David Byrne writes about Modern Music and Die Soldaten:
"As classical music followed this bizarre, perverted road for some half of the 20th century, the audiences left in droves. I hope the composers were pleased, because it seems they got what they wanted in that respect. Their compositional ideas live, and even thrive in movies; but as a form of music and music-theater, they simply died — rumbling and roaring all the way."
Good article by Mark Reynolds on the history of the blues, the blues revivals and the record collectors.
Since Americanos don't have the most desirable image abroad due to a number of factors, like our foreign policy, our brashness, the way we dress...I believe it's time to reconsider what we export, e.g. mediocre violent films. We have one of the most potent ambassadorial tools at our disposal jazz. Maybe we should use it a little more instead of sending mealy mouthed politicians.
"After his Middle East tour Dizzy Gillespie said with pride that it had been “powerfully effective against Red propaganda.” But when the State Department tried to brief him on how to answer questions about American race relations, he said: “I’ve got 300 years of briefing. I know what they’ve done to us, and I’m not going to make any excuses.”
From the slideshow:
In Athens, students who had recently stoned the local United States Information Service office lifted Duke Ellington on their shoulders and cheered. Later, in the Congo, he was paraded through the streets on a throne. As late as 1971, when he came to Moscow, an American diplomat likened his reception to “a Second Coming.”
I was having dinner and some very good red wine from Montalcino and Rioja in May at Il Buco NYC with friends of the vine and the table. My friend and I were talking about music. We share musical tastes among a number of other things. At one point, he told me that his family went into mourning for a week on May 24,1974, the day Duke Ellington died. I haven't met anyone who has told me such a thing. Maybe it wasn't a week, maybe it was. I don't know. Time is relative, especially when someone unique as the Duke dies. You have heard people say: "I have been standing in line forever". You look at the person and say to thyself, he/she looks pretty fresh for standing there forever. All I know is that I have to give it up to the Cevola family for respecting the Duke.
My mouth is dry. I think it all started with the still from "8½". Looking down from the tethered foot over the shore. In the documentary, Fellini: I'm A Born Liar, he talks about spontaneity and the ability to directly express oneself. Interestingly, the maestro refers to this as a type of religious experience; this direct spontaneous expression. This vitality is the touchstone of art for him. It is fascinating to listen to him talk of his ability to play with the stuff of neurosis-psychosis by using them as props on the set of life. The sedated Roberto Benigni on Fellini: "He's like a magician, a paesano who takes you by the hand and leads you to the edge of the abyss so that you can look into it!" I ordered the DVD since I don't have Tivo and only saw the last half of it. Which leads me to another Italian phenomena, the Tarantella. I have 16mm film transferred to dvd that my father took of my Uncle George doing the tarantella at my grandmother's house after a wedding. His movements are graceful and dramatic, his coal-black hair glistening in the light of the small kitchen. 
I can always conjure up him dancing in that kitchen where so many good times were had over so many good meals. Afterall, it was the Christmas Eve kitchen.
Aside: In one of the Marx Brothers films, after Chico plays a song on the piano, Groucho asks him if he could play something allegro pizzicata. "You do know allegro pizzicata?" asks Groucho. Chico answers, "Sure. I know all the Pizzicata's. Jimmy, Tony..."
Which all logically leads to my friend Alfonso's recent post. You can tell the heat and humidity have really kicked in from the tenor of his latest posts. They contain a heightened element of sun-dazed fantasia. This is a good thing since he is excellent at confabulation to begin with. These additional heat-driven bass notes and overtones weave a tapestry of words and images that are not only fun to read but leave one curious for more. So, Alfonso is bitten by a number of spiders in the heat of the Texas night and this is what happens. "...every sip of wine that isn't Riesling-with-lamb is wasted" and someone's mixing up the medicine in the basement. Ooo la la.
