BruceH

I just re-read some Peanuts strips.

Verve did an excellent 2CD collection called 20th Century Piano Genius. It's a collection of home recordings, before a small, attentive audience, done in Hollywood in 1950 and 1955. The sound is very good. Yes, yes, yes. Great stuff. The Tatum/Webster session is justifiably included on almost every top 100 best jazz recordings lists I've ever seen. There's something about the combination that's perfect: Webster paraphrasing the melodies with that massive tone filling the room like a beautiful fog, providing the perfect atmosphere for Tatum's fireworks and filigree. Word.

Indeed!

Is this any good? This is one to read. This book is the base of the movie "'Round midnight" of Betrand Tavernier with Dexter Gordon. 'Round Midnight is a brilliant movie ! And, if you haven't already seen it, read Paudras' Dance of the Infidels first. It makes the movie that much better. Francis Paudras makes the case that Bud was a co-inventor of what we call bebop. Paudras was close to Bud for several years and played a key part in his stay in France during the early 1960s, so this book is a kind of "work of love". I saw 'Round Midnight when it came out, but without having read any bio of Powell first. Dexter Gordon was very good in it, though it struck me at the time that there was quite a bit of Lester Young in his character.

Life just isn't fair.

I heard about this today on NPR. Sounded amazing!

Is this any good?

Sad news indeed. RIP.

Still lovin' it!

When I was a kid, I absolutely loved the Pink Panther cartoons. But was there only one season of them? It seemed like they repeated the same ones over and over.

That would be MOST artists right there.

Makes me sick.

Yes indeed...for me it would have been distracting as hell.

When I still lived in the Boston area I used to regularly visit the Mt. Auburn Cemetary in Cambridge, mostly because it's one of the most beautiful places I know of. There's amazing history there, too, as a lot of prominent names are buried there, and the varied sculptural styles of the stones from various eras is fascinating...there's also a tower set on a hill which you can walk up inside and get a wonderful panoramic view of the surrounding area, including Watertown, Belmont, Arlington, parts of Boston. Simply one of my favorite public spaces.

I'd have to say Monk too. Nice to find that so many people are like me, in that they find it easy to recognize a composition as being by Monk, not so easy to put a name to it. Except for a few like "In Walked Bud," "Well, You Needn't," and a few others, I usually can't say which Monk tune I'm hearing without some help. ...But I know it's Monk!!!!!!!!

I love this one so much that I find it hard to express in words.

Chirp?!?

Here's a game for ya: Try to make a fine "top five" using only names not on the list! Here's my stab---(no particular order)---- Sonny Clark Martial Solal Andrew Hill Herbie Nichols Mel Powell

One of the main names quite astonishingly missing from the "top 50" list. Talk about "clueless!"

"Refrain" is what I should do when this stuff comes up.

Yeah, that may be why I always thought of them as "intros."

But unlike Ray they didn't use the real singer's voice. Phoenix was ok but I wanted to hear Johnny Cash. I also think they made the songs sound a bit less C&W than the originals. Yes, this occured to me while watching the picture. But the only alternative would have been to have Phoenix lip-sync, in effect, to the originals. Having Cash's inimitable voice coming out of Phoenix's mouth would have been far more distracting to me.

Yeah, in some ways it does seem even better than season one. You have to have seen season one first, though, to know the players.

I just borrowed the DVD box from the library and zipped through the whole thing in two days. What can I say, every episode watched made me just want to see the next one right away. The change of scene to the waterfront was interesting, it was nice seeing the characters from season one in some new contexts, and it just kicked ass. Great series.

I'm with Moose. Especially since I still have a mental age of 24 (at the most.)