Dr. Rat

Ok, I'm on the lookout. --eric

What do you think? I've read a couple of her novels and wished they were better. --eric

I've found a lot of folks in the public radio business are kind of likie me--natural introverts who have made their way in the public speaking/education/public relations business through force of will. Now, I really like a day when I deal with people straight through from 6am to 5pm, but it exhausts me. I've just gotta run off and read a book for a while. Actually this I find relaxing as well--can deal with people at arms length here, which is a good antedote to live radio and customer service. --eric

I've talked to WD45 on the phone (it's a closed circle!), and otherwise it's only through the computer. But I'm already on record as being unsociable. --eric

Uh, you live in New York. Ever hear of Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall? Well, perhaps JazzKat has an aversion to the sort of "Night at the Opera (and not a Marx Brother in sight) atmospher of places like that. --eric

One of the things that surprises me about Bad Plus (and this has nothing to do with their musical merits) is that they seem to have zero resonance with the young people who work here. Other "borderland jazz" phenomena like Norah Jones and Jamie Cullum and Sex Mob, even EST picked up very enthusiastic followings among my sub-40 programmers. Not so Bad Plus--for all their vaunted ability to bring young people to jazz, they seem to leave my folks cold. They get played some, but no more than a Keith Jarrett cd. And I don't have to yell at anyone for playing the same track on their show four weeks in a row. --eric

My feeling is that 1. The sort of contentiousness here is more like Freud's narcissism of small differences or factionalism amongst political cadres. The fact that we're here means we care about jazz and jazz history--so we are liable to wrangle over what seem like small contradicitions on these matters. If we indifferent to small differences we wouldn't be here. 2. This is different than the mere casual hostility one runs into at many places on the net. 3. At the moment we've moved (and I included myself here) from being not indifferent to being intolerant of small differences and personality conflicts. 4. I am thinking this may be lingering emotional fallout from the election to some degree. 5. I am thinking that the diversity of the group here is *raising the bar* on how much tolerance is required of people who post, and we just aren't jumping any higher. --eric

Well you can find out who I am easily enough--in fact, you can find out more about me than you'd ever want to know just by looking at my profile. The reason I don't post under my own name is that, frankly, in a day with powerful search engines like Google, I don't want every word I write to come back to haunt me. I am in a public position--I run a public radio station--and I don't need people digging up stuff I write here as a stick to beat me with at my job. The alternative to anonymity is people not posting. I suppose boards like this are for people who like communicating, not for people who throw letters away. --eric

Haven't seen this latest edition, but I thought the first was a good "advanced beginner's" sort of book. Has it changed much? I like their guides to World Music. Coincidentally just mentioned these guides on my morning show this morning, much to the same effect. --eric

Oh yeah, that damned law. Has anyone been convicted of this yet? I have a feeling the courts would be unsympathetic to prosecutions under this provision. --eric

here in the US it is legal to undo whatever encription the manufacturers put on. One question would be, Does the de-encrytption software violate any of Apple's patents? Since apple probably gets you to agree not to do this as part of the licensing agreement with iTunes, another question would be would that contractual limit be binding on consumers? I have a feeling the answer would be no. --eric

There is no longer any "no longer" on the Internet. Almost, anyhow. Archived fluglehorn page --eric

Sorry to offend any residents of this city, but I visited it in January and thought it was terrible! There's a great Belgian beer bar downtown that's worth checking out, though -- Monk's Cafe. Only bar I've ever been to with a tapestry on the wall. Guy Guy, I'm curious what you found to be so terrible about it? Seconds on the Monk's Cafe recommendation. I am Philly born & bred. The usual things people complain about Philly: it's old and dirty and redevelopment is proceding in a pretty weird fashion in the downtown area--there are still wastelands 5 minutes from the most expensive real estate in the city. The town kinda looks drab in many ways because a) the city has never gotten its act together on presenting itself well to visitors and b) it's an eighteenth century town and it's just hard to do a lot of things the twenty-first century demands. So there's a feel to it similar to say, New Orleans or the older parts of London. It seems decrepid. Myself, I LIKE that. But I also used to play in a junkyard. The town is also still irrationally run in the old style of machine politics--without the money that Chicago and NYC have to overcome the inherent inefficincies of that way of doing things. So one runs into dumbass inconveniences (like potholes on city streets that can serve as cemetary plots and signage that let's you know what mistake you just made). So, if you like new-built towns and all the modern conveniences built right in and a strong, omnipresent customer-service ethic, Philly isn't really the place. On the up side, there are many many hidden, underutilized treasures. Natives tend to be unpretentious and helpful (though sometimes gruff), there is a fine park system and clever drivers can generally find ways around the worst traffic. --eric

