Now for something a little more serious...

Hello spacemen and spacewomen,

Have a look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_trSIBCgF0

It seemed like just the thing.

Love,

zmz

Alasdair Roberts and friends, post-show thoughts.

As mentioned in a previous jotting, there were recently several "materialisations" of Alasdair and Friends this side of the pond.  We were fortunate enough to have the chance to see him do his thing on stage when he came through town after performing at the Calgary folk-festival the week prior.  This was a "big deal" for Zmz, to say the least.

There were some misgivings in the back of the mind that the night would be another case of dashed expectations.  Waifu came along, aware of the significance, her first-born sharing a name with the singer, but herself not too enamoured of Mr. Roberts' body of work.  She finds his music, in the main, depressing.  This is understandable: he does transplant a fair few dark notions and traditions from Scotland's brooding past to the present-day.  But for me, the chords he strikes recreate a world and people beloved by my father, with a history taught to me with love and earnestness since as far back as I can remember.

The venue was run very professionally and had the feel of a small cabaret or jazz club.  The sound quality was top-notch, and when the opening act encountered problems with a cable, a working replacement was quickly produced.  There were no such issues during the main act.  We were the youngest people at the show, with two possible exceptions; however, this was not all that surprising as it was a Monday night.  From the banter with the local opener it appeared as if a number of the city's seasoned audiophiles were in attendance.

Just prior to the performance I got a chance to exchange a few words with Alasdair himself.  I felt keenly embarrassed upon approaching the soft-spoken, unassuming young man and starting to blabber.  I am acutely aware that most of the talking was done by the "fan" in this situation.  Anyhow, the moment felt surreal: all synapses were firing at once.  He was gracious and gentlemanly; I was pleased as can be, and probably came off as manic and strange.  I should have chosen what I wanted to say more carefully, but blurted out what came to mind, that my son shares his first name by no accident, that I feel akin, being born in Scotland et cetera.

The opening act served to warm up the audience quite well, generating some back-and-forth and calming the butterflies.  Alasdair and Friends (electric guitarist/harmonica player and up-right bassist; the drummer and violinist having been refused entry to the United States for one reason or another) started off with a song about the Highland clearances from the new album A Wonder Working Stone. The rest is rather a blissful blur.  There was a generous helping of both old and new songs. He had audience participation on "...the sun shines down on Carlyle wall/... and the lion shall be lord of all", an old Scottish (well, of course) folk-song about infanticide.  Only a few days earlier in this city a woman drowned herself and left her two infants to die in a bathtub.  Quite the opposite to being inappropriate, this dour ditty's call-and-response felt like an act of catharsis.  It's hard to know if this tune was chosen for the set-list especially for this reason.

The man really pours himself into his art.  His finger-picking is astonishingly nimble, his voice clear and ringing, and he was soaking in sweat after only two or three tunes.  His bassist has arms like the limbs of an old oak tree and fingers you'd be thankful to have had the limp-fish handshake from.  His guitarist looked a bit bored for most of the set, but livened up when getting the chance at singing vocals or playing the mouth-harp.  I put it down to being tired near the end of a long road trip playing the same material time and time again.  The inclusion of his noisy, atmospheric touches helped recall The Night is Advancing and some tracks from Spoils.

Alas, all good things must also come to pass, but not before a terrific instrumental piece followed by "Riddle Me This" from The Amber Gatherers for an encore.  Then it was over.  I walked out feeling inspired, more aware, and jittery with creative energy: not a bit let-down, and with fresh album of new tunes in hand.  Waifu seemed content, and I'm so glad she came as well.  Certainly not a night soon to be forgotten.

Some attempts at philosophy of a morning.

If "knowledge is power" then we have to have an understanding of what it means to "know" something. Having data is not enough. Being able to assess that data, make accurate assumptions based upon that data, and even to manipulate that data or how it is seen by others will open the avenues to influence, and thereby, power. The individual will is crippled if that given individual is not free from the manipulation of data.

Presently, we are in an age of data proliferation. The communication of data far out-paces a given individual's capability to process and to "know". Power is reliant upon the biggest and best computer servers. The fuel to run these comes from conglomerates (governments, companies) who are in turn reliant upon the biggest and best computer servers, and those who run them. In this symbiotic relationship, power is balanced. As an aside, this is similar to the balance of church and state in the Western world's past. The physical limitations are now measured out less in human suffering (warfare, physical struggle, oppression) and more in the capacity of the planet to endure humanity en masse. But the old demons still abound.

