In anticipation of the arrival of the Miditech I have got hold of a MIDI lead for the Dhorn and I have looked up free downloads of MIDI sequencers. Another link on Linkedin linked up - this takes me up to 19. I sent out some more invitations. There was a solstice greeting yesterday morning and a message from Laurence suggesting a meeting.

The bear played a Stanley Clarke track out of the blue. I remember seeing SC in Return to Forever around 1975. Al di Meola was in the band too - but I didnt like what they were doing. I had already seen Chick Corea in a big Miles Davis ensemble a few years earlier and the R2F material sounded like a step or two backwards. But the LFM SC track was quite good in a rolling swing time with lots of bass lead passages. The Esthero track the bear likes is by far the best on the album (Breath from Another). He played the mystery 1958 version of Miles' On Green Dolphin St once again. If I were to guess I would say its Sonny Stitt on tenor even though he usually plays alto. The Aquanote remix the bear likes is good too. LFM has a tag called That Detroit Sh1t - I entirely approve.

I got round to reading Kowlakowski on Lukacs - it's hot stuff. K thinks that L is a Leninist but a very sophisticated one - much more sophisticated than the mainstream Leninism which came to prevail in the USSR. According to L the historical process which is itself a totality will reach a key point when theory and practice merge and the divide between subject and object is eliminated. This actually happened during the Russian Rev and Lenin recognised the unique historical moment. There's a bit in AK's ITCOTCK book where the band's impression of their initial success is descibed in the sense of being at the leading edge of a wave of taste rippling across the globe. That's something like how I imagine L's account of the epochal moments when history transforms itself. In contrast, L does not seem to have much time for Marcuse - but I haven't got very far with that Ch yet.

Looking up K on wikipedia I see he died in Oxford in 2009 - I had missed this. I thought it strange when James did Russian Studies at Oxf that they ignored the greatest intellectual historian of Marxism in the 20C who was only just round the corner in All Souls. But maybe he was too old to teach by that stage.

Using quartals to do Coltrane Changes, the ambiguity of the 9 b13 is handy - it can also be a #9 b13 a major third up - exactly the same shape in the same position. In fact if you keep shfting the chord up a tone (every two key changes) you can keep going round the complete CC cycle. 1st position E/C; 2nd position C/Ab; 3rd position E/Ab; 4th position C/E; 5th position C/Ab. There's a nice quartal which happens when you play harmonics on the inside 4 strings ie A D G B (SoWhat Chord) and fret the bottom string on the 11th to give D# - that's a #9 b13 - fretting the high B is nice. The timbre of the U2/Roland Cube is quite favourable to this stuff - reverb up half way, bass up nearly all the way, mid up full, treble at 5. My ears are getting to the point where I can take a #4th in a major chord (even if it is low in the chord) as a consonace - but the same notes can equally well be a dominant dissonance (in the key one sharper). I have started using the bridge pick up on the U2 which although it is quieter has some distinctive upple middle which gives it a country feel -that is with the tone control about a third of the way up. I still use the neck pu but I have stopped using the two together - which is what the central position of the switch delivers. Some people call this a humbucker configuration but I'm not so sure.

I played through Sorceror which sounded as good as ever.