Buddy Bolden awaits me

I'm comin' Buddy, soon, put the Abita on ice.

Walking tall, and stiff

I think it is safe to say I'm going to wish I had gone for the one-level condo for the next couple days.

Spoils

And all I had to do to get them was engage in five hours of a modern version of flagellation.

The very definition of insanity

Watching the sun come up over the University of Illinois Memorial Stadium with a big grin on my face thinking about how I'm about to run 26 miles (plus .2, don't forget the .2). Yes, I've completely lost it.

Brrrrr 2

End of the KeyBank 8K last Saturday. It's supposed to be about 25 degrees warmer this Saturday, and for that the gods have my appreciation.

There'll be a lot on the plate

Hal Higdon says run a couple miles this morning, so I ran a couple miles. No more running until Saturday. Then I get a couple dozen miles to savor, plus a couple, plus .2, a veritable smorgasbord of miles. And intend to try consuming every one.

Not a breakfast food (or lunch, or supper)

Eu gosto de cães. In my online Portuguese lesson for today: Food 3. I like dogs. I'm hoping that's as in "I like doggies so I feed them treats." As opposed to "I like dogs sautéed with mushrooms and garlic in a little red wine."

Anybody wonder...

How this teenager and his brother were able to assemble a small arsenal of guns and ammunition and, should their bomb array turn out to be black powder-based, the gun powder to make a bunch of bombs? Didn't think so. Sure love that unfettered right to bear arms.

Just a little run before the big run

KeyBank 8K in the bank. Next stop, my old Champaign-Urbana stomping (or drinking, as the case may be) grounds and the Illinois Marathon.

Brrrrr

Since it's going to insist on being in the 30s, with wind chill in the 20s, for the KeyBank 8K in Carmel tomorrow morning I'm going to wear the Fort Lauderdale A1A half marathon shirt and tell myself those are the ocean breezes freezing my ass off.

Poor Wayne, poor, poor Wayne

Psychology tells us that guys with big guns are just trying make up for small "packages," if you know what I mean, and I think you do. I actually feel a little sorry for them. The operative word being "little." Jeez, Wayne LaPierre must have a real thimble dick.

I ran 7 miles today and whenever my pace lapsed I just called up Mafalda doing this.

What Danielle says

About Indiana…

The Truth About Love

“Where there is desire there is gonna be a flame. Where there is a flame someone's bound to get burned. But just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die. You gotta get up and try, try, try.”
--Pink

This is true about most things, not just love.

Also, she rolls out several good tunes on this new CD.

She also uses bad language. I'm for that.

Which is the Truth About Love.

31st IOSF set for West Lafayette

The 31st International Othersports Festival will be held Aug. 31-Sept. 3 in West Lafayette, Indiana. There is a a Purdue home football game that Saturday, so those of you needing accommodations may want to make arrangements ASAP. A list of possibilities follows.

Bowling is scheduled for after the football game so you may attend the game if you would like. The Purdue Athletic Ticket Office would undoubtedly sell you as many seats as you want. The opponent is Eastern Kentucky University, nickname the Colonels, whose mascot looks distinctly like a certain fried chicken restaurant franchise founder, albeit a version who's been eating a lot of factory farm fowl pumped up with steroids. This is all true. A special event will be scheduled during the game for those not attending. Miniature golf, at an exciting new venue, will be Sunday afternoon. Opening ceremonies will be Friday night as usual.

More details in an IOSF Tattler to follow. (Production delay due to ongoing restructuring discussions. The t-shirts have been printed, however.)

Accommodations:
1) Prestige Inn: 1217 Sagamore Parkway West, West Lafayette, 765-463-1531.
2) Four Points by Sheraton Hotel: U.S. 52 West at Cumberland Ave., West Lafayette, 877-214-0732.
3) Union Club Hotel: State and Grant streets, West Lafayette, 765-494-8913.
4) Campus Inn, 200 Brown St., West Lafayette, 765-743-9661.
5) Hilton Garden Inn: 356 E. State St., West Lafayette, 765-743-2100. They give out cookies at the desk at night.
6) Holiday Inn Select City Centre, 515 South St., Lafayette, 765-423-1000.
7) Knight's Inn: 4110 State Road 26, Lafayette, 765-447-5611. (Many other hotels in the Knight’s Inn area as well, but said area is kind of far away.)
8) Motel Hell: 666 Stix St. (Hades Road), Lafayette, 666-666-0666. Free sausage!

Running tomorrow

There isn't a damn thing I wouldn't do for Aldina Duarte when she's doing this.

Aldina Duarte distilling fado to its essence and stirring my soul.

Fado at the source

Carminho tarting up and singing about Mouraria, wellspring of fado. I need to trod those steps again. Carminho needs to put out another CD.

Future muse

So I don't know if Bjork's iPad album/app Biophilia is the future of pay-for music, but I do know listening to, watching, playing with it would be hell on wheels if I still knew where to get a hit of Thai stick in 2011, if they even have Thai stick in 2011.

Esperanza Spalding, Esperanza, Heads Up

I saw her Chamber Music Society for the second time this week and it was wonderful just like the first time. The most accessible Third Stream-style mix of jazz and classical forms in some time and I may be doing it something of an injustice characterizing it that way. In many respects, it is pathbreaking music. You gotta be doing something unusual to derail the Bieber juggernaut for a Grammy.

As much as I appreciate Chamber Music Society, the performances and the CD, this is my favorite Esparanza set so far (I mean, we only have three CDs and she should have a long way to go being, basically, a kid). From 2008, the focus is on her considerable ability as a jazz musician, singing, and even more importantly, as a magnificent bassist. If tunes like Espera don't get your heart going pitter-patter, you may be dead. Art Blakey would have been down with hard-bopper If That's True, which works Donald Harrison in on alto sax. Mingus would have dug it all.

Giants

Whenever I hear John Coltrane play Giant Steps I think, he had to be an extraterrestrial who dropped in for a visit, heard Charle Parker play, became enamored of jazz and stuck around to blow for the love of it until the extraterrestrial bigwigs made him come home.

