The New Yorker

[Sneakeater]

It's better than calling you a Brit!

Edited October 28, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Wilfrid]

Rosner’s latest, another very detailed and persuasive review, this time of Nigerian food in a nightmarish club environment near the M&M building. Need to read the digital version of course. 

[Wilfrid]

Nuts. I just read the piece on the artist Betye Saar. I know I have seen her work recently. I remember Aunt Jemima, I remember the cotton dress. But where? Google is no help. I guess I can thumb back through my physical diary.

[bloviatrix]

There was a Saar show at MoMA fairly recently. Perhaps there?

[Wilfrid]

Belatedly, if that was the case you are probably right. 

[Wilfrid]

This is maybe a regular thing now? Hannah gets a couple of pages to talk about a slightly generalized restaurant topic while Helen gets a drastically truncated (print edition) Tables for Two.

Curious decision. Maybe they’ll switch around sometimes.

[Wilfrid]

I see Tables For Two has become The Food Scene, which perhaps gives Rosner more scope.

The latest piece on diners contains a discussion about whether, when a diner’s food reaches a certain level, it is a diner no more; the sort of debate that could have run for months on Mouthfuls when we were young and carefree.

[Sneakeater]

Rosner has missed that, in keeping with the current trend, Old John's has reverted to calling itself a Luncheonette.

[backyardchef]

1 minute ago, Sneakeater said:

Rosner has missed that, in keeping with the current trend, Old John's has reverted to calling itself a Luncheonette.

Are you going to be ok living with this knowledge? 

[Sneakeater]

Life is hard.

[Wilfrid]

It’s Old John’s Diner on their own Instagram feed, it’s Old John’s on their website with no suffix I can find. It comes up as Luncheonette if you run a Google search, but that’s Google.

Not clear that the business itself changed the name back (and why bother?).

[Sneakeater]

I could swear I saw "Luncheonette" on their website a couple of weeks ago?

Why bother?  Cuz luncheonettes are all the rage this season.

[Wilfrid]

Mm, well they need to try harder.

[Wilfrid]

I was pleased to see the piece on Trouser Press and Ira Robbins.

Okay, so let's gripe about it:

Quote

Trouser Press, as it came to be called, soon became a scrappy yet integral vehicle for the incursion on these shores of Brit genres, like prog and New Wave...

I can imagine that the term "prog" was more a U.K. term than a U.S. term (correct me if I'm wrong), but the assertion that these were British genres is jaw-dropping.

Quote

...shelves holding more than thirty thousand records, almost a third of them vinyl LPs.

The other two thirds, I assume, are vinyl 45s or perhaps shellac 78s. Either that, or someone thinks we should refer to CDs as "records." But what a tough fix, what is a sub-editor supposed to do? How about replace "records" with "albums"?

[Sneakeater]

ISN'T Prog a British genre?

Who were the major formative American Prog bands?

[Wilfrid]

I think Wiki is right for once:

Quote

[Progressive rock] primarily developed in the United Kingdom, United States, and Germany through the late 1960s and early 1970s.

You certainly can't leave out the Germans. (Also the Dutch: Focus.)

Wiki mentions The Doors, The Grateful Dead, The Mothers of Invention, Spirit, Rush, Todd Rundgren. I might list Jefferson Airplane ahead of the Dead.

[hollywood]

The Soft Machine.

[Sneakeater]

33 minutes ago, Wilfrid said:

I think Wiki is right for once:

You certainly can't leave out the Germans. (Also the Dutch: Focus.)

Wiki mentions The Doors, The Grateful Dead, The Mothers of Invention, Spirit, Rush, Todd Rundgren. I might list Jefferson Airplane ahead of the Dead.

I see you on the Germans and the Dutch, but the American acts Wiki mentions either came after the British ones (or, as in the case of Todd Rundgren, went Prog in the wake of the British acts) (he was Pop before that) or aren't Prog (I don't see the Doors, the Dead, or the Airplane as Prog at all -- they were Psychedelic, which was a whole different thing -- and even the Mothers seem to me to be something else).

[Sneakeater]

You see, you ( @Wilfrid ) think of Psychedelic as having developed into Prog, cuz that's what happened in Britain.

In America, though, it didn't.  In America, Psychedelic oddly developed into Country/Roots.  Or heavy metal.

Edited January 17, 2024 by Sneakeater

[Sneakeater]

33 minutes ago, hollywood said:

The Soft Machine.

Were British.

[backyardchef]

The Lamb Lies Down on Shakedown Street

[Wilfrid]

I am not citing WikiP as definitive, but clearly there are divergent opinions on this:

Quote

...the style was an emergence of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and compositional techniques more frequently associated with jazz, folk, or classical music

Emphasis added, and the statement isn't restricted to the UK. 

[Sneakeater]

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that was written by a person who wasn't alive in 1970.

[Sneakeater]

I mean, Workingman's Dead is the work of a Prog band?  Or "Bertha"?

[Wilfrid]

Amanda thinks Of Monsters and Men sounds like the name of a gastropub. She also seems to think Noel Kahan is well served by a comparison between his lyrics and Wallace Stevens' poetry.