Larry Kart

As J Larsen says: "A chord in which the notes are not played simultaneously but rather they are played successively." But then that doesn't explain what Medjuck heard.

What I wanted to -- and may still, if I can get my act together -- offer some close-up perspective about is why Imus is/was not "a nobody compared to what [the Rutgers players] are on the way to becoming" and why the schoolyard taunts analogy, very good up to a point, doesn't work very well IMO beyond that point. For one thing, "blazingly indifferent" is a nice phrase with fine intentions behind it (and sound practical meaning too, in the setting you describe), but it also ignores the factor of time or timing, at least in a case like the Imus one. That is, when a blow like Imus's has been struck (and by that I mean in particular a blow struck by a figure who speaks to millions of anonymous listeners), that blow by its very nature tends to place the parties who have been struck on a brand-new stage for them -- the "schoolyard-school" frame suddenly no longer fits that well (though it doesn't disappear entirely). And when you're in that new frame, placed on that new stage, while indifference (blazing or otherwise) can be maintained within one's own soul (at a certain price that you can't quite calculate until you've paid it), the act of communicating that state to any being or entity outside oneself is a very tricky proposition. In particular (if I can use that phrase twice in one post), you don't know what's at stake here unless you've actually been on the receiving end of a shaft from a clever radio demagogue. I have been (though the matter involved was not a terribly grave one), and I can tell you that as savvy as I thought I was about such things (being a member of the media myself at the time), I realized almost instaneously that beforehand I had had virtually no idea what I was up against now, and further that I had almost no room to manuever, other than to just sit there and eat some shit (which is what I did). The demagogue has virtually all the leverage, until and unless he or she is somehow displaced from his or vantage point or you just get dumb lucky. (I had one of those dumb-lucky experiences with a media demagogue too, and it helped me to grasp more quickly that this other experience, the second one, was in fact utterly different.)

Jim: I have some (I think revealing) close-up stories I could tell about how "the system" actually works -- in particular, about the media and those who use and are used by it -- and I probably will tell one or two, but not until tomorrow. In any case, while I wish I could share in the thinking that to my mind underlies your "The people are all of us" etc., the most optimistic words I've come across recently are "Shit, under some circumstances, can be re-cycled."

Jim -- Furthermore, who are the people of your "Power to the people"? If they're readers of, say, People magazine or one of its equivalents, then they're as crucial a part of "the system" as the Dobermans or their kennel masters. The appetites that are fed are learned in part but not only.

Jim -- I understand what you're saying now, but IMO you're over-thinking this by a fair margain. Once Imus let the shit come out of his mouth, all the Rutgers team had to do was not in fact be what he said they were (that was easy) and maintain a reasonable level of cool. As for asking them to somehow stiff-arm "the system" because they "could/should have been able to cut Imus down to size their ownself" -- well, first, "the system" already was at their door like a pack of Dobermans; second, it takes certain skills (and/or a good deal of luck) to bend "the system" to your own uses, and under those circumstances one would need to be saint or a genius to pull off what you say they could/should have been able to do; and, third, they were dealing in Imus with a fellow whose use of such skills was among his chief skills (witness his "I'm a good person" ranch for sick kids), however atrophied those skills of his proved to be in this case at this time. As someone said, here or elsewhere -- who the hell is Imus's P.R. guy, if indeed he has one. Getting back to the Rutgers team's conceding its "strength," I afraid that once you become the focus of a human-interest story in our world, there is virtually no way out or back. Not only that, if you do try to shut the door on the Dobermans, some of them will find a way to say ... in this case, it might have been something like "Further reporting now reveals that some members of the Rutgers team were in fact what Mr. Imus said they were."

Blue Velvet from the same session is magical as well. Absolutely. Those tunes fit Red's harmonic approach so well -- super-sweetness turning into ambiguous dissonance -- that it's almost as though he wrote them.

Whose "strength" and what "strength"? Not being snarky, just don't get what you're saying here.

The one Red Garland performance to get at all costs IMO is his nine-minute slow-motion version of "Mr. Wonderful," here: http://www.amazon.com/Rediscovered-Masters...565&sr=1-12 It's an absolutely insane piece of "trance music." Also the trio here -- Doug Watkins and Specs Wright -- was Red's working band, and this was the only record they made together.

