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At some point during my time with George ($499), I lost a neighbor. The IT guy who sat in the cubicle immediately outside my office suddenly wasn't around anymore. Weeks later, I learned that the music had been bothering him. It had been too loud, I suppose. Or there had been too much of it. I'm not sure. I started apologizing to people: "Sorry about the music. It's just that I've got this new radio in my office. It's a lot of fun. His name is George."
"George?"
As it turned out, most people really liked George once they got to know him. Co-workers who'd never…
Adam Kolker’s Flag Day (on the Sunnyside label) is a knotty pleasure. It may leave your head in a coil (take two tracks of hard bop to unwind), but ride with the twists while they’re winding; it’s a soft-toned heady trip. Adam Kolker, who plays tenor sax, soprano sax, and clarinet, is known mainly as a sideman, and he doesn’t try to get out in front of his bandmates on this session—John Abercrombie on guitar, John Hebert on drums, and the irrepressible Paul Motian on drums. I promised when I started writing this blog that I wouldn’t dwell excessively on any individual musician, but Motian is…
My ears had been bothering me. First my right, then the left. A low-level high-pitched ringing, followed by a congested feeling and a popping like what you get when flying or taking an elevator way up to the 29th floor. Then, one morning in Las Vegas while attending the Consumer Electronics Show, my left ear went whooooooooosh. And my hearing was momentarily dulled—not completely gone, just dulled. Outside sounds were farther away, my own voice sounded distant and muffled. It freaked me out.
I started talking to myself.
Hello? Hello!
What the heck…
Received this fax today:
New York, NY—During "Classic Album Night," scheduled for 6:30PM on the second Thursday of each upcoming month, a Lyric high end specialist will play albums that have become standards, LPs when possible, on mid-six-figure reference systems in the main listening room of the firm's Manhattan store at 1221 Lexington Avenue, a unique acoustic space designed for optimum music playback. Admission is free, but reservations are required and can be made by calling Bob Herman or Mike Deutsch at (212) 439-1900. While supplies last, each attendee will…
As I was scrolling through the offerings at TDF a few weeks ago, I spotted a performance by the McCollough Sons of Thunder Brass Band. Hmmm, I thought I remembered my old friend Michael Cogswell mentioning to me that I ought to check them out. Actually, what he told me was that if I was ever able to hear them, I should cancel everything I could be doing and hie myself hence at oncely.
The MSOT are a "shout" band, performing a form of ecstatic sacred music at the United House of Prayer for all People on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 125th St. Founded in 1919 by Bishop "Sweet Daddy"…
They're saying five to seven inches in the city.
Some people actually like this crap. Managing editor Elizabeth Donovan, for instance, is all about it. She'll come into my office on an unusually warm winter day with a frown on her face and say, "I wish it would snow."
"You wish it would snow?! Are you frigging out of your mind, woman?" That's what I say to her.
My mom is another one. She actually called me up today to tell me it was snowing, like I couldn't tell. I slogged through the gray and sloppy mess on my way to the train station and listened to her syrupy…
Disaspora Suite is the 4th in a series of albums recorded by trumpeter-composer Steven Bernstein for John Zorn’s Tzadik label (the others were Diaspora Soul, Diaspora Blues, and Diaspora Hollywood). It’s also the most ambitious, far-flung, and satisfying. The band is a nonet that includes the versatile Nels Cline on electric guitar (strumming, plucking, and occasionally wailing), Peter Apfelbaum on saxes, and Ben Goldberg on clarinet. This is by no means simply “Jewish music.” The sounds and influences drift in from everywhere. The first track starts with an electric guitar riff and bongos…
From NYT Arts section ads:
"...evokes the masterpieces of silent cinema and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane."
"...bears comparison to the greatest achievements of Griffith and Ford."
God help critics. Citizen Kane!!!!
Some just like so much that the joy blinds 'em. That and their desire to be quoted in hysterical newspaper ads. 'Course the flip side is, there's nothing worse than critics who hate: their job, their salary, what they're supposed to review, themselves. When critics go permanently dark, it ain't pretty.
For proof that critics are just…
I spent some time last night listening to Joanna Newsom's Ys. Tangent CDP-50, Tangent AMP-50, Totem Arro loudspeakers. I know and love the Totem speakers, but the Tangents are new to me and, with Joanna Newsom's help and harp perhaps, they sounded better—more capable—than ever before in my small living room. The sound was fleshy and fast and detailed, whereas (earlier on and with other material) it had been thin and mechanical and uninvolving. I don't know if this has to do with the electronics breaking-in—they've now been in the system for about 200 hours…