Dr. Rat

I figure the artist who ost speaks to this era will have some sort of real insight into it. Is the defining characteristic of our era warfare? I doubt it. I'm 37 and I've never had to worry about war. Partially that's a function of being American, but that's not the whole of it I wouldn't think. That war and fear of war is a relatively strange thing is probably true of more people in our era than it has ever been. Considering that the first half of the twentieth century saw slaughter on a scale quite unimaginable to us, I think the "our era is one of warfare" proposition is a stretch. If our era is distinct from preceding ones, war, bloodshed or even official hypocrisy are not what make it distinct. These are more like eternal verities. --eric (edit for agreement in number on the final verb.)

Well, Schneider Weiss would be the obvious recommendation if you haven't tried it. Similar to the Spaten but less prone to bizarre off-flavors, in my opinion (though bizarre off-flavors aren't always bad). --eric

But we all know you're real name is Prince! --eric

Yeah, you should be able to find it around. Anywhere that carries The New Yorker or Harper's will have it. It's one of the things that's at practically every airport newsstand, say. It used to be The Atlantic Monthly (Ralph Waldo Emerson was amongst the founders, I think) but now they only publish 10 times a year. Francis Davis does most of their jazz writing, and does a pretty good job of it IMHO. You can read some archived material of his at Jazz in the Atlantic. The Shorter article is about 2-3 full magazine pages in length. They may post it to the web in a week or two (but they're getting stingy with what they give away).

Coincidentally, Larry Kart's review of Iska gets mentioned pretty prominently in an essay on Shorter in the new Atlantic. (not on the web yet) --eric

Thanks, Brownie. --eric

Listen, Jack. This isn't a negative response to you. Seriously.... I just wanted to say that (1) I agree that dudes like Nelly present awful images of women as sexual objects but, more importantly, (2) women "fighting back" against this sort of image portrayal isn't exactly late-breaking news. It just so happens that someone at the AP chose to write a story about it this time. Queen Latifah's "U.N.I.T.Y." came out eleven years ago. First verse: "Instinct leads me to another flow Everytime I hear a brother call a girl a bitch or a ho Trying to make a sister feel low You know all of that gots to go Now everybody knows there's exceptions to this rule Now don't be getting mad, when we playing, it's cool But don't you be calling out my name I bring wrath to those who disrespect me like a dame That's why I'm talking, one day I was walking down the block I had my cutoff shorts on right cause it was crazy hot I walked past these dudes when they passed me One of 'em felt my booty, he was nasty I turned around red, somebody was catching the wrath Then the little one said (Yeah me bitch) and laughed Since he was with his boys he tried to break fly Huh, I punched him dead in his eye and said "Who you calling a bitch?" Yeah, but then next day Latifa's just playing ball with other artists who do all the same things she complains about. Which is why this thing at Spellman seems so different. --eric

Yeah. these recording are all over the place. I'd recommend the recent 2-cd set on Iris (Crazy Rhythm) as a good place to get this and a lot of other good Django. But I hear there are later Stewart/Django recordings as well. Anyone know of these? --eric

Got a nice reply from my enquiry about Desmond: Anyhow, my notion is that one of the big influences on Desmond was his father and the musical milieu his father played and composed in. --eric

Who gets their record collections? --eric

What do you mean? That's how democracy works in this country. Haven't you heard? --eric

Sounds like my kinda five year plan. --eric

Hell, I'll take Sophia over Bridget then! I'll take the dog over BB! Woof! Like I say, it's a nice lookin' dog, --eric

That dog is beautiful! I got a big goofy shepherd, too. She just figured out that an 85-pound dog shouldn't sit in people's laps. --eric

Great. Desmond didn't make things easy for him, though. I'm actually mad at him for not doing his book, now. When I get to hell, he's getting it from me! --eric

Can he use the one with the seal instead? --eric

Isn't Elvis Costello's Get Happy about 70 minutes? --eric

Don't worry, None Can Withstand Tail of Fury!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (cue echo) Or was that the other neurotic thread? --eric

Larry- You now anything about Desmond's father? Is he the Breitenfeld that wrote the Last Long Mile and the Sierra piece? I've put out some inquiries, but it doesn't seem as if many poeple know about him. All I get is people firing questions back at me. --eric

One must have a fair deal of Mr. Lee Scrtach Perry. That Island Box would be a good thing to have. And Roast Fish & Cornbread. And the Upsetter Collection on Trojan, which would get you that Gatherers single I recommended. and, on Blue Note (!), Rico, Man from Waraika! --eric

No one stands a chance against tail of fury!!!!!!! (No sexual connotations intended) --eric

Long review of Proust translations by Christopher Hitchens might be worth a read when you're done (if you're not mad at him still about our nice little war). --eric

