With South Florida cowering before tropical storm Noel (could they not have given it a more aggressive name?), I thought I ought to post some kind of valedictory message before I'm blown in to the mid-Atlantic. Now, the reason things on here have been a bit quiet is that I've been - brace yourselves - working hard, very hard, and so have all the other grads. This means that I've been spending enough time in front of computers already, and also that I've been doing very little fun to report about.
The hard work seems set to continue for at least the next fortnight, but I have a new and welcome distraction. I managed, finally, a couple of weeks ago, to get a second hand mixer and pair of decks for a decent price. [Warning: slightly geeky tech speak for next 50 wds). Technics 1200M3D, Allen and Heath Xone32. The decks are in sparkly condition, even the 45 adaptors are there. The mixer is a handsome beastie, and has a built-in filter unit - so I can add LFO wobble to anything insufficiently squelchy. Only complaint: would it have been so hard to put a sharp cut on the crossfader curve control, given that they've put one on at all? Makes scratching a little less easy than it might be.
Anyway, those secured, the next task was to get some records, and here's how I've done:
70-odd 7" singles by completely obscure American artists on utterly recherche labels. Bought for buttons from Ebay. Still going through them: about half country of various degrees of nuttiness, one quarter sixties-style surf-pop, and one quarter soul gems.
20 assorted jazz LPS. Ebay, again. who doesn't need 8 Herbie Hancock albums? How did I manage without? I bought 14 records from the same guy, again for buttons, and he kindly threw in six extra. I'm grateful for the Billy Cobham, and slightly scared of the John Klemmer. Never heard of him, but it looks awful. Mind, Joe Zawinul's hardly less alarming on the sleeve of 'Heavy Weather'.
The cherry-picked highlights of a massive collection I rifled through on Saturday. I answered a classified ad that mentioned a record collection for sale and a few artists from the mid-90s Rawkus golden age, secured the necessary lift, and on arrival, was greeted with 20 crates of vinyl. Deep breath, send my chauffeur to read a book in the car ('this could take me a while'), dive in. I was very restrained and selective, and resisted the temptation to get copies of things I already had in the UK, but still came away with two boxes, mostly of hip hop 12"s and LPs, a few other bits and pieces mixed in - couple of Portishead LPs, some Femi Kuti, and so on. The crates were a goldmine of hip hop from the mid 90s to the present, a mix of the indie and the commercial, and I got loads of good stuff, including some things I've tried in vain to track down ( in a slightly obsessive manner) in the past - like a 12" of the original version of 'Grindin'', rather than the easy-to-find-but-rubbish 12" with the Sean Paul remix. Yes, it was released back in the days when the coolest thing to do with your remix was to get SP to phone in 16 bars of priapic patois-lite.
So I'm now all set up to distract myself mixing all my new purchases into a tasty musical stew. Of course, all this is a bit stupid, for two reasons. First, the tentative offers I've had for DJ work have been for dubstep mixing; so really, my record budget should be going on dubstep records, not Kool Keith LPs. Second, a few years from now, I'm going to have to face a horrible decision: bankrupt myself shipping my US collection back to Britain, or wave goodbye to all my precious acquisitions? I'm dreading that day already.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Sunday, 14 October 2007
photos
The Facebook links that previously appeared in this post were apparently misbehaving, so instead, I've spread my digital self a little more thinly and created a Flickr account. Go
see, if you' couldn't before. Even if you could, there are new pictures of lizards and rain.
I'll try to add photos fairly regularly. As a preview, here is a nice picture of the sky and some flags.
see, if you' couldn't before. Even if you could, there are new pictures of lizards and rain.
I'll try to add photos fairly regularly. As a preview, here is a nice picture of the sky and some flags.
You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think
OK, so I've been here a couple of months now. I've seen some alligators, been on a beach, massively increased my chances of skin cancer - the list of Miami cliche activities is being ticked off. One cliche I hadn't investigated till this weekend, though, was the city's reputation as having less culture than the average Brie. It turns out to be half true, half not (take that, bivalent logicians).
A dig around the internet and the local listings mags reveals a few art galleries, theatres and the like, as you'd hope in a city of two million people. As with everything, access to most venues is a problem for anyone who doesn't drive, but on Friday, I managed to get to the Carnival Centre by public transport easily.
The Carnival Centre is an enormous performing arts complex North of downtown, in the middle of pretty much nothing -it's surrounded by building sites, and seems to be the vanguard of an attempt to reinvigorate the Omni district. In the best tradition of big public projects, the Centre was built at a cost hugely in excess of the original budget, and is currently facing big running cost overspends, exacerbated by smaller audiences than was expected. It seems they might not come even if you build it. So it was good to see the auditorium almost full for the Classical Theatre of Harlem 's production of Romeo and Juliet.
As you might guess from the name of the company, this was a version of the play set in modern times, with hiphop playing in the party scene, gunfights instead of swordsmanship, and so forth. The language was unchanged, apart from a few extra anachronistic exclamations (Nurse: 'scurvy knave!' Mercutio: 'ya mama!'). It worked fairly well, but ran foul on the problem that afflicts most productions of R&J; Romeo is such an idiot, such an unsympathetic dithering twit, that attempts to emphasise, say, the tragedy of the main story or the theme of warring families are stymied by his presence as the main catalyst for events. Another of those superficially heroic, but actually quite unpleasant, main characters Shakespeare did so well (cf Antonio in Merchant).
