Larry Kart

Probably not by your standards or mine, but here is one of the songs Williams wrote for Beatty and Hoffman to sing in "Ishtar." Can you not tell that it's deliberately ludicrous? *** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiN3SL7SZ-Q Compare that to two of Williams' more iconic efforts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VQX2Xn7tI *** The Beatty-Hoffman song above has these lyrics: "Life is the way/we audition for God/Let us pray/that we all/get the job."

Probably not by your standards or mine, but here is one of the songs Williams wrote for Beatty and Hoffman to sing in "Ishtar." Can you not tell that it's deliberately ludicrous? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiN3SL7SZ-Q Compare that to two of Williams' more iconic efforts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VQX2Xn7tI

"The Importance of Being Earnest" in London with David Suchet as Lady Bracknell. They played it as farce, with lots of mugging and broad physical business, which was unfortunate, but the last act pretty much brought home the bacon, thanks to Oscar Wilde.

It must be the Paul Williams songs you like. In the context of the film, the Williams songs were supposed to be lame, terrible songs IIRC -- musical banana peels to show how lame and terrible the Beatty-Hoffmann duo was. You wanted them to be good songs? Ish Kabibble should look like Cary Grant? Marjorie Main should fit into a bikini? Prof. Irwin Corey should speak like John Gielgud? If that's the case (lame & terrible) they (the songs) were a success. Did Williams write them that way on purpose or was that the best he could do?? I guess the movie then becomes a cynical success. I just never could give it that much credit. I'll stick with Ebert. The movie was a comedy (some would say would-be comedy) that revolved around the premise that the quintessentially innocent and hopeful Beatty-Hoffman folk-song duo (who are sent to or wind up in Ishtar, I don't recall which right now) was a uniquely inept act but that they themselves didn't know this. Thus the songs they sang had to fit that concept. Mr. Williams, for a fee, obliged. As for ther "cynical success" notion, if Williams had written good songs for the Beatty-Hoffman duo to sing, he would have failed in his assignment. Again, it was a comedy about two innocent, insanely optimistic nudnicks who stumble into all sorts of goofy trouble in a fictional Arab country. The songs should have been at the level of "Porgy and Bess"?

It must be the Paul Williams songs you like. In the context of the film, the Williams songs were supposed to be lame, terrible songs IIRC -- musical banana peels to show how lame and terrible the Beatty-Hoffmann duo was. You wanted them to be good songs? Ish Kabibble should look like Cary Grant? Marjorie Main should fit into a bikini? Prof. Irwin Corey should speak like John Gielgud?

Why shocked?

FWIW, that was the Villa Durazzo is that photo above where Julie is languishing in the heat in Santa Margarita, not the Villa Ducasse (whatever that is).

Roger was wrong.

I like Ishtar, too.

Arthur Berger -- he isn't strictly serial but is certainly attuned to Webern and was writing along the lines of the latter-day serial-inclined Stravinsky before Igor himself. Berger has an exquisite ear for sonority. Franco Donatoni https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nl1S4ZdcN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ykCVOnkgLA Bruno Maderna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-kPZgWL83g

I like the way she looks, too! Also, I take credit for convincing her to stop coloring her hair a ways back. The grey bits create a kind of front-to-back three-dimensional effect.

Lots of things, but let me begin with something that was perhaps negative but eventually perhaps not. When we got to London at the end of our bus tour of GB, which began in London with two days of cold and rain, I found that our second London hotel the London Hilton Metropole, at the junction of Edgeware Rd. and Marylebone Rd., was, as we walked down Edgware toward Oxford St. (a bit more than mile), located at one end of what was now virtually one long Middle Eastern soukh, the sidewalk close to filled with tables from restaurants where men (mostly) sat smoking water pipes. Further, as the two of us tried to make our way, we (but especially my wife Julie) were frequently bumped into and/or even elbowed aside in what seemed to be not so much a show of overt hostility as a kind of "what the heck are you doing here amongst us?"/"we'll treat you as though your physical beings don't exist" thing. (Julie BTW said that she was treated in much the same casually contemptuous manner by many Muslim men on the streets of Morocco in the '70s. ) You can say that this was more or less a xenophobic reaction or even a projection on our part -- a thought that both of us certainly entertained -- and I for sure had been startled right off to see that this soukh-like vibe extended to Marble Arch, an area where I spent some time in the early '70s. In any case -- and all credit to Julie the Gregarious here -- the next night we walked into a bustling Edgeware Rd. Lebanese restaurant, the only Anglos present, got to talking and sharing food with a Middle-Eastern extended family at the next table, and had a great time. Residents of Great Britain and others, feel free to wade in on our naivete or what you will. Post-Stonehenge touristy highlights included a ride in a canal boat near Bath that crosses a viaduct that's some 200 feet above the valley below, and a small town in Wales that just felt utterly cozy and relaxed, no tourist feel at all and great local ice cream. Edinburgh I didn't really get into that much, though there was some great art in the Scottish National Gallery. The Scots do bathe in and sell being Scottish to a fierce and perhaps near-delusional degree. Some perspective on this came when we visited Sir Walter Scott's home at Abbotsford -- Scott being a great writer and a very good man who of course did more than his share to shape and promulgate the Scottish mythos. Somehow seeing how all that linked up to Scott's personal life and the place he had built for himself clarified things a bit, but then this is a country that, unless I'm dead wrong here, is still governed in the so-called modern world by ideologies that go back to, at least, Robert the Bruce. Most beautiful single place probably was York; caught an even-song service at York Minster -- magical. London, in the midst of late-July's infusion of tourists, seemed at times in the grip of near-madness -- en masse selfie-stalk takers of photos being a particular proliferating bane . Concert at Albert Hall was a semi-dud, but the hall itself is a trip; production of "The Importance of Being Ernest," with David Suchet as Lady Bracknell also was a semi-dud -- they played it as broad farce for the most part, lots of mugging and silly physical business -- but it's hard to destroy this play completely, and the final act was effective. A long walk through Hyde Park on a perfect warm day was a joy.

