7/4

I grew up in North Brunswick, NJ. Looking Glass (Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)) was from New Brunswick, NJ which is mysteriously north of North Brunswick. Lenny Kaye is from North Brunswick, he was/is in the Patty Smith grp and wrote liner notes for the Nuggets comp. The 1910 Fruit Gum Company was from Jersey too.

July 5, 2006 Critic's Notebook David Lewiston, a 'Musical Tourist' of the World By JON PARELES Forty years ago David Lewiston decided to change his life. He traded a desk job for a self-invented career as "a musical tourist": a recorder and collector of traditional music from dozens of countries over a territory that extends from Bali to Kashmir to Peru. He has brought back recordings for the Nonesuch Explorer Series, and then for other labels, that became revelations for many listeners: albums like "Music From the Morning of the World," his ear-opening Balinese collection. Mr. Lewiston is not an ethnomusicologist or any other kind of academic. His guideline, he said, is simply "the pleasure principle." Mr. Lewiston, 77, now lives on the Hawaiian island of Maui. There he has 400 hours of music — half of it digitized from his old tapes, half of it recorded digitally — and 12,000 photos that he wants to archive, catalog and perhaps find a way to make available online. "While I'm still alive, I have to make sure this material gets archived," he said. The entire project, he estimates, would cost between $150,000 and $200,000. "I don't have it myself," he said. "I need to find somebody who's got more money than they know what to do with." He visited New York City not long ago to speak at the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea and to revisit briefly Greenwich Village, one of his haunts as a young man. At a Village cafe, he spoke about a lifetime of what he calls "creative stumbling." Mr. Lewiston, who is English, earned a graduate diploma in 1953 from Trinity College of Music in London, where he studied piano. He grew interested in the spiritual teachings and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff, who had traveled widely in Asia. Gurdjieff was also a composer, drawing on non-Western traditions, and his music suggested to Mr. Lewiston that there were possibilities beyond the Western classical canon. Mr. Lewiston came to the United States to study piano with Thomas de Hartmann, Gurdjieff's musical collaborator and the leading interpreter of their compositions. To make a living in New York, Mr. Lewiston became a financial journalist, working for Forbes magazine and then for the magazine of the American Bankers Association. He was bored. So in 1966, Mr. Lewiston took a leave of absence from the magazine and traveled to the other side of the world: to the Indonesian island of Bali, where he thought he might record some music. A photographer friend lent him some first-class condenser microphones and a few hundred dollars; Mr. Lewiston packed his modest mono tape recorder. And in Singapore, where his plane made a stopover, Mr. Lewiston made a crucial purchase, a cheaply built Japanese machine, a Concertone 727, which happened to be one of the first portable stereo tape recorders. Bali in 1966 was trying to build a tourism industry, and when Mr. Lewiston inquired about music, locals were eager to help him. In his 10 days in Bali, Mr. Lewiston sometimes recorded three groups a day. The Concertone, which barely outlasted the trip, gathered the first stereo recordings of Balinese music: the clanging, shimmering gong orchestras called gamelans. Mr. Lewiston also recorded the Kecak monkey chant, a circle of men singing hearty, percussive syllables that go ricocheting all around. Back in New York City from Bali, Mr. Lewiston found himself in a Sam Goody record store looking at a rack of international albums including music from Japan and Tahiti; they were on the Nonesuch label. "Oh, there's a record company putting out this sort of stuff," he said he recalled thinking. "Being a good journalist, I wrote a pitch letter, just addressed to Nonesuch Records. And I got a call back." He took his tapes to the office of Tracey Sterne, whose unpretentious title was A&R coordinator for Nonesuch. Her engineer, Peter K. Siegel, went to listen to the tapes and came rushing out of the studio moments later, saying, "Hey, this you've got to hear!" There had been ethnographic recordings well before the 1960's, notably on labels like Folkways. But most of them had been dry, scholarly collections, with brief examples of various styles more for study than enjoyment. "Music From the Morning of the World," although