This is reminiscent of a certain work of modern art in the art museum in my hometown, done by an artist whose name I don’t remember, and I cannot now find it in the museum’s collection list online. It was loud and garish, but it had character. I kind of hope they didn’t sell it. I’m not much for modern art generally, but that museum is one of the few that I’ve always felt could make it work. Maybe it’s my parochial bias – have to support the home team.
I would second Kate’s motion, but it’s a done deal now. 🙂
I honestly hope to never see it again.
I’m a big fan of that iteration of the logo!
Mac,
Here’s my reply to your question about Disco and Electronica on the most recent Bee Gee’s thread.
Disco evolving to Electronic(a). I can see the evolution in the comparison that the latter is what is now done in the venues where the former was done. Young folks wanting to go out and have fun moving to music typically dance to Electronica these days. In the ’70s it was Disco.
The beats are similar in that most all Disco and most all Electronica are in 4/4 time. Pretty much any song in a 4 beat pattern (as long as the time is evenly divisible by 4) can be Disco-danced to. If you watch any Ballroom dance you’ll see folks doing older dances to modern music. For example; you can Foxtrot to pretty much all Disco music. Marches are also in 4/4 time. Most all music (that isn’t a waltz) written in the last 150 years is 4/4 (or 2/4, cut-time, which is basically the same thing). Just about every rock song you can think of is in that rhythm, so saying Disco evolved to Electronica because the beats are almost always identical is meaningless. Is Disco an evolution of John Phillip Sousa’s, “The Stars and Stripes Forever?” Well, Disco has the same beat, and it came along later, but that’s about all the two have in common.
One more quick comment about their beats. The beats seem fairly similar, but there is a common difference. As I wrote earlier, the Disco beat is almost always, “peasoup, peasoup, peasoup, peasoup.” The Electronica beat is almost always, “boots’npants,’nboots’npants,’nboots’npants,’n’boots’npants.” DJs and music production people often use those descriptors. That “boots” part is where the distinction is. Electronica has a wider range. Disco does not go as far down. It stays more up. “pea” vs. “boots.”
Disco and Electronica are both dance music, but that’s where the similarity ends. Disco is an evolution of Ballroom and Swing, even the Minuet folks did in the 1600s (also in 4/4 time). I’m not a ’50s and ’60s historian, but at some point couple dancing to memorized steps gave way to free form dances like the Twist and Shag and Frug and Monkey, which gave way to simply jumping and shaking and twirling. By the time I was dancing to New Wave there were not even names, like Twist, and it was considered a bit uncool to pay too much attention to your partner, or even look at her. Within a year or two when one went to a club playing New Wave it wasn’t even cool to ask anyone to dance. You just went to the floor and danced. Girls could always dance together, but guys tried to make sure they were near a girl, or girls. Of course, if you went with a date you’d both go to the floor together, and try to stay around the same area, but it was intentionally free, individual and disjointed.
When you see footage of couples dancing to something like “Rock Around the Clock” in the ’50s, they are doing swing steps to Rock music and dancing as partners. If you look at couples dancing to “Incense and Peppermints” in the ’60s they do not touch, they do not necessarily do the same arm movements…
Disco is a continuation of that Ballroom, Swing, “Rock Around the Clock” tradition.
Electronica is a continuation of that Strawberry Alarm Clock, New Wave tradition.
A modern “Rave” has its roots in Woodstock, Burning Man and ’80s Dance Parties.
Disco has its roots in Minuet and Square Dance and Foxtrot and the Lindy Hop.
I don’t know of a new form of couples dance currently extant. There is a swing-revival that has been going on for almost 30 years now. It stopped growing, but is still picking up young recruits. It would not surprise me at all to see a Disco revival make a comeback. The 20 somethings who do Swing dress in fashion from the era. It’s a hoot. I could easily envision 20 somethings doing the same with Disco era costumes and music.
Reminds me of a very overrated Science Fiction movie starring a different Neo. At first glance I thought the image was made of green 1’s and 0’s* on a black image.
Aside from the fact that it really is made on 1’s and 0’s…
Love it!
BTW, The Matrix is not overrated IMHO. But the sequels were crap.
Homeric, we shall have to agree to disagree regarding The Matrix.
Hello physicsguy from the Open Thread 3/3/21:
Xylourgos on March 3, 2021 at 9:44 am said:
This is for PhysicsGuy but if others have an opinion please join in…..
Would really like to know your opinion on this.
Very interesting take on music and dance styles, Rufus, and it mostly meets my observations. I like the description of Disco as “four on the floor.” Most EDM — Electronic Dance Music, the preferred term these days — fits in but with the modifications you mentioned. Not all 4/4 music fits that description, with some accented on the 2nd and 4th beat, 4th beat, or 3rd/1st and 3rd beats.
There’s also more rock-based music in time signatures other than 4/4 than one might think, mostly in progressive and psychedelic rock. And yes us Deadheads do dance in 7/4.
Tools to consider. Don’t give the bast*rds any data.
Fractal Rabbit – did you see The Matrix in the theater when it came out or later on DVD? At the time, the SPFX were quite cutting edge I believe. But taste in films is obviously subjective, and of course many people simply do not like Keanu.
Xylourgos,
Sorry, I missed that. I don’t always pay attention to open threads.
Anyway, the answer to your question as given by the climate alarmists, is that as CO2 increases in the atmosphere it will initiate a feedback loop with respect to water vapor. Water is, by far, the real greenhouse gas. As you point out CO2 doesn’t have the population by itself. There’s also the fact it absorbs IR only in one major band at 15microns, while water has many large absorption bands from the visible, near IR to far IR. The modelers set up an equation with a feedback factor. It’s those MODEL outputs that are published and declared to be reality. J Christy, from U. Alabama, Huntsville published a graph a few years ago comparing those model runs to balloon and satellite data. The models are initialized to data from around 1975. The models fallow the temp data fairly well up until about 1995 then go off the rails. They haven’t agreed with the observations for the past 20 years at the 2 sigma level. But, hey, what are facts when one is true believer.
I also liked The Matrix, but hated the second one so much I’ve never seen the third.
“Electronica is a continuation of Strawberry Alarm Clock”
And so is Lynyrd Skynyrd. SAC guitarist Ed King later joined LS where he wrote the music for their most well-known song, “Sweet Home Alabama”. Whoda thunk there was any connection between Lynyrd Skynyrd and electronic dance music?
Just recently you referred to “St. Patrick’s Day clothing” as “hideous”, neo. Changing your mind on green? You have always been a changer!
It’s funny that I didn’t make the connection with The Matrix upon seeing this green selfie rendition, but as I said above, I had a certain piece of art in mind. However, it does strike me that Neo’s hair is similar in its basic style to how the actress who played The Oracle in the first two films had hers done. Maybe it’s Neo who’s the mastermind of this entire simulation….
(Morpheus’ first big speech to Neo in the first movie – the pill scene – is one of the few speeches from film that I think I have completely memorized.)
As to physicsguy’s explanation about water, does this mean we’re heading toward a discussion of FTIR spectrophotometry? 🙂
Well, since Rufus and Marisa brought up music time signatures, and the 7/4 meter specifically …
Here is my favorite Rick Beato “What makes this song great” episode, #63, on Rush’s “Limelight.” Rick begins by citing a poll on what his fans wanted him to do, and most went for “What makes this song great” but a large minority went for Advanced Music Theory. So either he gave them the former good and hard, or he thought he’d mix the two.
The whole thing is good. He spends a few minutes talking about the 2nd opening phrase being in alternating 4/4 and 3/4 meters which can be felt as a 7/4 timing. That starts at 3:10.
Later he talks about the part of the song where the meters get really crazy. That starts at 10:30. At some point he asks “Who does that!?”
The Promenade from Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1874) is a good example. The opening measures are shown below: [Measures of 5/4, 6/4, 5/4, 6/4]
Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1913) is famous for its “savage” rhythms. Five measures from “Sacrificial Dance” are shown below:
[Measures of 3/16, 2/16, 3/16, 3/16, 2/8]
The part on the lead guitar solo is great. I got the impression that Rick is saying that most of the pitch bending is from the whammy bar, but I watched most of Alex Lifeson’s video on how to play that solo. First, he jokes about the other guitarist’s videos on how to play his solo: “Gee, I never thought about doing it that way. Maybe I’ll try that sometime.” Then, when he plays it, most of the pitch bending comes from stretching the strings with his left or fret hand.
