Month: May 2026

Zeitgeist 5/26/26

The day after Memorial Day, I am alive and so are you

random image meant to intrigue you with its randomness. Photo by me.

Y’know, I sure do like good coffee. I’m sitting here slurping on my second cup, and my mind is full of yum. Many things give me yum. What gives you yum? I’d like to know. I find your opinions yummy.

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You know who has some really yummy opinions? Graham Platner.

Graham Platner on a boat. Photo from the Graham for Senate campaign.

I generally don’t provide full context for these things I reference, so I won’t here. You may know who he is, you may not. If you don’t, fire up your favorite search engine and learn. But I don’t think you’ll need to do that.

I keep watching videos of the man talking. I find that I already agree with most of what he says, but I also learn things. The fact that this street-level guy who would be my kids’ age if I had any kids (who weren’t felines) has been so dedicated to the well-being of this country, is so well-read, and is willing to go through the BS of a senatorial campaign in these greed-crazy times is absolutely admirable, especially since he’s doing it based on small-dollar donations and fighting against The Big Money. If I lived in Maine, I’d want to volunteer for his campaign. And if it turns out that Trumpo the Clown and his band of idiots put ICE or the National Guard or whatever between the citizens of Maine and their polling places, I hope that they will consider what Graham Platner would do in their place.

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It’s planting time here in climate zone 5b, and Karen has been hard at work growing seedlings in her office and in plastic jugs outside (winter sowing) and this week and upcoming weekend is when all the little planties will go into the ground. Then in a little while, we’ll have beautiful heirloom tomatoes and many other crunchy and yummy garden goodies. I’m very excited for the yield and glad to help out a bit with bringing the things to life. My window overlooks the little garden from the second floor, and on summer days, I will look down from here and watch her water and weed and do all of the various activities while I WFH. The warm months are my favorite.

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I bought a copy of the Rhino High Fidelity remastered copy of Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. It comes in a glossy gatefold tip on jacket (yes, I’m aware — the original was neither glossy nor gatefold!) but this version is exciting to me. My old copy (which I stupidly got rid of at some point) was an original UK pressing that sounded about ten times better than the US pressing. I’ve heard that US pressing and it’s quite disappointing if you’re used to the much brighter and fuller-sounding original. This version brings the American song sequence up to *almost* the level of the yellow cover version, and it makes me happy that I can hear the thing close to the way it was originally meant to be heard. Producer Chris Thomas’s notes on the sessions, included here, are enlightening as well.

If you see a copy, grab it. Don’t let the idea of a slightly more expensive high-end remaster of a punk record seem foolish to you — believe me, it’s not! So, there’s another yum for you.

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Have a yummy week, OK?

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Two Albums By The Nice and Pictures at an Exhibition, part 6

Whatever else I might have to say about ELP’s Pictures at an Exhibition and this exploration of ELP versus The Nice.

Sooo… look. Did I come to a better understanding of what Keith Emerson was all about? Eeehhhh… maybe. I guess I’d say that the most perfect encapsulation of what Keith Emerson’s approach to music is in my opinion quite well represented by the final track on Pictures at an Exhibition, a boogie retelling of bits of the Nutcracker Suite called “Nutrocker,” which was devised by Kim Fowley. It’s what I’ve always thought he was about, to be honest.

It’s that fusion of rock n classical that Emerson seems to have been after. He really never dives all that deeply into either rock or classical music, although it’s clear that he sees that his bread is better buttered in rock n roll grease, and so he puts everything under that umbrella. Across these three records we see snippets of just about every section of the record store — jazz, show tunes, blues, rock, classical, even a little dusting of country music, and across all of it, the unifying element is Emerson’s fingers and the feeling he had that some of what he could do with his fingers on a keyboard was dangerous or even subversive (meh).

What he did with The Nice sometimes transcended that need to push the boundaries of outré attention grabbing. I especially felt that on Elegy which showed a band that might have had some technical limitations, but had all of the ability to think and feel and attempt to make something beautiful. With ELP, it was all about the flash-bang.

So, ELP could be bigger, louder, more exciting, but somehow I think they were slighter on an artistic level.

This is a minority opinion, I’m aware of that. I’m also entirely capable of changing my mind, given a better argument about what’s happening in the grooves of the records or on stage in the video above. The guy who thought he’d made an “instrumental protest song” is clearly operating on the same assumptions in that “I’m stabbing my organ!” bit. I just don’t know what it’s about beyond the prurience of it. Maybe he had a bad piano teacher?

I’m a Yes fan. I will be upfront about thinking that Yes had terrible lyrics, but they had great lyricism. They made some of the most beautiful music I can think of within the rock context. ELP could play anything (they did, they played every style of music, sometimes within the bounds of a single track) but all they ever made me feel was admiration for their musicianship, and a bit of cynicism-tinged excitement over all of the flashiness.

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A 500-Word History of a Lost Civilization That Stood for Over a Thousand Years

No one can accurately depict this much history in so small a space, but hey! I tried.

In 293, The Emperor Diocletian created the Tetrarchy. He split the Roman Empire in two, west and east, in 286 CE. He found that he needed a second-in-command to help administer each half of the empire. In the west, he appointed Maximian as Augustus with Constantius as Caesar under him. In the east, he appointed himself Augustus and Galerius as Caesar. The Roman Empire had been in danger of falling apart and in this way, Diocletian saved it for a time. The Tetrarchy collapsed after he abdicated, due to rival claims to power from Maxentius, the son of Maximian and Constantine, the son of Constantius. There was a civil war and at the end of it in 324 Constantine was the Roman Emperor and Christianity had become the state religion.

