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7796. PelleNilsson - 6/23/2005 5:18:59 PM Jean-Paul Sartre would gave been 100 this year. I saw a short article about him. There is an interesting little discussion of Sartre's views on structuralism versus individualism (or, if you want, social determinism versus free will), but what caught my eye was the author's claim that "Sartre became [...] the most hated man in France. Can that really be true? Do the French, not some French, but the French in general really hate a philosopher? In particular a Nobel laureate who stuck by his principles and told the Swedish Academians to shove their prize up their collective ass? In find that hard to believe. He passed away in 1980, well before the -68 winds had died down. 7797. alistairConnor - 6/23/2005 11:19:23 PM It's an odd thing, Pelle : he is deeply unfashionable, especially on the left.
Who is the major French philosopher of the last 50 years? The answer, almost unanimous : Foucault. (I think I agree)
There is a certain amount of re-evaluation going on. I think he suffered a great deal (somewhat unfairly) from the backlash against Communism in the 90s.
7798. alistairconnor - 7/7/2005 11:29:25 AM Quite a cultural summer so far.
Working backwards :
Last night : Blues night at the Vienne Jazz festival. The lineup:
Big James Montgomery and the Chicago Playboys
Taj Mahal Trio
BB King
Big James : I like Chicago blues, but these guys are showmen. It was a good show, but didn't quite connect with me.
 Taj Mahal : I've been meaning to catch up with this guy for at least a decade. It was worth the wait. You can't fake the blues in a trio format... From a strictly blues point of view, he was the hero of the evening. I'll be buying some records.
 BB King : For thirty years, I've recognised him as the elder statesman of the blues... I feared he might be in a twilight zone, but no, he is master of his guitar, his band, his music. He wouldn't be doing this at his age (79, he claims, but only his mother knows for sure) unless he enjoyed it... well so did we. Excellent tight, creative eight-piece band.
7799. alistairconnor - 7/7/2005 11:30:04 AM ah feck. Looked OK in preview... 7800. anomie - 7/23/2005 10:09:13 PM Where else to ask this...
Anyone hear of the Rasmus? 7801. anomie - 7/23/2005 10:12:59 PM ..Anyway, I thought they were a teenybopper Swedish group taking the Danish teens by storm...
They're really good. 7802. arkymalarky - 7/23/2005 10:47:35 PM I really like what little I've seen of them. Aren't they Finns? 7803. judithathome - 8/11/2005 5:23:11 PM I heard an interview on NPR yesterday with a German jazz group called Quadro Nuevo and I went straight to Amazon and ordered their CD. They play all sorts of instruments and a demo on the program played a tango and the theme from Pulp Fiction...very slow "Wipeout" with odd instruments, very jazzy sounds.
I misread the price and ended up paying almost $20 with shipping...I hope I like the damned thing. 7804. Ulgine Barrows - 8/13/2005 8:16:53 AM Are you happy with your purchase? 7805. judithathome - 8/13/2005 11:59:18 PM I won't know til it arrives. 7806. Ms. No - 8/15/2005 5:13:33 PM Goot Gott! Sorry to have dropped off so completely there, Mac. I've no idea what happened.
#1's a blank, #2's the Clash, I think, but I couldn't tell you the title. #3 sounds like The Smiths/Morrissey but I wouldn't bet big money on it.
I've discovered a lovely little internet radio station for all things 80's without the American Hair Bands. Most of the 80's stations here play way too much Madonna and Go-Go's and you'd think Depeche Mode and the Human League were the only British bands they'd ever heard of.
Anyway, Radio Nigel has quite a good little selection of "tunes I like to listen to". I'd post a link, but I can't figure out how to extract it from my WinAmp queue.
7807. Macnas - 8/15/2005 5:17:42 PM I was looking at your post for a few seconds before I remembered what it was about!
1. Beck, Loser
2. The Clash, Guns Of Brixton
3. The Smiths, Last Night I dreamt Somebody Loved Me.
Well done you, they were tough. 7808. Ms. No - 8/15/2005 5:25:08 PM I picked up the new Coldplay album this weekend after having avoided it. Silly I know, but I've been very resistent to this band for some odd reason and when I finally picked up the first album after similarly holding out I think I listened to it continuously for about a week straight. I'll still put it in the player for a road trip and let it cycle through two or three times and now I'm pretty convinced that the new album will get the same treatment from me.
I think perhaps some of it is the hype around them and some of it is my perception of Martin himself, but I enjoy the music so I'll just have to toss any pretentious music principals I might have pretended to and listen to what I like regardless.
Hell, I still love Styx and god knows that earns me some scornful looks. ;->
7809. Ms. No - 8/15/2005 5:29:57 PM I also picked up the latest Hot Hot Heat album which I haven't yet listened to. I've been hearing them in various out of the way places for a few years now but they're finally getting some major radio play. I'd never bought any of their previous albums out of sheer laziness.
They're definitely an 80's influenced band. When I first heard them I thought of Duran Duran but their latest hit is more Ray Davies/Kinks inspired and I've heard various other influences in them in the few times I've managed to catch them in radio play the last couple years.
7810. Ms. No - 8/15/2005 5:32:04 PM The third purchase was to replace an album I'd lost somewhere along the way --- Peter Murphy Love Hysteria.
I've been trying to get a copy of this on CD for years and either couldn't find it or mistook which album it was and passed it by. Oddly enough I may not even like it anymore, I just have fond memories of really liking it when I first owned it. We'll see how it holds up after 15 years of absence.
7811. Macnas - 8/16/2005 9:13:05 AM Hmm Coldplay, they have some growers, do doubt. I have to say I don't like the latest song "Fix You", but doubtless the rest of the album will have some good stuff.