Also, that solo ends with a very long sustain on a vibrato high note. He does in fact use an electronic delay box to do that. On stage, the box enables him to sustain the solo high note for 10 or 20 seconds while he plays an entirely different phrase.
Anyway, it is probably safe to say that when the meters in a song get this complex, the band immediately loses about 3/4 of their potential audience. It can very exciting, IMO.
physicsguy:
Thanks! A person could watch just Bee Gees videos on YouTube and it would take a long long time to exhaust the supply.
physicsguy,
Do you have an opinion of the green house multiplier for methane relative to CO2? AGW doomsayers use a multiplier that has varied from about 50 to 70 or is it 100 now?
Some have said that the absorption spectrum of water is almost exactly the same as methane, but my cursory look suggests that it is similar with some significant differences. So the naysaying theory is that the water absorption “covers” or blocks the methane absorption. Also, one should integrate that absorption spectrum over the actual solar energy spectrum. I have no idea what that is.
Frank Zappa did a lot of interesting stuff in different time signatures, but I’m much more of a jazz fan. For me, Brubeck’s, “Time Out” is the pinnacle.
Phillip Sells,
“Morpheus’ first big speech to Neo in the first movie – the pill scene – is one of the few speeches from film that I think I have completely memorized.”
My movie quote databank never advanced beyond, “Caddyshack*”
*40 years ago I could have probably recited, “Monty Python’s Holy Grail” from memory.
Blondie’s Heart of Glass actually uses 7/4 in three bars in the middle of the song. But I prefer King Crimson Discipline for more ‘radical’ time changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnnUIveM-e0
I’m a jazz fan too. I particularly like this 7/4 piece appropriately titled 74 Miles Away:
From what I can find methane is at 1884 ppb = 1.88ppm which is about 220x less than CO2. If CO2 is a trace gas at 412 ppm, what does that make methane?? 🙂 It’s absorption bands are at 7.7, 3.5, and 2.3 microns in the near IR. The 2 and 3 micron bands are at the very low end of the earth Planck curve, so it would be only the 7 micron that would contribute anything. But, water also has a large band at that wavelength, and given that water is literally 6000x more abundant, guess who wins in the competition for available photons? I would think methane is just a way for the alarmists to cry wolf even more. They love to show how much CH4 has risen in recent history…so what?
I actually spent a sabbatical looking at the absorption spectrum of water and CO2 for both the solar and earth radiation curves. Doing the actual integration is very, very difficult as one also has to use transition probabilities from the molecular wavefunctions. I got around that by using Einstein coefficients which kinda lumps all those nasty integrals into a single term which when taking ratios of absorption/emission drop out.
I’m old enough to remember when Brubeck’s, “Time Out” was available on any decent bar’s jukebox (and this was prior to the days of digital jukeboxes).
oops, meant to write “Take Five”, not time out.
Thanks for that physicsguy,
I mucked it up a bit, but you knew what I meant. The earth’s re-radiative Planck curve is the thing. If, if methane is 70 times worse than CO2, but there is 220 times less of it, then methane is roughly a 32% effect by comparison? But I don’t think 70 is a good number.
So is there a correct oversimplified multiplier number for methane? Or is it just that; oversimplified. Such a thing would rely on a standardized global atmospheric humidity map, and a while ago I found that such a thing exists, but couldn’t find any numbers to go with the label.
TommyJay,
That 70 number is some sort of “global warming potential” based with CO2 as “1” and calculated based on lifetime in the atmosphere and something called the “radiative efficiency” which I have no idea of what that means. Maybe something to do with quantum transition rates??? Seems like a made up sort of parameter not based on any real QM.
Stephen Miller,
“Take Five” is a single from “Time Out” so you were right either way.
“And yes us Deadheads do dance in 7/4.”
It shows. Just kidding, sorta.
Great music. That King Crimson Discipline will put a smile on my face all day long.
I’m not a Dead Head but that “short” video is quite good.
Take Five is such a classic. I keep bumping into the song in period piece movies or TV series where it is used to typify 1959. Here is huxley’s favorite site Songfacts on the song. I had forgotten that the whole song is about half drum solo. While the drum solo is reasonably complex, it is not too complex or overbearing. And the piano keeps the steady rhythm while the drum does variations.
Dave Brubeck said that yes, the more serious dancers do dance to a song in 5/4.
Homeric,
I saw it in the theater at release because it looked very interesting and about a year later on VHS (not DVD) when a friend and very big fan of the movie insisted I needed to watch it again, because I didn’t understand it enough to like it the first time.
I’m a funny guy. My friends kid around that it is very hard to determine what I will like or dislike. But I am a lifelong Science Fiction fan who, almost, but not quite, loathes flashy special effects. They just don’t make a difference to me, though sometimes, they make my hate a movie. Somewhere in my youth, I decided they just felt empty. Not sure why I didn’t like The Matrix but it wasn’t just the effects. Perhaps it was the Plato’s Cave rehash? Don’t know. But I fell asleep the second time I watched it.
I like Keanu though. Big fan of the first John Wick movie.
Well, Rufus T., I hesitate to argue, but there does seem to be some continuity. I had the vague impression that “house” music was part of the chain, so I searched for “house music disco” and this was one of the first hits:
As you probably are aware, what those of us who aren’t much interested lump together as “techno” has about 50 sub-genres. “House” seems to be one of the earliest ones.
Re the Dead and funny time signatures: I’m definitely not a Deadhead, but I do like a lot of their stuff, and one of my favorites is Live Dead, the 1969 (70?) live album. There’s a song (using the word loosely) on there called “The Eleven.” That title really puzzled me, especially when I discovered that the phrase occurs in the New Testament: after Judas’s betrayal, the disciples, who had sometimes been referred to as “the twelve”, became “the eleven.” So was there some mystical religious thing going on in the song?
No. Only within the past year or so did I learn that the song is called “The Eleven” because it’s in 11/4 time. And btw it is definitely danceable. To my not very knowledgeable ear it doesn’t actually hit the 11/4 groove till around the 3:30 mark.
That Adderley track is sublime. Adderley may be my second favorite saxophonist behind Paul Desmond, but Coltrane’s rendition of, “My Favorite Things” is so incredible that single song may push him ahead of Adderly on my list. I like more of Adderly’s works, but I really, really like Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.”
Wait, Coltrane and Adderly both played on Davis’, “Kind of Blue,” which just may be my favorite album, regardless of genre, so I guess I’ll call it a tie for second place behind Desmond. Actually, ranking creative genius is kind of dumb. All three are phenomenal talents!
11/8, not 11/4, according to something I just read. As a non-musician the distinction seems a bit arbitrary to me.
Remind me to keep an eye out for that Caleb Anderson boy five or ten years from now.
Today, the weather here in the hinterlands of the Empire State has been unseasonably nice. I ordered a vertical planter with 5 tiers for the patio; it’s going to arrive later this week. Going to put herbs in it, but haven’t fully decided which ones. I thought 2 trays for basil, 1 for cilantro, 1 for thyme and 1 for something else. (Spinach? Chives? Anybody know what would work well in a part-sun setting for USDA zone 5b? Does it matter that much for herbs?)
Philip Sells,
It’s supposed to be in the 50s here in the Lake George region tomorrow and possibly 60 on Thursday. I’m off this week and I plan on hiking both days. It was gorgeous out today while I was chopping at the ice.
Mac,
I absolutely agree that House music was a precursor to Electronica. I am from Chicago (where House “originated”) and when I first went to meet my girlfriend’s (now wife) family in Europe the 20 somethings gave me requests for House mix tapes that I sent to them, since they knew I was from Chicago and House was starting to take over the Discotheques in Europe at the time.
When I wrote earlier of ’80s Dance Parties, that was also an outgrowth of House (maybe, sort-of happened simultaneously). What was happening was DJs had started running 2 turntables and the way you slid one song into another distinguished DJs, talentwise (along with song selection, of course). This was a completely separate phenomenon from Disco, it just happened to be occurring at the same time as Disco was at its zenith. When me and my peers started dancing to New Wave music in the very early ’80s that is what some of the cool clubs were doing; mixing songs into each other; the end of one bled into the start of another so the dancing never stopped.
House music was mostly all about the DJ. I tended to call it Industrial because of the warehouses in Chicago where we’d go to dance to it. But New Wave was about the groups and the songs, themselves. Modern Electronica is definitely an evolution of House music.
