The addition of The Bad Plus to our blogroll got a positive review. Here they are, recorded by some guy in the back of the room with a hand-held camera, playing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” (Here is the original, and here is Paul Anka.)
Usually I like my jazz a little less adulterated — and the Bad Plus have stirred up considerable controversy by mixing in frequent pop covers along with their straight-ahead tunes. But these guys are playful, intelligent, and infectious, as well as accomplished musicians. The blog is worth reading, too — here’s a thoughtful commentary on Barack Obama and discrimination in jazz. Besides, it’s named “Do the Math”!
The Barenaked Ladies’ “Snacktime” is on very heavy rotation in my house these days. It’s officially an album for children (which explains the heavy rotation, because if kids like something once, they like it for approximately the next billion times). However, a lot of it is laugh-out-loud funny for adults. For example, from the alternate alphabet song:
D is for djinn, E for Euphrates,
F is for fohn, but not like when I call the ladies.
But I digress.
The first song on the album is “789″, about the nefarious dealings of the number 7.
1, 2, 3, 4 and more makes 7
Why is six afraid of 7?
Cause 7 ate 9
Recently the eldest kid piped up: “Seven eats all the numbers. There are no more numbers after 8.” I asked why. “Well, seven ate nine, so it’s 7-8-10, so then seven ate ten, so it’s 7-8-11, so then seven ate 11, and then it just keeps going.”
So, the Barenaked Ladies just inspired my seven-year old to discover the principle of mathematical induction, which is one of the first techniques you learn when you venture into the land of advanced mathematics. The idea is that if you can prove that something is true for some integer n, and that it is also true for n+1, then it has to be true for all integers greater than n. So, for a simple (and somewhat silly) example, if you can first prove that if n>0 then n+1>0, and then you also prove that 1>0, then all positive integers are greater than zero. I remember having a hard time wrapping my head around this idea when I first bumped into it in high school (though I got over it in college after enough algebra classes with Michael Artin). I just find it pretty nifty that you can get the idea from a kid’s song.
Simone affected an imperturbable demeanor onstage, but she had an eventful life. She gave her first classical piano recital at age ten and later trained at Julliard, but started playing jazz and blues to earn a living at a time when black women pianists were not highly sought-after in the world of classical music. In the 1960’s she became active in the civil rights movement, marching with Martin Luther King and recording protest songs such as Mississippi Goddam. Her struggles with bipolar disorder were kept secret until after her death in 2003. Her music brought together influences from jazz, classical, and soul. And she could rock out when the occasion required.
Matthew Yglesias invokes interpretive charity to suggest that MIMS, in the nation’s number one single “This is Why I’m Hot,” is not guilty of affirming the consequent.
In a follow-up analysis, Rob Harvilla in the Village Voice analyzes the logical structure of the song’s argument.
Don’t pass up the chance to click through; there are Venn diagrams.
Thanksgiving is over, and most of us in the U.S. have had our fill of turkey leftovers fixed in various ways – but there is one more set of turkeys to swallow. The annual list of Top Ten Turkeys. As compiled by KFOG, a Bay Area radio station, on their popular 10@10 morning program. A KFOG turkey is a song that is truly stupid, you know better and yet you actually think it’s a good song. Despite your best efforts, you end up humming it in the car. Generally the instrumentation is decent, but the lyrics are a problem. Here is this year’s set:
1. Boys Don’t Cry – I Wanna Be A Cowboy
2. Clarence “Frogman” Henry – Ain’t Got No Home
3. The Vapors – Turning Japanese
4. Baltimora – Tarzan Boy (voted best of set)
5. Trashmen – Surfin’ Bird
6. Blue Swede – Hooked On A Feeling
7. They Might Be Giants – Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
8. The Monkees – Gonna Buy Me A Dog
9. Chumbawamba – Tubthumping
10. Toni Basil – Mickey
BONUS TRACK: The B-52’s – Rock Lobster
The best turkey of the set was decided by vote from Fogheads (yes, they really use that term) who email or blog in their vote. The Monkees Gonna Buy Me a Dog gets my vote for best turkey of the set. I must admit that it has always made me laugh, and for some incomprehensible reason I actually like it, even though I know I shouldn’t.
The Blue Swede, Vapors and Toni Basil (I truly despise this one) tunes are repeats from last year’s turkey set list, prompting me to wonder about the depth of KFOG’s collection. I am sure CV readers can nominate many more turkeys, so perhaps we should help KFOG out next year!
N.B.: OK, I know, I know. I’m late with this post. Thanksgiving is over and done. But over the holiday, I had a house full of relatives, did all the cooking, and broke out in hives, so you gotta gimme me a break here.
Last night I heard a rather lovely program. It was on the NPR program called “Radio Lab”, and this one was all about music and language. You can hear the whole thing by listening to the archive at this link. Among my favourite things was the first piece, right at the beginning of the program, based upon the work of Diana Deutsch, who specializes in the psychology of music. They talk about (and play you a sample from) a time when she recorded a spoken phrase and “looped it”, so that it plays again and again. After a while of listening to this (I remember noticing this myself in other contexts), that spoken phrase actually takes on a musical characteristic! It is amazing how fast and sharp the transition is, actually. Go listen to the first part of the show to hear it yourself.
The most striking part is then to go back to the original sentence and and hear that spoken phrase in context. Once your brain has hooked itself on the idea that it is a sung phrase and not a spoken phrase, listening to the sentence is normal until you get to that phrase and then it sounds like she is bursting into song!
This opens up a very interesting discussion on the whole business of language and music, and their intersection. What is music, really? How context dependent is it?
Diana Deutsch has done some research on “tone languages”, for example – languages (more…)
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
