ghost of miles

Or restoring some of the one million acres of coastal wetlands that that area has lost to development over the past few decades. The natural "sponges" are gone, which is one reason why this is so much worse than Camille.

It's the first Griffin I ever bought, and well worth the money. Recorded almost two years to the day after her death (in fact, I think the sessions concluded on on the second anniversary).

Here's a blog from New Orleans TV station WWLV. These paras: The Tulane hospital is evacuating patients from the roof. Red Cross homepage.

Well, with no lights, a/c and overflowing toilets, I think its necessary. In fact, they're talking about evacuating all shelters. ← I'm sure they need to--but how, given that there are anywhere from 10-20,000 people inside the Superdome? This from a diary on Kos, saying that martial law's been declared in New Orleans:

How to Help Are they truly talking about evacuating the Superdome?

We're leaving around 11 tomorrow (noon Michigan time). Just got the new CD yesterday and plan to listen to it a couple of times on the way up.

A friend of mine was talking about this not long ago, and it's apparently now out: Atomic Platters

7/4, thoughts and prayers to your friends. In response to some earlier comments about the Guard:

Is he in OK health? His blog hasn't been updated in two years.

More Katrinas likely, according to scientists:

Photo of a former apartment complex in Biloxi:

This program is now archived.

God, it's horrible. I think there was a sense of relief in the rest of the country yesterday afternoon that had no relation to reality--and that certainly had no relation to this aftermath. ___

CNN reports that HK has weakened a bit, but that's not saying much, given its strength--and the tendency of hurricanes to fluctuate in intensity. Gotta hope that it does weaken considerably, though.

Statistically speaking, I'd say the odds are against the Yanks... they've got 10 more road games than home ones left, whereas it's the exact opposite with the Bosox. And both teams have much better percentages at home this year. Of course, it's baseball, and all sorts of crazy things can happen...

AP says a million could be homeless: It sounds as if New Orleans could be--to put it bluntly--destroyed.

They may offer the Superdome as shelter to folks who can't get out of the city to higher ground.

Trigger (if Mosaic were a horse)

Native American name: Running Low.

Mister.

Yeah, I'm really psyched about the Nelson (as well as the Tolliver, etc.)--I did a Nelson big-band program a couple of years ago and drew heavily from SOUND PIECES and the Verve Jazzmasters comp...not a lot else out on CD that I could find. Played some of those Smith/Nelson-orchestrated sessions earlier this summer, too... will be great to have all of that material in one set. And a great excuse to do another O. Nelson big-band show.

Abbie Someone.

In honor of Bird's impending birthday: This week on Night Lights it's "At the Birth of Bop." Several years ago an amazing audio find came to light--a June 1945 Town Hall concert in New York City featuring Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach--the rising stars of the then-revolutionary new music bebop--accompanied by Al Haig on piano and Curley Russell on bass. The performance, captured in sound that's stellar by the era's standards, has recently been issued by Uptown Records, and in it we hear the raw vitality of bebop's emerging canon. Chronologically, this is the first live and/or studio recording to feature a group made up solely of young musicians fluent in the musical language of bop. Parker and Gillespie blaze through seminal titles such as "Groovin' High," "Hot House," and "A Night in Tunisia." We'll also hear two Parker/Gillespie studio sides from earlier that year. The New York Times recently wrote about this release; you can read the article on our Jazz News of Note page. "At the Birth of Bop" airs Saturday, Aug. 27 on WFIU at 11:05 p.m (9:05 California time, 12:05 NYC time). You can listen live, or you can wait until Monday afternoon, when the program will be posted in the Night Lights archives. You guys should check out this live Bird-Diz stuff... it's the real deal. Next week: "Sonnymoon: Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins."

Tonight on The Big Bands it's the late-1950s music of composer, arranger, and bandleader Johnny Richards. Richards, best known for his work on Stan Kenton's Cuban Fire album, carried a diverse musical resume. He inherited his talent from his mother, a concert pianist who had studied with Paderewski. In the 1930s he wrote film scores for Hollywood, working as Victor Young's assistant at Paramount, and also studied with Arnold Schoenberg. He first led his own big band in the 1940s and went on to write arrangements for Charlie Barnet, Dizzy Gillespie, and Boyd Raeburn before putting in several years with Stan Kenton in the 1950s. He also wrote the melody for Frank Sinatra's 1954 hit, "Young at Heart." We'll hear Richards' later big-band version of that song, as well as his Third-Stream-ish "Annotations of the Muses Pt. 1," selections from his Legende Americana suite (a tribute to the American landscape), and "Omo Ado" from his work The Rites of Diablo. "Johnny Richards in the Late 1950s" airs Friday, August 26 at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. California time, 10 p.m. NYC time) on WFIU. No archives yet--hope to have that up next week.

I went to a jazz bar in D.C. about 13 or 14 years ago, right before I really fell in love with the music, and remember being surprised that the bar strictly enforced silence from its patrons during the sets. Later on I "got it."