So, as someone once said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” You can be correct. I can be correct. We are likely even talking about different things.
The distinction, for me, is the style of dance. Partner or solo. (For you, it appears to be who is dancing and where they are. If it’s young people on a big dance floor it’s all the same trendline*.)
House, Electronica, New Wave, ’60s Psychedelica, Ska… All basically solo (often with a partner, who is also doing her, or his, own thing), ad hoc dancing.
Minuet, Waltz, Cha Cha, Mambo, Square dance, Jitterbug, Bunny Hop, Polka, Quick Step (I love that one!)… all couples dancing to a limited range of steps. As was Disco.
*The reason I don’t make my distinction where you do is because humans have always used dance as a courtship ritual (just as many other species do). In my mind, people dancing is not unique. Every culture throughout history has done it. I see a through line from Hebrew or Greek line dancing to today’s country dance halls. I see a through line from tap to break dancing. I see a through line from the Waltz to Disco. I see a through line from kids doing the Frug to Electronica. But it’s all pretty arbitrary. I think a lot of folks see it the same way you do.
Fractal Rabbit,
I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but CGI completely pulls me out of a movie. I am literally more engaged by stop action clay models of dinosaurs and apes than I am by hyperkinetic action sequences done by computer rendering.
I’m fine with non-real things happening in movies if there are three dimensional objects being filmed (the first Star Wars movie, for example). When it’s two dimensional I instantly become detached. My subconscious says, “Hey, we’re watching a movie.” I hear it called the “uncanny valley.”
I disliked the Matrix for a similar reason. People standing in front of a green screen pretending. However, I did like the three dimensional camera affects in some of the Matrix action scenes where the camera would spin around the scene while the actors seemed to stand still.
Keanu Reeves,
I kind-of thought of him as a goof (although I sincerely, really enjoyed the first, “Bill and Ted” movie and thought he was great in that), then one of my kids developed a crush on him and she started telling me about him. He seems like a really, really great guy. A real mensch.
FOAF @4:32pm,
You got a big laugh out of me with that!
One bit of trivia I find hilarious: Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson are both huge Deadheads who spent (mis-spent?) a fair amount of their youth traveling with the band to dozens (hundreds?) of shows.
The City Journal article by Bari Weiss about elite private schools may be the most horrifying and worrisome thing I’ve seen in a while. It’s not that surprising but at some point people need to stand up or it’s all over. Depressing.
Rufus T. Firefly,
That may be a lot of why I don’t care for special effects, especially the CGI that infests everything nowadays. The effects that impress me the most are good model work and the old Ray Harryhausen stop-motion stuff. I’ll take Sinbad fighting the skeleton warriors any day of the week over CGI. But then again, the Sinbad movies were telling a great story too.
As far as the Uncanny Valley, I could be wrong, but I always understood it to be when something is supposed to look human. And it looks really, really close. But then that actually just makes it look “worse”, or more off-putting to people. I’ve heard The Polar Express animated movie was an example of that. It’s also a battle the robotics people are fighting with the life-like robots. They’re too close to human-like in looks but in a sense, that’s the problem. It ends up just giving people the heebie jeebies.
I *LOVE* the first Bill & Ted movie. Love. It. The second one isn’t bad either. But I tend to dislike time travel movies in general*, and since Bill & Ted is a silly movie anyway, at least the movie didn’t take itself too seriously and just went for fun. The mall musical scene and Napoleon Bonaparte at the Waterloo Waterpark are *classic*.
*Time Travel movies that I didn’t hate, in no particular order:
1) Primer (one of my favorite Sci-Fi movies ever)
2) Interstellar
3) the first 2 Terminator movies
4) Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Some people consider Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow: Live, Die, Repeat to be time travel movies. I really don’t. I see the case for it but disagree. That being said, I absolutely love both of those movies as well.
Mac,
“11/8, not 11/4, according to something I just read. As a non-musician the distinction seems a bit arbitrary to me.”
It’s not as hard as it seems. Musicians tend to be intentionally obtuse and answer simple questions with very non-direct answers. Ask one what “key” means sometime…
This is the first definition my bing search came up with, and it’s a good place to start:
“an indication of rhythm following a clef, generally expressed as a fraction with the denominator defining the beat as a division of a whole note and the numerator giving the number of beats in each bar.”
To give the music some form to make it easier to read pieces are broken up into measures. The time signature just tells you how many of what types of beats there are in a measure. Think of a march; 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 4/4 time. There are four quarter notes to a measure. Think of a waltz; 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 3/4 time. There are three quarter notes to a measure. The denominator is the division of a whole note (in both of these cases we are dividing the whole into four, even sections {conveniently referred to as a quarter note}). The top is how many of those beats until you draw a vertical line on the staff and begin a new measure.
You’ll find a lot of fours in Western music. It just seems we humans like that*. Twos, fours and eights are very common patterns.
Measures are also called “bars.” Except for Classical (and Big Band and March and probably a few more I’m forgetting), musicians typically talk about how many bars there are in a song. “12 bar blues.” “Cannonball, blow a 16 bar solo here.” Measure or bar patterns have common repetitions also, and those often fall into numbers divisible by 4. The next time you listen to a rock song start counting and the patterns will become obvious. There’s a good chance you’ll notice the song starting off with that four quarter note repetition. You’ll also almost certainly notice that after doing four of those patterns in a row something will change. There’s usually just a slight change after the first four (often it’s a repeat, or restart of the first four). Then, after four more (eight altogether) you’ll likely notice a bigger change. After eight or sixteen bars there will almost certainly be a big change; either a complete repeat of those first eight or sixteen bars, or a bridge to a chorus. When you start paying attention to it you won’t be able to stop hearing all the fours and eights. That’s why folks like The Dead, Zappa, Dave Brubeck… messed around with key signatures; to color outside the lines and have some fun.
And back to your quote. Your instinct was correct. It’s a simple fraction and it’s divisible or multiplied just like a fraction. You can take a song that is 4/4 and decide to write it with twice as many measures, putting it into 2/4 time. You can’t divide 3/4 in half, but you can write it as 6/8. Instead of 3 quarter notes per measure there are 6 eighth notes**.
*Well, Westerners. There is all kinds of crazy folk stuff around the world with all kinds of cool beat patterns and time signatures.
**The number you put in the denominator of the time signature does not force you to write the song using certain notes. A song can be in 4/4 time and not contain a single quarter note. (That would be unusual, but you can do it.) It’s the number of beats per measure. If there’s a whole note in a 4/4 song that single note takes up an entire measure (the space between the vertical bars) (that note is held for four beats), written as one whole note, rather than four quarter notes tied together.
Rufus, fascinating stuff about dance. Now I know something about the house genre. I can do a little bit of Greek line dance, so I fall more on that side of things, I guess, if anywhere.
Fractal Rabbit,
Based on what I thought “The Terminator” was I did not expect to like it. Long before everything was “on demand” fraternities at my University would get movies (actual reels of film) after they had their runs in the theater and show them on weekends for $1 as fund raisers. A girl I was very interested in agreed to go to the movies with me one Friday (I certainly couldn’t afford to take her to a real movie house) and “The Terminator” was about the only thing playing that neither of us had seen.
I was astounded! All the little foreshadowing and clues and hints James Cameron put in there. The first time we see Sarah Connor she is wearing a Jetsons t-shirt (I owned that same shirt) and her and her roommate get tangled up in blow dryer cords as they are both scrambling to get ready to go out on the town. (The Jetsons are from the future and she is getting tied up in technology vis a vis a hairdryer cord.) Who would bother to write something that clever in a dumb, action movie? And I don’t think there was any CGI in it. Not sure CGI really existed yet. Was “Tron” the first CGI movie? Pretty sure “Terminator” came after it, but I think Cameron used models, machinery and stop action. Anyway, it was so good I barely paid attention to my date. I don’t even recall if we ever went out again. That movie floored me.
Rufus,
Tron was a big one but if my memory is correct, Westworld or Disney’s The Black Hole had the first CGI in a Hollywood movie. I owe that knowledge to one of my favorite YouTube channels, “Good-Bad-Flicks”. Cecil, the guy who makes those video had one a while back about the Black Hole and he mentioned it.
I can’t recommend ‘Good-Bad-Flicks’ enough to people who enjoy a certain amount of cinematic cheese, like I do.
Thinking back, I don’t think the first Terminator had CGI, or at least, much to speak of. I think those cyborg/ androids are all models and stop-motion.
