Dan Gould

I was stunned when it came down to the two Johns last night. The Idol who at least was born for these times got axed. We can only hope the other twit gets it next time.

Not embraced? I hear plenty of melisma on that show, maybe not as much as Mariah and Christina but still ...

Speaking of Simon, interesting piece about him: American Idol Chatter Why doesn't Simon Cowell understand his own show? By Matt Feeney Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 4:29 PM PT Cowell: Oscar Wilde he is not When you look at American Idol's Simon Cowell, his buff plumpness packed into his fancy T-shirts, you might find another figure coming strangely to mind—William Shatner. More specifically, you might be reminded of the original Star Trek Shatner, who, even in early middle age, had to be girdled into his Enterprise stretch-wear. Both Shatner and Cowell are known for their histrionics: Shatner as Kirk looking into the alien heavens and tossing his head from side to side in B-movie despair; Cowell massaging his temples or rubbing his eyes in a hammy semblance of aesthetic displeasure. It took Shatner maybe 15 years before he began trading on his kitsch legacy by giving Kirkified poetry readings in cafes and punk clubs. So, with allowances for our tightening cycle of nostalgia and self-reference, we might give Cowell half a decade or so before he gets in on the joke that he is. Like Anne Robinson of The Weakest Link before him, Cowell has benefited from the weird TV conceit that, perhaps out of some sense of our own cultural inferiority, Americans should enjoy seeing other Americans derided by sarcastic Brits. And yet an indispensable part of the American Idol experience is watching the imperious Simon flounder in his own show. In the competition's early rounds, the bizarre comedy of the flamboyantly "bad" singers sails far over his head. He's like a figure-skating judge bitchily scribbling down low scores without looking up to realize he's at Wrestlemania. But more interesting are the later rounds, in which Simon tries to impose his own rigid ideal of Idolness—a dull combination of capable singing and synthetic sexiness—on the voting audience. And the audience, animated by its own far-from-elevated biases, rejects it. One vivid sign of Cowell's floundering: His famous putdowns, which—despite the stagy malice of the intent behind them—are toothless, indeed witless, in their execution. They are, in fact, more consistently cringe-worthy than the singing that provokes them. Cowell, who comes third in the line of judges, has even more time to hone the gist and syntax of his insults and these are what he comes up with: "It was like The Exorcist." "If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning." "You had about as much passion as a kitten mewing." "You sang like someone who sings on a cruise ship. Halfway through I imagined the ship sinking." "I think you're amazing ... amazingly dreadful." "That was extraordinary. Unfortunately, it was extraordinarily bad." It's one thing, and a fairly benign thing at that, to venture a croaking imitation of Luther Vandross or Celine Dion. It's another thing to present yourself as the next great wit-misanthrope, a combination of Oscar Wilde and H.L. Mencken, when your verbal dexterity is more akin to that of Regis Philbin. Simon's odd belief that he's a wit isn't the only fascinating bit of cognitive dissonance on display on American Idol. Another is that, on a show in which three judges purport to be tastemakers, nobody—neither singers nor judges—has any taste. It's not just that the judges are playing at being profit-conscious record execs, suppressing their own quirky predilections for the sake of the bottom line. Neither Randy nor Paula nor Simon even seems capable of a real aesthetic misgiving. Just once I'd like to hear a judge say, "You know, your singing was pretty good there, but that song, 'I Believe I Can Fly,' I hate that song. Points off for choosing an insipid song." When the biggest hits from the last year were OutKast's "Hey Ya" and Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love," it's bizarre to pretend that pop success has everything to do with competent singing and nothing to do with the quality of the songs. On Idol, the fixation on singing is itself so reductive it verges on, if not mechanics, then athletics. The judges occasionally feign an interest in style, but when it comes down to it, they want belters—contestants adept at loud, clear, identifiably