cih

I like biographies of old comedians - particularly British ones from the nineteen-fifties to seventies, particularly the ones with flawed personalities... This recent Hancock book is intended as a corrective to the earlier 'When The Wind Changed' which concentrated on the scandalous side

Horses for courses - I always though Ringo was doing just what he needed to do. He'd have sounded pretty daft doing a Keith Moon. But what do I know about drumming? nuffink. Watching all the old footage of the Beatles on tour that was on BBC earlier this year, it's clear how integral he was, even without the drumming!

That reminds me how much I liked 'Lipstick Traces': "...The desire begins with the demand to live not as an object but as a subject of history—to live as if something actually depended on one's actions—and that demand opens onto a free street." Very exciting for a youngster like I was! it's the only book of his I've read but it led to a lot of other stuff...

I've always liked em, since I was a kid and my mum played me their records. Some faves: The Night Before I'm Down Strawberry Fields Dear Prudence Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey Old Brown Shoe I never paid attention to the covers they did of the rock n roll greats, but heard Money and Dizzy Miss Lizzy recently and was surprised - because they kept the Liverpool accents, it worked for me better than the Stones and those that affected the American accent.

I really need to get more into stride when funds allow - love the stuff. Also Jimmy Yancey (vol 1's my fave but vol 3 essential too - for 'At The Window' - a lesson in restraint. The photo of him with Charlie Spand always makes me think, shame they never recorded Spand around the time the pic was taken - seeing as he's at the piano and all...

Never fear...

Thanks for all the recommendations - I've ordered the Shattuck book initially, because in fact my question (which I altered several times and still mangled) originally asked for an antidote to the writing of people like Franklin Rosemont and his Chicago surrealists (including Paul Garon)- and Roger Shattuck had a run-in with them in the pages of the New York Review of Books, so seems ideal. I really should have read this kind of background stuff at college years ago but always went for the primary sources, which is great but you end up with only partisan points of view, and it's surprisingly difficult to break away from that false ideal.

ok, relax - stop searching everyone... found what I'm looking for: Art Uber Alles

My 3 year old son needs to have blood tests every 3 months and we regularly have to wait up to an hour. When he was under 1, and needed the tests every two weeks, we often waited up to 2 hours. On occasion the junior doctors have been unable to find a vein and we’ve come away after an hour and a half without a test done, with him in tears and the need to go back and try again... but on the NHS they are understaffed and there are other kids on the ward with worse stuff so I remain philosophical and we play games and I get a couple of hours off work with him while we wait... BUT for myself, 10 mins max before I destroy everything in sight.

John Richardson describes Picasso’s ‘La Danse’ as depicting a charleston (the artist was presumably much more interested in this visual aspect than the music that accompanied it) - anyway I went looking for references to jazz in 1920s European art circles (just out of a 'separate' interest in both), I found this 2004 article...'Jazz as Decal for the European Avant-Garde' Can anyone recommend anything further that provides a comparison/analysis of these two sides of modernism and where they intersect or overlap - Or... even just something about jazz in Paris in the twenties... how was it regarded by the mainstream? Re. La Danse - the nature of this picture does change somewhat when viewed as a jazzy dance I think

Did a lot of push-ups in my teen years to the soundtrack of Taxi Driver... No 'Eye of the Tiger' for me.

Kenneth Williams was one of the great British comedians of the sixties/seventies - the only one who was in EVERY Carry-on film. Apologies for being a pedantic newbie :blush2: but he wasn't in Carry on Cabby - he turned the script down.

