Larry Kart

Some good stuff there. I particularly liked the last one.

Valeria -- please heed this: Although he had used other drugs in the past, including weed and heroin, it was the first time Boy George had taken acid. Compared to other drugs he had taken, there is a long delay between taking LSD and the drug taking effect -- typically up to an hour. George got bored waiting after taking the first tab, and took a second dose, so the trip was very intense. George and his friends headed to a club. After a bout of paranoia about the police presence outside, and upsetting another celebrity, George felt he had lost control of his body. The visual hallucinations made it feel like "everything was breathing and coming at me. I started shrinking and feeling scared. We had to leave." He then alienated most of his companions, who left him alone with celebrity pal, Marilyn. By then, George had lost control of his bodily functions. "I was tripping so badly I couldn't get myself to the toilet. Marilyn led me to the loo in hysterics and left me staring at the bowl. I caught my melting face in the mirror and started to freak. 'I can't go, I can't' [then] I pissed myself."

Valeria -- From now on we all shall be following your 'contributions' with a keen eye.

It's "Wuorinen." The album is on the Russian Disc label, from 2011, but I can't find it on Amazon or other similar sites. It can be downleaded, though.

Can't find it now, but I was reading last night that Wuorinen said that the pieces to him were about the notes more than the instrumental colors, and that recasting them for the piano or pianos made the not-to-note relationships clearer. I certainly see/hear what he means, though especially in the slower portions of the Chamber Symphony No. 1 there are some obvious losses, e.g. the magical liquid ascent (but not liquid here) that begins the central slow section. OTOH, in addition to the clarifying factor, I just found this arrangements to have a fascinating sound of their own. No other music for piano that I'm aware of sounds like this.

If you've got Spotify, check this out; it's nutty in a good sense. I found it by plugging in Wourinen; it's the first album that crops up. The album also includes Wuorinen's two-piano arrangements of Chamber Symphony No. 2 and (hold your breath) the Variations for Orchestra. The arrangements were done for a ballet company or companies, but I'd say they are far more than work for hire.

Because it's been my experience, for the most part, that "for that long" is a significant part of the overall musical/aesthetic effect. Also, as far as I'm concerned, "minimalism" (or Minimalism) has nothing to do with it, nor with anything that Feldman meant or had in mind. Don't know if Morty himself ever recorded his opinions about any of the Minimalism we've come to know as such, but I'd be surprised if he found it anything but annoying and/or simple-minded. And IMO anyone who thinks that Morty's music is simple-minded is ... you know the rest. P.S. about "for that long"-- Do you think Bruckner symphonies should be shorter?

Allen -- We've exchanged view son Mulligan before, I think, but to me he was always very charming and quite individual as a composer/arranger and at his best a good deal more than that (e.g. his sublime version of "All the Things You Are" for Columbia). As a soloist I thought he was, as Whitlock says, rather formulaic, and not a patch on Chaloff, Gullin, Bob Gordon, et al. during his years of peak celebrity, but he did get a good deal better/less formulaic as a soloist in his later years.

When did I say that? While I'm not a Feldman completist, I do have a lot of Feldman, and everything I have (if the performance is good one) I'm very glad I have. Exceptions would be most of the late orchestral "tapestry" pieces. The problem there may be Feldman, and it may be me, but I suspect it's the performances -- that for those pieces to work, at least for me, the performances need to be exquisite (for want of a better term) to a degree that most existing orchestras and conductors aren't going to realize. But perhaps in due time...

Is there any connection between Mark Russell and Mel Brooks, or is this a case of [insert any name here]? Not speaking for Goodspeak, but I assume he meant that while they both have fans, Russell and Brooks were as far apart as two comics could be.

Check out Barbara Harris in Hitchcock's "Family Plot." Fabulous/hilarious. Her boyfriend is played by Bruce Dern. Good grief what a couple. I ran across Harris at a Second City reunion some years back. She had quite an aura.

I haven't seen him in about 20 years. So when was he funny, in the '60s? About the same time that Rich Little's impressions were -- i.e. maybe never, but the earlier the better.

http://www.jazzwax.com./ Today's part 3 has much of interest to say about Mulligan and Baker -- their personalities and respective talents. Whitlock, as he explains in part 2, was the person who brought Baker into the group.

Not (re: Lehrer) that I think that cleverness/intellecuality and humor can't co-exist and exfoliate. Here for example is a transcript of Severn Darden's Second City metaphysics "lecture" (better when heard, but this is the only I could find it -- supply a German accent): http://groups.google.com/group/rec.music.dementia/browse_thread/thread/86f5c66980d81fa3 Darden on "Oedipus Rex": http://groups.google.com/group/rec.music.dementia/browse_thread/thread/6ef6125ed0644579/bfa1754d4e4da2cf?q=severn+darden

Apparently that Skelton review appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Dec. 10, 1986. Red was on a double bill; Andy Williams was the headliner (an Xmas show). I can't get hold of the review myself without paying for it. Can anyone else? As for Lehrer -- yes, he's clever, but for me he's clever in such a way as to usually undercut any impulse I might have to laugh. Maybe it's that his cleverness is more or less there IMO to establish an air of superiority. As for the political aspect of his humor -- same thing. His songs are just acidic billboards for sentiments that his fans already hold and congratulate themselves for holding. Sahl at his best, by contrast, typically wielded a double-edged sword, one that was particularly sharp on the side that met his audience's need to feel good about itself.

