ghost of miles

I listen to my Buddy Bolden cylinder every day... I guess that makes me pre-bop. (Bought it off some kid in a New Orleans alley--even though it sounded suspiciously like an outtake from MAJESTY OF THE BLUES at first, the kid assured me he was on the up-and-up!) I voted 52-67, but lately I've been listening to a LOT of 1930s jazz, both small-group and big-band. The bop 1945-52 era is one I return to quite frequently as well. And the 70s are drawing me in more & more these days. Aw, hell, I generally end up all over the place, which is a good place to be, atc.

Funny that you mention that about Beck, DoubleM, because when his record SEA CHANGE came out, I told my wife, "Wow, I'll bet Elliott Smith will feel jealous when he hears this record..." because it was as if Beck had gone and made an Elliott Smith kind of album. Thanks for the Portland report, too--I'm sure the news hit even harder up there. Interesting article from Billboard today about the album-in-progress:

I don't think there's anything wrong with sprucing up the effects, sound, etc. I'm more put off by story revisionism--as in the original STAR WARs, where Lucas altered the scene in which Hans Solo kills the bounty-hunter to make it appear as if the bounty-hunter fired first. It's not that big a deal, I suppose, but c'mon! I hope they didn't do that with the Indy films.

I saw him live only once, in Nov. 2000 at a very odd place called the Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky (the town, I believe, where Jerry Springer was arrested for writing checks to a prostitute). The Southgate House is a mansion set high up on a hill that overlooks the Ohio River; the man who invented the tommy-gun was born and raised there. It's kind of funny; in front of the house there's a historical marker about the guy that talks about how he lamented his association with gangsters' weapon of choice, and then you look up the hill and see a stenciled silhouette of a gangster popping off a few rounds with a tommy-gun in one of the windows of the club. There was a huge line down the hill and along the street, and it took us about 45 minutes to get into the club (we missed the entire opening set by a group called Grandaddy). When Smith came out he was very apologetic and laidback--he opened with "Ballad of Big Nothing" off EITHER/OR and played for about 90 minutes, doing much of the material off FIGURE 8 as well as cool, electrified versions of "Needle in the Hay" and "Clementine" from his earlier records. He also did a great acoustic duet of "Say Yes" with his backup guitarist/keyboardist Shon Sullivan. We were about 20 feet from the stage all night, and it struck me that Smith seemed like somebody who'd been happy for awhile and was now somewhat bored--perched, perhaps, on the cusp of another spell of depression. Not long after that tour ended he vanished from the public eye, and rumors began to go around that he'd lapsed back into heroin. The new album, which Smith himself had announced for autumn 2001 on the Sweet Adeline website, was delayed again and again, with stories circulating that Dreamworks had rejected it as "too dark" and too lo-fi, and also that Smith was too depressed to finish it. I hope that it eventually comes out in some form--he did a great deal of recording in the past couple of years, and many of the songs have surfaced in live bootleg versions. Again, I think a lot of people who followed him are somewhat astonished, because he seemed to be doing so well lately. I agree with the statement that he was "the most gifted songwriter of his generation"--at least, I haven't heard anybody else between the ages of 30 & 40 who I think equals him. But his hand has now been stilled, and even more sadly, by itself.

Will definitely be picking this up in the next several weeks. I would not be surprised, however, if some revision was done on TEMPLE, given George Lucas' involvement with the series. There are plenty of STAR WARS fans still furious about the "new editions" of the original trilogy, which Lucas has already announced will be the ones used for eventual DVD release.

Nina Simone, FOUR WOMEN (disc 2) Billie Holiday, LADY DAY (discs 1-5) Gene Krupa/Harry James Mosaic (discs 4-5) Elliott Smith, ROMAN CANDLE Elliott Smith, ELLIOTT SMITH Elliott Smith, EITHER/OR Elliott Smith, XO Elliott Smith, FIGURE 8 Nick Drake, WAY TO BLUE Duke Ellington, RCA COMP. discs 8-10

Yeah, right, Berigan, wrap it up and put a nice bow on it, etc.... C'mon, man, you've surely been a baseball fan as long as I have, and as that eminent sage Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over till it's over." Now it's 2-2 and the Marlins have to have a huge boost from winning in such dramatic fashion last night, after nearly throwing the game away. I'm hoping David Wells comes up with the big one tonight, 'cause the Yanks surely need it.

Via Sweet Adeline:

The drag of it is that his recent performances had supposedly been quite good. He underwent some kind of innovative new treatment for drug addiction and alcoholism earlier this summer (something called Neurotransmitter Replacement, or some such), and those who saw him in performance said that he seemed very happy, chatted amiably quite a bit between songs, didn't forget lyrics, etc. It really seemed as if he'd emerged from the darkness he'd been in for the past couple of years. Obviously he'd dealt with darkness his whole life, but after a relatively stable period between XO and FIGURE 8, he seemed to plunge back into it. Apparently the abyss opened back up, and this time he fell into it. I honestly thought he'd make it; on FIGURE 8's "Color Bars" he sings, Everybody wants me to ride into the sun/but I ain't gonna go down/Laying low again/high on the sound. Music always seemed to be his salvation.

Uh-oh. I've been wanting to pick up Carmen McRae's BIRDS OF A FEATHER and the Margaret Whiting Kern songbook, but haven't found them at a cheap enough price (they're still listed at the old $17.99 price). And our local Borders doesn't carry 'em... hmm...