still a sampler, reveled in the sheer sound of the music. Released in 1967, it became the first album of the Nonesuch Explorer Series, for which Mr. Lewiston would go on to record more than two dozen collections. In the decades before the Internet, the well-distributed Explorer series was often the only traditional world music available in many stores. After Nonesuch curtailed its Explorer series in 1984, Mr. Lewiston's recordings appeared on Bridge, Shanachie and Ellipsis. When Mr. Lewiston returned to the United States from Bali, he worked for about a year and took off again, this time to South America, where he visited every country and came back with music from Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and Brazil, as well as Mexico. He returned broke. He had his last day jobs in the early 1970's, disciplining himself to save a third of his pay toward, he recalled, "never again having to do anything like this." On subsequent trips Mr. Lewiston recorded in Tibet, Kashmir, India, Pakistan, Morocco and Central Asia. "I just thought, 'Oh, haven't been to that place, let's go and see what it's like," he said. He also returned to Bali in 1987 and 1994. On his early trips his travel budget, he recalled, was often $5 a day. He found musicians simply by asking around. "Don't organize, just go," he said. Mr. Lewiston recorded wherever musicians felt comfortable. "It should be a party," he said. "It should be totally enjoyable for musicians. If it's enjoyable, it'll be reflected in the music making. These aren't session musicians. These guys are farmers, and when they get together for music, it's basically to have a good time. I don't want to interfere with that." He sets up his recording equipment quickly. "Especially in villages, people get impatient really fast," he said. "So I have a configuration that I can just plunk down, switch it on and say, 'O.K., ready.' Because I don't want to make them nervous by fiddling with this and fiddling with that. And the trick is — at least my trick — if I'm not happy with the way I've positioned the musicians and the mics, I'll just unobtrusively go in and reposition them and set the levels to what they should be. And just have rapt admiration for everything and say, 'Wow, that was great,' and, 'Do you have more?,' " he said. "And after four or five or six pieces say: 'Well, I really enjoyed that first piece you played. Can I hear it again, you think?' Rather than saying, 'Take 2.' " He learned another recording technique in Colombia. "We had a bottle of aguardiente, firewater," he said. "When the aguardiente ran out, the music stopped. So that was a lesson. But on other occasions I've provided too much, and the musicians passed out." His equipment has improved through the years. He now records digitally onto a hard drive. But the villages he goes to are not so isolated anymore. "All India Radio, which is the government broadcasting system, has stations all over India," he said. "Of course, what people want to hear are the Bollywood hits." "So increasingly that's the music that's heard and, of course, it's picked up in the villages," he continued. "So if I go into a village, it's like this: I immediately look for a guy wearing a shirt, tie and jacket, right? I know he'll be either the local doctor or an administrator or a schoolteacher. I say, 'I'm David Lewiston, I'm very interested in the local music.' " "I'll explain what I want is the pure traditional music," he said. "So when the musicians set up, these intermediaries will be listening, and they will have enough knowledge of the local culture to know whether it is really local music or whether it's a Bollywood tune." Mr. Lewiston keeps returning to Gurdjieff's music. In the early 1990's, before his hands grew arthritic, he recorded his own interpretations in a San Francisco Bay Area studio, and he wrote via e-mail that lately he had been playing the slower pieces again, noting their similarities to the Persian classical improvisations called taqsim. But he has no interest in the countless recent world music fusions, some inspired by the recordings he made. His albums are documented with his photos and with liner notes that he struggles to write but are filled with both historical fact and delight in the music. But his appreciation, he insists, is not intellectual but sensual. "The ethnoids," Mr. Lewiston said, using his joshing term for ethnomusicologists, "can't stand me. They'll review one of my records, picking every nit they possibly can. And then the final line will be 'The sounds on this album are superb.' They can't get away from that."

