We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
It is a strange twist of fate that I should make my debut on the blog defending a French film that was found too offensive to be advertised on the London Underground (known locally as ‘The Tube’). This caring attitude of the tube authorities to French sensitivities and tourists has been noted and reported by Reuters. The picture accompanying the article made me think of the aesthetically minded among us bloggers (no names, Perry)…and I must admit the hand gun looks quite impressive.
 I do not know whether this sudden respect for French etatism is a good or bad sign. A bad sign because the male population of London will not be perked up every morning by a sight that could actually compete with the latest Dolce & Gabbana underwear advertising campaign – and as we know competition is good. A good sign because more people may realise how pointless such bans are. It may also highlight the fact that the film was not banned in the UK despite the opposition it faces in France. So much for European harmonisation. Vive raunchy French films!
I have loved Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto ever since I first heard it in my early teens, and I must have about twenty different CDs of it. My absolute favourite recorded performance of this piece is the CBS Lazar Berman/Claudio Abbado/London Symphony Orchestra version. Early reviewers complained about the “recording balance”, but for me the piano’s the thing and the piano is well to the front. (This was what the reviewers were complaining about.) And Berman plays it like a god.
The fashion nowadays tends to be to play this piece, yes, quite noisily, but basically too gently and carefully, as if vacuum cleaning around sleeping kittens, a state of affairs I hold Sergei Rachmaninoff himself responsible for. He was a fabulous pianist, one of the twentieth century’s best, but he was, I believe, shy about his own concertos, even when playing them. It was as if he couldn’t face going for broke when performing these majestic works (Number Two is also a super-popular piece), because what if people then didn’t like that? So, he would toss them off in a slightly detached albeit pianistically miraculous manner (described now as “aristocratic”), too quietly, too quickly, in a way that didn’t expose his own ego too much. Take it or leave it, folks. No skin off my soul!
Berman doesn’t make that mistake! By God he doesn’t. He storms the heavens, especially in the great first movement cadenza, and in that tempestuous passage near the end full of thunderous bass octaves that they made such a fuss of in that film about the mad Australian piano player played by the bloke who then played Queen Elizabeth I’s Spymaster in Elizabeth.
As Sod’s Law would have it, Lazar Berman’s is about the one recorded performance of this amazing piece of the classical repertoire that is not available currently on CD. It used to be, because about a decade ago I borrowed it from Pimlico library. And, I have it on a disintegrating CBS “cassette”, that technologically grotesque apology for a classical music recording medium. The number of the cassette is, if I’m reading the right bit: MYT 44715. It’s in the CBS Maestro series, and was recorded in 1977. CBS is now owned by Sony, of course.
Berman either became very fat and died of too much Russian-type drinking, or he is now very fat and will soon die of too much drinking, I forget which. Maybe this complicated his professional relationships, with e.g. the Sony Corporation, and keeping this performance available may have been too much bother for them. Or maybe Sony just didn’t like that he mostly recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Or maybe those damn critics with their poor recorded balance nonsense have caused all those classical music sheep out there who have to read a critic before they know what they think not to want this wonderful performance.
A year or two back, BBC Radio Three did a “Which is the best version?” spot on CD Review, choosing, inevitably, Martha Argerich on Philips, which is very good I do admit, although personally I don’t care for the recorded balance – you can’t hear the piano clearly enough. But amazingly, the Berman version was mentioned favourably, even though it’s not now available. This is not something CD review does on regular basis and is high praise. At last, I thought. Maybe now they’ll reissue it. But no, still nothing doing.
The Internet is my obvious answer. But I’m not the brightest button on the corduroy jacket when it comes to this Internet stuff. I can write okay, but when I surf I tend to sink. I’m still paying by the minute for my phone calls, God help me. So, if anyone out there likes me, and also understands the Internet, please, please, get on your electric surfboard and find this CD for me! My limit is about £25. Preferred price: £0, from someone wanting to get some other personal preoccupation mentioned on Samizdata. In my opinion, the libertarian meta-context definitely includes discussion of personal preoccupations.
It doesn’t have to be an original Sony or CBS CD. A CD copy would do fine. (I still have the notes from my cassette.) I can’t believe, given that this CD is unavailable in the shops and that I’ve already paid for the cassette, that any sane person in the music business could object to that. Course not.
(There’s also a Berman performance of Rachmaninoff PC3 done live with Leonard Bernstein and the NYPO, which may still be available if you also buy a ton of other Bernstein performances, but I can’t go to about £150 for all of that, much as I’m tempted. I’ve not heard this, but an original or copy of that CD would also be extremely welcome. Same terms as above.)
