Alexander

I saw it Friday night and I thought it was awesome! I LOVED the pseudo-tailers for non-existent movies ("...with Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu!") and the missing reels were hilarious! I saw it with a hip young audience at the local art-house, and they really appreciated it. I think the reaction at the mall cinema would have been more muted. I also thought that this performance may well do for Kurt Russell what "Pulp Fiction" did for Travolta. He was amazing! Was it the equal of "Sin City" or "Kill Bill"? No, but it's an ass-kicking good time. The cast are having a ball with it, you can see it in their faces... Plus Rose McGowan is totally hot, especially with that gun-leg! Yowza!

Thanks. I needed your approval to get on with my life. That's a load off my mind! LOL! You asked for opinions. If you expected you were going to receive unanimous hurrahs for your exquisite taste in pop music, I think you were being naive. Actually, everybody knows that the people who are into the most despised pop music are actually the hippest people of them all. Think about how many people were once embarassed to admit that they liked Louis Prima! You used to have to preface any positive remark about Prima with the observation, "Of course, he use to be a GREAT New Orleans jazz trumpeter..." Fuck that! I love the goofy pop stuff with Keely Smith!

Captain Kangaroo was immortalized in song in "Flowers on the Wall" by the Statler Brothers... "Countin' flowers on the wall That don't bother me at all Playin' solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo Now don't tell me I've nothin' to do..."

Thanks. I needed your approval to get on with my life. That's a load off my mind!

Actually, Keith Richards died over twenty-five years ago. But he keeps showing up for rehearsals, so Mick hasn't told him yet.

You might try contacting Jason Yungbluth. His website is www.whatisdeepfried.com. You should be able to contact him through his site. Jason and I went to school together and still email from time to time.

There's your problem right there. People don't want "unclassifiable." They want to be able to pack everything into nice, neat boxes. Anything that goes outside of that can't be marketed.

I got "The Song is You" several years ago when I was in the midst of my Stan Getz phase. Great disc, even if the sound quality is occasionally sketchy (at least, that's my recollection). I got it from Amazon for cheap. I recommend it highly. I need to spin mine tonight!

Elton is just a twit. Take away the self-created drama & the songs themselves suck. Damn near all of them. Q.E.D. Well, I couldn't disagree more. All of Elton's albums from his self-titled second album through "Rock of the Westies" are classic ("Empty Sky" is okay, but it's no "Tumbleweed Connection"). And "Levon" = "Silly Love Songs"? Excuse me? Maybe it was equally overplayed on '70s radio, but it's a beautiful song. The lyrics on nonsense, but that's part of what made Elton John and Bernie Taupin's collaborations so great. Much of the time, the lyrics didn't mean anything ("Take Me to the Pilot") by Taupin's own admission. Yet Elton still wrang as much emotion singing "take me to the pilot of your soul" as he did "someone saved my life tonight." Elton gets dumped on, largely because he became (from the 80s on) what McCartney had been in the '70s: Someone who just pumped out hit singles without giving much thought to making great albums. But in his heyday, Elton was as good any of his early '70s contemporaries (Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, etc.) And before you say anything, Clem, know that I have you on ignore and that I won't see it. So save your breath.

This may sound odd, but I haven't listened to the radio in years. I have a CD player in my car, and I always have a disc playing. If I don't, I drive in silence. I'd rather listen to nothing than music picked by somebody that isn't me. I'm weird, I know...

Got it, but haven't listened to it yet. I'll let you know when I do!

I hate to say it, but it's great for new (pop, country, hip hop) releases. If you buy them the week they come out, they're usually about ten bucks. For example, I'm planning on getting the new Joss Stone CD when it comes out tomorrow. It lists for $18.99, but Best Buy will very likely have it for $9.99. That's half off, people. How the hell can you say no to that? I also like it because Best Buy sells music as a "loss leader." In other words, they sell music for REALLY cheap (at cost, practically) because they hope it will entice you to come buy some big ticket electronic item at the same time. So every time you shop at Best Buy and buy ONLY music (especially the new stuff that's on major sale), you make them sell to you at a loss. You're actually taking money away from them! That's sweet!

Elvis Costello is well known for his love of jazz (which came from his parents. His mother ran a blues and jazz record shop and his dad was a trumpet player in the Joe Loss Orchestra) and for his collaborations with jazz musicians (Chet Baker, Ray Brown, etc.).

When I was in college, I had a roommate who had played high school football. His girlfriend (who often called and visited, and would chat with me sometimes because we had both had been on debate teams at our respective high schools) told me that my roommate had been a pretty bright guy, particularly when it came to math. During his junior year of high school, he was practicing while wearing a helmet that (it later turned out) was old and had inadequate padding. He injured his head (he told me that he couldn't remember the accident at all) and was never the same after that. He had terrible short and long term memory problems. Every morning was a ritual of my roommate leaving for class, and then returning a few minutes later to get something he had forgotten. This usually happened three or four times every morning. Today, he sells real estate. I'm sure that he's doing fine, but I can't help thinking that his life would be different if he hadn't played football (or had better equipment).

Wonderful album. I got it a few years back when I was going through my Stan Getz phase (Chaloff was a member of the same "Four Brothers" saxophone section in the Woody Herman band as Getz, if you don't already know). Chaloff had a completely unique sound. At times he sounds like a tenor player.

