Yearly Archives: 2009

There’s Hype About “Revolution No. 9” ?

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I had no idea, but listen to this:

To novice Beatles fans, I warn you not to believe the hype about “Revolution 9.” I’ve listened to it many times over the years, waiting for the light in my head to switch on so I could unlock its mysteries. All I’ve ever gotten out of it is the vague feeling that immediately after listening to it, something is going to rise out from under my bed and butcher me in my sleep.

That’s, uh, JBev at JamsBio Magazine. The magazine did a big list of 185 Beatles songs, starting with the ones the magazine disapproves of and working up toward its very favorite (“A Day in the Life”).  Good idea, it’ll give people something to link to.
I like “Revolution No. 9,” though it’s not the first song I’d listen to. I go for tunes, especially bouncy tunes. Anyway, I pretty much played the Beatles to death when I was a kid. Back then received opinion held that “Revolution No. 9” was gibberish. But it isn’t. It’s a sound collage, of all things, and it holds together.
Decades later I check in again and find that “Revolution No. 9” has become a sacred cow. When did that happen? I’m guessing 1995.   

Depression

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Back in the ’80s, when I was young, I would listen to WCBS fm. It’s the big Oldies station in New York. I no longer live in New York, but every now and then I listen to the station again. Still the same music, which I guess is the point of an Oldies station:  Buddy Holly, “Hey, Paula,” Herman’s Hermits, Motown, “The Logical Song,” Mr. Mister, Madonna, just about every piece of crap (or otherwise) that moved a lot of units sometime during the past 50 years. Except the ads used to be mainly for cars and household goods and now a lot of them are for cemeteries and funeral homes. That’s the depressing part. 

UPDATE:  An ad for Honda, another for Coors, even Insider.com and DirecTV. Hopeful signs.

Stubbing Our Collective Toes in the Name of Hope

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Ta-Nehisi Coates and his commenters are whining that nobody likes the inaugural poem enough and he argues that if you don’t read a lot of poetry you should just shut up and sit down. I left a comment which seemed sufficiently mean-spirited to repost here:

To my ongoing sorrow, I have read a lot of contemporary poetry over the years. Elizabth Alexander isn’t horrible by those standards…which means, yeah, she’s pretty bad. I mean:

“I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.”

First line, big cliche; second line lax waffling vague imagery bordering on cliche; third line — what, did she bash her nose in the dark? This is lazy, uninteresting crap; vague inspirational jeremiad. Blech.

I think it’s an extremely good sign that people are willing to come out and say that this stuff is dreck. One of contemporary poetry’s most serious problems is the fact that people feel so alienated from it that they don’t even bother to dislike it. A little (or a lot) more healthy disdain would go a long way towards making poetry more viable, both aesthetically and (dare I say it) commercially.

Marie-Eve to Have Child

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My buddy Marie-Eve, the lovely star of the northern skies, told me today that she is expecting. She and the proud father, the gregarious and engaging Joris, believe the child may be delivered on July 4. 

UPDATE:  Marie-Eve and Joris were quite tickled about telling me the July 4 due date. In response I suggested naming the child Obama, though I would never actually expect anyone to name their kid after a person in the news. It’s just that I get a kick, at least every now and then, about being an American among the Quebecois. It gives me a touch of the exotic and distinctive, which my personality needs.
A generalization that I came up with: English Canadians tend to dislike Americans more and the United States less; French Canadians tend to dislike the United States more and Americans less. The idea is that the Quebecois tend to be more left wing than English Canadians but not to get worked up about Americans’ alleged arrogance, insularity and stupidity.
The generalization is based on the usual, meaning lint. It was useful in sorting out my impressions of my first year or so up here. But whether it’s true is beyond me. At any rate it has felt a good deal less true for quite a while. During the stretch from 9-11 to the Iraq invasion, I stopped running into the old cattiness and griping. Maybe Bush served as our lightning rod, in which case I have to thank him. 

Blogging Like It’s 1999

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So we at the Hooded Utilitarian are, at least in theory, going to start making use of high-tech label functionality. We’ll label each themed roundtable, so you can click on the label and read all the posts. We’ll also label with our names, so you can read posts by individual authors. Unless, you know, we forget to do it, which could happen.

I’ll also post the blog roundtable links on the side over there so you can click on them and read them for all posterity. (I have retro-labelled, and added our earlier roundtables on the side so you can read the blog forums of the past…today!)

And, hey, I even remembered to label this post. So far so good….