ghost of miles

What to say? Is there any better proof that baseball, for those of us who love mythology and narrative, is the best game around? How fitting that it would take the greatest series comeback in history to "reverse the Curse." Congratulations to the Red Sox & their fans, and I'll be cheering for them in the World Series.

I think it's the Internet & website; fans find out much more quickly these days, and places like this only fan the flames. For which I'm grateful!

Were these previously issued as part of the Mystic Sound series? I ask only because "previously unissued" doesn't always mean what it says... OTOH I thought all of that material was now coming out through Fantasy. Good news, if they truly are new sides.

But you have posted at least....where is Ghost, and Dan, and bluesForBartok??? Are they all passed out from shock??? Just heard that Shilling had his ankle sutured before the start!!!! I've been on vacation and haven't been on the Internet much... oh, agony! A conservative poster on Atrios recently wrote, "I wouldn't mind Kerry winning so much... what I don't think I could take would be Atrios crowing about it for the next 4 years." Well, Dan, you may be crowing away come this evening. I also wouldn't mind the Yanks getting beat by the Bosox... but I would mind like hell their being the first team ever to blow a 3-0 lead. Lord, can you imagine what Steinbrenner will do if that comes to pass? Speaking of Atrios, he started a thread when St. Louis was up 2-0 and NY was up 3-0 saying, "Please spare us a Boston-Houston series," for the sole reason that it would spawn tons of baseball metaphors in articles about the presidential race (Bush=Houston, Kerry=Boston). At the time he said, "Not that there's too much chance of that happening." It's another reason why I love baseball so much. What a crazy series! And I thought last year's was over the top...

Oh, man, this is all too reminiscent of Game 7 in the 2001 WS... Boston will be really pumped if they pull this one out.

Not quite--Rivera just let them off the hook.

I understand the Red Sox fans at Fenway last night were chanting, "Let's go, Patriots" by the 6th inning.

Forget it, man. You're a goner. I got bit about 12 years ago. I'm now in my late 30s and the fever shows no signs of abating, for some of the same reasons that you state in your very thoughtful post. I still have a great appreciation for pop/rock, classical, r & b, etc., and there are times when I have to listen to music other than jazz. But jazz has become spiritual food/drink/breath for me; if I go longer than a day or two without it, I truly get to feeling deprived. I used to spend a great deal of time scrutinizing this phenomenon, trying to elaborate/articulate it, ponder it at length... now I just accept it as a part of my daily being. There's so much more I have to learn, and you're right, the music seems infinite... and immediate at the same time. I love living in it. Right now I'm listening to a live Ellington band broadcast of "Harlem Air Shaft" circa 1945 and thinking, does life get any aesthetically sweeter than this? Not often, anyway...

Nothing especially spectacular here, just good, warm, engaging playing from the principals, including Nelson on alto & tenor, Lem Winchester on vibes, George Tucker on bass, Roy Haynes on drums, and Johnny Hammond Smith on organ. One of those jazz CDs that made my wife go, "What's this?" when I was playing it the other day (in a good way!).

DrJ, another "giant" aspect of MLW is simply the astonishing length & duration of her career. How many other jazz artists span late-1920's Kansas City to performing a duet concert with Cecil Taylor in the late 1970s? And throughout that long, long career, she never sounds less than modern. The only person I can think of who equals or surpasses her in this regard is Duke.

Both Bethlehem titles came to mind when I saw this thread's subject heading--MODERN and also EAST COASTING. I picked up MODERN around '95, when Bethlehem themselves re-issued many of their titles on CD, and instantly got hooked by the aforementioned "Scenes." (Planning to use it in a late-February program that will also feature some of Langston Hughes' work w/Mingus.) EAST COASTING also came out on Bethlehem; the band includes Jimmy Knepper, Shafi Hadi, Clarence Shaw, Dannie Richmond, and Bill Evans on piano. Fortunately Rhino re-re-issued much of the Bethlehem catalogue again under the "Avenue Jazz" moniker in the late 1990s, but that series unfortunately came to an end several years ago. Jsngry and Joe Milazzo have both spoken highly of LET MY CHILDREN HEAR MUSIC, which means it's high time I sought it out.