<b>Miles Davis: Still defining cool, long after death Jazz trumpeter's estate making most of 80th-birthday year</b> Tuesday, July 4, 2006; Posted: 9:54 a.m. EDT (13:54 GMT) ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- To say 2006 is a busy year for Miles Davis and the estate of the late jazz virtuoso would be like saying Davis was a decent trumpet player. CDs, a DVD, a book, a movie, induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and even a USC marching-band halftime performance are a few pieces that make up something of a comeback for the King of Cool in his 80th-birthday year. "One of the things that has been most surprising to me is just how iconic the name Miles Davis is," said Darryl Porter, the General Manager of Miles Davis Properties. "Part of our goal is to get a whole new generation of Miles fans." As music changed, Davis morphed his cool jazz into fusion and experimental sounds that later gave way to jazz funk and hip-hop grooves. This year, his estate is finding ways to reinvent Davis and let the music he composed continue to evolve. Remixed Davis recordings called "Evolution of the Groove," featuring Santana and the rapper Nas, will be released in the fall. Miles Davis Properties hired high-powered entertainment publicists Rogers & Cowan this year to promote Davis' legacy and the many events taking place this year. Porter came on board to run the estate in the past year. He knew the jazz legend and the Davis family since childhood. A lawyer and manager for others in the music industry, Porter now coordinates business and marketing for the estate. Requests to use Davis' music and image come from around the world and are granted by Miles Davis Properties daily, he said. In May, a collectors' box of the Miles Davis Quintet was released 50 years after the recording sessions. But the momentum that Davis created during a career that spanned decades hardly needs a push from a four-disc box set or the force his estate has put behind him this year. Sales of Davis' music have not slowed since his death 15 years ago. "There's not an easier musician to market than Miles Davis. There are so many different version of Miles Davis. People can plug into the Miles they like," said jazz critic Gerald Early, who has edited a book on Davis. "As far as an artistic commodity, he's very valuable." "Kind of Blue," Davis' 1959 masterpiece, still sells thousands of CDs a week, according to Sony BMG. Davis records that also are jazz-collection essentials, including the trippy "Bitches Brew," "Sketches of Spain" and "Birth of the Cool," have maintained similar stamina. Sony Legacy plans to release more Davis recordings this year and his estate is excited that Don Cheadle has agreed to play Davis in an upcoming biopic. "It's a great year for Miles, there's definitely been a renewed interest," said Chuck Haddix, a jazz historian and director of the Marr Sound Archives in Kansas City, Missouri. In comparing Davis' estate with another jazz legend, Charlie Parker, there's a marked difference, Haddix said. Parker's survivors had been in turmoil for years with litigation over his estate. "Even before Parker was in the ground his family was embroiled in controversy over money," Haddix said. "I think Miles was a little bit better at taking care of business." Porter said looking at the strength of Davis' estate today, it was obvious he knew what he wanted for his survivors and understood the value of publishing. But Davis' survivors have not been without any public feuding. His son Gregory Davis has written a book that tells how he and Miles Davis Jr. were not named as beneficiaries in their dad's will when he passed on at the age of 65 in 1991. Gregory still owns a portion of his father's publishing rights, however. Miles Davis' legacy and the eternal proceeds from his name and music are now entrusted to four relatives who make up the Davis estate -- his youngest son, Erin, daughter Cheryl, and nephew Vince Wilburn Jr. and his father (Davis' brother in law). Gregory's book, "Dark Magus," is expected to be released this year. It paints his father's personality as "Jekyll and Hyde," something other Davis children disagree with. That's not a side of Davis that's being honored this year from St. Louis, where he spent his early years, to Hollywood. A jazz concert was held last month in his honor here, where he was honored the year before his death with a gold-plated star embedded in the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Besides the Rock Hall of Fame, Davis this year was also immortalized by Hollywood's RockWalk (having already been etched a few years back into the Hollywood Walk of Fame). In addition, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington had an exhibit on Davis and Thelonious Monk in April, and a performance DVD of Davis will be released on the 15th anniversary of his passing in September. "He was always about improving the craft and moving forward," Erin Davis said. "We feel like we are honoring him by continuing that tradition."