As things are, security would appear to be of utmost importance. However, security is a limitation. Access is most important of all. Those who have access set the restrictions imposed by security. To be powerful is to have access. To have access requires a short-cut to the biggest and best computer servers and the data stored within, the capability to process this data, and the ability to use this knowledge to some end. Even if "all data" were attainable at a given time, knowledge is dependent upon an individual mind or will. Conglomerates are an attempt at creating an individual will in numbers. For example, a democratic government is elected by the majority of people who ostensibly share the same views and vote accordingly. Of course this is sloppy, but the point is to gain power by sharing the same individual will. The sloppiness that arises from attempting to focus a group of individual wills into one united conglomeration of shared knowledge as power can be quite ghastly. It can also help to serve the common good of a people. But knowledge remains strongly dependent upon the individual, and the knowledge of power itself the key to how an individual behaves.

Well, if you have read this far, you can recognize a struggling brain when you see one. Socrates, after all these thousands of years, was an original individual for stating "I know that I know nothing".

The next post will have to be the Alasdair Roberts follow-up.
Bye for now!

Sagat's Wheel

Hello world!  Is not electricity wondrous?  This human brain, these muscles, cells glued together by tension, attraction, spark.  Today, life is inspiration.  It is time to make a donation of blood to help preserve life.  For some reason, here is the sound-track, brought to you by the electronic extension of the human mind and memory, the web:

http://windworld.com/features/gallery/savarts-wheel/

The most annoying instrument in the world should be re-named "Sagat's Wheel".  But then there is this. It looks like it might be something one could make for themselves:

http://windworld.com/features/gallery/musical-siren-built-by-bart-hopkin/

Let us know here at the hop how the construction of yours goes.

Alasdair Roberts

Zmz is going to see his minstrel-hero play tonight.  It seemed like a good idea to take the trickle of time available to me before the event to gather thoughts and consider feelings.  Perhaps afterward I can use the data comparatively to determine whether I am feeling disappointed, elated, inspired, et cetera.  I have been aware of the musical contrivances of Alasdair Roberts since very late last century.  The Appendix Out group stuff, and especially "Tangled Hair" and "The Grey Havens" from Daylight Saving, came to me in a troubled time. I rediscovered these slow, fragile, and beautiful songs some time after a number of intense personal relationships had withered. The music was a balm that worked healing magic, especially when heard lying on a bed under a window with the midday summer sun pouring in. The Night is Advancing and Farewell Sorrow, when I finally found them, worked on me in like manner, but of an evening: these were faerie tunes from the distant gloaming of my ancestors.  They caused me to happily swoon and retreat from the over-hyped modern world.  Roberts sang with passion and earnestness of things close to my own heart though far from my present reality, the history of a people severed by the sea.  So, this will be a special opportunity and a chance at refreshing the Gaelic psyche within the space-cadet.  I hope it goes well.

For a wee bit more information, and some music, feel free to check his artist page at Drag City Records:
http://www.dragcity.com/artists/alasdair-roberts

The album Spoils is particularly wonderful, and the newest, A Wonder Working Stone, well, we'll just have to find out now, won't we?

This is a skinny little post, in hopes that the apophthegm "you are what you eat" might nicely adjust to "you are what you write".  Zmz just recently found out that old worries about high blood-pressure were well and good, but distracted from the real concern: very high cholesterol from eating all this rich Earth-food.  He immediately re-joined the Order of the Carrot (you can too):

http://www.theorderofthecarrot.com

His colons, as you can see, are still functioning very well, thank-you-very-much.  He has quite taken to a little spinning disc with sound pictures etched in, which can be found on the electric web here:

http://yellowjacketavenger.bandcamp.com

Zmz still thinks of music as having a physical aspect, like one of those saucers journeying to new worlds simply by spinning, or Mr. Young's silver seed, or Mr. Morrison's Crystal Ship.  The Achilles heel is Achilles' shield in this scenario. The former becomes the latter and vice versa when the latter fails to protect the former. The idea spins round and round like the many-pictured protective disc from the old Greek poem which, for all its beauty still could not act as proof against death.  When we go, we may bite the dust, but the dust devours us soon afterward leaving us very skinny, indeed.

See you in the future, dry bones!

Just a little worm-hole journey away, but time is relatively fleeting. Never enough time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qL5SXTJ3e_A

Here is the original by Sun Ra, via YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ugv_q8vQYq4