I'll need to get my head together first

... in what may have been a 50 m.p.h. gale. A few days earlier, in the Villa Ducase in Santa Margarita, Italy, at about 90 degrees. After buying four great scarves from her favorite vendor at the Rapallo bazaar, who remembered her from prior years.

This Vuillard at the National Gallery, "Madame Wormser and Her Children," also was a mind blower:

A less than enthusiastic response to Spanyi from a knowledgeble fellow: http://www.musica-dei-donum.org/cd_reviews/BrilliantClassics_94849_BIS_CD1787_CD1957.html This extensive site is worth a long visit; Johann Van Veen has never led me wrong so far that I can recall, either in his enthusiasms or his demurrals.

Just got back from London, where I paid my first visit to the Wallace Collection. Wow. This "Cupid and Pysche" from the Collection just blew my mind: http://www.wallacecollection.org/whatson/treasure/74 My close-up is below.

Ordered the Wein in Mexico single (with Braff, Pee Wee and Bud Freeman) and the Clifford Jordan/Strata East box.

Thanks Larry. I'll check 'em out! Yes indeed on "Metamorphosis" and on "Thingin'"! There's another very good early one pairing Friedman with Attila Zoller released under the guitarist's name, "The Horizon Beyond" (Mercury, rec. 1965, CD reissue on ACT, probably quite OOP). Other good ones include "Invitation" (Progressive, 1978) in trio, the solo "I Hear a Rhapsody" (Stash, 1984), the trio "Almost Everything" (Steeplechase, 1995) or the more recent solo album "From A to Z" (ACT, 2005), which is an hommage to Attila Zoller. If you want to hear him in a band with horns, go for "Hot Pepper and Knepper" (Progressive, 1978) in quintet with Pepper Adams and Jimmy Knepper. I guess as a general recommendation I would just say: don't stay away from later recordings, don't restrict yourself on the early ones just becasue they're on Riverside and look like "classics" - he became better later on! But the two with Zoller (there's a third, "Dreams and Explorations", I think the one recorded first of the three, not half bad either) are indeed very good! I've not heard "My Favorite Things" yet, guess I'll have to get more Don Friedman anyway, sooner or later ... Yes, Friedman got better over the years, or at least different. The early "Circle Waltz" is for some the epitome of modal foo-foo, but for me its genuineness is seductive and moving; Friedman really felt this music.

Something fun, I hope.

FWIW. Save me a place at the table.

Don Friedman -- definitely. Here are some very good ones, but I don't know of a Friedman recording that is less than that (too bad "Thingin'" with Konitz [the leader] and Zolllar is OOP and pricey, but it seems to be there as MP3 files): http://www.amazon.com/Metamorphosis-Don-Friedman/dp/B00000FXOG/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1436972925&sr=1-2&keywords=don+friedman http://www.amazon.com/Circle-Waltz-Don-Friedman/dp/B000000ZAN/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1436972925&sr=1-3&keywords=don+friedman http://www.amazon.com/Favorite-Things-Don-Trio-Friedman/dp/B0002VERRE/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1436972925&sr=1-1&keywords=don+friedman http://www.amazon.com/Thingin-Konitz-Friedman-Attila-Zoller/dp/B00YBL0FGS/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1436973085&sr=1-3&keywords=don+friedman+lee+konitz

Very much admire Wofford. A heck of a player, and he also makes fine, carefully put together records.

My late friend Bob Wright -- forgotten mostly because there never was much of his work available on record, etc. A CD of his work is planned to emerge sooner rather than later on Delmark. Some years ago, Terry Waldo put out a superb cassette of Wright playing rags and stride piano. If you can find a copy, you will be blessed. Bob also was a uniquely "modern" player, out of Tristano and Bud Powell. Closest resemblance to this side of Wright probably would be the early playing of his high school years friend Denny Zeitlin. Interesting but almost totally forgotten -- Billy Wallace, who appears most notably IIRC on Max Roach's "Jazz in 3/4 Time." Wallace had his own two-handed thing -- not locked hands but parallel lines in bass and treble registers -- and was just darn good in general. Also, Chris Anderson. Known now, if he is that much at all, as a key early influence on Herbie Hancock, but he was MUCH more than that, a harmonic wizard. Another Chicago master, Jodie Christian.

Tristano's "Line-Up" -- good grief! Also (less well known) Warne Marsh's solo on "Subconscious-Lee" on "All Music" (Nessa) -- almost two choruses worth of what is more or less a single linear thought that's extended and extended and extended. Afterwards IIRC Warne said that it was the best he'd ever played on that piece/that chord sequence ("What Is This Thing Called Love?"), which he must have played on at least a thousand times, maybe many more than that.