Spoonfed Tribe

We weren’t really up for a late night this last Friday after an early evening Mexican meal featuring The Deltones at Madison (Al) Bandito Burrito – ’nuff said – we went into town (Huntsville) ‘cos I had a vague recollection I’d noticed an interesting gig at Crossroads, and I’m glad I hung onto that thought.

Both bands interesting – both different – like, different from much else I’ve seen or heard in a while. The opening band, were a two-guitar four-piece, playing very jazzy million-notes-a-minute arpeggio-picking style, trading licks and complex mixed pace structures, including reggae and calypso grooves – but endlessly changing – too complex to be entertaining without concentrating hard – but accomplished and different. Can’t for the life of me remember their name (Why do bands and venues not leave up recent events ? Damn MySpace – Post Note – sho’nuff – turns out they were local Huntsville band “Sandia”  … yeah, “fusion” sounds about right.)

Main act were Spoonfed Tribe. Wow. Different again, from Texas, and what a mixture. Hawkwind meets Beefheart meets Stomp meets Northern-Soul and eventually morphs into some seriously heavy guitar rock. 5 piece with at least 2 on percussion at all times. Dreadlocked flautist on vocals and PA loop effects, reminding me of Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall, stonking bassist with a huge range of effects, which allowed the masked guitarist to play around with vocals, cow-bells and loops before remembering his guitar. Varied, yes, but never missed a beat, and never lost your attention. A pity so few were there to experience them. Ones to watch.

Saw them again:

  • Last Concert Cafe, Houston.
  • Trees, Deep Ellum, Dallas.
  • The Continental, Houston, where I seem to recall they were playing pool before the gig.

Tom’s Dissertation

Uploaded a PDF copy of son Tom’s undergrad philosophy dissertation “On Incompleteness, Inconsistency and Moral Dilemmas.” By Tom Glendinning, Easter 2008, in which, after applying Godel to the problem he concludes:

“The future for moral debate … has to be concerned with the insurmountable dichotomy between complete and consistent moral systems. As we can no longer expect a unique answer to every situation, we have to decide which is more valuable.”

The End of Dialectics

Finished Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” at last … a rather disrupted read over several months … I last blogged an extract when I was less than a third of the way through back in April. Despite the lack of quality time to devote to it, I somehow sensed this was an important one to finish. Glad I did.

The final page includes this …

“In place of dialectics life had arrived, and in his consciousness something of a wholly different nature must now work towards fruition. …

 … But that is the beginning of a new story”the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.”

As Gav says, over on MoQ-Discuss highlighting that closing sentence, this is a lesson learned for “man” not just for Raskolnikov.

Overall the book is a complex study of Raskolnikov’s psychological struggle between emotional guilt and intellectual justification for the murder of “a loathsome, harmful louse, a filthy old moneylender” as an “audacious” academic exercise rather than the ostensible material motive of robbery. Some excellent passages on motives and virtues, not just Raskolinokov’s, also in the many characters and dialogues around him. More later hopefully. Three or four passages – on the psychological game-play on guessing what the other person knows and their motives in any dialogue – I will return to.

[Spoiler warning] Fresh in my mind is the final cliff-hanger (before the Eiplogue above) where we hear of Svidrigailov’s suicide and the note explaining his motives, of sound mind and body; We already know he was fully aware of and sympathetic to Raskolnikov’s higher-good intellectual motives in the “murder(s)” – does Svidrigailov’s suicide note plead the guilt, and let Raskolinikov off the hook ? No, the final confession is Raskolikov’s.

Did I Say Full Circle ?

Went to Nashville (and Memphis) last weekend and as well as a celebratory 27th annivesary meal at Merchants we stopped in at 12th & Porter to see The Daisycutters headlining again. Great energetic set by them again, though again a bigger crowd would have helped – so many seemed to have come just to see one of the three bands before leaving, including the bands and hangers-on themselves. Pity, great venue too.

Support were Daylight Brigade and Von Garde. Daylight Brigade were different. Varied arrangements, keyboards and trumpet and shared lead on guitar & vocals – a bit “art-school” and a bit sparse, so probably need to get better acquainted to enjoy. Von Garde were conventional 4-piece with the front-man on rhythm, but excellent snarling delivery all round, plenty of sweaty energy and attitude whilst still having fun. My Generation a-la Oasis with not-quite-gear-smashing a-la Who. Full circle again, ‘cos they are from Bowling Green, KY same as Tommy (Womack). Speaking to the band and their entourage, they knew Tommy and Government Cheese. It was Tommy co-producing The Victrolas, that I first saw Wess Floyd and The Daisycutters supporting.

BTW Plenty new and upcoming from Tommy.

(Memphis – Beale St was lively, and we’d treated ourselves to a stay at the Memphis Hilton, but nothing particularly impressed more than the house-band at B B Kings.)

Fishy Week

The subject of fish has come up several times recently – Tigris Carp & Salmon of (Doubt) Wisdom as wise advisors, BabelFish as a metaphor for language independent interoperability interface, and I had become convinced I’d heard of “talking catfish” somewhere before. I say heard of, because I was also recently thinking I was maybe hearing the local catfish amongst all the nightime noise of calling frogs, chuntering ducks, and chattering cicadas. An impression re-inforced when I caught a 3 or 4 pounder in the pond outside the front door and it growled at me.

Yes, this news story really does feature “Professor A. Bass” talking about coastal fish species Midshipmen and Toadfish that buzz and hum to communicate with each other. Trust me, he’s a scientist.

Proud to be an Aero Engineer

It’s a long time since I qualified as an Aeronautical Engineer and worked on Tornadoes, Hawks and Harriers, and I’m still a sucker for plane-spotting – civil or military.

At a time when civil aircraft are all increasingly scale-efficient clones of each other, and air-travel a non-PC chore, driven by eco-econo-geo-political considerations, it’s a wow to see the F22 raptor perform (here at Farnborough). A bit of creative freedom, even if it is equally non-PC to be a fan of a military fighting machine. Engineering – rooted in ingenuity – is the built world of humanity, and aero-engineering provides many fine examples of that art and craft.

[2021 Note: Even BBC suffering link rot after 13 years. Not sure where that video has gone.]

The display video opens (very briefly) then later an extended sequence (at about 2mins 50) with some amazing slow speed manoevres – you have to keep your eyes on the cloud texture to see which direction the machine is actually moving – tumbling like a snowflake, as the caption says. Clever stuff. I may have to add the F22 to my list of favourite flying machines – F6-Lightning (EE/BAC), F4-Phantom, Mig-23, Harrier, A10-Thunderbolt, F14-Tomcat, and now the F22-Raptor.

[Post Note: Aircraft page started here … never to be completed.]

[Post Note: Interesting also how variations on Navier-Stokes has become a recurring topic.]