abject learning

Some days I can’t believe the stuff I get through my aggregator. Over on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog Station Manager Ken Freedman has posted the entire contents of an amazing artifact:

In 1966, a toy company in Newark, New Jersey released a children’s record called Batman and Robin to cash in on the popular Adam West TV series of the same name. The music on the LP was credited to “The Sensational Guitars of Dan and Dale,” but in fact the band was one of the greatest uncredited session combos of all time, including the core of Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Al Kooper’s Blues Project. To keep the music licensing fees to a minimum, all the tracks were based on public domain items like Chopin’s Polonaise Op. 53, the horn theme from Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and the love theme from Romeo and Juliet, and generic rock riffs.

I could use that little bit of information to stretch some point on the nature of copyright and creativity, but mostly I’m just excited to get this music. A lot of people find Sun Ra’s style too abstract and weird, because he’s best known for albums like Heliocentric Worlds and The Magic City, which are dissonant atonal affairs. My favorite Arkestra recordings are from the late fifties, which come across as Duke Ellington’s orchestra gigging live while cruising the rings of Saturn. The first song I ever played for newborn Harry was “Interplantary Music” off We Travel the Space Ways (recorded in Solar Fidelity on El Saturn Records) — and yes, I thought that selection through.

I’m also very fond of my green vinyl copy of It Is Forbidden, a live album recorded in 1974 at a festival that had the Arkestra setting the stage for James Brown. The sound on this record is alternatively noisy and funky, the singing on the title track hypnotic and energizing at the same time. I had always wondered why the album was subtitled “at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in Exile” whereas the liner notes said the performance had been been recorded in Windsor, Ontario. Poking around to find links for this posting tonight, I came across this explanation (worth reading in its entirety):

… the City Council finally issued judgment in July: With less than two months left before the Festival’s scheduled September 6th opening, the City of Ann Arbor denied Rainbow Multi-Media’s application for a permit to hold the internationally-recognized musical extravaganza in its place of birth, citing RMM’s failure to clean up the site immediately following the 1973 Festival as reason enough to cancel the event.

The clean-up problem was troubling. The Festival had hired scores of young people from the community to prepare the site, an empty field next to Huron High School which we had dubbed “Otis Spann Memorial Field,” to staff the festival grounds during the three-day event, and to clean up the site after the festivities had concluded. These workers effectively went on strike after the Festival ended without any of them getting paid and refused to do any more work, thus postponing the clean-up until enough volunteers could be organized to remove the debris.

Two decades later it would come to light that the man RMM had contracted to supervise the Festival’s field operations had invested the payroll money advanced to him for the crew — something like $20,000 — into a multi-ton marijuana deal that, unhappily for all, failed to come off. The supervisor vanished, and the crew began a protracted muttering campaign against Rainbow Multi-Media that resulted eventually in the cancellation of the next year’s event.

“It is forbidden,” the City of Ann Arbor ruled in July, and pandemonium reigned for several days until the festival organizers were invited to bring the banned event across the Detroit River and into the lovely outdoor amphitheater at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario … Canada. Radio powerhouse CKLW-AM agreed to serve as sponsor of the event, pledging lots of free ad spots, and the Canadians waxed enthusiastic in their professions of support for the orphaned music festival.

If you want a short overview of perhaps the single most original jazz (or music) mind ever, I mostly endorse Scott McFarland’s version.

Anyhow, this Batman album finds Sun Ra playing his most accessible music since the early R&B stuff recorded as “The Cosmic Rays”. Al Kooper was no slouch, appearing on Dylan’s Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde among countless other truly classic records. And his Blues Project were making some eccentric and fine music of their own around this time. If you’ve made it to the bottom of this post, you really ought to give the tracks a listen.

It’s too late for me to write a proper recap of the day, and I barely have two synapses to rub together. But experience has taught me that overviews best be captured quickly. Hopefully I can follow up on a few things later.

Our session Beyond the Blog went as well as I could have hoped. For perhaps the first time ever, I was not anxious going into a talk. That was because I felt the material was solid (mostly due to the estimable CogDogBlogger), and we had decided we would simply set the stage with questions and place our faith in the wisdom of the crowd. We were amply rewarded with a tremendous room — there was some audio recorded (MP3 13.5 MB), and I hope it captures the participants because there were a lot of excellent points made. It is always a pleasure and privilege to share a podium with Alan — what a talented and fun fellow he is. I can’t say enough about him. I won’t apologise Alan (inside joke), but I do thank you.

I got to sit with Alan and Bryan at lunch! Worth the trip down in itself. Alan Kay gave a talk ostensibly about the $100 laptop , but which took in a broad range of contextual issues that were quite provocative. This is a rare keynote-type talk that I hope they post audio for, there were some great moments I would like to go back and review. I was wondering where Gardner was during lunch, but apparently he was dining with the man himself — I do hope to learn more about what went on there.