This may have come up before but let me repeat. I kinda approve of these guys and I’ve been on the list for a week or so.
Consider joining the 75M & Rising group.
And pass the link to people who are anti-authoritarian but not politically active.
This is a group that suggests simple daily actions which will gradually ease you in to being an activist. All of them are simple: be an “Armchair Activist” with no stress, no personal risk.
“Hope that when I get there somebody cuts me some slack”
Lots of hippie wiggling 🙂
ALO stands for Animal Liberation Orchestra. It’s about liberating the inner animal, not political activism. Out of all the bands I see live regularly, they have the most relaxed, positive vibe, in part because 3/4 of the band have been friends and bandmates since 7th grade in Saratoga CA. Guitarist Lebo (Dan Lebowitz) is an exceptional guitar talent.
And here’s a Tuesday song by someone rather better known:
President Trump asked the RNC to quit using his name as a fundraising tool, to which they promptly said “pound sand.”
Trump says the RINOS ” do nothing but hurt the Republican Party and our great voting base — they will never lead us to Greatness. Send your donation to Save America PAC at DonaldJTrump.com,” Trump said. “We will bring it all back stronger than ever before!”
I’ve been receiving multiple requests a day for donations from the RNC, ever since donating during the election cycle. No thanks.
Looks like the keyboard player borrowed Fred Flinstone’s water buffalo lodge hat!
Very fun band!
ALO knows how to throw down a dance party with great songs and great musicianship. Keyboardist/frontman Zach Gill likes his hats and they all like to costume fairly often.
Rufus, I actually was a big fan of the Dead right after I moved to San Francisco in the early ’70s, went to many of their shows. However as I began playing in bands myself I became less impressed with their long jams which sometimes seemed aimless. Like the Spinal Tap distinction between clever and stupid, there is a fine line between improvisation and noodling.
“Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson are both huge Deadheads who spent (mis-spent?) a fair amount of their youth traveling with the band to dozens (hundreds?) of shows.”
That explains a lot, at least about Coulter lol. I still like Tucker though.
As for CGI vs. claymation I don’t think CGI is automatically bad, but it is no substitute for creativity. The original King Kong put more humanity into the ape with claymation than most human actors this side of James Cagney put into their roles. The fight between King Kong and the T Rex is one of my favorite scenes in any movie. At the end after killing the dinosaur Kong wiggles its jaw just to make sure it’s dead, then stands on him and beats his chest. Brilliant!
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Again I’ve said many times … don’t care what you want to call yourself but I don’t have to praise or agree with you for your choice.
Testing…the blog seems to be swallowing my comments. Treated as spam maybe?
Mac
neo has mentioned it happening before.
Ok, I’ll try the missing one again:
Rufus T.: No, it’s not about the dance styles at all for me. I’ve never been to anything resembling a disco or any other species of dance club. This is purely a pop music fan’s curiosity. I am now asking myself why I’ve never had the visceral “ugh” reaction to electronic dance stuff that I did to disco. I’m not sure but whatever the musical connections may or may not be, there’s a vibe about the electronic stuff that I sort of like. I’ll occasionally put it on as an energetic alternative to ambient electronica, which I love. Some of it has a dreamy quality in addition to the intensity–no doubt related to the preferred drugs.
Probably 20 years ago I had a tape of a mostly-electronica local radio show which had a track that I really liked. It had (iirc) a pretty strong techno-ish beat but also a tune that I liked and a recurring vocal line that I never could figure out exactly: it was either “I have a nice life” or “I have a knife life”. It seemed to be deliberately distorted so as to be ambiguous. I lost or gave away or re-used the tape (whatever), but If anybody knows what that was, I would love to hear it again.
Seems to be one comment that won’t go. I just tried it again, after the 10:05 one, and as before there’s a sort of pause where it seems to be working, then the post and comments are redisplayed, but my comment isn’t there. Oh well.
Well, there it is (10:11).
Mac:
I liberated it from the trash pile. I have no idea why it kept going there.
Fractal Rabbit,
Well I guess we can agree on John Wick (I like all three). I also love Live Die Repeat which I’m surprised you like since it is almost entirely green screen effects.
The thing I’ve always liked about the Matrix is the concept that we are all “coppertops” meaning human batteries being used by [our overlords].
Excellent! Everybody quickly go and pre-Dox themselves with Parler!
🙂
Or can you now sign up without having to give them email and phone number?
Gab only knows my login name (not an email addr) and password hash. Assuming I log in to Gab using a Tor Browser, there’s no IP log can tie anything back to me.
Mac – The Disappearing Comment (Bermuda Triangle fashion) happens to me sometimes when quoting Solzhenitsyn, but I don’t think that’s your problem here.
Sooo – I was reading the Hoyt post somebody recommended somewhere here recently (haven’t been to her site for awhile) and it hits all the Crazy Times paranoia, which is not to say she is wrong.
…and it was full of quotes, one of which was particularly perceptive.
Anyone not of the Blue Church, especially gun owners, are dangerous reactionary maniacs waiting for the right time to rise up in counter-revolution! AND MANY OF THE LEFT BELIEVE IT. When you’re asked how you could believe the election was stolen, they’re asking you how crazy you are:
(Q)uite a few people I know who don’t ordinarily discuss politics with me – or, in the case of one, much of anything with me – have interrogated me (there really is no other word for it) as to whether I believe the election was fraudulent. I have given essentially the same answer as Anton, which in its summary form goes like this: the rules were changed so that we can never know; there was reason to think in advance that the results would be suspect, and then things are reported to have actually happened that do make them suspect, and the courts have never ruled on the merits and almost certainly never will.
I was a paragraph in before I realized I had read that somewhere before, a few more sentences before I figured out where I had seen it, and then had my memory confirmed at the end of the really long excerpt.
Get ready to be doxxed (well, they already know who you are), and cancelled.
jack @9:58pm,
I like the guy who said, “So if I want to date a woman simply because she’s a woman that makes me, what? Female phobic?”
neo @10:34pm,
The blog’s algorithm knows any comment questioning the genius of Rufus T. Firefly MUST be trash! 😉
Rufus T. Firefly @6:02pm,
Adderley, Desmond, and Coltrane… you missed one: Sonny Rollins. One easily could spend a lost weekend spinning LP’s from these greats.
My fav Coltrane might be Crescent, or Quartet Plays. I’m also fond of the work he did with Johnny Hartman (great for a rainy Sunday afternoon).
BTW, when I played street hockey as a youth I used the name Hackenbush on my jersey.
Neo: even weirder, the two original comments are now appearing for me, but with the note that they’re awaiting moderation. I presume they aren’t appearing for other people. I guess it would make sense that the spam catcher would decide to sequester the third copy of a comment.
Easier to spell than, “Devereaux.”
Roller hockey? In line?
Roller Hockey?
No, nothing so sophisticated as that, nor do I think that Roller Blades actually existed back in the days when I played street hockey and dinosaurs roamed the earth. It was actually hockey played in the street, in our sneakers, with a plastic puck, and nets that could be easily and quickly moved when the cry went out “car coming”.
We played roller hockey at skating ring with small ball. It was a blast!
Mac:
Liberating a comment from spam or the trash is just part of the process. I have to find the comment, mark it “not spam” or the like, and then I have to find it again in the regular comments where it will suddenly appear, and then I have to mark it “approved.” Duplicate comments that appear I have to send back to the trash. That is part of an effort to prevent future comments from that person being labeled automatically as spam or trash. The spam filter has a mind of its own and does not explain its decisions. Anyway, I tried to liberate all your comments, but I didn’t necessarily get around to “approving” them all or deleting the extras, although I thought I had.
Aesop, I followed that same rabbit-hole to Smallest Minority (although I didn’t go through Hoyt, but Grant instead – he’s on my daily reading list, Hoyt not so much). Interesting mind there.
The artwork immediately brought to mind Jim Morrison.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
You should post this one on Wednesday next week, for St. Patrick’s Day. 🙂
For Neo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhyHBoG-uZA
This is reminiscent of a certain work of modern art in the art museum in my hometown, done by an artist whose name I don’t remember, and I cannot now find it in the museum’s collection list online. It was loud and garish, but it had character. I kind of hope they didn’t sell it. I’m not much for modern art generally, but that museum is one of the few that I’ve always felt could make it work. Maybe it’s my parochial bias – have to support the home team.
