ghost of miles

Been revisiting Elliott's music the past couple of days (and even more has surfaced since this thread's most active years) and finding that it resonates with me as powerfully as ever. This morning I watched an entire hour-long October 2000 set from the Figure 8 tour, about two weeks before I saw him at the Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky. While the Southgate performance was fine (he hadn't gone off the rails yet.. that happened almost immediately after this tour ended), he seems more on for this show, and there are great electric full-band versions of several of his acoustic-based songs. Video/audio quality is not necessarily great, but I actually often prefer "lo-fi" fan videos of shows as opposed to pro shots... they give me a more visceral, you-are-there vibe. At the very end there's a nice clip of him signing a woman's guitar and tuning it for her before he boards his tour bus. (The venue was Howlin' Wolf in New Orleans... ah, for the days of attending live music events.)

He was excellent in First Blood as well:

Wasn’t that part of the Tristano teaching method—having his students sing notable jazz solos?

Just remembered that Konitz did a stint with Stan Kenton's Innovations orchestra in the early 1950s as well. (Was that the gig that supposedly caused friction between him and Tristano?) Damn, what a discography.

We're now going to re-air this next week in light of Lee's passing, but bumping it today in memory: Lee Konitz: The Verve Years

Brand new book from historian Mike Davis, whose previous book City Of Quartz has become a benchmark among Los Angeles histories:

Surely one of the last surviving members, if not the last, of Claude Thornhill's late-1940s orchestra? And one of the few alto players from that era to set a flight course different from Bird's, though that was just the beginning of an astonishingly original career. My first discographical stop today will probably be the Atlantic sessions that Larry annotated so splendidly for the Mosaic Tristano/Konitz/Marsh set. He sure did leave us a wealth of wonderful music to enjoy. Also a recommendation for this book: Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art

Similar situation with a beloved local bookstore here, in that the owner also owns the building--hope that makes it more likely that she'll be able to ride it out. Problem with starting up the country again, pre-vaccine development and distribution (still a year away, it seems) is that we can't make people go out and shop again, visit stores/restaurants/bars, stay in hotels, hold conventions, go to ballgames, etc. Most of the people I've talked to--friends and co-workers--feel very wary of participating in anything, commerce or otherwise, that requires close proximity to others in any number. (Their assumption, which I share and believe is not groundless, is that the virus is far more widespread than testing indicates, given how low the proportion of tests to the total population is.) It's a real quandary. We've got to live somehow, and living inevitably requires commercial transactions and an active economy. But I don't foresee anything close to a return to normal economic activity once the shelter-in-place restrictions, guidelines, or whatever they are in one's city or state are lifted. I like what the northeast governors are doing, trying to coordinate a sort of "rolling re-entry," but most people's hunker-down psychology is not going to change much IMO until a vaccine's been developed. Continuing to read more and more stories about people younger than 50 and without pre-existing conditions dying from this thing. Anyway, sorry--above is probably more appropriate for the general COVID-19 thread. Glad that City Lights will apparently endure for awhile longer. Hope we can all say the same for the rest of us.

Well, you know us, we like to jaw about all manner of things! Sounds as if City Lights will be OK for the time being. I’m still worried about similar small/independent stores and establishments that don’t have the kind of global reputation and recognition that City Lights has and may not be able to attract enough needed support. Trying to do what I can to still give some business to Landlocked Music here in Bloomington and help to others that are unable to offer any kind of inventory for sale right now. Not a proprietor, so I’m not really clued in to how much the loan legislation that Congress has passed is going to provide in the way of assistance.

Bit of a shocker, though he's taken a backseat to Hal in recent years. Not COVID-19 related, apparently. However, the death of 48-year-old NY Post sports photographer Anthony Causi was: New York sports figures share in grieving over death of 48-year-old NY Post sports photographer Anthony Causi

That's such a great film, Dmitry! I need to watch it again. There's a new documentary about NYC bookstores that my girlfriend and I were hoping to catch on the arthouse circuit sometime later this year. That won't be happening now, but Coolidge Corner's virtual screening room will be offering streaming rentals for it starting this Friday, so I think we'll be choosing that option for our weekend movie date:

I think my dentist is on a similar policy right now--emergency work only. Just rescheduled my six-month cleaning appointment from this month to July, though like so much else these days the new date is tentative.

Sept/Oct at the earliest, I’m afraid. Lincoln Center, for example, has cancelled all of its summer programming. Here at IU all summer events have been cancelled; we’re looking at trying to turn our outdoor Jazz In July concert series into Swing In September, but even that looks unlikely right now. Until a vaccine is manufactured and widely distributed (at least a year away, current consensus seems to be), I really don’t see how any kind of mass events—whether you’re talking 50-100 people in a small club or 50,000 people in a football stadium—are going to be able to be undertaken safely. Why Sports Aren’t Coming Back Any Time Soon

Not the first reputable source I’ve seen that suggests the overall number of deaths and cases in general may be significantly higher than the official totals compiled so far. We just had our first official death from the virus here in Monroe County (though it’s likely at least one other person died of it, but the state didn’t grant the county coroner’s request to conduct a posthumous test) and a firefighter in Terre Haute just passed away as well. Indianapolis and upper northwest Indiana (aka “Da Region” or “Chicagoland”) getting hit the hardest here in Indiana.

We re-aired Maiden Voyage: Herbie Hancock In the 1960s this past week in honor of his 80th birthday.

Thanks for hipping us to this—anything with Loren Schoenberg as a guide is worth listening to or reading. (I’ve been revisiting the 1936-47 Lester Young Mosaic set and marveling at Loren’s notes as well as the music all over again. Loren is to Lester as Dan Morgenstern is to Louis Armstrong.) I’ll definitely check this out after work tonight.

I've been to the Vanguard three times in the past couple of years, sitting twice on the right-hand side close to the bandstand, and on my last visit (to hear the Monday night Vanguard Orchestra) sitting far in the back center of the room... excellent sound at all of the shows.

Just finished the first (an intriguing look at crime and political corruption in 1920s/early 30s Los Angeles) and am halfway through the second (which is a 2020 reprint of the 1977 edition, with a new foreword by Gornick):

Whoops! Wrong thread, clearly!😄 I’ll delete and repost in the correct forum.

The new issue of the literary periodical Brilliant Corners includes a poem inspired in part by the Night Lights program The Jazz Monk: Thomas Merton. Though it's not available online, the poet (Betsy Sholl, former Poet Laureate of Maine) and publisher/editor Sascha Feinstein have given me permission to share it: "Thomas Merton Experiments with Meditations on Jazz" (Brilliant Corners is always well worth checking out, btw. Poetry, fiction, interviews, and other literary content all related to jazz.)

Hope they can somehow ride this out: City Lights on verge of closing for good