johnlitweiler

Keep Jazz Alive. The attitude that "Jazz is good for you" (so sit still and listen to my Ellington-like noises, peasants). A lot of this POV comes down to us from Albert Murray and his fellow Olympians.

Tomorrow evening, Monday, October 15, I'll play Bill Brimfield recordings, including his appearances on Don Moye and Ed Peterson, etc ., CDs, and John Tchicai recordings. It will be on Zoundz!, WHPK 88.5 FM, which begins at 6:30 pm Chicago time and, for listeners to www.whpk.org, at 11:30 Universal Time.

Thank God for critics.

Is it possible to find and view the episode of The Simpsons that included Ornette Coleman? I think it included him praising Lisa's saxophone playing?

Spud = Lyle Murphy / Gone with the Woodwinds, OJC-1905 (Contemporary 3506)

Neil Tesser wrote a thoughtful piece: http://www.examiner.com/article/chicago-trumpeter-bill-brimfield-early-avant-garde-star-dies-at-74?CID=examiner_alerts_article

I probably should be ashamed of this: I enjoy a lot of Wagner's music. Including Lohengrin, which I saw 2 years ago. Incredibly manipulative--all those dense chords and hanging leading tones, which sometimes weren't resolved, either. Also the plot was racist, about good Germans defending themselves against the attacks of barbaric Hungarians. I fear my liking for this stuff is the outward manifestation of something dark and perverse in my soul, maybe a secret longing for lots of beer. Dialogue of the Carmelites is a rarity. Most operas have sexy or/and sensational and ridiculous plots. Poulenc composed this one about a spiritual crisis, or rather spiritual crises. Very affecting. I don't get to the Lyric Opera very often and my heart was broken last year when I had to back out of Boris Gudonov at the last minute.

That Lincoln Center gig is political. What genuinely worthwhile jazz artist would, or even could, have expended the energy, ingenuity, and charm to mount such big political (not musical) successes? As a trumpeter he used to have the ability to begin solos with arresting phrases, even if solos declined after those. In my few listens to him in recent years I haven't noticed that so much. Rather, he's wandered around the stages playing garish solos with, for example, THIS IS BEHIND-THE-BEAT and THIS IS HALF-VALVE and THIS IS WA-WA MUTED phrases (neon lights implied). A clever and disorderly composer-arranger, I think. His orchestration of "A Love Supreme" was one of the weirder events of the 21st century. One day some years ago I turned on a classical music radio program as a trumpet-with-orchestra piece was playing. The lovely tone and the attack made me guess "That's Marsalis." I was right.

scat singing in print?

looks dangerous

Much as I appreciated Hobsbawn's "The Age Of..." histories, I thought he became more stiff, unreliable in later years. His eventual denial of the population explosion and its depletion of the earth's resources, which as far as I can tell was pure party orthodoxy, was what especially made me give up on him. But he was a good guy to read on the subject of jazz.

My White Sox, who were supposed to finish last this year, instead put on quite a show. They could break my heart with winning streaks followed by losing streaks. That last winning streak in Sept. was a beauty -- day after day of come-from-behind wins in late innings, for most of 2 weeks. Sale and Peavy between them didn't pitch even a handful of bad games all year and a few relievers were quite good; now I see Rios and Ramirez were among the 10 best clutch hitters in the league. After all the tension of the Ozzie Guillen era, it looks like Robin Ventura relaxed them right into contention. If Peavy and Pierzynski disappear, if Gavin Floyd and John Danks and Phil Humber continue to pitch disastrous big innings, if Dunn continues to swing at left-handers' pitches on 3-2 counts with runners in scoring position, next year could be the year of disappointment. But it sure was fun in 2012.

I'm in too - looking forward to the music.

He and his band and backup singers gave us a terrific show at the Chiago Blues Festival a few years ago. But as Cecil Taylor would say, always a pleasure.

Thanks, Brownie. Can't figure out how to find PMs, however.

Thanks for the help, gang! I just used the Google Translator and it worked quite all right.

In July I ordered that Martinon / Debussy-Ravel CD set from amazon.fr anyway - it was not supposed to be released til late this month. This week amazon.fr has been sending mysterious e-mails in French that I can't read because I can't read the language. Can't tell if they've shipped the CDs or if the shipment has been delayed or if evil gargoyles are eating the CDS or what the heck is going on there. Apparently they have not charged my credit card yet. Do any Organissimo folks read French and are willing to help me figure these things out?

A girl I went to high school with, after graduation, moved to Los Angeles and wound up with a job at the Chateau Maremont as a desk clerk. One day she was in the lobby crying when Stan Laurel, who lived there and recognized her, saw her. She explained that she had just gotten fired. Laurel tried to comfort her and said, "Stay there. Maybe I can help." He came back a little later and told her that X movie studio needed someone to run a concession stand, they would hire her. She took the job Laurel directed her to and eventually worked herself up to a job as set designer for soap operas - even won an Emmy, she said. At least in their silent movies, directed by Hal Roach, Laurel and Hardy were among the funniest people God gave us in the 20th century.

Wow, moonlight too! Thanks, Aloc. These look like major developments. When will they come to North America, I wonder?

Not long ago I read Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick. It turned out to be The Unteleported Man with a middle section added, at a publisher's demand, to pad it out, make it longer. The new middle section was written some long time after the original novel and is a description of a long, static drug trip that has no relevance to the original story. There's so much of this stuff in Dick and from the reviews his writings on "theology"/"philosophy" must be impenetrable. Why on earth do some people consider him a Thinker? Okay, so he took drugs and saw God. Can't they take their own drugs and see God themselves, firsthand, instead of relying on Dick? A biography of Dick indicates he made all this stuff up as a middle-aged guy in order to impress naive young ladies. One of his best is Confessions Of A Crap Artist. Great vivid characters in this novel. The villainess was said to have been based on Dick's ex-wife. Apart from his drugged-out stuff his stories always grabbed me.

It's Tuesday and I'm still happy from the festival. I was half or 3/4 ill so I missed a bit of the fest and heard none of the late-night shows at the clubs and concert rooms. This year I can qualify as an almost unbiased observer, so, a few highlights: Thursday: Damon Short's quintet playing his compositions and Damon's debut (at least in my experience) on piano to duet with sopranoist Paul Hartsaw. Also, Juli Wood playing her ass off on tenor sax on a Ken Chaney hard-bop piece. Friday: Vandermark honking sound variations on one baritone sax note while Joe McPhee played some sweet trumpet. In the Chico Freeman piece, his dad's absolutely burning rhythm section including Ben Paterson, piano; Mike Allemana, guitar; Matt Ferguson, bass; Michael Raynor, drums. Saturday: Caroline Davis playing modern Konitz on alto sax, w/Allemana and Ferguson. The Resonance Ensemble set - Rempis and Steve Swell were terrific, the 2 Polish sax guys sounded Klezmerish - Vandermark packed a lot into his hour. On the other hand, Ambrose Akinmusire sounded to me like a kinda raw talent; but maybe the problem is my ears and not him. Sunday: Vandermark and the Austrian electronics guy got into some intriguing interplay - quite a set. Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts w/Randy Brecker was all right, but Tito Carillo's quintet a block away was hot hard bop w/a good tenor player from Seattle(?) named Doyle. It was great to hear Dorge and the NJO again. I haven't heard the Bright MS album so Toussaint's choices were a surprise. Egyptian Fantasy, Minor Swing, Singing The Blues, Frankie & Johnny, etc. Sounded like he could reinvent anything into that easy-rocking New Orleans swing, and honestly his blues transfusions weren't all that far from Little Brother Montgomery or even JRM. (As a songwriter I've always preferred Toussaint to famous folks like, for instance, Bacharach-David.) Sound quality in Grant Park was good in evenings - whatever problems occured, the sound people adjusted quickly. Millenium Park was good for listening also, although the previous week they made rather a mess of Frank Rosaly's Puerto Rican-jazz fusion music ensemble. Detroit, our long-time Labor Day weekend rival, must have had a hell of a festival this year, but Chicago still had more of the people I was curious about.

A more reliable review of the Chicago fest is at http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/14890556-421/chicagos-2012-festival-delivers-wide-jazz-palette.html - Jackson is much more knowledgeable about and experienced in jazz than Reich. What a peculiar review Reich wrote about the Friday show. Looks like he wasn't there for the one, comparatively brief Chico Freeman song and Roy Haynes's uncomfortable set. It wouldn't be the first time he reviewed an event he didn't hear.

Sorta like discussions of Straight Life and Really The Blues, two sorta fantastic autobiogs, are actually about Mezz and Art Pepper. You are so right. I was a failure as a teacher myself and still enormously respect the ones who stuck with the job. How on earth did public schoolteachers become such 21st-century villains in America?

Off-topic: Once I rode up to the 3rd floor in an elevator with U.S. senator candidate Barack Obama, who was chatting with some Chicago Sun-Times bigwigs. At the time he was IL state senator from my district. I was too short for him to notice. A couple years ago 2 guys in a restaurant were convinced I was a British-TV soap-opera actor.