I would second Kate’s motion, but it’s a done deal now. 🙂
I honestly hope to never see it again.
I’m a big fan of that iteration of the logo!
Mac,
Here’s my reply to your question about Disco and Electronica on the most recent Bee Gee’s thread.
Disco evolving to Electronic(a). I can see the evolution in the comparison that the latter is what is now done in the venues where the former was done. Young folks wanting to go out and have fun moving to music typically dance to Electronica these days. In the ’70s it was Disco.
The beats are similar in that most all Disco and most all Electronica are in 4/4 time. Pretty much any song in a 4 beat pattern (as long as the time is evenly divisible by 4) can be Disco-danced to. If you watch any Ballroom dance you’ll see folks doing older dances to modern music. For example; you can Foxtrot to pretty much all Disco music. Marches are also in 4/4 time. Most all music (that isn’t a waltz) written in the last 150 years is 4/4 (or 2/4, cut-time, which is basically the same thing). Just about every rock song you can think of is in that rhythm, so saying Disco evolved to Electronica because the beats are almost always identical is meaningless. Is Disco an evolution of John Phillip Sousa’s, “The Stars and Stripes Forever?” Well, Disco has the same beat, and it came along later, but that’s about all the two have in common.
One more quick comment about their beats. The beats seem fairly similar, but there is a common difference. As I wrote earlier, the Disco beat is almost always, “peasoup, peasoup, peasoup, peasoup.” The Electronica beat is almost always, “boots’npants,’nboots’npants,’nboots’npants,’n’boots’npants.” DJs and music production people often use those descriptors. That “boots” part is where the distinction is. Electronica has a wider range. Disco does not go as far down. It stays more up. “pea” vs. “boots.”
Disco and Electronica are both dance music, but that’s where the similarity ends. Disco is an evolution of Ballroom and Swing, even the Minuet folks did in the 1600s (also in 4/4 time). I’m not a ’50s and ’60s historian, but at some point couple dancing to memorized steps gave way to free form dances like the Twist and Shag and Frug and Monkey, which gave way to simply jumping and shaking and twirling. By the time I was dancing to New Wave there were not even names, like Twist, and it was considered a bit uncool to pay too much attention to your partner, or even look at her. Within a year or two when one went to a club playing New Wave it wasn’t even cool to ask anyone to dance. You just went to the floor and danced. Girls could always dance together, but guys tried to make sure they were near a girl, or girls. Of course, if you went with a date you’d both go to the floor together, and try to stay around the same area, but it was intentionally free, individual and disjointed.
When you see footage of couples dancing to something like “Rock Around the Clock” in the ’50s, they are doing swing steps to Rock music and dancing as partners. If you look at couples dancing to “Incense and Peppermints” in the ’60s they do not touch, they do not necessarily do the same arm movements…
Disco is a continuation of that Ballroom, Swing, “Rock Around the Clock” tradition.
Electronica is a continuation of that Strawberry Alarm Clock, New Wave tradition.
A modern “Rave” has its roots in Woodstock, Burning Man and ’80s Dance Parties.
Disco has its roots in Minuet and Square Dance and Foxtrot and the Lindy Hop.
I don’t know of a new form of couples dance currently extant. There is a swing-revival that has been going on for almost 30 years now. It stopped growing, but is still picking up young recruits. It would not surprise me at all to see a Disco revival make a comeback. The 20 somethings who do Swing dress in fashion from the era. It’s a hoot. I could easily envision 20 somethings doing the same with Disco era costumes and music.
Reminds me of a very overrated Science Fiction movie starring a different Neo. At first glance I thought the image was made of green 1’s and 0’s* on a black image.
Aside from the fact that it really is made on 1’s and 0’s…
Love it!
BTW, The Matrix is not overrated IMHO. But the sequels were crap.
Homeric, we shall have to agree to disagree regarding The Matrix.
Hello physicsguy from the Open Thread 3/3/21:
Xylourgos on March 3, 2021 at 9:44 am said:
This is for PhysicsGuy but if others have an opinion please join in…..
Would really like to know your opinion on this.
Very interesting take on music and dance styles, Rufus, and it mostly meets my observations. I like the description of Disco as “four on the floor.” Most EDM — Electronic Dance Music, the preferred term these days — fits in but with the modifications you mentioned. Not all 4/4 music fits that description, with some accented on the 2nd and 4th beat, 4th beat, or 3rd/1st and 3rd beats.
There’s also more rock-based music in time signatures other than 4/4 than one might think, mostly in progressive and psychedelic rock. And yes us Deadheads do dance in 7/4.
Well about the real life matrix?
https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/a-quick-guide-to-free-speech-and-avoiding-big-tech-online/
Tools to consider. Don’t give the bast*rds any data.
Fractal Rabbit – did you see The Matrix in the theater when it came out or later on DVD? At the time, the SPFX were quite cutting edge I believe. But taste in films is obviously subjective, and of course many people simply do not like Keanu.
Xylourgos,
Sorry, I missed that. I don’t always pay attention to open threads.
Anyway, the answer to your question as given by the climate alarmists, is that as CO2 increases in the atmosphere it will initiate a feedback loop with respect to water vapor. Water is, by far, the real greenhouse gas. As you point out CO2 doesn’t have the population by itself. There’s also the fact it absorbs IR only in one major band at 15microns, while water has many large absorption bands from the visible, near IR to far IR. The modelers set up an equation with a feedback factor. It’s those MODEL outputs that are published and declared to be reality. J Christy, from U. Alabama, Huntsville published a graph a few years ago comparing those model runs to balloon and satellite data. The models are initialized to data from around 1975. The models fallow the temp data fairly well up until about 1995 then go off the rails. They haven’t agreed with the observations for the past 20 years at the 2 sigma level. But, hey, what are facts when one is true believer.
I also liked The Matrix, but hated the second one so much I’ve never seen the third.
“Electronica is a continuation of Strawberry Alarm Clock”
And so is Lynyrd Skynyrd. SAC guitarist Ed King later joined LS where he wrote the music for their most well-known song, “Sweet Home Alabama”. Whoda thunk there was any connection between Lynyrd Skynyrd and electronic dance music?
Just recently you referred to “St. Patrick’s Day clothing” as “hideous”, neo. Changing your mind on green? You have always been a changer!
It’s funny that I didn’t make the connection with The Matrix upon seeing this green selfie rendition, but as I said above, I had a certain piece of art in mind. However, it does strike me that Neo’s hair is similar in its basic style to how the actress who played The Oracle in the first two films had hers done. Maybe it’s Neo who’s the mastermind of this entire simulation….
(Morpheus’ first big speech to Neo in the first movie – the pill scene – is one of the few speeches from film that I think I have completely memorized.)
As to physicsguy’s explanation about water, does this mean we’re heading toward a discussion of FTIR spectrophotometry? 🙂
Well, since Rufus and Marisa brought up music time signatures, and the 7/4 meter specifically …
Here is my favorite Rick Beato “What makes this song great” episode, #63, on Rush’s “Limelight.” Rick begins by citing a poll on what his fans wanted him to do, and most went for “What makes this song great” but a large minority went for Advanced Music Theory. So either he gave them the former good and hard, or he thought he’d mix the two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P-yUOlOC5M
The whole thing is good. He spends a few minutes talking about the 2nd opening phrase being in alternating 4/4 and 3/4 meters which can be felt as a 7/4 timing. That starts at 3:10.
Later he talks about the part of the song where the meters get really crazy. That starts at 10:30. At some point he asks “Who does that!?”
My guess about who used mixed meters first was Stravinsky. I was close. Here is Wikipedia on mixed meters:
The part on the lead guitar solo is great. I got the impression that Rick is saying that most of the pitch bending is from the whammy bar, but I watched most of Alex Lifeson’s video on how to play that solo. First, he jokes about the other guitarist’s videos on how to play his solo: “Gee, I never thought about doing it that way. Maybe I’ll try that sometime.” Then, when he plays it, most of the pitch bending comes from stretching the strings with his left or fret hand.
Also, that solo ends with a very long sustain on a vibrato high note. He does in fact use an electronic delay box to do that. On stage, the box enables him to sustain the solo high note for 10 or 20 seconds while he plays an entirely different phrase.
Anyway, it is probably safe to say that when the meters in a song get this complex, the band immediately loses about 3/4 of their potential audience. It can very exciting, IMO.
physicsguy:
Thanks! A person could watch just Bee Gees videos on YouTube and it would take a long long time to exhaust the supply.
physicsguy,
Do you have an opinion of the green house multiplier for methane relative to CO2? AGW doomsayers use a multiplier that has varied from about 50 to 70 or is it 100 now?