AI slop. This configuration is not correct. The palace was across that square from the Hagia Sophia, and the hippodrome was next to the palace. The Galata tower was across the estuary known as The Golden Horn, in… ummm… Galata. Tip of the hat to John Mendelssohn who devised this color scheme.

He founded the city of Constantinople in 330 and made it the capital of the empire, which it continued to be for 1123 years, barring the 57 years the Latins held the city in the 13th century. The division of the empire continued, however, and the last western emperor, Romulus Agustulus, was deposed in 476. The German who deposed him proclaimed himself the King of Italy, ending the western empire.

The Eastern Roman Empire survived for many complex reasons. To vastly oversimplify, many of the emperors were good statesmen. A higher percentage of Romans were literate than in any other kingdom in Europe. They benefitted from advanced technology, such as Greek Fire and compound bows. Constantinople itself was situated in such a way and defended so well that it survived many sieges.

In the 7th century a new and charismatic religion appeared in the world, known as Islam. The Romans lost much of their territory – all of their holdings in northern Africa and much of their territory in Asia – to the Caliphate, at that time rulers of the Muslim world. The empire struggled, lost some of their power and prestige, but survived and came to thrive again.

In 1025, one of the empire’s greatest Emperors, Basil II, died without an heir. Afterwards, the Empire entered a period of decline, with a revolving door of 14 Emperors succeeding each other over a period of 50 years. During this time the Imperial coffers were drained, the Army was destroyed beyond recovery at the Battle of Manzikert, and internal strife took a major toll on the empire’s wellbeing. In 1081, the young general Alexios came to power. His army was the first to sack Constantinople. Still, he ruled for 38 years and is considered the last truly great emperor among the Romans. Every ruler of the empire to come after him was his relative or direct descendant.

But the power of the empire had been broken beyond recovery. The empire continued to decline, though it took another 350 years to die. In 1453, Mehmet II laid siege to Constantinople and after two months of fighting, entered the city and sacked it for the 4th and final time. The last Roman Emperor, Constantine XI, disappeared in the fighting at the Theodosian Wall and was never heard from again. The Eastern Roman Empire became a memory, receding into history.

Tuesday Post Postponed.

Hi, all.

I’m working on a query letter, so I have to concentrate on that instead of my weekly installment of whatever it might turn out to be in any given week. I will try to make a post after I get this thing done. If you are expecting a sixth Keith Emerson post, I apologize for the delay. It’s coming!

Cheers, felicitations, solidarity!
–Diane

Two Albums By The Nice and Pictures at an Exhibition, part 5

The cliffhanger is answered: Did Keith make the right choice? Side 1

So we arrive at the final volume of our little trilogy, the most The Nice-like album that ELP ever did, thus inviting a direct comparison. Let’s talk about what I get from the grooves of 3 (at least mostly) live albums recorded as Keith Emerson left The Nice and joined ELP. It’s an interesting journey. I’ll offer the spoiler right now that he really did find a better bassist and singer in Greg Lake. but in my opinion, whether Carl Palmer is a better drummer than Brian Davison is debatable.

I give the nod to Lake here with all due respect to Lee Jackson, who is a fabulous musician. He’s still with us at 83, and is still out there playing music.

And I prefer Brian Davison to Carl Palmer on the issue of pocket. If you haven’t heard that term before, it means finding the place in the rhythm of the music where there’s a gravitic center to the beat. If you can find the pocket, you unlock a feeling of being meshed in with your bandmates in such a way that the feeling of the music gets deeper. In that situation, the synchronicity of the players together feels transcendent. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t been inside it, but it will affect any music you hear. It can draw you in, settle you inside the beat in such a way that your whole body feels like it’s swaddled in groove.

There are microdivisions of the beat, and a range of time within the beat — either slightly forward of it, right on it, or slightly behind — where the feeling of “locking in” can be all-encompassing or it can make you anxious, or it can make the music feel almost robotic. That anxious feeling can be useful to convey a sense of aggression or danger, which some find attractive, but if you’re looking for an expansive, powerful groove, you’ll find that locked-in feeling so much more unifying. The anxious feeling is at the leading edge of that groove, the locked-in feeling comes more from being just the slightest bit past the middle of that range of being “in rhythm.” Brian Davison could find the pocket with ease. Carl Palmer was always at the anxious edge of the beat, anticipating slightly and pushing. So while Palmer would typically pack more strokes into a beat than Davison would, Palmer always felt like he was pushing things, and there’s plenty of evidence of that on Pictures at an Exhibition.

Cover by William Neal, photography by Keith Morris and Nigel Harlow.

On paper, this could almost be an album by The Nice, with the caveat that strong compositional elements come from both Lake and Palmer, as well as Emerson. There’s a song on side one that is a solo acoustic piece from Greg Lake. There wasn’t a piece that was untouched by Keith Emerson as an arranger/composer since the days of Davy O’List, back on the very first album by The Nice. Honestly, Greg Lake is the best singer and songwriter Emerson ever worked with in a band. Still, it’s the same basic approach as the previous band, with the two new components plugged in.

Lake played a Fender Jazz bass, giving a much rounder, fuller tone than Lee Jackson’s plunky hollow body ox teardrop bass, which gives the whole band a smoother, more contemporary tone. He was also a more fluid player. There was less jazz in his sensebility (the model of his bass notwithstanding) and more rock. As discussed above, Palmer was much more kinetic behind the kit. Emerson seems liberated here, though he’s the same player. ELP was more of a well-oiled machine than The Nice, it’s plain…

I’ll have more to say about this album in my next post. Stay tuned.

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