Leeway

The Flaming Lips The Firehouse 12 Smokey & The Bandit

Job The Comforters Muriel Spark

Wale Starbuck Ahab

Henry Rollins Rollie Massamino Mino Cinelu

Hardbopjazz's OP said, "Any artist or artists that you just been floored by recently that you [k]new of but never really gave that extra effort listening to." Recently, for me, that has been Dave Rempis. Since he started his own label, and stepped out as a leader, his work has really drawn my attention.

Sounds like a great show, Chuck.

Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle Roscoe Bartlett Bartleby

Dobie Gillis Dopey Opie and Anthony

I hink a lot of pressings are coming out of Eastern Europe and Russia, so in that sense there are a lot of new sources of vinyl. Very very variable quality.

LOITERING WITH INTENT - Muriel Spark - 1981 The story of aspiring poet and novelist Fleur Talbot and her employer and nemesis, Sir Quentin Oliver, with his nasty assistant, Beryl Tims, stand-ins, respectively, for Spark and the Poetry Society she briefly worked for, a stint that ended amidst wreckage. Thanks to Stannard, I could pick out the considerable amount of autobiographical material Spark herself included. Lots of score settling going on. As usual, Spark demonstrates a quick wit, and she throws some wicked jabs. I found it very amusing. If one thinks of the novel as in any way realistic, one would likely end up disappointed. It's really more of a fantasy or fairy tale. Which is not to say it doesn't deal with serious things, nor that it is perfectly constructed. There are two lines in the novel that go far towards explaining Spark own attitude: "How wonderful it feels to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century." This is stated near the beginning and the end of the book. Another, taken from Benvenuto Cellini, is repeated several times: "And so, having entered the fullness of my years, from there by the grace of God, I go on my way rejoicing."

Noddy Boffin Silas Wegg Silas Marner

That is very significant information. Share that with law enforcement. That information plus information from the mailing, could make the case. I wouldn't confront the person directly.

I gave "Poco-A-Poco" a listen today. Found it better than "Strictly for..." Nevertheless, I find it cut from the same mold: a little avant, a little straight-ahead, a little razzle-dazzle something or other. Not saying this won't work for a lot of people. I like some of it, just not that moved by the group's work overall. I think the music is not aging well. There is an aura of nostalgia about it. The back story of the group occasionally threatens to take over from the music. Steve Kulak's hyperbolic liner notes, in my view, get it backwards. He posits that if "three white guys" in New York came up with Ganelin music, it would have changed the world. I don't think so. It was the fact of the Iron Curtain that gave the music its importance. Kulak says, "The music of the Trio is not a political statement." Again, to me that is bass-ackwards. If it is not a political statement, it is nothing. Its energy is derived from the suppression of social and political life, of waiting on line once too often and long, of squeezing into a small state-owned apartment, of the constant threat of censorship. Not a coincidence that when the Wall came down, so did the Ganelin Trio. I celebrate the music as a political event. The avant element was an act of political opposition; no wonder everyone was nervous about that. As a result, it seems like much of these concerts are given over to tub-thumping music and circus antics. Russian wedding music I call it, having been to some of those, I feel Chekasin's reeds and winds are saying something. A musical samizdat. Tarasov's drum/percussion energies generate intense excitement. I still find Ganelin on piano too prone to musical cliche and sentiment. When all the currents flow together, when the art is advanced, good things happen.

That's a great one! Agreed! Thank goodness they gave Trevor appropriate credit!

Since it came through the mails, I would meet with the Postal Inspectors (not the Postal Inspector General). They might have a way of tracing the letter to at least the geographic point of origin. They also have sophisticated forensic tools to analyze the letter. What strikes me as odd is that the play in question would have to be at least 25 years ago. That is a very very long time to hold a grudge. Why now? something must have happened now to cause a resurgence of ill will. OK, in the meantime, you need to do what you can to protect yourself. Change your routines. get some pepper spray, be aware of your surroundings. My feeling though is this poison pen letter is just meant to upset and frighten, and nothing more. Someone trying to settle scores by frightening others.

I have "Poco-A-Poco" sitting about here, will give it a spin tomorrow. No "Con Affetto" I'm afraid.

I have those: good discs! Do you have The Feel Trio box set?

