Kalo

Took the words right out of my mouth, though I'm pretty sure he lives in Brookline and not Cambridge...

There was a brief time when cassettes were the best-selling form of pre-recorded music in the States (and probably world-wide). I never liked 'em myself, except for making copies of music I already owned on LP or that I "borrowed" from friends. I never really felt like I owned the music if I only had it on cassette. On the other hand, making mixtapes was another way of "owning" the music, putting it into your own contexts. So, yeah, I loved my cassette player(s) and the freedom and abilities it offered me, but I never bought any pre-recorded tapes, ever.

That sounds TASTY!

There's a DVD of the Piazzolla Forever band in concert that's wonderful.

Looking at that personnel list makes me drool... I'm going to have to get this one.

I was just poking around in the thrift store across the street from where I work. They have an LP bin I check out once in a while, mostly typical thrift-store crap, but they just got in a bunch of interesting-looking but terribly beat up jazz records. What did I find among them but Lee Konitz's Tranquility! I figured it was worth a couple of bucks just for the cover, but it also looks to be in reasonable condition, certainly playable, unlike most of the other records that were there. Only problem is, no working turntable at home. If this doesn't motivate me to get a new 'table, I don't know what will. At least I can read the liner notes without a magnifying glass.

The Beatles? "The Beatles" is just kind of a lame pun. But "The Police" is the polar opposite of what rock is supposedly all about. I mean, if they'd called themselves "The Hall Monitors," or "The Crossing Guards," then that would have been kind of funny. But "The Police"?

Toscanini's in Cambridge, MA, makes a mean espresso ice cream.

This looks like a must-have.

Anybody else here think that "The Police" has to be just about the worst name for a rock band ever?

Great theme for a show. I'll make sure to give a listen.

Roy Haynes last Saturday. Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts last night. Love those drummer-led bands.

Looks like maybe the place where Simon Rodia scavenged some of the materials to build his Watts towers? (Which are prominently featured on the cover of a different Harold Land album.)

Thanks, Larry. On the whole I'm a big Macdonald fan, but I'd agree about the repetition in plot shapes. I like how you put it: It was a doozy of a master-plot, though, if perhaps overly in debt to "Oedipus Rex" (another whiff of the analyst's office?). I agree that "The Zebra Striped Hearse" is a stand-out. By the way, that's the one that one of my favorite authors quoted from in his brief piece about what made Millar/Macdonald so good.

Nice session, too. Anyone know where the photo was taken?

I don't deny Westlake's expertise when he writes under his own name; I just don't care for clever/wry, and in some cases outright comic, crime fiction. In the same way, I like Lawrence Bloch's Matt Scudder novels but don't have a taste for Bloch's clever/wry books about burglar Bernie Rhodenbahr. BTW, Westlake under another of his pseudonyms (abandoned since the mid-1970s) Tucker Coe, wrote very well in yet a third way about a deeply depressed (with good reason) ex-cop, Mitch ... somebody. Mitch was almost as tough as Parker (and/or he lived in a world that was almost as tough as Parker's), but the Coe novels are largely free from on-the-page violence, and Mitch tends to think things out in a near-Nero Wolfe manner. Haven't read all the Tucker Coes -- I believe there are five of them -- but I assume that at the end of the final one, Mitch more or less rejoins the human race, thus resolving the theme or preoccupation that led Westlake to create him. Also BTW, one strange thing about the Richard Stark-Parker novels is that Westlake wrote a whole bunch of them from the early '60s to I think the early '70s, and then stopped, only to return to Stark-Parker in the late '90s. About a 20-year gap. And the late Stark-Parkers are very good -- the later Parker being a logical continuation (in character and life circumstances) of the man of the early Stark-Parker books, though if you went back and tried to figure out how old Parker would have to be by now (he's said to have been a young WWII vet in one of the early books), the present-day Parker wouldn't make sense age-wise. Also, in the later Parkers especially, Westlake sets himself some plot puzzles that are quite bizarre if you step back from them a bit, though they feel perfectly natural and necessary in the reading and are resolved in the same manner. You could say that the "poetry" of the Stark-Parker novels is in the plotting -- i.e. the rhythms of what happens next -- which is a really unusual thing in modern fiction of any sort, at least in my experience. About those plot rhythms -- Westlake/Stark makes an interesting contrast with Michael Connelly, who is also a "'poetry' is in the plot" writer. In a Connelly/Harry Bosch novel, typically you feel about 60 or 80 pages from the end that the plot is just about wound up, but it certainly is not -- and that is where and how a lot of the poetic "whoosh" hits you (by "poetic" I mean that there's a sense here that a lyrical vision or image of the world is being conveyed to us by this plot shape, one that is beyond our ability, and that of the characters', to grasp rationally). In a Stark/Parker novel, typically you feel about 6 or 8 pages (!) from the end that the plot can't possibly be that close to being wound up, but it is. And that where and how a lot of the poetic "whoosh" hits you etc. Taking the thread way off topic here, but I wonder how you rate Ross Macdonald's plotting, Larry. Poetic or just convoluted?

Another nice Gonsalves traversal of "Body and Soul" is the one on John Lewis's Atlantic session "The Wonderful World of Jazz." Terrible title for an excellent record.

I agree. As do I. but don't miss the one on YES! I'm glad you like the Cosmic Scene, BruceH. It was my first Mosaic Single, too. Four stars is a fair review, I'd say.

Just got this press release. Intriguing, to say the least.

I have to admit that I'm adverse to most Celtic music. Anyone ever see the Celtic Women on PBS? I was unfortunate enough to stumble across it today. Pretty ridiculous and far from educational.

I like country and/or western. Ignorant of "schlager-musik." I've come to like Irene over the years. She's far from the most horrible sound in the world. I like her a lot more than, say, Phil Ochs.

Billy and Lilly.

How about Kenny g's bones being scraped against a blackboard? Actually, that might sound kind of good. Like actually hitting him with sticks? That would be prettty disturbing, I guess. Otherwise, I really dig Matt Wilson.

She should stick to cooking, she'd never make it as a hand model. Funny you should say that. A few years ago, when Nigella first began making a splash in the U.S., I showed a picture of her to a colleague of mine in the wine business. I told him how hot I thought she was. "Yeah, but look at her hands," he said. I did, and they were the hands of a woman of her age. I have to say, I hadn't noticed her hands before then, given the, er, um, rest of her. I think I could deal with the hands... To each his own.

57! Too young. Not a huge fan myself, but I agree with those who appreciated his un-dumbed-down solos on pop records. I always get a kick out of his spot on Funkadelic's "Oh, I," from their underrated album The Electric Spanking of War Babies.