Re-evolving

These Beatles guys I discovered slay me. They just keep doing more and more bizarre stuff with every new CD. Revolver, their latest, is like plethora of dramatic vignettes set to rock music but with strings and stuff, too.

I can't say any of it is less than captivating. But I really like this thing Eleanor Rigby. Love To You is super weird, a bluesy song about relationships and settling for them, only rendered as an Indian (the subcontinent kind) tune. Then they lay this Yellow Submarine deal on you. What kind of minds decide to slip a Vaudeville-style ditty into a rock LP? There's genius in that.

For No One is a slice of my life and undoubtedly a lot of other people's. And there is genius in that as well. No question about it, got to get this music into my life.

There's Bird, and then there's the bird

Pictures of people flipping off Hummers are the sole focus (and soul focus, too) of this Web site and I am all for it.

What did I know?

These Beatles guys I discovered continually amaze me. Just when you think you've got them figured out, they toss something at you like Rubber Soul, which includes stuff like Norwegian Wood, with a decidedly Middle Eastern tinge, Nowhere Man, which is nearly operatic not to mention prescient, Michelle, about as ballady as it gets, What Goes On, which is a perfectly serviceable rockabilly tune, and a lot of other stuff I just didn't see coming. These guys are really good and getting better all the time.

Sonny in St. Louie

Tenth time a(nother) charm. Big ovation as soon as he steps on stage energizes him, if he wasn't already, and he starts slinging guns right out of the gate on Sonny Please. What he does to close In A Sentimental Mood is as incredible as anything I've heard him do live or recorded. Even his comping is more of a challenge to his side dudes than a compliment, although, consumate pro, he is certainly complimentary. Kobe Watkins rises to the challenge on My One And Only Love and Sonny slams it right back at him, 50 some years difference in their ages be damned. Guy turned 79 this month. Gives you hope. My new best Mr. Rollins interlude.

Sent from Mr. Greg's iPhone.

Just sayin'

I'd have had no problem being Charles Parker's worthy constituent.

Nelly Furtado, Mi Plan, Universal

Nelly, whom I've been madly in love with since Whoa Nelly!, and who is Portuguese-Canadian, will one fine day do a fado CD and make me very happy. Until that time, and that time may never come, correct that, that time will eventually come, I will be happy with Mi Plan, which is in Spanish. And yet, nonetheless, displays Nelly's captivating (to me anyway) mix of of pop, hip-hop, Latin, world music and, yes, fado, sensibilities. I might make Vacacion my anthem. Moreover, Feliz Compleaños is pretty close to being really hip fado. Whoa, Nelly!

Yum, yum

Cake my masterful cake-making co-worker Jade made me. Chocolate stout. Beat that, sucker.

I have such a sugar high right now and I only ate one piece of it. A pretty big piece, granted.

Bix mix

Like Louis Armstrong, who considered him a peer, Bix Beiderbecke produced a light with his horn that just brightens up the day. Good case in point, Since My Best Girl Turned Me Down on Mosaic's The Complete Okeh and Brunswick Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and Jack Teagarden (and, man, is that ever a lineup) Sessions (1924-36).

Just thinking out loud...

Sometimes I wonder why anybody picked up the tenor saxophone after Coleman Hawkins. You sure had to have a pair. Thoughts on the King Porter Stomp (Disc 3, Track 9) and Christopher Columbus (Track 10) on The Fletcher Henderson Story: A Study In Frustration, Columbia. Also Stealin' Apples, with Red Allen on trumpet as a bonus. Not to mention Blue Lou, which, quite frankly, gives me wood.

Just thinking out loud...

Mostly everything Benny Goodman did--and, hey, I love Benny Goodman--Fletcher Henderson did first (and, one might argue, better), with Coleman Hawkins in the vanguard no less. So The Fletcher Henderson Story: A Study In Frustration, Columbia, tells me.