House of Soul, in Better Days

An addendum to the previous post. This is a photo of the "House of Soul" I captured in August.

Alice Cooper, Reminiscing About the Early '70s

Lennon, Nilsson, and Cooper, with an unidentified forehead

Circa 1979, Billion Dollar Babies was Feral Boy's favorite album. Alice Cooper (née Vincent Furnier - a son of Detroit) sang songs that I could understand (in both senses of the word) - they were clearly enunciated, and offered coherent story-telling, with tangible imagery my adolescent brain could embrace. (Mush-mouthed Bob Dylan? Hippy-dippy Neil Young? "No, thank you," my 16-year-old self would reply. "I'll take the Alice Cooper combo, please, with a side of the Steve Miller Band.") And Glen Buxton's lead guitar on those songs still blows me away, rivaling Mick Ronson's work with David Bowie for the most tasteful noodling to emerge from that period.




So, you'll understand why I was so pleased to stumble upon a piece at vice.com, wherein Alice Cooper waxes nostalgic about that era. Even if you don't care for his brand of shock-rock, you may enjoy his gossip about other rock luminaries. Here are some choice quotes from an otherwise incoherent article:

When we put the Hollywood Vampires together, it was sort of a tribute to the old Hollywood drinking clubs, like when John Barrymore, Errol Flynn, and W.C. Fields would drink every night... We would go up to the top of the Rainbow... Every night it was Harry Nilsson, Bernie Taupin, Micky Dolenz, myself, and whoever else would show up. Ringo was there once in awhile. Keith Moon came when he was in town.

John Lennon would come too. He and Harry Nilsson were the best of friends, ya know? So if Harry was in town, he was always with John, and they’d come over...

But the really fun thing to do was to see what Keith Moon was gonna wear that night. One night he’d be in an Adolf Hitler outfit and the next he’d be the Queen of England... Keith was everybody’s best friend. When he was in town, he would stay at my house for a week, then go to Harry Nilsson’s for a week, and then stay at Ringo’s for a week. There was nobody like him. I always tell people, 30% of what you’ve heard about me is true, 30% of what you hear about Iggy is true, 30% of Prince is true, whatever… but everything you’ve heard about Keith Moon is true...

I got to meet Jim [Morrison] way back when we first moved to Los Angeles. The first people I ran into were Robby Krieger and the other guys from the Doors. They invited my band to come down to Sunset Sound and watch them record, which was great for a bunch of nobodies from Arizona. We were just out of our first year of college, so we had to be 19 or 20 years old when we came to LA. We were the biggest band in Phoenix, but we didn’t realize was there were 15,000 other bands in LA from Utah, Oregon, everywhere. They were the best bands from their cities too, and we were all trying to get gigs in the same clubs. There were maybe twenty clubs to play in and 20,000 bands—so the Doors took us under their wing. Those guys became our best friends, ya know?

Jim was just as self-destructive as you can imagine. He would go to a party—and in those days at a party, instead of jellybeans there'd be bowls of pills—and take a handful of pills and wash it down with Jack Daniel's. And who knew what those pills were?

...the version you hear of "The End" was the version they took from the session I watched them record. There were 26 other versions of the song, with different story lines, and every time they did it, Jim changed it. He never did it the same way twice... I mean, when Jim did "When the Music’s Over" and all those other songs—he was just improvising as he went. Which was pretty amazing, cause you were only gonna hear them once that way. The Doors were very jazz-oriented, so they played off each other well.

...you know the line in "Roadhouse Blues" that goes, “I woke up this morning, got myself a beer?” That’s my line. I was sitting there talking to him and Jim says, “What did you do today?” I said, “I woke up this morning, got myself a beer, duh, duh, duh…” Next thing I know, I hear it in that song.

...[the] harmonica on “Roadhouse Blues”... was John Sebastian, he just didn’t want his name on a Doors album because of the thing with Jim Morrison in Miami where he allegedly pulled his pants down and exposed himself. It wasn’t good for the Lovin’ Spoonful’s image to be attached to a Doors record.

...on “Under My Wheels,” it’s Rick Derringer playing lead guitar, not Glen Buxton.

We had a session one night in Morgan Studios in London when we were doing "Billion Dollar Babies." So Harry Nilsson walks in, and he’s got Marc Bolan, Ringo, Keith Moon, and Ric Grech from Blind Faith with him... To this day, I can't remember who played what on what. I know that Marc Bolan plays  somewhere on that album. Harry plays something on the album. Keith is on the album. Ringo’s on the album. It was one of those nights that’s just a blackout.

