Chrome

I happened to be listening to this again this weekend and scanning the ol' liner notes, and he lists his membership in three organizations, two of which have slipped out of my head already, but I believe they were music-related ... anyway, he also lists that he's a member of Mensa! That's great and all, but, I don't know, it struck me as kind of pretentious ... it's funny how little things like this can change the way one listens to music.

Kojak Ving Rhames Irving Berlin

I was in a music video! When I was in high school, I was one of about 20-30 kids who were extras for a video done by local Detroit band the Rockets ... they featured Johnny Badanjek and Jim McCarty, both semi-famous.

Right now I'm reading Nothing ... by Henry Green Green's a fantastic English author who died in the 1970s ... he's kind of got a slightly Joe Henderson-ish thing going on ... very lyrical "straight-ahead" kind of fiction, but with the ability to go "outside" to great effect on occasion.

Do you have the "mini" cards? I used to throw out all of my "old" cards when the new season started, but I started keeping them all from about 1975-1981 or so ... the cool thing was that in Michigan, along with a couple of other places, the '75 cards were printed about half the size of regular ones as a test of some sort ... so their worth about twice as much as the regular ones.

Erykah Badu is only 34 ... and was under 30 when her first (very nice) CD came out ...

Tattoo!

My wife is so desperate for me to take her on a vacation that she's appealing to my weak spots ... she's proposed we go to the Rochester International Jazz Festival in June with a side trip to Cooperstown! If we can get Grandma to watch the girls, I don't think I'm going to be able to resist. Has anyone been to the Rochester event before? Seems like a lot of nice shows this year, but I'm curious about the ticket situation ... they have a festival-long pass available that gets you into almost all the shows (not the main headliners) ... I'm a little concerned, though, that everything will be jam-packed and we'll have trouble getting into venues, since nothing's reserved in advance. Valid concern or inflated opinion about jazz's popularity, even during a big festival like this?

You've got an interesting sense of humor ...

All Blue Note CDs are 25% at tower.com through May 9!

Not a huge fan, but I've been digging the Gerry Mulligan/Paul Desmond Quartet disc from Verve lately ... one of those piano-less outings ... with the horns really at the forefront, it's more interesting than I thought it would be.

I'm guessing she knows as much about sexuality as she knows about the English language.

Anyone hear about this yet? I found it on the "arts.gov" Web site ... Television Broadcast: Legends of Jazz A special television series, Legends of Jazz, hosted by noted jazz pianist and radio personality Ramsey Lewis will debut on Thursday, June 16 at 10:00 p.m. (EDT) on PBS stations nationwide. The premiere episode of the series will be a one-hour special, showcasing five recipients of the NEA Jazz Masters Award. The celebrated guests are vocalist Nancy Wilson (NEA Jazz Master 2004); saxophonist James Moody (1998); vocalist Jon Hendricks (1993); Latin jazz artist Paquito D'Rivera (2005); and Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein (2005). In addition, teen jazz vocal sensation Renee Olstead appears as a special guest. The 13 weekly, 30-minute episodes will debut in Fall 2005, marking the first time in 40 years that jazz has been the focus of a national network weekly series. LRSmedia and WTTW National Productions produced the June 16 program and the Legends of Jazz series. Radio Broadcast: Jazz Profiles The NEA has partnered with National Public Radio to produce a new radio series celebrating the music and lives of NEA Jazz Masters. The NEA Jazz Masters series is comprised of 14, one-hour documentaries, part of NPR's Jazz Profiles program, and begins weekly broadcasts on Thursday, March 31, runs through Jazz Appreciation Month in April, and concludes on June 29. The program can be heard on more than 100 NPR affiliate stations. Jazz Profiles is hosted by Grammy Award-winning vocalist and NEA Jazz Master Nancy Wilson. Each program combines interviews, commentary, and music to craft a rich and nuanced presentation of a jazz artist, place, or event.

I just found this disc at my Border's Outlet ... it's Hubbard and Heath (with Gus Simms on piano, Wilbur Little on bass, and Bertell Knox on drums) recorded live at an apparently famous Baltimore jazz club. The sound isn't perfect, but talk about incredible energy! These guys are blowing the roof off in front of a very appreciative audience. According to the disc, it was put out by Joel Dorn/Label M ... the notes make it sound as if Dorn is/was putting out a whole series of these recently discovered vintage live tracks, but I wasn't able to find a Label M Web site or get much out of what I found online when I googled "Label M." Regardless, this disc is fantastic.

