ghost of miles

Love Belle and Sebastian! It’s been awhile, but this is a box-set definitely worth revisiting. Excellent booklet, too—screw the Cloud!

Seeing her in Detroit Monday night.

“Marquee Moon” is epic to begin with, but this live Portland performance from 1978 scales new heights of epicdom:

Fantastic performance of one of the best songs from the 1992 reunion album:

This live performance from Television's 1992 reunion tour just blows me away--Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd one of my all-time favorite guitar tandems:

NY Times article: What "Rubberband" Reveals About Miles Davis' Final Act

Digging the finished version of this more than I thought I would:

Just went to pull some CDs for two afternoon shows that I'm pre-recording next week and was glad all over (apologies to the Dave Clark Five) to be able to let my eyes wander over all of the music that I have, things that I haven't listened to in awhile (just to pick an off-the-beaten track example, Mundell Lowe's Satan In High Heels--that might be a fun one to revisit sometime!) and to leaf through the booklet for the Lou Donaldson Mosaic. Having grown up with vinyl, I have no love or even nostalgia for it (and feel it turned into a high-end hipster racket long ago), but I do have much respect for those who treasure their LPs. Maybe, or even most likely, it's the 20th-century (or older) notion of a library, whether it be books, music, or movies, but I love being surrounded by physical artifacts of the art forms that give me such profound pleasure. That's just my taste, let others stream or Spotify away--my concern there for the future of distributed music is how little compensation artists tend to receive from those formats. If nothing else, I'm well-situated for the inevitable CD revival of 2033!

Same here--I'll be buying a new or new-ish car in the next year, and it has to have a CD player. I know that limits my options, but so be it.

Finished Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, which is filled with brilliant writing that evokes the early 20th-century world of Jewish immigrants on New York City’s Lower East Side. The most dramatically compelling character to me is the young protagonist’s domineering, thwarted and abusive father, who throws a charge through any scene that features him. Roth was clearly under the spell of Ulysses when he wrote the book, and his exclamation-point-driven rendering of the protagonist’s thoughts can come to seem like a Joycean tic as the book progresses. Very glad I read it, but I’ll probably take a long pause before plunging into Mercy Of A Rude Stream. Turning now to another Depression-era NYC writer, Daniel Fuchs. I’ve had his Brooklyn trilogy for quite some time, but I’m starting with a posthumous collection of his essays and stories that draws on his experiences after moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s:

Very nice moment at Fenway: Red Sox fan gives Aaron Judge foul ball to young Yankee fan Onions to Boston’s front office/ownership, however, for forcing Alex Cora to be their media face regarding all questions Dombrowski last night.

Most people just listen online now, it seems, via Spotify, YouTube, or what have you. I'm happy to still be a CD-hoarding Luddite myself.

PM sent regarding both titles.

Thanks, Lon. I'm still on Facebook but haven't been quite as active as in the past... just miss Al's contributions to the board here. Glad that all seems to be well with him in general.

Never realized till today that Tucker died so young (37)--a cerebral hemorrhage while performing with Kenny Burrell, according to his Wiki page (source being Ingrid Monson's book Saying Something). He seems to get overlooked a bit when it comes to bassists of that era.

Just noticed that he hasn't visited since November--close to a year at this point.

Unless I'm reading dates incorrectly, all of these sessions occurred in one 15-month stretch (the first, the Tommy Turrentine Time session, was done in January 1960, and On The Spur Of The Moment was recorded on March 18, 1961).

Although the show I'm working on focuses on the Parlan-Turrentine connection, I'm already planning a sequel that will highlight said rhythm section's work with Booker Ervin, Lou Donaldson, and Dexter Gordon, as well as one or two Turrentine sides that won't make it into the current program-in-progress.

Finished season 3 of The Man In The High Castle the other night—mesmerizing. Rufus Sewell in particular is outstanding. The fourth and final season arrives on November 15. I really do need to undertake another viewing of Mad Men, which was appointment TV for me while it was airing. Same with The Wire and The Sopranos, though I came to those shows after they’d finished their respective runs. Another show that I’ve never gotten around to but have in the queue is Boardwalk Empire.

I seem to come back to this one every year. This time it’s because of a show I’m working on, but the listening, as always, is pure pleasure.

The Horace Parlan set (as I’m revisiting it yet again). Perhaps not “underrated,” but maybe even better than it’s given credit for? (Which is the same thing, I guess—although “underrated” usually carries a connotation of being overlooked.)

Picked that one up myself not long ago. 👍 Right now: