Dr. Rat

From the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger

When I was at college, the fraternity I was associated with (really a front for a lucrative cocaine-dealing operation) used to have pretty good import kegs on Tuesday nights: Bass, Guinness, DAB Dark, (on one occasion) DUB dark, etc. So along with all the yellow beer, I also developed a taste for better things. When I was in grad school, a friend and I put together a blind taste test with a bunch of American students and a bunch of Fullbright Scholars (edit: NOT McArthur fellows). Bud vs. Miller vs. Golden Anniversary. Hands down winner: Golden Anniversary. I find it strange that wesbed should like Pilsener and Guinness, yet dislike American microbrews. He must be drinking the wrong ones. Here in Michigan we've got that marvel, that inconsistently excellent (but always interesting) brewery: Bell's. I've found that with a lot of microbrews, it's best to drink close to home. And you've got to figure out what styles you like. I like IPAs, but even there I like some (Bell's Two-Hearted) and dislike others (Sierra Nevada Pale). Microbrews, I think are micro not just in the size of batches, but also in the size of their potential market. A good microbrew is assertively itself, and a lot of people will dislike it. You find the ones that are right for you and you are in heaven. --eric

I've got some of Dollar Brand's (future Abdullah Ibrahim) recordings on a label called Kaz (specifically the album with Mannenburg on it--can't remember the title). I really love it.

I remember when I saw this guy's name on the Mercury Jazz collection, I thought it was a pseudonym (I even tried to puzzle it out thinking it was an anagram.) Well, apparently not . . . if we can trust the source. The article below from NYTimes.com Has Clarinet, Will Swing Till Wee Hours March 15, 2004 By COREY KILGANNON The swing era is not over. It is stashed away in Sol Yaged's clarinet case, which he still opens nightly in a dark corner of a quiet Upper East Side restaurant. "I bought this baby in 1938 for $125" at a store on West 48th Street, Mr. Yaged, 82, said recently as he flipped open his worn case and took out his Conn clarinet at the restaurant, Il Valentino, on East 56th Street. The purchase turned out to be a long-term investment. He began playing professionally while still a teenager and has had few nights off since. Back then he had plenty of work on 52nd Street at clubs like the Onyx, the Three Deuces and Jimmy Ryan's. Those days are long gone, but Mr. Yaged is as busy as ever. Since 2001 he has been playing at Il Valentino, which is in the Hotel Sutton and was once a club run by the bandleader Eddie Condon. For a handful of diners each night Mr. Yaged turns back time, playing the same songs the same way he did a half-century ago. This is the Sol Yaged who hired the saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and the drummer Cozy Cole as sidemen and who wrote music for the film "The Benny Goodman Story," teaching Steve Allen to play the clarinet for the title role. Even now Mr. Yaged routinely plays into the wee hours; his business card includes his home phone number and the directive "Call after 1 p.m." Born in Coney Island, Mr. Yaged became a Goodman disciple in 1935 when he was 12. Early in his career he imitated Goodman's runs and phrasing and even mimicked his mannerisms and speaking style. He showed up so faithfully at Goodman's engagements and recording dates that Goodman called him "my shadow" and would jokingly reprimand him if he showed up late. "If it hadn't been for Benny Goodman I'd have been a juvenile delinquent," Mr. Yaged said. The jazz historian and radio-show host Phil Schaap said, "Sol Yaged has always been a solid musician," and noted that Mr. Yaged had played in Max Kaminsky's band on the opening night of the original Birdland. "That his fame has evaporated says more about the state of jazz than it does about him. He's still an employed musician in New York, a city with 600 hard-bop bands without work." The owner of Il Valentino, Mirso Lekic, said, "The man's a living legend and nobody knows he's still around." Mr. Lekic hired him to play quiet, classy music to dine by, and during the dinner hour he does just that, taking a back seat to chatting diners and to waiters reciting nightly specials. But as the evening progresses he seems to grow younger, swinging his group harder, until patrons put down their dessert forks and the dignified northern Italian restaurant turns into a festive jazz club. The musicians in his group sit in a corner in chairs backed against the wall, Dixieland style. They play their share of stompers, but their sets generally begin by invoking Goodman's spirit. Like Goodman's small-group ensembles, Mr. Yaged's band plays straight-ahead standards with simple melodies and a series of riffing choruses. Mr. Yaged plays with a steady, unsyncopated 4/4 beat with a guitar and bass backing. His usual group is Rick Stone on the guitar and Bob Arkin (the younger brother of the actor Alan Arkin) on bass, but he often invites friends to sit in. On a recent Saturday night there was a trumpet player and trombonist waiting for him when he arrived at the restaurant, sweating and puffing from the walk across town from his apartment in west Midtown. Mr. Yaged is built like a linebacker, and with his shaved head he looks like a cross between Yul Brynner and Knute Rockne. He wore a wide tie with a fat knot and had a threadbare fake rose in his lapel. The gold ring on his beefy pinkie shimmered as his fingers fluttered over the clarinet keys while the group began to play "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." He plays with a creamy, elegant tone that evokes Goodman's lyricism. On "Embraceable You" he treated the melody like a fat balloon that he nonchalantly thwacked into the air. "I first heard him play this song 50 years ago," said a man gripping a glass of Scotch. Neither Mr. Yaged nor the group does much creative improvising. On "Lover Man" they played several choruses with no soloist deviating much from the melody, except Mr. Stone. But their tight, swinging ensemble playing is infectious. They did tidy, catchy arrangements of songs like "I Can't Give You Anything but Love" and "Love Is Here to Stay" with tailgating trombone obbligato and brassy offbeat trumpet punches. Mr. Yaged's best improvising is as a showman. He is an unabashed ham, whether delivering borscht belt one-liners while fixing his reed or fake-clobbering a diner with his clarinet. He often plays with one hand and pours wine for patrons with the other. At one point he joined a discussion at a side table, but leapt up in time to play an ornamental run on the final chorus of "How Deep Is the Ocean?" He finished the song leaning against a dessert cart. "So easy when you know how," he chuckled as the diners applauded. At around midnight the place seems like a speak-easy and Mr. Yaged swings the band like a lariat, spurring the musicians on with shouts and comments. When backing up soloists he comes up with simple, floating riffs. He applauds his sidemen's solos, clarinet tucked like an umbrella under his arm. Sometimes, when he particularly likes the way his bandmates end a tune, he will start them up again and have them play it several more times, guffawing gleefully each time. Late on that recent Saturday night a man from the bar wobbled over and stuffed a $5 bill into the tip jar. Mr. Yaged started the band off on a stomping "St. Louis Blues" and then "Flying Home" and "King Porter Stomp." During "Alexander's Ragtime Band" a man leaned over and said, "When you write your article, say the food's terrible and the waiters are nasty so us old-timers can come and not be swamped with people." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/15/arts/mus...2195efd0a021965

