Go check out the album. I’ve posted several times before about my college band, The MayTricks, which was active from maybe early 1991 through the summer of 1994, after which I left Ann Arbor for graduate school in Madison. It was a pretty weird group of guys with a lot of ideas and enthusiasm. Since I knew I was leaving Continue Reading …
Search Results for: maytricks
Ep. 72: Terrorism with Jonathan R. White
Episode for Purchase: We're joined by an international terrorism expert to discuss how to define terrorism and whether it can ever be ethical. With readings by Donald Black, J. Angelo Corlett, Igor Primoratz, Karl Heinzen, Bhagat Singh, and Carl von Clausewitz.
Ep. 52: Philosophy and Race (DuBois, Martin Luther King, Cornel West)
Episode for Purchase: On W.E.B. DuBois's “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” (1903), Cornel West's “A Genealogy of Modern Racism” (1982), and Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963) and “The Black Power Defined” (1967), plus Malcolm X's “The Black Revolution” (1963). With guest Lawrence Ware.
Ep. 51: Semiotics and Structuralism (Saussure, et al)
Episode for Purchase: On Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) (Part I and Part II, Ch. 4), Claude Levi-Strauss's “The Structural Study of Myth” (1955), and Jacques Derrida's “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966). What is language? What is the relation between language and reality? With guest C. Derick Varn.
Episode 148: Aristotle on Friendship and Happiness
On the final books 8–10 of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. What does friendship have to do with ethics? With guest Ana Sandoiu.
End song: “A Few Gone Down” from The MayTricks’ Happy Songs Will Bring You Down (1994).
Episode 148: Aristotle on Friendship and Happiness (Citizen Edition)
On the final books 8–10 of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. What does friendship have to do with ethics? Aristotle thinks that friends are necessary for the good life and that the only true friend is a virtuous one. But the number one virtue is reason, and the chief activity for the good life for Aristotle is contemplation, so how does this connect with being a good friend? With guest Ana Sandoiu.
End song: “A Few Gone Down” from The MayTricks’ Happy Songs Will Bring You Down (1994).
Episode 147: Aristotle on Wisdom and Incontinence
On the Nichomachean Ethics (ca. 350 BCE), books 6–7. Is intelligence just one thing? Aristotle picks out a number of distinct faculties, some of which are relevant to ethics, and he uses these to explain Plato’s puzzle of how someone can clearly see what the good for him is, and yet fail to pursue it due to weakness of the will.
This episode continues our discussion from way back in ep. 5.
End song: “I Die Desire” from The MayTricks (1992).
Episode 145: Emmanuel Levinas: Why Be Ethical?
On “Ethics as First Philosophy” (1984). More existentialist ethics, with a Jewish twist this time! Seth returns to join Mark and Wes in figuring out how to best leave off all this aggressive “knowing” and other forms of individual self-assertion to grasp the more primordial appearance of the Other in all his or her vulnerability, which Levinas thinks makes us wholly responsible for others right off the bat.
End song: “To Valerie” from The MayTricks’ So Chewy (1993).
Episode 138: Guest John Searle on Perception
We interview John about Seeing Things As They Are (2015). What is perception? Searle says that it’s not a matter of seeing a representation, which is then related to things in the real world. We see the actual objects, with no mediation. But then how can there be illusions? Well, it’s complicated, but not too complicated, just some funny terminology that this episode will teach you.
Searle lays out his theory for us and amusingly dismisses much of the history of philosophy in the first half, and then Mark, Wes, and Dylan continue the discussion to make sure we understood what was just said and chase down some threads of the conversation.
End song: “Flesh and Blood” from The MayTricks’ Happy Songs Will Bring You Down (1994).
Episode 136: Adorno on the Culture Industry
On Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” from Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), plus Adorno’s “Culture Industry Reconsidered” (1963).
How does the entertainment industry affect us? Adorno (armed with Marx and Freud) thinks that our “mass culture” is imposed from the top down to lull us into being submissive workers.
End song: “All Too Familiar,” from around 1992 with all instruments by Mark Linsenmayer, released on The MayTricks..
Episode 134: Hegel on Thought & World (or “Logic”)
On G.F.W. Hegel’s The Science of Logic (1812–1816), §1–§129 and The Encyclopaedia Logic (1817) §1–§25. “Logic” for Hegel isn’t about symbolic logic; it’s about how thought interacts with the world. Our thoughts about fundamental metaphysical categories bear the same relations to each other as the the categories themselves do. Just take Hegel’s many, many words for it! With guest Amogh Sahu.
