Leeway

Thanks. Are you going to be doing a full-blown review? I guess it is priced like their Cecil double LP. That's a high $$ threshold for me to go to, but it sounds like this could be worth it.

Worth a $100 for the double LP? (That's the price I saw). How is the performance?

Wooo, sounds good! Taborn is someone to see in concert, hard to always get what he can do strictly from record. Ches has played with some fo the most demanding/advanced ensembles. And Mat continues to define the viola/violin world in improv.

Paul, what's your take on the Mistry books? I have "Family Matters" sitting about here, wonder if it is worth reading. THE FINISHING SCHOOL - Muriel Spark - 2004. Spark's last novel. I was going to read it last, but the library had it, so I went with it. The story concerns Rowland Mahler (nice touch) and his wife Nina, who run a "finishing school" in Lausanne, Switzerland. Rowland teaches the creative writing class and is an aspiring novelist. Red-haired (like MS) Chris (Christ?) Wiley is a teen student in the class who has already embarked on his first novel, a fictional treatment of the murders of Mary Queen of Scots' attendant and husband. The novel is already drawing publisher and movie interest, much to the absolute frustration of the blocked Rowland, who becomes more and more obsessed with Chris. Various turns are taken, various people are bedded (including teen Chris bedding a 60+ female guest lecturer). I wonder if Spark wrote about sexual relations from her experience or from her fantasies. Anyway, it's a good read, quite amusing, let down a little by, again, a weak, ending, that fails to redeem the interesting ideas raised earlier in the novel. This is a very short book, more of a sketch than a full-blooded novel, more a tapas than a meal, but Spark has made the form her own.

Owen Wister The Virginian Bob McDonnell

I don't think anyone mentioned any of the Bill Dixon Black Saint/Soul Note discs. The Cam Jazz box would be a good idea. Happy to hear that that John Stevens SME disc is coming out on Emanem. Still hoping and waiting for "Karyobin" to get a reissue.

Hello Kitty Cat Stevens Pussy Riot

REALITY AND DREAMS (1997)- Muriel Spark The protagonist of the story is Tom Richards, a film director. At the beginning of the story, Richards is just regaining consciousness from a fall off a high directing crane. Richards begins the process of physical and artistic recovery, even as he deals with the many aspects of love and hate that surround him in the persons of actors and family members. Substitute "novelist" for "director" and "novel" for "movie" and one gets the essence of the story (although it really works for any artistic pursuit). There is the usual sexual merry-go-round, people falling into bed with each other; likely overdone, but suggestive of the sexual roots of artistic creation. Interesting to see Spark working with a male protagonist, which comes off pretty well. Indeed, as I was reading, I was thinking how similar this novel was to some of those by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. There is even a Bellovian "reality instructor" in the person of a West Indian cab driver, whom Tom hires to drive him around at night to witness city scenes. As it turns out, Dave is unostentatiously right about many things; he gives Tom a grounding in reality. At one point in the novel, Tom's extremely unpleasant daughter, Marigold, disappears. There follows a long section where real, false, and fraudulent sightings of Marigold take place. This is very much like what Spark does in her next novel, Aiding and Abetting, where sightings of the murderous Lord Lucan become the leitmotif of that novel. Anyway, I found Reality and Dreams an interesting read.

I object to putting ketchup on that (as shown in the Consumerist link). Definitely a pile that requires mustard, spicy mustard.

The fact that Steve Lacy thought so highly of her, credited her as his muse, is enough for me to show her respect. The fact is that I like her vocals on many of the albums for themselves (not all, not every time, but often enough), and for the fact that they were obviously a part of Lacy's musical vision. It's a shame that with interest in Lacy still at a high, that somehow she is not benefiting from that, if she is indeed in dire straits.

Major Major John Major The Major and the Minor

John Butcher Jim Bakker Elton John

Bagger Vance Cyrus Vance Cyrus the Great

Dog the Bounty Hunter Bligh Christian

AIDING AND ABETTING - Muriel Spark - 2000 Spark's novel is primarily about the murderous Lord Lucan, who, aided and abetted by his upper-class friends, fled England after murdering the nanny and nearly murdering his wife, and was never found again. Spark's brilliant move is to wed the story of Lucan with that of Hildegarde Wolf, formerly Beate Pappenheim, a fraudulent stigmatic, who, when discovered, fled and assumed the identity of Hildegarde, and became a successful psychiatrist in Paris. These two stories interweave to great effect; the characters are rather fascinating. The issues of identity, religion, belief, and class, all get into play. I thought there was an especially noticeable criticism of the upper-classes, those born to privilege, who thought nothing of assisting a murderer because he was "one of us." There are two "fails" in the novel. One is the subplot involving Lacey, daughter of a woman who knew Lucan, and Joe, a gambling friend of Lucan, who decide together to find Lucan. The other is the ending, something out of early Waugh, that feels a bit of a let-down.

Ubu, is that serious, that Aebi is "starving in Belgium"? Where did you get that news? That would be terrible.

Maybe Caputo's A Rumor of War? Going After Cacciato is also by Tim O'Brien. Oh yes, that's right! Thanks for the correction. Relying on memory at this age is reckless

Barry Manilow Rob Lowe Allen Lowe

Jackie Gleason The Honeymooners The Newlyweds

That combination postal office and vinyl shop might be just what the US Postal Service needs!

Phil Klay's Redeployment , a group of 12 stories, each with a different narrator and each focusing on a different aspect of the Iraq War, and Kevin Powers' Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, a collection of poems also dealing with the Iraq War, had been heavily recommended, so I put in a "hold" at my library (all copies were out). When they came in last week, I put aside the 20th century modern English women authors for a bit. The defining military engagement of my generation was the Vietnam War. The great books for me that came out of that conflict were Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and, If I Die in a Combat Zone ; Michael Herr's Dispatches; and, Phil Caputo's Going After Cacciato. I think Klay's and Powers' books can stand comparison with these books of a previous war. What they all have in common is brutal honesty, deep feeling, and no easy answers.

The Fernwood Flasher Jumpin' Jack Flash Flash Gordon

Rumsfeld Rumpole Rumpelstiltskin

There are a lot of radio stations here (U.S.) that run "Breakfast with the Beatles" shows on Sunday mornings, and you're right, it's a good fit.

Eager to get to that one. My plan is to read all Spark's novels this yar. I'm about halfway there, with 10 down. Aiding and Abetting is next, plus I just got a couple of later titles from my local library. Stannard's bio got me particularly interested in Robinson, I just need to locate a copy. Spark usually wrote quickly, and eschewed the advice or guidance of editors, so sometimes there is a slightly slapdash quality to her work, occasionally the seams show. There very well may be too many characters on stage at once! I'll keep that in mind as I read. Right now I'm reading something completely different from Spark; a world away (I think). I'll post on it in next couple of days.