I haven’t watched all seven of Naxos’ <I>Jazz Icons</I> discs—a DVD box-set of televised European concerts by great jazz musicians in the 1960s—but one of them, <I>Charles Mingus: Live in ’64</I>, is a must-have: two hours of music, videotaped in Belgium, Norway, and Sweden in April 1964, featuring one of Mingus’ most electrifying sextets, including Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Johnny Coles, Dannie Richmond, and Jaki Byard.
<A HREF="http://blog.hometheatermag.com/markfleischmann/">Mark Fleischmann</A>, knowing my fascination with Harry Beck's London Tube Map, sends along this tasty variation.
I always thought I had a problem with Oliver Sacks. I found his <I>The New Yorker</I> articles interesting, but frustrating—I always had unanswered questions at their end. Then I read <I>Uncle Tungsten</I> and realized that his <I>métier</I> was not the long essay but the book-length exploration of a subject.
Albert Fuller has died. I enjoyed his playing a lot and, the one time I met him—we shared the elevator to Weill Recital Hall—he was gracious enough to tell me about the night he met Igor Stravinsky.
Caryl Phillips named his first play <I>Strange Fruit</I>. It had nothing to do with lynching, US race relations, or anything concerning Billie Holiday's famous song.
Hopefully the Meg White (or not) sex tape dustup will not engender a drummer sex tape trend. There are a lot of skin pounders that I for one have no desire to ever see in the buff. The mental images alone are like taking a woodburner to your brain.
First the sad. An old friend, harp player and all around sweetheart, Gary Primich passed away, suddenly as they say, in Austin on Sunday night. He was only 49. Although he'd had a solo career for some time, Gary was once a member of a smokin' Austin bar band called The Mannish Boys.
Oxford quantum scientist David Deutsche thinks he's proved they do. BTW, he thinks time travel is possible, too. Calling Dr. Who . . . .
"When the news reached my father's ears that I was running around the streets with gangs, he said to my mother, 'We have to do something, Maria, otherwise we're going to lose the boy.' Our neighbour Candida, whose nephew was one of the principal dancers with the Cuban National Ballet, had a suggestion: 'You say he likes dancing? Why don't you send him to ballet school?'