Email me at brian@libertarian.co.uk if you can help.
I do not know why I do it to myself. I watch Enterprise, the latest and by far the lamest of the Star Trek series and have to restrain myself from throwing things at the television. In the latest idiotic episode, the crew of a freighter starship which has been repeatedly attacked by non-human pirates finally captures one and tries to strong arm information out of the prisoner to gain a tactical advantage in order to retaliate effectively against their tormentors. However we are shown that the virtuous Star Fleet crew of Enterprise do not approve of this. Not just the fact the freighter crew are trying to beat information out of the captive but the very fact they are holding him at all, we are lead to believe, is bad. I wonder what Captain Archer of the Enterprise would have to say about Guantanamo Bay?
Many TV shows have fantastical settings and an implausible premise underlying them, but this is not in and of itself a bad thing. It is fiction after all. The socialist future for humanity posited by Star Trek is implausible but sadly by no means impossible. The technology theorised for the future is likewise as good a guess as any other. All that is okay. What is not okay is the fact that the human characters simply do not act like humans. They are utterly implausible as future examples of homo sapiens: people simply do not act that way when in life threatening situations. We are shown that tracking down and attacking the people who have been repeatedly attacking you is bad.
I wonder what Star Fleet would do if some alien species hijacked a starship and flew it into the 23rd Century equivalent of the World Trade Centre? Well they certainly would not a George Bush style “smash the Taliban” on them, that is for sure! Any culture that demanded such behaviour would simply not survive contact with less squeamish cultures or more rational disaffected members of its own culture. Star Trek is truly TV with rocks in its head.
Then look at Alias, the new spy-drama with the superb Jennifer Garner. It too has fantastical settings and a highly implausible underlying premise (a college girl/spy-commando).
And yet whereas the dismal Enterprise fails miserably to convincingly portray human interaction within its given premises, Alias does so triumphantly. Quite apart from the fact Jennifer Garner can act the socks off any of the current Star Trek cast, the show is superbly written and the characters plausibly drawn. Within the extraordinary fictional settings in which the show occurs, the people act like humans. They act the way you or I might act is suddenly plunged into the scripted situations. Jennifer Garner’s character, Sydney, was shown being tortured (none of the namby pamby crap of many shows… we actually see her being electrocuted and Garner makes it look very unpleasant indeed). Later in the episode, she escapes and in doing so takes an electro-prod from a guard. We see her standing over the man who had earlier presided over her torture and, if this had been Star Trek, we would have been treated to a brief sermon on the importance of non-violence or some disdainful grimace as she asserts her moral superiority as ‘New Socialist Woman’ over her ex-captor. But fortunately it was not Star Trek. Sydney steps over to the prone helpless man, jabs him with the electro-prod and as he screams says words to the effect, “Yeah, it hurts, don’t it?”
So which do you think makes for a more engaging story? Alias rocks!
Jennifer Garner as ‘Sydney Bristow’ in Alias
I’ve just read this Opinion Journal review of a new Mel Gibson movie and it sounds like a “must see”.
I do find myself of two minds on the tenor of the article. It says some things which I fervently agree with:
“Black Hawk Down” is a true story. But it differs from “We Were Soldiers” in that nearly everyone admits the shootout in Somalia was the bad consequence of aimless foreign policy–many just don’t want to admit it was Bill Clinton who didn’t have a clear sense of what he was doing and thus his policy hung those men out to dry.
There is no reason why one cannot simultaneously respect the valour and ability of the men who fought in Somalia against incredible odds while simultaneously disagreeing they should have been sent there in the first place.
Where I part ways from the reviewer is on Vietnam. Where I see no difference betwixt the two – honourable men doing the best they can at the behest of dishonourable and incompetent politicians – the reviewer apparently believes Vietnam served some sort of purpose. I lived through the time. I saw no point to it then and 30 years on I still don’t.
This is a dichotomy never to be bridged in this life. But perhaps we can all make peace amongst ourselves by settling on something we can agree on. Those who fought in Vietnam were decent, brave and honourable men who deserved more respect than they received.