"My name is John Johanna and I come from Buffalo town..." Love that recording!

I remember when I was about 19 years old, I listened to a Charlie Parker LP that belonged to my father (now in my record collection). At the time, I was baffled. I had an idea of what jazz sounded like, and this didn't sound anything like what I imagined. I thought that jazz was smooth and romantic. The Bird I listened to sounded abstract. Too fast and complicated. I taped it to take with me to college (I thought I needed to have at least one "sophisticated" tape so I could impress chicks), but I put Elton John's "Greatest Hits" on the other side, and wound up listening to that WAY more than I listened to Bird. Years later when I put the same Charlie Parker record on, I immediately recognized the first song (which had baffled me so) as "Now's The Time." I can't fathom what I thought back then. Why did "Now's the Time" sound so difficult to me? Why doesn't it sound difficult to me now? Obviously, the answer has to do with exposure. The more you hear, the more you are capable of hearing. Nowadays, "Ascension" doesn't sound all that difficult to me. When I first heard it, I thought it was just noise.

I love this game! I'm up to level 9!

I quite like it. You're not a fan, I take it.

Considering how much his first quintet sounded like Miles' second quintet, I think you're off by at least five years. Yes, but he eventually turned the clock back. Marsalis Saving Time. That's what I meant. He *used* to emulate mid-60s Miles, but as the 80s passed into the 90s and the 90s approached the millennium, Wynton grew ever more conservative. For a while there he was trying to make EVERYTHING sound like a "Hot Fives" recording (even Monk). Lately, as I said, he's taken Ellington has his model. Not saying there's anything wrong with liking what you like, but Wynton's been pointing ever further backwards for a long time. That's what I like about his last several albums: He seems to have discovered that "now" is what counts, so he's been making music that sounds...I don't know. I don't want to use the word "timeless," because it isn't, but I guess I mean that it doesn't sound 50 years old. 50 years old ON PURPOSE, that is.

I don't know. The new CD doesn't sound too bad to me. Yes, the lyrics are stridant. Yes, I could have done without Wynton's little rap at the end (although it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared it would be). I liked the playing, however, and I enjoyed the female vocalist, for the most part. Again, the problems I've had with Wynton have been primarily philosophical. He thinks that anything that came after 1960 is the Devil's music, and he's spent an awful lot of time emulating Duke Ellington (and not succeeding, imho). His playing has always been fine, so I've never had a problem with that. He usually hires good musicians to play with. His last few albums, it seems to me, have taken some chances (compared to his work on Columbia, especially right before he left). This one takes more chances than most. Does it succeed? No, I don't think it does. But I'm willing to give the guy props for taking those chances, and for making an album that speaks to his concerns and interests. Clearly he's taken the lessons of Norah Jones and Diana Krall to heart (you get more radio play with a pleasant female voice), as well as the lessons of the very Hip Hop music he despises (you got beef? Say it loud!). So I give it a thumbs up for being daring, for overall instrumental excellence, and for wearing his heart on his sleeve.

I saw this in the theatre and recently rented it on DVD. I have to say, it loses a LOT when seen on a small screen. This may account for so many people being unimpressed when watching it recently. On the big screen, it simply EXPLODED.

Amazing. And yet the Union endures! Funny, that's not what the Fundies predict would happen if we took "In God We Trust" off of our currency. This is a dangerous precedent!

The film (which I saw over the weekend) did an excellent job of evoking the period(s) in which it was set without giving in to the "greatest hits of the decade" phenom ("Let's see, this is set in the late sixties, so we need to have one hippy, two militant black guys, a VW Beetle..."). It looked more like a film that was MADE in the late 60s/early 70s than a film ABOUT the late 60s/early 70s. In that, it reminded me of the similarly excellent "24 Hour Party People" and "Munich." SPOILER ALERT! The thing I really dug was the way all of the seriously suspenseful stuff turns out to be red herrings (like Jake G in the spooky house bit). I also like the fact that (and I confirmed this after seeing the film) the Zodiac is played by different actors in his different apperences in the film, and that NONE of them were played by the guy who was the prime suspect. This really captured the contradictory nature of the various eye-witness discriptions. I also wondered WHY the SF police never considered the possibility (with all the hand-writing stuff) that there was an accomplice. You know...one person doing the killing, and the other writing the letters. Maybe they did consider it, but dismissed it. The film never mentioned it, though. In reality, of course, the film isn't really about the Zodiac Killer. It's about obsession and about the way the media can make us all feel like victims. The hysteria that enveloped San Francisco during the 10 months the Zodiac was active was prefigured by the hysteria over the Whitechapel killings in 1888 London, and would itself prefigure the hysteria following 9/11 (remember: Watching something on TV is NOT the same thing as experiencing it first hand).

Funny. Common isn't talking hate and sexism. Neither are the Roots. OutKast has had its share of "bitch" and "ho" moments (largely from Big Boi), but the fact is that Andre Benjamin's more positive message tends to balance things out. The Goodie M.O.B. stressed a pretty postive message, over all, and Cee-Lo has turned out to be one of the greatest Soul singers of his generation. Queen Latifa had a few things to say about sexism. Not every rap record is "Straight Outta Compton" (which is, indeed, a classic of its kind). Hip Hop is about as dead as jazz.