Larry Kart

About the arts and academia (in its American form in particular), Allen for one may dig this quote from our old pal Theodor Adorno, which I admit may not be easy to disentangle but seems to me to be worth the trouble: "Obviously it is very difficult in America ... to comprehend the notion of the objectivity of anything intellectual. The intellect is unconditionally equated with the subject who bears it, without any recognition of its independence and autonomy. Above all, organized scholarship scarcely realizes to how small a degree works of art can be understood in terms of the mentality of those who produce them." Can't be sure, but I would guess that what the translator renders as "mentality" might be better understood in American English as "personality." Adorno is in part talking about the assumption that information about the artist's personal makeup will fairly directly and reliably yield information about his or her artistic intentions, methods, thinking, etc. -- and vice versa, of course.

Think I have about everything tenor saxophonist Walt Weiskopf has recorded as a leader, plus some things where he's a sideman. I do like his playing, but looking back that's a good bit over the top comparatively speaking. It's also an example of what Jim was talking about a while back on this thread -- you dig a guy, you buy his next album (which comes out maybe a year and a half later, is in much the same vein but shows variation/growth), then you buy his next, his next, his next ... and whoops, ten or more years later, there you are. Don't regret it, but it's something my heirs may puzzle over.

Read the story; it's a very good one, definitely in the mordant vein of "Nightfall." As for how it fits into my "thesis," I guess I've already laid that out enough until I actually go on to write that part of the chapter that it may be part of and see how it links up to other things there. An especially interesting, shrewd (as one might expect) document on the nature of "classic modern" science fiction is from one of its chief masters: Robert Heinlein's 1959 essay "Science Fiction: Its Nature, Faults, and Virtues," which is in Damon Knight's collection "Turning Points: Essays on the Art of Science Fiction."

Pullman's terrific Bud bio seems to be getting very close to lift off; just got an indication from him of that a few weeks ago. Perhaps the advent of the Kelley Monk bio will light a fire under Pullman's publisher, a very good university press whose approval procedures for manuscripts (unfortunately for Pullman and for us) would do credit to the Knights Templar crossed with a taffy factory. About the Kelley Monk bio, I noticed that the four blurbs for it on Amazon are from two musicians (Chick Corea and Geri Allen), a scholar whose specialty is black political and social/cultural history but not music (David Levering Davis), and a New Jazz Studies figure from Columbia (Farah Jasmine Griffin). Nothing from anyone who would be regarded as a notable figure in the world of jazz scholarship. But the proof is in the reading.

Me either -- I love, or used to love, E.E. (Doc) Smith and others. But Space Opera that comes in the wake of what once would have called "modern" science fiction is, by and large, science fiction's version of Wynton Marsalis -- "traditional" in demeanor but without the core flame/dream/ethos/what have you that first-generation Space Opera had. IMO, of course.

Got the Asimov collection it's in -- "The Winds of Change" -- at the library. Will read the story ASAP, perhaps will report back if it turns out to fit my belief that this story accidentally predicted how in the face of actual space flight the science fiction genre itself would be altered (and IMO would virtually drip away in slow motion into streams of fantasy, space opera, counterculture-tinged woo-woo stuff, feminist tendentiousness, just plain pretentiousness, etc.). If so, it's funny that Asimov didn't collect this 1957 story for almost two decades because he thought it had been almost immediately rendered pointless by the fact of actual space flight. In one sense, sure, but as I see it, not at all.

Some 45 years ago, while under the influence of a controlled substance, I concluded that John Lewis' piano style (an MJQ recording was playing at the party) was mincingly effeminate (not that there's anything wrong with that, etc.). It look me a long time before I could put that "insight" aside.

Wow -- many thanks, Werf. You guys are/this place is great, not that this is news.

That sounds tantalizingly close, but in the story I'm thinking of it's not a psychological experiment, even though the astronauts go mad in the end at the sight of the fake stage-set moon's unfinished other side. That was just penny-pinching, and the astronauts saw the unfinished other side of the "moon" because someone made a mistake at the control panel that day.

Red Courage was an interesting tenor player.

Found lists of all the stories that were printed in Astounding and Galaxy, and looking at the period I'm sure it came from and assuming I'd recognize the title, I don't see anything.

Sorry, Teasing -- I've yet to develop a taste for outer space exotica, unless Bob Graettinger's stuff counts.

I'm sure I read it one of the science fiction magazines I read regularly back then -- Astounding, Galaxy, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction -- not in a book. A fellow addict of my vintage says that it sounds a bit dark for Astounding and suggests Galaxy.

