not translated until 2012 afaict. I can't judge from the Englished PDF I have if any of the text was adjusted in subsequent years, though I suspect it wouldn't be titled “journal" if it was: Schaeffer iirc was given to having changes of heart about seemingly basic stuff, especially theoretical stuff… )

"Let us pass over the dispute about terminology. Beyond the question of terminology I am happy to enter into debate: in the same way, where figurative and nonfigurative painting are concerned, the debate, if it is about the word painting, is of no interest. It should be about the thing itself. In other words, painting fifty years ago was a representation, and also, it goes without saying, an interpretation. The cubist break with this introduced a new subject for painting, so-called abstract painting. Simi­larly, with Western music, for centuries music was expression, i.e., lan­guage. Suddenly concrete music to some extent breaks with this, and instead of language it introduces an object that no longer has to express itself. The contrasting adjectives— "abstract" for painting and "concrete" for music— in fact demonstrate how alike they are. Classically, music and painting are indeed at opposite poles from each other, at the two poles of reality. Painting is born of an external reality, a spatial and material world. Music, which can be nonfigurative, is born of an inner reality. It is easy to establish connections between concrete music and abstract painting, tangible realities, whereas descriptive music is as illusory as musical painting. Some works of concrete music immediately call for graphic translation, and it would not be impossible, for example, to compose a concrete music based on an abstract painting and which would express the similarities of matter and form. Such a painting would in any case be a better score than notes on lined paper. And so there are indubitably connections between these two new phenomena that build a bridge, this time firm, between painting and music.

"Often, in the course of the doubts that assailed me over these last four years, I would take heart by thinking that the adventure begun by cuiism was continuing under my very eyes. And yet painters had been faced with the problem of a new art for fifty years without its being so clearly resolved. How, after four years, could we reasonably demand of concrete music that it define itself as a new music or as an antimusic? Perhaps we should have baptized it "plastic music" or "sound plastic"? Why would I, who often left the studio as sick at heart as from an exhibi­tion of modern painting, tempted to destroy it all, have persevered if not because of that great precedent? Several generations of painters had persevered in abstract painting, which some of them were even beginning to call 'concrete,' in just the same way that I could have called what we had undertaken 'abstract music'. Only the future would give an­ swers, and perhaps there would be several."

part of the issue here is that he seems to want to use abstract in two colliding ways:
(i) to argue that ALL scored music (and not just the slide-rule-clutching weirdo avant-garde) (which as noted had not yet really foregathered in 1950-51) is abstract in the sense that it emerges from organisations of the written note as the basic figure
(ii) to argue that "concrete" in music means much the same as "abstract" has come to mean in art, viz an epochal break with the practice of the past

it is a bit weird to say "concrete" and "abstract" mean the same thing....

or not the same maybe but "alike"

… the practical analogies (of material, of method) are not necessarily easy to draw between these different artforms …

― mark s, Sunday, 10 March 2024 14:34 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

in fact i think schaeffer was never a particularly strong or clear-headed theoretician/rhetorician -- esp.when up against cage or stockhausen or lol o/g wordthug boulez -- but he had actually established the deeper and more radical project: a lasting school of research studios into the practicalities of the artistic organisation of all possible sound

but he is correct that “abstract“ is a perfectly plausible term for all music ever and to intuit that this introduces a big muddle into the binary (and ditto the noise/signal binary) -- or would be correct if he had said this out loud early on and constructed his arguments around it

the philosopher paul feyerabend's last, unfinished work was about the centuries-long project of western society to abstract the wrinkly real world - which he calls the world of "abundance" - into reductive schemas that allow for rapid exchange, problem-solving, reproduction, etc - which were in turn regarded as more real. and that the success of this project in certain critical fields eg technology was such that abundance was "conquered". (the full title of the pieced-together book is "the conquest of abundance: a tale of abstraction versus the richness of being")

seems like "concrete" music aligns with an attempt to insist on the irreducibility of the wrinkles (possibly a point of view made more thinkable by the advent of recording technology)

Xenakis was very unimpressed by Schaeffer's attempts at theorizing but thought he was right about concrete music v. electronic music.

me sowing (= finding a second-hand copy of xenakis's book formalized music that wasn't insanely expensive): "haha fuck yeah!!! yes!!"
me reaping (= attempting to read my inexpensive second-hand copy of xenakis's book formalized music): "well this fucking sucks"

(it is VERY mathsy)

Thanks Tracer, that Feyerabend sounds interesting....

So who has been most successful then?What is the "wrinkleiest" music ever?

