J Larsen

In Euclidean space, you're right.

I've been going out more in Manhattan since our smoke ban, as I did in SF after it passed out there eight or so years ago. I have not noticed a decline in the number of bar/night club dwellers in either city, and I have found my nights out to be much more enjoyable. FWIW, I think being free from suffering the repercussions of others' ridiculously hazardous habits is one of the freedoms I cherish the most.

Wow, this particular genre of music really hasn't evolved at all in the last ten or fifteen years, has it? How did I get the impression that Jewel was a country singer? Am I mistaken, or was she once billed as such? Was she country's Norah?

I haven't been to Smoke in a couple years. Has it changed at all? I remember it being overpriced and over stocked with the Columbia crowd. I sort of like getting away from the college set when I go out.

Here's the article: The Lesson of Smalls, a Little Club With a Big Heart By BEN RATLIFF n the common model for a jazz club in New York, the emphasis is on established musicians who have a new album, weeklong runs of a single band, a healthy bar business. (Something has to make up for those nights when four people show up.) But in 1994, when Mitchell Borden opened Smalls, a boxy basement club on 10th Street in the West Village, he ignored the common model. Mr. Borden had been hanging out at Augie's, the club on upper Broadway popular with Columbia students. He wanted something similar but more ?a space where musicians could play, rehearse, teach, network and crash. He did not want a a liquor license and ID-checking. He didn't know or care about new albums. He simply believed that the longer a band has a place in which to play and rehearse, the better it develops. What happened was extraordinary. "It was the mecca for young musicians," said Ali Jackson, a drummer who first performed at Smalls when he was 18 and is now a member of Wynton Marsalis's band. "That's where all of us met, our generation of New York musicians." Now that Smalls is closing ?its final night is tonight ?we can begin to appreciate how rare it was, how helpful it was for developing musicians and how hard it would be for anyone else to duplicate. Mr. Borden, 46, is a genuine New York eccentric: a small, deadpan, shaved-headed man who usually hangs out in the club's stairwell, talking to musicians or reading dog-eared paperbacks, or practicing his violin on 10th Street. If you spent a few minutes with him, you heard stern musical opinions ?about the high-water mark set by bebop, about the elements that make a band work, about rhythm and harmony. Sometimes he didn't love what he booked and told you so with surprising honesty. But he trusted the opinions of certain musicians, he saw an interesting community taking shape and he trusted the response of an audience. At times he worked 15-hour days, seldom seeing his wife and two children as he operated the club and even slept there. In exchange for help from musicians, he gave them room to sleep in the club's back areas. At 10 p.m., with a sellout line often already formed (the club's official capacity was 50), he opened up, taking $10 per person for the whole night, letting in a lot of musicians without charge. He closed at 6 a.m., after four sets of jazz. He didn't serve food or alcohol. Students arrived by the bushel, smoking and talking and hanging out; to hear the music you could sit at caf?style tables, sprawl on couches, stand behind the nonworking bar. He paid most of his bands at the beginning of each month, so he took care of their rent as well as his own. And he kept giving shelter to musicians. Among the living spaces at Smalls were a closet, a boiler room and a defunct walk-in freezer, complete with a piano. (If you were sounding rusty, Mr. Jackson recalled, musicians would say, "You need to head to the freezer.") Within two years Mr. Borden had 17 rotating bands at the club, some of them playing once a week. There were trios and big bands, 18-year-olds and jazz elders like the drummer Jimmy Lovelace. The styles ranged from straight-ahead 1950's-style jazz, to new variations created by players like Mark Turner, Kurt Rosenwinkel, James Hurt, Aaron Goldberg, Guillermo Klein, Magali Souriau, Jason Lindner, Greg Tardy, Brian Blade and Avishai Cohen ?a high percentage of the names in the New York jazz scene to emerge over the last decade. Late at night there were jam sessions, rare around New York. "Whenever someone moved to town, that's where they'd gravitate," said Mr. Lindner, who started a Monday night big band at Smalls and performed there for eight years. And the strange mix of styles seeped into the musicians, creating a new kind of jazz mainstream, young New York musicians fresh out of school who found their own sound more quickly. And the major record labels took notice. Impulse, part of the Universal records group, sensed a new wave and recorded "Live at Smalls," featuring six different bands. It came out in late 1998, a little too late to capitalize on the street buzz. No matter: people kept packing the club, particularly students and tourists, because it was Smalls. Finally, Mr. Borden's luck ran out. When he originally started the club, getting recommendations about whom to book at the club from teachers and students at the New School jazz program, the club's monthly rent was $2,650. It grew to $8,000, and he said he could not keep it going by himself. "I was in a unique situation," Mr. Borden said. "I could put on music that was unpopular, and yet there would be an audience there." For now he will concentrate on another club ?the Fat Cat, a room within a pool hall at 75 Christopher Street; he has been booking the place as a sideline on weekends for nearly three years. He can get about 25 more people into the Fat Cat than he could at Smalls. But he isn't a leaseholder, so at the moment he is restricted to booking only Thursdays through Saturdays. Musicians can't rehearse in the room during the day, and Mr. Borden can't keep the music going past two in the morning, when the pool hall closes. Before deciding to lose money supporting unknown saxophone players, Mr. Borden grew up in Freehold, N.J. He played violin in a bluegrass band during the 70's and later became a nurse and a schoolteacher. His previous work experience helped him run the club, he said. "Smalls, all night long, is like triage," he said three years ago, when he was thinking of closing the club. "And keeping the audience down is like running a classroom." Smalls was a compact box of a place. Listening to music there was like listening through headphones, and could almost give a musician a false sense of security. "It was the most intimate connection with an audience that I've ever had," said Charles Owens, a young saxophonist who worked there from the beginning. "For a long time I was playing at Smalls exclusively. When I started working at Kavehaz, on Mercer Street, I said, `Hey, what happened to my sound?' " It's hard to say what the Smalls legacy will be. Since Mr. Borden is nearly selfless, he remains the opposite of a good business model. But the Fat Cat, which this weekend features the pianist Pete Malinverni's trio, will continue to show bandleaders, developed and developing, in a setting with no commercial distractions. The Jazz Gallery, on Hudson Street, run by Dale Fitzgerald, has become another club where musicians feel comfortable hanging out ?and creating that kind of atmosphere is the most important thing that a club owner who cares about music can do. But the clubhouse atmosphere of Smalls, with all its wee-hours mingling, had a definite effect on New York jazz, offering a stage for unforgettable performances: Wynton Marsalis working out on "Cherokee" with a band of just-out-of-school musicians; Lee Konitz poring over the lines of "The Song Is You," then drifting off into abstraction with the guitarist Ben Monder and the drummer Matt Wilson; the bassist Omer Avital's dynamic sextet, with four saxophones; the alto saxophonist Myron Walden playing hard for 90 minutes in a pianoless trio; the bassist Reid Anderson presenting remarkable music with long, melodic themes and sneaky backbeats. Goodbye, Smalls. Come back soon, in another form. ****************************** Here's a letter published today: Farewell to a Jazz Club o the Editor: The closing of Smalls, one of the city's last true bohemian hangouts, is a loss for every New Yorker ("The Lesson of Smalls, a Little Club With a Big Heart," by Ben Ratliff, Critic's Notebook, May 31). The dark, underground club wasn't only a safe haven for young and old musicians alike, exploring and developing the struggling form of jazz; it was a gathering place for enthusiasts, some just being introduced to this real American art form. For $10, a cover price unheard of in Manhattan's other clubs, you could hang out all night along with some of the most talented and interesting musicians in the city. How tragic for a city that prides itself on its cultural wealth, its contributions to the arts and to the history of jazz to lose a place like Smalls over something as absurd as an impossibly high rent. No wonder Chicago, the "second city," is now becoming first in the arts: the artists can afford to live there. ************ Links to a couple other articles can be found at www.smallsjazz.com.

Anyone here heard the Belgian group AKA Moon? They're worthy of more attention than they seem to get.

Okay, I answered my own questions. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/31/arts/mus...sic/31SMAL.html Of course, it's the Times, so maybe take it with a grain of salt! Can you believe the landlord wanted $8,000/month for that little hole in the ground?!?!? Unbelievable!! It's crap like that that has me seriously considering moving back to California. The cost of living/doing business here is completely unrealistic. Bertrand, to offer a partial answer to your question, Cleopatra's Needle on BWay and 85ish St. has jam sessions from about midnight to 4am, and I believe St. Nick's has jam sessions on certain nights, but you'd have to call to verify. I've seen a couple lengthy jams there, but I'm not certain it's a regular occurance. Cleopatra's is not nearly as cool as Smalls (it's essentially a sports bar that happens to have a stage open to jazz musicians), but it's worked for me in a pinch. The big screen TV behind the musicians showing soccer, rugby, etc. can be a bit distracting.

Smalls' closing is very sad. I went as often as I could. One of my closer friends met his fiance there! Any idea what happened? The place was always packed whenever I went. Also, any idea where the regular musicians will be playing? I'd particularly like to know where I can catch that Bud Powell-esque pianist.

Another very good point.

I don't think the excuse holds water at all. First off, corked bats don't belong in the dugout at all. Secondly, he has 300 or 400 bats in the clubhouse, and 70+ in the dugout, and he just *happens* to pick the *one* that's corked during a game? Last but far from least, players know their bats incredibly well. The whole point of corking a bat is to lighten up the barrel (and the barrel only) in order to increase the bat speed. There's NO way I believe that Sammy couldn't tell the difference between one of his corked and uncorked bats from just taking a quick practice swing. Players become sensitive to even minute variations in weight distribution from bat to bat, to the point where they will reject some bats of their own model (no two wood bats are exacltly alike). I don't buy it for one second.

Even though I'm now in Manhattan, as a native San Franciscan I still have a very strong anti-So Cal sports bias. Besides, the idea of ANOTHER Disney-owned team winning a championship is nauseating. GO DEVILS!!!

I had that problem with them too. But they're one of my gf's favorite groups, and we take turns on the stereo. In light of some of the other stuff she listens too, I often BEG for Radiohead. I've learned to accept the vocals.

I'm thinking about going. It will depend on how late I have to stay in the office that night. I'd imagine the odds of this thing selling out are pretty low, no?

I saw (but didn't hear) a copy of the new Radiohead today. It looks like they're going political. The album is called "Hail to the Theif". It's supposed to be out next week.

Maybe one of these days BN will manage to pry Yanni away from Vivendi.

I haven't been able to watch more than about fifteen minutes of it. I haven't been able to stand what little I've seen. But then I should add that I'm VERY picky about TV shows. I generally only watch sports, movies and Seinfeld.

No order, and off the top of my head: Nirvana Pavement (through S&E) Drive Like Jehu Big Black Shellac Circus Lupus (I'm willing to listen to most Dischord groups) Radiohead (I was really surprised when I caught myself singing their songs in my head the day after my girlfriend played OK Computer for me - never would have thought in a million years that I'd get into something like that)

I think I was about two when I figured out how to ask my mom to take me to the cd store, so I guess it's two years for me.

One serious culinary shortcoming in Manhattan is the lack of decent barbeque restaurants. There's a place ill-traveled New Yorkers swear by in Times Square called Virgil's - if you come to visit, don't be deceived. It's not offensive (which ranks it higher than most bbq spots in town) but it's far from impressive. I agree that you have to go south (or buy your own bbq grill and pick up someone's cooking secrets) to get the best bbq. However, if you find yourself with a craving for bbq and you happen to be in Portland, OR, there's a place called Tennessee Red's that's very impressive. PS: If any NYers reading this know of good bbq places in the city, by all means share yoiur knowledge. PPS: Had some DELICIOUS jerked pork in Jamaica this week.

There's a beer brewed in Portland, OR called Hair of the Dog that is highly, highly recommended. I've tried finding it on the east coast with no luck at all. Fortunately, I'll be making a trip to the NW in a few weeks. I'm trying to figure out how many cases I can take back on the plane. Just to put my taste in context, other favorites include Salvator, Anchor Steam, Liberty Ale, Sierra Nevada, and Duvel.

I see RoosterTies wants to test me. Well, RT, you might want to know that leaving your Memorex radio on when not in use can eventually result in the emmission of a high-frequency radiation burst which will destroy all of your electronic equipment.

Here's my opinion. My research lately has been geared towards new types of extremely tiny devices that can be embedded in chips, so I guess I'm a quasi-expert. An EE guy could probably give a more authoritative answer, but I'm pretty confident in the answers below. This I'm positive of: There's no reason to leave analog circuitry on (ie, devices composed purley of resistors, capacitors, tubes, etc.) You're not going to fry a resistor or a capacitor just by turning its current source on and off. On the other hand, as mentioned above, voltage fluctuations that occur while the device is left on really might fry the resistors. So leave these turned off when they're not needed. This is informed speculation: I don't think there is a simple answer to the question for digital circuitry (op-amps, chips, etc.). It is conceivable (but not very likely, IMO) that powering such systems up and down a lot could fry the tiny transistors imbedded in such devices. On the other hand, computers (especially the hard disks!) prefer to be cold, so that's an argument for turning them off when not in use. I'd think keeping your hard disk cool (amost had a nasty typo here - change an "s" to a "c" and you have a post unsuitable for minors) is the overwhleming concern. It seems to me that it is quite unlikely that you're going to fry any transistors, however small, by powering up. I recommend turning your computer off when not in use, but you might want to check with your manufacturer for their opinion. (As an aside, I always wondered whether people left their computers on just so they didn't have to boot up the next morning. It will be interesting to see if attitudes on this subject change after MRAM comes out.) As to the "stabilization" issue: to me it sounds like someone was feeding you a line of mumbo-jumbo. However, any circuit with resistors and capacitors will experience voltage osciallations when first powered up. Eventually, the circuit settles into a steady state. Depending on the circuit, this can take anywhere from nanoseconds to minutes. (The amplitude of the oscillations also varies depending on the circuit.) In my opinion, this time is not long enough to justify leaving all your equipment turned on.

Hi Lon! I didn't realize you were on the board. Thanks for the advice. What type of phono preamp are you using, btw?

It seems like there is a fair amount of DIY interest on the board! Thanks for all the info. I've heard of the Decware Triode amp before. As I recall, Lon Armstrong swore by that amp on the BNBB. At this point, the Bottleneck Foreplay pre-amp and Decware Triode are sounding like a good way to go. Once I start understanding the theory better, perhaps I can start doing my own tweaks. On a related note, my girlfriend's father built his own speakers and found it to be a very rewarding experience. Has anyone around here tried that before?