Saturday, May 31, 2003

Grades a Medium sorta like Cars. In Dos Passos they only have one brand of Car. Studebaker? Hupmobile? I haven't decided. Not Fords. I'm making notes for a paper in Los Angeles on Henry 'Ragtime Texas' Thomas:::::(one of these days we gonna import some neater punctuation I swear: get some little footsies and teddy bears and pot leaves and what-nots):::: there are folklore paradigms, the concept 'roots' for eaxample, that make yr. ears hear things but keep them from hearing other things; thus: Henry Thomas is heard as 'archaic' because he's mostly listened to in 'developmental' terms; but if you listen to Henry Thomas like you would, say, Harry Partch, then some new stuff come popping at you. Texas songsters, Leadbelly, Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Henry Thomas, they tend to get listened to in terms of 'old timey'. John Lomax hyped Leadbelly in terms of 'old timey', 'rooted', 'real', 'authentic'. We gonna argue, with specific reference to Henry Thomas and the songs 'bobby kinney' and 'railroadin' some', that when you listen with a 'modernist ear' you realize that these boys are picking up and holding pieces of the past but they are walking on with their eye to the future. (When I was a boy Lightning Hopkins was hard to position in my head because of that 'root' thinking. Then I read Walter Mosley about the time Dr. Dre and Snoop were coming up and I thought about Woody playing on the Radio in California and I started to realize: 'whoa, Lightning a little ahead of his time'. Mance Lipscomb used to point out: 'Lightning only ever give you two songs.' Mr. Lightning Hopkins a Minamilist. Mr. Lightning Hopkins a 'scientist of memory' who worked out a style appropriate for some pretty horribly Contemporary places. Houston and L.A.) 11:27:08 AM    comment []