Larry Kart

A discovery of all the unreleased stuff that was lost in the Atlantic warehouse fire -- Fruscella/Brew Moore, the second Hasaan/Max Roach album, et al.

I think Chuck means -- though I have a long history of not quite getting what Chuck means -- that the music was recorded in the present for the film, then altered or manipulated a bit sonically so that it sounds like something that was recorded at the time of the film. Which, if so, is cool IMO; they got it just right. Maybe Gary Smulyan.

From Fincher's Esquire interview: Fincher was a kid then, in the Bay Area. He and the other first graders talked about the Zodiac on the playground. The stories grew and grew. "It was really scary," he says. "He was the ultimate bogeyman." Fincher saw sheriff's cars tailing his school bus. Some parents started driving their kids to school. You know, police cars are following our buses, Fincher told his father. Well, his father said, you should know that a man who has murdered a handful of people has sent a letter to the Chronicle saying he plans next to take a high-power rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus and kill the children. Uh-huh. Fincher stared at his father. "And I kept thinking, You know, you have a car, you could give us a ride to school. You're a freelance magazine writer. There's really nothing to stop you," he says. "I remember being kind of appalled. My parents didn't seem that concerned about my well-being."

About "Vertigo," it just might be that the demeanor and "look" (in particular the prematurely grey hair, the height and thinness) of Anthony Edwards' character is meant to subtly evoke Jimmy Stewart's character in "Vertigo." That is, you have a string of obsessives or semi-obsessives -- played by Edwards, Ruffalo, Downey Jr., Gyllenhall, and the guy who plays Lee -- and when Edwards jumps ship on the case, ostensibly for rational real-world reasons, it feels to me more (or also) like he's saying to Ruffalo that he (i.e. Edward's character) lacks the defenses or whatever that Ruffalo's character has displayed up to that point, that Edward's character is pulling back not so much because it would make sense to most anyone to do so but because he's too vulnerable to continue, that if he did he might undergo the sort of madness/disintegration that Stewart's "Scotty" does in "Vertigo."

Excellent movie, best American movie I've seen in years. Alexander's "It looked more like a film that was MADE in the late 60s/early 70s than a film ABOUT the late 60s/early 70s" was my impression too. I was especially knocked out by the newsroom scenes; that was exactly the atmosphere, human and physical, of the Chicago Tribune when I went to work there in the mid-1970s. For instance, the Robert Downey Jr. character versus the more orthodox old-style newspaper types around him. In that era, it was fairly common to have at least one peacock-like overt eccentric on the staff, who usually was really good at what he did but also was self-destructive. And the anxious, lifted-pinky patrician publisher! Also, especially toward the end -- e.g. the final scene between Ruffalo and Gyllenhall -- it really choked me up, in large part because this was a movie that was really ABOUT something that runs deep and wide though all of our lives, or at least the lives of all of us of a certain age range: the need to/desire to/failure to (in most cases) get a grip on the swirl of seemingly significant (and seemingly external) events. One little touch I especially loved -- when Chloe Sevigny leaves and takes the kids, her note to Gyllenhall ends "Don't call." When she next shows up at the house one night, after a gap of time and in a scene where the sound of her entrance is meant to frighten Gyllenhall and us, she says to him something like "You never call." About the music, I noticed one particularly nice moment: Once Ruffalo's character has been thrown off Homicide and is being investigated by Internal Affairs, Gyllenhall calls Ruffalo's house to ask him a key question/pass on some key information. Ruffalo's wife answers, and we see Ruffalo pacing in the next room while the sound of an uptempo, Pepper Adams-ish baritone saxophone solo is heard -- the impression being, it seemed to me, that this is not at all a soundtrack-mood thing but is meant to be taken as the record that Ruffalo's character is actually playing/listening to in the scene, as his way of at once acknowledging his agitated state of mind and relieving some of the anger he feels by listening to a recording that expresses the mood that he himself is feeling. Also, that he'd be a jazz fan. This struck me as perfect all the way around. My wife liked the movie too but felt that Gyllenhall played his role in a too broadly innocent, boyish manner. I kind of see what she means but would say that the whole thing probably couldn't have worked otherwise. In that vein, in an interview Fincher has said that he grew up in Marin County, was age seven when the Zodiac killings began, and that he and his friends were really freaked out by what was going on, that Zodiac "was the ultimate boogeyman" for them. Most tellingly perhaps --and perhaps touching on something about the Gyllenhall character -- Fincher explains that his own drily matter-of-fact father told little David just what was going on, noting especially Zodiac's current threat to kill a bunch of kids as they fled a school bus after Zodiac had shot out the tires, and that Fincher's unspoken thought at the time was, "Like, couldn't you drive us to school?" So I'm thinking that Gyllenhall's character is in effect an adult and a child in one body, with the adult trying to protect the endangered child in one sense (as Gyllenhall literally does several times by driving his kid to school, though I believe that he does this for the first time before Zodiac issues his threat; and yet later Chloe Sevigny rightly accuses Gyllenhall of endangering his kids by pursuing the case), while it is the still-endangered child's vision, needs, and desires that drive the adult's behavior. Or, to put it in a slightly different way, the adult exists by and large to preserve the still-endangered child within, that the drive to so is virtually absolute, and that the adult world must give way at key points to the rage, purity, and strength of the preserved endangered child's vision, until what? See "Hitchcock's "Vertigo" here, I guess, which of course is set in San Francisco.

