Brandon Burke

This brings up an interesting point. Why is it that the folks who fund certaon jazz LP reissues -- usually the cheap ones -- don't credit themselves on the jacket? The ones I'm thinking of, mostly Atlantic and Columbia, don't have stickers on the shinkwrap either. There are several titles currently in print with exact reproductions of the original artwork (albeit with glossy jackets). I've never been able to figure this out.

I was not aware of the clues in the DVD insert but I've not seen it since it was in the theatre. Funny story: When Mulholland Drive was up for an Academy Award, my mother, who hosts an Oscar party every year and as such feels obliged to see everything that's up for a big award, said she wanted to see it. I remember my brother and I looking at each other as if to say, "Errrr...maybe not this one, Mom." (Understand that my folks' idea of a "weird" movie is Groundhog Day.) Even funnier was my father piping up during the same conversation saying, "I saw it." This was especially interesting since his idea of a good movie is something with Bruce Willis or Will Smith, car chases, and a lot of one-liners. Again, my brother and I looked across the dinner table at one another. "So what did you think?" I asked. "I thought it was good," he replied. To this day, I have no idea how he could have possibly liked this film. [side note: I dragged him to see Rushmore when that was still in the theatres. Something of a selfish act. I didn't think he'd like it but I felt like Max Fischer in high school and I wanted him to see what that was like. About 30 minutes into it he leaned over and said, "This is pretty f*cking weird".] To again state the obvious, I have no idea how he could have possibly enjoyed Mulholland Drive. I need to bring this up next time I talk to him.

Yes, it's coming out on DVD next month. Amazon already has it listed. There are only going to be a handful of proper screenings (San Fran, SXSW, etc) so this is your only shot to see it on a big screen.

My friend Bradley Beesley's new film The Fearless Freaks is showing at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco this Friday the 25th at 9:30pm. It is a feature length documentary on the Oklahoma band The Flaming Lips and, judging from the random 10-minute clips I've seen, it's really great. Just a heads up.... You can get tickets here

I had just assumed that they were boots.

I've got all of this footage. Several years ago, somebody stuffed two VHS tapes full of Beefheart TV appearances and shows. Also the John Peel narrated documentary (which is very good). If you've not seen the 'Saturday Night Live' performance you're missing some seriously heavy shit. Also, the live TV performance of "I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby" is waaay better then the overly sluggish LP version. Like stepping out of a triangle into striped light, -- Brandon

This, for example: Not surprisingly, "Lost in the Funhouse" (the story, not the book) was my introduction. Read it in an undergrad English class. I believe it's in the Norton Anthology of Fiction. In my opinion, it's still the definitive metafiction work. Well...okay. Maybe it isn't. There's a lot out there. But its aesthetic intentions are clear from the word go and it seems to encapsulate an entire genre in just a few pages. The first paragraph wastes no time: For whom is the funhouse fun? Perhaps for lovers. For Ambrose it is a place of fear and confusion. He has come to the seashore with his family for the holiday, the occasion of their visit is Independence Day, the most important secular holiday of the United States of America. A single straight underline is the manuscript mark for italic type, which in turn is the printed equivalent to oral emphasis of words and phrases as well as the customary type for titles of complete works, not to mention. Italics are also employed, in fiction stories especially, for "outside," intrusive, or artificial voices, such as radio announcements, the texts of telegrams and newspaper articles, et cetera. They should be used sparingly. If passages originally in roman type are italicized by someone repeating them, it's customary to acknowledge the fact. Italics mine. From there it dives right back into the story of Ambrose and his family's journey to the seaside park. Other than the many textbook-like interjections, there's little to seperate it from a John Updike story: thirteen year old kid, awkward, hormones raging. A lot like A&P, actually. But Barth's M.O. is the relationship between author and reader. Read: the very act of reading is to enter a "funhouse" created by the author while writing places one in a position of power. The power to create worlds.

Where can I buy a Single Malt Sampler? here. B-)

I don't buy them myself but can understand why someone might want to get a sampling of a few different styles before diving in. Not unlike how short story anthologies can hip somebody to a particular style or author they wouldn't have otherwise noticed. (That's how I discovered metafiction as an undergrad.) Same thing for wine or single malts or cheeses.... Makes sense to me.

I read about that too. Reminded me that I guy I worked with years ago used to have (or still has?) a well-edited video tape of the Minutemen playing the Ballroom of the Student Union at the University of Kansas in 1984. It's been at least ten years since I've see it (or him, for that matter) but the footage is great. Whoever filmed it also conducted interviews with the whole band and each member individualy. I wonder if that footage ended up in this film?

Friends, Amoeba in SF has an unopened Paul Chambers Quintet Conn in the used CD section. I almost bought it myself but had already spent quite enough money by the time I got there. B-) Just a heads up. I think they want $15. -- Brandon

Five years ago I bought a Hubbard 'Goin' Up' mono W. 63rd that had been part of a sealed collection until the owners demise.....and it has a medium dish warp. The 'Open Sesame' from the same collection didn't. Difficult to say with absolute certainty but it's my understanding that it's okay to leave shrink on as long as you slit the openeing. Was it the disc or the jacket? ...or both? When I ran the jazz archives at KU, a number of the early BN LP jackets bowed in toward the front. It seems the laminant likes to shrink over time because I noticed this same situation among records from different donors and always in the same direction. I should add that they were otherwise in great shape. My guess is that they could have been in tighter quarters on whatever shelves they were on before they made it to the Archives. But that's just a guess....