Up for broadcast in about 30 minutes.

The musical MY PEOPLE is another example of Ellington making a pretty strong statement about civil rights.

Ellington's involvement with politics is a nuanced history. You might want to check out Michael Denning's THE CULTURAL FRONT, an excellent book about politics and the arts in the 1930s and 40s; there are several mentions of Ellington there. He played a few Communist Party benefits in the 1930s and signed petitions for a number of social justice causes. He himself wasn't a Communist, but this sort of support and peripheral involvement wasn't uncommon at all in the 1930s jazz world (and it's one of the reasons why there's still a tradition, alive today, of jazz's being intertwined with liberal and leftwing politics). In the late 1940s he issued a statement distancing himself from some of the things he'd signed (given the times and the political climate, it's understandable, if regrettable--a number of other artists were backpedaling fast, including alleged tough-guy Humphrey Bogart, from leftist causes that they'd previously backed). He also had some sort of run-in with the NAACP in the early 1950s, but my details on this are pretty fuzzy--had to do with a concert performance. Denning's book also contains a long section on JUMP FOR JOY, Ellington's 1941 civil-rights musical, and one of the most overt statements he ever made about racial politics in the United States. (When a protestor challenged Ellington in the early 1960s with the question, "What have you done for the movement?" Ellington replied, "I did my civil-rights piece 20 years ago with JUMP FOR JOY.") Pardon the self-promotion here, but I did an hour-long documentary on this musical precisely because of the fascinating intersection it forged with politics, Hollywood glamour, racial justice, and the 1941 Blanton-Webster band. It's archived here.

A long (10 minutes) feature on Elliott last night on NPR's "All Things Considered." Scroll about halfway down this page. Even the strongly protective posters over at Sweet Addy loved this piece. The new album sounds so good--better and better with each listen.

What are the comments about Rivers' playing? Do they also offer any explanation as to why they left off the other two concerts with Rivers in Japan that were recorded by Columbia?

This week on Night Lights I'll be playing music from the 1956 RCA Victor Jazz Workshop albums of George Russell and Hal McKusick. (A Part 2 will air in late November, featuring music from Johnny Carisi's abandoned session and Charles Mingus' Savoy Jazz Workshop album.) The program airs at 11:10 tonight (9:10 on the West Coast, 12:10 on the East Coast); you can listen live on WFIU, or you can listen next week when it's posted in the archives.

Fox has now fired O'Reilly's accuser. Nice move, Fox! Just when you think a network can't go any lower... they find a new level of scum to suck up.

How cool that they're doing "Life and How to Live It"! I've been listening to that song a lot lately--always been a favorite. Going to see them in Indpls. next week. Saw them on the Fables, Pageant, and Document tours--the IRS years were IMO easily their best. Yeah, I thought the same thing about the thread title. And "Permanent Vacation" shows up on some live bootlegs from the early 1980s.

well, he was already Secretary of Defense so... 7 screaming diz busters clem ... and Miles was CIA.

The Tyner program is finally up on the archives page. My apologies for the delay--our webmaster is employed fulltime elsewhere, and he and his wife just had a baby. What is it with these parenting types anyway? Don't they know that public radio is the only thing that matters? OTOH, they are breeding the next generation of membership!

I remember on the old BNBB that Weizen once suggested--as a prize for some hypothetical contest--a tour of East Jerusalem with Greg Maltz & Chris A. in an old Volkswagen Beetle. (No offense to Chris--could've just as well been Greg M. and me... or Greg M. and Barak... or, heck, Greg M. and anybody.)

There are a few people I appointed that I shouldn't have, but I'm not going to name names--I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

Ah yes, the Big Red Machine... they were much-loved here in Indiana. Re: Boston-NY, according to the Times, Torre is leaning towards starting Hernandez in Game 4. Evidently his last throwing session went well. Fenway will be tough turf to win on.