well, how about a little ditty on donation details for those of us that feel inclined.
I'm happy as to throw a few bucks out now and then to help with the nuts and bolts, and I'm sure many here would be too.
I might find info if I searched the site, but here seems as good a place as any find out.
Now, back to lurking....

holy shit!
hello: image with "donate" caption on front page!

ok, now I know I gotta go to bed.

REALLY back to lurking now... ;)

Still, could have been worse - see http://www.pureftpd.org/

By all means, Dennis. We take cash, check and/or plastic... even Diner's Club or ducat if the preferences better suit you.

Damn, Andrew. That is one hellacious horror story. Faik, Milo down in Bags Data Safety & Retrieval has all our shit backed up, but it's probably high time to get him on the horn and confirm.

Whew. Now I can get back to trashing Cat Stevens!

Tom - I think Stevens trash-o-mania was happening in another chapter, a few mouse clicks away. To be fair, I'm not sure why we were trashing Stevens, when a target of Dan Folgerberg's stature was waiting in the wings and just asking for it?!

I should probably save this rant for some other day, but all these 'pop music is great' posts remind me of when Musician magazine was publishing articles and reviews about stuff like Boz Skaggs and The Selekter and UB40 and Becker&Fagen and how great they were (alongside articles about Beefheart and the AEC and George Clinton, stuff I knew already was great), how much was going on in the music, and so on. Me, I was young and gullible and willing to believe it all, then when I listened I was like HUH? So it's my fault for being young and gullible and making false comparisons. Oh well. Nobody's listening to this thread anymore.

Tom - I'm listening. Keep the thread going. When I was young and gullible, I used to listen to ABBA, Barry White and Michael Jackson. Now, that I'm older and gullible, I still listen to them. Nothing changes, I guess...

Other Tom: I would guess everybody except Damon Smith has their guilty pleasures. ;)

Mine are just plain silly, and mostly from a further-removed bygone era. I love "I'm Sorry" by Sandra Dee, for instance. Perfectly awful pop shit. And the Beatles' somewhat sad attempt at rock-steady, "She's A Woman," which starts off with the immortal line, "My love don't by me presents; I know that she's no peasant." And Glenn Miller's "Serenade In Blue," which has 8 or so bars of perfect Bobby Hackett. Lately I've taken a shine to the James Bond themes of John Barry, which takes one into such dangerous territory as Nancy Sinatra and Tom Jones. I suppose at this point I should opine, "Both VASTLY UNDERRATED singers!" or some such nonsense. But that Eb-B riff that underpins "Goldfinger" -- irresistible. Wagneresque pop pleasure-inducing guilt.

But just because I enjoy it doesn't mean it deserves any "this music is important too!" accolades. Important, perhaps, in a sociological wallpaper-over-the-ears-of-modern-society sense, but that's as far as I'd go. Fun is fun, ya know.

Tom - I wasn't even calling ABBA, Barry White or Michael Jackson my guilty pleasures. They're AS MUCH a part of my listening environment as anything I may choose to listen to from say Gunter Muller or William Basinski. It's all the same to me. There's absolutely NO SHAME on my part when I choose to state publicly I actually listen to pop music....and I certainly don't feel guilty doing it.

Here's a sincere question for Mr. Djll: what makes a given variety of music deserving of the designation "important" beyond a "sociological sense"?

Warne: You got me. I can't answer your question in those terms. I'm an utter fool.

Maybe, but you're also a damn fine trumpet player & a savvy music critic with his head screwed on right. :)

Djll: "Lately I've taken a shine to the James Bond themes of John Barry, which takes one into such dangerous territory as Nancy Sinatra and Tom Jones. I suppose at this point I should opine, "Both VASTLY UNDERRATED singers!" or some such nonsense."

What makes Tom Jones a much better than average singer is that he has sophisticated breath control. Because of that he doesn't rush his lines or lose tone as the line ends and his breath fades. Frank Sinatra was good at that too. As for his daughter, Nancy, I gather she breathes through her gills, but she's said to be able to stay submerged for up to 20 minutes at a time without lapsing into consciousness.

Derek,

Is this an early Valentine's Day, or are you just trying to get me to write that essay on Patsy Cline for Bags?

Hmmm. Looks maybe it's about time to post this lengthy EW Hall quote again. He was an American philosopher who was working on an aesthetics book when he died suddenly in 1960.

FWIW, it gives my own (totally unoriginal) take on these fundamental questions.

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"It is possible to find in emotions the occurrence of valuative references which may be taken as evidence for (i.e., as incomplete justification of) the legitimacy of specific valuative sentences. Just as the occurrence of perceptions may be taken as verification of the truth of relevant declarative thing-sentences, so the occurrence of emotions may be taken as justification of the legitimacy of relevant valuative sentences about their objects. And analogously the occurrence of different emotions under different conditions may offer different degrees of justification.

"I am then saying that any positive motor-affective experience of any actual or possible state of affairs is some justification of the legitimacy of the valuative which says that the state of affairs is some justification of the legitimacy of the valuative which says that the state of affairs ought to be. Similarly for negative and indifference-experiences. It is now important to state however that occurrences of different motor-affective states are not all equal in justificatory weight.

"If there occur more perceptions of a physical object as having certain properties, we feel that there is better evidence that it has those properties. This is due ultimately, I think, to the conviction that perceptions that agree in their referential or belief-aspect but differ in their occurrence-properties add confirmation to the thing-sentence expressing their common belief....