"Tarantella" by Shai Bachar
Si signore
Johnny Morris was the house pianist at Jimmy Ryan's on 52nd St in NYC for seven years, appearing with trumpeter Roy Eldridge and later with Spanky Davis. In the latest newsletter from A Place For Jazz, Johnny Morris tells this anecdote. The waiters at Jimmy Ryan's were a surly bunch. No food minimum, only snacks. There was a drink minimum, but only dinky sized bottles of beer. The waiters would refill and wait for people to order more. One waiter in particular really just wanted to make money and didn't care about what was going on in the place. One night some people came by to say hello to Roy Eldridge and gathered up a bunch of the tiny cocktail tables in a corner so they could all sit together. This waiter was very pissed off that these tables were taken from his station. The people who came buy to see Roy Eldridge were: Tommy Flanagan pianist, Bobby Durham dummer, Keter Betts bass,(i.e. Ella Fitzgerald's rhythm section), Connie Kay from MJQ, Benny Carter and Oscar Peterson. It was like a surrealist dream, all these jazz greats in a corner. The clueless waiter asks me "Who are those people with Roy and who do they think they are?" So I said to the waiter, "Please don't say anything. Those are some very famous people. I really feel I'm in a dream, here."
I first heard Shai Bachar's music on the Cacio e Vino site. The track on the site, "Tarantella", is the first and last track on the album, "Souvenirs". "Tarantella" is a wild and propulsive ride. It's also very addictive. Sandwiched in between two versions of "Tarantella" is a quite a range of musical styles and genres. On the heals of "Tarantella" is a dark introspective interlude on war and its memories. This is followed by three tracks entitled "Rafi" using different instrumentation on each track. Ethereal and spiritually moving. So is "Angels", a very beautifully melodic piece that floats and speaks of first things. Then comes a very fine take on "Embraceable You" sung by one of the women vocalists. "Hit The Road" brings the tempo up again in a cosmopolitan kind of way. The beginning of "Encounter" reminds me of Aaron Copeland. "Song of Childhood" w/ vocals with its percussion reminds me of Bahian Carnival. "Melodica" contains strains of the previous track and yet morphs into another filigreed melody. Shai's music is a very evocative and playful. He knows how to keep the images moving through songs and their sequence. He is adept at weaving images that take you from carefree abandon to inner tranquillity. Most will jump on "Tarantella" because it is so kinetic and uplifting. But there is a lot more music here that rewards one upon repeated lsitenings. Shai was in Istanbul when I emailed him about his music. As soon as he returned to NYC he mailed me the cd. How many musicians do you know that do that?
Red Kelly's "B" Side blog is one of the most comprehensively researched on the web.
"What I'm getting at here is that Bo Diddley is truly one of the cornerstones of this whole thing they call 'Rock Music', only nobody seems to want to admit it."
Jason Berry of The Gambit in NOLA has a fine article on Dr. Michael White, the clarinetist, and his new album, "Blue Crescent" (Out June 10th). His previous album "Dancing in the Sky" is an album drenched in the blues and hymn styles of the early brass bands that, says Dr. White, came about originally when jazz was dance music. The album is a phenomenal testimonial to the spirit of passing on the tradition.
Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans has an interesting take on the Gambit article.
I met Jude Ciccolella, who plays Mike Novik on the TV series 24, while working at the Albany NY County Department of Social Services in the early 70's. We hit off right away. He and I both loved music, literature, drinking, women and humor. Chick, the name he went by in those days, had passion and determination. Like me he was looking for someone and something. We both knew that we hadn't started to find it, but at least we knew that much, sort of. One Friday night we heard a knock on the door of our apartment. I opened the door and Dick walked in quite drunk and reeking of a onion-laced submarine sandwich that he had just devoured. I said Chick come in. Chick is about a foot taller than I and at least 2 feet wider. What could I say? Sorry Chick, no more room at the inn. He could have easily flattoned me into one of those stand up cardboard figures. Besides I liked him. He came into our apartment, uttered a few things and fell on the floor face down. We would have had to call for help to move him. Chick was/is not a featherweight. I got a blanket and covered him up. He was gone before we awoke the next morning. Chick loved Brando. He would always talk about Brando's style of acting. Brando was one of his archetypes. Not long after he told me that he was leaving for acting school. The next and last time that I saw him in person was in NYC in the early 80's. Kathy and I had gone down to the city for a weekend and we were staying near Madison Square Garden. After we checked in we went in search of lunch. Right around the corner from the hotel I spotted Chick on one end of a couch that he was being moving into someone's apartment. I walked up behind him and asked him for a quarter. He did a double take and then we both laughed. He told me that he had got advertisement gigs, living up in Morningside Heights and was still plugging for some acting jobs that he could get his teeth into. Then he started showing up in quite a few TV commercials. I knew then that he was going to make it. He did and I am happy for his success. He went after it, perservered and worked hard. He derserves it.
Phil Schaap, "that most obsessive of anal obsessives", has hosted "Bird Flight" on Columbia University's WKCR for 27 years. You could say that he has been Parkerized.
