Larry Kart

I don't follow you. Adorno, like him or not (and I sure have mixed feelings), was able in part (if you believe what he says) to write what he did in this sphere because he became quite aware of and resisted the positivist habits that he describes here as being typical of American academia in the late 1930s/early 1940s, when he was in direct contact with it: "The intellect is unconditionally equated with the subject who bears it, without any recognition of its independence and autonomy. Above all, organized scholarship scarcely realizes to how small a degree works of art can be understood in terms of the mentality of those who produce them." If you mean that Robin Kelley actually or potentially believes and proceeds quite otherwise, why would his work and Adorno's be a much of a muchness? But on second thought, you probably mean that in the works by them that you mention above, both Adorno and Kelley donned significantly different sorts of intellectual "hats" in order to fit those particular tasks/situations. If that is what you meant, it seems to me that Adorno, for better or worse, only wore one such hat, though of course his thinking altered over time (as his head swelled?). About Kelley's work, I don't yet have enough info to have an opinion. In any case, here's an Adorno passage that may clarify this IMO potentially significant difference (paradoxically so, perhaps, because typically for Teddy it's a bit clotted): "Another ... already established scholar considered my analyses of light music as 'expert opinion.' He entered these [i.e. Adorno's "opinions"] on the side of reactions [to] rather than analysis of the actual object (i e., the music), which he wanted to exclude from analysis [because he thought of the music] as a mere stimulus." Note: What inside [] is mine; what's inside () is Adorno's.

Well, "closing [your] mother" would be painful. Sorry -- couldn't resist.

Yes, but that's a charge more properly levelled at the trad (i.e. non-'New') jazz scholarship that you laud above to the exclusion of more socio-cultural angled work! I don't see how you reach that conclusion. Certainly trad jazz scholarship was/is not without it flaws (these IMO mostly the result of the individual scholar or scholar-critic having less skill or information to work with than one might wish rather than being the result of methodological errors or prejudices). But what I see in much of the more socio-cultural angled work of the New Jazz Scholarship (often in the name of correcting the supposed methodological errors and prejudices of the past) is a lot of fairly blatant power-accumulating operations -- for their own sweet sake and also to nail down what look like to me like P.C. conclusions that have been reached up front. Further, and most important to the point Adorno was making and that you raise, the NJS exhibits little or no humility in the face of the art work itself (seldom, in fact, talks about music in musical terms), because said music is, from the NJS perspective, almost entirely "evidence" of the so readily decodable (by the right NJS guru) effects of social context (which is what the NJS cares most about anyhow -- and even there, as I've said above, I mistrust their motives). In any case, under such conditions, the "independence and autonomy" of the work that Adorno speaks of would seem to be far more out of reach than it ever was before.

About the arts and academia (in its American form in particular), Allen for one may dig this quote from our old pal Theodor Adorno, which I admit may not be easy to disentangle but seems to me to be worth the trouble: "Obviously it is very difficult in America ... to comprehend the notion of the objectivity of anything intellectual. The intellect is unconditionally equated with the subject who bears it, without any recognition of its independence and autonomy. Above all, organized scholarship scarcely realizes to how small a degree works of art can be understood in terms of the mentality of those who produce them." Can't be sure, but I would guess that what the translator renders as "mentality" might be better understood in American English as "personality." Adorno is in part talking about the assumption that information about the artist's personal makeup will fairly directly and reliably yield information about his or her artistic intentions, methods, thinking, etc. -- and vice versa, of course.

Think I have about everything tenor saxophonist Walt Weiskopf has recorded as a leader, plus some things where he's a sideman. I do like his playing, but looking back that's a good bit over the top comparatively speaking. It's also an example of what Jim was talking about a while back on this thread -- you dig a guy, you buy his next album (which comes out maybe a year and a half later, is in much the same vein but shows variation/growth), then you buy his next, his next, his next ... and whoops, ten or more years later, there you are. Don't regret it, but it's something my heirs may puzzle over.

Read the story; it's a very good one, definitely in the mordant vein of "Nightfall." As for how it fits into my "thesis," I guess I've already laid that out enough until I actually go on to write that part of the chapter that it may be part of and see how it links up to other things there. An especially interesting, shrewd (as one might expect) document on the nature of "classic modern" science fiction is from one of its chief masters: Robert Heinlein's 1959 essay "Science Fiction: Its Nature, Faults, and Virtues," which is in Damon Knight's collection "Turning Points: Essays on the Art of Science Fiction."

Pullman's terrific Bud bio seems to be getting very close to lift off; just got an indication from him of that a few weeks ago. Perhaps the advent of the Kelley Monk bio will light a fire under Pullman's publisher, a very good university press whose approval procedures for manuscripts (unfortunately for Pullman and for us) would do credit to the Knights Templar crossed with a taffy factory. About the Kelley Monk bio, I noticed that the four blurbs for it on Amazon are from two musicians (Chick Corea and Geri Allen), a scholar whose specialty is black political and social/cultural history but not music (David Levering Davis), and a New Jazz Studies figure from Columbia (Farah Jasmine Griffin). Nothing from anyone who would be regarded as a notable figure in the world of jazz scholarship. But the proof is in the reading.

Me either -- I love, or used to love, E.E. (Doc) Smith and others. But Space Opera that comes in the wake of what once would have called "modern" science fiction is, by and large, science fiction's version of Wynton Marsalis -- "traditional" in demeanor but without the core flame/dream/ethos/what have you that first-generation Space Opera had. IMO, of course.