Elijah Wald's new page on the speed theory. (for benefit of anyone who doesn't visit the Blindman's forum)

thanks guys - after more searching all I can find is a quote from Tommy McCook: “Don came on the scene initially about ’52. He became very popular and was playing with good bands at the time. He was a member of the band that backed Sarah Vaughan when she came to Jamaica and performed at the Glass Bucket club. She heard him for the first time and told the Jamaican public that she figured that he was rated in the first five in the world. From then on Don lived up to what Sarah said – he was even thought of at one time as being the best in the world. His tone on the trombone, his approach, everything was so perfect. I considered him a genius on his instrument. Even other players of the instrument expressed this, and they should know.” Also mention that he was friends with Dave Brubeck after playing with him in Kingston. And a memory from Jamaican ex-Prime minister PJ Patterson of a cutting contest between Drummond and ex-bandmate Ernest Ranglin: "Ernie sent for his instrument and as the band played a tune called "Indian Summer," they dueled for nearly an hour, Don on trombone and Ernie on guitar as each matched the other’s portion. Everybody stopped dancing and retreated to the side to applaud this battle royal as neither would give up." Not that these endorsements from more internationally known 'stars' add anything to his worth, which speaks for itself, but I think it's interesting ...

The great Jamaican trombonist and composer, and Alpha Boys’ School alumni and teacher Don Drummond, who before he helped establish ska as the national music was regarded as one of the most intelligent jazz musicians in Jamaica, is one of my longest standing musical loves. Anyway... On the back of one of his Studio One lps it says that he won the praise of JJ Johnson, and all over the place you can read that Sarah Vaughan, with whom he apparently performed in the early fifties rated him very highly, as did George Shearing. Does anyone have any information (like actual quotes) on what these musicians said about him? Or is anyone else a fan? These Jamaican produced lps are charmingly scant on accurate information, correct spellings, correct track listings etc etc and a lot of the online texts inevitably dwell more on the tragic and sensational aspects of his short life.

How Low Can You Go? : Anthology of the String Bass (1925-1941) - Dust to Digital Dug this out and am hearing it with fresh ears. A nice genre bender...

Melrose brothers? Frank Melrose - piano, Lester melrose - music publisher/A&R etc, Walter Melrose - music publisher.... McCoy brothers - Charlie & Joe of the Harlem Hamfats (et al)

I just finished my first full listen through Devilin Tune this week - still reading the book - fabulous stuff (understatement). Thanks for confirming my suspicion that I might like jazz. (you can quote that on the front of your next box if you like, just above Greill Marcus and Gary Giddens ) Looking forward to part 2 of the blues one. If only there was a gospel set like this...

How about Clarence Williams' washboard bands? Also the Louisville Jug Bands - 'Philips' Louisville Jug Band' is a good 'un (on Document but probably on Frog too?)

The Justin Yap produced ska stuff was always great - especially the instrumentals. Also the pre-ska Jamaican R&B - people like Theo Beckford. Vocal groups through the rocksteady years - The Maytals, Heptones, Paragons, Sensations etc. Favourite solo vocalists - Ken Boothe (love the way he does vowels) and Laurel Aitken (love the way he does consonants)... Roland Alphonso on tenor sax - love his records right through the reggae years LOVE that beatboxy stuff they did - Baba Brooks' Vitamin A a classic for this

I think he was also really creating music for records - I mean with Patton you get the feeling that these discs just captured something that was there already - sort of a snap shot of a larger reality, but with Johnson you get a sense that he had the three minutes all worked out and that the drama was totally contrived (not a criticism). At the end of Malted Milk, when he sings “.. the hair rising on my head” - it actually makes the hair rise on my head (although I have none to speak of). Even that photo of him with the cigarette seems to indicate that he was totally aware, after the fact (the few years he has on the older guys is crucial), of this myth of the ‘Mississippi Bluesman’ as some kind of existential wanderer... maybe he wasnt but it sure looks like it to us now, and the fact that he never grew old means that younger listeners today never have the image 'spoiled' by seeing him on stage in footage from the sixties as an old man. In fact, all the other legendary Mississippi bluesmen, are, in the subconcious maybe, older men - even Patton, though he died was already older - or had something of the ‘lived’ about him... Johnson is a convenient stepping stone for modern listeners, because he was in some ways a few years behind, and therefore stands in relief against the background of mid-late 30’s Chicago blues singers like Bumble Bee Slim, Bill Gaither, Joe Pullum etc... so people tracing a line back through Muddy Waters to Mississippi or ‘country’ blues can avoid ‘urban’ blues by going directly through Johnson and then back to Son House, Patton etc...