Kind of like that X-Files episode The Unnatural with the Negro Leagues baseball player from outer space.

The end

Finishing the Wabash Heritage Trail 15K on Sunday, Oct. 2, 2011.

I felt kind of bad about passing the guy behind me near the end.

But if I hadn't, then he would have been the top dude in the 50-59 age group, not me. That's why they call it a race, I guess.

Running just as fast as we can

Time for first 15k on Aug. 6, 2:02:33

Time for 15k today, 1:34:41. Slow but headed in the right direction, more or less quickly. I even passed a guy at the end to finish first in my age group. Then I felt kind of bad about it, although I kept the medal.

The pleasure is in the run, not the finish, and both runs were a pleasure. (I have to say the cool October run was a little more pleasurable for my body than the hot and humid August run, however.)

Next up, Monumental Half Marathon in Indianapolis Nov. 5.

Gigi Gryce, Doin' the Gigi, Uptown

George General Grice, Jr., AKA Gigi Gryce and Basheer Qusim, got sick of the music business early in the 1960s and went into teaching disadvantaged and troubled kids using music as a tool. When he died in 1983, too young at 57, they named a school after him. So he left a heck of a legacy.

What he didn't leave was a big recorded legacy and while his students are richer for the career change, those of us who appreciate the music of a gifted alto sax player, composer and arranger admired by his peers could be excused for ruing it, if just a little. However, we're richer now, too, thanks to this collection of never-before-released cuts from studio demos and live radio and TV sessions (with good sound throughout).

We get some of Gryce's compositions, but what I really like about it is his rearranging of some well-chewed standards, which renders, for instance, Take the A Train and Stompin' at the Savoy in a way that retains the essence of the originals while sounding like almost entirely new songs. Gryce is in excellent form on both those cuts, and most of the others as well, making me think of Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt (on alto) here and Benny Carter or Johnny Hodges there, while nonetheless always being Gigi.

The other revelation to me is trumpeter Richard Williams, who appears on most of the tracks. He's every bit of Kenny Dorham and Donald Byrd (another bandmate of Gryce's) and also died too young, of cancer at 54 (this I do not like).

Ranges from classic bebop to sophisticated stuff akin to the modal productions of Miles Davis around the same time, all of it good for many listens right out of the box.

Nothing to fear, but fear

"Fear. It's the oldest tool of power. If you're distracted by the fear of those around you, it keeps you from seeing the actions of those above."

-- Fox Mulder

Gee, why didn't the Koch brothers think of that?

Never mind.

What Pops said

"What's money anyhow? You make it and you might eat a little better than the next cat. You might buy a little better booze. But you get sick just like the next cat, and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is."

-- Louis Armstrong

Amen daddy!

Ana Popovic, Unconditional, Eclecto Groove

Ana Popovic sings a little like Big Mama Thornton (and Helen Reddy) and plays the guitar a little like Stevie Ray Vaughan (and Robert Cray), which is kind of weird when you consider she's from Belgrade, and I don't mean the one near St. Louis, or even the ones in Maine and Montana. Still, you know it's true, music is a universal language and I might say the blues is universal, too.

In any event, Count Me In and Soulful Dress are going into the running playlist Mix 26.2 because you hear them and the feet must move. Sonny Landreth adds a second slide on one tune and there's some b-a-d bad organ and harp playing in the bargain. It's all good.

Danielle Ate the Sandwich sings her excellent song American Dream with some kids/fans from North Carolina.

Amusing Danielle Ate the Sandwich video. They blew her off in Kentucky so I got to see her in Indianapolis. Her voice is even more wonderful in person. The CD is her latest, Two Bedroom Apartment, and it's boffo.

Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter, Fat Possum Records

Townes Van Zandt wasn't a stunning guitar player and his singing voice wasn't all that great but, man, he could play and sing. And write lyrics that melt your heart and stir your soul and can feel so sad even when they're funny, like Talking Thunderbird Blues.

Country blues, maybe not officially, although I'm not uncomfortable classifying it that way given tunes such as Chauffer's Blues, which could have come right from the Delta. Call it Country and Western Folk meets the Blues Folk, and a copacetic meeting it is.

And I don't mean in a Halloween way

The Way the Whole Thing Ends on Gillian Welch's The Harrow & The Harvest, Acony, is about the most haunting (new) tune I've heard in a good long while. She may be a folkie, but I hear some Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday in there, not to mention some Woody Guthrie and Mississippi John Hurt, with a nicer voice but no less emotive.

Really good guitar playing as well.

The murder of Troy Davis by Georgia got me thinking

"Whether the trial witnesses against him were lying then or are lying now, by fighting against his requested relief Georgia is saying that its interest in the finality of its capital judgments is more important than the accuracy of its capital verdicts."

-- From a thoughtful Atlantic piece by Andrew Cohen.

So if government is "bad" when it taxes you, what about when it kills you, and with more than a "reasonable doubt" that you did the thing for which you're being killed? Why aren't John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, et al, stepping up to the plate on that issue?

Of course, we know where Rick "Serial Executionier" Perry stands.

Saudade on Sept. 11

This evening I am listening to Portuguese fado music. The fado is rooted in the concept of saudade, loosely translated an intense longing for things lost. Lives, for instance, thousands on this day 10 years ago, hundreds of thousands since, mostly without purpose. Or the rule of law that says one may not be held indefinitely without a trial by a jury of one's peers, or even without being charged with any crime at all. Or the idea that a person should be judged on content of character, not choice of church or of headdress. Or the right to communicate and/or travel freely without being surveilled by the CIA and the New York City police and strip searched, virtually or literally. Or the notion that state-sanctioned assassination inevitably leads to more problems than it solves. These, and an economy devastated by 10 years of ill-advised and ineffective war, are the wages of 9/11, or, rather, our reaction to it. Celebrate that.

