Chrome

Hey, you wouldn't want to curtail their 2nd amendment rights, would you? That would be un-American!

I know what you're saying, but I guess I hear the "lack of conviction" as a kind of "cool" approach ... maybe even "cold," that I enjoy sometimes. Kind of like electronic music, if you follow.

Yep, that's the one ... going back and reading it reminds of Eric Alexander posts ... seems like Byron also has that kind of a polarizing affect on people.

Maybe I'm not using the search function correctly, but I didn't turn up anything about this album ... I just picked it up based on (I thought) a recommendation here, and it's quite good. Byron's on clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor, with Jason Moran, piano; Jack DeJohnette, drums; Ralph Alessi, trumpet on a couple tracks; and Lonnie Plaxico, bass on a couple tracks. After one listen, it seems to be a good combination of both "inside" and "outside" playing ... sometimes Byron sounds almost Dolphy-esque ... plus, the disc includes interpretations of both Freddie Freeloader and In a Silent Way. It's just challenging enough to make me think, but without overloading the few working brain cells I have left.

... my oldest daughter is just 12 and on a local swim team, and even girls in her age group are starting to where those kinds of shorts with "SWIMMER" on them ... this country definitely has a split personality when it comes to sexualizing young girls. Li

Pet store owner: Satan's image on turtle's shell Monday, March 21, 2005 Posted: 7:22 AM EST (1222 GMT) MICHIGANTOWN, Indiana (AP) -- A turtle that was the only survivor of a pet shop fire may have emerged with a hellish memento. The palm-sized red-eared slider turtle, named Lucky, was the only animal to survive a fire last October at Dora's A-Dora-ble Pet Shop in nearby Frankfort, about 40 miles northwest of Indianapolis. Owner Bryan Dora now says he sees an image of Satan's face on the critter's shell. He can spot lips, eyes, a goatee, shoulders and a pair of pointy horns on Lucky's back. "The marking on the shell was like the devil wanted us to know he was down there," Bryan Dora said. "To me, it's too coincidental that the only thing to come out unscathed would have this image on it." The image was not visible before the fire and Dora speculates the intense heat might have caused the shell's color to change. The turtle is healthy and there was no change in its behavior, he said. The cause of fire that destroyed nine businesses or offices in the 1912 building in downtown Frankfort has not been determined. "Turtles can hold their breath quite awhile," Dora said. "He may have taken one breath just before and held it through the fire. Except that the fire went on and on for hours."

... speaking of banning "members" ...

Well, w/Linklater should be a help ... I know that reading Dick's books often leaves me Dazed and Confused ... in a good way, of course!

That symbol in the right corner ... does that mean he was a Mason?

Every time I see JSngry's avatar, I smile ... Jimmy Rushing was something else ... I've got the Rushing Lullabies/Big Brass twofer and it spends a lot of time in my CD player. Any other Rushing fans out there?

