Tom Storer

Good news, Weiz, you don't have to go to all the trouble of a trip to New York. Just pack 'em up and send 'em to me! I'll be more than happy to take them off your hands.

Just to be a nitpicker, if a location is "near the town" how can it also be "remote"?

Thanks to this thread and Mr. Litwack's generous assistance, I've discovered Inez Andrews, the Caravans, and even the Andrewettes. Amazing stuff! So now I'm on a bit of a gospel thing. I already had the Golden Gate Quartet (40's recordings) and the Soul Stirrers with Sam Cooke. Where should I go next?

OK, OK, I'll bite... what happened with Jack DeJohnette in New York City's downtown Tower Records, circa 1990?

PM sent.

My speculation, based on no external evidence whatsoever, is that Marlo will somehow cross Chris and/or Snoop and that will be his downfall.

Who'd've thunk it? I remember being undecided and finally figuring, "This will just be another Wyntonian album that I'll think is kind of good but never listen to more than twice." Better than "Deep in the Shed" was "Blues for the New Millenium," which was much the same idea but a few years later and done with a larger group and a bit more bite. If I recall correctly.

I have it, and enjoyed it a lot--but I haven't listened to it in a while. I think Roberts is a fine piano player who has somehow never really burst through a Wyntonian self-consciousness, that tendency to take himself so fucking seriously. The thought that what he's up to now is recreating that album is kind of depressing. It was a good album, but performing the whole thing four times over a weekend indicates an inflated self-regard, as if the album was historic and this is a serious cultural event. I mean, what the hell? Move on! Do something different! Surprise us!

I love it. As for the Greeks, when they allowed Marlo to pay them "insurance," they were tipping him that they wouldn't take Prop Joe's side against him--he promptly took advantage of this and eliminated Prop Joe. Remember as Marlo left the Greeks after that meeting, they looked at each other and said, with slight contempt, "He's not Prop Joe." I took that to mean that, raw and unsophisticated as he is (despite his viciousness), they believe they will be able to rip him off somehow.

When she wants to rearrange some aspect of life (furniture, routines, whatever) and I voice reservations, if she smiles lovingly and says, "We'll just try it this way for a while and see," it means "You'd better get used to it because I will not budge an inch on this."

I see what your passage quoted from the book means, and agree with it, but this example confuses me. They put the emphasis on the first syllable of "strawberry" and the second syllable of "forever"--just as one pronounces them in conversation. The only "unnatural" thing is stretching "fields" over two beats. No?

I'm surprised to hear that, outside of some obvious eccentrics like Dylan, rock lyrics' phrasing clashes with natural spoken rhythms. I would have thought rock lyrics would take after blues lyrics in that respect. But I haven't done much research, I admit. However, one thing one notices when listening to rock music in French is that the French language really doesn't fit rock phrasing. I think English lends itself to an iambic pentameter kind of deal, with every other syllable accented, more or less, the same way that 4/4 popular music accents every other beat. When French musicians sing rock, they use the same beats and it's usually glaringly obvious that they're mangling their own language, singing with stresses that just sound wrong, in order to make it fit the rhythm. Not every song, but often enough to make it really obvious. So when you hear Francis Cabrel, who sings romantic rock that makes teenage girls dewy-eyed, it sounds (in comparison) really good because he manages to use elegant French with its native rhythms. Or maybe it's because it uses its native rhythms that it sounds comparatively elegant.

What the hell is Popsike?

Note that you are not required to say which party you support--the only reason to do so is to be able to vote in a closed primary if your state has one. Or if you're a proud partisan and want to declare your affiliation as a matter of militancy. In any case, if you want to keep your politics to yourself you simply decline to give that information. And, of course, having registered as a supporter of one party doesn't mean you can't vote for another. Cf. the well-known phenomenon of the "Reagan Democrat" of the 80's and the "Clinton Republican" of the 90's.

It pains me somewhat to find fault with Desmond, but this interesting thread (thanks, Larry) is helping me pin down some of my own "passing but hard to formulate reservations." Terry Martin's mention of "kaleidoscopic rhythms" and "chaos" do underscore what I think Desmond lacks: a certain hardiness or hunger, a willingness to do more than caress, in however lovely a fashion, his own undeniably alluring melancholy. Desmond's playing radiates the loneliness of the man who, in the end, is quite content with his own loneliness and finds solitude in fact to be rather cool and hip. The rhythm sections he always preferred were those that served as a comfortable backdrop against which he could approvingly listen to himself lay down the gorgeous tone and beautiful melodic turns that he knew he could spin out at will. Where Pepper and many others have a dramatic bent in which you sense them testing themselves, searching, risking, Desmond is one whose pathos comes from expressing some sadness within that one feels he not only knows and has accepted long ago but which, rather than vanquish or transform, he gets quite a kick out of observing endlessly, martini in hand. Hence the aptness of your adjective "masturbatory," alas. Pepper is out in the alley with a hooker he's in love with, Desmond is alone in his overheated penthouse. That said, Desmond's onanism is one I wouldn't want to do without! (Chewy, the Pepper links are in post #5).

More props for Nash! I remember him when he was starting out with Betty Carter's trio. She used to tell the audience, "Keep your eye on this young man, he has the potential to go all the way!" And he has. He was great with Ron Carter's nonet, too.

I'm thinking French companies are obliged to charge VAT and pay it on to the government for whatever they sell, no matter who buys it, but American companies are obliged to charge sales tax and pay it on to the state government only in those instances where the customer is residing in their state (or they are operating in the customer's state). Therefore the price of VAT is passed on to all customers in Europe but the price of the sales tax in the US is passed on only to the customers to whom it applies.

I saw them in the same time frame. I recall Corea getting up from the keyboard and doing some kind of dumbed-down flamenco dancing to the screaming delight of the crowd. It was fun for the kids, of which I was one. I was a big RTF fan in high school, but as I moved out toward "real jazz" most of the fusion stuff lost its interest. I still enjoy the pre-electric albums, "Return to Forever" and "Light As A Feather," which is iconic for me because it was a key album in my discovery of jazz. Stanley Clarke just released an album which, to judge by the review I read, is a throwback to his mid-70's solo albums. Hey, these guys have careers to manage. I don't blame them for milking late-boomer nostalgia. But I think I'll give the concerts a miss.

Great Doberman story, Jim. When I was in college I was living in an apartment with my girlfriend. One day she found a starving young dog and took it in. Because of its long tail and floppy ears, we didn't realize at first that it was a Doberman. Despite the fact that we were both living in this apartment, the dog quickly became hers. I was only tolerated. When I would come home from class, as soon as I approached the apartment, which was on the ground floor, this dog would start that "let me kill him" growl and follow me as I walked in front of two windows and got to the door. When I opened the door and the dog saw it was me, she would stop the growl but she was never friendly. It got to the point where I was uncomfortable being alone with the dog, although it never made a move against me. It was just... cold. Suspicious. I felt like I had to be on my best behavior. With my girlfriend, on the other hand, it was the world's sweetest, happiest dog. All this with no training at all. Purely instinctive. Before long the landlord learned we had a dog--contrary to the terms of the lease--and my girlfriend found a good home for it. For those months we had it, though, I certainly never worried about being burgled.

I rarely have drinks with ice, but when I do, I chew the remaining ice once I've finished the drink. Maybe I should join that forum!

I don't know the first thing about audio, but I'm curious to know what you mean by "identical if not similar material"--the songs themselves (the key they're in, etc.), the style? For example, the Massey Hall concert was a bebop quintet with alto sax, trumpet and rhythm section, featuring songs that bebop quintets covered often. I would think there has been plenty of stuff "quite like it" in general terms, so what about it makes it hard to find "similar material"?

Thanks for this, Jim, it's great! Any CD recommendations?

But if they subsidize booksellers but not chains or supermarkets, doesn't that also penalize chains and supermarkets? Six of one, half dozen of the other, no? I believe the thinking is that big chains and supermarkets have such an advantage over independents in their very size that laws such as the one in question will not do serious damage to them while nonetheless sheltering the independents. It's a question of Amazon making a little less profit or X number of bookshops closing their doors. Anyway, it's an uphill battle for independents even with this law on the books.

Greater choice is not the only issue--in France, independent booksellers are seen as providing a cultural service that is not provided by impersonal chains and huge supermarkets. The idea is that small bookshops are part of the cultural fabric of society, a place of cultural exchange and discovery that should be available to get people involved in books and reading. In France, that isn't quite the subtext, or not the only one. On the one hand, France, like many Western European countries (the continental ones, anyway), believes it is a legitimate role of government to support "culture" rather than letting the market sort it out and leaving it at that. On the other, rather than imposing diktats on the resentful masses, the French government is reacting to pressure from groups of constituents. Therefore I don't necessarily agree that it's a question of "ruling classes" meddling with "what the people want." For one thing, the "ruling classes" are elected officials, not hereditary monarchs, and on the other, "the people" in France want those elected officials to do things for them. A more accurate assessment is to recognize that the government is reacting both to high ideals (although you may disagree with them) about how to keep a healthy cultural life in society and to corporatist pressures from all sorts of professional and industrial groups. No politician here wants to be tarred with the brush of "favoring corporations over the little guy." In the current case little guy = friendly neighborhood bookseller and corporation = faceless giant Amazon. On one level it's politics as usual: there's probably more political capital to be had at the moment from forcing Amazon to charge for shipping than to be seen as helping drive independent bookshops out of business. Another point that I haven't quite worked out in my head that there isn't a single, monolithic public (I, for example, want snooty intellectual books and cheap trash). One public, people who are solely interested in formulaic crime or sentimental novels or self-help books or whatever, would prefer lower prices, period, because in any case there will always be plenty of those around. Another public, people who are interested in "literary fiction," want that niche to be protected because they fear it would be greatly reduced otherwise. My wife works in publishing, and she says there is typically greater choice in a French independent bookshop than in a British chain, which tends to support this view. They can just buy online, you may reply, where choice is vast. But while that's good for people who know what they're looking for, it doesn't duplicate the experience of being able to browse in a bookshop and talk about books with the person who runs the shop. I don't know. I understand the objections but I don't think letting the market decide with no government role at all is necessarily going to produce a better result than having some government input, based on ideas about the public good that in this instance don't contradict public opinion, far from it.

Personally, I like the law itself--which regulates discounting so that chains and supermarkets can't take advantage of economies of scale to put independent booksellers out of business. It's tough on chains and supermarkets, poor things, but it does mean that there still are independent booksellers in France, who play an important role in book distribution. Every quartier has its librairie, and booksellers are generally passionate and knowledgeable about books, can advise their customers whose tastes they get to know, and from whom you can easily order books that might not be stocked. It does seem contentious to count free delivery as a discount, since as I understand it the law makes reference to the price of the book itself, not the total transaction. But the intent is clearly the same: help small bookshops against huge online sellers, the same way it helps them against chains and supermarkets. Counter to free market principles, but in practice this law has results that I appreciate. If a similar law applied to the price of CDs, maybe we'd still have lots of independent CD shops--I fondly remember a jazz specialist shop from the 80's, now long gone. They're now few and far between, and mainly rely on second-hand sales. For the rest it's big chains, orders direct from the label... or Amazon.