34 is too young. I'm sorry to hear about this.

Does your family have royal roots? There can be a king or queen in every family tree, genealogists claim The Associated Press Updated: 6:34 p.m. ET July 2, 2006 Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree — hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conqueror and King Harold, vanquished by William at the Battle of Hastings. Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, and the royal houses of virtually every European country. She counts renaissance pundit Niccolo Machiavelli and conquistador Hernando Cortes as ancestors. What is it about Brooke? Well, nothing — at least genealogically. Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another. “Millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs,” said Mark Humphrys, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland. “The number of people with unprovable descents must be massive.” By the same token, for every king in a person’s family tree there are thousands and thousands of nobodies whose births, deaths and lives went completely unrecorded by history. We’ll never know about them, because until recently vital records were a rarity for all but the noble classes. Millions of descendants It works the other way, too. Anybody who had children more than a few hundred years ago is likely to have millions of descendants today, and quite a few famous ones. Take King Edward III, who ruled England during the 14th century and had nine children who survived to adulthood. Among his documented descendants are presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, both Roosevelts), authors (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning), generals (Robert E. Lee), scientists (Charles Darwin) and actors (Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields). Some experts estimate that 80 percent of England’s present population descends from Edward III. A slight twist of fate could have prevented the existence of all of them. In 1312 the close adviser and probable lover of Edward II, Piers Gaveston, was murdered by a group of barons frustrated with their king’s ineffectual rule. The next year the beleaguered king produced the son who became Edward III. Had Edward II been killed along with Gaveston in 1312 — a definite possibility at the time — Edward III would never have been born. He wouldn’t have produced the lines of descent that ultimately branched out to include all those presidents, writers and Hollywood stars — not to mention everybody else. Links to Prophet Muhammad Of course, the only reason we’re talking about Edward III is that history remembers him. For every medieval monarch there are countless long-dead nobodies whose intrigues, peccadilloes and luck have steered the course of history simply by determining where, when and with whom they reproduced. The longer ago somebody lived, the more descendants a person is likely to have today. Humphrys estimates that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, appears on the family tree of every person in the Western world. Some people have actually tried to establish a documented line between Muhammad, who was born in the 6th century, and the medieval English monarchs, and thus to most if not all people of European descent. Nobody has succeeded yet, but one proposed lineage comes close. Though it runs through several strongly suspicious individuals, the line illustrates how lines of descent can wander down through the centuries, connecting famous figures of the past to most of the people living today. The proposed genealogy runs through Muhammad’s daughter Fatima. Her husband Ali, also a cousin of Muhammad, is considered by Shiite Muslims the legitimate heir to leadership of Islam. Ali and Fatima had a son, al-Hasan, who died in 670 A.D. About three centuries later, his ninth great-grandson, Ismail, carried the line to Europe when he became Imam of Seville. Many genealogists dispute the connection between al-Hasan and Ismail, claiming that it includes fictional characters specifically invented by medieval genealogists trying to link the Abbadid dynasty, founded by Ismail’s son, to Muhammad. The Abbadid dynasty was celebrated for making Seville a great cultural center at a time when most of Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. The last emir in that dynasty was supposed to have had a daughter named Zaida, who is said to have changed her name to Isabel upon converting to Christianity and marrying Alfonso VI, king of Castile and Leon. Yet there is no good evidence demonstrating that Isabel, who bore one son by Alfonso VI, is the same person as Zaida. So the line between Muhammad and the English monarchs probably breaks again at this point. But if you give the Zaida/Isabel story the benefit of the doubt too, the line eventually leads to Isabel’s fifth great-granddaughter Maria de Padilla (though it does encounter yet another potentially fictional character in the process). Maria married another king of Castile and Leon, Peter the Cruel. Their great-great-granddaughter was Queen Isabel, who funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Her daughter Juana married a Hapsburg, and eventually gave rise to a Medici, a Bourbon and long line of Italian princes and dukes, spreading the Mohammedan line of descent all over Europe. Finally, 43 generations from Muhammed, you reach an Italian princess named Marina Torlonia. Her granddaughter is Brooke Shields. © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13621717/

...what a shock! I never expected it.

Truer words may have been spoken but I'm sure I don't know when. I'm a successful teacher of children, but it wasn't always so. Kids want to learn a song and more specifically they want to learn a song they know. I wasted a lot of years trying to be a pedagogue instead of tapping into the musical memory children already have. If they sing something it's because they like it. You can use the musical memory they have while slowly addressing the physical aspects of the instrument. Having said this I find 5 is not always a good age to start---depending on the child, of course. There are motor skill/attention issues and the smallness of hands to get around. That's when singing and hand clapping, etc. come in. You're keeping them with a song and you slowly show them how to do a simple one, praising their effort. They really need to like it so I smile a lot. It's not phony because I always smile around music----and it's contagious. But the physical/developmental realities are there and cannot be dismissed, and so I prefer 6 or especially 7 year olds as beginners. I teach guitar and beginning piano. Guitar is a hard instrument (as Benny Golson observed once to me at an IAJE clinic---not that I don't know that already playing the damn thing 40+ years ). So after knocking my brains out and getting nowhere trying to teach in 1st position where the frets are the biggest (due to indoctrination by all these damn beginner's books) the guy I work for gave me an alternative---and it works like a charm: Let them play a simple melody (Frere Jaques, etc.) along one string and have it written with tablature (a guitar system of reading fret numbers on each string) under the notes. Don't even mention the notes, only the tune and the #s. They get it and my whole practice turned around from this one adjustment. But singing, playing----everyone responds to melody and everyone has a musical memory to tap into. Great advice!

Boo frickin hoo. Guy nothing but fun.

It's that point of the party where they're feeling kind of transparent.

Not as long as we can bait each other!!! Yeah, I know. I'm just not feeling too patriotic today. My nephew just got to Afghanistan a few weeks ago and the holiday just makes me think of how fucked up the world is.

starting to look like a political thread...

It's on again, happy 4th folks!

All the best for Jim and Brenda.

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2006/06/digital_morty.html

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Happy Birthday!

extremely very rarely.

she does have a way with ice cream cones.

I wonder if she's still playing with his noodle.

the coin purse ran out of change.

Jaclyn Smith.

You left out impotent... like a limp dish rag.