Every day is better with a little Nina Simone.

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.

Have a peaceful holiday, everyone. If you’re not feeling especially peaceful, perhaps this bit of groove from Rosko Mercer can help you along.

[audio:http://preposterousuniverse.com/audio/rosko_peacemaker.mp3]

Audio and artwork via the Love Unlimited sound system.

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…)

The Bad Plus have a blog! How cool is that? (Via Marginal Revolution.) The BP are a jazz trio consisting of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer Dave King, known for an energetic and imaginative style that ranges from free jazz to playful pop. Their version of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit became quite a hit as these things go, and rightfully so. The blog is called Do The Math, so perhaps they are trying to compete in the nerd-off. It’s fantastic that a working jazz combo (or musicians more generally) have their own blog; anyone know of any other examples?

I haven’t had a chance to explore the blog very closely, but I noticed that they link to a recent NYT article by Ben Ratliff on Jazz at Lincoln Center’s upcoming Coltrane series, in honor of what would have been his 80th birthday. One of the pieces being performed is Giant Steps, an especially interesting tune. Coltrane knew his music theory backwards and forwards, and he put a tremendous amount of thought into composing Giant Steps; rumor has it that it was meant as an exercise for students, but has since grown into a popular standard, in much the same way as Bach’s Goldberg Variations. (Apparently Trane himself decided that it was too mechanical, and didn’t play it very much after the record had appeared.) The solo is based on an extremely rapid series of a particular type of chord changes, now known as Coltrane changes. In the tune, Coltrane plays four notes in each chord (the root, second, third, and fifth) as a series of eighth notes, changing chords every two beats. For those of you keeping score at home, that means each note is played precisely once before moving on the the next chord, not leaving much time for ornamentation. You can buy a whole book of transcriptions of Trane’s different takes of the chorus.

I know you want me to link to an audio file of Giant Steps, don’t you? But I have something even better. Via Wikipedia, here is an animation of Giant Steps by Michal Levy. It’s extremely well done, and the visual representation tracks the music faithfully while adding its own imaginative dimension.

For your obligatory science content, MR also points to a very clever animation of different dimensions, all the way up to ten! (Okay, the mixing of quantum mechanics and the higher dimensions is a little bizzare; but the pictures are nice.) Those MR guys are pretty good linkers, for libertarians.

Regardless of how unhip I may be now (a matter for everyone to decide for themselves), it’s nothing compared to how unhip I was growing up, especially when it came to music. The first 45rpm single I ever purchased was by Kiss, and the first full-length LP was by the Electric Light Orchestra; let us say no more about that.

In particular, I didn’t know anything about punk rock, and certainly didn’t come close to appreciating the genius of the Clash. Sure, I knew Rock The Casbah from the video on MTV (although little did I suspect it would some day become a conservative rock anthem, the Clash being secret Republicans at heart). But I didn’t at all understand the skill and passion with which the band blended hard-core punk sensibilities with a disparate palate of musical influences.

Which is just as well, as my lack of familiarity allowed me to fall in love with frontman Joe Strummer on the basis of his solo work with backing band The Mescaleros. After the Clash broke up in 1986, Strummer’s output waned, while he appeared in a couple of films and contributed some soundtrack music. Then, starting in 1999, he released a series of three albums of astonishing range and beauty: Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, Global a Go-Go, and Streetcore. The last of these, sadly, was posthumous, as Strummer died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2002. (I’m sure everyone else knows all this. Me, I never whould have discovered Strummer if Mondo Bongo hadn’t been prominently featured on the soundtrack for Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Thanks, Brad and Angelina!)

Reviews of Strummer’s solo work have been largely positive, but somewhat tempered by confusion due to a lack of obvious continuity with his punk roots. Personally, I think that if the albums are considered in their own right, rather than as “by the guy from the Clash” with all the preconceptions that implies, they are an amazing achievement. Strummer was always interested in different genres of music (and reggae was an important influence on the Clash), but here he mixes a mad panopoly of styles — from punk to folk to reggae to rockabilly to Middle Eastern to Latin to African and on — with equally eclectic instrumentation and colorful lyrics. (Where “colorful” should occasionally be taken to mean “surreal bordering on nonsensical,” unless I was patrolling a Pachinko / Nude noodle model parlor / in the Nefarious zone is more transparent to you than it is to me.) Along with drums/bass/guitar, a Mescaleros song might feature violin, whistle, mandolin, organ, conga, bells, bodhran, udu, accordion, saxophone, dulcimer, and/or whatever else was lying around. While he could still rock with the best of them, Strummer could also step back with an acoustic tune like Bob Marley’s Redemption Song (also recorded elsewhere in a duet with Johnny Cash).

