Matthew T Grant

The New York Times ran a story on Friday about the spotlight Glenn Beck had cast on an “obscure CUNY professor,” Frances Fox Piven, and how this had attracted some very hostile attention from Beck’s followers. One fine fellow had left this comment on Beck’s site, The Blaze, “Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas ready and I’ll give My life to take Our freedom back.”

The thing that struck me about this quote wasn’t the threat of gun-related violence but the idea that we need to take our freedom back. As I told a friend the other night, I can’t relate to this sentiment at all. Specifically, I don’t feel any less “free” today than I did before Barack Obama became president. Indeed, my friend responded that he felt more free since Obama was elected.

I’m not sure if my perception of the Tea Party (or Tea Party-ish Republicans) is simply a caricature invented by the liberal media, but it seems like this notion of freedom is near and dear to them and that they see the Obama presidency as an assault thereupon. However, I’m hard-pressed to name a freedom that has been lost during the last two years (and the “individual mandate” in the healthcare bill doesn’t count since it hasn’t gone into effect yet – though, even then, it’s really just a tax issue for those who don’t have insurance. Of course, freedom from taxation is a freedom we have never truly enjoyed).

Now, I love freedom just as much, if not more, than the next guy, but I also believe that freedom is relative and that actual freedom is different from formal freedom. We are all formally free, for example, to own property here in the United States, but one’s ability to actually exercise that freedom is constrained by one’s available resources. Similarly, we are formally free to pursue whatever career we wish, but our ability to do so depends on education, physical or intellectual abilities, available resources (again), and so on.

In other words, while we have not lost any fundamental formal freedoms over the last two (or more) years, the economic downturn has definitely impinged on the ability of millions to actually exercise said freedoms. Having lost my own job two years ago, I can relate to that feeling. However, I don’t understand how assaulting an economics professor, let alone trying her for treason, would restore that dimension of freedom.

Having said that, I do think that lashing out would at least give someone the sense that they were reclaiming the most fundamental freedom that humans enjoy: the freedom to act. Nevertheless, this raises another question about freedom and one that few have the existential wherewithal to adequately face let alone answer: If we are parts of the physical universe, and every thought or action cannot be separated from its physical underpinnings (think: neurochemistry), isn’t possible that our sense of freedom is itself an illusion imposed by the physical system that enables us to sense anything at all? What if, for instance, the evolutionary advantage that has made human beings the dominant species (at least among vertebrates) is not that we can act freely, but that we can believe we act freely?

In other words, the freedom to act that the lone gunman seizes could be, and in most cases probably is, just the symptom of an underlying neuro-chemical or otherwise conditioned physical state and thus not free in any sense of the word other than when physicists speak of an object, subject to the gravitational pull of another object, being in “free fall.”

And that’s a freedom that, frankly, no one can take from you.

An old friend accused me of “playing it safe” on my blog. Apparently, writing about death metal, however aesthetically outlandish the music or my love of it may be, is of little consequence, big picture-wise.

Of course, I thought that my post on communism and change was kind of edgy—not to mention my frequent advocacy of atheism and/or nihilism—but apparently such musings neither touch nerves, shatter preconceived notions, nor speak truth to power.

Can it be true that there is nothing dangerous about this blog? Have I remained too scrupulously within the lines of accepted opinion, too conscientiously observed protocols of civility, too gently treated the thoughts and feelings of my contemporaries, even when I found them preposterous, stupid, or atrocious?

I suppose this is possible.

Will I henceforth change my approach?

This, too, is possible.

Am I playing it safe with this post?

Undoubtedly.

Phil Johnson has an ad agency (PJA) and also likes to read books. One day I asked him if he ever read science fiction and he said he didn’t. He asked me then to assemble a list of science fiction books I would recommend. I agreed to do so but thought, “Why should this list just sit in Phil’s inbox? Why don’t I, in fact, share it with the world via this worldwide, web-like platform I normally use for blogging about atheism, communism, and heavy metal?”

I’m no science fiction fanatic, and there’s probably a ton of great stuff out there that I’ve never even heard of (if you think so, PLEASE leave suggestions in the comments!), but this is the list I put together for Phil with the understanding that he has not even read some of the “classics”.