Hot Hot Heat. I've yet to hear of them, but they sound interesting.
Pete Murphy eh? his solo stuff is just to sparse for my taste, his more recent stuff in anycase. I cannot remember listening to his first album, so it might be better. 7812. Ms. No - 8/17/2005 5:09:17 PM Yeah, Fix You is not my favorite cut on the album and Speed of Sound is too similar to their last megahit, but White Shadows is great and the album as a whole gives me a good vibe with a couple of stand-outs that I don't know the names of since I've been listening mainly in my car where I can't read the liner notes.
Murphy's stuff did get really sparse when he went solo, but he also had some more pop-friendly tunes. Love Hysteria's got All Night Long and Indigo Eyes which both got a lot of radio play. Dragnet Drag are Blind Sublime are solid but some of the other tunes can get tedious. It's hard for me to overlook the melodrama of some of his lyrics when they're all I can hear except for a vague drum kit in the back and some mystic bell-ringing.
None of his solo stuff touches Telegram Sam or The Passion of Lovers and his ballads have gotten kind of sappy. My Last Two Weeks doesn't compare to Crowds or All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, but he still gets me with some of his tunes and I'm a sucker for his voice.
7813. Macnas - 8/18/2005 9:08:11 AM Ms.No, have you heard of Gavin Friday? You might like him. 7814. judithathome - 8/26/2005 4:19:03 AM This appeared in my paper today. Welcome to the American Taliban:
Audiences are staging protests
By ANDREW MARTON
STAR-TELEGRAM SENIOR ARTS WRITER
The play was called The Kiss at City Hall and, at least in the mind of one Circle Theatre patron, its unsparing look at abortion was just too much to stand. So she did just that: stood up in the middle of the production and clomped out.
"But she first stopped in front of the stage," says Circle executive director Rose Pearson, recalling the incident two years ago. "And said to one of the principal actors, 'Young man, you should be ashamed of yourself.' "
An extreme reaction, perhaps, but emblematic nonetheless. Over the last five years, with more and more local theaters -- from Fort Worth's Stage West and Circle Theatre to Dallas'Theatre Three and the Plano Repertory Theatre -- brashly portraying nudity, violence and "adult themes," some audience members are voicing their unequivocal displeasure and dismay.
Fort Worth's Stage West had a scene of full-frontal nudity in its recent staging of The Coming World, and there is a healthy dose of salty language in its current presentation, Port Authority, which finishes its run Sunday.
At last year's Plano Repertory Theatre production of Shakespeare's R&J (based on Romeo and Juliet), several audience members stormed out after a kiss between two men. And last year, Dallas Theater Center's production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Topdog/Underdog sparked numerous walkouts during several of its scenes heavy with adult language and sexual content. Meanwhile, Theatre Three's January 2004 musical production of The Wild Party, with its staged orgy, unleashed a tidal wave of e-mails and phone calls.
One audience member actually called the director a "spawn of Satan" in an angry e-mail, says Kimberly Richard, the theater's director of publications and communications.
In an e-mail to the Star-Telegram, Mary Ann and Ray Scheel aired some of their discomfort with Stage West's Port Authority.
"There isn't any real reason to be so blunt either in word or action," they wrote. "I believe that it is just as harmful for adults to continually hear this in plays, TV or films as it is for children. It does damage to us mentally whether we are conscious of it or not, and this in turn [a]ffects our relationship with our spouses and offspring . . ."
Stage West's producing director, Jerry Russell, who directs Port Authority, is often the target of either audience adulation or outright rejection of his theater's grittier work.
"In Port Authority, a young man uses the language of young people today, talking openly about sexual things, and certain parts of that really bother some in the audience," says Russell, 69. "The protests we get reflect the much sharper divide right now along moral lines in the country as a whole."
Circle Theatre's Pearson says theatergoers are much more blunt these days about expressing their scalding displeasure with material they deem offensive. "They don't mind disturbing the performance and just leaving in the middle -- it's all about immediate gratification in making their complaint," says Pearson.
Anticipating these more barbed reactions, local theaters are warning their audiences with greater clarity -- through a movie-rating-like system, plus a barrage of brochures, postcards, e-mails and recorded box-office messages -- about every element of a production, from foul language to smoking on stage.
"We all now have an obligation to let people know what they are in for," says Terry Martin, producing artistic director of WaterTower Theatre in Addison, whose May 2006 production of Take Me Out will be publicized as containing "locker-room nudity."
While some theaters are concluding that their audiences desire a stronger mix of lighter fare with some more jarring social drama -- Fort Worth's Circle Theatre's next two productions are the decidedly sudsy Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie and Guys on Ice, a musical about ice fishermen -- other theaters understand that controversial subject matter can produce controversy -- and boffo box office.
Kitchen Dog Theater, which will present Bug in September, with its 20 minutes of male and female nudity, certainly recognizes this. Its production of The Dead Monkey, which featured darkly comic adult situations, incited audience outcries but also became one of the theater's biggest sellers.
"Oh, yeah," agrees Richard Hamburger, artistic director of Dallas Theater Center. "From our Topdog/Underdog to Big Love, Six Degrees of Separation and Angels in America, pretty much all of our shows that have been controversial, and moved from the arts pages to the news pages, have all ended up doing one thing: selling more tickets."
7815. judithathome - 8/26/2005 4:20:33 AM It does damage to us mentally whether we are conscious of it or not, and this in turn [a]ffects our relationship with our spouses and offspring .
Then stay home and avail yourself of Reader's Digest.
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