"Lawrence Lucie, who celebrated his centennial in December, was glad to hear Schaap talk about his days with Fletcher Henderson. And when Schaap asked him if he remembered the name of the song that Benny Carter opened with at the Apollo seventy-four years ago, Lucie said, “I know, Phil, but do you?” “Sure, it was ‘I May Be Wrong (But I Think You’re Wonderful).’ ” “That’s right.” Both men laughed. “And you played the first notes,” Schaap said. Indeed, they were the first notes played in the Apollo when, in 1934, the theatre opened under that name and began admitting African-American audiences."
From Toulouse Street in New Orleans, Mark Folse tells about a special moment at Jazz Fest 2008 when Terence Blanchard performed selections from his "A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina)".
Monsters of the id
No longer stayin' hid
And terrors of the night
Are out in broad daylightNo need to knock on wood
Don't stop to say a prayer
It won't do any good
They're multiplyin' in the airCreatures of the deep
Are going without sleep
And phantoms of the dark
Have their own place to parkNo need to lock the door
They're sprouting through the cracks
They're making room for more
They're deputizing maniacsPrehistoric ghouls
Are making their own rules
And resurrected huns
Are passin' out the gunsNo need to cause a fuss
Don't go and make a scene
They know what's best for us
They're fightin' fire with gasolineThe creatures from the swamp
Rewrite their own Mein Kampf
Neanderthals amuck
Just tryin' to make a buckAnd goblins and their hags
Are out there wavin' flags
Oh, when will we be rid
Of monsters of the idMonsters of the id
Mose Allison
Spike Lee's latest film "Miracle at St. Anna" (release date October 2008) was scored by Terence Blanchard, the New Orleans trumpet player who provided the music to "When The Levees Broke."
I first had Popeyes Fried Chicken in the Bronx many years ago. My mate was in Loehmann's and the fried chicken was across the street. The chicken was good. The batter was right, not overloaded, falling off the chicken. Crispy, hot and spicy and the chicken moist. I lost track of the time. That's what good fried chicken should do to you. It was a chain, but it was still good, then, 20 years ago. By the time Popeyes reached upstate NY, the magic was gone.
Al Copeland started Popeyes (no apostrophe since he said he could never afford one) in Arabi in 1972. He died a young very wealthly man. $319 million and an income of $13 million a month. His NOLA obit details his feud with Anne Rice, the vampire author who is now writing novels about Jesus Christ, yes that Christ, known in New Orleans for her flamboyant stunts. It is worth a read. He lead an eventful life. As Poppy Z. Brite said "I always liked him for being such a fly in Anne Rice's ointment, and while most people assume that Lenny in my Liquor novels is Emeril, he owes at least as much to Big Al. Rest in Pieces, Al, preferably a box of 12 spicy ones."
The world famous Cuban maestro Cachao has died at 89.
When Sam Cooke sang "Bring It Home On To Me", he had a young Lou Rawls backing him up. Then over 20 years later, the late great Lou Rawls sang Sam Cooke's "That's Where It's At" with Ray Charles backing him. This is soul music at its best. Can't top this. It's where it's at.
Well, it's Holy Week for all you non-Christians and pagan-heathenists. Then again, there is the Vernal Equinox coming up. Without day equaling night, none of this would exist, would it?
Alfonso On The Wine Trail in Italo-Americano California dines in a few posh overpriced real Italian eateries on that venerable pacific coast and discovers the secret ingredient that keeps the faithful returning to these temples of Italian food. Since it is Holy Week, he somehow manages to avoid the use of profanity. I could never do that.
"Who therefore knows the salt and its solution knows the hidden secret of the wise men of old. Therefore turn your mind upon the salt, for in it alone (i.e. the mind) is the science concealed and the most excellent and most hidden secret of all ancient philosophers."
The trumpet has played a vital part in the history of the city of New Orleans. Irvin Mayfield views libraries as musical notes drifting through city, creating a sense of community.
"A library is democracy inside four walls, the freedom to information," he said. "Jazz is democracy we hear."
I think this marketing ploy is a little shallow, demographically speaking, but wine for drama queens? Turn up the refrigerator.
"Well I'm sitting here thinking just how sharp I am
Yeah I'm sitting here thinking just how sharp I am
I'm a necessary talent behind every rock and roll band"
The music bizness is one of the more horrendous ones with which to be involved. I am sure that there are many others. The very fact of music being a commodity is fraught with ambiguity and contradictions, much like wine. Via Boing Boing, The 20 Biggest Record Company Screwups of All Time.