Happy birthday, Juju!

Up. And farewell.

Two of Smith's greatest records (some think THE greatest), ELLIOTT SMITH and EITHER/OR, came out on Kill Rock Stars. Here's what you see today when you go to their website: It just about made me fucking cry.

Some of you may have already seen this, posted by Charlie, who ran the Sweet Adeline website, and who got to know Smith in the last year of his life:

I know that he tried to commit suicide in 1997 (by jumping off a cliff, supposedly). And there were all kinds of shadows in his life & in his music that pointed to suicide as a possible outcome. I have been haunted, ever since FIGURE 8's release in 2000, by its last song, an instrumental called "Bye." At the end of it Smith hits a crashing, glassbreaking flurry of notes on the piano. It always sounded like an audio suicide note. It's going to be a long time getting over this.

I am so fucking torn up by this. I found out half an hour ago when I went online. Just two days ago I was listening to FIGURE 8, and I was going to change my Organissimo signature to a line from one of the last songs on that record--Why should you want any other/when you're a world within a world? This, for me, is even worse than Kurt Cobain's suicide. I listened to Smith's music almost every day for about two years, and he's still somebody I've turned to frequently when I wanted to feel an intimate, lyrical connection with an artist. He made the most beautiful music since Nick Drake. Music that could break and re-make your heart. Thank you, Elliott. Your songs came to me like spiritual and artistic gifts. I know there are many, many others who felt & feel the same way. I'm going to go listen to your music now and hope that you've found peace. You deserve it, because your records brought love into people's lives.

I saw the Thorns open for the Jayhawks last summer at Indianapolis' Vogue Theater. Their songs sounded much better live (not unusual, huh?). Something got lost in the studio translation, methinks.

How can you not share my zest for 1940 Popular Front agitprop? Yeah, they were pressed by the Theater Arts Committee, a leftwing NYC group. (Denning's footnote lists them as "TAC 3"--I don't imagine too many of these puppies are floating around!) Frankly, it's the kind of thing more likely to pop up on a Bear Family collection, but a quick check of the SONGS FOR POLITICAL ACTION box yielded them not.

Well, Classics, they put out a lot of stuff that nobody else will touch, God bless 'em, but their omissions sometimes drive me nuts. I was really happy to pick up the recent Hazel Scott 1939-45 release--heretofore I've heard only a couple of cuts from this period on a Bluebird "Women in Jazz" anthology. So yesterday I'm sitting around reading Michael Denning's THE CULTURAL FRONT (great book on 30's political/art movements), in which Scott receives some discussion. Denning mentions two tracks that Scott recorded in 1940 on a 78 for the Theater Arts Committee (don't ask unless you're a serious 30's radical buff like me): "The Yanks Aren't Coming" (non-interventionist tune, obviously) and "Mene, Mene, Tekel" (a song from the leftwing musical PINS AND NEEDLES, written by Harold Rome). They ain't on the new Classics. I'm sure they were either too obscure to be known, or else Classics couldn't find a copy (wouldn't surprise me). In any case, AMG doesn't list any recordings of either tune w/Hazel Scott as a performer; does anybody out there in Internet land have this music, or even know of it?

Well, Pettite made up last night for blowing Game 6 against the Sox, and the Yanks finally began to hit a bit. Now to Florida, where Mussina--who pitched well as a reliever in Game 7 and as a starter in Game 4 of the ALCS--will try for his first postseason win this year. The Yanks will have a hard time beating Beckett, though. I'd still say slight odds in favor of the Marlins, esp. given their taking of Game 1 (NY hadn't lost a World Series game at home since dropping the first two games of the '96 WS to the Braves). As a secondary Bosox fan, I hope that Grady Little comes back, too. I understand the anger & frustration, but until his bad decision Thursday night, everybody in the baseball world was talking him up as one of the primary reasons that the Sox were there. And I'm more than a little put off by Boston's new owners--are they competing w/Steinbrenner in the obnoxiousness category as well? Call me a sentimentalist, but I miss Tom Yawkey...

Johnny, Definitely hit me re: WFHB 91.3/98.1 FM Bloomington, IN (the community radio station where I work, as opposed to the NPR affiliate). There's at least one other show besides mine at WFHB that plays out jazz, and I will hip them to your release... if you need the direct address info again, drop me a PM.

On my mind simply because today I cleaned the gutters. Lots of clambering about on a ladder and the roof, yanking out plugs of mucky leaves, getting blackish crap all over my gloves & clothes--gotta be one of the things I like least when it comes to doing work around the house. I always give myself some kind of incentive, such as, "When I finish this f#*#ing job, I'll sit down with a cup of coffee and enjoy the new Lee Morgan and Andrew Hill Connoisseurs." What's your least favorite job at home?

BTW, speaking of 2-CD blues sets, BMG currently has THE ESSENTIAL SONNY BOY WILLAMSON on its clearance list for $3.99. With shipping and handling it comes to about $9--not bad for a double-disc overview of SBW's Chess & Checker career. Only catch is that you have to already be a BMG member to get access to the clearance list.

The real reason why the Yanks won Thursday night: the pizza sent that very afternoon to the gravesite of Babe Ruth.

That Ayler box will be something to see (and hear!). Better start savin' my pennies....