melodic yelling, with vibrato if possible. Simon also clearly has Spice Girls on the brain. That is to say, none of the judges is what you would call not shallow, but Simon is the one most likely to size up a contestant who has just performed in satisfactory compliance with American Idol vocal standards and say, "You just don't look like the American Idol." Simon has forgotten, apparently, that last year's American Idol finalists, Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard, didn't look much like the American Idol, either. Or, anyway, he's unwilling to accept that this was no accident. That's because, no matter how reductive his, and the other judges', pop aesthetic is, it isn't reductive enough. The voting audience is animated by something even more elemental, more reptilian-brained. Watching the later rounds of American Idol instills in the viewer a subtle but potent type of fear—empathy-fear, stage-fright-by-proxy. You can't help identifying with contestants you've seen over several weeks, whose life stories you keep hearing in ever-greater detail, whose stunned parents and disoriented younger siblings you've seen sitting in the waiting room and absorbing the judges' criticisms with visible winces. And, when the contestants hoist the mic to their faces and begin squawking the opening lines of their song (even the good ones start off badly), you can't help identifying with them even more—especially the ones you already kind of identify with. That's why, despite Simon's preference for contestants who "look like the American Idol," the audience continues to impose its preference for contestants who look like America. At the end of one semifinal round, all three judges lathered heavy, insistent praise on La Toya London, an attractive-by-numbers belter from Oakland, and Leah LaBelle, a pretty redhead with an able voice and a model's body who defected to the United States from Bulgaria with her musician parents when she was a child. "You are a star," Simon cooed to Leah. The voting audience went along with the judges on La Toya, but they shoved the lithe, stage-named Leah aside in favor of Amy Adams, a plain, wan, country-voiced beautician from Bakersfield who, as Simon had pointedly observed, does not look like the American Idol. The thing is, Amy Adams may not look like the American Idol, but she does look like a demographically meaningful slice of America (or at least, with her beautician's dye job, like someone who does her hair). And, leaving aside Leah LaBelle's other alienating features, like the émigré stage parents and the porn-star name, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more resonant analogue for "foreigner," for the telephone-voting American public, than "Bulgarian." In the end, the smart money might still be on Diana DeGarmo, even though she was a candidate for elimination last week. (I'm guessing this was because she sang first on a marathon show, and since voters can't dial in until the show is over, they had forgotten her.) She's an irrepressible combination of Shakira and Shirley Temple from the town with the Dr. Seussian name—Snellville, Ga. With her Anglo-Latin ethnic vagueness, her perky Georgia drawl, and her megaphonic vocal style, she has all the bases covered. But don't be surprised if, advancing far into the competition with her, is John Stevens. Stevens is a redheaded kid who, with the innocent squinch of his pale face and his preference for Sinatra, appears to have time-traveled to his Idol audition from 1954. He's inspired a passionate following despite the fact that he can't, actually … what's the word I'm looking for? … sing. Indeed, his thin crooning relies on his retro appearance and his swingin' moves to maintain the pretense that he's singing and not just talking funny. After a semifinal round a few weeks ago, when it was Simon's turn to guess the audience's three finalist selections, he offered his two favorites (La Toya London and Leah LaBelle) and then, after a bitter pause, added John Stevens to his list. His spite was audible, but he guessed right. A week later, to the astonishment and outrage of Randy, he actually complimented Stevens after a comically undersung version of "Lately." "This guy," Simon said, "is Middle America." These were moments of insight, however grudging, into the real cues that guide Idol voting. It'll probably take a little longer—maybe a half decade or so—before Simon has an equally unpleasant moment of insight about his own hambone persona.

