7/4

Ask for Manny and be very difficult with him.

Same here. I like On the Corner, I wouldn't mind hearing more. That's all, I listen to plenty other music.

Sell 'em off and spend it before he dies.

The first cut is Lungs and now I find out many years later that was the nickname of Don Alias.

There's where he fucked up. Beer doesn't work, vodka helps you focus early in the day.

What a beautiful album. I first bought this in the late '70's on safari looking for Jan Hammer discs at Golden Disc on Bleeker St. The cuts where he's playing organ smoke and having DeJohnette on board sure help move things along. Those were the days...DeJohnette and Abercrombie still kick ass, but I wish they could get together for a couple of discs where they revisited that analog sound. Hammer could go back to the Mini Moog, Hammond & Rhodes that made him a legend.

Isn't that from AAJ?

Whatta hoot! I haven't seen this in years...

I was just thinking the same thing this morning. CD Universe doesn't even list it. Jazzmataz just says it's coming out this year.

Louvre Story Hanks and Howard turn bestselling Christian skullduggery into long-winded History Channel special by Michael Atkinson, Village Voice May 18th, 2006 4:54 PM Stuffed with book learnin', worshipful of scholarship, queasy about violent action, and motored by anagrams and Riddler-style brainteasers, the obligatory film incarnation of The Da Vinci Code is something of a locker-stuffed nerd in Blockbuster High School. Studiously faithful to the ubiquitous bestseller, Ron Howard's film is uniquely clotted with history and mythology for a bankrolling summer movie, a form virtually defined by a gape-mouthed ignorance of both. If only it were allowed to be merely a cheesy romp, an Indy Jones movie with more sophisticated stereotypes and far less humor. But apparently this is no mere pop novel-turned-high-hat megaplex product. Even satisfied readers of Dan Brown's Christian skullduggery may be surprised by the gravitas with which this franchise is being regarded—in the week rolling up to its release, newspapers dissected the book's high-flying theses yet again as if they were historical assertions in need of debunking. Advance reviews burst early like hand-jobbed teenagers, and incredulous BBC commentators broke the story of the film's "ordinariness"—as if they thought it was destined to be a genuine revelation. Concerns about sectarian violence may keep the film from many Arab theaters, and cries of sacrilege have been renewed, as if by command of Brown's publicity team. Da Vinci Code coffee table volumes, board games, spin-offs, retorts, T-shirts, and coffee mugs continue to clutter bookstores, while the Vatican called for a boycott sight unseen, lending Brown's conspiracy theories cultural weight he couldn't buy for a billion bucks. The resulting irony is thick as a brick, as we're faced with a populace, ordinarily disinterested in historical matters, who are suddenly paying far too much serious attention to the cryptology of the deep Christian past. Even star/coif victim Tom Hanks is cynically sensible about the hubbub—or is he brownnosing the devout?—when he told The Evening Standard that the film's story "is filled with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense." Brown might quibble, but Hanks is right—the Da Vinci Code movie is old-school skylarking, pulling monk-chant tropes out of The Omen and talking up theories of symbology, Jesus biography, and Crusades espionage that have loitered in fringe academia for decades. (Robert Graves's The White Goddess danced over and disposed of this pagan vs. apostolic material in 1948.) For the first hour, at least, it's the sort of movie in which the hero is told by a stranger, "You're in grave danger." It may've been the 80th or 90th time I've heard that line, and I succumbed to a pang of matinee joy. It didn't last. A plot synopsis would be redundant for many and scandalous for some; let's leave it with Hanks's semiotic historian being confronted by a Parisian cop (during a book signing!) to help uncode messages left beside a murdered body in the Louvre. From there, he careens (in a single day, mind you) through a nefarious plot involving Opus Dei, the Crusades, the significance of the Star of David, the secret legacy of Mary Magdalene, and a psychotic, self-flagellating albino monk (Paul Bettany) whose idea of being inconspicuous is to stalk the banks of the Seine in a cowl. Jungians will be snoring by the second act, such are the elementary-grade explanations for religious signs and occult motifs. As a thriller, Howard's movie is 2.5 hours of clue-finding, plus explanation, plus police pulling up outside. Hanks's rather testy bookworm has absolutely no third dimension, but Audrey Tautou's nurturing, code-experienced civilian has too much baggage—helpful flashbacks pop in at the drop of a gospel and often digitally occupy space with the contemporary characters. (A half-remembered glimpse of cabalistic sex ritual scans like an outtake from Eyes Wide Shut.) The juice that made Brown a magnate doesn't begin to flow until Ian McKellen, as an eccentric academic on a Grail quest, shows up with his capable jowls packed with exposition. The book may've magnetized readers with explications of Christian lore that draws too much uninterrogated devotion as it is, but the movie ends up feeling like a long-winded History Channel special with movie stars and car chases. Without the 40 million books already sold, this overpuzzled hogwash—which, it should be rationally said, is no less risible than the Christian dogma it disputes—might've commanded the presence of Scott Bakula and gone straight to video. Overshadowed by its own marketing hurricane and popular rage, Code struggles for significance as a movie experience and flies a weak flag as a provocation.

Now there's a reason to run out and see the movie.

I read it, borrowed from a friend a few years ago. I really enjoyed it. I don't think I'll rush out and see the movie, but eventually I guess I'll check it out. I also read Angels and Demons, but it wasn't as good.

Pharoah Sanders, "Village of the Pharoahs" & Alice Coltrane, "Huntington Ashram Monastery" I bought as imports from Japan. Alice Coltrane, "World Galaxy" I'll pickup.

Joachim Kühn

Seems like the they're getting an early start on Jazz Profiles until 7 p.m. edst. edit for time and photo.

Happy Birthday David!

What he said.

It's a damm shame I never got this on CD, now it's out of print.

Sort of like the GUI. Didn't he lift that from Xerox? Or was that the mouse?

now there's innovation and marketing.

like sheep.

Recent acquisitions: Abercrombie, John - Class Trip Abercrombie, John - Timeless Bruford, Bill - Earthworks Underground Orchestra Burt, Warren - The Animation of Lists and the Archytan Transpositions Chambers, Paul - Mosaic Select DeJohnette, Jack w/Bill Frisell - The Elephant Sleeps But Still Remembers Dreyblatt, Arnold - Live at Federal Hall Nat Memorial, 1981 Eno, Brian & David Byrne - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts Feldman, Morton - Something Wild: Music for Film Gillan, Ian - Gillan's Inn Lentz, Daniel - On The Leopard Altar Little Willies, the - the Little Willies Massacre - Killing Time (reissue) Mclean, Jackie w/ Ornette Coleman - Old & New Gospel Patton, John - Mosaic Select Root Doctor - Been a Long Time Coming Scelsi, Giacinto - The Piano Works 3 Shostakovich, Dmitri - The String Quartets Skeleton Crew - Learn to Talk/the Country of Blinds Soft Machine - Floating World Live Stenson, Bobo - Goodbye Towner, Ralph - Time Line Trower, Robin - Another Day Blues ZZ Top - Fandango (reissue) ZZ Top - Tres Hombres (reissue)