This week's episode of Late Lunch With Out To Lunch (Ben Watson's long-running show; 2pm Wednesdays) is called 'Sentiment', and mounts a furious attack on two footnotes to 'Mental Ears and Poetic Work', an obscure lecture J.H. Prynne delivered in Chicago in April 2009 and was shortly afterwards published in Chicago Review. The case for the prosecution is buttressed with Doo Wop by the Penguins, trash rock apocalypse by the New York Dolls, the ever-annoying Frank Zappa and three songs about Pablo Picasso. Prynne's position is castigated as 'Gradgrind realism' in sentences hot from a recent reading of Raya Dunayevskaya's book on Women's Liberation and exchanges with Doloras LaPicho of the Chaos Marxism blog.
Ever willing to enter combat with the great and the good, Out To Lunch has the temerity to question John Cale's decisions as a producer, and improvises his own piano commentary on the chord choices of Jerry Harrison, organist with the Modern Lovers. Treat this show as the warm up to the AMM (Association of Musical Marxists) Xmas Party on Thursday 20th December featuring Alan Wilkinson and Oscillatorial Binnage, Ben Wilson the Chewing Gum Man, Rob Dellar of Mad Pride and Esther Leslie on rainbows (free entry - see here for details).
AMM #5 Xmas Party >>
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Download Mental Ears and Poetic Work >>
I wasn't able to download JHP's paper at archive, - but there's a copy sitting at: http://english.duke.edu/uploads/assets/Mental%20Ears%20Prynne.pdf
ReplyDeleteThat's a better link, Ken - I've updated the article to point there instead. ta!
ReplyDeleteImagery obviously getting to fever pitch as the SWP Conference approaches ...
ReplyDeleteI've downloaded but yet to read the Prynne piece, but I hope that the New York Dolls aren't crucial to the 'prosecution case'. The appeal of those bogus hype merchants are lost to me.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's partly an age thing. My being 40yo I didn't register them when they might have made the best non/sense. But they're one punk totem that do still less for me than the Clash.
signed dc