Kalo

As long as "Honey" or "American Pie" is on a playlist someweher that will never be true. ← "Honey" and "American Pie" are nauseating in the extreme. Though it must be said that Don McLean topped his own "American Pie" with his paean to Van Gogh, "Starry, Starry Night." Now there's a shameful performance. Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey" is indeed a nadir of the American pop song. ... "kinda smart and kinda dumb..." Bob Lind's "Bright Elusive Butterfly of Love," (I'm not even sure that's the actual name of this putrid top 100 song), surely wins the most needlessly extended metaphor prize, with such lyrics as these: "Through fields of dreams/With nets of wonder/I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love." And that ain't the half of it... I still vote for "Lady Willpower."

I bless you, George Jones blesses you, We ALL bless you. Happy Birthday, White Lightning...

Really?

I agree with both of the above-quoted Organissimites. Haden is a great jazz bassist, IMHOP. And Steal Away, his spiritual and gospel duet with Hank Jones, is a record that transcends jazz as a genre: one of those records that can appeal to a spectrum of listeners (both Haden and Jones, for one thing, EPITOMIZE poise)... A Haden recommendation: Silence (Soul Note), with Chet Baker, Enrico Pieranunzi, and Billy Higgins. A great showcase for late Baker, also for Higgins; and then there's Pieranunzi, who Francis Davis's liner-notes find to be reminiscent of Eddie Costa. Six tunes, mainly hackneyed jazz standards, emphasis on the jazz -- yet these renditions are fresh, clean, and revivifying.

Looks good. Bookmarked it myself. Will report back.

I have that TOCJ, too, and it's among my favorite Christy dates. Short but sweet, and nice to hear her in a predominantly uptempo, swinging mode.

"Young Girl" is absolutely Loathsome, but "Lady Willpower" is my candidate for worst rock hit ever. I missed it the first time around, but it was frequently played on the oldies station imposed on one and all by the owner of a laundromat I used to frequent. My clothes got clean, but my mind was forever soiled.

In another thread I described this contemporary style of oversinging as "a miasma of melisma." I hate this. Yet I LOVE singers as diverse as Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, George Jones, and Harry Nilsson who employ melisma MUSICALLY. Problem is, with most contemporary singers, whether they have a good voice or not, their singing is needlessly melismatic: just a bunch of show-off wankery.

Guston was the artist I thought of first whn I saw the thread title. I'm a big fan of both of these guys. But doesn't the best art speak to all times? (I'm not positing this as an amazing revelation or anything). I mean, come on, Bach, Ellington, Vermeer, Picasso, as different as they are, all captured something essential about the human experience in ALL times, as well as for their own

Either way he's full of Schaap. The BEST defense I've heard of Russell is that his book captures what the scene must have felt like during that time. This from someone who wasn't there.

Rhino reissued his first album Comedy Minus One a few years back. But I guess it didn't sell well enough for them to want to reissue A Star is Bought. That Albert King track is the shit. It's called "The Englishman-German-Jew Blues" and it features King singing and playing guitar in a call-and-response duet with Brooks. King sings about how depressed he is and in between Brooks tells a joke to try to cheer him up! In the context of the album it's Brooks's attempt to cut a track for the free-form FM radio market. By the way, the album was co-written and co-produced by none other than Harry Shearer, and features cameos by Daws Butler, Pat Carroll, Mickey Dolenz, David Geffen(!), Emmylou Harris, Sheldon Leonard, Harry Nilsson, Rob Reiner, Linda Ronstadt, and Peter Tork, among many others. The musicians involved include not only Albert King, but Oscar Brashear, Conte Candoli, Buddy Collette, Russ Freeman, and Andrew Gold. It's an amazing record for 1975, WAY ahead of the curve, anticipating what SCTV and others would do in the years to come. It might even be the first "Mockumentary" (or does the fake newreel in Citizen Kane count?). In any case, an unjustly unrecognized classic in my opinion.

I'm with you on that.

How could I have forgotten Django Reinhardt? DJANGO!

Seems to me that Starbuck's is a pretty bizarre place to buy music in. Or other chains like Putamayo or Victoria's Secret. Never done it myself, but lots of folks do...

Of course, I was thinking of the duets on People Time, which is an all-time favorite of mine. You're right, though, Barron's amazing on those late band sides.

Hey, I mentioned Monk (as did Guy Berger). But then again, I'm no horn player. I LOVE the way Monk comps -- it's compositional comping. Incomparable! I'm not quite sure that's comping, as Barron's basically the whole band there, but it is some truly great music.

Has Hemingway ever played with David Murray?

I'm curious about that myself, Moose. ← A friend of mine had this observation about the Modern Library "readers" poll: "The prevalence of Ayn Rand and Scientology books makes me think that the methodology for compiling the readers' list was open to a measure of ballot box stuffing. Both those crowds (do they cross over? seems like they ought to) are the types who would sit at their computers all night pushing "Send" on a ballot e-mail." Sounds plausible to me. Still, for over 20 years, the book I have most frequently seen people (almost always women) reading on the Boston subway is Atlas Shrugged. Last sighting was only a month or so ago, and I've spotted other Rand titles, too. The Bible is a very distant second.

I've never heard of this; is this an adaptation of the short story? (Uh...does it involve killing for sport? would be the give away question I guess...) ← You're thinking of the movie The 10th Victim, starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress, which was based on a Robert Sheckley short story called, yes, "The Seventh Victim." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059095/

Ellington, Basie, Monk. Jim Hall!

Well-known in Japan, perhaps. Too bad the jazz volumes haven't been translated. Are they similar to British author Geoff Dyer's jazz reverie, But Beautiful? (Highly recommended, BTW, if you haven't read it yet.) What's your favorite novel that HAS been translated into English, JohnJ? I need to catch up on Murakami.

BTW: I dig your Avatar, Hank!

Checked out Hoffman's website. Nice hairdo: both curly and mullet-esque! I'll have to check out his work. Any opinion among Organissimites?

Thanks, J.A.W., So, as a Berry fan, do I have to get these? What's special about them? Are they especially acute and detailed? Are they scarce?

Well, I don't drink that shit anyway -- so does that count as a boycott? Seriously, Guy, let us know what you find out. I'll investigate, too. The worst that could happen is that Coke tries to buy us off by sponsoring Organissimo!