End song: “Procrastination” by Steve Petrinko from The MayTricks’ Happy Songs Will Bring You Down (1994). Hear Mark interview Steve on Nakedly Examined Music.
NEM#6. Steve Petrinko: Self-Contained Stalwart
Steve is a one-man band, overdubbing his compositions both in jazz (steel drum!) and pop/rock (featuring his unique and sometimes disco-high voice). He’s also drummed and/or fronted bands (including one in college with your host Mark). The common thread through all of this is a love of his craft: a dedication to creation in the studio, whether or not anyone hears the result.
We discuss “P.I.” from his last original full pop album to date, Acoustinaut (2002); his jazz number “Perseverence” from the 2013 EP Where You Going with That?; and “Darkness” from his full-band album BAMF! (1997). Plus we hear the 2012 single “Warren Zombie Apocalypse.” Get Steve’s music at www.cdbaby.com/Artist/StevePetrinko.
Episode 132: Living Stoically with Seneca and Massimo
On selected “moral epistles” (from around 65 CE) by Lucius Annaeus Seneca: 4. On the Terrors of Death, 12. On Old Age, 49. On the Shortness of Life, 59. On Pleasure and Joy, 62. On Good Company, 92. On the Happy Life, 96. On Facing Hardship, and 116. On Self Control. We’re joined by Massimo Pigliucci of the How to Be a Stoic blog. How can one most profitably interpret weird-sounding Stoic recommendations about the emotions and about following nature?
End song: “I Lose Control” by The MayTricks from So Chewy! (1993).
Episode 127: John Dewey on Experience and the World
On Experience and Nature (1925), through ch. 4. What’s the relationship between our experience and the world that science investigates? Dewey thinks that these are one and the same, and philosophies that call some part of it (like atoms or Platonic forms) the real part while the experienced world is a distortion are unjustified.
End song: “Uncontrollable Fear” by The MayTricks So Chewy! (1993).
Ep. 46: Plato on Ethics & Religion
Episode for Purchase: Discussing Plato’s Euthyphro. Does morality have to be based on religion? Are good things good just because God says so, or (if there is a God) does God choose to approve of the things He does because he recognizes those things to be already good? Plato thinks the latter: if morality is to be truly non-arbitrary, then, like the laws of logic, it can’t just be a contingent matter of what the gods happen to approve of (i.e. what some particular religious text happens to say). With guest Matt Evans.
Ep. 41: Pat Churchland on the Neurobiology of Morality (Plus Hume’s Ethics)
Episode for Purchase: Patricia Churchland on her new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. We also discussed David Hume’s ethics as foundational to her work, reading his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Book III, Part I and his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Section V, Parts I and II.
Topic for #118: The Examined Musical Life (with Half of Camper Van Beethoven)
Mark and Wes will discuss songwriting and the experience of music with Jonathan Segel and Victor Krummenacher. Why not check out some of the links in this post so that you’ll have a better idea of what we’re talking about?
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “Sleep”
A tune for the Freud episode to listen to late at night, in a recording where past and present meet. Plus, a recap of Mark’s music-completion efforts.
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “Jesus Noise”
A newish song about blocking out religion. Very soothing!
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: Run Away
The definitive version of an acoustic tune written in 1987, completed for our Whitehead episode. With oboe and ukulele!
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “Stoobis in the Sky”
A song about grief… but need it aim to be merely beautiful, or sublime (in Burke’s sense) as well?
Episode 104: Robert Nozick’s Libertarianism
On Anarchy, State & Utopia (1974), ch. 1-3 and 7. What are the moral limits on government power? No redistributive taxation, suckah! With guest Stephen Metcalf.
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: Geoff Esty’s “Samuel”
A song recorded in 1994 about a lonely cat, resung for the new millennium.
Episode 103: Thoreau on Living Deliberately
On Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854). Should all true philosophers go live in the woods and seek Truth in nature? Probably YOU should.
Episode 98: Guest Michael Sandel Against Market Society
Interviewing him on his book “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets” and continuing the discussion of his first book, “Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.”
Ep. 29: Kierkegaard on the Self
Episode for Purchase: Discussing Soren Kierkegaard’s “The Sickness Unto Death” (1849). What is the self? or K. we are a tension between opposites: necessity and possibility, the finite and the infinite, soul and body. With guest Daniel Horne.
Ep. 25: Spinoza on Human Nature
Episode for Purchase: Discussing Books II through V of the Ethics. What is the relation between mind and body? How do we know things? What are the emotions? Is there an ethical ideal for us to shoot for? What is our relationship to God?
Episode 94: Schopenhauer on Reading, Writing, and Thinking
On Arthur Schopenhauer’s essays, “On Authorship and Style,” “On Thinking for Oneself,” and “On Genius” (all published 1851).
