[H/t: Mark Blyth]

In the wake of the RNC, here's G.A. Cohen's paper from a few years ago, before his death obviously:

“Professor Cohen, how many Fellows of All Souls does it take to change a light bulb?”

“Change?!?”

The present paper defends the attitude that I just expressed in my answer to the chair’s question. I have for decades harboured strongly conservative, that is, strongly small-c conservative, opinions, on many matters that are not matters of justice, and I here mount an exposition and defence of what I believe to be my widely, although perhaps not universally, shared, conservative attitude. (I do not have conservative views about matters of justice because what conservatives like me want to conserve is that which has intrinsic value, and injustice lacks intrinsic value2 (and has, indeed, intrinsic disvalue). I shall say something in section 7 about the relationship between small-c conservatism and large-C Conservatives, many of whom are indeed devoted to conserving injustice.)

I am a kind of conservative not only in that I have the strong small-c conservative attitude that I shall describe, but also in that I endorse certain conservative factual assessments according to which a lot of valuable things have been disappearing lately. I join the ranks of the complainers down the ages who say: “Things ain’t what they used to be.”

Do not suppose that, because that lamentation is perennial, it’s misplaced. Anti- conservatives say, “Oh, well, people have always said that things are getting worse”, and anti-conservatives mean thereby to convey that the conservative lamentation expresses an illusion.3 But it is entirely possible that at any rate certain kinds of things have always been worse than they were before.4 Remember the wise Hungarian, who, upon being asked how things were going for him, said: “Oh, you know, things are about average. Not as good as yesterday, better than tomorrow.” In fact, I think lots of good old things are being lost and lots of good new things are arriving. It is the conservative disposition, in the present sense of ‘conservative’, to lament the first fact more than non conservatives do. (As I’ll explain in section 3, it doesn’t follow that a person who is conservative in the present sense welcomes the second fact – that lots of good new things are arriving – less than non-conservatives do.) But there will be no defence of my conservative factual assessments in what follows.

From the description at YouTube:

These are two gigantic solid state musical Tesla Coils. A Tesla Coil is a special type of transformer invented by Nikola Tesla that is able to generating extremely large voltages using a phenomenon known as electrical resonance. Each coil in this video is capable of generating a 13 foot spark. This equates to about 500,000 volts of electricity.

The primary drive system for the coils consists of high power semiconductors arranged into an H-Bridge switching configuration. During a spark event, the coil is pulsed on for a few hundred millionths of a second. During this short time, thousands of amps circulate within the primary tank circuit and the energy is coupled into the secondary resonator through magnetism.

So what appears to be a continuous burst of sparks is actually a specific number of sparks generated per second. By modulating the number of sparks that emit from the coil each second, different tones can be produced by the coils.

These coils were constructed by Eric Goodchild and Steven Caton.

Tonight at 7 p.m., Darcy James Argue's steampunk big band jazz orchestra Secret Society and the 17 piece disco band Escort (both bands are friends of 3QD, we say proudly) will play a joint show at the Ecstatic Summer — River To River Festival over at the World Financial Center Plaza. The show starts at 7:00 p.m. and is free.

Darcy has some interesting thoughts on disco (including some thoughts on Donald Byrd's 70s disco pieces), over at the Secret Society blog:

Was disco the last musical genre that absolutely everyone had to get in on? It wasn't just the likes of Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones and Wings-era Paul McCartney and the Greatful Dead and Kiss… a surprising number of major jazz artists also made disco-inflected records. There's Ron Carter's 1976 Pastels, which opens with the glossy string-sweetened “Woolaphant.” Also in '76, Dizzy Gillespie put out a record called Dizzy's Party — here's the title track. Sonny Rollins even put out a tune called, of all things, “Disco Monk” — it's from 1979's aptly titled Dont Ask. (Remember, Thelonious was still around at this point and consequently had no grave to spin in.) Almost all of the big bands had their disco moments, too — Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Thad & Mel — but nobody embraced disco with as much gusto as Maynard Ferguson. I still vividly remember the time when my teenage self first heard his disco version of the theme to Battlestar Galactica — I think my jaw still hurts from where it hit the floor.

The above tracks (and more) were all referenced in a recent Twitter discussion of jazz-disco crossovers — I'm grateful to Jacob Garchik, Dave Sumner, Mark Stryker, and everyone else who chimed in with their suggestions.

The discussion was instigated somewhat by the fact that Secret Society is going to be appearing this Saturday, August 25 at the Ecstatic Summer Festival, where we'll be joined onstage by the 17-piece neo-disco band, Escort. In addition to separate sets, we'll be bringing both bands together for a few tunes, including an original of mine called “Penumbra” (think late 70's Quincy Jones meets Guillermo Klein's rhythmic filter) and my arrangements of two influential disco-era tracks recorded by Donald Byrd, “Stepping Into Tomorrow” and “Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)” — both of which will feature special guest soloist Tim Hagans.

This isn't a vein of music that we in Secret Society get to tap explicity very much, but that doesn't mean we don't love it or aren't deeply influenced by it. So let's take a minute to get a few things straight:

• DISCO IS AWESOME. Notwithstanding the ill-advised crossover attempts listed above, the decades-long knee-jerk “Disco Sucks” backlash is lazy and tired and needs to stop. Yes, there is bad disco. There is bad everything. But disco was the natural outgrowth of 70's funk and Philly soul, and there's no shortage of deeply grooving disco tracks that easily stand up today. For the skeptical, I recommend and endorse this Sound Opinions podcast on disco's early years.