I gave Strictly for out Friends another listen. I hope there is some room for a mild dissent. I like them well enough, but I don't have the same kind of strong reaction that others have for them. I think Tarasov on drums is exciting, and Chekasin on reeds has his moments. Ganelin on piano does nothing much for me. In their more avant mode, they can be really interesting, but they often revert to straight-ahead, or even Russian pop stylings, which for me is not interesting. I think the fact that they did not have easy (or any) access to jazz/avant players much of the time contributes to their strengths and weaknesses, that is, a chance to make their own identity, OTOH, the unavailability of leading edge performances that could have given them more to work with.

Soft Machine Soft Heap Uriah Heep

Seymore Butts Rumpelstiltskin Jennifer Lopez

That is quite interesting. I really did not like The Good Terrorist for a variety of reasons, but probably boiling down to the idea that almost all urban dwellers of a liberal bent might get swept up into a radical position if the chips were down. Maybe that wasn't the main thrust but it is what I remembered and reacted quite badly to. But I did like The Golden Notebook, which others didn't (many preferring the Martha Quest books). It is sort of the same thing, multi-layered with a female protagonist struggling to "keep it together." I only read one of Lessing's SF books, and I didn't think it was all that great. She was working in the same general territory as Ursula LeGuin, but not as satisfactorily. Still, I am pretty sure I will get to the Martha Quest books one of these days. I'm back making slow but steady progress on Demons and enjoying it. I think I am about to get introduced to a bunch of additional radical characters. I might have to read at a faster pace to not lose track of them all. The politics of "The Good Terrorist" didn't bother me; it comes with the title. I don't know for sure, but I suspect Lessing's politics were Left, or at least anti-authoritarian, probably a by-product of her colonial upbringing in Rhodesia. In any event, right or left, she is fearless in scrutinizing the people who make up the various camps. I like that about her. It struck me as a very authentic look into radicalism, in the tradition of Conrad's "The Secret Agent." I thought the ending of the book was quite powerful. I too would like to read the middle books of the "Children of Violence" series, particularly for its depiction of life in the colony. Martha's transformation from an intemperate, lost young person in the first book to her translation into an esteemed figure in the last is interesting too. I haven't read "The Golden Notebook," which I think got her the Nobel Prize. I read that Lessing got a bit sick of (or professed to be sick of) all the praise for the book, especially it being labeled a "feminist" book. Lessing claimed that "The Four-Gated City" was a better book. Don't know if that was pique or her considered view but I thought it was interesting.

Chuck Klosterman Chuck Mangione Giorgioni

PM coming on: Juhani Aaltonen - To Future Memories - (TUM) Jorrit Dijkstra - Music for Reeds & Electronics: Oakland - (Drift) Raskin, Gratkowski, Bruckmann, Greenlief The Whammies - Play the Music of Steve Lacy vol. 3 - (Driff) Still looking

Pussycat Dolls New York Dolls Dolly Parton

THE FOUR-GATED CITY - Doris Lessing - 1969. I finally finished this title in the closely printed 669 pp Panther paperback edition (pictured). Not a good edition; surprising number of printer errors. I have to say it was a bit of a slog. I kept thinking it needed an editor badly. And yet I also felt that the book was following a plan laid down by Lessing. The book could have easily gone on for another 500 or 1000 pages, since Lessing's approach was to keep extending the circle of characters outward with new characters building off the old, like cell multiplication. However, easier to describe than to read at times. Not many modern authors are as involved as Lessing in the events of their times. "Four-Gated City" is a deeply political novel: communism, capitalism, radicalism, anarchism, ecology, mental illness, sexuality, sexism, racism, media, and more. Lessing is in her element when she describes outcasts, strange children/youth, radical lifestyle, living in squatter housing. There is a humanistic foundation to all this that one respects. Lessing doesn't lack courage, and maybe that's what I was often responding to. If there is humor here, it must have been of the squinty-eyed, deeply wry variety; not obvious. The book is really rather baffling. After reading for about 600 pp in more or less realist mode, the story is continued in a series of appendices that go deep into science fiction/utopian/dystopian territory, which in retrospect, make you question how realistic the preceding 600 pages were. There is something spongy about their reality, with the walls between reality and extra-reality being somewhat permeable. These are my initial thoughts on the book, but I suspect that the book will continue to ferment in my mind, until I get a better sense of it. This is not my first Lessing book. I previously read "The Fifth Child," which is incisive, concise, strong and scary. I also read "The Good Terrorist," whose main character, Alice Mellings, is a lot like Martha Quest, and in many ways resembles, on a smaller scale, "The Four-Gated City."