Got the Asimov collection it's in -- "The Winds of Change" -- at the library. Will read the story ASAP, perhaps will report back if it turns out to fit my belief that this story accidentally predicted how in the face of actual space flight the science fiction genre itself would be altered (and IMO would virtually drip away in slow motion into streams of fantasy, space opera, counterculture-tinged woo-woo stuff, feminist tendentiousness, just plain pretentiousness, etc.). If so, it's funny that Asimov didn't collect this 1957 story for almost two decades because he thought it had been almost immediately rendered pointless by the fact of actual space flight. In one sense, sure, but as I see it, not at all.

Some 45 years ago, while under the influence of a controlled substance, I concluded that John Lewis' piano style (an MJQ recording was playing at the party) was mincingly effeminate (not that there's anything wrong with that, etc.). It look me a long time before I could put that "insight" aside.

Wow -- many thanks, Werf. You guys are/this place is great, not that this is news.

That sounds tantalizingly close, but in the story I'm thinking of it's not a psychological experiment, even though the astronauts go mad in the end at the sight of the fake stage-set moon's unfinished other side. That was just penny-pinching, and the astronauts saw the unfinished other side of the "moon" because someone made a mistake at the control panel that day.

Red Courage was an interesting tenor player.

Found lists of all the stories that were printed in Astounding and Galaxy, and looking at the period I'm sure it came from and assuming I'd recognize the title, I don't see anything.

Sorry, Teasing -- I've yet to develop a taste for outer space exotica, unless Bob Graettinger's stuff counts.

I'm sure I read it one of the science fiction magazines I read regularly back then -- Astounding, Galaxy, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction -- not in a book. A fellow addict of my vintage says that it sounds a bit dark for Astounding and suggests Galaxy.

Far be it from me to endorse Fresh Sound pirate jobs, but in the name of accuracy, it's three LPs of material on two CDs, and it can be had for $29.89 "from these sellers" (as they say): http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00...p;condition=new

Actually, that Signal album was titled "Red Rodney 1957" -- reissued on another label it became "The Red Arrow." That album, coupled with other worthwhile Rodney from the period, is available now in this form: http://www.amazon.com/Rodney-Quintets-1955...6471&sr=1-2

I love this one: http://www.vee-jay.net/jazz/birdlives/birdlives-v1.htm for everyone on it: Ira, Nicky Hill (almost certainly his best record), Jodie Christian, Donald Garrett, and drummers Wilbur Campbell and Dorel Anderson. I was there that night at the Birdhouse. Another gem that's easy to overlook is is the 1957 Red Rodney album that orginally was on Signal as "The Red Arrow." Some of Ira's best tenor playing. And the bass-drum teams! Oscar Pettiford throughout, coupled with Elvin Jones on one side and Philly Joe on the other.

Or maybe "The Dark Side of the Moon."

-- title and author if possible. The story had to have been from before the time of actual space flight but when men were being shot up in rockets or that was in the offing, probably 1953-55 (which was when I was a hardcore addict of the genre). In the story, the first flight that is going to circumnavigate the moon, and thus be able to see the side that always is hidden from Earth, is launched. In fact, deliberately unbeknownst to the crew, the flight is a simulated one (a training exercise) and never leaves the ground, and the image of the far side of the moon that the crew eventually sees by mistake is an incomplete half-sphere -- a stage-set-like mockup (left incomplete to save money) -- whereupon the crew goes insane. It sounds like an Asimov, but that may be because it kind of echoes "Nightfall." A friend says that Algis Budrys wrote several stories that were wryly skeptical about the realities of space flight (the story was mordant in tone) before actual space flight began, but I can't find a checklist of Budrys stories and might not recognize the title if I saw it. A logical (perhaps inevitable) title for the story BTW would have been "The Other Side of the Moon." I'd like this info to fill in a gap in a memoir-like book that I'm trying to write. It's mostly about jazz, but there are digressions, and the grip that science fiction had on some of my generation is one of them.

I've had two Subarus in a row -- a 2003 Outback wagon and then a 2007 Legacy sedan. (The 2003 wagon was still fine; sold it 18 months after my wife passed away when I finally grasped the fact that one person didn't need two cars.) Terrific, top-value cars in their price range IMO, especially if you live where there's winter weather. All Subarus have all-wheel drive, and theirs is the best such system I believe. Can't count the number of days I was able to handle road conditions that most other cars, SUVs, etc. were having big trouble with.

Last night heard Hypercolor with Lukas Ligeti, drums (yes, Gyorgy's son); James Ilgenfritz, bass; and Eyal Maoz, guitar. Ligeti seemed quite heavy-handed to me, the bassist and guitarist were better, but basically it was an updated "power" trio with arty/shaggy trimmings, not my cup of tea. Three tunes was enough.

Just getting into it and am stunned by the relaxed intensity of the music-making. The group of four pieces from the "Anatomy of the Murder" score (the novel's author was in the audience that night) is a g-- damn tapestry. Am looking forward to the 11-minute (!!) "Mood Indigo." The Blue Note was Ellington's favorite club, and it shows. The trumpet section for this engagement was Clark Terry, Cat Anderson, Willie Cook, Ray Nance, and Shorty Baker. http://www.amazon.com/Live-Blue-Note-Duke-...0340&sr=1-1

As for the music, I've only listened to the side of somewhat updated/rearranged for the S-F instrumentation Finegan charts for the Miller band, but at least two of them are really nutty -- recastings of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto -- while another that sounds like it would have to be weird/queasy, "Song of the Volga Boatman," turns out to be just gorgeous, on a Gil Evans level. But then Evans arranged classical pieces for Claude Thornhill.