I'll agree on most, though maybe I'm missing the immortality of Red Skelton because I grew up with the unbearably maudlin TV version. Incidentally, Larry, Tom Lehrer is Jewish. Leher is Jewish? Then I disown him. He's the most un-Jewish Jewish comic imaginable. About Skelton on TV I understand, but even in that period he could still be a brilliant clown, particularly doing stuff that was in large part mimed. I saw him do stuff on stage in that period that was from outer space in its subtlety/emotional power. I wrote about it in a review; I'll look for it. If I can't find that review, though, I'd be hard out to recall anything about what he did other than it was tremendously funny/moving/powerful. And believe me I went expecting the Gentile equivalent of chicken fat.

I assume you're not responding to the query about comics who were neither Jewish nor black. I had no idea Phyllis Diller and Homer and Jethro were immortal. Didn't see that "or black" restriction. I'd say that the following are all immortals or close to it: W.C. Fields. Bob Newhart. Bob and Ray. Stan Freberg. Jonathan Winters. Bob Hope. Ernie Kovacs. Laurel and Hardy. Red Skelton.

A fair number of immortals here: W.C. Fields. Bob Newhart. Richard Pryor. Slappy White. Moms Mabley. Red Foxx. Edgar Bergen. Bob and Ray. Stan Freberg. Victor Borge. Lord Buckley. Tim Conway. Bill Cosby. Phyllis Diller. Jonathan Winters. Brother Dave Gardner. Dick Gregory. Homer and Jethro. Bob Hope. Sam Kinison. Godfrey Cambridge. Don Knotts. Ernie Kovacs. Laurel and Hardy. Tom Lehrer. Pat McCormick. Martin Mull. Eddie Murphy. Herb Shriner. Red Skelton. Smothers Brothers. Lilty Tomlin. Robin Williams. Flip Wilson.

One on that list would be George Gobel. Not to my taste, but there's Will Rogers. Buster Keaton. Fatty Arbuckle. Harold Lloyd. Dick Van Dyke. Jackie Gleason. Fred Allen. Steve Martin. Johnny Carson. A little late for me for list-making, but you get the idea.

It's Greene in both stories. He's the subject of Jones' "The Burton Greene Affair" and then the guy who encounters Baraka decades later in Amsterdam, brings up the piece after they've had a pleasant encounter and is told "It was all Black Nationalism." Not an excuse I would have accepted, I think, not without further explanation. In particular, I would want to know how many more of Baraka's rhetorically fierce essays/poems, etc. over the years does he now disavow and/or rationalize along "It seemed like the thing to say at the time" lines. We all change our minds about stuff, but there's a difference I think between doing that on a more or less internal basis and doing it (or saying that one does/did it) in a "it seems like the thing to say" manner. In any case, if Baraka were to take that "aw shucks, don't get your underwear in a knot over what I said" tack, I would say that I don't believe him -- the passionate, often acerbic tone of his work (and not only that) speaks of an internal consistency.

This Burton Greene interview makes it clear that he, not Blake, was the party involved: http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/greene.html

The Amsterdam/"It was just Black nationalism" story is about Baraka and pianist Burton Greene. Are you sure that it isn't Greene, too, in the first story? That Gerber says it is Blake, if Gerber's book is where you read it, doesn't mean it's reliable. Ran Blake would not have been that likely a musical partner for Marion Brown, and Greene certainly served in that role.

The Naxos S. Weiss series, with Robert Barto, is now up to six discs I think -- I have three or four, all excellent. Weiss was quite a composer.

Moms -- I agree with this reviewer: http://kemer.blogspot.com/2008/04/fistfull-of-forqueray.html on the differences between Rannou and Rousset in Forqueray. Having heard Rannou, I would say that perhaps Rousset just doesn't like this music, which is admittedly rather odd, particularly in its very low tessitura, and might even be taken for ugly until one hears someone like Rannou play it. Couperin or Rameau it ain't.

Alsut Records:110 East End Ave. NY, NY 10028. Mapleshade has an online catalog. I don't know if Long Night was issued on CD unless the master was purchased from whoever inherited the catolog from long-defunct Jazzland. Frank Strozier Quartets & Sextet: Long Night (Milestone 47095) I meant specifically the AlSut recordings. I'd prefer just to order them online somehow in what has come to be the normal manner, not engage in a correspondence with the label over prices, etc.