Steve, Liz and Dean gave a wonderful talk on using wikis to empower student learning. There were some insights that came out during the student reaction section that were novel to me and I need to think them through. And I wish we had more student voices at conferences like these — Liz and Dean were poised and articulate, and my read of the room is that they opened a lot of eyes besides mine.

This event marks the second anniversary of my first Bryan Alexander experience, and I have seen him speak on five or six occasions since then. You’d think I would be able to keep up with him by now, but if anything he dazzles and confounds me more each time out. This talk on alternate reality games was a virtuoso performance. He created an ARG disguised as a Livejournal blog and used it as a means to explore the mysterious and often arcane techniques these narratives utilize. Quoting a phrase Bryan was kind enough to leave as a comment on this blog, ARG’s create an uncanny “first sense of unfolding connections, stretching off into shadows.” Which captures the sensation I felt today as an attendee.

All this material so skilfully delivered that I found myself literally gasping in disbelief, my mouth gaping open like a slack-jawed yokel. As the talk wrapped up, I debriefed with a crew that included Alan and Gardner (who had some keen insights about how these emerging forms of narrative might be situtated in a hermeneutic literary critical context). After all that, my mind was so revved up my metabolism went into a weird overdrive, and I experienced a total neurosystem crash as a result. I hope that explains this shoddy post.

Do I seem excessive with my praise? I don’t care if I do. This talk was that good. Gardner did some recording, I fervently hope it turned out OK.

You can’t go home again, but two years on we returned to the In-N-Out burger, site of the most rewarding fast food meal I have ever consumed. This time with an augmented crew — besides most of the people already mentioned in this post, we had Rachel Smith, Ernie Ackerman, and Leaf fan, inveterate innovator, and groovedaddy Andy Rush. I cannot express how fortunate I felt to be part of this gathering of amusing, intelligent and passionate peers. It is a small token of the esteem that I and everyone else feel for Dr. Glu that we happily piled into taxis and headed to a remote burger joint for our dinner.

This post probably reads over-the-top. I admit I am overwhelmed, but I stand by every word. Days like today remind me why I am lucky to be engaged in this profession.

All that remains is to get Alan his fish tacos. And you know what? He can call them penultimate if he wants to.

Well, after all my anxiety the talk at the Vancouver Public Library went pretty well. One of the biggest audiences I’ve spoken to, and definitely one of the most diverse. We had people like Richard Eriksson in the front row, and we had a fair contingent of people who were only barely conversant with the web (sample question: “what’s the difference between a chat room and a discussion board?”). First talk I can recall where there was security barring people at the door because they were disruptive presences — it was a downtown kind of crowd.

Since my last shout-out, we had a few more contributors I’d like to thank. Stephen Downes pointed to this Pew Internet study (pdf) that made the pertinent argument that the web provides “people with access to multiple communities worldwide from which they can draw help and support.” No kidding. Gardner, Joan, David and D’Arcy all made wonderful last-minute contributions. I was literally adding their stuff in at the podium moments before beginning.

The biggest challenge was assembling so much great material in some kind of coherent framework on the presentation wiki. I hope none of the contributors feel slighted with how I arranged things — I had to leave a lot of excellent stuff out. But as a demonstration of the concept of distributed conversation I think the cry for help worked as well as I could have hoped. When I revealed half-way through the talk where I was getting most of my material, there seemed to be an “a-ha moment” for at least some in the audience. Lindsay Kante describes the tactic as “shameless, yes, but effective”, and I couldn’t hope for a better assessment than that.

Once again, I thank everyone who offered their precious time to share their thoughts and their work for this event.

I was on the bill with Mark Schneider, who gave a passionate talk with some truly fine insights on the current state of journalism and how the pitfalls might be addressed. He went over very well. I’ve had a couple of requests for his slides, which can be downloaded here (ppt 1.4 MB). Richard also shot a bit of video of Mark’s talk and posted it to YouTube.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

It’s all my fault.

For the past week or two, Alan and I (OK, mostly Alan) have been labouring in obscurity constructing our presentation for next week’s ELI Annual Meeting. Though I’ve mostly been whining here about my talk at the library tonight, in a sense this one is more challenging. Judging from the conference schedule, it looks as if there will be some fairly savvy people in the audience. I’m glad Alan will be there.

Anyhow, I managed to accidentally give Leigh a sneak preview (I won’t go into how — too embarrassing). And the linkage has spread. Just want to make two points:

* We’re not done! We still have images to add, and a fair bit of content and navigation to add and edit. And we haven’t even started the audio.
* It was Alan who built those snazzy book covers.

I know there’s nothing stopping you from peeking. But I ask you to think of this presentation like a wrapped Christmas present — won’t it be more fun to open it on the big day?

Apologies to Alan for my loose mouse finger. I’ll be treating for the fish tacos.