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Hi. I turn my back on my computer screen to look through my office window and see that it is once again pouring rain. This is the 567th consecutive day of rain in New York City. What the hell is going on? Is this some sort of end-of-the-world business?

It is June 18th, and it's been over a year since we last saw the sun. I suppose the trees are enjoying this. Or are they? Maybe even the trees are tired of the rain. There comes a point when you can eat and drink no more, when you are full, when even the sight of a tall pint of golden ale turns the stomach. Maybe it is the…

Jazz Journalists' Association Prizes, 2009

The Jazz Journalists’ Association held its annual awards bash this week, honoring musicians and their work for the period from March 2008 to March 2009. Here’s who won in each of the major categories, followed by who got my vote and why.

NEW RECORD OF THE YEAR:
Winner: Carla Bley, Appearing Nightly.
My Vote: Bill Frisell & Jim Hall, Hemispheres. This guitar-duet recording is a masterpiece, the best thing either player has made in years, and that’s something. I liked Bley’s album a lot; I’d put it in third place, after the Frisell-Hall and Rudresh Mahanthappa’s head-turning,…

I Guess I Need To Be Amazed

I woke up this morning with a couple of sweet lines playing themselves over and over in my mind. The doctors and scientists call this phenomenon an earworm, which is an entirely unpleasant term. Isn't it? I mean, I would never want an earworm, but I don't at all mind the sound of pretty words running through my head.

Come on, everybody, sing it with me now:

Don't know why I have to work
Don't know why I can't play

We can sing just those two lines over and over again, and be perfectly fulfilled, or we can try to add a couple more lines to it:

Turn me…

New Depression Songs

Seems to me most musicheads always have a reserve of bands, solo artists, string quartets, jazz soloists that they know but haven’t really seen or connected with. You know `em but you don’t.

Loudon Wainwright III has for years been that for me, but that’s all changed. Yeah, I know his hit, his nightmare come true that he has to sing every time he plays, “Dead Skunk,” but it was always clear that that tune was an anomaly, the unlikely hit that became the bane of his existence. This Wednesday at Madison Square Park in Manhattan I got a chance to see Loudon do his thing and it was…

Dave Douglas' Brass Ecstasy

Trumpeter Dave Douglas’ new album, Spirit Moves, featuring his Brass Ecstasy quintet, is a rouser: hot, cool, raucous, pensive, sometimes all at once, and always a lot of fun. The band’s name is a play on the late Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, and they share a similar hard-blowing vibe—as well as two of the players (Luis Bonilla on trombone and Vincent Chancey on French horn)—but where Bowie used the band to riff on the pop tunes of the day (long before The Bad Plus), Douglas’ sources are mainly original tunes with a zesty swing and a dash of his trademark Mediterranean melancholy.

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Advertisement for Myself

What’s the point of having a blog if I can’t occasionally indulge in self-promotion? So if you’ll forgive my blatancy for a moment, today marks the official pub date of my new book, 1959: The Year Everything Changed. Unlike my last book, which was entirely about foreign policy, this one actually might be of some interest to the readers of this space, because it covers not just politics but also culture, society, science, sex—as the title suggests, everything. More to the point, there are three chapters (out of 25) that deal explicitly with jazz. (Key jazz albums of 1959 included Miles Davis’…

All Sorts of Awesome

A couple of months ago, I heard an interesting segment on NPR about Sam Hillmer's Representing NYC project. Hillmer, a NYC school teacher, partners his students with indie-rock musicians to create hip-hop albums. The children are given an opportunity to express themselves and gain real experience in the art of commerce, while the musicians get to contribute to the working-class communities they've recently moved into.

Awesome, right? There's more.

Released by True Panther, the first Representing NYC album is Da' Brats From Da' Ville and comes from a group of young…

Not Even Jesus

Here in the office, I am (like most jerks in the corporate world) constantly juggling several tasks at once. Sometimes these tasks seem to have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and nothing to do with the making of a magazine. So it goes. To keep everything from crashing down at my nervous, trembling feet, I scribble little reminders on yellow Post-it notes and stick them to everything around me: Post-it notes on my computer screen, Post-it notes on my telephone, Post-it notes on my calendar, Post-it notes on my stapler, etc.

As time passes, I'm sure to revisit my notes…