Month: March 2024

An upcoming band at a new venue. I mentioned a couple of posts ago, my meditative release from worldly intellectual and practical concerns includes loud, intense, visceral musical experience. The moral imperative is to give it your full attention. Last night was my latest fix.

The band are Avalanche Party and the venue was Toft House in Middlesbrough. That venue is the “club house” of Middlesbrough’s “Little Theatre” and it’s many decades since I visited the latter. Avalanche Party I’ve actually seen 2 or 3 times, previously at multi-venue, multi-band, short-set “showcase” events, but I’ve never mentioned them in the blog. (I have noted on Facebook seeing great reviews from Austin TX “SXSW”, and noted that their latest recordings were done at Joshua Tree CA. Not bad for a lil’ old band from Texas Castleton & Marske, NY – North Yorkshire that is).

It’s their local connection that brought them to my attention, partners of band members and latterly band members themselves, experiencing local pub and brewery gigs. Beer and live music, what’s not to like? AP even make their own vinyl product, with A- and P-sides, locally at “Press On Vinyl”. Creative, authentic stuff.

Last night was the first time I saw them headline their own gig. A night of three stonking drummers.

Support #1 were “Strong Lion Boys” – that Sleaford Mods / Benefits genre of angry socialist politics shouted over heavy rhythmic and drone backing: “We Still Hate Thatcher” with added “Up the Boro”. Three of the AP lads joined-in on that drone backing, bass, guitar and sax. Stonking drummer.

Support #2 were “Juku” – great young female lead on bass working well with another stonking drummer – put me in mind of QOTSA (as with AP themselves) driving but with staccato pauses and breaks – and two “gentlemen of a certain age” on stereotypically loud but otherwise unremarkable guitar. Guessing it’s her songs, her band, both of few words, and very promising vocals that would probably benefit from a better mix.

Avalanche Party, my only complaint would be the over-bright & busy, distracting lighting programmed from the mixing desk. The performance itself excellent again, and already recognising their crowd-pleasing numbers from previous gigs as well as a couple of new ones. A 5 piece with keyboard and sax as well as guitar, bass and drums providing lots of variety in pace, rhythm and dynamics. Very little “lead” instrumentation, not even riffs, mostly atmospheric but heavy drone backing to clear audible vocals and a wide range of backing / harmony vocals. Did I mention, stonking drum and bass again.

Proper team-work. Hard to fault.

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Ostensibly I’m re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in order to review the 50th Anniversary edition, but as usual I’m finding more significant note-worthy connections with my ongoing systems thinking work than there are pages in the original.

The read – the story – is of course very familiar, I’m reading it for the 4th or 5th time though it’s probably a decade since I last did, and yet even focussing on the review and resisting the urge to make personal notes for the whole of part 1 (the first 7 of 32 chapters) I since lapsed into adding post-it markers, significant to my own work, to almost every page. As well as the re-reads I have of course also looked-up references in it many times in the 25 years since I first read it. Whilst the story is very familiar, what really hits you is recognising the thoughts & concepts, words & phrases, used half a century ago in today’s 21st C context, mine and humanity’s predicament in general.

Review-wise, it’s the same book it was in 1974, with the author’s introduction, afterword and reader’s guide, all added to the 25th anniversary edition, plus the new foreword to the 50th anniversary edition by Matt Crawford “Why Zen Still Resonates Today”. As Crawford notes and quotes, the story has no Hollywood ending effectively leaving the reader filled with thoughts and questions. Perhaps that’s why despite many references to such projects since, it has still never been made into a definitive film. But as the climactic father-son reconciliation scene shows, the thoughtful open-ended-ness is explicitly hopeful for the future:

[Son, Chris,] understands for the first time on this whole trip that he has found his long-lost father again. “The tension is gone. They have won it. It’s going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.”

That’s maybe why so many of us saw hope for the future in better, wider understanding of Pirsig’s messages. Over on the #ZMM50th pages of  the Robert Pirsig Association you will find more life-changing testimonials for our better futures. It would be easy to be frustrated and angry that the same things Pirsig was explaining to us in 1974 are the same things we still need to understand to make better decisions about our futures in 2024 – a time when so many issues facing humanity 50 years later appear both existential and urgent. Conversely as David Deutsch would say, the future is infinite and we’re only ever at the beginning of it. We humans have a great track record of solving problems, even ones we’ve created. Pirsig already explained why and how humans understanding and embodying systems, and not fearing the technology, are what will get us out of this mess, mental and physical, however long it takes.

Now, what about all those important notes and messages …

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[Post Notes:

The connection between Pirsig and Cybernetics as human systems of governance, individual, organisation and/or social, goes back as far as 1995 and the fact that Principia Cybernetica curator Francis Heylighen invited Pirsig to deliver his “Subjects, Objects, Data and Values” paper to the “Einstein Meets Magritte” conference May 29 to June 3, 1995 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Free University of Brussels (VUB). Who says anniversary celebrations don’t matter? 🙂]