ghost of miles

Hello... hello... it's good to be back, it's good to be back, hello...

Been alternating among the Basie Verve, the Columbia Swing, and Piano Moods.

Still pretty slow, although it's been better in the past five minutes... at first I couldn't post or launch a search--kept getting the "Cannot find server" message (and at one point the "Too many connections SQL" oldie-but-goodie).

What happened to Helen? Hope there's a good Lee bio some day... I'd especially like to read more about his last several years. Brad: I was thinkin' Peter Gunn. The one where the spotlight opens on the piano player, who then falls off the bench with a knife in his back.

Small donation made w/thanks for the server transfer.

You want slooowwww--anybody else had trouble on JazzCorner today?

I didn't even realize that... I was working at Borders the day that he died, and yeah, we played his music for the rest of the shift that I was working. Just got Friedwald's THE SONG IS YOU a couple of weeks ago; maybe I'll sack in with that and the Columbia box tonight when I get home (still haven't listened to discs 10-12).

Worlds Records has PERFECTLY FRANK as a closeout for $8. Ordered it yesterday, along w/several other items... thanks for the initial tip on this title, Tony! I've been considering snagging the 4-CD Reprise set from BMG as well.

Some more discussion here. And I remember a great, Moby-Dick-sized whale of a debate on the old BNBB between Jsngry and GregM about this subject.

Hey all, Music from the new Hill Mosaic Select on Night Lights this evening at 11:05 p.m. (9:05 California time, 12:05 a.m. NYC time). We've discussed this set at length on the board, so I won't add anything other than the usual: You can listen live or wait until Monday afternoon when it's posted in the archives. Next week: "Jazz in the French New Wave Cinema."

For some reason I couldn't log on at all until just now... nobody was in the back room, so I knew the S.S. Org must be up and sailin' somewhere.

That whole issue of the Nation is worth reading--devoted almost entirely to progressive radio.

What do those gathered here think of SILVER CITY, the 2-CD distillation of his Milestone work? I picked that one up several years ago and like it quite a lot; have not ventured forth to buy any of his individual albums on the label simply because there's such a withering body of critical response to it.

The program is now archived. Apologies to any who tried to listen yesterday or this morning; there was a problem with the link that has now been corrected.

(1) It's problematic that he played it differently than the way it's usually played? (2) "...as if he's going to die the next year." Uh... yeah. Irony intentional there?

Some more images from the movie: That's Andre Previn in the lower righthand corner, playing a harpsichord...

There are several weird connections to GIGI (1958) that I talk about during the program--Freed produced both movies, Leslie Caron starred in both, and Andre Previn, who wrote and performed the score for THE SUBTERRANEANS, was the musical director for GIGI.

It's very different. The characters are retained, to some degree, but Mardou is changed from a half-black, half-Native American to a French woman, and the character of Roxanne--an independent painter sent up as a man-hater who comes around to the conventional view of things in the end--is added. Leo Percepied, the Kerouac stand-in, carries over much of Kerouac's bio, but he's infused with a predilection for violent machismo, and Mardou's spells of mental instability are magnified into onscreen hysteria. (The character in the book is really cool; hard to not come away a bit infatuated with her, and evidently the real-life Mardou--Alene Lee--exercised a similar charm upon not just Kerouac but Gregory Corso, Lucien Carr, and NYC beat man-about-town John Mitchell.) In the book Mardou eventually breaks up with Leo; in the movie she becomes pregnant and they decide to get married. I re-read the book for the first time in 15 years last weekend, and came away surprised by how much I still enjoyed it.

Pretty much! Hard to see it these days... Turner owns it, but I don't believe it's ever been put out on either VHS or DVD. A friend of mine heard me mention it on the radio a year or so ago and loaned me the copy he taped off TNT during a Roddy McDowall festival (McDowall played Yuri, the character based on Gregory Corso); he's now turned it into a choppily edited DVD as well. Whaley argues in his book that the film, despite its many flaws and changes, still serves to uplift beat culture in certain ways... I think he's stretching meself, but the chance to see Mulligan, Art Farmer, and others onscreen is quite cool.