I too prefer "Boston Blow Up," if only for "Body and Soul."

You want some Ravel, check out Un Barque and Alborada from Naida Cole: http://www.naidacole.com/web/music/index.php Just files, though, no video. Hamelin strikes me as though I were being struck ... as in beaten, pummeled, etc.

http://tinyurl.com/2opj8a http://tinyurl.com/2m4yk7 The second one is particularly alarming.

Larry, I think you are confusing two different incidents: 1) Octavian being shipwrecked in Spain, when he was 17 (mid 40s BC), while Caesar was still alive. I assume the plot in the 1st season episode where Octavian gets kidnapped by barbarians was a nod to this. 2) Octavian's naval battles against Sextus Pompeius (Pompey Magnus's son), who was based in Sicily. This did happen in the 30s BC, between the battles of Philippi and Actium. Guy No -- I meant 2), though you're right that Sextus P. was not a mere pirate, even though his threat to Rome was piratical in nature. From "The Cambridge Ancient History: The Augustan Empire," p. 61, about the campaign against Sextus Pompeius that was launched in 36 B.C. and led to these events in mid-August: "...Octavian decided to risk a sea-fight, but the superiority of Sextus' seamanship was crushingly demonstrated; Octavian's ships were burnt or wrecked, and though some survivors were rescued ... Octavian himself in the gathering darkness only just managed to evade capture and reached the mainland with but one friend to be by him during the night. So near had Sextus come to success. "Octavian was utterly exhausted both in body and soul; for one moment even his will and belief broke and he begged his companion to kill him.... But dawn brought help and renewal of hope: he was seen, recognized and escorted to Messalla."

I haven't fiddled around with the settings too much, but my impression is that if you adjust the volume to the point where the softer passages (such as they are) sound at all realistic/lively, the louder passages will come close to making your ears bleed, while you can't really adjust the volume downwards so that the loudest passages sound normally loud. It's like almost all the sonic information is packed into a fairly narrow band in the high-volume level range. It's also a "blunt" sound -- highs are certainly there but without much air around them. On the other hand, all this may be in tune with the way the band actually plays -- exciting/intense and bashing -- though it's also hard to take for more than a few tracks at a time. In fact, now that I think of it, it may also be in tune with the Tolliver himself plays the trumpet -- blunt and intense.

I remember that episode, but don't remember any S or M. He was also seduced by his sister in a different episode. Guy I'm pretty sure that he beat or whipped the girl he was with -- the implication being (I think on the basis of a knowing look from the girl afterwards, perhaps directed at Pullo) that the things hadn't been working until then. BTW, one factual incident that I hope they make room for in the episodes (only two left?) before the end is Octavian's attempt to subdue pirates who have been menacing Roman commerce. Octavian's fleet is scattered and largely destroyed by a storm, then by the pirates, and Octavian washes ashore accompanied (so it is said) by only one companion and so full of fear and despair that he decides to commit suicide, only to be stopped by the companion, who hustles him inland where the two hook up with Roman forces and are saved. The companion would have to be Pullo -- natch. But, again, the whole thing is in the history books.

