mjzee

How does someone embed a YouTube video here?

Inside One's Memory Bank - Roz Chast

6 discs. No other information listed on Amazon.

It's called Rendezvous With Rex. Song titles: Tillie's Twist, Pretty Ditty, Tell Me More, Danzon D'Amor, My Kind Of Gal, Blue Echo. Rex Stewart, cornet; George Stevenson, trombone; Haywood Henry, clarinet, baritone sax; George Kelly, tenor sax; Willie "The Lion" Smith, piano; Leonard Gaskin, bass; Arthur Trappier, drums. 1/28/58.

I have a funny story peripherally involving Larance Marable. Sometime in the mid-80's, I was working in the Accounts Payable department of an electronics retailer. I got a call from a Margaret Marable from Pioneer Electronics in California, asking about some late invoices. She was pretty hard-nosed, as these encounters can be. A thought occurred to me, and I asked her "are you related to the jazz musician Larance Marable?". There was a pause, and then she said "He's my father-in-law!". She was thrilled that someone knew of him. From then on, our conversations were very cordial. RIP, Mr. Marable.

I'm curious what these would sound like on a good system. Certainly, for an industry pilloried for not noticing and then fighting the download revolution, BN should be praised for trying something new.

Just ordered the Bley, Carter/Bradford and Tapscott.

I ordered the Paul Motian and Bill Dixon boxes. Great prices.

OK, I guess this is as good a point as any to post an off-topic but enjoyable little film: Hava Nagila (The Movie) - Sample Reel

I really like the Braxton Performance (Quartet) 1979. I own that with the older cover.

He made me laugh when he came on. I loved the swagger in his walk as he entered a room. Very funny guy, always in character. RIP.

The recent thread on the Criss Cross label got me to browsing through various websites... ok, I was killing time, OK? Anyway, I came across the Double-Time label, which seems very similar in tone to Criss Cross. I noticed a Joe Cohn with Doug Raney, John Abercrombie, Mike LeDonne, and some Hank Marr, among others. Can anyone recommend some titles on Double-Time?

I've always liked this one...good, straight-ahead jazz:

2 of the 3 albums just dropped on eMusic for $6.99 each: Transfiguration of Hiram Brown V-8 Ford Blues

What's the difference, as far as the product is concerned? If Allen doesn't identify himself as Jewish, and has no Jewish content in his work (here I'm referring to his movies over the last few decades), then should he be characterized as a Jewish artist? This was the point of the original Forward article: that Allen's being Jewish somehow translates into his being a crabbed, dour person producing misanthropic work. I'm saying: whatever Allen's work may or may not be, why attribute it to being Jewish? There doesn't seem to be a cause-and-effect. I'll try an analogy: Paul McCartney came from Liverpool. Can one look at his work of the last 30 years or so and say "this is a Liverpool artist"? One has seemingly nothing to do with the other. (And before anyone asks, yes, I know he produced a "Liverpool Oratorio", but c'mon - who's listened to it?)

Well, that's my point...does Allen identify himself as Jewish, or does he see it more as an accident of birth and fodder for comedic material?

You might not recognize Raymond Scott’s name, but chances are that you’ve heard his music — and that it makes you anxious. That’s because Scott’s “Powerhouse” (1937), easily his best known work, has been used to accompany scenes of mechanized peril in everything from the classic 1940s Warner Bros. cartoons to “The Ren & Stimpy Show” and a Visa check card commercial. As Warner Bros. animator, director and historian Greg Ford notes in “Deconstructing Dad: The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott,” a new documentary film by the composer’s son, Stan Warnow, the disquieting “Powerhouse” became the go-to choice for scoring animated scenes of panic on the assembly line. Raymond Scott (1908-1994) never wrote with animated films in mind (Warner Bros. simply licensed Scott’s back catalogue in 1941), but it’s fitting that he should be forever linked to the image of a swiftly moving conveyor belt — a contraption that makes its operators struggle to keep pace. A technophile and jazz musician who was out of step with his time, Scott made a living writing for popular film and television of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, but spent his free time experimenting at the frontier of electronic music. As he refined his inventions — early synthesizers and sequencers — Scott envisioned a future in which machines could make music all on their own. Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/159115/music-man-of-the-future/

He's all of those (not sure how politically engaged he really is, though), but the Jewish underpinning of his "vision" is essential and undeniable. I don't know; I, for one, would deny it. Sure, he grew up in that milieu, but what in "Paris" or "Match Point" is particularly Jewish? Yes, Match Point is about guilt, but so was a lot of Bergman's work.

I think reducing Woody Allen to "a generic Jewish comedian" misses the point. Besides being a genius, he's an individual with many different influences, both philosophical and cultural, in his work. For example, when the Forward article (the Ha'aretz article is originally from the Forward) describes him as "a dismal icon of despair," that's more a reflection of his philosophical influences, from Kant and Schopenhauer to Bergman to the birth of the atomic bomb; there's nothing particularly Jewish there. Most obviously to this point, the article, which was written in 2009, has as its starting point the movie Allen had just released, the misanthropic "Whatever Works." Allen's biggest movie to date, "Midnight in Paris," which was released last year, is sunny and upbeat, and would seem to contradict most of the points of the article. Also, since Allen doesn't particularly identify himself as Jewish (associate with Jewish causes, live in Jewish neighborhoods, or in any major way culturally identify himself as Jewish), it's hard to see why one should predominantly label him as Jewish instead of, say, a New Yorker, an intellectual, or a leftist. Finally, one needs to point out that the article is reacting to Allen's public persona, which is what sells. We cannot know what he is like in his private life. As for the rest of the article: there are harsh comedians, and there are many other types of comedians. I myself don't like the cringe-worthy types of comedians (not just Larry David and Baron-Cohen, but also Ben Stiller, Steve Carell, Will Farrell, etc.), but I'll leave it to others to figure out who is all Jewish, half-Jewish, or not Jewish among them. If these comedians are popular, it's because this style of comedy is currently popular. But to take just one example, I thought "American Reunion" (the latest sequel to "American Pie") was a wonderfully funny and sweet movie, and the creators seem to be Jewish (I never asked them). How would the Forward writer shoehorn this movie into his thesis?

Broadway and jazz factions tend to dismiss each other, but in "The Jazz Standards" Ted Gioia at least tries to bring the two together, showing no bias as to whether a song was written by John Coltrane or Richard Rodgers. For every song by a jazz composer (Thelonious Monk, Benny Golson, Sonny Rollins) there is one by a Broadway or Hollywood songwriter (Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen). Duke Ellington is a rare of example of a composer who wrote for both the pop and jazz markets. In terms of the greatest number of contributions to the canon listed here, I imagine Ellington and Rodgers are neck and neck. (One thing the book could use is a composer index.) In the past few decades, a bewildering amount of information about the classic works by all these songwriters and many more obscure ones has become available, especially online. But Mr. Gioia's is the first general-interest, wide-ranging and authoritative guide to the basic contemporary jazz canon. An ideal companion to the author's "History of Jazz" (1997)—one of the best overall books on that subject—this volume contains entries on more than 250 tunes that today's jazz musicians are likely to play, from Burt Bacharach's "Alfie" to Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite." Any young musician or singer would do well to learn every one. Full review here: WSJ

archive.org

FYI, I see the next batch of Zappa releases has been added to Amazon, with a release date of August 28. Strangely, the label listed is "Xenon", but the descriptions have the "official release" #. This batch seems to go through One Size Fits All.

Thanks, Marcel. I've found a copy of the first concert that sounds closer to the original source material (the archive.org file sounds no-noised). I haven't bought it yet, but I might: Old Time Radio Catalog As for the second concert (1945), this might be the best version, but it would be nice to know how complete it is: eMusic

Y'know, songs take on a life of their own. The Leiber/Stoller back story is interesting, but I gotta tell you, as a kid growing up in America after his parents escaped from the horror of Germany and the Holocaust, this song was thrilling and dead-on. "Only in America...land of opportunity" correctly described the gratitude we felt (and I still feel) towards this country.