I like this point of view from the Pro Football Talk website: FAREWELL TO THE I-MAN The Associated Press reports that CBS Radio has fired Don Imus. On Wednesday, MSNBC dropped the simulcast of the Imus show. It's a stunning development. On one hand, the comments made last Wednesday by Imus took on a life of their own, becoming a flash point for discourse regarding the state of race relations in America. On the other hand, similar comments from Imus have been tolerated over the years, and the chickens finally came home to roost. Still, just as ESPN shouldn't have been surprised that Rush Limbaugh acted like, well, Rush Limbaugh when he was hired to appear on the network's NFL pregame show, it's hard for CBS or NBC to say that they didn't know what they were getting themselves into. Another problem here is that Imus kept talking about the issue, bouncing back and forth between contrition and defiance. His best bet would have been to move on. (Or move out.) Moreover, we think that the rush to dump Imus was fueled by the influence of media figures and politicians on whose heads the I-man urinated over the years. Shtick or not, he was a miserable person, and folks who inhabit the public eye have long memories. Meanwhile, his only support came predictably from portions of the nucleus of "I-faves" -- regular guests who benefited greatly from the relationship with Imus and from the exposure his show gave the guests and the books, music, etc. that they were selling. Moving forward, who will pay any attention at all to Tom Oliphant or Levon Helm? Meanwhile, we hope that the African-American community will use this incident as the impetus for cultivating new leaders who will step forward at times like these. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have way too much baggage of their own, and it's high time for them to step aside for folks who do not have a history of racially divisive words and deeds. Me again: I haven't been a regular Imus watcher but saw and heard enough when I did partake to have felt from the first and with no prompting that "shtick or not, he was a miserable person, " even when he wasn't being blatantly/cutesy offensive -- another in the long line of the Neros and Caligulas of the airwaves, In fact his saving grace (though it didn't save/couldn't have saved him in this affair) was that his "grouchy old coot with a heart of gold (if you really look closely)" persona was at base such an old-fashioned cornball creation, one part Walter Brennan, one part Arthur Godfrey.

For me it was a bit of a shock to be re-introduced to the sheer, brutal lowness of this world, on the part of all or virtually all the characters, but I suppose I'll get used to it again -- I always have before. Also, say what you will, I felt a sudden sick moment of hope that somewhere toward the end of it all Meadow gets maimed or killed. Perhaps that's evidence that the show corrupts its watchers as much as it does its characters.

I know what you mean, but at least some of time I think that for Shavers that frequently surrealistic mix of styles was the point -- that at the heart of his music there was an impish, "let's melt some watches" streak.

The book kind of runs out of gas after a while IMO, but the part about Gordon's upbringing and her days with Alfred Lion is invaluable. About her politics, I'd be more inclined to agree with some of the positions she took than Dan Gould is, but even so, she does seems to be more than a bit of an air-head in that realm, e.g. snuggling up to top-level Soviet officials in 1965 in the name of "peace."

A nice, humorously boppish Shavers solo with Dorsey on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUbh4REDnC0 What chops!

Just picked it up from the library and am enjoying the heck out of it so far. Great photos. I particularly like the one taken in the Lions apartment circa 1947-8 that shows them listening to takes from a Blue Note recording session in order to pick out the best in the company of Ike Quebec and Mr. and Mrs. Ram Ramirez. The pictures on the walls and Alfred's recliner chair! Also, Lorraine was a pretty hot lady IMO or as far as I can tell. Finally, her account of becoming a jazz fan in her teens is exemplary, as they say, of a lot of us I'm sure. It's like the music somehow chose or recognized her as much as it was the other way around.

The exchanges with Hawkins on the title track of "Hawk Eyes" are one of my favorite moments in recorded jazz. The sheer aggressiveness, the wit, the joy! I had a chance to play a tape of that track, Blindfold Test style, for the young Wynton Marsalis in the course of an interview in the early '80s. Wasn't trying to trick him in any way, just get his reaction to a trumpeter who in his combined impish zeal and slickness seemed to me to be related to what Wynton at his best was up to then. As I recall, Wynton's response was very guarded, as though he thought I was trying to trick him in some way, so so much for that...

The answer to your question is here: http://www.carolkaye.com/ Google before you ask.

I've run into them IIRC in New York, the London Tube, and the Paris Metro.

As the first sentence suggests, Ammons et al. is a whole different type of thing than that Green Mill yack-fest. Nothing wrong with a fair bit of talking back if it's actual talking back and within the code of the scene. Right. And when the chef brongs a birthday cake out to a front table and the band IMMEDIATELY switches into "Happy Birthday to you", that's when you know what it's about. And one of the reasons why jazz stopped being a popular music. "Code of the scene": you all take this stuff much too seriously. MG All I meant by "code of the scene" is knowing within reason who you are and where you are. If that birthday cake were being placed in front of 12-year-old girl and her parents, and you shouted, "Hey, kid, nice tits!" you'd be out of line, even if she did have them.

