'...when I ran the Xanadu bar at the Majestic Hotel, Cleethorpes. Ah, that was the high water mark of my career. Suffice to say that since those halcyon days the tide has gone out rather further than I had hoped.' - Lillian Spencer (Corrie)

Christmas Eve. At work. Slightly hungover. Hungry. Want a burger. Looking forward to giving my girl her gifts. More than opening my own.

Strange, but true.

:-)

Xmas:

It was about eight or nine years ago. I was living with Tony in a one bedroom apartment downtown. I hadn't been dating Cornelia for at least six months. I gave her some CDs for Xmas. She gave Tony and I a gift. It was a Chia Pet. But not a pet. A Chia Xmas tree. What a fucking useless piece of shit present if I ever got. Utter crap. What a daft bunt she was.

Merry Xmas.

> If you wish to draw conclusions about music for which we have absolutely
> no sources because nothing about it was recorded in its time and
> thousands of years have gone by in the interim, be my guest, but don't
> expect me to believe you.

I never have - that would imply that you had reached the point of initial
comprehension of the propositions I have made.

> Why not interpret it on its own terms rather than forcing it into boxes
> of today's harmony?

If have forced nothing into any box of "today's harmony". You simply form
the most crass and stereotypical representations of what I say and then
argue with yourself with be occasionally trying to butt in to this autistic
shadow-boxing process.

> These things occur much more frequently in Bach than in any of the above.

That's very sweet and quite probably true but also absolutely irrelevant to
any proposition I originally made.

> Basing an interpretation on no data, or worse, on "extrapolated" data,
> is pure speculation.

The presence of seven-note scales fitting over triads is not "no data" and
the use of the combination of evidence, reason, perception of patterns over
time etc. is allowed in my world.

If you want to interpret musical history, get to
> know musical history.

There's not a fat lot of it to know that impacts on the fundamental
questions of interpretation.

The bulk of your interpretation has been that it
> has been striving towards triadicism all along.

Rubbish. This "triadicism" mantra is just your way of avoiding hearing
anything I have actually proposed and substituting a crass and stereotypical
version in it's place.

> The data itself
> indicates that music, as a human activity, has long existed with no sense
> of incompleteness or imperfection from the lack of triads.

Pure speculation on people's sense of completeness/incompleteness and
perfection/imperfection with regard to the music of long-dead people's own
time.

Adding triadic
> accompaniment to the bulk of musics of the world is simply ruinous.

This is your hobby - not anything I've ever proposed nor having any bearing
on it.

> I don't care how exceptional you think the numbers LOOK. LISTEN to
> them. Play some of your favorite music on a keyboard in Pythagorian
> tuning. Form an opinion of the sound from hearing it.

If I did - it would not settle any question I have nor contradict anything I
have proposed. It would settle your argument with yourself (between your
beliefs and your crass misrepresentation of mine).

> The harmony in Perotin is extremely explicit. And in this harmony the
> major and minor triads are restless connective sounds.

Likewise.

> It directly addresses your claim that some composers "couldn't cope" with
> later harmonies unless sufficiently well-paid. The history of music
> shows us a very different picture.

Since I have never claimed either that some composers "couldn't cope" with
later harmonies nor that it had anything to do with *their* being
sufficiently well-paid or otherwise you are arguing with yourself about God
knows what again.

> >YES - absolutely. This is the crux of every other detail. The history shows
> >this absolutely clearly.
>
> Actually it doesn't---though you can ruin lots of monophonic music by
> supplying triads.

I have never suggested doing this. You've gone autistic again.

> And where harmony does show up, it shows up for long
> periods of time (e.g. 1000 years) without the fashion for triads.
> Triads are a fashion.

More autism bearing no relation to my propositions but anyway it's absurd to
designate something which has stuck since it's arrival a "fashion". I'll
take that seriously when I see them pass.

> >> my suggestion that you get your ear around a wider variety of music
> >I'd suggest that you learn to cope with the presence in the world of people
> >who interpret the same raw materials differently. I have already laid out
> >the explanation once on this newsgroup and there was not one person capable
> >of comprehending it. They neither said "this is great" nor (as with Kevin
> >Dean) "this is rubbish" only "why don't you get a website and spoonfeed us
> >with diagrams". None of them had the slightest inclination to take a brief
> >holiday from what they considered "the known" to look at music a different
> >way - you included.
>
> Ah, if it all comes down to your persecution complex, then ta ta.

Christ knows how you manage to read "persecution complex" in the above which
explicitly states the opposite.

> Good luck.
> There's nothing preventing you from adding triads to trouvere songs,
> shakuhachi solos, Gregorian chant, Torah trop, etc. Lots of us do it all
> the time. But we recognize that we're making a new art.

Why the hell I would want to do that is a mystery to me since it bears no
relation to anything I've said but I'm glad you've won the argument with
your version of me and settled the question of whether or not it's a "new"
art. Congratulations. May you have many future triumphant victories over
your crass and uncomprehending representations of other people's
propositions.

Last night I saw Peter Gabriel perform live.

Fucking incredible.

He ran in circles, road a bike, walked upside down and sped around in a giant hamster ball.

Tony on bass, Rhodes on guitar and his daughter on backup vocals.

Played old and new songs.

Loved it.

but....

Why do people need to draw attention to themselves? Everyone there paid $111 to pay attention to Peter. So why do you need to scream, yell, whistle, dance or have long and involved converstations behind me? Is it sitting in the dark without someone listening to you for more than 5 minutes? Why do you need some of that attention turned to you? Is it a competition? If your mouth stops moving does your brain start working?

Why?

Peter kicked ass. That old man can rock.

Tammy: Ugh. Grow up. Kurt, I'll be waiting at my mom's house.

Kurt: Oh, crap. I just realized I never got my mom anything for mother's day!

John: You know what I got mine? A big box of "I didn't kill you again this year."

Q. How evil would you say you are?

A. Oh, I'm evil times five. If evil were nickels, I'd have a quarter. I'm like Hitler, only moreso.

Q. So, how would you compare your evil to, say, Garth Brooks?

A. I'm about half as evil as he is.

Q. Wow.



A. Yeah. Like I said, I'm pretty evil.

According to Erin, disabled people are not interested in pity fucks.

feh.

Tony & Cat Piss

Never believe a word I say.

It's so much easier to just not care at all.

Or, as Debbie was doing on her way out the door to work today, just sing old 80s tunes by ABC.

And smile....

When my friend Doug moved his girlfriend Linda and her family into a new house with him, something bizarre happened.

The dishwasher was still full of dirty dishes.

The washer still had a load of wet clothes.

We were able to convince them to empty the fridge.

I swear they wanted us to move the beds with them still sleeping in them.

In the late 80s I was going to school in Moose Jaw to become a Computer Technologist. I would steal toiletpaper and lightbulbs from the school to save money. So that money could be spent on more important things. Like booze and drugs. And my Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard.

Ah....the salad days.