ghost of miles

Thank ye! I have even more of a yen to spend now.

Amen to the Burrell Christmas CD, which has gotten several spins in our household this past week. In addition to the old standbys like Guaraldi and Ella, I also like the compilation HIPSTERS' HOLIDAY, Bird's famous "White Christmas" (as well as the Ravens' 1940s doo-wop version), Bill Evans' vocal take on "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" ("with a beard on!") from the Evans Verve box, Frank Kimbrough's "Silver Bells"... too many others to mention. As a radio programmer I try to find "new" material each Christmas, something I haven't played several times before; in that spirit I sent a check off to Chuck today for the Uptown Christmas collection, which will be adorning the airwaves of Bloomington come late December.

The three 1940-42 Thornhills are at the top of my birthday/Christmas list this year. There are about 15 others I've still got in my sights as well. Anybody have that SOUNDS OF HARLEM disc?

Any info on the Mariano sextet session? That's one in which I'm definitely interested. To hell with the trade deficit!

I didn't much follow the Series after the suicide of singer-songwriter Elliott Smith earlier this week. Frankly, I found that much more depressing than the possible spectacle of the Yankees losing the Series. The only thing they need to change is Steinbrenner's expectation that they win it every time out. That's absurd and utterly at odds with reality. (Of course he's not going to change, though.) Chemistry is a very subtle element, and (pace their pulling it out against the Sox in the ALCS), this team of the past two years, though better on paper, does not have the killer ability to win that the teams of the O'Neill/Martinez/Brosius era did. Paul O'Neill could be 1-23 and he'd still slap a single when they needed it most; Chuck Knoblauch, who struggled during his years w/the Yanks, still had a knack for coming up with big hits in the clutch. But that era ended two years ago in Arizona during the ninth inning of Game 7. As for Yankee-bashing, whatever... All of the Yankee fans on this board seem to be the model of decorum. I've rooted for them for 28 years now, through good times & bad, and the Torre years have been a sheer joy. Classy manager, classy players, multiethnic teams... I can understand why people hated them in the Reggie/Billy Martin era, but now it just seems like excessive sour grapes. Did people hate the A's this way in the 70s? Or the Reds, for that matter? And plenty of owners try to buy championships these days. Plenty. The Yanks have more money partly because they're in one of the nation's best TV markets. Also, many of their dynasty players this time around have been homegrown--Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettite, Mariano Rivera, Posada, Soriano... All of whom seem to be genuinely nice human beings as well. And I don't think you could find a more decent-spirited manager than Joe Torre. My congratulations to the Marlins, who clearly were the better team. Matthew, I agree about the desolation of the long winter! I'm beginning my post/pre-season reading with PRESS BOX RED, the story of sportswriter Lester Rodney, who wrote columns for the Daily Worker and who helped open & sustain the drive to eliminate the color line in professional baseball. See y'all round the hot-stove.

Hey man, I'm just happy for Jack McKeon. Torre already has 4 rings, y'know? In any case--the Steinbrenner GOP curse lives on. We ain't got a chance at the title again till 2005 at the earliest (or maybe 2009--groan!). I really meant it going in when I said I favored the Marlins to win it. They're a hell of a team, obviously.

Ouch... my wallet will take a bite for a couple of those Bethlehems.

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.