Randy Twizzle

How old are you Dan? 7 or 8 sounds about right, though the part about a "media blackout" is pretty precocious for a tantrum boy.

Shepherd married again in 1977 to his radio show producer Leigh Brown

My real rooting interest in sports begins and ends with the Mets. For whatever reason my father, who wasn't a baseball fan, first took my brother and I to the prehistoric Polo Grounds to see our first pro baseball game. When the team moved to Shea in Queens he still drove us out there rather than to the much closer Bronx to see the Yankees. We'd go to 5 or 6 Sunday doubleheaders a year, always sitting in the general admission upper deck. We were there in June 1965 when fan reaction to bad call against the Mets held up the game for over 10 minutes. (see below) I was 9 years old at the time and loved every minute of the craziness. Maybe I'm not passionate enough about sports to have a team that I hate. Though I don't really like the Yankees or their often smug fans, I've never been able to build up much hatred for them.

From the December 2002 Atlantic Monthly Bobby Fischer's Pathetic Endgame

Members of the 1961 Packer team celebrating their world championship win over the Giants.

With all due respect, nothing about Clemens' buttocks holds any interest for me.

I worked in 2 World Trade Center for 3 1/2 years and the elevators usually had low level smooth jazz playing. However once I actually heard an Art Tatum recording. It probably wasn't the best place to listen to Tatum but I appeciated it at the time.

I think it was this one:

I really don't believe Pops would have put it in those exact words.. I guess I was misinformed. What Armstrong really said was "If you gotta ask then ask Barney Bigard or Teagarden, I'm busy right now." Sorry for the screwup.

It's a video that's been widely circulated and I'm sure many of you have seen it, but once again we must be reminded:Leave Britney Alone...

Here's an oldie that always brings a gentle chuckle to my lips. It seems that someone once asked Louis Armstrong to define jazz. Well Pops put down his trumpet, thought for a moment and said "Hey asshole do I look like a fucking dictionary?"

He was just a tad more lucid than yourself which mean he was making no sense and unfortunately embarrassing himself. Maybe you're into that kind of self-destructive scene but even in my early 20s I found it to be sad. The drummer did him a big favor and handled it with dignity and class.

This should probably be part of a thread about concerts that saddened/depressed us. In 1979 or 80 (I don't remember exactly) I went to see Hank Mobley at a place called DC Space in downtown Washington. He was playing with a trio of local musicians. They got through one tune and in the middle of the second Mobley stopped playing and started in on a rambling disjointed monologue. I don't remember what he was saying but after 5 minutes or so the drummer gently ushered him off the stage into the backstage area. There was a brief intermission while the rest of the band got together and decided to continue without him. I left soon after that and walked home feeling bummed out about this lost opportunity to see a legendary musician.

It seems The Lagoon was a picnic ground/amusement park/dance hall.

OK I'll call the Times and tell them to delete the story Thanks. It's a slow news week, they'll run anything. Look...another article about Joseph Biden. What language is he "chattering" in?