As the first sentence suggests, Ammons et al. is a whole different type of thing than that Green Mill yack-fest. Nothing wrong with a fair bit of talking back if it's actual talking back and within the code of the scene.

Has anyone mentioned John Dentz? Based on my deliberately limited experience, the guy can hardly play. He ruins every album he's on that I've listened to, and many of them were otherwise promisiing.

You can see as well as hear Budd in great form on that Quincy Jones Jazz Icons DVD.

Hi Mark -- Been watching the Masters too. Didn't realize until your previous post that you were a fellow laborer in the vineyards where I used to press grapes. Googled you, and there you are. Is there an accessible archive of your stuff at the Free Press?

By "lazy-ass" I meant not that there was no effort involved in reporting the story but that the concept was a "lazy-ass" one IMO. That is, if the editor or the chief writer had thought much upfront about the likely factors involved (some of which I spelled out in my previous post), they would have realized that the results that they and Bell got were what one would expect. And the high-toned references aspect of the story -- Kant, Ellsworth Kelly, et al. -- strikes me as what we used to call being a "culture vulture." That is, quote who you will, but only in order to advance a line of thought that otherwise could not be advanced by you, not to pump up the story's status quotient. Do any of those quotes or references tell the reader something that he or she otherwise wouldn't know or that the reporter himself couldn't have figured out and explained to his or her readers? (I'm on the losing side of a long journalistic battle here, but I can't stand "quote whores" and the editors who won't rest easy until you cite an expert who says what you already know.) About most people not getting who Bell was and/or not recognizing (or even noticing) the quality of his playing, far more alarming and revealing to me than this rush-hour subway platform test are the experiences I've had in jazz clubs where people pay substantial cover charges to hear name acts and then proceed to talk at a fairly high volume level throughout the performance. Here, one would think, the "frame" would be in place, but for many people it obviously isn't, or at least not in the way that you or I might want it to be. Thinking about this one very noisy weekend night at the Green Mill in Chicago several years ago and watching the people around me, I think I made some progress toward figuring this out. For me, paying close attention to good music is both absorbing and, for want of a better term, fun. As for the talkers around me, they were of course socializing with each other and drinking and smoking, but they were not wholly oblivious to the music -- they acknowledged the end of each tune with applause and, so it seemed when I began to look closely, they also acknowledged the beginning of the next tune with facial expressions and bodily gestures that suggested they were taking in things like tempo and mood. But after that initial "estimating" moment, the rest of that piece (judging by their behavior) pretty much receded into the background of their consciousness, while to me, if the playing is good, it's this moment and next moment and the next moment and the next that I'm persuing and hanging onto -- with lots of pleasurable-to-me curiosity. Why people like me have that taste or approach and to what degree it's innate or learned is a question for another time, but I know that a lot of people don't have it and that some of those people use the art that I'm forcefully drawn to pay attention to as the (to some degree and in some ways necessary to them) "frame" for other pleasureable-to-them activities. That is, you might think that all those people at the Green Mill that night who were talking over Tim Hagans et al. would have been just as content if they'd been among a similar bunch of people at a bar of comparable nature where interesting live music was not being played. I'm pretty sure, though, that the "frame" that the Green Mill and, that night, Tim Hagans amounted to in their minds was far from incidental -- that if a band that didn't in some sense matter had not been there, most pf these people wouldn't have been there either. I might have tried pursued this further if I had still been a journalist at the time, but I decided that beyond the point I'd reached or thought I'd reached, I really didn't care. Besides, my head hurt.

I don't get it -- this means what about what? First, the operative factor probably is not the kind or the quality of the music Bell was playing but "the fog of a D.C. rush hour." Second, as Wayne Shorter once pointed out, many if not most people take in musical performances primarily in visual terms. If Bell had had a striking "look" of some sort going for him, he would have had more success cutting "through the fog" of rush hour indifference to just about any damn thing this side of an on-going ax murder. Finally, anyone who travels the subway system of any major city runs into lots of buskers. Thus the inclination of most people -- again, minus any striking visual cues -- would be to lump Bell into the class of other players of his type of music one encounters on the subway system on a semi-regular basis. P.S. F--- lazy-ass/cute features journalism. And I say that as a former journalist in what used to be (and may still be) called "the toy department."

P.S. One of the most marvelous examples of all this at work is the Piano-Violin Sonata K. 526 (I have Radu Lupu-Szymon Goldberg). In fact, especially in the last movement, there are places where the "naturally" singing violin responds to the singing artifice of the piano by in turn imitating the piano's natural on-off pulsation/timbral colorations. Also, to push it a fair bit further, you could say that what happens to the male-female pairs of lovers in "Cosi Fan Tutti" is a dramatic extension of the same (or a similar) principle.