Now reading...

[Matthew]

Finished Eric Ambler's The Light of Day, and again, I'm disappointed. Ambler is able to create great situations for a "thriller" novel, but he does nothing with the given situation. Maybe it's just his later novels, but it's beginning to get irratating.

Edited June 24, 2006 by Matthew

[ghost of miles]

Nelson Algren, NONCONFORMITY.

[Kalo]

Myself When I am Real, Gene Santoro's biography of Charles Mingus.

Anyone else read this? It felt very disjointed. Santoro keeps repeating certain phrases, such as "Mingus was feeling the Zeitgeist." He obsessively and tiresomely lists exact amounts that Mingus was paid or that he paid for things, interesting in some cases, but enough already.

Mingus is so fascinating that the book was worthwhile for that alone and for the quotes from contemporaries (I'd rather have read a compilation of the interviews, really).

Also, some things in the book were just plain wrong. "Chateau Neuf du Pape" for "Chateaneuf-du-Pape" could be an editor's mistake. But to assert that cumbia is to Columbia as bossa nova is to Brazil is just plain wrong. Shouldn't he have compared it to the samba rather than bossa nova?

Oh well. Has anyone read Brian Priestley's Mingus book? It looks like it has a lot more about the music in it, which Santoro was surprisingly light on.

[kinuta]

Elizabeth George - Playing For The Ashes

[BruceH]

Myself When I am Real, Gene Santoro's biography of Charles Mingus.

Anyone else read this? It felt very disjointed. Santoro keeps repeating certain phrases, such as "Mingus was feeling the Zeitgeist." He obsessively and tiresomely lists exact amounts that Mingus was paid or that he paid for things, interesting in some cases, but enough already.

Mingus is so fascinating that the book was worthwhile for that alone and for the quotes from contemporaries (I'd rather have read a compilation of the interviews, really).

Also, some things in the book were just plain wrong. "Chateau Neuf du Pape" for "Chateaneuf-du-Pape" could be an editor's mistake. But to assert that cumbia is to Columbia as bossa nova is to Brazil is just plain wrong. Shouldn't he have compared it to the samba rather than bossa nova?

Oh well. Has anyone read Brian Priestley's Mingus book? It looks like it has a lot more about the music in it, which Santoro was surprisingly light on.

Guess I can give that one a miss.

Haven't read the Priestley, but it's one of those books I've been "meaning to" read for years.

(Actually, it may have been one of those books destroyed in a basement/garage flood a few months back. Oh well.)

Edited June 26, 2006 by BruceH

[jazzbo]

I've read both of the Mingus books. You'll like Preistley's. They both are good in my opinion for what they are. As is Sue Mingus's book. I think there could be twenty books about Mingus and not one would be "true" or maybe even ultimately satisfying. What a spirit, what a character, what a composer, what a player.

[rostasi]

"The final of the four plays of Wellman's Crowtet, Magoo follows the adventures of Curran and Candle -- an expert on "Crowe's Dark Space" -- and their motley assemblage of peers, some of them categorically "unusualist," in the parallel, decidedly unsettled, universe that is distinctly Wellman's. Magoo is chockfull of alternative histories, comprehensive pseudo-sciences, eerily relevant, off-the-map absurdist politics and soft-spoken contacts between humans all vying for attention in the seemingly self-propelled linguistics of Wellman's versification, which at turns recalls Beckett, at others the polymath Pynchon or the more childlike landscapes of Ashbery (in Girls on the Run). The music for The Lesser Magoo, scored for voices, toy piano, ukulele, and violin, was composed by Michael Roth, for both the Los Angeles and the New York productions."

[Kalo]

Myself When I am Real, Gene Santoro's biography of Charles Mingus.

Anyone else read this? It felt very disjointed. Santoro keeps repeating certain phrases, such as "Mingus was feeling the Zeitgeist." He obsessively and tiresomely lists exact amounts that Mingus was paid or that he paid for things, interesting in some cases, but enough already.

Mingus is so fascinating that the book was worthwhile for that alone and for the quotes from contemporaries (I'd rather have read a compilation of the interviews, really).

Also, some things in the book were just plain wrong. "Chateau Neuf du Pape" for "Chateaneuf-du-Pape" could be an editor's mistake. But to assert that cumbia is to Columbia as bossa nova is to Brazil is just plain wrong. Shouldn't he have compared it to the samba rather than bossa nova?

Oh well. Has anyone read Brian Priestley's Mingus book? It looks like it has a lot more about the music in it, which Santoro was surprisingly light on.

Guess I can give that one a miss.

Haven't read the Priestley, but it's one of those books I've been "meaning to" read for years.

(Actually, it may have been one of those books destroyed in a basement/garage flood a few months back. Oh well.)

Ouch! Sorry about the flood.

I've read both of the Mingus books. You'll like Preistley's. They both are good in my opinion for what they are. As is Sue Mingus's book. I think there could be twenty books about Mingus and not one would be "true" or maybe even ultimately satisfying. What a spirit, what a character, what a composer, what a player.

Good point! Mingus is so deep that the possibilities for illumination/elucidation are endless... I had the good fortune to meet Sue Mingus recently. I'll put her book on the list.

I'll definitely read Priestley's book soon, as well as getting around to reading Mingus's own Beneath the Underdog. I also need to beef up my Mingus collection, though I flatter myself that I've been holding and listening to the "meat" of his music for quite some time. (Though I have none of his 1970's stuff...)

[ep1str0phy]

I'm presently trying to digest Jost's Free Jazz, Russell's Lydian Chromatic... textbook (Vol. 1 of the--supposedly--'final' edition), and Teodoro Agoncillo's A Short History of the Philippines. The latter represents an attempt to reclaim my ethnic origins well beyond the (infinitely more) factually relevant bases of the family circumstances. Also--reading my girlfriend's copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Ugh...

[ghost of miles]

Really eager to read AMONG THE DEAD CITIES, a new book about the Allied bombing of population centers during WWII--in the meantime, alternating between CONVERSATIONS WITH NELSON ALGREN and Dave Oliphant's TEXAN JAZZ.

[jazzbo]

Oliphant is a very nice guy. . . . He's a stone cold Kenny Dorham freak. He's retiring in a few months I believe.

That book is hard work. . . but a good one.

[Christiern]

I am about halfway through this biography of John Hammond. So far, I was glad to see that the author has not totally tried to whitewash John, but he does avoid much of his less appealing side. That may not be deliberate, for it is obvious that Prial knows little about the music business and that he is working in the dark when it comes to jazz history. Still, at least from what I have read, there is a lot here that John Himself left out of his autobiography. Considering some of the people he interviewed, I find it difficult to believe that he wasn't told some of the things I know--things that ought to have been in this book.

I'll come back when I've read it all, but not here--someone already started a thread on this book.

[BruceH]

I recall that the late, lamented Otis Ferguson had some reservations about Hammond.

[paul secor]

Peter Pouncey: Rules for Old Men Waiting

[B. Clugston]

Myself When I am Real, Gene Santoro's biography of Charles Mingus.

Anyone else read this? It felt very disjointed. Santoro keeps repeating certain phrases, such as "Mingus was feeling the Zeitgeist." He obsessively and tiresomely lists exact amounts that Mingus was paid or that he paid for things, interesting in some cases, but enough already.

Mingus is so fascinating that the book was worthwhile for that alone and for the quotes from contemporaries (I'd rather have read a compilation of the interviews, really).

Also, some things in the book were just plain wrong. "Chateau Neuf du Pape" for "Chateaneuf-du-Pape" could be an editor's mistake. But to assert that cumbia is to Columbia as bossa nova is to Brazil is just plain wrong. Shouldn't he have compared it to the samba rather than bossa nova?

Oh well. Has anyone read Brian Priestley's Mingus book? It looks like it has a lot more about the music in it, which Santoro was surprisingly light on.

Is Santoro's book the one that is full of errors? Like the description of Mingus at Monterey where he gets the personnel really wrong and describes solos by musicians who do not even appear on the album.

nr: The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas

[Bright Moments]

Joe Keenan - My Lucky Star

Joe is this Generation's P.G. Wodehouse!

[paul secor]

Tom Sancton: Song for My Fathers - a fine memoir of a boy growing up in New Orleans in the 1950's and 60's, his thoughts and stories about his father - a writer, an eccentric character, and an honest man; stories and memories of his musical fathers - among them, N.O musicians George Lewis, George Guesnon, Joe Watkins, Jim Robinson, and many others; race relations in New Orleans in the 60's; and portraits of people who were associated with the early days of Preservation Hall and the New Orleans traditional music scene - lots of good stories.

I truly enjoyed reading it, and I plan to try to find a copy of Tom Sancton Sr.'s first novel, Count Roller Skates, and to read that.

[Harold_Z]

An Oral History of WWII.

Really good.

[jlhoots]

Irene Nemirovsky: Suite Francaise

[ejp626]

Irene Nemirovsky: Suite Francaise

What do you think so far? I liked it, though obviously it would have been improved had she lived to finish the whole thing and also had a chance to revise.

[jazzbo]

"Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead's American Adventure" by Carol Brightman. So far, me likey.

[slide_advantage_redoux]

Vibrations - A David Amram autobiography

8 Men Out - The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series - Eliot Asinof

[jlhoots]

Irene Nemirovsky: Suite Francaise

What do you think so far? I liked it, though obviously it would have been improved had she lived to finish the whole thing and also had a chance to revise.

So far, so good - but I'm only half-way through the first part.

[Uncle Skid]

The Origins of the Urban Crisis : Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit - Thomas Sugrue. An eye-opener, to say the least.

Recently finished Mr. Litweiler's The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958. Combined with re-reading sections of Mr. Kart's Jazz in Search of Itself, I feel like I know much more about the music that has become so important to me in the last five years. Thank you, gentlemen!

[ghost of miles]

Just finished two books in the very cool 33 1/3 series, devoted to seminal rock albums--the ones for R.E.M.'s Murmur and the Smiths' Meat Is Murder (the latter actually a novella instead of analysis). Now reading Henry Miller's THE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE and looking for my misplaced copy of THE GREAT BLACK WAY ( ).