Friday, December 11: Bandersnatches
SHUFFLE MODE
by Steve Steinbock
In my November 20 installment of Bandersnatches I decried the current usage of the word Random as a pejorative. Oddly enough, last night on the news there was a short segment that referred to Lady Gaga. The story made out like everyone knew who Lady Gaga was, but I’d apparently missed that memo. I turned to my twelve-year-old son and asked, “Sam, have you heard of her?”
“Dad,” he responded. “You have got to be kidding me. That’s Lady Gaga. Everyone’s heard of her.” And then, as an afterthought, he said, “She’s really random.”
Okay. From this I surmised that Sam – and everyone else that Sam knew except me – was familiar with Lady Gaga, and that Sam was not impressed. On the other hand, Sam’s eyes were glued to the screen whenever she appeared on it. There had to be something there.
That got me thinking about Dadaism. But then, when I mentioned it to Sam, he looked at me askance and said, “Dada?”
And while we’re on the subject of generational lag, I’ve noticed the notion of an “album” of music has disappeared. An Compact Disc contains a group of musical pieces, but other than the fact that they are probably all recorded by the same artist, they aren’t necessarily linked. Gone are the days of “Abbey Road” or “Days of Future Passed,” “Dark Side of the Moon” or “Abraxas,” or nearly any album by the Who or the Kinks. Those were albums that you listened through in order, one song after then next, and in some distorted corner of reality it meant something.
My sons both have good taste in music. They are as likely to be listening to Cream or Herman’s Hermits or The Beatles as they are to Green Day or Weezer. But they listen to music digitally. And nearly always they have their players set on “Shuffle Mode.” They have no idea that “Something” is supposed to come after “Come Together” or that “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” leads into “Golden Slumbers.” Now that’s random.
Scan Artists
I’ve been reading a book – a reprint of a novel from the 1960s. Every page or so I come across an irritating typographic error that is an obvious remnant from an unedited scan. The letters “h” and “b” often get transposed so you end up with things like “tbe helltower.” Quotation marks are missing all over the place. Paragraph breaks are added or omitted in places where the author never intended them to be so. There are pages scattered with apostrophes perched where no apostrophe belongs, probably the result of pigment on the original page, or dust or scatches on the scanning surface. I’m currently involved in an editing project, so I guess I’m particularly sensitive to these kinds of errors. But it strikes me as shameful that a publisher lacks the decency to proofread the books before they go to press.
Somewhere I have the 1964 paperback original of this novel. If my eyesight were better, I’d stick to that original. But remember how small the print was in those 1960s paperbacks?
Geek Holidays
I’ve mentioned that my sons both have good taste in music. Nate introduced me to a brilliant folk-singer comedian named Jonathan Coulton. I sort of think of him as the Tom Lehrer of the 21st century. His songs include a love ballad to a laptop, a survey of all the US presidents, and a tribute to Benoît Mandelbrot that actually explains the mathematical concept of fractals (“Mandelbrot Set”). Jonathan Coulton has written several cute Christmas songs. Here’s a lovely one with a science fiction theme:
Enjoy! Be good.
Did I really call Jonathan Coulton “brilliant”? Cute and clever, I’ll give him for sure. And he may be brilliant, what do I know? But I was probably overstating it.
Wow, a folkie I didn’t know about. Thanks. Here’s a link to another folkie christmas song. I should say Roy Zimmerman doesn’t usually sound like that. He’s channeling another Zimmerman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0jB_JoDYsY
Steve — Your two articles touching on “random” remind me of an incident not far removed from mystery writing. Back in 2005 when EQMMM held the “Ellery Queen Centenary” symposium in New York I heard about the symposium only a few days in advance. I promptly emailed Kurt Sercu, who, from Belgium, runs the Ellery Queen — a Website on Deduction webpage. Kurt and I had corresponded by email for years, but living half a world apart we had never met. I asked Kurt whether, by any chance, he was going to attend. He emailed back immediately expressing interest and then, in a whirlwind of emails we arranged his trip, with him flying in to D.C. and our plan to travel together to New York by train.
All of this evolved so fast that I forgot to inform my then 16 year old son Colin of the impending visit. When Colin found out that we were about to have a visitor from Belgium he asked what this was all about. I explained, in great detail, and Colin’s retort was the predictable “random!”
“No,” I replied. “In fact, it is linear.”
— Dale
Rob, that was a fun video. Thanks. And indeed, he’s channeling the other Zimmerman. (I wonder if they’re related).
Dale, great story. Had me laughing up my random coffee. It was at that symposium that I first met you and Kurt. I guess you could call that random fandom.
Some of us can remember when albums of recordings were really albums, with front and back covers and pages of sleeves that held the 78 rpm records.