(xp) I've got a book of interviews with Xenakis, I will stick to that.

Sophie Winkleman (Big Suze in Peep Show & now a minor royal) is Claudia Winkleman's half-sister.

Clue was in the name I guess

cc - as in cc-ing someone in on an email - is short for carbon copy.

That “Jody Sings” by Masters of Reality is clearly about getting stoned and watching Sesame Street

Bewitched was also v popular in 60s Japan especially among girls, who loved the idea of living a normal life but secretly having magic powers.
this directly led to the creation of "magical girl" shows for girls, a huge subgenre e.g. Sailor Moon, and shows are still being made to this day.

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi)

specifically "bewitched" was a huge influence on Little Witch Sally, often held to be the first "magical girl" show

fun fact: magical girls are gay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NClwb_CKWvI

(little witch sally wasn't gay, she was, like, six. magical girls have only really been gay since sailor moon.)

I saw an ad on a music magazine in the 90s for a record by a band called two bit thief, and the design of the ad made me think that the singer was a dwarf. Today I remembered the band while looking at the mother love bone poll (there was an ad for this band in the same magazine), so I looked up the band and they all seem to be of regular height. The record is called "Another sad story...in the big city" which could be a megadeth album title.

Martha Plimpton is Keith Carradine’s daughter.

If I knew that before today, I forgot it.

I saw an ad on a music magazine in the 90s for a record by a band called two bit thief, and the design of the ad made me think that the singer was a dwarf. Today I remembered the band while looking at the mother love bone poll (there was an ad for this band in the same magazine), so I looked up the band and they all seem to be of regular height. The record is called "Another sad story...in the big city" which could be a megadeth album title.

I loved this post

lol same

If I knew that before today, I forgot it.

Maybe he is the subject of “Easy to Be Hard.”

i was traveling for work and nearly home when my wife texted a picture of one of the cats saying "she won't stop yelling." i said "tell arrow [the cat] to put a sock in it, i'll be there soon!" only i accidentally typed cock instead of sock. i corrected it before hitting send, but it made me pause. was it originally cock and sock is the "clean" version? cuz i hate that if so!

Martha Plimpton is Keith Carradine’s daughter.

― just1n3, Thursday, March 14, 2024 1:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

No way!! I had no idea.

Blimey is a minced oath.

Cockney Rebel bassist Paul Jeffreys died in the Lockerbie bombing, somehow that tidbit passed me by until now

Same!

Wonder what they have on him in the archives. Maybe I will find out.

Just looked at this: http://paul-jeffreys.co.uk/ Hadn't realized it was their honeymoon!

jesus! :(

Watched Marat/Sade the other day and only just realised where Arthur Lee got his final words from for "The Red Telephone". Even the triple chant of "freedom".

... i will have to look into that

The title is held by his son Christopher Guest, the fifth Baron, who succeeded him in 1996. Christopher Guest is a film director, writer, actor and musician, married to the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who is therefore the current Lady Haden-Guest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Haden-Guest

In New Zealand, the Classic Kiwi Dip has been a party staple for decades. I love this stuff. It’s a can of reduced cream mixed with a packet Maggi onion soup and a bit of malt vinegar. I love this stuff so much that I bring back several pairings of the onion soup and cream every time I visit. I’ve tried premade onion dips in the US and they’ve never tasted even close.

A couple months ago at my PiL’s house, onion dip was being passed around. It tasted almost exactly like the CKD! “Omg what’s the recipe?” I asked my MiL.

Lipton’s onion soup mix and sour cream 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ I guess because all the previous onion dips I’d tried were sour cream-based, I assumed that was the issue and I needed reduced cream specifically.

Tbf, CKD does benefit a little extra from the malt vinegar.

a little malt vin in the onion dip does sound good

Not sure how I’m gonna break this news to my fellow kiwis, since for generations we’ve been under the impression our CKD is extremely unique.

Does the vinegar curdle the cream?

I think I’ve used the Knorr French Onion mix before for the same. Looks like they have a dip recipe on the bag sometimes, although theirs appears to include mayonnaise in addition to sour cream

https://www.knorr.com/us/en/r/french-onion-dip.html/107790

lmao my dad used to make the onion soup mix plus sour cream combo all the time and I was SPRINTING to tell you

We are not kiwi of course just your everyday snack connoisseurs

French onion dips a thing in Aus too but yeah we just make it with sour cream and Continental french onion soup in a packet. I'd be curious to try an evap milk/malt vinegar combo instead!

(assuming reduced cream = evaporated milk ? I am maybe rong)