Monk on the Air

I’ll be the guest on WILL (Illinois Public Radio), on the AM 580 morning show “Focus 580″ with David Inge tomorrow at the 10:00 hour, chatting about my book, Thelonious Monk, and jazz history. For those of you not in the WILL listening area who want to check it out, it’s podcast here: http://www.will.uiuc.edu/am/focus/default.htm [...]

Read Full Post »

Lacy in Action

Since a lot of people haven’t heard Steve Lacy, here’s a youtube video of the Steve Lacy 4 (Steve Potts on alto and Jean-Jacques Avenel on bass; I think it’s John Betsch on drums). Two things about Lacy that this really brings out nicely: first, I think his is the best sound on [...]

Read Full Post »

Steve Lacy

I was listening to a recording of Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd playing “Monk’s Dream” (on their 2000 release of the same name) this afternoon, and thinking about how much I like Lacy’s approach to music and to the soprano sax in particular. But I wonder a little whether I mostly like [...]

Read Full Post »

Charlie Haden, Part 3

Just found this in an interview with Charlie Haden from downbeat’s website. He and the interviewer are talking about bassists he learned from, and when they get to Wilbur Ware (who played, among others, with Monk) the interviewer says what a great soloist he was. Haden says:
You forget sometimes that you are [...]

Read Full Post »

Wow

I love Philly, as anyone who knows me can attest; and this is one of the reasons why:

(For those who didn’t catch it at the beginning, that’s Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.)
Thanks to Charles for bringing this to my attention.
Compare with MC Rove at the president’s press dinner last year. Also makes [...]

Read Full Post »

Music, Race, and Presidential Politics

A friend just brought Maureen Dowd’s recent column on Barak Obama to my attention, for this:
“…Obama’s vague optimism and smooth-jazz modernity came together in a spectacular fusion with the deep yearning of Democrats who have suffered through heartbreaking losses in the last two elections with uninspiring candidates.”
It makes me wonder what she is accomplishing [...]

Read Full Post »

Captain Beefheart Again

There was some interesting discussion of Cpt. Beefheart back in the Fall, because I was playing him in the rock seminar. At the time I think I neglected to mention that I had programmed him largely because I think Robert Christgau’s and Lester Bangs’s approaches to writing about him so nicely encapsulate the [...]

Read Full Post »

More on Charlie Haden

Not sure why I’m writing so much about jazz right now, except that I’m listening to a lot of it–though I’m not sure why that’s the case, either.
I suppose this is the sort of piece that would have made sense in 2005, but I’ve been listening to Charlie Haden’s latest Liberation Music Orchestra release, 2005’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Herbie Hancock, Charlie Haden and Genre in the New Century

 Two items I’ve been listening to lately, Herbie Hancock’s tribute to Joni Mitchell, River: the Joni Letters and Charlie Haden’s album with Pat Metheny, Beyond the Missouri Sky, have made me think about an awful lot of my favorite music right now and the issue of genre in contemporary music.
What are they? Jazz? [...]

Read Full Post »