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Transatlantic flights wipe me out. Chalk it up to being an old man I guess. But after a connection through a dark deserted Heathrow, I arrived in Barcelona for the 41st Barcelona Jazz Festival and within a couple of days, semi-disaster had struck. Not to me mind you but to American jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano who fell, not once but twice and broke an arm and a shoulder. He had to cancel his show here in Barcelona, his European tour and then had surgery with the chief orthopedic surgeon of Barcelona’s much beloved soccer team, FCBarcelona, presiding. I saw Lovano this morning as he was leaving…
Back at the Barcelona Jazz Festival, after many espressos, a hunk of Cod, potatoes with olive oil mayo and tomato sauce, grilled mushrooms, and some of the best cookies I’ve ever had (thumb sized sugar cookies with chocolate centers), I made the trip to several record stores including Jazz Messengers, which has perhaps the finest collection of live jazz CDs and some LPs, in the world. If you’re feeling strong, pay down a credit card and then check out their website, www.jazzmessengers.com. They ship to the States, I checked. I picked up a CD of Clifford Brown’s final concert in…
A Round of Shots
Friday, October 23, 9:35pm
Friday, October 23, 9:35pm
Fritzy walks over to me and asks, “Are you going to talk to them or what?”
“I’m working up to it.”
“I’m gonna buy them a round of shots,” he says.
“Oh shit.”
Aleida laughs at me. My heart is beating so hard I can feel a bruise forming on my chest. Fritzy walks over to where the Vivian Girls are sitting and asks if he can buy them a round of shots. The girls shrug their shoulders and nod their heads.
Oh, god. I sigh, take a deep breath, and set down my drink.
“Okay, I have to go…
If just seeing a room can make you mouth water...well, this was it.
Casa Werner
During my Barcelona sojourn, I made a trip to the leading high end gear store in that beautiful city, Casa Werner, which is downtown, on the Ronda Sant Pere. Open since 1933, this former music store which began selling Victrolas along with 78’s, before moving entirely from content to gear, has been in the same family now for about a decade.
I had a good feeling about the place when, as soon as I walked in, there were Stereophile reprints of Bel Canto gear displayed prominently. The owner of Werner, Vicente Viguera, who was a sly fox and a world class character/…
Well, here’s another great video from Grizzly Bear. The band is like a bottomless cup of creativity. How do they do it? Don’t they have record reviews to write? Don’t they have issues to ship to press?
Gah!
This one is for “Ready, Able,” off of the band’s excellent Veckatimest, an album sure to be at the top of many year-end lists, including my own.
The December 2009 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Our final issue of 2009 includes our annual “Products of the Year” feature. People love this feature. We’re already receiving fun complaints from manufacturers whose products are not pictured in the article, complaints from readers because we only vote on products we’ve actually listened to, complaints from angry moms because we didn’t pick their children to play one of the lead roles in “A Christmas Carol.”
Complainers! They are so silly!
For an explanation of our voting process, check out John…
We can’t let Sarah Palin have all the fun.
In an upcoming review, new contributor Erick Lichte talks about the inherent coolness of tubes and the “transitive property of coolness,” by which owning tubes makes you cool, and it got me thinking:
What the hell am I waiting for? I’m always waiting around for something that never comes. Why don’t I just go out and grab it?
All of my cool friends have tubes in their systems. And don’t I want to be cool like them? Why, yes! Yes, I do want to be cool like them.
I have had some experience with tubes. I…