Far be it from me to endorse Fresh Sound pirate jobs, but in the name of accuracy, it's three LPs of material on two CDs, and it can be had for $29.89 "from these sellers" (as they say): http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00...p;condition=new

Actually, that Signal album was titled "Red Rodney 1957" -- reissued on another label it became "The Red Arrow." That album, coupled with other worthwhile Rodney from the period, is available now in this form: http://www.amazon.com/Rodney-Quintets-1955...6471&sr=1-2

I love this one: http://www.vee-jay.net/jazz/birdlives/birdlives-v1.htm for everyone on it: Ira, Nicky Hill (almost certainly his best record), Jodie Christian, Donald Garrett, and drummers Wilbur Campbell and Dorel Anderson. I was there that night at the Birdhouse. Another gem that's easy to overlook is is the 1957 Red Rodney album that orginally was on Signal as "The Red Arrow." Some of Ira's best tenor playing. And the bass-drum teams! Oscar Pettiford throughout, coupled with Elvin Jones on one side and Philly Joe on the other.

Or maybe "The Dark Side of the Moon."

-- title and author if possible. The story had to have been from before the time of actual space flight but when men were being shot up in rockets or that was in the offing, probably 1953-55 (which was when I was a hardcore addict of the genre). In the story, the first flight that is going to circumnavigate the moon, and thus be able to see the side that always is hidden from Earth, is launched. In fact, deliberately unbeknownst to the crew, the flight is a simulated one (a training exercise) and never leaves the ground, and the image of the far side of the moon that the crew eventually sees by mistake is an incomplete half-sphere -- a stage-set-like mockup (left incomplete to save money) -- whereupon the crew goes insane. It sounds like an Asimov, but that may be because it kind of echoes "Nightfall." A friend says that Algis Budrys wrote several stories that were wryly skeptical about the realities of space flight (the story was mordant in tone) before actual space flight began, but I can't find a checklist of Budrys stories and might not recognize the title if I saw it. A logical (perhaps inevitable) title for the story BTW would have been "The Other Side of the Moon." I'd like this info to fill in a gap in a memoir-like book that I'm trying to write. It's mostly about jazz, but there are digressions, and the grip that science fiction had on some of my generation is one of them.

I've had two Subarus in a row -- a 2003 Outback wagon and then a 2007 Legacy sedan. (The 2003 wagon was still fine; sold it 18 months after my wife passed away when I finally grasped the fact that one person didn't need two cars.) Terrific, top-value cars in their price range IMO, especially if you live where there's winter weather. All Subarus have all-wheel drive, and theirs is the best such system I believe. Can't count the number of days I was able to handle road conditions that most other cars, SUVs, etc. were having big trouble with.

Last night heard Hypercolor with Lukas Ligeti, drums (yes, Gyorgy's son); James Ilgenfritz, bass; and Eyal Maoz, guitar. Ligeti seemed quite heavy-handed to me, the bassist and guitarist were better, but basically it was an updated "power" trio with arty/shaggy trimmings, not my cup of tea. Three tunes was enough.

Just getting into it and am stunned by the relaxed intensity of the music-making. The group of four pieces from the "Anatomy of the Murder" score (the novel's author was in the audience that night) is a g-- damn tapestry. Am looking forward to the 11-minute (!!) "Mood Indigo." The Blue Note was Ellington's favorite club, and it shows. The trumpet section for this engagement was Clark Terry, Cat Anderson, Willie Cook, Ray Nance, and Shorty Baker. http://www.amazon.com/Live-Blue-Note-Duke-...0340&sr=1-1

As for the music, I've only listened to the side of somewhat updated/rearranged for the S-F instrumentation Finegan charts for the Miller band, but at least two of them are really nutty -- recastings of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto -- while another that sounds like it would have to be weird/queasy, "Song of the Volga Boatman," turns out to be just gorgeous, on a Gil Evans level. But then Evans arranged classical pieces for Claude Thornhill.

Yes, RCA-Victor.

Today I picked up (for 50 cents!) a more than decent copy of the 1958 Sauter-Finegan LP "Memories of Goodman and Miller" (it may have been their last), cleaned it up, put it on, and was just astonished. This may well be the most vivid, well-balanced recording of a big band I've ever heard. The music (and the music, if you like S-F, is quite something too) just thunders out of the speakers. And not only is the dynamic range incredibly broad (sounds like there might have little or no equalization -- Don Lamond on drums, playing his ass off, sounds as "present" as Blakey or Philly Joe do for RVG), but also everything is in focus, from piccolo to tuba -- no sense of artificiality. Webster Hall, Ray Hall the engineer.

Even by "street team" standards, that last post sounds pretty diffident: "It's not the best album ECM has put out this year, but it's good enough to be in my rotation for a while." Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln...