ghost of miles

I'm sure she's a babe, but she's an UNFUNNY babe... and I prefer funny ones. To each his or her own currency of humor, of course!

There was a profile of her in the New Yorker recently as well. As a kind of weird social commentator, I guess she's... interesting. If, as she says in the Slate article, a comedian's job is only to "have funny thoughts..." well, I don't think I've ever laughed or internally smiled at one of her jokes or lines. And I don't blame Joe Franklin for being upset by the "he raped me" remark either. In a culture where women have frequently been accused of hyping charges of rape, it seems particularly callous. Maybe that's just part of Silverman's game. I like comedians who take risks, but I'm not seeing (or not getting) the payoffs from her take on things. Seems to me like her schtick is a failed variant of Lenny Bruce's "How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties."

I love what I've heard & what little I have of Nelson's 60's big-band work and am really looking forward to this set. I think they're doing just fine with big-band output--not too much, not too little. It does seem, though, as if the genre itself is waning, in terms of audience interest. I'd love to see Mosaic do a set of Herb Pomeroy's 1950s big-band material that's now owned by EMI. It's five albums in all, I think, perfect for a Select. I e-mailed them once with the suggestion and Cuscuna replied, "Intriguing... risky, but tempting." So I'm hoping that they do it eventually.

Yeah, I'm none too inspired by many of the modern, McDonaldized churches that I've seen. There's a beautiful old brick one down the street from where we now live... I'm tempted to go sometimes, even though I'm not a Methodist, just because I like the building. I'd be interested in seeing pictures of contemporary churches that are really well-done--there must be some nice ones out there.

I still read it nearly every day, after getting hooked back in the mid-1970s when I was a politically-minded tyke. Sure, Trudeau is long past being a "cutting-edge" satirist, or whatever the hell you want to call it, but I don't think that was ever really his primary goal.... not after he picked up syndication out of Yale, anyway. Doonesbury strikes me as much more of an ongoing literary/cultural soap opera narrative that's still often amusing in the bargain. The B.D. strips have brought the war home far more than most efforts I've seen in the mainstream media. (Big putz points to Bill "The War on Christmas" O'Reilly, btw. )

Forgot when I upped the thread this a.m. that the jazz radio forum didn't use to exist; in any case, The Wild One will re-air this evening since WFIU met its fund-drive goal 32 hours early. It's already online in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Homecoming: Dexter Gordon in the Late 1970s."

"The Wild One" will be re-broadcast tonight at 11 p.m. Same link as in the first post still applies, and you can listen to it right now in the archives... we had to grab a re-run because fund-drive ended 31 hours early!

Up for fund-drive for the next hour and a half or so, if you want to make any show of support for Night Lights. The phone number: 1-800-662-3311. Also online!

Thanks for posting this, garthsj. I'm a big Shank fan and am looking forward to checking this out when my schedule eases up a bit in the next couple of days.

Update: fund-drive is going so well that we will probably be ending early, sometime tomorrow night BEFORE Night Lights airs. My station manager has advised me that anyone wishing to pledge Night Lights should make a pledge tonight while I'm on the air for my show The Big Bands, and to simply say that the pledge is for Night Lights. Problematic, but happily so! I'll up the thread in five hours or so... and will probably re-run "The Wild One" tomorrow night on Night Lights instead of doing a live funder.

Like me? 46 ← Doc, you seem so Jung for your age.

Boy, you're gonna carry that wait, carry that wait, a loooooonnngg time... Er, uh, well, it's close. Closer than a certain box-set.

Ah! Now I get it... And I guess we've got plenty of time to discuss other things while we wait for... uh... what is it we're waiting for now? ← Some fellow named Godot.

All of the above & more. Hope to touch base with you again soon... and hope we get to hook up at some point stateside. Hope you're diggin' some cool West Coast sounds, wherever you may be.

Phew, that's a relief... I thought it was just me... ← I'm completely lost ← It's a Texas thang... we wouldn't understand. I've been to Austin, but I ain't never been to Texas. My loss... lotsa cool folks from that state, as I once posted.

BTW, if any brave soul does wish to pledge via phone or the Internet this upcoming Saturday night at the $90 level, Luke Kaven has generously donated a couple of copies of Frank Hewitt's NOT AFRAID TO LIVE to the cause. We'll be doing a Night Lights show on Hewitt this Dec. 17.

I'm hoping that they mine the 1970s and 80s more--sets like the Pullen/Adams, say. My sense is that there's still a lot of great jazz from those decades that deserves more attention. The unissued live material is certainly a promising route, too; what about the Joe Henderson Trio material from the 1990s? Didn't Verve record that group live? I could see them licensing that to Mosaic... they didn't think it commercially worthwhile to release while Henderson was alive. (Dunno, maybe they'll think more of it now that he's gone. )

$7.99 here in Bloomington.

Thanks much, ejp626. What I'm hoping to do--we're currently going gangbusters for fund-drive, and I haven't been able to plan it out with our webmaster--is to put up a little donation tab on the archives, similar to what Organissimo has here (and what we have on the WFIU website for Harmonia, the early-music program that we produce here). With luck, we'll have it up and running early next week.

Nice version of "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" by Madeleine and Marion McPartland over at the Piano Jazz site right now, under the Gulf Coast tribute heading. I think this was recorded back in early September, when that song was in the air quite a lot... hopefully they'll broadcast the entire program with MP soon.

Thanks for starting the topic, Berigan (I was going to start it myself--I got the same e-mail) and much thanks to Chuck for posting that info. There's a very brief and relatively uninformative bio on Baron at the Solid! site. He sure got some quality players for his studio dates, eh?

Take heed, my fellow Organissimoes.

May many history books and compelling jazz CDs find their way into your hands! Have a great day, Paul.

I think with Mosaic there's generally a connection (pardon the pun) between the semantic and the real world. Is THE CONNECTION as done by Messrs. McGhee, Brooks, etc. somehow not "jazz"? I understand that in the past Mosaic has put out sets called "Complete" that have left off certain tracks because they contained nothing of "jazz value." (I'm thinking of some of the early-jazz sets here, I believe.) But to call something "The Complete Jazz Recordings" of a label and then dump out the McGhee/Brooks on stylistic grounds seems a different matter... why don't they just go the route they did with the Columbia box and call it "The Complete Felsted Small-Group Swing Sessions?" No doubt I'll be flamed for making something of this.. just that I find it surprising, given how careful Mosaic has been in the past about its use of the word "Complete." I remember folks getting huffy because they left that one track off the Jacquet box at Illinois' insistence... Again, I understand that legal issues probably made inclusion of this album impossible. But I still think they should refine the title of the box. I'll refrain from starting online "We demand..." petitions, however.

Well, that's cool, and I'm not losing sleep over it or anything... just that reasons 1 & 2 are irrelevant, given the title of the box (unless Mosaic is deciding to dilute the meaning of "Complete" further). Reason 3 is obviously a problem. I'm not upset, just surprised, given how much Mosaic puts into its branding. Maybe they're planning on calling it "Complete 1957-59" or something. But in any case, I assure you I'll be sleeping well!