I'm heading out to do some used LP/book shopping here in a bit. Will look for some McElroy. Thanks for the tip. (And thanks to Clem for bothering to send me a super long email suggesting all of the stuff I've been enjoying lately). Cheers fellas! -- Brandon

That's funny. A friend of mine was in a band that made a song called "Sound on Sound" in 1983. As for The Dead Father, I just read that book last summer. Still trying to wrap my brain around it, frankly. I mean I really enjoyed it, right. Just as I have the rest of his work. (And, at that time, it was the one title that I still hadn't read yet.) Still...

Was going to post this in "Jazz in Print" but decided it might work better here as most of those discussions concern non-fiction... Been reading a lot of fiction lately. Mostly Flann O'Brien, Gilbert Sorrentino, and Harry Mathews. (I only discovered them a few months ago.) Sorrentino's Imaginable Qualities of Actual Things references several jazz artists. As I rememember it, guys like Lester Young. The reason why I'm posting this is because I was reading Mathews' The Journalist just now and ran across the following sentence: When Colette was mentioned, I reminded myself, The woman you long to be with! and felt only an echo of regret, like a regret out of art, like catching one of Monk's long solos through a window in the summer twilight. Here's another great one, this time from the classical world. In Donald Barthelme's "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby". It's a bit longer but the Ives fans among us will find it funny: We asked him what sort of music he would like played at the hanging. He said he'd think about it but it would take him a while to decide. I pointed out that we'd have to know soon, because Howard, who is a conductor, would have to hire and rehearse the musicians and he couldn't begin until he knew what the music was going to be. Colby said he'd always been fond of Ives's Fourth Symphony. Howard said that this was a "delaying tactic" and that everybody knew that the Ives was almost impossible to perform and would involve weeks of rehearsal, and that the size of the orchestra and chorus would put us way over the music budget. "Be reasonable," he said to Colby. Colby said he'd try to think of something a little less exacting. B-) Curious if others knew of some comparable moments they might share.

My CD covers are bare bones. But I've made a ton of fliers. Mostly black and white because printing color is tough without a super serious printer. Below is something I did for a proposed DJ night I never actually had enough time to make good on...

I run a Technics 1200 mkIII turntable into a Vestax PCV-275 mixer (which acts as a preamp) and then into my computer. I capture the audio using Bais Peak software. Peak is just fine because it's a 2-channel mastering program and you only need two channels: right and left. On my PC at work I use WaveLab 5.0 which I also like.

Me too. B-)

Same session right.....?

The more I think about it, the more I find "a fabulous suite incorporating sound, noise and texture into a swirling masterpiece of overdubbed trumpets" really really appealing. I'm excited to hear this.

I'm reminded of Negativland's U2 EP from 1991. I was working at a record store at the time and we all found this very funny. A matter of weeks later, we got a letter from SST demading that we cease sales of U2 and send all remaining copies back to the label. So of course we bought the whole lot of them for ourselves. I somehow lost mine over the years. Too bad because it's worth a lot of money now. Anyway, here's some info about it. The Story... This disc was released in August, 1991. Two weeks after the release, on 5 September 1991, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of Island Records and Warner/Chappell Music (the label and publishers of the band U2) against SST Records and Negativland to stop sales of the disc. The recording has two versions of a cover of U2's song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," including an unauthorized sample of the original recording by U2. It was also alleged that the artwork was confusing; that consumers would mistake it for a copy of a U2 recording. The members of the band U2 were not a party to the lawsuit and restraining order, and did not learn about it until after the fact. The lawsuit resulted in an out-of-court settlement in November, in which the remaining unsold copies, master recordings and mechanical parts for creating more copies were to be destroyed by Island, and the copyrights for the recordings were transfered to Warner/Chappell. According to an accounting at the time, before the court order 6951 copies of U2 had been sold (it has been estimated that about 5300 of these were compact discs, the balance were cassette tapes and 12" vinyl) and 692 promotional copies had been distributed (probably all 12" vinyl). Other than some illegal (and not high-quality) counterfeit copies (CD and 7" vinyl), these remain the only copies of this recording available. To try to cut a long story down to a manageable length (this is probably the best documented case of its type, due to the band's policy of making the whole process as public as possible), Negativland was later sued by their label SST (regarding who was going to pay the costs of the first case, as well as the band's publishing a book The Letter U and the Number 2 which included documents critical of their label). Negativland was eventually able to get permission from all the original parties involved to allow them to rerelease the recording. However, Casey Kasem (the disc jockey) has refused to let the court injunction be lifted, as the recording includes out-takes from his American Top 40 show in which he curses up a blue streak. The band was able to publish a second version of their book (with information about the second suit) now titled Fair Use: The Story of The Letter U and the Number 2, which includes many source documents, press clippings and legal opinions about this case as well as copyright law in general. The artwork.... front cover back cover

Grove. But you have to be a member now.

Jacques Coursil: Minimal Brass [#8016] The first recording since 1969 from one of the legends of the New York experimental music scene who has collaborated with Anthony Braxton, Sunny Murray, Perry Robinson, Albert Ayler and many others. After two astounding albums incorporating serial techniques into the angry energy of free jazz, Jacques Coursil dropped out of the music scene and returned to his native Martinique to teach linguistic theory…but he never stopped playing and never lost his connection to the music. Minimal Brass is a new beginning for this remarkable maverick, a fabulous suite incorporating sound, noise and texture into a swirling masterpiece of overdubbed trumpets. Circular breathing, French philosophy and soulful lyricism from one of modern music’s lost masters. Source: http://www.tzadik.com/

The Milano show was released as The Unprecedented Music of Ornette Coleman. I reviewed that for AMG. It's really great.

For whatever reason, original ESP pressings (emphasis on the plural there) of Town Hall seldom go for very much money. I imagine you could probabaly score one for close to the same price as the CD.