I love tripe! I'll make you pepper pot soup some time. That's some tripe! --eric

Here's Gioia's bit on Desmond's background: a tender Mozartian twist[\i] Paul Breitenfeld, later Desmond, was the antithesis of Brubeck in al- - most everv wav. While Brubeck was a country boy raised on a ranch, Desmond was a city sophisticate, born on November 25, 1924, in San Francisco, and reared in California and New York. While Brubeck was obsessed with the trappings of musical modernism, Desmond had little interest in studying with Milhaud and instead focused his efforts on polishing a retrograde, almost antimodern saxophone style. While Brubeck had a domineering nature and needed to be group leader: he later insisted that the octet be called the Dave Brubeck Octet, ostensibly to make it - easier for the band to get bookings, and he actually forced a - plebiscite of the group members on this issues vote he won: Desmond, in contrast, was all too happy to avoid leadership responsibilities, - content to make r / his mark as a sideman. While Brubeck was the master of stage presence (trom the start he had, Van Kriedt recalls, "tremendous powers of creating attention while just being on stage"), Desmond was unostentatious to an extreme. While Brubeck, especially after his more untamed early years, - me lowed into a strong family man, Desmond remained ostensibly the happy bachelor and proponent of the high life until the end. And while ~rubeck's public demeanor was high seriousness, Desmond's was inevitably tongue in-cheek, veering from subtle irony to thinly cloaked sarcasm. That two such antipodal musicians could create powerful music together may be but another roof of the compatibility of opposites. Perhaps the true mystery was not that this musical partnership worked so well but that it lasted so long-for a quarter-century-despite such a marked divergence in lifestyles and temperaments. Paul was secretive about his family background. Few early acquaintances were invited into the Breitenfeld residence, just as later in life most of his friends were unaware that this apparent lifelong bachelor had once been married, albeit briefly. As with Brubeck, even Desmond's ethnicity has been the subject of speculation. Gene Lees explains that "Paul thought his father was Jewish until, near the end of his life, a relative told him he wasn't."' Frederick Breitenfeld, Jr., Paul's cousin, is more ambiguous in his account: Much kidding has gone on over the generations and across the lines of cousins throughout the family, about who is Jewish and who isn't. This was a favorite topic of Paul's when he was working for laughs, and it appears that even he might ultimately have taken the whole thing seriously. There was no religious training of any consequence, or any specific denomination for that matter, at [Paul's grandfather] Dr. Sigmund Breitenfeld's household, so the question of "Jewishness" reduces to one of what other people thought rather than what the family thought. "Paul was devoted to his father," Frederick Breitenfeld continues. Paul's father worked as a theater organist and arranger, and much of Desmond's early musical inspiration probably came through him. Early in his musical career Paul used his father's arrangements when backing shows and acts. Although some of the other musicians moaned about the corny tunes, Paul was markedly enthusiastic about the old songs. His later repeated use of quotations from old popular songs in the context of his solos perhaps reflects this apprenticeship with the elder Breitenfeld's music. In stark contrast to his devotion toward his father, Paul was always guarded and secretive about his mother, Shirley. Van Kriedt helps cast some light on the matter: "Another time [Paul] brought up that his mother was not mentally well--as a matter of fact, I would be practically the only person he ever invited to his house to meet his family." The Breitenfeld residence sat high on a hill and commanded a breathtaking view of San Francisco. Inside, however, the home was uncommonly stark. Van Kriedt continues: I was struck by the fact that there were no rugs or curtains on the windows just plain yellow hardwood floors, bare windows and no pictures on the walls. I had the impression I was getting the royal treatment and that I was to be shocked by meeting his mother. [Paul] had told me she was scared by disease, dirt, death-ne never mentioned death around her, and she wore rubber dishwashing gloves while cooking. Anyway-I assumed a very passive, luridly, understanding personality and it turned out that she was a very likeable person. We all chatted while we had lunch and I was relieved that it wasn't as traumatic as Paul had led me to believe. . . . I wanted to go again to Paul's house but I think that the whole area was a deep-seated torment to him and he was highly protective of this. There was clearly much more to Paul's strained relations with his mother. Her illness was evidently severe enough that, at age five, Paul was sent back east to live with relatives in New Rochelle, New York. He did not return to San Francisco until 1936-almost seven years later. One can see the stamp of this uneasy maternal relation on much of Desmond's later life, not only in his committed bachelorhood and frequent womanizing, but perhaps as much in the little satisfaction such pursuits seemed to bring him. Brubeck could perhaps tell much more, as he hinted to Gene Lees: "If you knew the story, you could forgive him anything."I6 "He was the loneliest man I ever knew," remarks Lees, who also notes that Desmond was attracted most to his friends' wives. Desmond somehow found solace by fixating on the women who were the most unobtainable, even at the cost of wreaking havoc with his closest friends. Nor perhaps is it going too far to see these same elements figuring in Desmond's bittersweet music. Van Kriedt reflects: "Seeing his home and playing a lot with Paul, [i felt that] his deeper song had to do with a 'babe crawling into his mother's arms,' a kind of tender Mozartian twist for a jazzman rather than the drugged-up stud proving his manliness." After returning to San Francisco, Desmond began studying clarinet at San Francisco Polytechnic, apparently at the instigation of his father, who advised him to drop his French class to make time for music. In 1943, Desmond switched to the alto. Soon he was drafted into the army, and he \ spent three years in San Francisco as part of th 253rd AGF Band. Through Van Kriedt, also a member of the ensemble, Paul was introduced to another young army musician, pianist Dave Brubeck. Brubeck was about to be shipped overseas, and Van Kriedt planned "to show him off to the band, hoping to get him in. So I prepared a little concert in the rehearsal room." Only a few people showed up to hear the audition-"about five," Van Kriedt recalls-including Paul Desmond. "They all came to the Band Room, and Dave played for all his life It was to no avail. Afterwards I asked Paul, who commonly played with and highly regarded Larry Vannucci (local pianist), what he thought of Dave. He wasn't terribly impressed and thought that Vannucci was much better."

I really like Stephenson a lot (Cryptonomicon & In the beginning was the command line are both fine). I tried hard on the first of the Baroque cycle, and I might go back and try again (a few of his ideas have stuck with me) but I just couldn't finish it. Maybe it's becasue I've read so much from and about the era he's writing about, but I just couldn't buy the characters or the voice he was telling the story in. Just didn't work. By and large the book seems to have gotten beat up by fans like me. Not as good as it shoud have been at any rate. What'd NYT say about Book 2? --eric