1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – The book upon which Blade Runner was based, of course, though much more engaging, involved, and philosophical than the film. It also contains at least one passage that, I believe, induces a palpable experience of existential vertigo. Watch out!
2. Spaceman Blues: A Love Story – Brian Francis Slattery’s relatively recent vignette hits you with a heady melange of beat prose, hard-boiled pacing, and an undying love of New York City. It also depicts the banal horror of alien conquest.
3. Dune – Speaking of melange, I was surprised to learn that Phil had never read this. The epic weirdness of David Lynch’s movie version aside, this novel is a virtuosic display of world-crafting that functions as political allegory, alternative history, and mystic tome.
4. Neuromancer – William Gibson is a reserved—at times almost austere—stylist with a keen eye for future probabilities and a good record collection. Oh, and he coined the term “cyberspace”. One of his most recent books, Pattern Recognition, was about marketing.
5. Schismatrix – I read this right after I read Neuromancer and thought that it actually contained more interesting ideas about social evolution, humanoid psychology, and the polymorphy of culture. If you like hallucinogenic drugs and societies built around the practice of sewing, you’ll love this.
6. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Speaking of hallucinogens, Philip K. Dick’s novel about the extreme ennui experienced by space colonists, their flight into a world of Barbie dolls and pharmaceuticals, and the appearance of drug-peddling cyber-god works both as a parable of the 60s and a prophecy for the future.
7. Radio Free Albemuth – This is the last Philip K. Dick novel I’m going to recommend but, in many ways, it is the best written (possibly because it was published posthumously and bears the trace of careful editing?). Dick had a religious experience in 1974 that obsessed him until his death. He wrote a lengthy exegesis of this experience and incorporated many of its details into his later novels (Valis, The Divine Invasion, Flow My Tears). It plays a central role in this novel as well but is handled in a more human, and less cartoony, way.
8. The Deathworms of Kratos – This was Book 1 in a series called “The Expendables” (I also read The Rings of Tantalus). It is totally adolescent science fiction that made a big impression on me when I read it in seventh or eighth grade. The lesson here isn’t that this is a great book; the lesson is that, with science fiction, sometimes you just have to pick up a book because it has a cool cover or weird title and start reading (that is in fact what I did with Spaceman Blues above).
9. The Alegebraist – This guy Iain Banks (or Iain M. Banks) is prolific and a very solid writer except that he sometimes gets too many plot threads cooking for his own good. This book definitely suffers from that but the weaknesses in plotting are more than made-up-for by the phantasmagoria of worlds, beings, and circumstances Banks conjures.
10. A Deepness in the Sky – Vernor Vinge is the guy who invented “The Singularity” and he’s written a bunch of cool science fiction novels. Some may argue that this book’s predecessor, A Fire Upon the Deep, is better, but this creepy, slow-burning study of intergalactic colonialism, mind control, and revolt has stuck with me much longer.

I could recommend a bunch more, but that’s enough for now. Like I said, if you’re reading this and got something to add, go for it!

Image Source: th3ph17.

Death Metal is genre music. Its defining characteristics are complex riffing (with a sometimes equally complex approach to meter), “blast beat” drumming, and vocal stylings that range from deep grunting to “cookie monster” growling to maniacal screaming. Naturally, the lyrical content of death metal centers around death —its many causes, violent and otherwise, as well as its various physical characteristics and consequences— feelings of terror or menace, and the occult. Likewise, the genre’s visual palette consists of images of the dead, the undead, war, murder, satanism, heathenism, barbarity, all-pervading darkness, and a post-apocalyptic futurism replete with blasted landscapes and bio-mechanical weaponry.

While there are bands like Opeth or Enslaved who have pushed and prodded these generic attributes in many surprising and strange directions, if you are wandering the halls of the record shoppe (or browsing through iTunes) and you see a cd whose cover depicts necrophagia or some pagan or devil-worshiping atrocity and the name of the band is Baphomet or Entombed or, well, Necrophagist, then you pretty much know what you are going to get.

That predictability is the beauty of genre music. Like country music or reggae or acid house, death metal, in the abstract, “all sounds the same.” But as any lover of the genre will tell you, there are real differences between the greats and the innovators and everyone else.

Which is why I want to tell you about Portal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, when in conversation my conservatively inclined contemporaries begin to criticize the liberals, I’ll say, “Hey, I’m a communist. I hate the liberals just as much as you do.” They generally, laugh, presuming me to be joking. One guy even said, “Well, then you must be happy there’s a Marxist in the White House.” [On that note, I’m not sure I understand the equation of Obama’s policies with socialism. “If he’s a socialist,” a friend of mine said, “then why is there so much unemployment?”]

For the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the communist party. I am also well aware of the crimes committed by communist parties around the world (and if you really want to head down a rabbit hole, just try to follow some of the disputes that arise when it comes to figuring the actual number of communism’s victims – this post and the accompanying comments are a good example). Furthermore, I categorically reject apologies for or defenses of genocidal atrocities, of whatever magnitude, in the name of unrealized or, even worse, unrealizable ideals. Read the rest of this entry »

Easily the best band on earth. I sincerely hope other bands pay attention and decide to eschew all the pretension and all the trends and just focus on creating real, honest-to-God ART. That’s a rare thing these days. – urdisturbing

I went to the Metal/Hardcore festival at the Palladium in Worcester in 1999 mainly to see Morbid Angel, a band I’d been into since 1991.

