ghost of miles

G.d. Sagittarians... fiery and passionate, but always needing that "creative space"... How the hell do women ever put up with 'em, anyways?

More like beating one's head against a brick wall, actually. I understand Clementine's points. He has mixed feelings about Francis Davis. On one hand he despises him, on the other he wishes Davis would drop dead. Randy, I think you've become the David Letterman of this joint... and I mean that as high praise.

Claude--thanks! Yep, those are the titles--couldn't figure out from the sheet what the format was for sure. What a relief! I'm still trying to move enough budget shells around to get in one last big Fantasy order for later this year.

What are the Fantasy titles on the latest True Blue sheet that are listed as deletions? I'm referring to the two Byards, the three Don Friedmanns, the Yusef Lateef, etc.... I'm hoping these are XRCDs or something akin & not the regular CDs.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Did not know that... exciting news indeed! Some of the sequels, esp. ANOTHER THIN MAN, are pretty good... even SONG OF THE THIN MAN has its moments, with an aging Powell and Loy disoriented by bop/hipster NYC musicians. Was Another Thin Man the one that involved horse racing? I think that was my favorite sequel, if memory serves. I think that's AFTER THE THIN MAN. Hammett basically adapted ANOTHER THIN MAN from one of his Continental Op stories; it was set on an East Coast estate.

Tonight on The Big Bands it's "Duke Ellington: The Treasury Shows, May 1945." In May 1945 World War II ended in Europe, and we'll hear Ellington acknowledge that several times throughout this program in his pitches for U.S. war bonds on "Your Date With the Duke," the Saturday-afternoon radio show sponsored in 1945 and 1946 by the Treasury Department. With an invasion of Japan appearing imminent and necessary, the "Mighty Seventh" bond drive was begun, with a goal of seven billion dollars. This edition of The Big Bands draws from Ellington's broadcasts throughout May, including arrangements of Ellington songbook-classics "Solitude" and "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" that feature all four of the then-current Ellington vocalists (Kay Davis, Joya Sherrill, Marie Ellington, and Al Hibbler), lesser-heard numbers such as "Everything But You" and "Teardrops in the Rain," features for trombonist Lawrence Brown ("I Miss Your Kiss" and the little-known "Blue Cellophane") and interpretations of pop hits of the day, including "I Should Care" and "Sentimental Journey." The program airs this evening at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU. Next week: "The Clarke-Boland Big Band."

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/MG/209674.jpg The Subterraneans, the only novel of Jack Kerouac's to be adapted to film so far, was released in 1960, when the media fever surrounding the Beat Generation (much of it inspired by the publication of Kerouac's On the Road in 1957) was still at a high pitch. Hollywood took great liberties with Kerouac's story of a romance between his narrator stand-in (Leo Percepied, played by George Peppard) and a young half-black, half-native American bohemian--for starters, the woman was played by the very white Leslie Caron. http://www.torriblezone.com/subterraneans.jpg The soundtrack, however, was composed by Andre Previn, and it features a number of West Coast jazz luminaries--Gerry Mulligan (who also appears in the film as a hip street priest), Art Pepper, Russ Freeman, Shelly Manne, and Red Mitchell. Carmen McRae also appears, singing an updated beatnik version of "Coffee Time." We'll hear both dialogue and music from the film, including some selections only recently released on a new version of the soundtrack from Film Score Monthly. http://www.screenarchives.com/fsm/images/CDL/subterraneans.jpg You can listen live Saturday night at 11:05 p.m. (9:05 California time, 12:05 a.m. NYC time) or in the Night Lights archives, where it will be posted Monday afternoon. Some tidbits that didn't make it into the program: Ranald Macdougall, the director replacement for the fired brother team of Dennis and Terry Sanders, originally opened the film with the credits rolling over a Pollock/Rothko-like painting that dissolved into Gerry Mulligan playing his saxophone, the light gleaming off his crucifix. This was replaced in the final version by a much more conventional opening showing San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge in daytime. The words that appear onscreen were originally almost an exact quote of Allen Ginsberg's description of "the subterraneans" (his character is named Adam Moorad in the book); they were altered in a manner that rendered them more neutral and cliched. The film was originally supposed to be shot in black-and-white for a more austere aesthetic; it ended up being done in Cinemascope and Metrocolor. Article on the movie version of Kerouac's SUBTERRANEANS Photograph of the real-life model for "Mardou", the love interest of Kerouac's who inspired the book: http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/mardou8.gif Next week: American jazz in French new-wave cinema.