Ep. 17: Hume’s Empiricism
Episode for Purchase: On David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). Hume thinks that all we can know are our own impressions, but that no experience shows us one event causing another event. So, causality must just be regular patterns of conjoined events.
Ep. 19: Kant on Knowledge
Episode for Purchase: Discussing Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783). Do we have any business doing metaphysics, which is by definition about things that we could not possibly experience? With guest Azzurra Crispino.
Episode 91: Transhumanism (Plus More on Brin)
More on David Brin’s novel Existence, plus Nick Bostrom’s essay “Why I Want to Be a Posthuman When I Grow Up” (2006). With guest Brian Casey.
Not School Digest #4: Sartre, Heidegger, Zizek, Marx, and Theater
Excerpts from discussions on Sartre’s Nausea, Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology,” Slavoj Zizek’s Year of Dreaming Dangerously, Marx and Engels’s “Communist Manifesto,” Peter Schaffer’s play Equus, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form.
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “Take a Hike”
Listen to “Take a Hike” and “Goldfish” by Mark Lint and Stevie P. After my college band The MayTricks broke up due to my leaving for grad school in Austin, I returned to Ann Arbor for several quick visits and recorded new material with my co-front-guy Steve Petrinko. Sometimes he would just record some drums for something I was working Continue Reading …
Episode 80: Heidegger on our Existential Situation
On Martin Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism” (1949).
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “Into the World”
Some comments on the song featured on our Heidegger episode. You can hear “Into the World” and the rest of the second and most poppin’ MayTricks album, “So Chewy” here. The MayTricks was my college band, and our first album was released as soon as we had enough songs recorded in whatever form to make a good collection, but it’s Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “Things We Should Do”
Listen to “Things We Should Do” and “Things You Should Do.” I did not intend to write another new, episode-specific song right after the last one, but once I started thinking about it, it rather kicked off in my head. The only relation to Ayn Rand is that she’s, in my opinion, “of the existentialism moment,” meaning that like the Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 72: Terrorism with Jonathan R. White
We’re joined by an international terrorism expert to discuss how to define terrorism and whether it can ever be ethical. With readings by Donald Black, J. Angelo Corlett, Igor Primoratz, Karl Heinzen, Bhagat Singh, and Carl von Clausewitz.
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “1000 Points of Light”
Just a bit about the song featured on our terrorism episode. You can hear “1000 Points of Light” and the rest of the MayTricks’ self-titled album here. This was off of my first full album, released when I was a senior in college, and this song was recorded the previous summer as a sort of going-away present to Matt Diaz, Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 52: Philosophy and Race (DuBois, Martin Luther King, Cornel West)
On W.E.B. DuBois’s “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” (1903), Cornel West’s “A Genealogy of Modern Racism” (1982), and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963) and “The Black Power Defined” (1967), plus Malcolm X’s “The Black Revolution” (1963). With guest Lawrence Ware.
PREVIEW-51: Semiotics and Structuralism (Saussure, et al)
On Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916) (Part I and Part II, Ch. 4), Claude Levi-Strauss’s “The Structural Study of Myth” (1955), and Jacques Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966). What is language? What is the relation between language and reality? With guest C. Derick Varn.
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: Mark Lint and Stevie P Big Summer 2011 Reunion
Listen to “Freeway” and “Stories.” I’ve done some remote collaboration over recent years with mixed results. I’ll record a song and send it to a drummer or guitarist I used to play with, and sometimes the person will be all jazzed about it and record a part right away, or sometimes the process will drag on for months, or the Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 46: Plato on Ethics & Religion
Discussing Plato’s Euthyphro. Does morality have to be based on religion? Are good things good just because God says so, or (if there is a God) does God choose to approve of the things He does because he recognizes those things to be already good? Plato thinks the latter: if morality is to be truly non-arbitrary, then, like the laws of logic, it can’t just be a contingent matter of what the gods happen to approve of (i.e. what some particular religious text happens to say). With guest Matt Evans.
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “False Morality”
Listen to “False Morality” and a more recent tune of Cliff’s: “I See God.” Probably my first experience with hardcore atheism was hanging out with Cliff Kaminsky, who played with my college band The MayTricks for about a year from fall ’93 to its end in August ’94. We auditioned Cliff a year or two earlier, and he played us Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 41: Pat Churchland on the Neurobiology of Morality (Plus Hume’s Ethics)
Patricia Churchland on her new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. We also discussed David Hume’s ethics as foundational to her work, reading his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Book III, Part I and his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Section V, Parts I and II.