Anyone else ever think about how the name of a song affects one's opinion of what's going on with the music? Something that's been driving me crazy lately is that there's a tune on Larry Young's disc Mothership called Love Drops, and I keep wondering if "Drops" is a noun or a verb here?

I came across the last half of Westworld on TV last night ... boy that movie freaked me out when I was a kid!

The Clifford Brown/Max Roach version from "At Basin Street" is pretty nice.

They're certainly starting to scream around here, and I work for one of the Big 2.5 ... earlier this week a guy was telling me it cost him $75 each time he fills up. Of course, we need people to do more than just scream about it.

If you're a muscle-car fan, it's a flat-out home run ... they did a great job of updating the classic look, and they've already had to increase production on them.

I'd be guessing, but this is up there pretty high on the overall list ... for jazz it would be Art Blakey - Moanin' ... I can't figure out how to get two pics in one post, though.

Charlie Hunter does a nice version of Nirvana's "Come as you are" on the disc Bing, Bing, Bing! ... and although it's a little before the 1980 cutoff, Hunter covers the entire Bob Marley album Natty Dread, and that's great.

You never heard of Foghat? Ugh, do I feel old ...

Foghat guitarist dead at 57 Thursday, March 24, 2005 Posted: 8:30 AM EST (1330 GMT) WILTON, New Hampshire (AP) -- Guitarist Rod Price, founding member of the blues boogie band Foghat, died Tuesday after falling down a stairway at his home, a family friend said. He was 57. The London native's solos drove Foghat to three platinum and eight gold records during the band's quarter-century career. Foghat released its self-titled debut album in 1972. The group was best known for the hit single, "Slow Ride," from the 1975 album, "Fool for the City." After many years of touring he settled in Wilton in 1994. Many in town knew Price as a loving dad who never missed his son's baseball, soccer or basketball games. Fewer people knew of Price's musical background. Price had played with Champion Jack Dupree, Duster Bennett, Eddie Kirkland, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon and Honey Boy Edwards. In recent years, Price concentrated on his blues projects, cutting several CDs and giving private guitar lessons at his home.