From Slate ... Goodbye, Papa, It's Hard To Die The enduring appeal of an abominable pop song. By James Sullivan Posted Wednesday, March 16, 2005, at 5:29 AM PT With its outtakes, rarities, and B sides, the long-awaited Nirvana boxed set turned out to be the table scraps of a once-bountiful buffet. There is one moment, however, that's well worth seeking out: a ghostly rendition of the infamous pop hit "Seasons in the Sun." Fittingly, it comes at the end. A video clip from 1993 shows the trio struggling grimly with the song in a studio in Rio de Janeiro. Having switched roles—Kurt Cobain on drums, Dave Grohl on bass, Krist Novoselic on guitar—their funereal seriousness might reflect their lack of skills on unfamiliar instruments. It's more tempting, though, to believe that impossibly maudlin tune is hitting them right in the gut. For those of a certain age, Terry Jacks' 1974 chart-topper "Seasons in the Sun" remains an unsurpassed nadir of pop music. There was, to be sure, stiff competition at the time—Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)," Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods' "Billy, Don't Be a Hero." During those mid-Watergate weeks and months, the whole country seemed eager to wallow in tuneful misery. "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun/ But the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time," sings Jacks, puckering up on every syllable. The singer addresses his friend, his father, and his lover as he prepares to die of unspecified causes—assuming, that is, that "too much wine and too much song" isn't a diagnosis. In his epic bad-song survey, Dave Barry put "Seasons in the Sun" in a class of its own, and voters emphatically agreed. Yet Nirvana is hardly the only band to cover the tune—there's been a recent revival of sorts. If it's so universally despised, then why does this song refuse to die? Part of the allure, at least for connoisseurs of Continental cool, is the song's source. The lyrics, written by the mass-market poet Rod McKuen, are a translation of the French tune "Le Moribond" ("The Dying Man") by Jacques Brel. Born in Brussels, Brel was a family man and cardboard-factory worker until his breakthrough in the 1950s. In the clubs of Paris, he became a hipster chansonnier, a cabaret hero with the dash of a nouvelle vague leading man. Routinely compared with Dylan despite his overt theatricality, Brel, with his storytelling style and his world-weary melodramatics, was an inspiration for David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and many others. Brel's original 1961 delivery of "Le Moribond" is idiosyncratic, almost jazzy, despite being set to a rigid martial tempo. By contrast, Jacks sings it as if he's following the bouncing ball. As the story goes, Jacks discovered the song on an old Kingston Trio album and brought it to a Beach Boys session he was producing. The Boys cut a demo but declined to release it, leaving Jacks to record it himself. The production was poky and very AM-radio, but the power-chord pioneer Link Wray supposedly played the opening electric guitar riff. The resulting single sold millions. The more elusive part of the song's appeal lies somewhere between the cradle and the grave. In Jacks' twee version, the melody is reduced to a hectoring nursery-school simplicity, yet the subject is the heaviest of them all—going off to ride the big teeter-totter in the sky. Kurt Cobain, quintessentially conflicted, clearly loved "Seasons in the Sun" despite his aversion to sentimentality. (The Terry Jacks 45 was the first record he ever bought.) He certainly wasn't alone. On a new limited-edition single, the L.A. punk holdout John Doe covers the song straight, with no hint of a snicker and no fear of the schmaltz. A sneaky theremin tweaks the role of the angels' chorus, but it's almost as if Doe were auditioning as Jacks. England's Black Box Recorder, featuring former members of the Auteurs and the Jesus and Mary Chain, covered the song faithfully, too. Their version followed yet another reverent reading, turned in by the Dublin boy band Westlife, that went to No. 1 on the U.K. pop charts. If some bands bring no irony to the song whatsoever, others have predictably played it for broad laughs. Blink-182 has been known to mangle it in their live shows. The Scarsdale knuckleheads Too Much Joy couldn't resist; neither could the campy Cali-punk cover band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. The Brooklyn Francophiles Les Sans Culottes give the song a psychedelic-lounge spin that goes all frantic at the finish. However we hear the song—as a heartbreaking suicide note or an unforgivably mawkish tug on our emotions—it remains lodged in the collective cranium. "Strange how potent cheap music is," Noel Coward once remarked. The secret of the enduring appeal of "Seasons in the Sun" is just that simple. How will we face our own final days—with grace, humility, a defensive sneer, or a loud guffaw? It's a sad song about death, and death gets us every time.

I think I've seen this movie ...

I received the 40th anniversary box as a gift, and that's mostly Atlantic stuff ... it was a nice present, but it didn't inspire me to get anything else by them.

You know what? I completely retract my previous post ... I was just thinking of the discs I have w/him as a leader, like Hubcap, Hub-tones, Red Clay, etc ... I've got all three discs you mention and agree w/your assessment! I'll just shut up now ...

What do recommend, Hubbard-wise?

I've only got four or five discs from each, but from what I've been able to glean, I think Morgan was more adventurous ... for example, I'm not aware of a Hubbard counterpart to Search for the New Land.

