Why does LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka) hate Hard bop?

[Larry Kart]

"...a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find."

You gotta love that "hard to find."

[JSngry]

"...a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find."

You gotta love that "hard to find."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyLByabn4co

[AllenLowe]

Larry - you'll appreciate this from Scott McLemee's review:

"As mentioned, his romantic life sounds complicated. Brother West is a reminder of Samuel Johnson's description of remarriage as the triumph of hope over experience. One paragraph of musings following his third divorce obliged me to put the book down and think about things for a long while. Here it is:

"The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high -- and they apply equally to both of us. I seek full-blast mutual intensity, fully fledged mutual acceptance, full-blown mutual flourishing, and fully felt peace and joy with each other. This requires a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find. And it shares a depth of trust and openness for a genuine soul-sharing with a mutual respect for a calling to each other and to others. Does such a woman exist for me? Only God knows and I eagerly await this divine unfolding. Like Heathcliff and Catherine's relationship in Emily Bronte's remarkable novel Wuthering Heights or Franz Schubert's tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat (D.960) I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!"

No doubt this is meant to be inspirational. It is at any rate exemplary. Rendered more or less speechless, I pointed the passage out to my wife.

She looked it over and said, "Any woman who reads this needs to run in the opposite direction when she sees him coming."

Returning to the book, I found, just a few pages later, that West was getting divorced for a fourth time. Seldom does reader response yield results that prove so empirically verifiable."

Edited March 21, 2012 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

From Amiri Baraka hating hard bop to Cornel West's history of failed marriages.

Nice thread.

[Larry Kart]

From Amiri Baraka hating hard bop to Cornel West's history of failed marriages.

Nice thread.

Next up -- Monica Lewinsky.

[Pete C]

From Amiri Baraka hating hard bop to Cornel West's history of failed marriages.

Nice thread.

No thread is a straight line.

[JSngry]

And not all freeway traffic results in 50 car pileups.

[Larry Kart]

And not all freeway traffic results in 50 car pileups.

And why -- compared to any number of other arguably wayward and or evolving-at-oblique-angles threads, including some (e.g the Quincy Jones thread) in which IIRC you yourself veered toward the Bastille bearing a torch in your hand -- is this one a "50 car pileup"?

[AllenLowe]

just remember: you can put a sieve in water - but you can't put water in a sieve.

Edited March 21, 2012 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

And you can't make a camel lead you to water, even if you'd drink it when you got there!

[Larry Kart]

Shoot -- I mistakenly deleted Jim's last post while trying to delete/modify my response to it. Please repost yours, Jim.

[JSngry]

Sorry, it was an improvisation. It got deleted, oh well. I know it wasn't malicious, you're not the kind of guy. Now, it's like, reposting turns music in the air, gone forever, never to return, into a fart, in the air, sure to linger, and sure to come back again, even less fresh than before.

All I can say for sure is that "Bernadette" is the truth.

This other stuff...not so much.

[Larry Kart]

Then I guess I won't reply to it.

[JSngry]

Dude, it's "Bernadette". There is no reply. Not from you, not from me, not from anybody. Stuff like that is just... BAM, here's life, now go along and live. Commentating on it is just wasting time away from doing that.

But that's "Bernadette". Not all things are.

[AllenLowe]

actually it contained the true meaning of life.

[JSngry]

One of them, at least.

[Pete C]

It's the same old song.

[JSngry]

Yes, we have no bananas.

[JSngry]

We have no bananas today, that is...

[danasgoodstuff]

http://idelsohnsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/blacksabbath_linernotes.pdf thought this might be of interest to some posters here...

[Pete C]

http://idelsohnsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/blacksabbath_linernotes.pdf thought this might be of interest to some posters here...

Definitely of interest. There are also airchecks of Ethel Waters singing "Eli Eli," not on that compilation. I found this quote:

That is why Ethel Waters, for whom “Eli, Eli” was a staple, could say both that the song “tells the tragic story of the Jews as much as one song can … I felt I was telling the story of my own race, too.” But also: “Jewish people in every town seemed to love the idea of me singing their song. They crowded the theaters to hear it, and they would tell one another, ‘The schvartze sings ‘Eli, Eli!’ The schvartze!”

http://www.thejewishweek.com/arts/music/blacks_and_jews_musical_gray_area

And there's a Black Sabbath exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF.

http://www.thecjm.org/index.php?option=com_ccevents&scope=exbt&task=detail&oid=51

I wonder why they didn't call the album Black Shabbos. It was good enough for these guys:

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20120870,00.html

Edited March 21, 2012 by Pete C

[robertoart]

Barak's line about Jesus and the money lenders just seemed like another cheap shot at the Jews.

West's retort that "I'm a Christian" doesn't sound too out of context given other comments I have heard West speak.

He constantly defers to Christianity as a buffer between his rage at the injustices of America, and the use of violence. Him maintaining a Christian stance in his otherwise Socialist position doesn't seem hypocritical to me.

Baraka, not Barak. Let's not cause a second crucifixion..

[robertoart]

try this full quote from West, oi veh:

“The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high -- and they apply equally to both of us. I seek full-blast mutual intensity, fully fledged mutual acceptance, full-blown mutual flourishing, and fully felt peace and joy with each other. This requires a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find. And it shares a depth of trust and openness for a genuine soul-sharing with a mutual respect for a calling to each other and to others. Does such a woman exist for me? Only God knows and I eagerly await this divine unfolding. Like Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship in Emily Bronte’s remarkable novel Wuthering Heights or Franz Schubert’s tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat (D.960) I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!”

Yes it's a bit embarrassing.

Seems like he's had a lot of fun trying to reach his ideal though.

Anyway since when does bed hopping need to be a negative critical factor in the life of ideas.

And who would want to really examine the dialectic of 'long term true love' between pragmatism and (lack of) opportunity.

"...a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find."

You gotta love that "hard to find."

Ditto.

[robertoart]

and here's an evisceration of his work; read it:

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee267

Yes I read it. The reader comments underneath are just as interesting, and intelligent. Sure beats scrolling through Youtube comments

[Larry Kart]

Larry - you'll appreciate this from Scott McLemee's review:

"As mentioned, his romantic life sounds complicated. Brother West is a reminder of Samuel Johnson's description of remarriage as the triumph of hope over experience. One paragraph of musings following his third divorce obliged me to put the book down and think about things for a long while. Here it is:

"The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high -- and they apply equally to both of us. I seek full-blast mutual intensity, fully fledged mutual acceptance, full-blown mutual flourishing, and fully felt peace and joy with each other. This requires a level of physical attraction, personal adoration, and moral admiration that is hard to find. And it shares a depth of trust and openness for a genuine soul-sharing with a mutual respect for a calling to each other and to others. Does such a woman exist for me? Only God knows and I eagerly await this divine unfolding. Like Heathcliff and Catherine's relationship in Emily Bronte's remarkable novel Wuthering Heights or Franz Schubert's tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat (D.960) I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!"

P.S. Nice to be informed that "Wuthering Heights" is a remarkable novel and by Emily Bronte, too. Also, that final sentence, as written, makes no sense; it says that "I" (i.e. West) am "[L]ike Heathcliff and Catherine's relationship" and " Schubert's tempestuous piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat." What he means is that "Like Heathcliff and Catherine, I will not let life or death stand in the way of this sublime and funky love that I crave!" Don't know how to nudge the Schubert sonata into the sentence, though.