Like The Mule was sayin'

"You can't know too much. It ain't no shame if you know a whole lot. But it's a shame if you don't know nothing."

Good advice from Henry Townsend on Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen. Just before he gets down to killing on If I Asked You.

I can think of several congresspersons who should apply the lesson.

But of course

Religious.

How iTunes classifies Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen, a live show CD featuring Robert Lockwood Jr., David "Honeyboy" Edwards, Willie "Pinetop" Perkins and Henry Townsend.

It is for me.

What he said

"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."

-- H. L. Mencken

Nor a tea bagging wingnut.

Screwed

No other word need be said.

(OK, it also could be "fucked," but I didn't want to put that in the heading. Actually, I like fucked better.)

There are days I feel exactly like the seal.

But there are other days…

More pictures and a report on a study showing how the whales cleverly, and frighteningly, work together to "get some."

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

Dear Mrs. Laura Bush

I was thrilled to receive your invitation yesterday asking me to contribute to the development of the George W. Bush presidential center and library. Let me wade right in and make a contribution.

I know you and the president have a deep appreciation for symbolism. Who can forget president Bush landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declaring an end to our successful operations in Iraq under that rousing red, white and blue “Mission Accomplished” banner. The scene still makes me shudder.

I have a wonderful idea for a symbolic work of art in the entry foyer to the George W. Bush presidential center and library, a work of art that will capture the essence of your husband’s presidency perfectly – a colorful, life-sized portrait of president Bush dressed as a clown, to be painted on black velvet, like those marvelous paintings of dogs playing poker or Elvis.

I myself enjoy dressing like a clown occasionally (strictly at Halloween, those other rumors are not true) and I happen to own a pair of big red shoes that I would be pleased to loan to the president while he poses for the painting. I also have some funny hats he might wish to use and I am sure other Americans like me would be happy to contribute necessary items. In fact, I will get the ball rolling by asking my friends what they might be able to lend for this project.

Former vice president Cheney undoubtedly has some baggy orange pants the president could borrow, as Mr. Cheney enjoys hunting and bright orange attire is standard equipment in this hobby for safety reasons. (It makes it easier to identify your hunting partner in the brush, so as not to mistake him for a deer, which refuse to wear bright orange attire, and accidently shoot him.)

I do not mean to imply that former vice president Cheney is fat in saying that his hunting pants are baggy. Hunters often don quilted underwear against the cold and need extra room in their outer garments to accommodate this. In the case of Mr. Cheney, he also needs room for his colostomy bag and diaper, although the small size of his “package” (if you know what I mean, and I think you do) mitigates this need somewhat.

I have many other exciting ideas for the George W. Bush presidential center and library. I think we can do an entire wing on president Bush’s decisive response to Hurricane Katrina, while his capture of the terrorist Osama bin Laden deserves at least a display case. On the other hand, his response to the Great Recession can be covered with a small shelf, I believe. I say this only because economics bores most people and they know little about the subject, like your husband.

I would be pleased to discuss my ideas further. Perhaps you, president Bush and I could talk over a few Shiner Bocks when I next visit Austin. You buy, and I’ll bring my big red shoes.

Sincerely
Greg Kline, American

P.S. Thank you for including a postage-paid return envelope.

Ana Moura, Coliseu, World Village

I really like this compilation from two of her live concerts in Portugal because it captures, naturally, her voice and her singing style as is, at least on those nights. She's a wonderful fadista in the studio, too, but studio recordings are always attempts at near perfection, depending on the number of takes allowed in a session. This is the fado of fado clubs, or the streets, and she delivers it in a tougher, more husky way, on Porque Teimas Nesta Dor (Why do you dwell on this pain?), for instance, or the rousing O Fado da Procura (Fado of searching). The a cappella opening of Lavava no Rio Lavava (I went to the river to wash) is haunting, while E Viemos Nascidos do Mar (And we came born of the sea) is jaunty, which is by way of saying there's a nice mix of music here.

I have a ticket to see her in concert in San Francisco in June, which will make me one happy man who loves fado, and Ana Moura. To hear her speak Portuguese to the audience and laugh are music as well.

The truth? You can't handle the truth!

I am very disappointed with NPR for failing to defend its people against the smear tactics of rightwingnuts like James O'Keefe, but I'm even more disappointed with what's left of the legitimate news business.

What this O'Keefe guy does should be objectionable to almost any news organization out there (Fox excepted, of course). Cub reporters learn from the get-go that you never misrepresent yourself. People get fired for it. People get sued for it. A prime example I always think of is the fake bar (called the Mirage, hah, hah) the old Sun-Times set up in the '70s to secretly film Chicago officials demanding payola. (Wow, who knew?) They lost a Pulitzer Prize for using deception to get the story. You can still generate a debate by bringing it up at industry gatherings today, 30 plus years later. Yet, legitimate news organizations cover this O'Keefe's "revelations" like they were, well, Revelations.

O'Keefe isn't a reporter any more than Abbie Hoffman was in the '60s. He is engaging in guerrilla political theater. Rightwingnuts like to cite Michael Moore and say, hey, liberals do it, too. But evidently they've never actually watched Moore's movies. Whatever you think of him, he identifies himself and states his purpose in the process of getting people to make asses of themselves on camera. He doesn't create fake identities to coax people into saying things they wouldn't in the given situation otherwise. Likewise, his cameras are right out in the open.

I don't question O'Keefe's right to do what he's doing. Like I said, it's political theater, protest, and the First Amendment protects it. But any news organization covering this as real news, as opposed to a blatant political stunt by a discredited hack with a record of making stuff up, is doing its audience, and the country, a disservice. Ditto the tack taken by NPR leadership.

Good take on the situation by Scott Rosenberg at Slate.

I like this part:

"Sting operations conducted by law enforcement officials have a dubious record themselves, but at least they require oversight and must meet court standards of evidence. For public actors like James O'Keefe, the oversight, we assume, is performed by the media. The press prides itself for serving as truth's first line of defense, democracy's bullshit filter. This week it failed in a big way."