"There is, I think, something analogous in the case of valuative sentences. If there occur different motor-affective experiences of the same object, differing in their occurrence-aspects (e.g., as to who experiences them, when they are experienced, under what general bodily conditions, etc.) but agreeing in their valuative reference (i.e., having essentially the same central percepts and being all positive--or negative or indifferent--in relation thereto), they add to one another's justification of the legitimacy of the valuative sentence expressing their common claim. And the greater the difference in their occurrence-aspects the more justificatory weight is given to their supplemental agreement. This rests on the realistic assumption that their common object does have a normative dimension, and that its normative character is epistemically independent of our various emotive experiences of it.

"Besides supplemental agreement there is another variable determining the weight or degree of justification afforded by a motor-affective experience. It is the degree of value-sensitivity furnished by conditions of the experience of by the occurrence properties of the valuative claim included in an emotive experience.

"We have an analogous criterion in perception, viz., degree of perceptual discrimination. If under certain conditions more properties of a given type can be perceptually discriminated than under others, we generally admit that perceptions under the former conditions confer greater confirmation than those under the latter.

"Similarly for value-experiences. If under certain conditions a greater variety of emotions is experienced towards objects of a given type, then, in any given case of emotions experienced under those conditions, the value-belief so occurrent has greater justificatory weight. By 'greater variety of emotions' is meant not merely a greater variety in somatic components of emotions having the same value-significance, e.g., positive emotions such as love, desire, joy directed toward some object (this would really fall under supplemental agreement), but also emotions having different value-components (i.e., positive, negative, neutral), as well as different somatic components, so far as directed toward different objects....

"Suppose Jones and Smith hear the same rendition of Brahms; Fourth Symphony and that they are comparable hearers except that Jones has a slight headache and Smith feels fine. We shall then say that Smith's motor-affective experiences have more justificatory weight as regards any valuative sentences concerning the symphony than do Jones's. We say this because generally people are more sensitive to musical values when feeling well than when suffering from slight headaches. Headachy people tend to experience mostly negative emotions such as disgust, irritation, annoyance, etc., when listening to music, as contrasted with hearers who feel well, the latter tending to have a larger variety of emotions....

"[Emotions] are more complex than perceptions. They include a number of percepts. They are centered in one, however, the percept of the exciting object, the object of the emotion as a whole. This central percept in an emotion, like any percept may be more or less discriminative. As such, it has more or less verificatory weight in relation to thing-sentences about its object. We are not now concerned with the truth of declarative sentences but with the justification of the legitimacy of valuative sentences. However, valuative sentences, in a peculiar way, embrace corresponding declaratives. They include them without asserting them. Now, it follows that the larger the number of different declarative sentences the larger the number of possible valuatives (viz., valuatives embracing these declaratives). Thus conditions conducive to greater perceptual discrimination tend to produce more different perceptual beliefs and thus (so far as these are expressed) more declarative thing-sentences. Hence the number of emotive experiences of a given type of object tends to increase as conditions promote greater perceptual discrimination in the area of this type of object. That is, value-sensitivity is promoted by increase of perceptual discrimination.

"This lies behind the widely accepted educational principle that art appreciation is supported by knowledge of art forms and art history. This knowledge (if concretely tied in with perception) increases the ability to perceive properties present in the work of art, and thus tends to increase the number and variety of emotive experiences toward works of art in the are involved. One who can perceptually trace all the voices in a Bach fugue and perceive how they develop, in polyphonal harmony, the same theme, is at least capable of a greater variety of emotive reactions to the fugue than is one who is unable to recognize the most familiar melody even where occurring alone."

Everett Hall, "The Empirical Justificability of Valuative Sentences" (1947)

Tom, both, though I’ll settle for essays on the Criterion Redbeard & Kurosawa sets you picked up recently instead of one on ol’ Patsy (please don’t tell me you think she sucks too?)

Walt, my philistine ass is aching after the first paragraph; where’s the Cliff’s Notes version?

Derek,

I think Walt's post might be distilled down to an aphorism something like: "The more of a range of reactions you get, and the more passion behind them, the more likely you're producing something good." This is something all artists know from experience.

But I could have read Walt's post wrong. It was a bit squiggly. Not to mention non-emotive, so I didn't know where to look for the perceptive signposts.

Re Kurosawa, I don't know if there's anything I can say that hasn't been said better elsewhere. And I'm not talking about Donald Ritchie. (And I haven't had a chance to view any of them yet. On Jon's reco, I'm going to watch Hara-Kiri tonight...)

Thanks for the distill, Tom... sounds like our old friend Cat could fit that bill. ;)

Harakiri is pretty damn incredible, some scenes therein that still stick with me on a very visceral level (no pun intended). How about posting your thoughts on that then instead?

Derek: Well, maybe... I should note that, in addition to my other huge talents, I have a black belt in aikido and studied iaido sword and zen for about 10 years. So, if you ever need somebody's head cut off with extreme beauty and precision... ;)

Djll: "Lately I've taken a shine to the James Bond themes of John Barry, which takes one into such dangerous territory as Nancy Sinatra and Tom Jones. I suppose at this point I should opine, "Both VASTLY UNDERRATED singers!" or some such nonsense."

-Opening section of "From Russia with Love", there are quiet strings, ponticello with a fast tremelo, then these amazing tutti punchs, heavy on the brass come in. Just amazing.
I guess my guilty pleasures are: Some pretty sappy solo classical double bass lps, Bond movies and some not-so-hip ECM recordings by Arild Andersen. Normally I listen to Andersen for the bass playing only, but the newest cd is good music.