I have mentioned this before, but sometimes ya just have to crank that volume knob...and let the sound wash out over you (and possibly the neighbourhood) in an overpowering wave.
Like the James Page Quartet - two strings, one percussion and voice - performing their timeless masterwork Opus #2. Was stereo sound really so new in 1969, that we marvelled so at the way the sound shifted across speakers? I remember it being novel - and such a pleasure to revisit, sitting between my laaaarge speakers, in the new hifi unit, with my eyes closed.
Totally oblivious to all but the sweet vocals and accompaniment....
"You been coolin'
And baby, I've been droolin'
All the good times, baby, I've been misusin'-a/Oh
A-way, way down inside
I'm gonna give ya my love/Ah
I'm gonna give ya every inch of my love/Ah
I'm gonna give you my love/Ah
Yes, alright, let's go/Ah"
Did I REALLY listen to that in 1969, and not understand what it meant? And this:
"Squeeze me, babe, 'till the juice runs down my leg
Do, squeeze, squeeze me, baby, until the juice runs down my leg
The wayyou squeeze my lemon-a
I'm gonna fall right outta bed, 'ed, 'ed, bed, yeah..."
I think I only woke up to what THAT was about in the last ten years...I suppose I was only 14 when I heard them the first time, and it was the awesome sound, rather than the lyrics, that captivated me...Led Zeppelin burst in on me (and everyone) with the subtlety of a cruise missile coming into a Baghdad bunker - and I think my hearing loss dates back to about then. Them, and Deep Purple (Black Knight, you need to cue up "Smoke on the Water" and "Space Truckin'" right about now...B-).
But it's in the last ten or so years, when I have seriously got into blues, that I have realised just how good, and how novel, some of those early heavy rock outfits were - and how blues-influenced. In fact, you can go back to Cream, Taste, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and even the Stones, and pick up an astonishing amount of very good blues: the live "Stray Cat Blues" off the Stones' "Get Yer Ya-Yas Out" has to be one of the nastiest blues tracks I have ever heard; Tull does a very passable "My Sunday Feeling"; Cream's "Crossroads" is the stuff of legend; and Rory Gallagher...suffice it to say that "Bullfrog Blues" is another one to blow your brains out with when the synapses need scouring.
"Well did you ever wake up
With them bullfrogs on your mind"
Well did you ever wake up
With them Bullfrogs on your mind?
You had to sit there laughin'
Laughin' just to keep from crying."
Sublime...! You know, "Retroid Raving" actually gets its name from "Retroid Rock", which I presented on UCT Radio as a weekly two-hour classic rock show, between 1995 and 1996 - which is when I woke up to the blues background for most of the 70s rock that I grew up with. And played a LOT of it...some of which survives as a collection of 60-120 minute MP3s entitled "Dinosaurs Live!", if anyone's interested.
Think I'll go and submerge my brain with some more dirigible....
Retroid could not help but notice - it's at the top of the UCT home page today - an article entitled "Research blossoms in VC's eight-year tenure". Part of it says:
"Research has blossomed at this university and it could not have flourished if not led by a VC who cares very much about research," Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Danie Visser said of outgoing Vice-Chancellor, Professor Njabulo S Ndebele.
He was speaking at Wednesday night's event to celebrate UCT's research endeavour.
Yes. Well. Um. Apart from the fact that Retroid could not BE there due to a myriad of child-transporting duties, and the fact that said backward-trending individual LIKES the outgoing VC...I think a statement like that might have left a somewhat sour taste. I could refer you to the "research bled" raves - now several in number - or simply ask: how, exactly, did he and his team lead research to blossom (implying it had not flowered previously)? UCT - as opposed to OUTM - has always been one of the premier research institutions in this country; has this changed? Have we improved more than Tukkies, or Wits - and by what criteria? A certain former DVC was more famous for NOT listening to researchers than the other thing; I can think of a number of very worthy thrusts / themes / hopeful monsters that withered away, not for lack of interest at ground level, but because the top level did not engage. Things like biotechnology. Bioinformatics. Structural biology....
Anyone seeing a trend here?
Ah, well. As a poor footsoldier in the Accountant-led African-Class World University (ALACWU; nice punny bit of onomatopoeia there...B-), mine is not to reason why. Mine is just to get research money...and give it for the greater glory of OUTM.
In the Sunday Independent of the 8th June 2008:
"Black voices have already been raised in the defence of Hlophe. The Black Lawyers' Association, apparently responding to calls for Hlophe to be suspended pending the outcome of the commission's deliberations, emphasised that Hlophe was entitled to the presumption of innocence until found guilty.
Its stand was reinforced by an open letter to the judges of the constitutional court from Paul Ngobeni, the deputy registrar of legal services at the University of Cape Town.
He argued that the complaint should have been made by the individual judges whom Hlophe allegedly tried to influence and that the complaints should have been registered discreetly by the judges concerned and not "orchestrated" through the media as a joint complaint of the constitutional court as a single entity.
He also contended that the constitutional court had, thereby, violated the "common law adage that no man should be a judge in his own cause"."
By Patrick Laurence
Well, well, well: the Absent Registrar raises his head - to again defend what appears rapidly to be becoming the indefensible.... In his official capacity? If not, did he say so? And does he in fact HAVE an official capacity, given that we were told things would be clearer after February, and they are most certainly not? Is the man in evidence in any official capacity at OUTM?
And of his travails with the law in the Great Satan?? I note a very interesting couple of comments to one of my posts on the subject: link here if your're interested. And not even from pigment-disadvantaged Seffricans....
In case y'all thought it was a fluke, here is the same class on another exam entirely.
And yes, again I told them what they would be getting - see "Will it be in the exams?"
Same result.
Frequency vs mark; pretty much a normal distribution - with some outlier clever guys. And a couple of others...passmark was 15.
Horses, water, leading...some listen, some don't, and some just muddle through. Bless 'em all...B-)
Steps in an examination exercise:
- Give pre-practical class. Tell students what practical test question will be
- Do practical. Reiterate that you will ask them x and y
- See students. Tell them yes, that is what you will ask
- Set test. Ask x and y
- Mark test: OK, should be out of 8, but let's pretend it’s 16…haven't cracked Excel yet!
MORAL: It doesn’t matter whether you tell or what you tell them, the result is that some will fail, some will do well – and most will just do OK.
Students: gotta love them.
Because you certainly can't shoot them.
