#louielouie — Public Fediverse posts

#RIP #music #critic #DaveMarsh, who earned my eternal gratitude when he wrote a very good #book about the #song #LouieLouie.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sobuuoeq2fx72o26vpoclgki/post/3mt56wcjrhb2j

#RIP #music #critic #DaveMarsh, who earned my eternal gratitude when he wrote a very good #book about the #song #LouieLouie.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sobuuoeq2fx72o26vpoclgki/post/3mt56wcjrhb2j

This is the wildest thing I've heard in a while: Bill Orcutt's mashup of "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen and "Four Organs" by Steve Reich. (The way it's chopped and sliced reminded me of "You're Nogood" by Terry Riley.) If you like either song, or minimalism, or drones, or having your mind blown, or annoying the neighbours, check it out.

https://fakeestates.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-louies

#BillOrcutt #SteveReich #TerryRiley #LouieLouie

“We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive”*…

The estimable Robin Sloan on the challenge of keeping our language– our words and our use of them– up to the task of wrestling with our present and our future…

The overloading of common words is well underway: new language models have “thinking” modes, “reasoning” capabilities! What this means, in practice, is that they’ve learned to produce a special kind of text, the conversion of the linguistic if-then into a dynamo that spins and spins and, often, magically — yes, it is magical — produces useful results.

Here is one distinction among several: this process can only compound — the models can only “think” by spooling out more text — while human thinking often does the opposite: retreats into silence, because it doesn’t have words yet to say what it wants to say.

Human thinking often washes the dishes, then goes for a walk.

So, if you redefine “thinking” to mean “arriving at a solution through an iterative linguistic loop” … yes, that’s what these models do. That definition is IMHO pretty thin.

We talk about humans thinking harder, which is not the same as thinking longer. I think most people know from experience that thinking longer generally just makes you anxious. But that’s what the models do, and not only longer, but in parallel, all those step-by-step monologues spilling out simultaneously, somewhere in the dark of a data center. “Quantity has a quality all its own,” said Stalin, maybe … 

Well, okay — what does it mean for a human to think harder? Reasonable people will disagree (and in interesting ways) but, for my part, I think it means prospecting new analogies; pitching your inquiry out away from the gravitational attractors of protocol and cliché; turning the workpiece around to inspect it from new angles; and especially bringing more senses into the mix — grounding yourself in reality. You’ll note these moves are challenging or impossible for systems that operate only on/with/inside language.

A couple of years ago, when I wondered if language models are in hell, I expressed some hope about the richness of multimodal training. So far, this hasn’t panned out. Rather than images anchoring text in a richer, more embodied realm, the marriage seems to have gone the opposite direction. The models chop images into sequences of tokens — big bright pictures become spindly threads, a bit sad — and feed them in along with everything else.

We are going to lose this word — we might already have lost it — but/and we can put a marker down; a gravestone, you might call it; for a kind of thinking that used to mean more than “more”.

Other useful words, still with us, include: imagination, ingenuity, insight. Clarity, most of all. Clarity is what Einstein was seeking when he sat and thought hard about the relative motion of magnets and conductors. He wanted to push through language, beyond it, beyond even the formalism of physics — because there wasn’t physics yet for the things he wanted to understand.

I am still waiting for models that aspire to pack complex systems — whole economies — into high-dimensional space, “hold it all in their heads”, then make observations and predictions way out beyond the if-then of “reasoning” language.

Think harder!

“Thinking modes,” from Sloan’s wonderful newsletter.

Pair with “Horseless Carriages, Digital Paint, AI,” Quentin Hardy‘s meditation on the ways in which new technologies shape both our language(s) and the ways we think (from Hardy’s also-wonderful newsletter).

[Image above: Rodin, “The Thinker” (source)]

* Albert Einstein

###

As we ponder pondering, we might recall that it was on this date in 1963 that “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen entered the Billboard Hot 100.

For more on how the record came to be (and the ruckus over language that followed), see here (and here and here).

https://youtu.be/1RZJ4ESU52U?si=6oCjxAZW5DWTluJf

#culture #history #language #linguistics #literature #LouieLouie #philosophy #politics #Technology #TheKingsmen #thinking #words

Today's #JukeboxFridayNight theme is #Simplicity. Here's my list:

Richard Berry & the Pharaohs: Rock, Rock, Rock (This Dance Is Crazy) (1957)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FelCxZoYwE

Buddy Holly: Every Day (1957)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brXjbHcrjw4

The Fleetwoods: Come Softly To Me (1959)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIivzJ90M0s

Elvis Presley: Blue Moon (1956)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1PqU16gHbc

Bob Landers with Willie Joe & His Unitar: Cherokee Dance (1957)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KYj7umGB5U

#music #louielouie #richardberry #buddyholly #fleetwoods #elvispresley #bluemoon #boblanders #specialtyrecords #rocknroll

Cookie, cookie
Whoah, baby, me gotta go

#AnyCookieASongOrPoem
#HashTagGames
#LouieLouie

@NPR today shares some interesting info on the history of the 60-year-old pop song #LouieLouie. For those interested, the #FBI vault contains a file on the #obscenity investigation of the song. It includes this 1964 letter to U.S. Attorney General Kennedy and (on the next page) the supposed obscene lyrics.

Find the file here:
https://vault.fbi.gov/louie-louie-the-song

#RFK #FCC #Histodons #Music

You gotta go!

24-hour ‘Louie Louie’ marathon concert will feature 70 acts playing the iconic song
https://www.oregonlive.com/living/2023/10/24-hour-louie-louie-marathon-concert-will-feature-70-acts-playing-the-iconic-song.html
>Some 70 performers will play "Louie Louie” during a 24-hour marathon concert to honor the 60th anniversary of The Kingsmen’s iconic record.

#LouieLouie #garagepunk #sixties #sixtiesmusic

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#BLABBERMOUTH
Watch: SLASH Joins IGGY POP AND THE LOSERS At L.A. Concert For 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' And 'Louie Louie'
GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Slash joined IGGY POP AND THE LOSERS onstage Thursday night (April 27) at the Hollywood Palladium in Hollywood, California to perform THE STOOGES' 1969 classic "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and a cover of the 1950s rock staple...

https://blabbermouth.net/news/watch-slash-joins-iggy-pop-and-the-losers-at-l-a-concert-for-i-wanna-be-your-dog-and-louie-louie

#Slash #IggyPop #TheLosers #LA #IWannaBeYourDog #LouieLouie #BLABBERMOUTH #LiveConcert

La canción creada por Richard Berry había sido un éxito menor y sus derechos fueron vendidos en u$s 750 para pagar su casamiento. No resultó un buen negocio. #TheKingsmen versionó #LouieLouie con un pésimo sonido que la convirtió en prácticamente incomprensible pero a pesar de ellos se hizo famosa. Y su letra, que versa sobre un marinero extrañando a su amor al otro lado del mar, tenía para algunos “cosas ocultas” y de “mal gusto”. Haciéndose eco de estas quejas, el “bienintencionado” gobernador de Indiana, Matthew E. Welsh, decidió prohibir la canción en su estado el 1 de febrero de 1964. #EfemeridesRock

Y fue tan fuerte su presencia por aquéllos años, segunda mitad de los 80´, que invadió los más diversos ámbitos de la cultura mundial. Muestra de ello, es la versión de #LouieLouie, el clásico de Richard Berry, que interpretó #IggyPop y donde lo nombra junto a Bush https://youtu.be/ZhSFV_M1Hv8