Some have said that the absorption spectrum of water is almost exactly the same as methane, but my cursory look suggests that it is similar with some significant differences. So the naysaying theory is that the water absorption “covers” or blocks the methane absorption. Also, one should integrate that absorption spectrum over the actual solar energy spectrum. I have no idea what that is.
Here’s some danceable 7/4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR5iB3ITGIU
Marisa,
Frank Zappa did a lot of interesting stuff in different time signatures, but I’m much more of a jazz fan. For me, Brubeck’s, “Time Out” is the pinnacle.
Phillip Sells,
“Morpheus’ first big speech to Neo in the first movie – the pill scene – is one of the few speeches from film that I think I have completely memorized.”
My movie quote databank never advanced beyond, “Caddyshack*”
*40 years ago I could have probably recited, “Monty Python’s Holy Grail” from memory.
Blondie’s Heart of Glass actually uses 7/4 in three bars in the middle of the song. But I prefer King Crimson Discipline for more ‘radical’ time changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnnUIveM-e0
I’m a jazz fan too. I particularly like this 7/4 piece appropriately titled 74 Miles Away:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz99Sg6DvYs
TommyJay,
From what I can find methane is at 1884 ppb = 1.88ppm which is about 220x less than CO2. If CO2 is a trace gas at 412 ppm, what does that make methane?? 🙂 It’s absorption bands are at 7.7, 3.5, and 2.3 microns in the near IR. The 2 and 3 micron bands are at the very low end of the earth Planck curve, so it would be only the 7 micron that would contribute anything. But, water also has a large band at that wavelength, and given that water is literally 6000x more abundant, guess who wins in the competition for available photons? I would think methane is just a way for the alarmists to cry wolf even more. They love to show how much CH4 has risen in recent history…so what?
I actually spent a sabbatical looking at the absorption spectrum of water and CO2 for both the solar and earth radiation curves. Doing the actual integration is very, very difficult as one also has to use transition probabilities from the molecular wavefunctions. I got around that by using Einstein coefficients which kinda lumps all those nasty integrals into a single term which when taking ratios of absorption/emission drop out.
I’m old enough to remember when Brubeck’s, “Time Out” was available on any decent bar’s jukebox (and this was prior to the days of digital jukeboxes).
oops, meant to write “Take Five”, not time out.
Thanks for that physicsguy,
I mucked it up a bit, but you knew what I meant. The earth’s re-radiative Planck curve is the thing. If, if methane is 70 times worse than CO2, but there is 220 times less of it, then methane is roughly a 32% effect by comparison? But I don’t think 70 is a good number.
So is there a correct oversimplified multiplier number for methane? Or is it just that; oversimplified. Such a thing would rely on a standardized global atmospheric humidity map, and a while ago I found that such a thing exists, but couldn’t find any numbers to go with the label.
TommyJay,
That 70 number is some sort of “global warming potential” based with CO2 as “1” and calculated based on lifetime in the atmosphere and something called the “radiative efficiency” which I have no idea of what that means. Maybe something to do with quantum transition rates??? Seems like a made up sort of parameter not based on any real QM.
Stephen Miller,
“Take Five” is a single from “Time Out” so you were right either way.
“And yes us Deadheads do dance in 7/4.”
It shows. Just kidding, sorta.
Great music. That King Crimson Discipline will put a smile on my face all day long.
I’m not a Dead Head but that “short” video is quite good.
Take Five is such a classic. I keep bumping into the song in period piece movies or TV series where it is used to typify 1959. Here is huxley’s favorite site Songfacts on the song. I had forgotten that the whole song is about half drum solo. While the drum solo is reasonably complex, it is not too complex or overbearing. And the piano keeps the steady rhythm while the drum does variations.
Dave Brubeck said that yes, the more serious dancers do dance to a song in 5/4.
Homeric,
I saw it in the theater at release because it looked very interesting and about a year later on VHS (not DVD) when a friend and very big fan of the movie insisted I needed to watch it again, because I didn’t understand it enough to like it the first time.
I’m a funny guy. My friends kid around that it is very hard to determine what I will like or dislike. But I am a lifelong Science Fiction fan who, almost, but not quite, loathes flashy special effects. They just don’t make a difference to me, though sometimes, they make my hate a movie. Somewhere in my youth, I decided they just felt empty. Not sure why I didn’t like The Matrix but it wasn’t just the effects. Perhaps it was the Plato’s Cave rehash? Don’t know. But I fell asleep the second time I watched it.
I like Keanu though. Big fan of the first John Wick movie.
Well, Rufus T., I hesitate to argue, but there does seem to be some continuity. I had the vague impression that “house” music was part of the chain, so I searched for “house music disco” and this was one of the first hits:
https://www.electronicbeats.net/15-essential-disco-house-tracks-every-head-know/
There’s also this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_music#Influences_and_precursors
As you probably are aware, what those of us who aren’t much interested lump together as “techno” has about 50 sub-genres. “House” seems to be one of the earliest ones.
Re the Dead and funny time signatures: I’m definitely not a Deadhead, but I do like a lot of their stuff, and one of my favorites is Live Dead, the 1969 (70?) live album. There’s a song (using the word loosely) on there called “The Eleven.” That title really puzzled me, especially when I discovered that the phrase occurs in the New Testament: after Judas’s betrayal, the disciples, who had sometimes been referred to as “the twelve”, became “the eleven.” So was there some mystical religious thing going on in the song?
No. Only within the past year or so did I learn that the song is called “The Eleven” because it’s in 11/4 time. And btw it is definitely danceable. To my not very knowledgeable ear it doesn’t actually hit the 11/4 groove till around the 3:30 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE5VdsuGWJg
Marisa,
That Adderley track is sublime. Adderley may be my second favorite saxophonist behind Paul Desmond, but Coltrane’s rendition of, “My Favorite Things” is so incredible that single song may push him ahead of Adderly on my list. I like more of Adderly’s works, but I really, really like Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.”
Wait, Coltrane and Adderly both played on Davis’, “Kind of Blue,” which just may be my favorite album, regardless of genre, so I guess I’ll call it a tie for second place behind Desmond. Actually, ranking creative genius is kind of dumb. All three are phenomenal talents!
11/8, not 11/4, according to something I just read. As a non-musician the distinction seems a bit arbitrary to me.
Remind me to keep an eye out for that Caleb Anderson boy five or ten years from now.
Today, the weather here in the hinterlands of the Empire State has been unseasonably nice. I ordered a vertical planter with 5 tiers for the patio; it’s going to arrive later this week. Going to put herbs in it, but haven’t fully decided which ones. I thought 2 trays for basil, 1 for cilantro, 1 for thyme and 1 for something else. (Spinach? Chives? Anybody know what would work well in a part-sun setting for USDA zone 5b? Does it matter that much for herbs?)
Philip Sells,
It’s supposed to be in the 50s here in the Lake George region tomorrow and possibly 60 on Thursday. I’m off this week and I plan on hiking both days. It was gorgeous out today while I was chopping at the ice.
Mac,
I absolutely agree that House music was a precursor to Electronica. I am from Chicago (where House “originated”) and when I first went to meet my girlfriend’s (now wife) family in Europe the 20 somethings gave me requests for House mix tapes that I sent to them, since they knew I was from Chicago and House was starting to take over the Discotheques in Europe at the time.
When I wrote earlier of ’80s Dance Parties, that was also an outgrowth of House (maybe, sort-of happened simultaneously). What was happening was DJs had started running 2 turntables and the way you slid one song into another distinguished DJs, talentwise (along with song selection, of course). This was a completely separate phenomenon from Disco, it just happened to be occurring at the same time as Disco was at its zenith. When me and my peers started dancing to New Wave music in the very early ’80s that is what some of the cool clubs were doing; mixing songs into each other; the end of one bled into the start of another so the dancing never stopped.
House music was mostly all about the DJ. I tended to call it Industrial because of the warehouses in Chicago where we’d go to dance to it. But New Wave was about the groups and the songs, themselves. Modern Electronica is definitely an evolution of House music.
So, as someone once said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” You can be correct. I can be correct. We are likely even talking about different things.
The distinction, for me, is the style of dance. Partner or solo. (For you, it appears to be who is dancing and where they are. If it’s young people on a big dance floor it’s all the same trendline*.)