No kidding! I just gave a listen to the whole disc, and I feel like I been beat up! It's just full throttle, non-stop (even the ballads, like "'Round Midnight"). Afterward, I put on Jimmy Heath's Turn Up The Heath to cleanse the palate. Swingin', ballsy writing and playing, but not nearly as rough around the edges as Tolliver's thing. About bleeding ears, I moved on yesterday to "'Round Midnight" and the next track, and suddenly felt (though this may be nuts on my part) that the harsh way this is recorded (and the harshness is in Tolliver's writing as well) is the perfect analogue to how angry I feel when I read the newspapers these days. It's like an "Ode To Rove and Gonzales."

Last season, I think it was, they established that the young Octavian had problems, conceptual and in terms of execution, when it came to sex with women. Pullo took him to a brothel and helped him get over the hump, so to speak, but I'm pretty sure I recall that there were intimations of S&M (or probably just S) -- as though without such trimmings the whole business didn't work for Octavian.

Another from Larkin, "This Be The Verse." Not a nice man, by most accounts, but not without wit. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.

I forget the guy's name, but the first jazz criticism book I ever read, in the early 70's from my local public library, was some British guy who considered Coltrane and the Miles Davis Quintent with Hancock/Carter/Williams to be "anti-jazz". It was just awful stuff to read, as 'A Love Supreme' brought me into the jazz world. Might have been poet/jazz fan Philip Larkin's "All What Jazz." Those were certainly views that Larkin held. Here is his "For Sidney Bechet," which conveys a fair bit of Larkin's, quirks, fantasies, prejudices, and affections regarding jazz: That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes Like New Orleans reflected on the water, And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes, Building for some a legendary Quarter Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles, Everyone making love and going shares-- Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles Others may license, grouping around their chairs Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced Far above rubies) to pretend their fads, While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids. On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City Is where your speech alone is understood, And greeted as the natural noise of good, Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.

Things could be very different if you were there witnessing this stuff as it happened. Part of my problem with Williams re. Coltrane is that I have the sense that he never was able to hear John Coltrane's music - at least post 1960. And That's ok - I just don't think that he should have written about it if it didn't speak to him. I stopped reading his stuff after 1966 or 1967, so perhaps he didn't write much about Coltrane's music as time passed. He must have had the sense that other listeners/critics he respected were moved by Trane's music. (Did he respect other critics?) Perhaps he should have accepted the fact that it just wasn't for his ears. I never bought the Smithsonian jazz box, but I believe that he only included one recording from Coltrane's post 1960 recordings. (I may be wrong about this. If I am, please correct me.) For me, that's the same thing as if he had written a negative review of Coltrane's music. He might have allowed someone else to have made the choice(s) as to what Coltrane recordings would be included. To my mind, there should have been more than one included. I find that I'm writing mostly negative things about Martin Williams' writings, and my feelings about his books (at least my memories of them) are much more positive than negative. I don't have any of his books anymore, but I'm going online today and see which of his books my local libarary has and do some reading and rereading. Personal note: I'm more or less responsible for the sole Coltrane recording that's in the Smithsonian set (at least its first edition; more may have been added down the road). Martin and I were friendly at the time; he got in touch, admitted (not that he needed to) his lack of sympathy for Coltrane's 1960-and-beyond work, and explained that he also had a severe space problem with the Smithsonian set because so many well-regarded later Trane performances would have consumed most or all of an LP side. I suggested "Out of This World" if he had room for it, "Alabama" if he did not. He went with "Alabama." I don't agree that Martin should not have written about Trane; his lack of sympathy for that music was honestly arrived at position, and, as I said in a previous post, what he didn't hear there and what he said about what he didn't hear there arguably helped one to define better define/understand what was there. He certainly wasn't part of the reactionary crowd who referred to Trane as "anti-jazz."