I could listen to Ike Quebec and drink Alion all night long. I have a few Ike Quebec cd's and some vinyl that I can listen to any time, but we drank the last half bottle of Alion last night. It was a 1992 Reserva and still had backbone, subtle fruit and silky tannins. We had it with sliced pork loin marinated in orange juice, cumin, smoked paprika, olive oil that was then grilled on charcoal. I bought several bottles of the 1992 Alion Reserva for a song a few years ago at the Spirit Shoppe in Great Barrington, MA. The last bottle we drank was about a month or so ago. I could sense that it was time. It had peaked and was beginning to fade. I think part of the problem was the heat of last summer when the temperature in our cellar reached 70+. Alion Reservas or Crianzas of the future will not fit into our budget. Unless lady luck is with us, I don't foresee drinking Alion anytime soon. It was a fond farewell to the times circa 1992. Scents and sounds from times past. They commingle and make for magic that nothing can match. The 1990's were a decade of polar extremes for me. There was cancer, cure and a cancer. The sun at 16 degrees N made the sun at 42 degrees N seem like twilight at noon. There was the discovery of a new universe of music and dance. There were sleepness periods of three months. There were anti these and anti those. There were two therapists who fell asleep while I struggled to spit it out. The darkness polaxed me. I was almost inert. I was like a one-eyed pig running in a muddy ditch. There were horrible scenes with filled with contempt. I am the same person and I am not. On the morning of April 20, 1999, I had numbness in my right arm. The day before I had an angina attack that I thought was something else. I told my supervisor that I needed to leave and see my doctor, who luckily was right down the street. In response, my supervisor being the true bureaucrat that he is, asked me about some silly statistics. I told him that I had to leave and did. My doctor hooked me up to an EKG and called the ambulance. He told me had I waited a little longer that things would have been really interesting. He also said that he would have my car parked in his lot towed. I said thanks. After a stent was inserted at the hospital, I was wheeled into recovery. Everyone was glued to the TV. It was Columbine High day, the fourth deadliest shooting on modern history.
Time is relative as Einstein once explained by comparing his finger on a hot stove for a few seconds and a beautiful woman sitting in his lap for 15 minutes.
When Preservation Hall Jazz Band came to Albany last year, we got to see them at the acoustically sound Egg. John Brunious was playing trumpet that night as he has been for over 20 years with the band. His trumpet tone and style were very much like his voice: casual, soft, appealing and clear. At one point in the show, he merely said without drama that things in New Orleans were not good. He didn't say anything else about the condition of his home town. He didn't need to. Then he began to play "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?" He died outside Disney-fied Orlando.
Creative Director of Preservation Hall, Ben Jaffe remarks, “John Brunious was living history. One of the last things John told me was, ‘There’s another Louis Armstrong somewhere out there in New Orleans. I’m going to find them and teach them all I got.’ It’s now in our hands to carry on his message and legacy the way he carried the torch for so many years.”
The Library of Congress thinks so. They have saved WWOZ's record and tape collection. So far they have over 3,000 hours and expect more. It will take 10 years to digitize and catalogue the musical treasures of the legendary station.
Whether or not you are a Chris Rose fan, he has written a good piece about the 30 year anniversary of Tipitina's in New Orleans.
"Come on baby, we're going ballin'
We're gonna have ourselves a good time
We gonna hoola tralla walla malla dalla
Drink some mellow wine"
Dan at Home of the Groove has links to the Jazzfest and Ponderosa Stomp lineups. Incredible amount of music and talent.
As if that's not enough, there's the free the Fete Internationale in Lafayette during Jazzfest.
Transfixing video of Sarah Vaughn live in Berlin 1969. The artistic trickster is here too.
Now, I don't know if I'm in the market for a Drum Buddy. However, this gizmo created by the amazing Quintron of New Orleans is an analog marvel in this tricked out tech world we all live in.
Bucovina was a place of cultural exchange and tolerance. The mix of resonating multi-cultures created a vibrant viable community. Shantel is trying to show the origins of this plangent music that was born of this rich melange of diversely rich cultural heritages. He is bringing this energy via the dance floor to the young people of a part of the planet that has undergone much turmoil and bloodshed. The people that are listening understand this vital cultural link to the source of their traditions . It is very uplifting in many ways and speaks to the healing uniting power of music.
