AllenLowe

I know, Larry, but after reading your chapter I now find Evans annoying in key ways - it's odd and interesting, but there are certain tendencies he has (that you pointed out) that I now find glaring in nearly everything he played - though I will admit my difficulties with his music are augmented by having met him in his last years (his wife was a friend of mine) and being put off by his slow personal narcissistic descent - I also disliked Helen Keane - but such are the problems of getting to know these people personally. It's a good thing I never met Dostoyevskey -

look, Larry's the only guy who could write a piece on a musician I had always liked, illustrating several glaring problems with that musician, which only confirmed something which had bothered me for years but which I had kind of ignored, and than made it almost impossible for me to listen to that musician - Bill Evans, of course, and I don't mean Yusef Lateef or the guy who used to play tenor with Miles - what am I gonna do with all these Village Vanguard cds? thanks, Larry -

and than there were the musicians who were just too damn old when they died -

what are the performances from?

played too slow - sorry, with me, you just can't win -

yes, but not as good as Barney's Greatest Hits - which includes: 1) I'm so Special 2) You're So Special 3) Everyone is So Special and 4) Everyone is Special Except Danny Gatton, Though He Can Really Play Fast hope I'm not confusing Barneys...

I will add, that I interviewed him on the phone maybe about 10 years ago when he was appearing in Boston - one of the nicest people I ever spoke to -

I also like Jimmy Bryant - there is something about speed of execution that leads to problems for some; certain muscians play fast, and it's like a typewriter being worked by a good secretary - all motion and a level plane, no variation, technically skilled but mechanical - and yet some musicians (thinking, eg, Bud Powell, Jimmy Bryant) can play fast, intricate passages with subtle variations of emphasis and touch - and it becomes music, it has feeling. This is open, of course, to individual interpretation, and there is certainly a thrill to be felt in virtousity for its own sake - but than listen to Tristano execute, with his perfect internal rhythmic sense, or Tatum of course, who has an incredible knack for turning the beat in different ways, or Jaki Byard, who turns fast passages into little waves of contrary motion - once again, just my opinion -

don't believe Carter's rhetoric on anything - his first Department of Energy appointment as Chairman was James Schlesinger - former Director of the CIA, former head of the Department of Defense - so they put some money into solar energy at the same time that they undermined the program - this fits Carter's m.o. on everything, domestic to foreign - a former Professor that I new from SUNY Binghamton, James Petras, has written the following: "In the late 1970's Afghanistan was ruled by a nationalist secular regime allied with the Soviet Union. The regime promoted gender equality, free universal education for women and men, agrarian reform including the redistribution of feudal estates to poor peasants, the separation of religion and the state and adopted an independent foreign policy with a Soviet tilt. Beginning at least as early as 1979, the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia orchestrated a massive international recruiting campaign of Islamic fundamentalist to engage in a "Jihad" against the "atheistic communist regime." Tens of thousands were recruited, armed by the US, financed by Saudis Arabia and trained by the CIA and Pakistani Intelligence. Pakistan opened its frontiers to the flood of armed invaders. Internally the displaced Mullahs, horrified by the equality and education of women, not to speak of the expropriation of their huge land holdings, joined the Jihad en masse. The Carter Presidency (and not Reagan) was responsible for the organization, financing, training of the Islamic uprising and the terror campaign which followed. Zbig Brzesinski later wrote of the US--Afghanistan campaign as one of the high points in US Cold War diplomacy--it provoked Soviet intervention on behalf of the secular Afghan ally. Even when confronted with the consequences of the total devastation of Afghanistan, the rise of the Taliban and Al Queda and 9/11, Carter's former National Security Adviser, Brzesinski replied that these were marginal costs in comparison with a war which successfully hastened the fall of the Soviet Union. President Carter's intervention in Afghanistan initiated the Second Cold War, which was pursued with even greater intensity by Reagan. Carter backed a series of surrogate wars in Angola, Mozambique, Central American, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Carter was clearly an advocate and practitioner of the worst kind of imperial intervention and a master of public relations: he was an early practitioner of "Humanitarian Imperialism"--humane in rhetoric and brutally imperialist in practice."

I don't know, you guys keep buying those bootlegged and used copies, and Larry won't be able to afford that large dacha in the Illinois woods that he has his eye on - (I'm assuming that there are woods somewhere in Illinois)

1) sorry, that's incorrect - his words were one thing, his Department of Energy, which ran the solar program, was another - his appointments to that department were all Detroit auto types - and they slowly dismantled the program until there wa nothing left - this was well documented at the time by Fred Goodman, a great journalist, now dead, who did a series of articles in the 1970s on how the DOE was slowly discontinuing that program. Carter's words are a smokescreen - he did worse than nothing - somewhere in my files I have copies of Goodman's articles, but one only has to look at what happened to solar energy during the Carter administration - nothing - 2) solar panels, solar schmanels, as my kid would say - yea, he put them up in the White House, Reagan took them down - but once again this was mostly rhetoric on Carter's part - you need to go back to the 1970s; the solar energy program died on the vine. Secretly, Carter did big business's bidding - as in his refusal to institute price controls when the cost of energy basically doubled during his administration. He was the last prresident to have the right to do this, and he refused, though people suffered and died as energy costs outstripped people's abilities to keep up with them (shades of Bush et al)

well, I no longer receive cash from the giant rabbits, but I do see them frequently -

as the owner of a record company I have always paid myself proper royalties - don't know about that Nessa guy, however, though he does do a good job with those Monkees bootlegs -

I always do - that and that stupid smile - and the fact that Carter: 1) began the military buildup that Reagan continued; and that 2) his administration passed one of the most regressive tax bills in history, making drastic cuts in the corporate rate; and that 3) he destroyed the Legal Services administration by failing to make key appointments, appointments which Reagan than made and which crippled the organization and there's more -

I gotta say that Gatton, for all is gifts, bothers me for the same reason Buchanan does - his playing sounds to me the equivalent of Oscar Peterson, fast and technically intricate, but based on chord/scale patterns that are more displays than exhibits of musical feeling - just my opinion -

let me take this opportunity to point out that it was a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, who canceled the solar energy program, at the behest of his Department of Energy appointees, all of whom were from the Detroit auto industry - just wanted to make sure that this is on the record - I hate Jimmy Carter -

one set left - the usual - $125 plus shipping conus - a promo, but mint, all complete - act now and I'll throw in the "better sex through barnyard visits" DVD -

used to see him at Passim's in Cambridge in the 1970s - interesting guy, part of the whole Eric Anderson/John Prine/Tom Paxton scene - good songwriter, too -

years ago (mid 1970s) I saw an ad in the Village Voice, "Jimmy Giuffre at Jimmy Ryan's" - now Ryan's was a trad joint in midtown NYC, though that's also where Roy Eldridge did some of his last work - Giuffre was on early, maybe 4-5 PM and it turns out he was playing with a a swing-style rhythm section, can't remember who, but Herb Hall was on clarinet and Giuffre played tenor. Strange afternoon, given my expectations, but Giuffre fit right in -

he used to have a funny song about what we would do after The Revolution - "we'll take Jackie Kennedy and shoot her up with LSD"

"but I have to say what a wonderful father and husband Jim is" oh, you HAVE to say this? want us to send over social services? Police? Swat team? Dog the Bounty Hunter?

just curious - was the song Odjenar named after her?

actually, if you play the outside groove, you hear someone say "Duke is dead Duke is dead Duke is dead"

stop me when I hit the right pianist -

or Son of Sam -