Other BG drummers from around that time were Ralph Collier and Hud Davies, maybe a few more.

Don't know what you mean by "precious little Martin stands up as writing today." If his thinking about things still makes sense -- and IMO if often does (and when it doesn't so much, what Martin had to say often still raised key issues) -- his writing was the evidence of that thinking. Surely, you don't mean that he wasn't poetic enough for you? BTW, on the "key issues" front, Martin's ""If one looks for melodic development or even some sort of technical order or logic, he may find none here" response to "Africa Brass" Coltrane, while wrong in my and your view, is a good example. That is, one has to in response realize that the kinds of "melodic development ... technical order or logic" that Martin expects to find in Coltrane of that vintage is not there but that other, new and significantly different kinds of development, technical order and logic are at work, the nature of which it was then up to us to explore and describe in our words and talk. In other words, when Martin shied away or got grumpy or worse, his underlying seriousness and acuteness still remained in play. In effect, you argued with him and in the process educated yourself. Usually.

I agree -- that's almost certainly Mel Powell.

Could that be Dave Barbour? http://www.parabrisas.com/d_barbourd.php Barbour didn't join Goodman until 1942, where he met his wife-to-be Peggy Lee, but he seems to have been West Coast-based in '37, with Lennie Hayton and doing some studio work, and if this clip is from "Hollywood Hotel," Barbour might have stepped in from the soundtrack orchestra for this solo spot. The playing certainly fits in stylistically with other things I've heard from Barbour.

Read the Jazz Review at the time when I could, got a fair number of back issues, wish I had them all. Not perfect -- what is? -- but the best jazz magazine I ever saw. And Martin was its guiding spirit and key contributor. His interview/discussion with George Russell about Ornette was a landmark and damn smart on both their parts.

Purchased today and just started to listen. Oodles of energy here; also, while this band has its own sound, it reminds me of Dizzy's '40s band, that "Let's all jump off a cliff" thing. Fascinating to hear how Tolliver himself has developed over the years. I might want to hear McBee more strongly/clearly, but from what I can tell he's playing his ass off, as is Victor Lewis, who does come through strong and clear.

OK, sorry for misreading your comment. But YES! "glancing around for cues, etc." -- this is exactly what occurs during these performances. In fact, it was my experience watching this ensemble perform at Wesleyan in fall 2005, that led me to decide to videotape these shows. There is a lot to see during the performance which helps you understand how the music is put together, e.g.: Each musician has a stack of Braxton compositions to draw from, which can be cued at any time by anyone via hand signals (Braxton has several sheets worth), white boards, and other gestures; language music improvisations are conducted via physical gestures; and musicians use signals to select other musicians with whom they want to play. OK. Thanks.

Are having fun and “really playing” mutually exclusive? In any case, this is all premature since you presumably haven’t heard the recordings. I look forward to your thoughts after you hear them. I didn't mean at all by "shrug, wink, and the like" that the these players looked like they were "having fun" (though that's certainly possible). Rather, they looked to me like they were unsure of themselves at times, glancing around for cues, etc. -- though this may be a function of what Braxton wants or doesn't want them to do in this music. Obviously, I could be wrong about how I interpreted what I saw, but I have been watching people play music -- some of it quite "advanced" -- for more than 50 years now, and I'd be surprised if these players had come with a new way to "look" while playing as well as a new way to sound. Also, there is, at least potentially, both an upside and downside to "About two-thirds of them have studied with Braxton, and a quarter of them ... have been studying with and/or performing with Braxton for over a decade." The upside is obvious; the potential downside is that a master-disciple relationship with a figure such as Braxton -- who is an actual master himself of course but probably denies the fruitfulness or meaningfulness of such relationships on philosophical/aesthetic grounds -- could leave certain players of certain temperaments feeling more confused than liberated, if in fact liberation is a goal here. Whatever, as you say, all this is premature -- though you did post the video in the hope of getting reactions to it.

A little voice in my head (got to get that taken care of) tells me that the conductor might be Frank Comstock (Hi-Los, R. Clooney TV show, etc.), though I can't find a Comstock photo. No way that's a Gil Evans chart.