From the UK's The Observer, via Salon: In the first of an occasional series in which the greatest recording artists reveal their favourite records, Tom Waits writes about his 20 most cherished albums of all time. So for the lowdown on Zappa and Bill Hicks, step right up... Sunday March 20, 2005 The Observer 1 In The Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra (Capitol) 1955 Actually, the very first 'concept' album. The idea being you put this record on after dinner and by the last song you are exactly where you want to be. Sinatra said that he's certain most baby boomers were conceived with this as the soundtrack. 2 Solo Monk by Thelonious Monk (Columbia) 1964 Monk said 'There is no wrong note, it has to do with how you resolve it'. He almost sounded like a kid taking piano lessons. I could relate to that when I first started playing the piano, because he was decomposing the music while he was playing it. It was like demystifying the sound, because there is a certain veneer to jazz and to any music, after a while it gets traffic rules, and the music takes a backseat to the rules. It's like aerial photography, telling you that this is how we do it. That happens in folk music too. Try playing with a bluegrass group and introducing new ideas. Forget about it. They look at you like you're a communist. On Solo Monk, he appears to be composing as he plays, extending intervals, voicing chords with impossible clusters of notes. 'I Should Care' kills me, a communion wine with a twist. Stride, church, jump rope, Bartok, melodies scratched into the plaster with a knife. A bold iconoclast. Solo Monk lets you not only see these melodies without clothes, but without skin. This is astronaut music from Bedlam. 3 Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart (Straight) 1969 The roughest diamond in the mine, his musical inventions are made of bone and mud. Enter the strange matrix of his mind and lose yours. This is indispensable for the serious listener. An expedition into the centre of the earth, this is the high jump record that'll never be beat, it's a merlot reduction sauce. He takes da bait. Dante doing the buck and wing at a Skip James suku jump. Drink once and thirst no more. 4 Exile On Main St. by Rolling Stones (Rolling Stones Records) 1972 'I Just Want To See His Face' - that song had a big impact on me, particularly learning how to sing in that high falsetto, the way Jagger does. When he sings like a girl, I go crazy. I said, 'I've got to learn how to do that.' I couldn't really do it until I stopped smoking. That's when it started getting easier to do. [Waits's own] 'Shore Leave' has that, 'All Stripped Down', 'Temptation'. Nobody does it like Mick Jagger; nobody does it like Prince. But this is just a tree of life. This record is the watering hole. Keith Richards plays his ass off. This has the Checkerboard Lounge all over it. 5 The Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryars (Point Music) 1975 This is difficult to find, have you heard this? It's a musical impression of the sinking of the Titanic. You hear a small chamber orchestra playing in the background, and then slowly it starts to go under water, while they play. It also has 'Jesus Blood' on it. I did a version of that with Gavin Bryars. I first heard it on my wife's birthday, at about two in the morning in the kitchen, and I taped it. For a long time I just had a little crummy cassette of this song, didn't know where it came from, it was on one of those Pacifica radio stations where you can play anything you want. This is really an interesting evening's music. 6 The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan (Columbia) 1975 With Dylan, so much has been said about him, it's difficult so say anything about him that hasn't already been said, and say it better. Suffice it to say Dylan is a planet to be explored. For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter. I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in - so the bootlegs I obtained in the Sixties and Seventies, where the noise and grit of the tapes became inseparable from the music, are essential to me. His journey as a songwriter is the stuff of myth, because he lives within the ether of the songs. Hail, hail The Basement Tapes. I heard most of these songs on bootlegs first. There is a joy and an abandon to this record; it's also a history lesson. 7 Lounge Lizards by Lounge Lizards (EG) 1980 They used to accuse John Lurie of doing fake jazz - a lot of posture, a lot of volume. When I first heard it, it was so loud, I wanted to go outside and listen through the door, and it was jazz. And that was an unusual thing, in New York, to go to a club and hear jazz that loud, at the same volume people were listening to punk rock. Get the first record, The Lounge Lizards. You know, John's one of those people, if you walk into a field with him, he'll pick up an old pipe and start to play it, and get a really good sound out of it. He's very musical, works with the best musicians, but never go fishing with him. He's a great arranger and composer with an odd sense of humour. 8 Rum Sodomy and the Lash by The Pogues (Stiff) 1985 Sometimes when things are real flat, you want to hear something flat, other times you just want to project onto it, something more like.... you might want to hear the Pogues. Because they love the West. They love all those old movies. The thing about Ireland, the idea that you can get into a car and point it towards California and drive it for the next five days is like Euphoria, because in Ireland you just keep going around in circles, those tiny little roads. 