True, but the votes for the latter two options are implicitly supportive of "no", so the vote might be fairly considered not quite a tie as it technically is.

Now why didja have to go and ruin the surprise?

Thanks, Claude. Jim, I would not worry about this too much.

So where was this posted, Jim?

I think people should lighten up. And be reminded that the board allows you to supress signatures and avatars so if you are afraid of being offended, go into your controls and make the necessary changes. Maybe Jim should add that to the registration e-mail, so the soon-to-arrive diversity doesn't go screaming away.

You can tell the difference between good and bad remasterings with all that noise???? Do you A/B your discs in the car or on your main stereo? Sorry Paul, but all I can say to that is

Excuse me? Is there a missing smilie here or am I getting a rash of shit for no particular reason?

Someone, anyone explain to me why Freaking Quentin Tarrantino, that smarmy full of himself hack, is on the judging panel tonight? Someone tell me tomorrow what happened, normally, the atrocious singing would send me away, tonight its a man who should be returned to that video store posthaste. End of rant.

The reference is to Airplane!

Assuming there was some tax liability, getting a refund only signifies that you overpaid in witholding. The question is asking what your taxes were.

In my current job, my listening only becomes restricted when I am doing careful audio editing, and I have to concentrate. Not only does it not bother the boss, but she even returned from Brazil with a Brazilian jazz CD for me. And on top of that, I am now near the end of my second go-round through the 2500 CD collection. In fact, in order to spread things out this time, I think I will drop the picking and choosing and just go from A-Z. At ten CDs per day, that's 50 a week or about 50 weeks. Who said collections get so big you can't listen to it all?

Couldn't resist after Sangrey's Have You Ever Seen a Big Band thread.

Thanks for the info, EasyRider, er, Mark! Glad I'm not in the market for Think Different posters! Pathetic that this guy invents things like that. But he might get caught by careful readers-does Paypal ajudicate a dispute in less than 30 days? I can't imagine that they do such a thing so quickly-especially since they are now owned by Ebay and Ebay makes you wait quite a while before posting a non-paying bidder alert, for example. So anyone who reads his claim that "Paypal ruled in my favor" might realize that this isn't even possible in the time frame given. I would go really hard against Paypal to get this charge reversed. Another reason to use credit cards rather than checking accounts with Paypal-you can take it up with your card issuer, too.

Oh, I'd definitely put him in the top five jazz composers! Along with Dameron and Golson (and ahead of Ellington, forgive me but its true).

Mark, have you contacted Ebay? The guy is clearly a fraud. I don't know what ebay will do-my ebay disappointments have been limited to non-paying bidders and the occasional over-graded LP. Care to share his ebay handle? It would be a good help for other members. You might also inform him that you will contact local law enforcment-that might get his attention, even if they are unlikely to follow up. (That's assuming he's not in NYC or a major metropolitan area. But definitely contact Ebay.