Anyone familiar with the book The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, a Harvard Med School psychiatrist? From Publishers Weekly: Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Stout says that as many as 4% of the population are conscienceless sociopaths who have no empathy or affectionate feelings for humans or animals. As Stout (The Myth of Sanity) explains, a sociopath is defined as someone who displays at least three of seven distinguishing characteristics, such as deceitfulness, impulsivity and a lack of remorse. The 4% figure (obviously) means 1 in 25 ... think about that next time you're in a crowd.

Maybe not as great as Twilight Zone, but Night Gallery was certainly some classic stuff:

Thanks ... I can't access that at work, but I'll check it out at home.

Yep, yep ... as BFrank mentions, it's the cover of Dry!

I just picked this up; it's my first disc by Manne as a leader,* and it's very good ... kind of an "advanced West Coast" sound to my ears. It's on Concord and also features Conte Candoli, trumpet; Frank Strozier. alto/flute; Mike Wofford, piano; and Monty Budwig, bass. Although I can't compare it to much else he's done, it certainly sounds more "individualistic" than what I've heard of him with, for example, Stan Getz. *Even I think it's kind of a weird place to start, but I was placing an order with Daedulus and saw this for $5.99 ... an impulse buy. On a slight tangent ... even back in the day, how did he ever get away with "The Manne Hole"?

For me, it's a question of both limited time and limited $$ ... one of the few non-jazz musicians I still consistently spend money on is PJ Harvey.

Has anyone heard the albumb by Petra Haden (Charlie Haden's daughter) in which she covers The Who Sell Out using only her voice to do all the different parts? Sounds intriguing. (I've got a vague memory of seeing something about this on the board, but a 30-day search didn't turn anything up.)

I second this ... but I'm the other way around, liking Elastic a little better than Yaya3 ... to me it sounds a little more cohesive. Regarding Blade, I know he's been pretty busy lately as a sideman, but I wish he'd put out another disc as a leader already.

NY Post: $50M OFFER FOR 'GATES' NIXED CHRISTO and Jeanne-Claude, the husband-and-wife creators of "The Gates," have spurned a $50 million offer to buy the undulating orange sheets that briefly carpeted Central Park. The duo financed the $21 million project through sales of Christo's drawings of "The Gates," life-size renderings that fetched about $600,000 apiece. The artists signed a contract with the city stipulating that all proceeds from "The Gates" and its memorabilia would be donated to nonprofits. But financier Steven Greenberg — who evidently believes everyone has their price — tells PAGE SIX that he and a team of investors were willing to pony up $50 million for all 7,500 gates. "I thought collectors might pay $250,000 for four of them, to keep on their lawn or to add to their art collection," Greenberg says. "My idea was to re-market them. You could perhaps end up realizing $375 million for all of them." Told of Greenberg and company's offer, Christo is said to have quipped, "I wouldn't sell them for $100 million." A spokesman for Christo and Jeanne-Claude told us, " 'The Gates' are not for sale. The artists aren't making a penny off this project. The rights to the signed prints and merchandise are all going to charity. This is public knowledge, and in a contract they signed with the city. It's all out of their own pocket. The only thing they didn't pay for was the weather." The spokesman added, "All the material will be recycled. The nylon will be shredded and made into carpet padding, and the aluminum will be melted down and sent back to an aluminum manufacturer." The main beneficiary of "The Gates" is Nurture New York's Nature, a nonprofit environmental group that has an exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license on all "Gates"-related products. Nurture has since sub-licensed many of the products to groups like the Central Park Conservancy and the Met Museum. Nurture still gets a portion of proceeds from "Gates" T-shirts, sweatshirts, postcards, books and $295 silk commemorative Hermes scarves. Nurture project manager Jake Kheel said that Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who are already working on their next project, a giant piece of fabric stretching over the Arkansas River in Colorado, are extremely sensitive over allegations that they are profiting from their work. "They adamantly insisted that they not profit from this project," he said. "They go crazy even at the suggestion that they're making money from it."