More notes on the film version of The Subterraneans: the Poet and Painters Mission in the movie, run by the Rev. Joshua Hoskins (Gerry Mulligan), was based on a real North Beach place called the Bread and Wine Mission, located at 501 Greenwich Street. Its founder was Pierre Delatre, a writer and a graduate of divinity and comparative religion from the University of Chicago, and his wife Lois. Delattre opened the mission, he said, to serve "a very powerful spiritual movement in America." The movement, Delattre added, was "not in the churches" but "in the streets where a whole group of prophets and singers were energizing and coming together: singers, poets, jazz musicians." In addition to the mission's spaghetti and wine dinners (alluded to in the movie, when Mulligan hands George Peppard a large plate of spaghetti), poetry readings were frequently held, featuring Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Kaufman, Joanne Kyger, Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen, and others. The mission also served as the birthplace for the street poetry magazine Beatitude.Delattre advised Subterraneans director Ranald Macdougall, screenwriter Robert Thom, and producer Arthur Freed; he was a model for Gerry Mulligan's Rev. Hoskins character. The "spotlight" scene in which characters stand up and deliver monologues was based on "Blabber Mouth Night" at the Place in San Francisco. The original opening title read: These are Subterraneans. The Beat. They are hip without being slick. They are wise without being corny. Most of them are lost. They exist. They are everywhere now. On the Left Bank in Paris. In Soho, London. In Greenwich Village, Venice West and North Beach, San Francisco. After a disastrous January 1960 screening for MGM executives, the title was altered to the following: This is the story of a New Bohemia... where the young gather to create and to destroy. In all times, in all cities, for good or for evil, the Bohemians have been the makers of the future. They are foolish and they have genius. You will find them on the Left Bank in Paris, in London's Soho, in Greenwich Village and here in San Francisco, in the area known as North Beach. I'm indebted to Preston Whaley's book BLOWS LIKE A HORN: BEAT WRITING, JAZZ, STYLE, AND MARKETS IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF U.S. CULTURE for much of the above information.

Evidently the re-issue has sold quite well, however, according to a friend of mine who sometimes does liner notes for the label. This evinced an interesting discussion of how the nostalgia market is changing--how, as more and more of the original audience dies off, albums like YUMMY, YUMMY which do indeed seem dreadful upon first glance (or maybe on first listen--don't know, haven't heard it) may appeal to a younger audience in weird and/or kitschy ways.

This Sagittarius found an answer to his romantic prayer in a woman named Brenda. Mine's the New England version... B-)

Up for broadcast in several minutes.

Hey Jim, thanks for the podcast! I've had the Mosaic Select Hill with me at work all day (it's the subject of next week's Night Lights) and enjoyed hearing some cuts off POINT, an album I've obviously gone far too long without listening to.

A repeat of what I've said before, but the Yanks' great era ended in Arizona at the end of Game 7 in 2001. From 1996 through 2001 they had a great run, and some of that--much of that?--was b/c Steinbrenner was out of the loop for a couple of years in the mid-1990s. Otherwise I don't doubt that Jeter, Rivera, Pettite, Posada, and all the other homegrown talent would've been traded away... They also made shrewd trades in those years too, and I don't recall as many big free-agent signings--even Clemens came in a trade, right? And as long as the Yanks won the Series, George pretty much had to leave well enough alone. I still think it's heartbreaking that O'Neill/Martinez/Brosius couldn't walk off with a last title under their belts, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11... those last two games against Arizona at Yankee Stadium were magical, and I would daresay even healing in a small way, given how raw we all still felt at the time. I remember practically praying for Jeter to hit a home run in Game 4, and then he did... simply amazing. The Yanks weren't only good, they were likeable under Torre... that '96 team was like something out of a cliched kids' sports novel. It's sad to see him trying to hold this team together now--the chemistry just ain't there. And that's what those late-1990s teams had, with chemistry left over to give. That's how they could go a godawful 88-74 or whatever they went in 2000 and then march through the playoffs and knock off the Mets in the Subway Series (another magical moment, and coincidentally enough, right around the end of the Clinton era--we had our messy, nasty presidential election just a few days later). I kept buying copies of the NY Times for days after they won, and I remember the wistfulness I felt when they ran a last photo feature with the headline, "Closing the door on the Subway Series." These days I fear we're back in Eighties mode. Could be a long next few years.