I was going to just point out a splendid article in the UK edition of Esquire magazine by the dependably excellent Karen Krizanovich about ‘the murky world of the dominatrix’ and how context really matters:
Let’s say that one evening your girlfriend starts having a go at you for not doing the washing-up. “You are so lazy!” she screams, slapping a teatowel against her firm thigh. Her breasts quiver as she gestures at you. “I should put you across my knee and spank you!” she shrieks, her pupils dilating with anger. She’s red in the face now, and you are the helpless target of all her built-up rage and resentment. She steps forward, towel in hand, to take her revenge…
Whoa! Stop right there. Maybe this isn’t the perfect evening for you. But picture this scene in the bedroom with both of you naked. Maybe now you get the point.
Yes indeed I do!
But the fact is that quite apart from this howlingly wonderful Karen Krizanovich piece, this is one of the best issues of Esquire I have read in ages. There is a great article about the race car driver and supremely cool French Resistance hero Robert Benoist, a fascinating piece on the Falklands War, a hilarious ‘Ali G’ interview, new iMacs, why the sex, sadism and hard drinking in Ian Fleming’s James Bond books make the 007 movies look pallid, and an excellent list of Britain’s 40 most eligible women. Under the entry for supermodel Kate Moss:
Money: You know your annual salary? She wouldn’t get out of bed for that.
Personality: Like shouting at an alien bartender through a wall of ice 6ft thick while juggling two cats and a monkey
Run, do not walk, to your nearest news agent and purchase a copy of the April UK edition of Esquire
A few days ago I reviewed John Keyes’ new play and mentioned it would soon be going on the road. I rang him t’other day for details so our London readers can drop in to see this excellent bit of theatre.
John will be performing his two act play at the Wimbledon Studio Theatre from Sunday February 24th to Tuesday February 26th.
Enjoy!
I must say that the most egregious omission from the Oscar line up for best flick is director Chris Nolan‘s highly unconventional Memento. Unlike the linked review I think it quite possibly does make it to “favorite-of-all-time status” rather than just pretty damn good.
Guy Pearce turns in his best performance yet, sympathetic without being sentimental and Carrie-Ann Moss proves there is more to her than just ‘Trinity’ from The Matrix with her alluring, pitiable and in the end utterly detestable character. Joe Pantoliano is of course as dependable as ever. The structure of this work is pretty much in a class of its own: we see a scene and we think we understand what is going on, but a few minutes later we see the exact same scene but the context has changed, and we realise what we thought had happened before was not the case at all. This happens several times throughout the film, which in effect starts at the end and works not so much backwards as backwards, forwards, backwards again, hop to the middle, jump back again…
This little non-linear gem is certainly in my top 5 movies of all time. Hey Oscar, we wuz robbed!
Dale Amon, from Belfast, reports on the daft new regulation to limit decibels to 83db. Are the EU mad? Who is really going to enforce this? I can imagine the first time some little dweeb from the EU directorate goes into a death metal gig in Sweden. The venue is full of leathered, iron spiked and generally cranky death-metal fans. Is the EU bloke going to ask these nutters to turn down their music, and expect to live? Just look through the pages of Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles or Terrorizer to find examples of death metal types. Never mind the fact that most death metal fans I meet are huge, well built hard men who look like they could be vikings. Is it a co-incidence that extreme/death/doom/speed metal is very popular in Scandinavia and Germany? I don’t think so. Sorry to tell you Dale but punk rockers are wimps compared to these guys.
May I suggest we send Chris Patten to Wacken or maybe the Inferno festival? Someone needs to convince him to announce from the stage at about 10pm what his intentions are. “Excuse me fellow Europeans, I am here to inform you that this venue must turn down the music to an EU-approved 83db. The EU is only concerned for your hearing and well-being.”
Well good thing about this new db rule, it will turn anyone who likes loud and heavy music against the EU in an instant. What I would love to see is an army of leather clad insensed metal-heads decending on Brussels for a huge protest.
Oh yes and Dale, there have been several songs written about the EU. One, whose name I forget, mentions the great line: “another doomed utopian ideal…” You are also mistakened if you think all musicians are socialists. The loud-mouthed ones might be, but there are many a band whose lyrics speak to a libertarian mind-set (especially in the heavy metal/hard rock genres). Of course, I know of major bands who are Tory voting, all of whom think their being ‘outed’ would hurt/kill their careers.
Lagwolf
Rockers Outraged At Regulation (R.O.A.R.) arise against fascist EU state!