OK I'll call the Times and tell them to delete the story

From the NY Times ON Monday night at 10:27, listeners to the Newark-based jazz station WBGO could hear the legendary Red Norvo plunking away at the final bars of “Have You Met Miss Jones?” The station’s signal, at 88.3 FM, blankets the city from Tottenville at the southern tip of Staten Island to Riverdale in the north Bronx. But WBGO fans in the heavily Haitian neighborhood of Flatbush, Brooklyn, could not hear Norvo’s glistening arpeggios. At that moment on that frequency, the Flatbush listeners instead heard an echoing voice pitching a wonder pill in Creole. “Haitians!” the man cried over a raucous background of horns and drums. “This medicine cures all maladies! Constipation, depression, high cholesterol, even AIDS!” The intruding signal came from a low-power pirate broadcaster, one of many in Flatbush and nearby neighborhoods that bedevil the major stations by blocking their signals. “They’re killing us,” said Cephas Bowles, the general manager of WBGO. “They don’t respect the F.C.C., and they don’t respect the stations that have legally been licensed to operate.” According to Mr. Bowles, listeners have been calling in daily with complaints. Brooklyn, over the years, has been home to dozens of pirate broadcasters, chattering in every language from Spanish to Yiddish. The Haitian-American community, with its traditional fondness for radio, is an especially receptive audience. But representatives of licensed stations say that for reasons they cannot pinpoint, the number and persistence of the pirates squatting on their frequencies has been increasing. George Evans, the head engineer at WFUV, the Fordham University radio station, said that a rising resentment about Spanish and Creole pirates had prompted him to solicit listener complaints on the station’s Internet home page. The station has received 294 complaints since the notice went up in August, Mr. Evans said, most of them from listeners in Brooklyn and Paterson, N.J. Both Mr. Evans and Mr. Bowles said that they had complained to the Federal Communications Commission, but that the agency was slow to act against pirates. Since 2005, the commission has fined only one pirate broadcaster in Brooklyn, a man named Elroy Simpson of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, who in January was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. In response to questions, David Fiske, an F.C.C. spokesman, would say only, “We don’t comment on our investigative processes.” But Mr. Evans of WFUV had some advice for legislators. “Florida has a very strict law where the police will come to your house, seize your equipment and throw you in jail,” he said. “That’s what they need for New York.”

There's actually 3 DVD's. So far I've only looked at the first one which covers 67-83. I'm not a huge rock nor Rolling Stone fan but I enjoy the "You are There" feeling of reading about the late 60s and early 70s scene as it was happening. It's all so groovy.

PM sent, thx. You got it.

I bought the Rolling Stone Cover To Cover DVD's which contain every issue of the magazine from Nov 1967 until May 2007. The package came with a "Redemption Certificate" good for a free year's subscription. If anybody is interested in getting RS for free for a year (it's only good for US residents) send me a PM with your name and address and I'll send you the certificate in the mail.

From the Canadian Press: OTTAWA - Even Nelson Mandela deemed it an honour to meet this Canadian jazz legend. There was one witness in the room when the great South African leader was introduced to Oscar Peterson - and he was the man who made the introduction. Jean Chretien reminisced Monday about the display of mutual admiration that unfolded when he invited Peterson to a 2001 ceremony honouring Mandela. The former prime minister had been a fan and friend of Peterson's for decades, and says he had already offered to make him Ontario's lieutenant-governor after he took office in 1993. He says Peterson declined for health reasons. Years later Chretien brought Peterson to an Ottawa event where Mandela was named an honourary Canadian citizen. During a private meeting, Chretien recalled, the revolutionary political figure glowed upon meeting the great pianist. "It was very emotional," Chretien told The Canadian Press in an interview Monday. "They were both moved to meet each other. These were two men with humble beginnings who rose to very illustrious levels." In fact he says that when he first met Peterson in the 1960s, his level of international fame was without parallel among his countrymen. "He was the most famous Canadian in the world," Chretien said. In an illustration of Peterson's worldwide celebrity, the French government issued a statement reacting to his passing even before the Canadian government did. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said one of the bright lights of jazz had been extinguished. "He was a regular on the French stage, where the public adored his luminous style," Sarkozy said. "It is a great loss for us." The Canadian government also produced a written statement Monday saluting Peterson as a "jazz icon." "A great Canadian, Mr. Peterson was a beloved and respected citizen of the world who remained proud of his heritage," said Josee Verner, the heritage minister. "More than a talented musician, he was a composer and conductor." Canada's official Opposition leader expressed deep sadness at the loss. "I share in the grief of the millions of fans with whom Oscar Peterson shared the tremendous gift of his remarkable music," said Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.

Having just seen "Walking Hard" I'm curious about Spector and Turner's relationship with the great Dewey Cox.

Until I read this May 1969 NY Times review I never knew that the Woody Herman band played at the Fillmore on the same bill as Led Zeppelin. Apparently things didn't go too well.

Not if everybody sometimes listens to XM's "Real Jazz" channel, where it always shows up. Its last appearance, according to xmfan.com, was yesterday 12/20 at 6:15 pm et.