Back then, after reading about Morbid Angel in Spin, I picked up an Earache compilation called Grindcrusher at Disc Diggers (long since defunct) in Somerville (I also picked up Morbid Angel’s masterful Altars of Madness there shortly thereafter) and was introduced to their sound via “Chapel of Ghouls,” a Slayer-esque monolith of strangely psychedelic, thrashy death metal.

Of course, the rest of the cassette kicked ass as well because Earache’s roster in the early 90s was a who’s who of genre-defining death and grind bands (Carcass, Entombed, Bolt Thrower, Napalm Death, Terrorizer, etc.). Given my association, then, of the label with a certain level of aesthetic quality, I was happy to come across a basket of discounted Earache cassettes sitting on a table in the hustle and bustle of the “labels” area set up at the Palladium that night.

After a bit of rummaging around I ended up buying some Napalm Death —From Enslavement to Obliteration and Harmony Corruption, if memory serves— and a tape that, like anything that matters, altered the course of my life: Sleep’s Holy Mountain.

I’ll be honest. I bought the thing because is was like two bucks and the cover boasted an intricately ornate graffiti tableau consisting mainly of variations on “pot leaf.” Listening to it while driving through the dark and wooded hills outside of US 495, my mind just blew and blew. These Sabbath worshipers, thanks to their ability to craft a riff and wail trippily, took unabashed adulation to the point of mad originality. The first galloping notes of “Dragonaut” —the sinewy ooze of the bass line, the oddly chanted vocal (“Ride the dragon under Mars’ red sky”)— hooked me immediately. I couldn’t believe how great it sounded. Read the rest of this entry »

I received an email from a fellow named Igor. I assumed it was your garden variety, botnet-generated spam. It did, however, include a link to a Youtube video and, feeling secure that the Russians or Estonians or Ukrainians or whoever hadn’t jacked Youtube (yet!), I clicked on it. This is what I saw:

If you go ahead and watch the vid on the Youtubes, you’ll discover that there are multiple versions of it including parodies! Furthermore, the video and parodies are discussed at length on Know Your Meme. Why did they care? Because the video had some viral legs, in part thanks to this description which accompanied the original video post:

There is a video on Youtube named Mereana mordegard glesgorv. If you search this, you will find nothing. The few times you find something, all you will see is a 20 second video of a man staring intently at you, expressionless, then grinning for the last 2 seconds. The background is undefined. This is only part of the actual video.

The full video lasts 2 minutes, and was removed by Youtube after 153 people who viewed the video gouged out their eyes and mailed them to Youtube’s main office in San Bruno. Said people had also committed suicide in various ways. It is not yet known how they managed to mail their eyes after gouging them out. And the cryptic inscription they carve on their forearms has not yet been deciphered.

Youtube will periodically put up the first 20 seconds of the video to quell suspicions, so that people will not go look for the real thing and upload it. The video itself was only viewed by one Youtube staff member, who started screaming after 45 seconds. This man is under constant sedatives and is apparently unable to recall what he saw. The other people who were in the same room as him while he viewed it and turned off the video for him say that all they could hear was a high pitched drilling sound. None of them dared look at the screen.

The person who uploaded the video was never found, the IP address being non-existant. And the man on the video has never been identified.

Igor (if that is his real name) wrote in his message: “Tell you know this person? Simply it would be desirable to put an end in this history once and for all.”

The super strange part? I actually do know the guy in the video! How did Igor know? HOW DID HE KNOW!?!?!

More importantly, should I be afraid?

Got to see James Levine get back in the saddle and ride Mahler’s sprawling warhorse into the sunset last night. It was amazingly beautiful and there were times, especially during the first movement, when I thought, “Is this the most incredible music every written or conceived by any human?”

I was awe-struck by Mahler’s unending melodic inventiveness, his mastery of independent harmonic and rhythmic motion, and that insane chord which verily shreds the fabric of sanity and reality in the third and fifth movements.

I was furthermore impressed by, among other things too numerous to enumerate, the ominous and almost menacingly hushed entrance of the choir in the later stages of this dazzling and confounding masterpiece.

There may have been flaws in the execution (at least the Globe thought so) and the sheer volume towards the end was too much for my aging ears, but, all in all, I found this performance sublime and cathartic.

Plus, driving to and from the concert my car radio provided the following musical bookends: Kiss’ “Detroit Rock City” (driving in) and ELO’s “Fire on High” (driving home). Sweet.