House, Electronica, New Wave, ’60s Psychedelica, Ska… All basically solo (often with a partner, who is also doing her, or his, own thing), ad hoc dancing.
Minuet, Waltz, Cha Cha, Mambo, Square dance, Jitterbug, Bunny Hop, Polka, Quick Step (I love that one!)… all couples dancing to a limited range of steps. As was Disco.
*The reason I don’t make my distinction where you do is because humans have always used dance as a courtship ritual (just as many other species do). In my mind, people dancing is not unique. Every culture throughout history has done it. I see a through line from Hebrew or Greek line dancing to today’s country dance halls. I see a through line from tap to break dancing. I see a through line from the Waltz to Disco. I see a through line from kids doing the Frug to Electronica. But it’s all pretty arbitrary. I think a lot of folks see it the same way you do.
Fractal Rabbit,
I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but CGI completely pulls me out of a movie. I am literally more engaged by stop action clay models of dinosaurs and apes than I am by hyperkinetic action sequences done by computer rendering.
I’m fine with non-real things happening in movies if there are three dimensional objects being filmed (the first Star Wars movie, for example). When it’s two dimensional I instantly become detached. My subconscious says, “Hey, we’re watching a movie.” I hear it called the “uncanny valley.”
I disliked the Matrix for a similar reason. People standing in front of a green screen pretending. However, I did like the three dimensional camera affects in some of the Matrix action scenes where the camera would spin around the scene while the actors seemed to stand still.
Keanu Reeves,
I kind-of thought of him as a goof (although I sincerely, really enjoyed the first, “Bill and Ted” movie and thought he was great in that), then one of my kids developed a crush on him and she started telling me about him. He seems like a really, really great guy. A real mensch.
FOAF @4:32pm,
You got a big laugh out of me with that!
One bit of trivia I find hilarious: Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson are both huge Deadheads who spent (mis-spent?) a fair amount of their youth traveling with the band to dozens (hundreds?) of shows.
The City Journal article by Bari Weiss about elite private schools may be the most horrifying and worrisome thing I’ve seen in a while. It’s not that surprising but at some point people need to stand up or it’s all over. Depressing.
Rufus T. Firefly,
That may be a lot of why I don’t care for special effects, especially the CGI that infests everything nowadays. The effects that impress me the most are good model work and the old Ray Harryhausen stop-motion stuff. I’ll take Sinbad fighting the skeleton warriors any day of the week over CGI. But then again, the Sinbad movies were telling a great story too.
As far as the Uncanny Valley, I could be wrong, but I always understood it to be when something is supposed to look human. And it looks really, really close. But then that actually just makes it look “worse”, or more off-putting to people. I’ve heard The Polar Express animated movie was an example of that. It’s also a battle the robotics people are fighting with the life-like robots. They’re too close to human-like in looks but in a sense, that’s the problem. It ends up just giving people the heebie jeebies.
I *LOVE* the first Bill & Ted movie. Love. It. The second one isn’t bad either. But I tend to dislike time travel movies in general*, and since Bill & Ted is a silly movie anyway, at least the movie didn’t take itself too seriously and just went for fun. The mall musical scene and Napoleon Bonaparte at the Waterloo Waterpark are *classic*.
*Time Travel movies that I didn’t hate, in no particular order:
1) Primer (one of my favorite Sci-Fi movies ever)
2) Interstellar
3) the first 2 Terminator movies
4) Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Some people consider Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow: Live, Die, Repeat to be time travel movies. I really don’t. I see the case for it but disagree. That being said, I absolutely love both of those movies as well.
Mac,
“11/8, not 11/4, according to something I just read. As a non-musician the distinction seems a bit arbitrary to me.”
It’s not as hard as it seems. Musicians tend to be intentionally obtuse and answer simple questions with very non-direct answers. Ask one what “key” means sometime…
This is the first definition my bing search came up with, and it’s a good place to start:
To give the music some form to make it easier to read pieces are broken up into measures. The time signature just tells you how many of what types of beats there are in a measure. Think of a march; 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 4/4 time. There are four quarter notes to a measure. Think of a waltz; 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 3/4 time. There are three quarter notes to a measure. The denominator is the division of a whole note (in both of these cases we are dividing the whole into four, even sections {conveniently referred to as a quarter note}). The top is how many of those beats until you draw a vertical line on the staff and begin a new measure.
You’ll find a lot of fours in Western music. It just seems we humans like that*. Twos, fours and eights are very common patterns.
Measures are also called “bars.” Except for Classical (and Big Band and March and probably a few more I’m forgetting), musicians typically talk about how many bars there are in a song. “12 bar blues.” “Cannonball, blow a 16 bar solo here.” Measure or bar patterns have common repetitions also, and those often fall into numbers divisible by 4. The next time you listen to a rock song start counting and the patterns will become obvious. There’s a good chance you’ll notice the song starting off with that four quarter note repetition. You’ll also almost certainly notice that after doing four of those patterns in a row something will change. There’s usually just a slight change after the first four (often it’s a repeat, or restart of the first four). Then, after four more (eight altogether) you’ll likely notice a bigger change. After eight or sixteen bars there will almost certainly be a big change; either a complete repeat of those first eight or sixteen bars, or a bridge to a chorus. When you start paying attention to it you won’t be able to stop hearing all the fours and eights. That’s why folks like The Dead, Zappa, Dave Brubeck… messed around with key signatures; to color outside the lines and have some fun.
And back to your quote. Your instinct was correct. It’s a simple fraction and it’s divisible or multiplied just like a fraction. You can take a song that is 4/4 and decide to write it with twice as many measures, putting it into 2/4 time. You can’t divide 3/4 in half, but you can write it as 6/8. Instead of 3 quarter notes per measure there are 6 eighth notes**.
*Well, Westerners. There is all kinds of crazy folk stuff around the world with all kinds of cool beat patterns and time signatures.
**The number you put in the denominator of the time signature does not force you to write the song using certain notes. A song can be in 4/4 time and not contain a single quarter note. (That would be unusual, but you can do it.) It’s the number of beats per measure. If there’s a whole note in a 4/4 song that single note takes up an entire measure (the space between the vertical bars) (that note is held for four beats), written as one whole note, rather than four quarter notes tied together.
Rufus, fascinating stuff about dance. Now I know something about the house genre. I can do a little bit of Greek line dance, so I fall more on that side of things, I guess, if anywhere.
Fractal Rabbit,
Based on what I thought “The Terminator” was I did not expect to like it. Long before everything was “on demand” fraternities at my University would get movies (actual reels of film) after they had their runs in the theater and show them on weekends for $1 as fund raisers. A girl I was very interested in agreed to go to the movies with me one Friday (I certainly couldn’t afford to take her to a real movie house) and “The Terminator” was about the only thing playing that neither of us had seen.
I was astounded! All the little foreshadowing and clues and hints James Cameron put in there. The first time we see Sarah Connor she is wearing a Jetsons t-shirt (I owned that same shirt) and her and her roommate get tangled up in blow dryer cords as they are both scrambling to get ready to go out on the town. (The Jetsons are from the future and she is getting tied up in technology vis a vis a hairdryer cord.) Who would bother to write something that clever in a dumb, action movie? And I don’t think there was any CGI in it. Not sure CGI really existed yet. Was “Tron” the first CGI movie? Pretty sure “Terminator” came after it, but I think Cameron used models, machinery and stop action. Anyway, it was so good I barely paid attention to my date. I don’t even recall if we ever went out again. That movie floored me.
Rufus,
Tron was a big one but if my memory is correct, Westworld or Disney’s The Black Hole had the first CGI in a Hollywood movie. I owe that knowledge to one of my favorite YouTube channels, “Good-Bad-Flicks”. Cecil, the guy who makes those video had one a while back about the Black Hole and he mentioned it.
I can’t recommend ‘Good-Bad-Flicks’ enough to people who enjoy a certain amount of cinematic cheese, like I do.
Thinking back, I don’t think the first Terminator had CGI, or at least, much to speak of. I think those cyborg/ androids are all models and stop-motion.
Phillip Sells,
Like the Greeks, Orthodox Jewish men dance together. I can watch this stuff all day! It looks like such fun!
https://youtu.be/fZNmGaEw57Q
https://youtu.be/eHlau4xnQYs
https://youtu.be/CBNmqwJ5aN0
This may have come up before but let me repeat. I kinda approve of these guys and I’ve been on the list for a week or so.
