LATEST ADDITIONS

"I wasn't scared," says Huckleberry. "I've seen Bagheera royally PO'd." Actually, he's generally the cause.

Oh, it's just Bagheera.

Skunk Baxter has a new gig. After all, Steely Dan goes for years between tours.

Jon Carroll has a fine <A HREF="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/…; this morning (no surprise there) that meanders from his thoughts on <I>Die Hard</I> (very Aristotlian) to the making of the Jeep and how the humvee influences our presence in Iraq.

As I venture further into the hi-fi universe, I can start to understand what I like and what to listen for in my equipment: natural musical delivery, groove, and clarity. I'm excited.

<I>Cafe Aman</I> posts an Antonio Machado poem, thanking Osvaldo Golijov for introducing him to it. I wish I could name drop OG&mdash;I think that he and Jennifer Higdon are the most consistently satisfying composers writing today.

I'm a total Neil Gaiman fanboy, so I'm giddy with anticipation of the theatrical release of <I>Stardust</I> tomorrow. I just re-read the book and was delighted to find it as charming as when I first devoured it in 1999.

Mitch Albom's essay on Barry Bonds is so sharply written I can almost forgive him for the two hours I spent reading <I>The Five People You Meet In Heaven</I> that I will never get back.

Richard Schickel ruminates on an American art form.

It was no surprise that Charlie Haden and Kenny Barron struck such rich chords Tuesday night at the Blue Note, the first in a series of duet concerts that Haden, one of the great bass players in jazz, is headlining—six nights, four different pianists—at the club in Greenwich Village. Haden is best known as the bassist in Ornette Coleman’s original quartet, but it’s a mistake to tag him as a “free jazz” musician, in the usual sense. Above all, Haden is a romantic—he loves ballads and waltzes, he plucks a thick, juicy tone—and Barron is a lush balladeer. A few moments in the opening set didn’t quite click (maybe because Haden, now 70 but still youthful, recently had a hernia operation), but most of it did, Barron cruising triplets on the keyboard, Haden responding with undisguised but tightly harnessed emotion. The duet recording he and Barron made several years ago, <I>Night and the City</I>, seems a simple pleasantry if you play it in the background, but listen closely, there’s so much intricacy between the two—and yet, at every level, the music above all delights and charms.