Alexander

The first album I remember really loving was Beatles 65. I later came to regard Revolver as the Beatles' peak, so both of those albums would be on my list. In high school, I fell in love with Pink Floyd and The Who. Dark Side of the Moon and Who's Next would also have to be on the list. When I got into jazz, the album that made it all click for me was The Best of Horace Silver, v.2. I could list many, many others. Elvis Costello, Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Miles, Trane, The White Stripes...but we're only allowed five choices...

I guess I misunderstood. I thought you claimed that they were removing Washington's name from the textbooks or the curriculum. You were saying that they renamed the school! Well, I personally don't have a problem with that. School are renamed all the time, for various reasons. After JFK was assassinated, high schools all over the country changed their names to JFK. My high school considered it, but refused because they wanted to maintain their regional flavor (the school was named after the local Shaker sect, hence "Shaker H.S." Instead, the junior and senior high schools named the different halls after figures discussed in JFK's "Profiles in Courage" (and if THAT isn't a round about way to honor someone, I don't know what is).

I met Phil Hartman many years ago when I was auditioning for SNL (long story). He was a genuinely nice man who immediately put my at ease and built up my confidence when it needed building. I have never forgotten that brief encounter and have always been grateful to him (even though things didn't work out with SNL). I was literally shocked by his death. He was a brilliantly funny man on SNL at a time when the show was frankly mired in mediocrity (I do not believe I would have improved the situation, btw). I was never a huge fan of Lovitz on SNL, but I loved him on "The Critic" and his various "Simpsons" appearences. He's one actor I always like better as a voice than as a presence. I never found Andy Dick to be the least funny.

Please, cite one incident when that has happened (the Washington thing). I seriously doubt it. PC hysteria has gotten out of hand in some cases, but I seriously doubt that any school has expunged Washington, Jefferson, or any other slave-holding founder. This smacks of Right-Wing hysteria.

By sheer coincidence, I just finished re-reading "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Must've been some sort of cosmic thing...

You have that right. But Mosaic has the right (and I would argue the obligation) to release said product. While an apology or explanation might be nice, I really don't think it's necessary...

I'm not saying that African-Americans (or any other group, for that matter) should "get over it." I'm saying that history is history and we ignore it at our peril. When I did my student teaching, I taught the novel "To Kill A Mockingbird." You'd be surprised how many students were ignorant of just how hair-raisingly ugly American race-relations were. They'd all heard about separate bathrooms and all that, but they had no idea just how dangerous it could be to be black in the American south during the early to mid-20th century. So in addition to Harper Lee's novel, we also studied the murder of Emmett Till. We listened to Billie Holiday performing "Strange Fruit" while we looked at real photographs of lynchings. Many of the students were disgusted. Some of them complained to their parents. When the parents called me up, their main complaints were twofold: 1) Their children (completely innocent, as they were, of the atrocities of the past) should not have to look at such disturbing things, and 2) that this is SUPPOSED to be an English class, not a History class. My response was, 1) that this is a part of our nation's history and that no one has the right to ignore it, and 2) that it is really impossible to understand Harper Lee's novel without understanding the stakes involved. It is necessary to understand how easily and casually many Southern whites beat and lynched blacks to understand the very real peril Tom Robinson faced. It had nothing to do with his trial (after all, Tom is innocent and he has the best lawyer in town representing him), but rather with the racisim ingrained in the social structure of Maycomb. By all means, be offended by the casual racisim of America's past. But don't hide it. If you hide it, how are we to learn from it?

My seven year old daughter is a HUGE Phil Collins fan. I got tickets to take her to see them in September. She's thrilled, of course! This will be her first rock concert. I've gotta get her some ear-plugs...

Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs Officially surpressed, but wouldn't you know it's on YouTube! Here's "Coal Black" for anyone interested. Great cartoon, but maybe offensive to modern viewers. Be warned!

Not to get off the topic of the disturbing "Johnny Reb" crap (that's not music...that's outright HATE speech), I should note that the Johnny Mercer lyric in question is not derived from the blackface minstrel tradition (at least not directly), but rather from the more relatively recent tradition of the so-called "coon song." While blackface minstrelsy dates back to the late 18th and early 19th century (hitting its peak of popularity during the 1820s and 30s), the "coon song" became a national craze during the 1880s and lasting until the 1920s. During the late 19th century, coon songs incredibly popular. During the 1890s, over 600 such songs were published. The sheet music for these songs sold in the millions. Several prominent Tin Pan Alley composers, including Irving Berlin, wrote them. This is not to defend these songs (although I personally think that we whitewash history at our peril. A lot of great cartoons, for example, have been surpressed because they engaged in humor that was considered perfectly appropriate at the time. The Warner Brothers Disney parody, "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" is a perfect example), but to put them in their proper context. If the "coon song" died out in the 20s, it would have been considered fairly recent history to Mercer (these songs would still have been popular during his childhood).

I always loved those Jones cartoons about the two mice, Hubie and Bertie, who tormented Claude the cat. Hilarious stuff. The best one was "The Hypocontri-cat" in which they convinced Claude, not only that he was sick, but that he was dead! So funny! "Riot! Riot!" "Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure!"