DJ Shantel featuring Orkestar Bobana Markovica--Bucovina Club
Whoa, my Balkan baby. The horns so blow you away that you might not need any slivovitz.
Kizomba is an African dance that is very sensual and pleasing to dance to. It's the closest thing to sex that I've seen on the dance floor. I have always wanted to DJ a show on the web and show the various dances that one can do to certain rhythms. Now we have YouTube, which Cory Doctorow explained as being like a dandelion. Try dancing it.
I wish that I could write half as well as Mark Folse, a New Orleanian who returned home after 20 years away from his city. In this post he recounts the story of the person who helped carry him back to his home in New Orleans. If you can read this and not weep, then there's no hope for you.
P.S. Mark tells me that is the Iberville projects and that they are mostly occupied. And that's St. Louis Cemetery #1 in the foreground. This one of four cemeteries that border those projects. I do remember going through it one May long ago to Marie Laveau's tombstone.
I enjoy soulful music that is recorded with great care. I enjoy the dynamics of pristine sparkling treble, meaty mid-range and deep rounded bass. It is something that I have spent thousands of dollars on over the years. No, it has not reached the point of fanaticism and never will. I have known fanatics who are constantly tweaking and flipping old gear for new. I know I could become one if I had unlimited funds, but I don't. What I really would like to learn about is the quality of sound that is on cd and mp3. So, in writing this I am on-the-job learning as I write. This is from a Stylus Magazine article: "I’m pretty anal about sound, and I’m prepared to admit it. I’m not a super-duper audiophile (I can’t afford to be), but I have spent hundreds thousands of pounds over the years on stereos, headphones, hi-fi separates, portable audio systems, and even (in my more gullible moments) biwired speaker cables and limestone slabs to position my speaker stands on, all in pursuit of the “perfect” sound: slightly more sparkle and physical *ping* in the treble (hearing the stick hit the hi-hat, perhaps, rather than a vague *splash*); a more rounded and tighter bass sound that doesn’t bloom like ugly bathwater and overwhelm the song; more realistic vocals that put the singer right in front of you, spittle-filled lips and all. You know the kind of thing… It’s like when serious wine buffs talk about being able to smell diesel or orange peel in a bottle of Shiraz: it seems like nonsense until you immerse yourself in the sensations of the discipline and find that you too are scrabbling for ridiculous metaphors to describe how something tastes or sounds or smells when you suddenly realise there are more nuances than you ever imagined."
MP3 compression results in a loss of sonic dynamics that includes color, space and depth. MP3's now have a bitrate of 192kbit/s while uncompressed compact discs have a bitrate of 1,411.2 kbit/s (16bits/sample x 44100 samples/second x 2 channels / 1000 bits / kilobit) There are people I know who think that some audio compression encoding is better sounding than CD quality! All this is important to your relationship with a song. People want loudness and that's what they are getting at the sacrifice of a complete range of the sound spectrum. Much like the international sameness of some wines that have no sense of place or distinction. The art and craft have been diluted to an average or the LCD. In acoustics, loudness is measured in peaks and averages. For better or worse, our ears respond to the average loudness rather than to the peaks and troughs, so record companies and artists are aiming at loudness at whatever cost. And the cost is high. Some artists are mixing their masters with exactly this in mind. The resultant sonics are horrendous distortion. The loudness compulsion goes back a ways in recording history. The Beatles asked Parlophone to press their albums on heavier vinyl for more bass. Then there was poor delirious Phil Spector and his "wall of sound." Nowadays, music with a loud signal is referred to as "hot". Highly extracted hot wine, anyone? The highs and lows of a wine are softened to be internationally palatable. When the music is compressed it becomes hotter, i.e. the peaks and troughs are ironed out so that they are almost level. Then the signal is increased. Modern cd's have a much more consistent volume level. People aren't really listening closely for the changes in volume, because there are none. It's non-distracting background music, easier to ignore. The same with generic wine. People are drinking them and not expecting something surprising, inspiring or challenging. They want safe predictable wines with no unexpected turns or twists. Loud, big Parkerish wines with the volume set at 93+. As a result, the space between the notes and the space surrounding instruments is lost. Not only are the volume differentials flattened when you compress music, but bass and treble frequencies are pressed into the midrange and the space surrounding instruments is lost, making them less easy to separate when you listen. Muddled. Warm dymanics keep listeners on their toes and will make them continue listening. "It's not how loud you make it, it's how you make it loud."
"Bass frequencies drive music, they give us a physical sensation to hold onto and ride through a song. Play "Unfinished Sympathy" on a decent hi-fi and the sub-bass shots that open the song hit you like a punch in the belly and a pillow-whack to the chest. Play Girls Aloud's superficially sonically savage "Wake Me Up," Nine Inch Nails meets Gwen Stefani, on the same set-up, and it sounds flat and lifeless. Treble frequencies by contrast add imaging—a sparkling, accurate treble hit can almost be seen—think Jacko's early 80s work with Quincy, all those pointillist pricks of light over the top; cymbals, shakers, and twinkling keys. Try The Killers though and their cymbal work is so muddy and indistinct that it's hard to even identify, let alone hear clearly. Speakers work by moving air molecules. Overly compressed music moves a LOT of molecules, but it doesn’t move them very precisely."
When your ears tire easily, it is because the flat sound of the mid-range relentlessly pounds your tympanic membrane and your brain nodes. Ear damage results mainly from the loudness of the mid-range. Music is about peaks and troughs, tension and release. Un-dynamic hot music doesn't let up at all, thus fatigue and unmusical sounding. Always looking for something new because one is tired of the flatness. Dynamics take you emotionally. You can ride the ups and downs, the textures in sound. A well made wine does the same thing in tastes and flavors. You can ride the nuances and notes. Compression itself is not bad. It's the overuse of it and the consequent extremes. People don't know when to stop.
"Compression is a way of life. A week's worth of radio broadcasts have become an hour-long podcast. Think of those plastic bags you can get for clothes with a hole to stick a vacuum cleaner nozzle in so you can suck all the air out and pack them tighter. We squash fruit into smoothies, social policy into soundbites, vitamins into pills, entire meals into cans and English into txt spk, all so we can consume things quicker than ever before. But quicker is not the same as better. Meanings, subtleties, and understandings are lost because we don't have the time to pick up on them."
Very few people that I know sit down and listen to music. Even fewer sit down and listen with good wine. "The subtle nuance of the release of a reverb tail" is a lot like the long silky finish of a 1992 Alion Reserva.
The extraordinary jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson, has died at age 82. We went to see-hear him in the 1980's at the Troy Music Hall. At least, I saw the great heir to Art Tatum once. He was a phenomenal artist that could play "deep blues grooves balanced with technique and tenderness," as Herbie Hancock said in his obit.
Hedley Lemarr in Blazing Saddles: "My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention."
Tomorrow is the longest night-shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. In this part of the world, it occurs at 1:08 am EST. We are supposed to have about 9 hours of daylight. As if it is not dark enough, nature being what it is, conspires to make it darker due to lack of sunlight. Grey December and the "sky is a hazy shade of winter... Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts of unpublished rhyme, drinking my vodka and lime." Summer is born on the winter solstice, as winter is born on the summer solstice in June. The solstice in Europe used to be on the 25th until Pope Gregory XIII changed the date to the 21st in 1582. Thus, he got a calendar named after him. How convenient, helpful and less pagan for the Pope to do that for us holidazed folk.
"On the night of Winter Solstice, as seen from a northern sky, the three stars in [Orion]'s belt align with the brightest star in the Eastern sky [Sirius] to show where the Sun will rise in the morning after Winter Solstice."
On the night of the solstice, the Sun ceases to decline in the sky and the length of daylight reaches its minimum for three days. In Greek mythology, the seven days either side of the solstice were Halcyon Days. After this, the Sun begins its ascent from the pit of darkness and the days grow longer. A Sun reborn and a return to light. Nature's elegiac-swan-song night sea journey reiterated in the individual, like Jonah in the belly of the whale. It was the time of the year when all the cattle were slaughtered so that they would not have to be fed through the winter, i.e. fresh meat/chestnuts roasting over an open fire. Most of the beer and wine was fermented and ready for drinking at this time. The months of famine, January-April, would weed out the unhealthy. You get the idea. Serotonin levels are low, melatonin high, circadian rhythms out of whack. Sorta farblunget. The clave is 2-3 or 3-2. Evergreen yourself up and bring that light to the top of the tree. Rekindle and re-source. Why in tarnation do they put a star on top of the tree anyway? Most are looking for what's under the tree, non?
In the spirit of St. Nicholas of Bari, maybe a Pugliese red would be more appropriate rather than an overpriced Brunello. I'll have to brood over it for a while. Thanks, Alfonso and Terry, my most recent friends of centered vino. You are scintillae in a deep dark glass of red wine of the earth.
A while back I posted a Mose Allison story contained in the liner notes to "Allison Wonderland": The Mose Allison Anthology. The notes were written by Joel Dorn. Yesterday, Joel Dorn died of a heart attack at the age of 65.
Dee Dee Bridgewater 's new album "Red Earth" looks to be pretty hot. I have heard her on a few other albums and here voice is phenomenal. However, she sometimes sounds too affected and her material varies in strength. I think she has hit the motherlode here though.
Popmatters has an indepth review of the reissue of Pink Floyd's "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn".
Syd Barrett was the lead guitarist for the band at the time. Years later at the "Wish You Here Sessions":
"Barrett had one noted reunion with the members of Pink Floyd in 1975 during the recording sessions for Wish You Were Here. Barrett attended the Abbey Road session unannounced, and watched the band record "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" — as it happened, a song about him. By that time, Barrett had become quite overweight, had shaved off all of his hair, including his eyebrows, and his ex-bandmates did not at first recognise him (one of the photographs in Nick Mason's book Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd appears to have been taken that day; it is captioned: Syd Barrett at Abbey Road Studios, 5th June 1975). Eventually, they realised who he was and Roger Waters was so distressed that he was reduced to tears. A reference to this reunion appears in the film Pink Floyd The Wall (1982), where the character 'Pink,' played by Bob Geldof, shaves off his eyebrows (and body hair) after succumbing to the pressures of life and fame.
In an interview for the 2001 BBC Omnibus documentary Syd Barrett: Crazy Diamond (later released on DVD as The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story), the story is told in full. Rick Wright spoke about the session, saying: "One thing that really stands out in my mind, that I'll never forget; I was going in to the "Shine On" sessions. I went in the studio and I saw this guy sitting at the back of the studio, he was only as far away as you are from me. And I didn't recognize him. I said, 'Who's that guy behind you?' 'That's Syd'. And I just cracked up, I couldn't believe it... he had shaven all his hair off... I mean, his eyebrows, everything... he was jumping up and down brushing his teeth, it was awful. And, uh, I was in, I mean Roger was in tears, I think I was; we were both in tears. It was very shocking... seven years of no contact and then to walk in while we're actually doing that particular track. I don't know – coincidence, karma, fate, who knows? But it was very, very, very powerful". In the same documentary, Nick Mason stated: "When I think about it, I can still see his eyes, but... it was everything else that was different". In that same interview, Roger Waters has said: "I had no idea who he was for a very long time". David Gilmour stated : "None of us recognised him. Shaved...shaved bald head and very plump"."
I learned of DJ Shantel via Pop Matters. Disko Partizani is a fusion of Eastern European, Balkan, Turkish, Sicilian and Arabic folk musics that are deftly honed, twisted, mashed up, reggae-fied doused with a funky sense of humor. Wads of horns and percussion. The infectious grooves are an amalgamation that bodes well for the future of planet-music cross-fertilization. Preludes to this solo album are his compilations Buscovina Club and Buscovina Club Two that are danceable hip-swingin' deep grooves all over the Mediterranean map.
Today the mail brought "Allison Wonderland: The Mose Allison Anthology" on Rhino. Joel Dorn, whose liners are tops, has a story about Mose Allison that appears in the front of the liners.
"Mose told me one time that his epitaph could well read, "IRONY IS MY ALBATROSS." He has a Ph.D in irony. Here's a story he told me:
A prominent white educator was studying the culture of the Hopi, a desert-dwelling Native American tribe of the Southwest. He found it strange that almost all Hopi music was about water and asked one of the musicians why. He explained that so much of their music was about water because that was what they had the least of. And then he told the white man, 'Most of your music is about love'."
My aunt Celena has passed. We gave tribute to her partyloving-soul by making pizza and drinking some good red wine. The weight has been somewhat lifted by a heartfelt apology from my cousin Anthony. I will try to write more tomorrow. Death of a loved one creates tremors in the psyche that arouse images covered with the dust of aeons.
The legendary pianist Marion McPartland is going to 90 next March. For her birthday, she'll be performing "A Portrait of Rachel Carson", a symphonic piece that came to her in the studio. With the earth being raped at breakneck speed, she said that she felt that she should say something. In a link at Pop Matters, she's interviewed in South Carolina.