'Dirty Old Town', 'The Old Main Drag'. Shane has the gift. I believe him. He knows how to tell a story. They are a roaring, stumbling band. These are the dead end kids for real. Shane's voice conveys so much. They play like soldiers on leave. The songs are epic. It's whimsical and blasphemous, seasick and sacrilegious, wear it out and then get another one. 9 I'm Your Man by Leonard Cohen (Columbia) 1988 Euro, klezmer, chansons, apocalyptic, revelations, with that mellifluous voice. A shipwrecked Aznovar, washed up on shore. Important songs, meditative, authoritative, and Leonard is a poet, an Extra Large one. 10 The Specialty Sessions by Little Richard (Specialty Records) 1989 The steam and chug of 'Lucille' alone pointed a finger that showed the way. The equipment wasn't meant to be treated this way. The needle is still in the red. 11 Startime by James Brown (Polydor) 1991 I first saw James Brown in 1962 at an outdoor theatre in San Diego and it was indescribable... it was like putting a finger in a light socket. He did the whole thing with the cape. He did 'Please Please Please'. It was such a spectacle. It had all the pageantry of the Catholic Church. It was really like seeing mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Christmas and you couldn't ignore the impact of it in your life. You'd been changed, your life is changed now. And everybody wanted to step down, step forward, take communion, take sacrament, they wanted to get close to the stage and be anointed with his sweat, his cold sweat. 12 Bohemian-Moravian Bands by Texas-Czech (Folk Lyric) 1993 I love these Czech-Bavarian bands that landed in Texas of all places. The seminal river for mariachi came from that migration to that part of the United States, bringing the accordion over, just like the drum and fife music of post slavery, they picked up the revolutionary war instruments and played blues on them. This music is both sour and bitter, and picante, and floating above itself like steam over the kettle. There's a piece called the 'Circling Pigeons Waltz', it's the most beautiful thing - kind of sour, like a wheel about to go off the road all the time. It's the most lilting little waltz. It's accordion, soprano sax, clarinet, bass, banjo and percussion. 13 The Yellow Shark by Frank Zappa (Barking Pumpkin) 1993 It is his last major work. The ensemble is awe-inspiring. It is a rich pageant of texture in colour. It's the clarity of his perfect madness, and mastery. Frank governs with Elmore James on his left and Stravinsky on his right. Frank reigns and rules with the strangest tools. 14 Passion for Opera Aria (EMI Classics) 1994 I heard 'Nessun Dorma' in the kitchen at Coppola's with Raul Julia one night, and it changed my life, that particular Aria. I had never heard it. He asked me if I had ever heard it, and I said no, and he was like, as if I said I've never had spaghetti and meatballs - 'Oh My God, Oh My God!' - and he grabbed me and he brought me into the jukebox (there was a jukebox in the kitchen) and he put that on and he just kind of left me there. It was like giving a cigar to a five-year old. I turned blue, and I cried. 15 Rant in E Minor by Bill Hicks (Rykodisc) 1997 Bill Hicks, blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around. Pay attention to Rant in E Minor, it is a major work, as important as Lenny Bruce's. He will correct your vision. His life was cut short by cancer, though he did leave his tools here. Others will drive on the road he built. Long may his records rant even though he can't. 16 Prison Songs: Murderous Home Alan Lomax Collection (Rounder Select) 1997 Without spirituals and the Baptist Church and the whole African-American experience in this country, I don't know what we would consider music, I don't know what we'd all be drinking from. It's in the water. The impact the whole black experience continues to have on all musicians is immeasurable. Lomax recorded everything, from the sounds of the junkyard to the sound of a cash register in the market... disappearing machinery that we would no longer be hearing. You know, one thing that doesn't change is the sound of kids getting out of school. Record that in 1921, record that now, it's the same sound. The good thing about these is that they're so raw, they're recorded so raw, that it's just like listening to a landscape. It's like listening to a big open field. You hear other things in the background. You hear people talking while they are singing. It's the hair in the gate. 17 Cubanos Postizos by Marc Ribot (Atlantic) 1998 This Atlantic recording shows off one of many of Ribot's incarnations as a prosthetic Cuban. They are hot and Marc dazzles us with his bottomless soul. Shaking and burning like a native. 18 Houndog by Houndog (Sony) 1999 Houndog, the David Hidalgo [Los Lobos] record he did with Mike Halby [Canned Heat]. Now that's a good record to listen to when you drive through Texas. I can't get enough of that. Anything by Latin Playboys, anything by Los Lobos. They are like a fountain. The Colossal Head album killed me. Those guys are so wild, and they've gotten so cubist. They've become like Picasso. They've gone from being purely ethnic and classical, to this strange, indescribable item that they are now. They're worthwhile to listen to under any circumstances. But the sound he got on Houndog, on the electric violin ... the whole record is a dusty road. Dark and burnished and mostly unfurnished. Superb texture and reverb. Lo fi and its highest level. Songs of depth and atmosphere. It ain't nothin' but a... 19 Purple Onion by Les Claypool (Prawn Song) 2002 Les Claypool's sharp and imaginative, contemporary ironic humour and lightning musicianship makes me think of Frank Zappa. 'Dee's Diner' is like a great song your kid makes up in the car on the way to the drive-in. Songs for big kids. 20 The Delivery Man by Elvis Costello (Mercury) 2004 Scalding hot bedlam, monkey to man needle time. I'd hate to be balled out by him, I'd quit first. Grooves wide enough to put your foot in and the bass player is a gorilla of groove. Pete Thomas, still one of the best rock drummers alive. Diatribes and rants with steam and funk. It has locomotion and heat. Steam heat, that is.

Sorry, sometimes when I read these kinds of stories I start getting this weird twitching in my knee ...