You can get a good idea of the playful energy, at once exuberant and reflective, of Strummer’s later music from the lyrics to Bhindi Bhagee. It’s a song about eclectic food choices, but there is an explicit parallel (which the lyrics are happy to spell out) with eclectic musical choices. Of course, if you listen to a bit, the energy is even more obvious.

Well, I was walking down the High Road
And this guy stops me
He’d just got in from New Zealand
And he was looking for mushy peas
I said, no, we hadn’t really got ‘em round here
I said, but we do got

Balti, Bhindi, strictly Hindi
Dall, Halal and I’m walking down the road
We got rocksoul, okra, bombay duck-ra
Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without – with it or without
Bagels soft or simply harder
Exotic avocado or toxic empenada
We got akee, lassi, Somali waccy baccy
I’m sure back home you know what tikka’s all about – what tikka’s all about

Welcome stranger to the humble neighborhoods
You can get inspiration along the highroad

Hommus, cous cous in the jus of octopus
Pastrami and salami and lasagne on the go
Welcome stranger, there’s no danger
Welcome to this humble neighborhood

There’s Balti, Bhindi, strictly Hindi
Dall, Halal and I’m walking down the road
Rocksoul, okra, bombay duck-ra
Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without

So anyway, I told him I was in a band
He said, “Oh yeah, oh yeah – what’s your music like?”
I said, “It’s um, um, well, it’s kinda like
You know, it’s got a bit of, um, you know.”

Ragga, Bhangra, two-step Tanga
Mini-cab radio, music on the go
Um, surfbeat, backbeat, frontbeat, backseat
There’s a bunch of players and they’re really letting go
We got, Brit pop, hip hop, rockabilly, Lindy hop
Gaelic heavy metal fans fighting in the road
Ah, Sunday boozers for chewing gum users
They got a crazy D.J. and she’s really letting go

Oh, welcome stranger
Welcome stranger to the humble neighborhoods

Well, I say, there’s plenty of places to eat round here
He say, “Oh yeah, I’m pretty choosy.”

You got
Balti, Bhindi, strictly Hindi
Dall, Halal, walking down the road
Rocksoul, okra, bombay duck-ra
Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without
Let’s check it out

Welcome stranger to the humble neighborhoods, neighborhoods
Check out all that

Por-da-sol, por-da-sol
Walking down the highroad

I know, it’s William Shatner. At a science fiction conference an awards show. From the Seventies. “Singing” an Elton John/Bernie Taupin hit.

But still. It can’t be for real, right? Like, irony? Please tell me it’s a joke. Seriously. (Via The Sports Guy, ultimately via Ed Brayton.)

Cate Blanchett to play Bob Dylan in biopic.

The resemblance is uncanny.

To be candid, Blanchett will not have to shoulder the burden all by herself; Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, and Richard Gere are among those who will portray different aspects of Dylan in the upcoming I’m Not There, due to be released next year.

It is that time of year again. Because I am insane, I am teaching -by choice- two classes this semester. One of them is quite small, having 12 students, the other is not. The small class is my electricity and magnetism class. With a class this small, it is nice sometimes to have a change of scenery, and -if the material can handle it- I show up one sunny Spring day (after the hard slog through rainy Winter days) and declare that we are going outside to sit under a tree. There are several lovely spaces on the USC campus perfectly suited to this, and so we go outside. Last year, when I first had the idea for doing this, eventually I thought to buy a little portable whiteboard in case I need to write or draw something. (I discovered that the board fits perfectly into my Brompton‘s front carrier bag, sticking pleasantly out of the top as I cycle along!)

It’s just a perfect setup actually, since this time of year usually coincides with the last part of the class where we are doing Special Relativity. I can think of few physics topics which are better suited to sitting outside and discussing under a tree -with a few diagrams and equations- than the classic thought experiments of Special Relativity. Here’s everyone in the class (except Chris Cantwell, who unusually could not make it this time), and also the whiteboard, my coffee cup, and the Brompton (of course):
(L to R: Michael Crampon, Jeff Pennington, Michael Johnson, Douglas Mason, Omar Hussein, Aleksandr Rodin, Amanda Fournier, Christopher Winterowd, Christopher Palmer, Justin Seymour, Matthew Recker.)

You can see, if you look closely, the last remnants of the moment of confusion that appeared on their faces from just being told that a vector can have zero squared length while not itself being zero. (That’s a “null four-vector”, we were talking about, for the uninitiated. You need them for describing things that move at the speed of light, for example.)

I have to design them a final exam very soon. Time for a trip to the Cat and Fiddle then, some evening soon. I’m going to see if I can get in a “fun” question at the end again, like last year. During the exam last year, one student (Lauren Schenkman) raised her hand to ask a question. I thought there was a typo or something on the exam. No, there wasn’t. Her question – asked cautiously and respectfully, was, “Are you serious?”. I love that. Here was the question:

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