Yes, you can find some really great electric blues here. Not to sound like an agent for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board or anything… although a women friend of mine does work there. Rab McCullough’s band is simply on a level with the best you will find anywhere. He can compete with the best in the USA, and in fact has. He took 3rd in an international blues competition in Memphis a couple years ago. I stopped in to their gig at the Empire after the play since I’d not seen Rab in a couple months, and I’d just gotten an SMS message from a mutual former bass player of ours. Which is not at all to put myself in the same league as the unnamed bass player…
This is not a huge city, nor is Northern Ireland altogether very large. But the place has more talent per square meter than any place I’ve ever been. And that includes Manhattan. I’ve lived in the Village too, and I agree there are more fine acts there than in Belfast. But then, there are 10,000,000 people in New York City… and 500,000 in Belfast.
We’ve got you on per capita talent, no ifs ands or buts about it.
One of the perks of the arts community is that you get invited to things without having to pay. Arts people take care of their friends because like themselves, their friends are always broke.
Tonight I went to the night after opening night of a one man show by John Keyes, a marvelous actor. One of the top actors in Ireland actually. It was a very small crowd in a small venue… this is the trial run, the warmup before he takes it to London.
John is the agent for a close friend of mine, and although I knew he was a top actor, I only knew him in a social environment and had not actually seen him doing his professional thing.
I was awed.
He wrote the play and performed the two acts. Solo. One man show. He didn’t need anyone else. From the first word to the last I was rivited.
Well, almost. To digress… I used to do a great deal of theatre myself. Mostly tech, although I used to do work in musicals. I knew I was a mediocre actor. I pushed choreographers to new levels as they strove to find moves for three left feet… I got the parts because I could belt, pure and simple. Nonetheless, I decided that I was better off doing tech… and then someone talked me into producing a play. It’s that demon rum, something like that. Devil made me do it and it was a bad idea. I can only say that I did *not* commit homicide upon the director; I even went so far as to stop the cast from stringing him up from House One… and I never did theatre again. I was already losing pleasure in theatre because instead of watching the show, I saw the detail. I’d note the light cues, catch the flaws in the fields, nod my head at the use of a particular fresnel… in other words, the magic was gone.
So to come back to our story… I was watching John in the midst of a brilliant monologue and caught myself analyzing the reflections of the straw gelled PAR reflecting off the grand piano strategically placed as a distant backdrop behind him… and caught myself before it was too late.
That was my only slip of the night.
I won’t give you a lot of detail, but the show is about Michael Mac Liammoir, originally from London, who was a founder of the Irish theatrical tradition. A man whose passport was signed by De Valera himself.
The monologues and acting are brilliant. When John hits London, look for it.
I’ve read the posts on the recent EU regulation that nowhere in Europe should a workplace exceed 83db and did not think a great deal about it until tonight when I was standing up near the stage at an electric blues gig. There is a section of the bar near the speakers that is “musician country”. Everyone there is either a head or part of the family. It struck me somewhere arount the 3rd or 4th pint that the decibal level where I was standing was a bit beyond 83. Well, let’s face it. it passed 83 when the first chord was struck and went up from there. For myself, I’d hardly noticed it. If I’m due for hearing loss, the damage was done and finished with over 20 years ago standing in front of a speaker stack with my Hagstrom III cranked up to eleven. 83db? Is for wimps!
Which got me thinking. Where is the EU going to find someone with the pure balls to walk up to a rock band and tell them they are playing too loud for EU law? Thinking back to my own self in a younger and wilder format, I know exactly what would happen. I’d have stopped playing long enough to beat the crap out of him. Jail? Who cares? For most young musicians trying to make it jail would be warmer, cleaner and have better food that they can afford. Artists live on the fringe. Many bloggers comment on artists who have “made it” and that they are socialist. That might be true when they’ve got the gig with real dosh… but for most artists politics is just words. The enemy is whoever threatens your art.
Would you like to imagine what songs will be written if the EU starts trying to shut down punk rock bands?
And can you imagine what the regulation enforcers will look like walking out of a gig with a drum stick rammed up their arse?
Although I make my living (sometimes and poorly) doing internet infrastructure, my true home is in the art’s scene. It may be hard for those who have not live the life of the artist to understand the world of the actor, the musician, the fine artist… but no matter how long or how well I program machines, that is my true home.
The entry into the arts world is not an easy one, and not one for those who are weak of heart or who do not truly love their art for its’ own sake. I’ve paid my dues over decades and it lets me move freely in the arts world, and most particularly in that global brotherhood of musicians. There is an assurance in knowing you could be dropped anywhere in the world and inside of an evening get yourself sorted for a place to crash and pointers to where the craic is.
I’ve been out on such a night and have decided I should compose several short stories rather than write one long and disjointed article.
Due to the format, you are reading the introduction last… so just pretend you started here.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