I believe that the only true and lasting changes to consciousness, culture and civilization start with the individual. Yes, there have been revolutions and coups, but look at the outcomes. Even individual transformation is painfully slow. Try changing your eating habits or try changing mine. Very small incremental changes in human behavior versus the St. Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus radical transformation. So much has been written about the 60's and rock, that it has become a little boring, especially for those who missed it for one reason or another.
The Telegraph UK has this review of "There's A Riot Going On": Revolutionaries, Rock Stars and The Rise and fall of 1960's Counter-Culture" by Peter Doggett.
A couple of quotes from the review:
"Lennon was also a generous patron of Michael de Freitas, the former pimp and drug dealer who reinvented himself as the black-power leader Michael X. In one press conference, Lennon exchanged locks of his and Yoko’s hair with a pair of bloodied boxing shorts that had been donated to de Freitas by Muhammed Ali. De Freitas was later hanged for murder in Trinidad."
"Sly Stone’s disappearance into a haze of cocaine and angel dust was typical. The LSD guru Timothy Leary was exposed as a government informer. Huey Newton was charged with beating a 17-year-old prostitute to death, fled to Cuba and was shot dead in 1989 over a drug deal.
Abbie Hoffman committed suicide. Jerry Rubin became a stockbroker, and was killed while jaywalking in 1994.
At least Mick Jagger managed to sort out his tax problems."
Without a doubt, influences from that time permeate our post-modern-absurdist psyche more than most would like to admit. I don't think you can right off the 60's with a drug hazed aliby and cop- outs. The 1,000 things are still churning and will be for eons. At least, that's what I think IMHO.
Alan Bloom's book, "The Closing of the American Mind" is twenty years old today. The New Criterion offers this article about Bloom's observations about our instant karma culture.
"But Bloom is writing about rock music the way someone from the pre-rock generation experiences it. You’ve no interest in the stuff, you don’t buy the albums, you don’t tune to the radio stations, you would never knowingly seek out a rock and roll experience—and yet it’s all around you. You go to buy some socks, and it’s playing in the store. You get on the red eye to Heathrow, and they pump it into the cabin before you take off. I was filling up at a gas station the other day and I noticed that outside, at the pump, they now pipe pop music at you. This is one of the most constant forms of cultural dislocation anybody of the pre-Bloom generation faces: Most of us have prejudices: we may not like ballet or golf, but we don’t have to worry about going to the deli and ordering a ham on rye while some ninny in tights prances around us or a fellow in plus-fours tries to chip it out of the rough behind the salad bar. Yet, in the course of a day, any number of non-rock-related transactions are accompanied by rock music. I was at the airport last week, sitting at the gate, and over the transom some woman was singing about having two lovers and being very happy about it. And we all sat there as if it’s perfectly routine. To the pre-Bloom generation, it’s very weird—though, as he notes, “It may well be that a society’s greatest madness seems normal to itself.” Whether or not rock music is the soundtrack for the age that its more ambitious proponents tout it as, it’s a literal soundtrack: it’s like being in a movie with a really bad score. So Bloom’s not here to weigh the merit of the Beatles vs. Pink Floyd vs. Madonna vs. Niggaz with Attitude vs. Eminem vs. Green Day. They come and go, and there is no more dated sentence in Bloom’s book than the one where he gets specific and wonders whether Michael Jackson, Prince, or Boy George will take the place of Mick Jagger. But he’s not doing album reviews, he’s pondering the state of an entire society with a rock aesthetic...
Well, they’re the suits in the back room. What of the revolutionaries themselves? The last time I saw Paul McCartney on stage he was urging us all to give our money to Africa. Yet I found myself thinking of Sir Paul’s late wife. Linda McCartney had been a resident of the United Kingdom for three decades, but her Manhattan tax lawyers, Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts, devoted considerable energy in her final months to establishing her right to have her estate probated in New York state. That way she could avoid the 40 percent death duties levied by Her Majesty’s Government."
Some good points, some so so points. But when I'm feeling down and need something to raise me up or when I'm up and want to stay there or go higher, I don't look to Mahler or Puccini or Tupac. I get out some Ella or Sarah, Ellington-Strayhorn, Professor Longhair, Scott Hamilton, Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Paulo Flores, Carlos Lamartine, Tito Paris, Teofilo Chantre, Kassav', Malavoi, Sam Cooke, Jimmy Rushing and on and on.