Consider joining the 75M & Rising group.
And pass the link to people who are anti-authoritarian but not politically active.
This is a group that suggests simple daily actions which will gradually ease you in to being an activist. All of them are simple: be an “Armchair Activist” with no stress, no personal risk.
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/Op6CMY6
You have to give an email addr.
You can do the suggested actions. Or not. And you can unsubscribe. There is no pressure.
Rufus, glad you enjoyed the ALO Monday song from yesterday’s open thread.
Give this longer, jammed out song a try:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX1IpB2tGGY
“Hope that when I get there somebody cuts me some slack”
Lots of hippie wiggling 🙂
ALO stands for Animal Liberation Orchestra. It’s about liberating the inner animal, not political activism. Out of all the bands I see live regularly, they have the most relaxed, positive vibe, in part because 3/4 of the band have been friends and bandmates since 7th grade in Saratoga CA. Guitarist Lebo (Dan Lebowitz) is an exceptional guitar talent.
And here’s a Tuesday song by someone rather better known:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQMRWtCRPmw
President Trump asked the RNC to quit using his name as a fundraising tool, to which they promptly said “pound sand.”
Trump says the RINOS ” do nothing but hurt the Republican Party and our great voting base — they will never lead us to Greatness. Send your donation to Save America PAC at DonaldJTrump.com,” Trump said. “We will bring it all back stronger than ever before!”
I’ve been receiving multiple requests a day for donations from the RNC, ever since donating during the election cycle. No thanks.
Better quality version of ALO song above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsVMYKE94s
Marisa,
Looks like the keyboard player borrowed Fred Flinstone’s water buffalo lodge hat!
Very fun band!
ALO knows how to throw down a dance party with great songs and great musicianship. Keyboardist/frontman Zach Gill likes his hats and they all like to costume fairly often.
Rufus, I actually was a big fan of the Dead right after I moved to San Francisco in the early ’70s, went to many of their shows. However as I began playing in bands myself I became less impressed with their long jams which sometimes seemed aimless. Like the Spinal Tap distinction between clever and stupid, there is a fine line between improvisation and noodling.
“Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson are both huge Deadheads who spent (mis-spent?) a fair amount of their youth traveling with the band to dozens (hundreds?) of shows.”
That explains a lot, at least about Coulter lol. I still like Tucker though.
As for CGI vs. claymation I don’t think CGI is automatically bad, but it is no substitute for creativity. The original King Kong put more humanity into the ape with claymation than most human actors this side of James Cagney put into their roles. The fight between King Kong and the T Rex is one of my favorite scenes in any movie. At the end after killing the dinosaur Kong wiggles its jaw just to make sure it’s dead, then stands on him and beats his chest. Brilliant!
You have to love it … “Super Straight” identity.
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2021/03/09/lgbt-activists-get-checkmated-by-tiktok-users-with-a-new-hilarious-sexuality-type-n339928
Someone on TikTok came up with this.
Basically they use Saul Alinsky Rule 4
Again I’ve said many times … don’t care what you want to call yourself but I don’t have to praise or agree with you for your choice.
Testing…the blog seems to be swallowing my comments. Treated as spam maybe?
Mac
neo has mentioned it happening before.
Ok, I’ll try the missing one again:
Rufus T.: No, it’s not about the dance styles at all for me. I’ve never been to anything resembling a disco or any other species of dance club. This is purely a pop music fan’s curiosity. I am now asking myself why I’ve never had the visceral “ugh” reaction to electronic dance stuff that I did to disco. I’m not sure but whatever the musical connections may or may not be, there’s a vibe about the electronic stuff that I sort of like. I’ll occasionally put it on as an energetic alternative to ambient electronica, which I love. Some of it has a dreamy quality in addition to the intensity–no doubt related to the preferred drugs.
Probably 20 years ago I had a tape of a mostly-electronica local radio show which had a track that I really liked. It had (iirc) a pretty strong techno-ish beat but also a tune that I liked and a recurring vocal line that I never could figure out exactly: it was either “I have a nice life” or “I have a knife life”. It seemed to be deliberately distorted so as to be ambiguous. I lost or gave away or re-used the tape (whatever), but If anybody knows what that was, I would love to hear it again.
Seems to be one comment that won’t go. I just tried it again, after the 10:05 one, and as before there’s a sort of pause where it seems to be working, then the post and comments are redisplayed, but my comment isn’t there. Oh well.
Well, there it is (10:11).
Mac:
I liberated it from the trash pile. I have no idea why it kept going there.
Fractal Rabbit,
Well I guess we can agree on John Wick (I like all three). I also love Live Die Repeat which I’m surprised you like since it is almost entirely green screen effects.
The thing I’ve always liked about the Matrix is the concept that we are all “coppertops” meaning human batteries being used by [our overlords].
Parler is back on line and functional!
And here is a link about it
https://youtu.be/2to83UUT5Fc
Excellent! Everybody quickly go and pre-Dox themselves with Parler!
🙂
Or can you now sign up without having to give them email and phone number?
Gab only knows my login name (not an email addr) and password hash. Assuming I log in to Gab using a Tor Browser, there’s no IP log can tie anything back to me.
Mac – The Disappearing Comment (Bermuda Triangle fashion) happens to me sometimes when quoting Solzhenitsyn, but I don’t think that’s your problem here.
Sooo – I was reading the Hoyt post somebody recommended somewhere here recently (haven’t been to her site for awhile) and it hits all the Crazy Times paranoia, which is not to say she is wrong.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2021/03/08/i-dont-want-to-write-this-post/
Anyway, she linked a post by Peter Grant (also very good)…
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/03/us-politics-have-now-become-war-for.html
…and he linked a post from a person outside of my ken (still pretty good) …
https://www.smallestminority.org/2021/02/immanentize-the-eschaton/
…and it was full of quotes, one of which was particularly perceptive.
I was a paragraph in before I realized I had read that somewhere before, a few more sentences before I figured out where I had seen it, and then had my memory confirmed at the end of the really long excerpt.
“Michael Anton has a question: Why Do the Election’s Defenders Require My Agreement?” – Neo blog, 2/25/21
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/02/25/michael-anton-has-a-question-why-do-the-elections-defenders-require-my-agreement/
Ta-dah.
Gotta love the interwebz.
Get ready to be doxxed (well, they already know who you are), and cancelled.
jack @9:58pm,
I like the guy who said, “So if I want to date a woman simply because she’s a woman that makes me, what? Female phobic?”
neo @10:34pm,
The blog’s algorithm knows any comment questioning the genius of Rufus T. Firefly MUST be trash! 😉
Rufus T. Firefly @6:02pm,
Adderley, Desmond, and Coltrane… you missed one: Sonny Rollins. One easily could spend a lost weekend spinning LP’s from these greats.
My fav Coltrane might be Crescent, or Quartet Plays. I’m also fond of the work he did with Johnny Hartman (great for a rainy Sunday afternoon).
BTW, when I played street hockey as a youth I used the name Hackenbush on my jersey.
Neo: even weirder, the two original comments are now appearing for me, but with the note that they’re awaiting moderation. I presume they aren’t appearing for other people. I guess it would make sense that the spam catcher would decide to sequester the third copy of a comment.
Easier to spell than, “Devereaux.”
Roller hockey? In line?
Roller Hockey?
No, nothing so sophisticated as that, nor do I think that Roller Blades actually existed back in the days when I played street hockey and dinosaurs roamed the earth. It was actually hockey played in the street, in our sneakers, with a plastic puck, and nets that could be easily and quickly moved when the cry went out “car coming”.
We played roller hockey at skating ring with small ball. It was a blast!
Mac:
Liberating a comment from spam or the trash is just part of the process. I have to find the comment, mark it “not spam” or the like, and then I have to find it again in the regular comments where it will suddenly appear, and then I have to mark it “approved.” Duplicate comments that appear I have to send back to the trash. That is part of an effort to prevent future comments from that person being labeled automatically as spam or trash. The spam filter has a mind of its own and does not explain its decisions. Anyway, I tried to liberate all your comments, but I didn’t necessarily get around to “approving” them all or deleting the extras, although I thought I had.
Aesop, I followed that same rabbit-hole to Smallest Minority (although I didn’t go through Hoyt, but Grant instead – he’s on my daily reading list, Hoyt not so much). Interesting mind there.
The artwork immediately brought to mind Jim Morrison.