Just got the new Takashi Matsunaga disc, and the kid is a really fine pianist. He cites Tatum and Red Garland as influences,a nd you can hear some of the Latin American monsters (Valdes, Camilo) in him. But the CD isn't about technical virtuosity: it's all pretty digestable & a lot of it kinda catchy. Lots of sudden shifts, but all pretty well integrated, and dynamically perhaps a little bit under wraps (but that perhaps all to the good). Definitely worth hearing, --eric

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I use the Vince Guaraldi filing system: where ever I cast em, there they are. But we've got two djs in the family so there's a lot of hither and thither. A crapshoot finding anything in particular. But I'm alright with "openness to the unbidden." --eric

Wait for it now . . .

Chris- Thanks for the engaging reply. Well, he ain't dead yet. And while there's life . . . --eric

That's too bad about the interview. I was looking forward to hearing/ reading the results of that. --eric

Chris wrote: Bearing in mind that I substantially agree with your evaluation of the releases themselves (except this last one, but I haven't lived with it long enough to be any too certain there) . . . Anyhow, I wonder about your use of a different yardstick for WM because he's been offered greater opportunities than many others. I think we might say that a certain responsibility comes with the sort of opportunity he's been given, but to my mind he's always acted as if he were fully cognizant of that sort of responsibility, and that's all we can ask from him. (You may disagree.) One can't be under a moral responsibility to be aesthetically great or even wise. There's very different realms involved in each of these. In fact, I'd argue that the sense of responsibility he's under is one of the things that's held him back from fulfilling the potential many saw in him. And I don't really see him laughing all the way to the bank, either. Though I have no personal acquaintance with him, he's never really struck me this way. --eric

it's Sch AA p like Sheep, bêêêêêêêh waddo I caranyway The one bit of trivia he never told me was how to spell his name!

I should add though, too, that Schapp has also done some compelling radio, as well. I've stayed and listened to hours to some of his memorial broadcasts (they seemed better to me when it's someone who has just died rather than a long-planned thing). But, I also changed the station on popped in a CD on Schapp's voice on many an occasion. --eric

Schapp is notorious for yammering on. With fiction yet, according to Chris. When I live near NYC my friends and I used to imitate Schapp giving infinitely detailed descriptions of the utterly banal and trivial. Fun, fun! --eric

But why then is there so much difference in the amount of mindless violence between the regular season and the playoffs, or between American and European hockey? Not that the game is ever completely free of folks overreatcting to the violence that is inherent in the game, but it seems that when the stakes are high, on-ice assaults become less common, regardless of stick-carrying or skating speed. So let's raise the stakes a bit and see how well hockey players can contain themselves. The only reason hockey wouldn't do this is that they feel that fights and assaults are what they are really selling--pro wrestling with real blood, more or less. I think its more than past time the NHL, and North American hockey at large, took a hard and serious look at this. The game has a lot of potential to expand if it can put the "wrestling on skates" image behind it. --eric

I didn't notice this, but I listened to it on my computer then I turned it over to the folk guy. I thought her voice was a too upfront, maybe (very close miked), but I didn't notice distortion. Perhaps the guys got a little crazy with the compressor--if these folks (the people complaining of distortion) aren't used ot pop recordings, they may not be used to that, and I should imagine Jones is getting the full pop treatment, for good and ill, and one of the ills is the liberal use of dynamic compression, which would be particularly annoying on this sort of recording, I think. But I won't have the disc back until next week, --eric

What kind of distortion? --eric

They should all be issued firearms. A good clean kill (preferably while the victim is sitting on the bench or coming in from the locker room) is much to be preferred to this neck-breaking stuff and spilling blood right there out on the stark white ice. A sort of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) situation will eventually settle in (like the cold war) keeping actual deaths to a tolerable minimum; or it'll be Hatfields and McCoys; either way, we, the viewers, are the winners. --eric

The book that inspired my monicker (link in Claude's note on this thread) is definitely worth a read. A caustic critique of the abuse of science as an institution. And they can use a good kick in the ass once in a while (I'm about to marry my second scientist type, so I'm allowed). --eric

Ha! When I was a kid, my older sisters "baby sat" the high school bio labs white rat. We kept it in a cage in the basement, and our cat wouldn't go to the basement all summer. We lived in the NJ suburbs and I guess the cat just didn't know WTF the rat was! I've got a couple little rats--I think they are bred from lab rat stock--they are very docile but they are colored. My cat definitely knows from rats: she pants and gets all worked up, but she's a bit of a spaz--we found her under the porch with her head screwed on wrong (about a 25 degree angle off center) so she's never been quite right. The rats just come right up to the cat and rub noses, and the cat just doesn't seem to know how to take this. She knows she's supposed to do something with these damned rats, but doesn't seem to know what! Our rats are lots of fun. One is Chubbs and the other is Solly. They're quite intelligent and curious. I aspire to be like them one day. We got a boa, too (talk about manageries!), but feeding is a private matter! No non-comestible rats allowed! --eric

Sorry I missed your comment at the bottom--I thought you'd misfired! The encyclopedia is very big indeed. So aside from the heft issue, you think it's a good buy at (I think) $20? On the Hendrix: Hardcover: 256 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.91 x 13.02 x 9.96 Only an inch thick, so no this isn't anything like the encyclopedia. I'd guess it's more along the lines of a modest coffee table book: appropriate to sit on a coffeetable rather than to eb made into one. --eric

The encyclopedia: I don't think a paper binding would hold up very long! So probably not. The Hendrix: I'm sure this'll get put out in paper eventually. --eric

I've been eyeing this in the remainder pile at Borders. --eric

What nonsense I've been writing today. How's that for a fungo? --eric

Do you mean rats, or doctors? (DrJ, AchtungDrFreudCalling...) Actually I meant moose, rat, human . . . notice I said at least . . . thinking about it there's also a muskrat, dogs, cats, a river rat (different species?--probably) and probably a whole managerie besides. We are truly an ark. I am the third rat person, I guess, though I see as well, but there's a bunch more doctors, some of whom might actually be doctors. --eric