I'm sure she is great. I just think the whole, "so-and-so is better than whatshisface" argument is stupid. Allison Miller is not Meg White. She doesn't play in the White Stripes, so whether or not she's a better drummer is really irrelivant. The idea that women who play drums should be compared to other women who play drums (Terri Lynn Carrington, Cindy Blackman, etc.) is absurd. It would be absurd as saying "Pavarotti kicks Bob Dylan's ass." Yeah, they're both men. They both sing. And Dylan trying to sing Verdi's "Otello" would be pretty silly. But Pavarotti trying to sing "Blowin' In The Wind" would sound pretty stupid too (in fact, I usually hate it when opera singers try to sing pop. Their voices are TOO highly trained. Many of them can't "dumb it down" enough to sing a simple melody). I'm not aiming any of this at you, Allen. I'm just using your post as a springboard to talk about this rather silly discussion about Ms. Miller vs Meg White. When people invade threads to dump on the artists under discussion and drop the names of people they think are "better," we're getting into Clem territory. I personally try never to put down an artist I'm not fond of. I'm old enough to know that my likes and dislikes are not the final word when it comes to quality. A good friend of mine is into Rush. He just sent me a couple of "Greatest Hits" CDs that he no longer needed (since he had all of the albums). I listened to them both and found that (on first hearing) they are not my cup of tea (he also sent me some King Crimson and Yes albums, which I liked much, much better). Does this mean that Rush sucks? Not at all. I might get more out of it upon closer inspection. I also may never get into it, but that has more to do with me and my particular tastes than it does with Geddy Lee.

Sounds like "Three Kings" meets "Ocean's Eleven."

My parents owned the "SNF" soundtrack album, back in the day. This was, by far, my favorite cut on the album. She had a very sexy voice, which managed to get through to me at age 8. (although, like Woody Allen, I don't think I ever had a latency period...)

I think it's a great idea for a band. They could call it "A Paler Shade of White."

Another Jones Bugs cartoon that I prefer to "What's Opera Doc." Bully for Bugs Docha love when he makes that "wrong toin at Albuquerque?" Mike Maltese, who wrote most of the best Jones cartoons, should not be ignored when we discuss the greatness of Bugs Bunny! "Stop steamin' up my tail!"

It's a great cartoon, but it's far from being my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon. By this point, Jones had developed a very distinctive graphic style that gave all of his films a similar look ("What's Opera, Doc" looks more like "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" than, say, "Rabbit Seasoning"). It's not bad, but by this point I feel that Jones had outgrown the WB house style. It's a great Chuck Jones cartoon, rather than a great Bugs Bunny cartoon. It's certainly in the same league as "One Froggy Evening," which uses no continuing WB characters. I've always admired Jones above most of his WB peers (although Avery and Clampett were in a league of their own). I prefered his Bugs to that of Fritz Freeling or Bob McKimson. The trio of "Rabbit Season-Duck Season" cartoons are among his best, although I also love his other treatments of opera (especially "The Rabbit of Seville"). The Rabbit of Seville

Same gender/same instrument, chief. On the skills-looks continuum for chick drumsters, Alli PWNS. Is Roy Haynes cuter than Elvin Jones? Would you rather look at Charlie Parker's ass or Greg Osby's? Hey, same instruments, same gender!

They did "Stonehenge!" Man, they were such a loud yet punctual band...

Thanks for that very useful contribution to the discussion. Shall I show you to Clem's table?

I agree. To me, music has always been very intimately connected to the circumstances in my life when I was listening to it. I was heavily into CSN and Buffalo Springfield when I was in high school. When I put on the live recording of Neil Young performing "On The Way Home" from the "Four Way Street" album, I can still smell the wood burning stoves that were pressed into service when the freak blizzard of early October of 1987 knocked the power out. When I hear "Bluebird" by Buffalo Springfield, I think about a girl I had a crush on during the fall of my Junior year. I don't listen to this music to remember the past, but I do remember the past when I hear this music. It's like the protagonist of "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" eating the petit madeline soaked in tea...

Never had the pizza there, but the Boston House of Pizza off of Comm Ave has AMAZING subs. Best subs I've EVER had, anywhere...

My favorite pizza will always be Bob and John's on Hertel Avenue in Buffalo, NY. It was the first place I was allowed to go to BY MYSELF when I was a kid. Me and my friends used to go there for lunch on Saturdays. We'd all share a basket of wings (they have GREAT Buffalo wings. No place outside of Buffalo seems to make them the right way) and each get a slice of pizza. They served Squirt (a grapefruit flavored soda (or "pop," as we called it in Western New York)) in little green bottles. Ahhhh. It was heaven. After lunch, me and my friends would hit the comic book shop (Fantasy World, right down the street) and then go to the North Park theater to see a movie. Ah, weekends when I was twelve...

I agree with almost all of the winners except the statue of Christ (how is THAT a wonder?) and the Colosseum. Maybe I need to see it first hand, but it just doesn't seem very wonderous to me.

Never said that I listened to music for "purely" nostalgic reasons. Fact is, I didn't LIKE "Under the Red Sky" when it came out. Point of fact, I hated it. I loved "Oh Mercy" and "UTRS" seemed a piss-poor follow-up. In those days, I took my Dylan WAAAAAY too seriously. It was only years and years later that a friend of mine said that I should give it another try. By that point, I had learned to lighten up considerably, and I found that "UTRS" was a fun little lark (not too dissimilar to the Wilbury albums, in fact). However, anybody who listens to music for a long period of time cannot HELP but make associations between the music and the lives they lead when they are LISTENING to that music. When I first got the Joni Mitchell album "The Hissing of Summer Lawns," I was dirt poor and living in Boston. Listening to that album evokes that time for me. I don't listen to it solely for that reason, but the fact remains that it will always make me think of walking down Comm Ave. without a penny in my pocket...