I’ve got a few of those 78 album books laying around. 45 rpm records also came in albums, I think some of them were boxed, each disk with its own sleeve, and others had attached sleeves similar to the 78 albums.
Ah, those were the days.
Y’know, double-LPs often came with sides 1 and 4 on one platter and sides 2 and 3 on the other. That way you could stack them on a record-changer and after the first two disks played, you just flipped them over as a set.
This is all making me feel sentimental. I think I’ll put on a Juan Garcia Esquivel album.
I’m always glad to bring a sentimental tear. Instead of Esquivel, I think I’ll go for Vaughn Monroe.
All my old 78s were classical recordings—I remember one of Bruno Walter conducting Gustav Mahler’s 4th Symphony in particular, which I always held out as proof that the so-called “discovery” of Mahler in the late 1960s, attributed to Leonard Bernstein, was a lie. Walter was himself a Mahler protégé, who, along with Otto Klemperer, always had a Mahler symphony or three in his repertoire. Other pre-Lenny Mahler devotées included Oskar Fried (another protégé), Willem Mengelberg, Sir John Barbirolli, Dimitri Mitropoulos (who was Bernstein’s predecessor as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic and regularly progammed Mahler symphonies), and even George Szell.
Leopold Stokowski’s performance of the 8th Symphony (“Of a Thousand”) in Philadelphia in 1916 is legendary — there was such a high demand for tickets that scalpers got $100 for each one, over $2000 in today’s dollars — and it was so popular that Stokie added a performance in Phillie, and then took the show on the road to New York, where the critics finally accepted the Philadelphia Orchestra as one of the world’s best orchestras (a reputation it still has today). Stokowski was still conducting when he died in 1977, although he only recorded one Mahler symphony, the 2nd, in 1974.
Bernstein got credit for the “revival” because he programmed all the symphonies in New York during the Mahler centennial — Mahler himself having been the first world class conductor to lead the Philharmonic. But I’m probably the only person here who cares about this stuff.
Alas, I got rid of them 30 years or more ago, when I could no longer find a turntable that could play them.
The only 45 rpm “album” I remember having was the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” — it was a British pressing, bought when I was in 9th grade in Belgium. It had two discs and consisted of all the “A” side songs included on the 33 rpm LP. I have no idea whatever happened to it.
Vaughn Monroe, 45 rpm albums, double-LPs — I remember all that too. You guys are making me feel REALLY old.
Vaughn Monroe did some Christmas songs, too. I thought only Jewish guys did Christmas songs.
Occasionally CDs will come in boxes that remind me of the old albums. George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” (which was a triple album back in the day) came in a nifty box.
>I thought only Jewish guys did Christmas songs.
(laughing) Remind me to tell you the bell joke, Steve.
Before she became Lada GaGa (supposedly named after Queen’s Radio Ga-Ga), Stefani Germanotta was a talented composer, pianist, and singer of torch songs. Undoubtedly, the dividing line is whether we prefer the old or the new.
In the 60s and 70s, head rock musicians often told stories as you suggest with The Who’s Tommy, Queen’s Night at the Opera, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Heard out of context, they are still enjoyable, but they lose much of their meaning.
I’ve still got a bunch of the LP’s I bought in the ’80’s and at used stores. I still hear classical radio stations refer to “albums.” And a local station has played the Vivaldi “The Seasons” on shuffle I guess…
I suppose the very definition of geekiness is actually watching the Mandelbrot Set and getting it. (sigh) Not that *I* would do such a thing, but my mouse slipped and after I stopped chuckling, I clicked on another, Coulton’s Your Brains.
I’ve got to stop this and get work done.
Steve, I followed up on an earlier post of yours and have finished two of the three Old Man in the Corner books. (I can’t find the first.) The second was riddled with errors as you describe above. I suspect the problem is that contributors are electronically scanning the books, but failing to proofread when the OCR software selects the wrong word.
Ah, Baroness Orczy. Funny thing is that I didn’t know (until researching it after reading Leigh’s comment) that there were three “Old Man in the Corner” collections. I’ve only read the first one.
And I’m guessing that Leigh and I are complaining about the same publisher (H of S).
Re. Jonathan Coulton’s songs, Leigh just named one of my favorites, “Re. Your Brain,” a sort of zombie office memo. My other favorites are:
“The Future Soon”
“I Feel Fantastic”
“Still Alive” (from the soundtrack to the computer game “Portal”)
and one of my son Nate’s favorites: “Tom Cruise Crazy”
The edition I reviewed on my blog a while back is from International Polygonics. I’m too lazy to check and see if it has all the stories in it. It has 12. I remember that much.