First thing I noticed was that Chris Potter doesn’t have an iPhone. He took a call right before the set and it looked like he just had one of those free phones, or maybe a Blackberry. A Blackberry would make sense – as one of the leading tenors of the day, he’s got a business to run – but, somehow, an iPhone would have made more sense.

Chris Potter plays with the precision, force and lucidity that I associate with Stan Getz. His harmonic conception is palpably modern stemming as it does from Coltrane, of course, but even more obviously, at least to these ears, from Wayne Shorter. Last night he led the band through a set comprised primarily of new and, as Potter pointed out, untitled compositions, many reminiscent of the cyclical openness of Shorter’s mid-sixties work, though one at least, the last number, sounding fairly Zawinul-esque.

In other words, the evening provided a healthy dose of melodic and spacious dynamism that was simultaneously grounded, cerebral, and even atmospheric.

Last time I saw Potter he was accompanied by the guitarist Adam Rogers and I was struck then by Rogers’ mastery of myriad styles from bebop to fusion to funk-rock. Last night, I had a similar feeling about Potter’s talent; he has obviously subsumed the dominant tenor strains of the last fifty years and continues to deploy and forge them into a deliberate and individualized sound.

The main challenge for someone at Potter’s level of playing is not sounding too much like any of the guys he could sound like. Following in Shorter’s footsteps helps him do this since the latter’s career was literally born in Coltrane’s shadow (Trane had recommended him as a replacement for himself to Miles). Shorter of course, whose playing in the 60s bears some un-mistakable Trane-isms, went on to build a towering body of work characterized by a nuanced, engaging and distinctive vision. Potter’s oeuvre, for its part, remains a compellingly evolved work in progress.

Potter did sound sort of Trane-y at times, especially on one self-penned ballad. In fact, he even took the band on an extended, Eastern modal workout right out of Trane’s playbook. I was glad to see him take the head with his tenor but, inevitably, he reached for the soprano and I thought we were moving straight into imitative homage territory. I was pleasantly surprised, however. Potter’s soprano tone was more in the controlled, Jan Garbarek vein and, in fact, highlighted by contrast the helter-skelter, jittery and frantic nature of Trane’s.

Potter’s supporting cast featured Larry Grenadier on bass, Edward Simon on piano, and Marcus Gilmore on drums. Grenadier is a pro – thoughtful, lyrical, focused. Marcus Gilmore is full of energy and ideas and a deft juggler of simultaneously independent rhythmic flows and phrases. Simon produced endlessly beautiful and absorbing tableaux which, unfortunately, I was not always able to adequately descry, seated as I was some five feet behind the cauldron of Gilmore’s drum kit.

A young Berklee kid sat down next to me right before things jumped off. We were chatting and he asked me if “I played.” I’ve been playing guitar for over thirty years but I’m so self-conscious about my abilities that I responded, “Ah, I’m just a hacker. A journeyman.”

Later, as the band kicked in and I started to get a little lost in the music, I realized I should have told him the truth: I’m a latter-day beatnik jazz mystic type of guy. Ever since I heard Coltrane’s Ascension, I knew that jazz was a portal into the All, a complex and transient exploration of the infinite Now. When I hear jazz live, I’m looking for a hit of that.

And frankly, listening to Chris Potter’s angular, sinewy, but fleshed out and utterly human solos, and everything the band did around and through them, I got my fix.

Image source: Olivier Bruchez.

I went to see Rush at the Garden last night. It was good, but it wasn’t sublime.

Here’s the thing. I’ve liked Rush since I was a kid and in fact still listen to their music with an, for some, alarming frequency (my favorite album being Fly by Night). However, I never really explored their catalog, which I otherwise celebrate, beyond Moving Pictures, the mega-hit which sold over 4 million copies worldwide and put them on the classic rock map for good.

If I think of things from the standpoint of Geddy, Alex, and Neil, I realize that for them, Rush is everything they have done since they started playing together in something like 1968. In fact, early on in the show Geddy Lee joked that they had “400 songs” that they could play for us.

Unfortunately, for many of my generation—I recently turned 47—Rush actually boils down to the 4 or 5 songs (“Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight,” etc.) that we’ve heard a thousand times and, if you are a semi-fan like me, choice cuts from the preceding albums (“Xanadu” from A Farewell to Kings or “The Necromancer” from Caress of Steel). Aside from “Subdivisions” off Signals, I couldn’t really name a Rush song recorded after 1980.

It was for this reason, and a couple others, that the first lengthy set Rush played was a bit of the hard slog. Kicking things off with a very corny, though highly produced, film clip that set up the “time machine” theme of the evening, the band launched into one of their biggest hits, “Spirit of the Radio,” and it was exhilarating. When you hear a band play a song that has been kicking around your ears for thirty years it is undeniably powerful and I was, for about 4 minutes and 50 seconds, transported. Read the rest of this entry »