It was very useful to me when I was first getting into the music--particularly the 1950s/60s Blue Note records. Enough so that I still recommend it to neophytes who are interested in that period. Hoping that somebody like Deveaux will undertake a more definitive treatment of the era (and look forward to reading Allen's book on it).

Not weighing in good or bad here--haven't read much Davis at all, though I think I have used paperback copies of IN THE MOMENT and his blues book floating around the house somewhere--but whatever happened to his Coltrane biography? Still in progress? Which gives me an idea for yet another thread...

Either one of the Lee Wiley songbook collections on Liberty (are they still in print?). The three albums she did for Columbia are all great--they're on the Condon Mob Mosaic, a pricey way to get them--also available on one of the sketchier labels as well (Jazz Factory, I think). I really like A TOUCH OF THE BLUES and am told that WEST OF THE MOON is even better... WEST OF THE MOON hard to find, though. (You can get most of it on an OOP Bluebird that still floats around sometimes.) I also like the live CD on Uptown as well. I have mostly Connor's Bethlehems and have been meaning to pick up most of her Atlantic catalogue as well, because I love the one Atlantic CC that I have.

If not for that, Tom Selleck might've been playing this guy:

Big Al, I'm a huge Marx Brothers fan, and I agree that the experience is wonderful... in fact, my first experience of the Marxes was as a child in a neighborhood theater in the late 1970s... NIGHT AT THE OPERA and A DAY AT THE RACES were shown as a double-feature. My mom, being quite a fan, hauled the whole brood to the moviehouse--one of many acts for which I'll be eternally grateful to her. Just last October my wife showed NIGHT on a DVD projector as part of a project to help neighborhood businesses--we screened it in the garage of a bakery, which catered the event. Many, many families and kids came, and even a fair amount of teenagers--probably 100-125 people, as some were sitting on the sidewalk. And yes, there is something remarkably infectious about watching the Marxes in a big audience--a real communion of comedy. The laughter starts feeding on itself in a cumulative way.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Did not know that... exciting news indeed! Some of the sequels, esp. ANOTHER THIN MAN, are pretty good... even SONG OF THE THIN MAN has its moments, with an aging Powell and Loy disoriented by bop/hipster NYC musicians.

Medjuck might be able to confirm this, but I think there's a story behind that. Supposedly an early bare-bones treatment--basically a secretarial typing up of the book--accidentally made its way to one of the studio heads, who responded so enthusiastically that Huston & co. felt compelled to work off the treatment. I'll have to go back and check on that story; read it in either a Bogart or Hammett bio years ago. Lots of praise for RED HARVEST, but I'd still try THE GLASS KEY next... it's the book that Hammett wrote after THE MALTESE FALCON. And I even have a soft spot for THE DAIN CURSE, what with its prescient portrait of a druggy, cults-in-California culture.

Bertrand, don't know if your interest extends this far, but there's a good ASV compilation called JAZZING THE CLASSICS that features the kind of tunes you're talking about, drawn from the late 1930s/early 1940s, when that trend was in vogue.

Thanks, Mark. "Jazz Cameos" is now archived. Re: SUBTERRANEANS, I found a neat poster image online that I'm going to use for the website... just re-read the novel last night and am going to watch the movie tonight. The new soundtrack (out from Film Score Monthly) is quite good--adds a lot of extra music that didn't make it into the film.

Thanks, Gary. I had sent him an e-mail and hope to hear back. Also hope he's doing well/better.

Anybody know what's up with him? Doing okay? Taking a breather? I miss his reflective thoughts on many matters. No posts since Jan. 18.

Ex-girlfriend of mine up in Chicago is really into the Fluxus movement. Now (re)reading Kerouac's THE SUBTERRANEANS in preparation for a Night Lights show... and spent some time this morning reading pieces about the fall of Saigon from the Library of America's REPORTING VIETNAM 1969-1975.

Ahhh, this story still has nothing on the woman a few years ago who got pregnant while her husband was away and claimed she'd been impregnated by aliens. "It was them aliens!"

Very interesting! And about how I thought it would turn out... except for the Baha'i result:

and apparantly of art blakey fame too! i sure would like to know more about her! B-) I think somebody may be writing a book about her... more speculation than even rumor at this point.

Oops.. I never did send that e-mail. Will rectify that right about now.

28? Impossible! Have a great one, my man!