Interesting. The Nessun Dorma would be the Jussi Bjorling version, I guess? I picked up the remastered Solo Monk a few months back, and I can't really agree with Waits--occasionally i get a sense of greater insight into the comps or Monk's mind, but I also get a sense of exhaustion. Though I do see what he's talking about. The crack about bluegrass groups isn't true anymore. I am surpised by how much of this music I have and really like a lot. My one big divergence would probably be Trout Mask, which I've never been able to enjoy or gain insight through--just not my flavor, I guess. I am also surprised that there's nothing here beside Leonard Cohen that reflects the Brecht/Weill/Weimar-ish sort of sound a lot of his recent work seems to partake of. Costello's album also a surprise--it's good, but I hadn't thought of it as all-time list material. I'll have to listen to it through again. --eric

Except for the fact that C. specifically disavowed the idea that Hammond did this: And the fact that Mr. Christian was not limited to dealing only with Mr. Hammond. He was--get this!--an actual social agent in his own right, in spite his situation as a black man in a white-dominated world. And he could well have, if he so chose, gone to other folks in the world of jazz who might have recorded him as a leader. This assuming that Mr. Hammond had some sort of aversion to the idea of Christian recording as a leader, which we have no evidence of whatsoever. The "point" I seem to be missing is that the opportunity to carry out a personal vendetta comes in three furlongs ahead of the facts with some folks. But, anyhow, back to late lunch, --eric

Conical means the walls if the pipe are getting bigger as you move away from the mouthpiece. Tubular means they are remaining the same. Think I read somewhere that a trumpet is 2/3s tubular (for 2/3 pf it's length, the walls of the pipe keep the same diameter, then over the last 1/3 the pipe opens out to its terminal diameter which comes just before the bell (which I think is counted separately). This last third being the conical part Cornet is 1/3 tubular and 2/3 conical, so it opens up over a longer span of pipe. So the cornet sound is thought of as somewhat less forceful and more "open" than a trumpet. A flugelhorn is conical the whole way from the mouthpiece to the bell, with the walls of the pipe gradually expanding the whole way, and therefore you get the softer sometimes kinda blowsy sound of the flugelhorn. The length of the tube in all three cases being identical for horns in the same key. --eric

I think Man in the High Castle could work--you could steal more details about perverse Nazi politics and atmosphere from Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy, and you could evoke a lot of strange parallels by playing off the LA setting so familiar from Chandler. The tough part would be getting across (or sacrificing) the stuff on aesthetics and the sublime. --eric

A rather clueless post, eric. You obviously don't know that 1939-41 was a very different time as far as the record industry goes. Musicians did, in fact, need people like John if they wanted to do a session--especially if they were not well-established, but even then. Christiern- Do your damnest and try not to be patronizing, either to me or to Charlie Christian. There's a damn site of difference between needing John Hammond to record and needing someone "like" John Hammond. If you can't see that difference, sorry, but perhaps you don't know that plenty of folks recorded in the late thirties and early forties without the personal intervention of John Hammond. So Charlie Christian had more options than begging a reluctant John Hammond to give him a recording session if he was disposed to record, no? And other black musicians of similar stature or even lesser stature in the era managed to find record producers who would record them, no? How ever did Chu Berry lead a session? Or Tiny Parham? or [fill in the blank]. The patronage of some rich white guy was not the be all and end all. Black artists found ways to use their resources to get things they wanted from the system, no matter how crooked it might have been. And, apparently, it was not a Herculean task, though no doubt it was needlessly difficult. So, as much as we might like to get a dig in on John Hammond, the question goes back to Charlie Christian, not to John Hammond.

Well, Christian didn't need Hammond to do a session. The question starts with Christian, not with the closest white man. Perhaps he didn't feel like it. Perhaps he figured he'd have plenty of time to do it and was in no hurry. Perhaps he'd much rather sit in at some after hours club. --eric

Ouch! That rings true! (Also I once left a drink on the roof of my car.) *Twice* I have walked home from somewhere I drove to, woke up the next day unable to find the car, and then reported my car stolen to the police. They just love me! (Alcohol was not inolved in either case, beleive it or not) --eric

Good for you, you weirdo! --eric

I have to vote with Jsngry here. It's always seemed bizarre to me that you say "sexy" and the picture of a 16-year-old girl pops into the collective consciousness.

Very few professions have been more dramatically altered by the WWW than the used book trade. In the not-so-distant past it was slow, inefficient, and required dedication, a broad if not necessarily deep knowledge of history and culture, and a real love of books; dealer wannabes normally served apprenticeships at established bookstores, or were collectors who became dealers to feed an insatiable book habit. Today it is fast, efficient, and requires very little of its practitioners other than an urge to turn thrift store finds into cash. There are plenty of real book dealers on ABE and related sites, but there are plenty of imposters as well. They're the ones selling dollar books and gouging on shipping. Yeah, I actually know someone in the business slightly. It's depressing when I talk to her about the books she actually makes money on. She actually sold a Reader's Digest condensed book for some increadibly high price a few weeks back. --eric

My big complaint with abebooks is that the sellers are all lowballing the actual prices of books ($1, say) and then padding their shipping costs to make up the difference. I think abebooks should institute some standard shipping costs so the listed prices for books are all working from the same baseline. --eric

He looks like he's desperately trying to get a hall pass so he can gallop off to the little moose's room. --eric