Cafe Bucky

Recently? Besides words and films?

Dave Brubeck. Dizzy Gillespie (”Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac”
drives my daughter crazy). Lots of Chemical Brothers, Crystal Method,
and Fat Boy Slim. Oh, and always some Beatles here and there (and
everywhere).

I just used the Apple Music Store to get Massive Attack’s “100th
Window” and href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000006045/qid=1056955376/sr=8-
2/ref=sr_8_2/104-5950210-3209560?v=glance&s=music&n=507846">“Mezzanine”.
Both get me in the programming groove. Volume up. Coffee strong.
Floating vocals over samples, ambient, sometimes hard-driving beat.
So much of what I’ve heard from MA would be right at home in a Bond
soundtrack. “Man Next Door” is yet another song using the classic John
Bonham drum riff from Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” (I hear
this beat all over the place - it’s almost become a game of “find
Bonham’s influence, again”). I can’t hear “Exchange” without thinking
of the movie “Dogtown & Z-Boys”, which always brings a tinge of
Santa Monica mid-70s flashback (very good).

There’s the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival this weekend, and I hope to catch a good part of the show on Sunday (when I get into town). Looks like I will be too late to see Taj Mahal. Taj used to give my dad harmonica lessons in the 60s. Blues Harp, dontcha know?! Hohner. Dad had at least a dozen of ‘em. One night when I was a wee lad, my dad and I were at a Hootnanny (a form of music making party), where Taj complemented my sense of drum rhythm (years of school band with lots of rudiments followed; beats with names such as “double paradiddle”). Great to see that Taj is still out there performing!

I have a media wish list, which is only here
as a “stuff that interests me” link. (so don’t go buying me anything,
unless it’ll make you incredibly happy - I’m just showing a less
tech-centric side here, a different onion layer :-)

More recent input, following films…

I am slogging my way through Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s the master of the serpentine
sentence. It’s become a personal challenge to get through, at which
point I think I’ll start again. Maybe it’s a lot better the second
time?

Just finished Henry
Rollins: The First Five. Man! Mr. 2-13-61 lays down a lot of
thoughts on shallow society, relationships, suicidal thoughts, being
burned, and so on. The book is great in parts, can be pretty intense,
but can get repetitive. It’s not “read it straight through” material. Hank’s a couple of months younger than me
(42), and I wonder if he’s come to terms with some of the stuff that
pissed him off so thoroughly in the 80s. Reading this and seeing L’Auberge
Espanol in the same week might make for a nice double whammy - 2 sides
of 20-whateverish.

I’ve read all of William Gibson’s books, so I had high hopes for Pattern
Recognition. I can’t say that I was let down, but this is no
Neuromancer, or any of the Bridge Trilogy. One thing I missed: multiple
threads, ping-pong chapters. PR is a straight follow of Cayce all the
way through. I never found myself caring about the Footage, and what
it meant. I did enjoy a lot of the atmosphere though - mention London
and I’m drawn in! I wanted to see Cayce wander into a small shop, and
meet The Finn just starting out. A good book if you are reading everything Gibson, or if you are into the “looking over the shoulders of the
main character, and where they travel” aspect. Perhaps I have too
much of a cyberpunk expectation when I think of Gibson: I want my
Ono-Sendai. I want Molly. I want reflected neon in oil puddles.
Braun coffee grinders. Mercenaries. Cheap origami trick.