Found it: Stopping the white wash Rahsaan Roland Kirk on TV By DAVID HINCKLEY Rahsaan Roland Kirk with Ed Sullivan Just about the time the cameras started to roll for the regularly scheduled nightly taping of Merv Griffin's show on Friday, Aug. 27, 1970, the phone rang in the television department of the Daily News. An anonymous woman said that a group called Black Artists-Musicians of New York, of which no one had previously heard, was planning a nonviolent disruption of the Griffin taping to dramatize its demands that black artists get some of the television exposure given so copiously to derivative white artists. Had someone made a similar call to Griffin, perhaps he would have been less startled when about 35 minutes into the taping at the Cort Theater on W. 48th St. a group of between 60 and 80 demonstrators sure enough did stand up and make it quite impossible for Griffin to continue. The demonstrators, who included well-known jazz artists Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Lee Morgan and Andy Cyrrile, blew wooden whistles and played various sounds on flutes and other instruments they had smuggled in under their coats. Soon they moved forward to take over the stage, waving signs that read "Stop the Whitewash!" and "Tom Jones rose to fame singing black songs!" Griffin, who had just introduced Larry Kert, star of the Broadway show "Company," shook his head and walked off. The CBS cameras continued to roll as the studio audience sat fascinated, wondering what would happen next. As it turned out, not much. When the protesters announced they would remain until they could talk with someone in authority, Griffin came back and announced that taping was done for the day. Since this Friday tape wouldn't air til Monday night, it had been decided to finish the last hour over the weekend. By now a dozen police had entered the theater. As the only apparent damage was to the taping schedule, no arrests were made - and, even as the audience was starting to trickle out, producer Walter Kempley and associate producer Andy Smith were talking with Black Artists-Musicians of New York, who had suddenly changed their name and now told reporters just to call them Lovers of Music. Their complaint, heard for neither the first nor last time in the music world, was that the "roots" artists of American music - jazz, blues, gospel and so on, a disproportionately black group - deserved mainstream media exposure on national shows like, say, Merv Griffin's. While jazzmen played 200-seat clubs, they argued, white "jazz-rock" musicians who had clearly gone to school on those jazzmen's records were cleaning up from recordings and concerts in much larger places - abetted immeasurably by all that free media exposure and promotion. The protesters also warned that paying all this attention to later-generation white artists distorted history because it crowded out the real, undiluted music. These complaints echoed arguments made by respected musicians in many fields, though the Griffin demonstrators got something of a "fringe" tag largely because of the prominence of Kirk, a brilliant musician who distinctly marched to his own muse. Blinded in a childhood accident, Kirk formed his first band at 14. In his early 20s, he began to experiment with his sound, at first by playing several horns at the same time, then by rediscovering forgotten instruments, like the stritch and the manzello, then by inventing others, such as the trumpophone, which was a trumpet with a saxophone mouthpiece. He was well respected for his skills, and his presence guaranteed that the Griffin protesters would be heard, not merely tossed out on their ears. When they did leave, after talking with the producers, they said they expected a spot for jazzmen on a prime time CBS show. They also mentioned they might visit other shows on other networks. Sure enough, on Oct. 13, now calling themselves the Jazz and People's Movement, they dropped in on Dick Cavett at ABC. This time the disruption lasted about an hour, ending when the Cavett people agreed Cavett would have Movement spokespersons on his Oct. 22 program. Meanwhile, they had also worked out a deal with CBS: Kirk would be a guest on "The Ed Sullivan Show." A widely circulated story has it that Kirk was the last guest on the last Sullivan program, and that this final segment ended with Godfrey Cambridge sneaking up behind Sullivan and putting an Afro wig on his head, crowning him an "honorary Negro." Actually, Kirk played the show Jan. 28, 1971, two months before Sullivan stopped doing live shows. Nonetheless, it was a memorable night. Kirk invited Charlie Mingus and Archie Shepp to play with him and announced they would play Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour." In fact, they largely improvised for 5 minutes, weaving in and out of Mingus' "Haitian Fight Song." It was instantly controversial: fascinating to jazz fans and widely considered impenetrable to almost anyone else. "The purpose of the Jazz and People's Movement was to make everyone aware there wasn't enough jazz on television," said critic Dan Morgenstern, "and now they clearly proved the reason why." But many fans said that even though the Jazz and People's Movement soon drifted into history, it had at least made major TV networks aware of an important issue. Still, there was a long way to go. Another widely circulated story has Kirk asking Sullivan backstage why the late John Coltrane had never played his show, and Sullivan replying, "Does John Coltrane have any records out?" As for the Merv Griffin incident, it wouldn't be many more years before TV producers realized disruption isn't a problem. Packaged properly, it's a commercial gold mine. Originally published on April 13, 2004 http://www.nydailynews.com/04-13-2004/city...7p-158794c.html

Paul, I second the suggestions that you consider a full Mosaic set before writing off the company forever. Remember that while the Selects are a good value, they are not what has made Mosaic's reputation and they aren't the reason that as you said, some "view Mosaic box sets with the devotion of cult members." The remastering (usually), the attention to detail, the LP size box in classic black & white, the photography and the informative booklet and the attempt to include all music recorded are the reasons why Mosaic gets so many thumbs up. Its unfortunate that your first purchase did not thrill you beyond compare, but you may disappointed, or at least wait a very long time, if you write off Mosaic and wait for regular reissues of the music they offer.

PFunk returns, just to insult us ... quite charming indeed.

Am I missing something? The link goes to a story about Toscanini.

I'd certainly believe that a careful shopper would enjoy really nice sound. But my question was the "typical" shopper.

This thought occured to me as I watched The Apartment tonite and saw Jack Lemmon putting an album on a little tabletop turntable stereo: We all talk about how wonderful original Blue Note vinyl sounds, back in RVGs heyday. But just how good was the average stereo back then? I don't know, but my guess is that the greatness of those recordings is better revealed by today's high end stereos, and that probably even the low-to-mid-range stereos of today are superior to what most BNs of that era were heard on originally. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but that image of the stereo in Lemmon's apartment got me thinking.

What's your connection to Horace, Adam? I like to think I'm within a degree of Horace, since my friend Sally White went to High School with him in Norwalk, CT, but I don't know when the last time was she actually saw him.