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: Remembrance
Listen to “Rembrance.” When reading Schleiermacher, I was reminded of my friend Steve Petrinko, who was my main cohort in my college band The MayTricks (previously covered in a number of music blog posts). Working in close proximity like that at that time of life (we were also apartment-mates for a couple of years) meant lots of philosophy discussions, and Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 29: Kierkegaard on the Self
Discussing Soren Kierkegaard’s “The Sickness Unto Death” (1849). What is the self? or K. we are a tension between opposites: necessity and possibility, the finite and the infinite, soul and body. With guest Daniel Horne.
PREVIEW-Episode 25: Spinoza on Human Nature
Discussing Books II through V of the Ethics. What is the relation between mind and body? How do we know things? What are the emotions? Is there an ethical ideal for us to shoot for? What is our relationship to God?
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 30
As I hit the big 30 here, let me thank you for your indulgence, to the extent that you’ve actually been reading/listening. I’m marking this round number with another whole album, this time the debut full album by The MayTricks from 1992, cleverly entitled The MayTricks. As this was really the first full-length album I worked on, it definitely has Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 29
At last, here’s the final tune from the 1991 MayTricks demo (which I’ve made a new page for), “Her Skin Is Only Warm.” The song was written by Steve and was our most bombastic. It was modeled on The Rolling Stones’s “Steel Wheels” album, meaning it has kind of awkward “Rock! Rock!” lyrics, but it was actually describing a particular Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 28
Three songs today: cover tunes by The MayTricks from 1992 or so. Specifically, the Police’s “Can’t Stand Losin’ You” (which I sing) and Talking Heads’ “And She Was” and The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” (both of which Steve sings). These are actual, multi-track studio recordings done with probably as much care as many of our actual album tracks, recorded Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 23 continued
I felt bad enough about posting the previous tune that I spent a bit more time and “polished” up another two old clunkers from the same pile, because mom always told me “If you do something bad, do more of that same thing to make up for it.” So, first, a very old (1988) demo called “A Little Feeling.” This Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 23
Warning: foul language, juvenile humor, possible misogyny, and terrible sound quality. The song is called “Girl,” and it is from fall, 1989, just a couple months into my college experience, recorded in the excruciatingly awful sounding method of tape-to-tape dubbing, which is what I used from 1987 or so through spring 1991. This was my first collaboration of any sort Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 22
To apologize for many weeks now of old (i.e. poorly recorded) and (in the case of the “classical pieces”) near unlistenable material, I’ve now newly encoded and posted the entirety of my “Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio” album: http://marklint.com/FJTalbum.html. This is probably my single strongest collection of tunes. The recording quality is decent (i.e. digital 8-track, not 4-track Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 19: Kant: What Can We Know?
Discussing Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783). Do we have any business doing metaphysics, which is by definition about things that we could not possibly experience? With guest Azzurra Crispino.
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 18
…Almost done polishing the turd that is this old demo. Here’s a Pink Floyd-y song of mine called “To Valerie,” written for a girl by that name in my second month or so of college (fall of ’89). I believe it was elicited when I went to knock on her dorm room and a male voice said “Go away!” so Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 17
This week I give you an entire album from my murky past: “So Chewy” by the MayTricks (no, that movie had not come out when this band existed, so that name isn’t as awful as it seems, though it’s not so good, I think; any band name you have to spell for people is bad news). It was recorded in Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 15
Here’s “Wasted Youth,” a song by Steve Petrinko, also (like week 14) from the MayTricks 1991 EP, which I’m retroactively calling the “Happy Flowers EP,” as “Happy Flowers” was to be the name of the album that we started recording with this lineup shortly after making this demo (at least according to my decision; I don’t know that the band Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 14
One of my heretofore unmentioned projects for this blog is digitizing and mixing the original, 1991 5-song demo from my college band The MayTricks, so here’s the first tune: “Run Away.” I’ve also posted an mp3 of the eventual 1993 album version of the tune for comparison. I like the demo better, I think, though the album version has its Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 17: Hume’s Empiricism: What Can We Know?
On David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). Hume thinks that all we can know are our own impressions, but that no experience shows us one event causing another event. So, causality must just be regular patterns of conjoined events.
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 7
Here’s another new recording: “Ann(e).” It’s a pretty old song, written I think late in 1991, back when I was in a psychedlic band called The MayTricks, and though the recording is entirely new (OK, I started the click track and the acoustic guitar back in 2000, i.e. this is another tune destined for the “Cheese Stands Alone” album), the Continue Reading …
Episode 6: Leibniz’s Monadology: What Is There?
Discussing Liebniz’s Monadology.