Big Wheel

BTW, if you decide to vote again, you can vote for my old high school friend and one of the great drummers of his generation, Obed Calvaire. (Someday I'll make a killing licensing the crappy demo I did with him on drums. )

Been doing a lot of cooking lately. Tonight's recipe: Pasta with squid, tomatoes and capers 1 lb cleaned squid, bodies and tentacles separated but kept intact 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 4 large garlic cloves, finely chopped 1 (1 1/2-inch) fresh red or green Thai or serrano chile, halved crosswise 1/2 lb grape or cherry tomatoes, halved 1/3 cup dry white wine 1/2 cup raisins 1/4 cup drained bottled capers, rinsed, patted dry, and coarsely chopped 1/2 lb campanelle (small bell-shaped pasta) or fusilli pasta 1/2 cup loosely packed torn fresh basil leaves 1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted 1 (1- by 1/2-inch) strip fresh lemon zest, finely chopped If squid are large, halve ring of tentacles, then cut longer tentacles, if attached, crosswise into 2-inch pieces. Pull off flaps from squid bodies and cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Cut bodies crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick rings. Pat squid dry. Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then sauté garlic and chile, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add squid and sauté, stirring, 1 minute. Add tomatoes and wine and simmer, stirring, 2 minutes. Add raisins and capers and simmer, stirring, 30 seconds. Remove from heat. Cook pasta in a 6-quart pot of boiling salted water until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup pasta cooking water, then drain pasta in a colander. Add pasta to tomato mixture with 1/4 cup reserved cooking water and cook over moderately high heat, stirring constantly, 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in basil, pine nuts, zest, and salt and pepper to taste. If pasta looks dry, moisten with more cooking water. Divide pasta among 4 plates, then drizzle each serving with some of remaining 3 tablespoons oil. ------------------------------ I left out the raisins, and didn't have any basil or lemon. It came out damn good regardless, and was even better with a bottle of organic white wine. Plus there was enough left for lunch tomorrow!

The man is earning his keep, then!

As an improviser? I confess that I know him a lot better as a sideman than as a leader...he's at his most adventurous on: Empyrean Isles Contours Speak No Evil As well as Free Jazz and Ascension, though I'm not as familiar with those two.

As a writer, especially in the '60s, maybe. As an improviser, no way.

The split infinitive proscription is poo-poohed by many grammarians. It grew out of a 19th-century attempt to force English to obey the rules of Latin grammar, despite the two being nothing alike as far as infinitives are concerned.

This recipe turned out DAMN good, by the way. I must have gotten lucky and timed it just right. Crispy skin (not for long after I tipped the chicken in the juices by accident), only a tiny hint of the heat of the chiles, and tender meat. It doesn't taste like Coke at all. This one is a definite keeper!

Tonight, mostly some leftovers (you don't want to know what) plus some Shanghai bok choy I picked up cheap, sauteed in some chicken stock and butter with garlic. But I'm also making a whole roast chicken with a sort of habanero-garlic-coriander rub invented on the spot (I needed to get rid of a few habaneros I bought on a whim), to eat for the rest of the week. I jammed a can half-full of Coke in the cavity to make the chicken stand up in the oven, per a recipe I saw recently. Supposedly the coke comes out and keeps the chicken moist.

I guess that's how it works. I'd recommend trying at an off-peak hour, when fewer people in the US are trying to get on.

I think Rooster is confusing it with FIRST SESSION, with Wynton Kelly et al.

The problem is that I have a hard time seeing how any determined stalker would stop when he found no Google listing. It's very easy just to hop on over to any number of reverse phone directory websites and do the exact same thing. I'm sure it couldn't hurt any, but I wouldn't rest easy either...

And now the 1966 set with Richard Davis is up. Crazy! The only thing better will be if any tapes with the 1967 sextet with Joe Henderson turn up...

I confess to being unsure of the meaning of this sentence. I guess the problem for me is that it's exactly as you describe it--"simply a tribute," in the very narrowest sense. It's a conscious attempt to ape both the sound and style of everyone who's being celebrated, with no other thought put into it. At best, dull. At worst, a landmark in egotism. I'll save my $18 and pick up the Booker Little records I don't have yet.

It's weird to me that Lion never originally released this session. Could he have been a bit cautious at first about taking a chance on Mitchell as a leader, and needed another great followup to persuade him?

Generally, when I use the phrase "I'd say," you can safely infer that I'm only speaking for my own tastes. Look, I like some of what Arturo's done but this one, more than almost any modern straight-ahead jazz release I've heard, is an absolute travesty. There's nothing new or inspired in any of the arrangements. It's just slavish, self-indulgent copycatting. A coaster as far as I'm concerned.

What do you mean? I think that he might mean that the last two discs are a little too cheesy for his liking. I do enjoy Boss Horn but can see how some are turned off by that last session. But The Thing to Do and Down with It are kickin'!

On this album? I'd say a forgotten trumpeter by the name of Good Taste.

I can't decide if I find it cool or annoying.

Indeed! Couldn't have said it better myself.

It's frustrating...I'm getting the "problem connecting to tracker 10060" error and I can't tell if it's a firewall issue or not. I turn off both my software firewall and my network firewall, and it doesn't seem to help. A search has turned up examples of people who say the ISP is to blame, for shutting off people's access to certain ports if they see a lot of BT traffic. That would be really shitty... Update, not that anyone cares: looks like the problem was on their end last night. About 75k/sec right now over here. Can't wait to hear it when I get off work today.

Any luck with downloading this? My torrent won't start and I'm trying to figure out if the problem is on my end, or if there are just too many people trying to connect or something...

If you are referring to Van Gelder, he remastered neither of those two titles.

Maybe just a little...it's my revenge for being too young to pick up most of the '90s limited edition Blue Notes! Mingus sounds mostly in control on this. It's the engineers or producers (I think you can hear one of the Erteguns from the booth) who are getting exasperated as take 26....27...28 go by...

These are not complete takes--mostly breakdowns and such. (I don't have the Atlantic box, but I assume it doesn't contain much of this nature.)

There are about a half hour or so of these out there, all of the title track, and they are really quite interesting from a historical perspective to me. I assume this was one of the very first jazz waltzes (or 6/8 pieces, depending on your perspective, I guess), and you can hear the soloists struggling to feel the meter for the first time. Wade Legge in particular has a bit of a hard time, but eventually does start to sound more comfortable. Very cool to hear them gradually locking into the groove. The last few takes feature the section with the poetry read over it. This was recorded some time before Max Roach's Jazz in 3/4 Time, right?