And, I would add sadly, lost a little more relevance in the process.

Note: Had these been NPR news people like, say, Juan Williams I'd of let them go, too. The way the situation was instigated still would have distressed me. But reporters are supposed to learn not to hang their opinions out there willy-nilly about as soon as they learn not to misrepresent themselves. You think there's a point to be made? You do the legwork and make it in a story with good sources and hard facts and only if your reporting supports it.

Teach this!

I spent 26 years covering lots of local schools off and on as a newspaper reporter. Yeah, some teachers in large, wealthy school districts did OK. But none were getting rich. And many, especially in smaller, less well-heeled districts, were working at damn near poverty level. Those summers they had "off" they generally worked, non-school jobs if not teaching, to try to make ends meet.

I knew more than one really good teacher who went into another profession entirely so they could support families and put kids through college.

From an NYT story on how a lot of teachers must be feeling about those targets on their backs in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and on and on:

"Ms. Parker, a second-year teacher making $36,000, fears that under the proposed legislation class sizes would rise and higher contributions to her benefits would knock her out of the middle class. 'I love teaching, but I have $26,000 of student debt,' she said. 'I’m 30 years old, and I can’t save up enough for a down payment' for a house. Nor does she own a car. She is making plans to move to Colorado, where she could afford to keep teaching by living with her parents."

Meanwhile, "Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education policy group, said the decline in teachers’ status traced to the success of unions in PAYING (my caps) teachers and granting job security based on their years of service, not ability. 'They are reaping a bitter harvest that they didn’t individually plant but their profession has planted over 50 years, going from a respected profession to a mass work force in which everyone is treated as if they are interchangeable, as in the steel mills of yesteryear,' Mr. Finn said."

How do you even talk to a guy with such a disconnect from reality?

I like this from Gene Lyons in his column posted at Salon today:

"Even if they don't often think about it, most people do understand that government employees do much of the basic grunt work that keeps a civilized society functioning. Think of it this way: Every hedge fund manager, investment banker, oil industry lobbyist and political consultant in the USA could be raptured to that great Republican country club in the sky to spend eternity golfing with Speaker John Boehner and the brothers Koch, and weeks might pass before anybody noticed. Newspaper columnists, too. There's raw sewage in your basement? Well, don't call me. None of us is keen to take on a class of 35 9-year-olds, let alone, heaven forbid, teenagers. Try some lazy, overpaid, unionized government worker."

We shouldn't be talking about how to pay teachers less. We should be talking about how to pay them commensurate with their integral role in the well-being of our society, and how to best make the profession attractive to a cadre of the brightest and most skilled among us.

You want to adjust the tenure system, to consider merit in hiring and retaining teachers? Fine by me. As long as it is really merit you want to consider, not the fact that somebody in town doesn't like somebody else's politics, or the church they attend, or that they don't attend any church at all, or a book they're seen checking out of the library, or their support, heavens, for organized labor--because that kind of thing, which happened routinely in the American history conservatives are happy to ignore (and still happens in some communities), is why tenure was fought for and won.

"Merit" also doesn't include pandering rightwingnut politicians getting rid of old teachers just because they cost more than young teachers. In teaching, experience counts. Yesterday, a teacher spent part of his busy afternoon explaining to me how he mapped the molecular structure of a common cold virus. It was exciting, educational and fun and that's the assessment of a writer who's certainly no rocket scientist, let alone a biology PhD. Don't yawn, we might get a cure out of this yet for those miserable colds that afflict even the piggishly wealthy, their Chamber of Commerce priesthood and their Tea Partying acolytes.

My teacher in this instance is 81.

Wynton Marsalis, Vitoria Suite. EmArcy

Look, if you question the importance of Wynton Marsalis in the history of jazz, you're just wrong. This CD is exhibit A. It is where Wynton the composer and his big band the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra position themselves alongside, that's right, Ellington and Basie (and also Kenton). I heard them play portions of this in Chicago's Orchestra Hall earlier this month and I was blown away. I feel the same way about this CD, where they do all of the suite he wrote in homage to, and melding rhythms from jazz and its blues roots with, the Basque region of Spain, where they play regularly.

It makes for sophisticated, intricate stuff executed with an amazingly high level of musicianship. Sean Jones, Ryan Kisor and Marcus Printup on trumpet, for example, plus Wynton. Now that's a lineup. I think it is difficult to argue that there is a better baritone sax player working today than the Scotsman Joe Temperley, nor a more versatile reedman than Victor Goines. Duke would have salivated at the prospect of playing this band.

Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake, Back Together Again, Thrill Jockey Records

So there are many, many great Fred Anderson CDs, but I might suggest this one to anyone who's wondering whether to join the Church of Fred. Why? Because this is Fred with the guy he maybe dug playing with above all others and who happens to be one of the world's great percussionists. That is, you get Fred with lots of room to be Fred, and Hamid Drake with lots of room to be Hamid Drake and, buddy, there's nothing better.

The DVD with this actually hurts me, watching Fred hunched over that tenor and making it talk with such eloquence and thinking I'll never see that again. The interviews could be used as a recipe for living a righteous life.

Fado Tradicional, addendum

When I wrote about Mariza's new CD Fado Tradicional I should have said this: It is the least-produced Mariza CD and hence the best look at just how good a fadista she has become. Elegant amid the simplicity and, amazingly, even more powerful in the emotional responses she can conjure with her singing. I can't get this out of my playing rotation.

Aldina Duarte, Apenas o Amor, EMI

Aldina Duarte makes me think of the late Koko Taylor not because their voices sound anything alike. Rather it is because as Taylor's singing was the very essence of Chicago blues, almost organically so, Duarte's is the essence of Lisbon fado.

You might call her voice pretty but for the world weariness, the miles and miles of bad road, sadness, loss and longing she packs inside the fetching wrapper. A Voz e o Silêncio, The Voice of Silence, is one of the saddest songs I have ever heard, in Portuguese or any other language. (The CD title means Only Love.)

In addition to how she sounds and the emotion she conveys, I just like what she does with her voice in a technical sense, as a tool, so to speak. She understands the value of space the way Miles Davis did and there are places where she pauses leaving the music, and me, hanging and in a state of tension before pulling us back from the precipice. Which is to say she sometimes sings like Thelonious Monk played the piano. Listening carefully, and repeatedly, pays dividends.

This kind of fado singing demands the traditional, spare accompaniment by two guitars (Portuguese and classical) and it is executed perfectly here by José Manuel Neto and Carlos Manuel Proença. A cherished CD that I recommend to anyone wishing to explore fado.

What Wynton and the gang make me think

Playing in an "orchestra" hall. The difference is that an orchestra plays the notes perfectly, or as perfectly as possible. It is bad not to do so. A jazz orchestra must willfully play the notes imperfectly, yet still logically in the context of the music and of the group.

If you swing like hell, it ain't bad either.

Sent from Mr. Greg's iPhone.

Climatology

I know there is something fundamentally screwed up about the global climate system when it is warmer in Ely, Minn., than where I am sitting in the lower Midwest. Hell, I've been in Ely in late May when it was about as cold (warm) there as it is now.

Sent from Mr. Greg's iPhone.

I am in love with Carminho...

…and this is why. Translation: Jesus, you sing fado that makes me hurt, smile, want to do whatever I can to make you feel better--all with no guitars or anything else supporting you. I mean, damn, girl, where's that come from?

Relive the (overly) exciting Purdue-Penn State game in 3 minutes

Sonny picks 5 soundtracks

The master on his Top 5 movie soundtracks. To hear Mr. Rollins live making this kind of material into something you've never heard before--and never will again--is the definition of bliss.

On record (or CD as the case may be), I never cease to be blown away when I hear him play Cabin In The Sky on Sonny Rollins +3, which also includes wonderful versions of I've Never Been In Love Before, They Say It's Wonderful and, another personal favorite, Mona Lisa.

Then there's A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square on This is What I Do.

Violent political rhetoric and violence

A link between violent rhetoric and some propensity for inciting violence in the aggression prone as shown by one study, which is certainly fodder for more point-missing conversation.

The problem isn't that the violent rhetoric characterizing American political discussion of late "caused" the Arizona incident, nor that it is likely to be the cause when the next wingnut shoots a public official or blows up a government building, although it certainly doesn't make such occurrences less likely.

The problem is that it does nothing, I think it should be obvious, to encourage honest, rational discussion and collaboration on how to get folks back to work, educate kids effectively, repair a crumbling infrastructure, develop military hardware (as long as we're going to pay so much for it) that actually reflects the realities of the 21st Century, and a whole lot of other pretty important things.

If you're screaming, you're not talking. It isn't physically possible (and is psychologically unlikely).

Compare and contrast

"We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us," Mr. Obama said. "I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us."

"There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently," Ms. Palin said. "But when was it less heated? Back in those calm days when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols?"

Source: New York Times

The gun

A reasoned piece from Gail Collins in the New York Times about how the unjustifiable--constitutionally and morally--legal availability of almost any kind of firearm in the U.S., especially in states such as Arizona, plays into tragedies like the Giffords incident.

Key point: Loughner’s gun, a 9-millimeter Glock, is extremely easy to fire over and over, and it can carry a 30-bullet clip. It is “not suited for hunting or personal protection,” said Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign. “What it’s good for is killing and injuring a lot of people quickly.”

I would dearly like to see a more Paul Simon- and Dick Lugar-like approach to political discourse in this country, one focused on stating a case rationally without the need to demonize, let alone threaten with violent rhetoric, those who disagree.

But even more, I would like to see us come to grips with the reality that not everyone should be able to own a gun, just as not everyone is qualified to have a driver's license, and that some guns shouldn't be "street legal" and readily available at all, just as we don't allow even people with driver's licenses to tool down the highway in Indy 500 racers.

The shooting of Rep. Giffords

Measured responses I think are spot on from James Fallows in the Atlantic and from George Packer in The New Yorker. The violent rhetoric characterizing our current political climate--and let's face it, that rhetoric is almost exclusive to the right--encourages this sort of tragedy, even, and perhaps especially, in a case where the assassin may be so mentally ill as to be beyond coherent thinking about the politics of the victim(s).

Likewise, the ready availability of firearms, even to someone who is mentally ill, nationally and in states like Arizona in particular.

Alex Pareene on Salon may be a little less measured, but his case is well constructed and, I think, correct in its elemental point: if you make a bed with violent rhetoric (and insanely easy access to firearms) you can't expect that everyone will lie peacefully in it.

Additionally, some sensible words from Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik and Peter King, a football writer, for gosh sakes (alebit it a good one).

Dupnik: "The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous. The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business (Editor's note: This is you, FOX!) ... This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in. It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. That's the sad thing about what's going on in America: Pretty soon we're not going to be able to find reasonable decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office."

King: "I'm not blaming guns, I'm not blaming the right or the left. Time will sort out all of the issues about why Jared Loughner apparently targeted Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords for death. Whatever the reason for Loughner's actions, I don't know how we can continue to listen to the incredible public fury we hear in politics and the political media without it having serious consequences for society."

Natalie Merchant, Leave Your Sleep, Nonesuch

The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a war on terrorism. You believe that if you are like the blind man who touched the tail of an elephant and said it was clear that the elephant was like a rope. Which is why I love the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant, and Natalie Merchant. WTF you say?

The story of the Blind Men and the Elephant is one, like Stone Soup and Edwin Markham's epigram Outwitted, I have carried with me, and tried to apply in my life, from my very early years. It is, in essence, about keeping an open mind and trying to look at the larger picture (it's about more than that, OK, but if you carry a lesson away from it, that would be a good one).

So what does Natalie Merchant have to do with this? Well, among the children's poems she renders in song on Leave Your Sleep is The Blind Men and the Elephant, which as good as it is as a parable is even better rendered in a voice that I find immeasurably more diverse in its employment and interesting than her 10,000 Maniacs Days, especially given the world-jazzy arrangement of it here and the stellar instrumentals in support (true of every song on both disks, both her singing and the vast cast on the axes behind her).

And that's the program, a bunch of classic children's verses many of us heard as kids that Natalie Merchant was reading to her daughter and sometimes, quite naturally in the case of Natalie Merchant, singing, which possessed her somewhere along the way to think the stuff could become something like Leave Your Sleep. The result is, to me, an incredibly impressive and marvelously diverse collection, from Bleezer's Ice-Cream, which could be a Beatle's tune, to The Dancing Bear, which I could see, with only some slight adjustment, Gogol Bordello doing. The Peppery Man sounds like it's right out of the Delta, The Adventures of Isabel right out the bayou and Topsy-turvey-World right out of Kingston. The show don't end there either, mon. Griselda makes me think Janis Joplin working with Barry Gordy. This stuff doesn't need to be sold, it sells itself.

I'd add that while some of it is just fun, a lot of those verses we, people my age anyway, heard as kids had, like The Blind Men and the Elephant, a point worth packing in your kit. Besides the music, you get a mini book with all the poems and bios and pictures of all the poets. Shipped off to the proverbial desert island, I'd take this with me. Instead, I might go to sleep listening to The Land of Nod tonight, and dream sweetly.

Eden Brent, Ain't Got No Troubles, Yellow Dog Records

Delta gal whose singing makes me think combination of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin, who plays a blues piano almost as tasty as Leroy Carr or Pinetop Perkins and who composed most of her program here. What's not to like? Nothing.

Her writing always feels like today but also feels like yesterday, meaning songs such as the Brent original Blues All Over make you think she's covering a blues classic, albeit with her own modern touches. I can just hear Bessie Smith, or Big Mama Thornton, doing In Love with Your Wallet. A lot of New Orleans jazzy spicing in this set, too. Let's Boogie-Woogie is a foot-stomping romp Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson would be down with.

Really good stuff. I'll be watching for Eden Brent releases and performances henceforth.

Danielle Ate the Sandwich, Two Bedroom Apartment

I have Danielle Ate the Sandwich’s Two Bedroom Apartment going around in my head this morning and if I try to switch it out I get Danielle Ate the Sandwich’s El Paso and that is about what I want to say about Danielle (real last name Anderson). Her songs, her singing and her ukulele and guitar playing are catchy and, I might even say, captivating.

Two Bedroom Apartment is the title song of her first professionally done CD, which I got two weeks ago and have listened to about every day since. First time through, I thought, well, that’s pretty good ukulele but I was doing other things and not really paying attention to the lyrics.

Now, having listened to the words and connected them to the music numerous times, I am struck by how a lot of these songs are fun and upbeat (or at least not somnolent), poignant and pointed at the same time (Two Bedroom Apartment and American Dream come to mind). In any event, the lyrics and instrumentals are so good you will probably want to listen to this a lot, which makes for a great value.

Danielle is all over YouTube and she maintains a nice blog that’s as smile-inducing as her music. I would like to see her in concert, which has to be a real hoot.

Oh, the holidays

Performed the holiday gift-wrappping duties while while listening to, in order, Beverly Sills (The Great Recordings, Deutsche Grammophon, CD 1), Joan Sutherland (The Greatest Hits, London/Decca), Renata Tebaldi (Arias and Scenes, ODP), Beverly Sills (CD 2) and Mariza (Fado Tradicional, EMI). Each a big winner.

We're trying to get all of them for ICP (Insane Callas Posse).

The gegalowz would be so down with that.

Mariza, Fado Tradicional, EMI

In the edition I own of a wonderful book Fado Português: Songs from the Soul of Portugal the picture facing the index is a picture of the legendary fadista Amália Rodrigues performing at a traditional fado bar accompanied by a Portuguese guitarist. Place Mariza in this picture instead and that is what you get with Fado Tradicional. I could witness such a performance, never see another and be satisfied.

Her previous CDs have included cuts like this, the voice that soars, implores and makes one think of Maria Callas here and Ella Fitzgerald there in concert with only the traditional fado accompaniment of Portuguese and Spanish, or classical, guitars (plus, sometimes, a bass guitar). As often, however, we have heard her accompanied as well by a symphony, African drums, a blusey, jazzy trumpet and her singing has reflected all of this (and more), although always fado as its core.

On this CD, fado is the main dish, spiced by her range of influences, but fado as Amália, and many others, as fervently if not as fabulously or famously, have served it up in the little tavernas of Mouraria or Alfalma. You feel them, the bars and the singers, in traditional tunes, traditionally rendered, like Promete, Jura (Promise, Swear), Rosa Da Madragoa (Rose of Madragoa) and Desalma (Soullless). Still, perhaps even more so, amidst the simplicity of the rendering and of the array of instruments surrounding her, I marvel at the command she has of that voice (check out Mais Uma Lua, Another Moon, or Dona Rosa) and gain in the process a new appreciation of her skill as a fadista. Essential Mariza. Essential fado.

Insane Callas Posse

Maria Callas, 100 Best Classics, EMI

So right now you can buy this 6-CD set on Amazon for $9.94 and I cannot conceive of anyone who is financially able not being tempted to do so. I don't care whether you like rock, rap, country, folk, reggae, salsa, tejano, fado, the blues, jazz, whatever. I don't care if you don't know a thing about opera or think you hate it.

You will spin these discs and you will sit there and you will think, or even say out loud, the gods surely designated this woman as a singer because there is no other explanation for it. And there isn't one track less than "wow" in the whole collection--100 cuts, never anything below stellar. That's unnatural.

Earlier today, I was listening to a Thelonious Monk CD titled The Transformer in which we get to hear Monk teaching himself the tune I'm Getting Sentimental Over You and then remaking it as his song, still something like the original and, yet, so much more. This is what Maria Callas does in all 100 songs in the collection here cited. Makes you glad to have ears and to be alive to use them.

Henry doodles, and I love it

2010 holiday email card from the great Henry Grimes. I look forward to these every year and to whatever music Henry produces in the year following.

Like my old dad used to say...

How do you know you know what you know? The answer, as dad knew, was sometimes you don't--if you take an honest look at that position you're so stridently sure of (and yeah, I'm talking to you Tea Party wingnuts). This, for instance:

"History records that President George W. Bush, who inherited a $236 billion government surplus from the Clinton administration in 2001, handed President Obama a stacked deck eight years later. The Congressional Budget Office's projected budget deficit for FY2009, beginning four months before Obama took office, was already in excess of $1.3 trillion. Indeed, the 2011 budget deficit is projected to be ever-so-slightly lower than the one Bush left on the White House doorstep. Despite the one-time $787 billion economic stimulus (spread over three years), no huge growth in government spending has taken place on Obama's watch. Three proximate causes of the rising national debt remain: the Bush tax cuts of 2001, his unfunded Medicare drug benefit, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

More in this succinct, informative commentary.

Robbie Hummel gone, Purdue barely Top 25

Reality: 2 potential NBA players still on team, 5 guys 6-5 to 6-10 to fill the gap, 1 junior point guard who's started 3 years. Let's say Robbie was going to average 20 and 15 this year, which is high. You're telling me Matt Painter can't get 4 points and 3 rebounds out of 5 replacements (realizing some will do more than others)? Defensively, 25 fouls to spend, which should allow them to be aggressive; smart, hopefully, but aggressive. Moreover, a diverse group, which could allow Purdue to really take advantage of favorable matchups.

None of that takes into account improvements by the other 2 potential All-Americans on the team (likely), two highly rated freshman guards, and a couple experienced juniors on the bench.

And people are saying they're barely still worthy of a Top 25 ranking? You just keep thinking, Butch, that's what you're good at. --The Sundance Kid

I kind of like it, though, because it may piss them off and motivate them further.

Ana Sofia Varela, Fados De Amor E Pecado, iPlay

So I was listening to my man John Prine today and, let's face it, John Prine is not the world's greatest singer. Mostly, he more or less talks through his songs in a sing-songy way and the point isn't his pristine or rangy voice but the words and the feeling with which he delivers them. True, as well, of the late (and lamented, in my house) Harry Chapin or Mr. Tom Waits. True also of my favorite male fadista Alfredo Marceneiro, whom I hear in Ana Sofia Varela singing Quase Um Anjo (Almost An Angel), Estranha Vontade (Strange Will), O Corvo (The Crow) and a lot of other places.

She does not sing in the precious tones of Amalia or generate the aural and emotional roller coaster that is the singing of Mariza. She does not make me think of a powerful blues shouter like Jimmy Rushing, as Carminho does. But she sings captivating, expressive, emotive fado as appealing to me as John Prine doing Sweet Revenge, Harry Chapin doing A Better Place To Be or Tom Waits doing Closing Time.

Her voice is prettier than those dudes, but the end result is the same: good tunes, and better stories, well told. The album title means fados, essentially fates, of love and sin.

Ralph Towner, Paolo Fresu, Chiaroscuro, ECM

Chiaroscuro is art characterized by contrast between light and dark and here, I would have to say, Towner's guitar is the dark and Paolo's trumpet and flugelhorn are the light, which is maybe not what I might expect, although in point of fact neither is all that dark nor overly bright. Mostly, this is very peaceful music, bordering on classical, Sacred Place for instance, particularly where Towner's playing is concerned.

Paolo, as always, makes me think of Miles, not in an imitative sense, also as usual, but as a logical extension by a man with a horn who comes from the European tradition. Their rendition of Blue in Green is a perfect example and simply marvelous. Likewise the rest of this duo session, a format that gives them both plenty of room to work. Doubled Up makes me think of a two-man Jazz Messengers piece, or Miles and the second great quintet at the Plugged Nickel.

This is what it means...

... to "own" an audience.

What he said

Now this is the guy I voted for and would dearly like to see more of.

WASHINGTON (AP) - After skirting the controversy for weeks, President Barack Obama is weighing in forcefully on the mosque near ground zero, saying a nation built on religious freedom must allow it.

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he said. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

Miles Davis, Agharta, Columbia

So I figure you like Miles in his electric period or you don't (and I do, as well as liking him during any other of his decisions to change music), but I think, if I were trying to turn someone onto it, I might suggest this.

Pete Cosey on guitar, bassist Michael Henderson, Al Foster on drums and Mtume generating percussion created a near-perfect soundscape for Miles' trumpet to interact with, recorded live, no less, in 1975 at what may be the last juncture that you can say he was at a height of his powers. Oh, he was very good later, but he kills here, as does the rest of the band, which you only have to listen to the fantastically diverse Interlude to get. Sonny Fortune on saxes and flute reinforces my belief that he's grossly underappreciated.

Blind Gary Davis, Harlem Street Singer, Prestige

Samson and Delilah, which has meaning far beyond the face value of the words, its marvelous singing and mesmerizing guitar playing justifies the purchase even if the 11 other tracks were mediocre, as they're not.

Take, I Belong to the Band, which is about as impressive as Samson with more than a minute less to work everything out, or Pure Religion, essentially a 2-minute, 57-second avant-garde gospel and blues piece. I mean to say, Albert Ayler would get it from one end to the other. The song, the concept, the whole damn thing. Death Don't Have No Mercy in particular.

Alejandro Escovedo, Real Animal, various

Back Porch, Manhattan Records EMI, but also Blue Note, if you notice on the back of the CD, which I notice because Alejandro makes me think of jazz as I have listened to him now through five CDs since developing a jones with his latest, Street Songs of Love. Nah, he's not a jazz musician. Except maybe he is at heart.

He assimilates stuff. I think of Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Sex Pistols, neither necessarily surprisingly, Muddy Waters and, for gods' sake, John Prine and even Randy Newman (Nuns Song) listening to this. Golden Bear, I'm thinking of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Not that he is really like any of them.

He bends forms to his own purposes. He does things you wouldn't expect. He slips in odd instrumentation (like the frigging hot violin--yeah, I said hot violin--that colors hard-rocker Smoke) and makes it work. He's frequently discordant and adept at manipulating tension and release, a la Monk and Miles, in his lyrics (Chelsea Hotel '78) as well as his musical structure. He knows how to work in a good sax solo, like on Sensitive Boys.

Rockin' for sure, but thoughtful, as well, the classical strings opening Hollywood Hills, for instance. Tom Waits would be down with the whole program, I expect.

Plays a damn fine guitar, I might add.

P!nk, Missundaztood, Arista

This has to do, what, with avant-garde jazz and the blues and reggae and fado, my purview? Well, it has this not exactly what you would expect thing going (take Respect), and it is generally discordant, lyrically as in My Vietnam if not always, but sometimes, musically in a Monkian sense. Likewise, the words are generally ironic, in, more or less, a Robert Johnson, Bob Marley or Albert Ayler (in Albert's case ironic sounds not words) sense (see 18 Wheeler). What I perceive is that she is laying herself bare in her music, which when you think about is precisely what Miles and Coltrane did, or any good fadista does, and, hence, I respect it. Oh, and Misery, Aretha would R-E-S-P-E-C-T it. She could certainly sing soul well and kind of does here, like on Eventually, and I think she would be a fine fado singer, too. Gone to California is a blues. Which is to say, this isn't typical pop bullshit, but something I might, actually, listen to in 2111 and beyond.

Eddie Harris & Ellis Marsalis, Homecoming, ELM

This is as excellent a saxophone and piano duo pairing as People Time with Stan Getz and Kenny Barron, one of my all-time favorite jazz sessions (and People Time: The Complete Recordings, Sunnyside, 2009, which includes all seven sets from which the original was derived, is even better).

Here we have Harris, who really should be considered a tenor giant, and Marsalis, patriarch of one jazzy family and a stunning musician in his own right, on an out-of-print session from 1985 and reissued on the Marsalis family label with his son the stellar drummer Jason Marsalis in charge. Ethereal Moments, 1&2 is a track that really strikes me as revelatory because it could be taken as excellent 1) Third Stream music incorporating European classical forms and jazz or 2) advanced avant-garde jazz, neither of which you would necessarily associate with Harris, whose reputation suffers (unjustly in my my mind) from some of his more commercial efforts and Marsalis, at heart a New Orleans traditionalist. This is not, however, an out session (although some of the Harris licks on Zee Blues make the think: Archie Shepp). Ethereal, for example, is followed by an inside, but creatively Latinized, version of the Harold Arden-Johnny Mercer tune Out of This World, which is followed by a post-bop rendition of Darn That Dream, which would have struck a chord, so to speak, with the second great Miles Davis quintet, or Stan Getz and Kenny Barron for that matter.

The original clocked in at 42 minutes, so Jason Marsalis added four tracks with his father dueting with the young New Orleans pianist Jonathan Batiste in December 2009, a tasty bonus, and a final track, Blues at the End of the Session, with Ellis on piano, Batiste on melodica and Jason drumming that is a boffo blues and as good as anything else on what is a track-after-track gem.

You can have my book when you pry it ...

I am reading the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot in the Kindle app on my iPad as I ride my exercise bike in the morning and it has me worried. More or less on a lark, I opened it in the Kindle app on my iPhone over lunch downtown today. The book came up in the exact place, the beginning of Chapter 36, where I left off on my iPad at the end of this morning’s ride at home.

That ability to keep track of my place through the ether is certainly a nifty trick. But think, I also carried the book with me without having to carry the book, or anything else other than what I normally carry--my cell phone.

Then there is the way I have bumped up the type size of the book on my iPad to make it easy on my not-as-young-as-they-used-to-be eyes, and the ease of turning the pages simply by swiping my index finger across the screen. Likewise, the iPad sits flat on the book holder that’s a feature of my bike and the pages don’t have to be clipped down to keep the e-book open, or unclipped to turn them. I don’t even have to turn on the reading lamp connected to the book holder; iPad backlight. Moreover, the Kindle book is hyperlinked in many places, for example to more information about DNA or historical incidents like the Tuskegee experiment.

So what worries me? I love books. When I moved into my condominium pretty much the second piece of furniture I bought, after a bed , was a set of bookshelves. I don’t think books are going anywhere soon, certainly not my books. But I also love bookstores, I love spending hours perusing them, even when I don’t buy anything (which isn’t often). I now have to think--given online sellers like Amazon, et al, and buy them, carry them, read them anywhere e-books--that brick and mortar bookstores will soon go the way of film cameras, record shops and video rental stores. You may be able to find one (I hold out hope for the kind of wonderfully overstuffed used bookstores I adore), but it won’t be easy, convenient or in every community of decent size. Technologist though I am, I dislike the thought nonetheless.

The other thing that bothers me about reading Immortal Henrietta in Kindle form is this: it’s a stunningly good book I would love to loan, or give, to someone else; great science journalism, great journalism period, excellent reportage and marvelous writing. But I have no easy (or legal) way to pass on my e-copy.

I’ll just have to go to the bookstore and buy copies for people.

Oops...

Now I am really sorry I stayed up too late, got too lit and passed out on Alejandro Escovedo in Austin, Texas, that time because his new CD Street Songs of Love is better every listen I keep giving to it. Tender in places, tough in others, which is appropriate to the topic, great guitar play throughout (Street Songs rocks). Favorite track: maybe Fall Apart With You, kind of of doo-wop with an edge. But I dig it all.

Harpin' on it

I was hanging out around Fisherman's Wharf one time and ran across Dave Earl playing there and I have to say that on his CD S.F. Blues he plays some mean harp. I mean Little Walter mean, if you know what I mean.