Not like the stuff I usually listen to but I’ve been giving this a few rotations:
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Hard Fall Hearts from San Diego are a band I’ve started listening to relatively recently and actually heard of through the internets. (Another “local” band that’s not local to me!) This is actually quite difficult to categorise though it has elements of punk, rockabilly, psychobilly… similar in some parts to bands like Tiger Army. Actually I think there are some elements of ‘folk punk’ as well (am I the only person that sees the similarity between a lot of the stuff described as ‘folk punk’ and ‘psychobilly’?) This book is something I initially got for Christmas last year, read once and have recently re-read. It’s the 20th anniversary edition of the book, and not having read the original from 1979 (this one is from 2000 so it is actually a bit longer ago than 20 years now!) I’m not sure how much it has changed from the first version, but as it deals with topics such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) these types of subject areas move on, of course. I read quite a lot of fiction and non-fiction (probably more non-fiction on balance, though) and what strikes me with this book is how different it is in approach from many ‘popular’ science and maths books etc although it is aimed at the general reader, not just the AI/Computer Science/Maths/Music specialists. Rather than expand on aspects of just one subject the emphasis here is how certain aspects of all of these subjects are related and in fact in many cases isomorphic, ie that the same structures and relationships are present in different domains… It’s quite hard to explain without reading the book actually, but the appeal for me is this ‘connectedness’ between ideas.
Originally uploaded by ctsnow It made more sense on the second reading as well, as I was more aware of the overall structure and ‘argument’ of the book, and was very enjoyable to read… in spite of the formidable length (824 pages according to Amazon) it’s certainly not boring or heavy – there was one of the number theory sections that got slightly heavy and had to be re-read a few times but eventually made sense (I think!) I’d definitely like to get hold of more books like this – I’m aware of systems such as the Amazon ‘recommended’ and ‘people who bought X also bought Y, Z…’ but many of these books are linked by subject matter and ‘audience’ rather than approach as such, for instance Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Selfish Gene as popular science/maths books… perhaps there just are no other books quite like this! It’s a good introduction/explanation of all of these subject areas and there are certainly some I’d like to pursue further now (such as Number Theory) which previously I’d dismissed as too ‘dull’ or ‘detailed’ etc… I do get a strong feeling a lot of the time with subjects like this that in reality everything must be much simpler than it’s made out to be with all the Theorems and equations and all the rest of it… like there’s a piece of knowledge ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered that will suddenly make sense of a lot of disparate subjects and cause them to be seen as genuinely related and part of “the same” thing. I haven’t read any of Hofstadter’s other books though will be looking into these as well (though I’ve heard that a lot of the same subject matter is covered). Tiger Army’s music is a great example of what you can do as a 3 piece! though on the studio recording it sounds a little thinner (and more well defined) than the live ones. Will be seeing these guys (supporting A Wilhelm Scream) and quite excited for this gig already. I’ve seen AWS once before (with some more “metal” oriented support bands!). |
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