Saturday, and back relying on lifts, the Miami phil dept foreign legion (four of us) took a trip to the Bass Art Museum on South Beach. A relatively small museum with a much larger collection than in can show, and plans to expand, the Bass has three galleries for its collection and one for transient shows. The collection galleries do a lot with little space; in particular, the gallery of Renaissance and Baroque art gave an excellent overview of the period despite only displaying a handful of paintings. The touring exhibition this time was by a Cuban-American artist, and included an installation that was the first I've seen, I think, to include smells as part of the art.
On the way out, the volunteer (I think) at the entrance desk stopped us and gave us each a lovely book documenting a previous show at the museum, and chatted to us about the Miami art scene, giving us some tips about events, places to go and so on. This could have been kindness to foreigners, or it could have been a reward for (my) attentive listening on the way in to his tales of his trip to 'your wonderful country' and his adventures in 'Edinboro' and Parsons Green.
Or it could simply have been because, on a Saturday afternoon, we were four out of only six people to visit the gallery in an hour and a half. And that seems to be the true part of the Miami culture cliche; the infrastructure's there, but persuading the residents to partake is hard when there's all that tanning to do...
A dig around the internet and the local listings mags reveals a few art galleries, theatres and the like, as you'd hope in a city of two million people. As with everything, access to most venues is a problem for anyone who doesn't drive, but on Friday, I managed to get to the Carnival Centre by public transport easily.
The Carnival Centre is an enormous performing arts complex North of downtown, in the middle of pretty much nothing -it's surrounded by building sites, and seems to be the vanguard of an attempt to reinvigorate the Omni district. In the best tradition of big public projects, the Centre was built at a cost hugely in excess of the original budget, and is currently facing big running cost overspends, exacerbated by smaller audiences than was expected. It seems they might not come even if you build it. So it was good to see the auditorium almost full for the Classical Theatre of Harlem 's production of Romeo and Juliet.
As you might guess from the name of the company, this was a version of the play set in modern times, with hiphop playing in the party scene, gunfights instead of swordsmanship, and so forth. The language was unchanged, apart from a few extra anachronistic exclamations (Nurse: 'scurvy knave!' Mercutio: 'ya mama!'). It worked fairly well, but ran foul on the problem that afflicts most productions of R&J; Romeo is such an idiot, such an unsympathetic dithering twit, that attempts to emphasise, say, the tragedy of the main story or the theme of warring families are stymied by his presence as the main catalyst for events. Another of those superficially heroic, but actually quite unpleasant, main characters Shakespeare did so well (cf Antonio in Merchant).
Saturday, and back relying on lifts, the Miami phil dept foreign legion (four of us) took a trip to the Bass Art Museum on South Beach. A relatively small museum with a much larger collection than in can show, and plans to expand, the Bass has three galleries for its collection and one for transient shows. The collection galleries do a lot with little space; in particular, the gallery of Renaissance and Baroque art gave an excellent overview of the period despite only displaying a handful of paintings. The touring exhibition this time was by a Cuban-American artist, and included an installation that was the first I've seen, I think, to include smells as part of the art.
On the way out, the volunteer (I think) at the entrance desk stopped us and gave us each a lovely book documenting a previous show at the museum, and chatted to us about the Miami art scene, giving us some tips about events, places to go and so on. This could have been kindness to foreigners, or it could have been a reward for (my) attentive listening on the way in to his tales of his trip to 'your wonderful country' and his adventures in 'Edinboro' and Parsons Green.
Or it could simply have been because, on a Saturday afternoon, we were four out of only six people to visit the gallery in an hour and a half. And that seems to be the true part of the Miami culture cliche; the infrastructure's there, but persuading the residents to partake is hard when there's all that tanning to do...
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
A few thousand words' worth
I've spent the last couple of days trying, and failing, to write something perceptive about McGinn's theory that consciousness is matter without committing the cardinal sin of calling the theory bunk. So I'm no mood to write much. Fortunately, I bought a camera last week, so I can show you some pictures instead. Unfortunately, it's been raining in Miami for much of the last week, so I can't show you any pictures of the city in refulgent splendour. If I take enough goodies, I'll perhaps start an online gallery of some kind. In the meantime:
Here's the view towards downtown from the university metro station....
Here's the view towards downtown from the philosophy department....
Here's a view of part of campus from the philosophy department...
And here's the view I've mostly been enjoying this week when not in the philosophy department.
If you click on the pictures, they go all bigger and stuff. If anyone has any particular things which they'd like to see, let me know. Or anything they'd like me to write about. Though bear in mind my mother reads this (hi Mum).
Might also be worth mentioning I'm now Skype-equipped. If you are, you should be able to find me if you can spell my surname, and then you can audit my accent for any americanisms.
Here's the view towards downtown from the university metro station....
Here's the view towards downtown from the philosophy department....
Here's a view of part of campus from the philosophy department...
And here's the view I've mostly been enjoying this week when not in the philosophy department.
If you click on the pictures, they go all bigger and stuff. If anyone has any particular things which they'd like to see, let me know. Or anything they'd like me to write about. Though bear in mind my mother reads this (hi Mum).
Might also be worth mentioning I'm now Skype-equipped. If you are, you should be able to find me if you can spell my surname, and then you can audit my accent for any americanisms.
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