So Donovan was in the next studio recording with Mickey Most. He had a bunch of kids in there, ya know, that were singing on something. I can’t remember what song it was, but I came in and said, “I need a guy with a real British accent to do a voice over. Donovan, it’s time that you did some real rock ‘n’ roll.” So Donovan says, “Come into my studio, I’ve got all these kids that I’m conducting for this one vocal part.” I said, “I’ll conduct ‘em for ya!”       

He said OK. I had the make-up on and everything and the kids were terrified, but we got it all done and it was great. So then I pulled Donovan into my studio, and he just nailed the duet on “Billion Dollar Babies.” He just killed it.

Lost, again

"Don't make no difference who the guy is, long as he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya, a guy gets too lonely an he gets sick."

"Of Mice and Men"

So, I have been on a binge again. I will plead extenuating circumstances. My wife and the youngest and still mostly portable kid are back in Detroit for the summer. Suddenly, the house in Tokyo becomes empty and quiet. Not empty and quiet in a nice-to-have-an-undisturbed-moment-to-check-Facebook way. More like house arrest with an electronic tether. More like the gulag.  More like the quiet of Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. When the house finally speaks, this is what it will offer: "I must break you." Yes, a better man and a deeper thinker would plunge with exultation into these cold waters. Me, I need the warm and shallow end of the pool. If in the dark night of the soul, we must fight or flee, I am going to run like the devil is chasing me.  And so I buy the first three seasons of "Lost" on iTunes, roughly 48 hours of viewing distraction, two full days, about a dollar per hour. Cheaper than a cheap motel. And I check in. And I do not leave. And dishes pile up. And laundry mounds. I ignore the phone and leave the mail unchecked. I go feral.

It's amazing in a way that despite my dangerously compulsive instincts I have managed to stay employed. Maybe it's because I have found a way to channel these instincts into work often enough to keep a paycheck coming. What is it they say about heroin addiction? It's not the drug that kills you, it's the poverty. 

At any rate, I watch the first 72 episodes of "Lost" in an alarmingly short period of time. A little more than three days, but not much more than three days. It is not pretty, but it happens. I am not proud.

There is little to write about "Lost" that has not already been written. The pilot aired in September 2004. The last episode of the third season aired in May 2007. As I slipped into my fugue state over a long weekend just ended, I found myself flashing back to my own backstory as it played out in those three years.

I bought and mostly fixed a house in California at huge cost. We had the first summit in Snowmass. We drank Feral Boy's homemade brew. Somehow I agreed to "run" a half marathon -- clamber up the mountain, realize your hands are horribly distended, limp down to the finish, queasy. Then I was in New Orleans helping with Katrina coverage. And then I was out of Los Angeles and back to Detroit, back to Plymouth. I left a house and a neighborhood I loved to go back to a place I had thought I would never return. In the summer of 2007, just after the Season Three finale of "Lost," Stoner and my oldest son took the fateful drive to Memphis and Graceland that became such an anecdote spinner. It all happened so fast. And now I'm gone again. And we lost our brother.

In some small way, "Lost" became something more for me as a sometimes absentee dad in those years. When kids one through three came to visit from Japan for the summers of 2005 through 2007, they got into the show. We bought the DVD box sets, and I just let them burrow in. I enjoyed watching their reactions to the plot twists more than the show itself the first time round. "What? Jack and Claire have the same father? Did not see that coming." I don't know why I thought a show that featured such toxic or distant fathers would be a good bonding choice, but I let it happen anyway.

It's interesting to go back after almost a decade. The show has moments of utter TV nonsense, like the the diamond-stealing couple that poison each other with a previously undiscovered species of spider and are buried alive. Or the pilot-eating monster. It backs away from the darkest "Lord of the Flies" undercurrent pretty quickly. When bad boy, heart-throb Sawyer threatens to veer from antisocial bravado to sociopathic scheming, you can almost hear the producers step in to protect the franchise. Make him apologize to Sun for attempting to kidnap her. Make him kiss a baby. Make him lose at ping pong. Thank you.

Of course, this is also no guide to surviving 80 days on a desert island. The writers get tired pretty quickly of chronicling the whole nasty business of staying alive. In the first season, it's a big deal when Jack finds fresh water. By the third season, food is literally falling from the sky so we can get on to weightier matters like the nature of faith and fate versus free will.

There are many other satisfactions. A truly despicable character named Edmund Burke is hit by a bus. A character named Locke and another named Rousseau square off in the jungle. The show name checks or quotes from Hemingway, "The Brothers Karamazov," "The Third Policeman," "Our Mutual Friend," "Taming of the Shrew," "Turn of the Screw" and "Of Mice and Men." Ben quotes the line above from Steinbeck. An annoying know-it-all blows up in the middle of a speech on the dangers of dynamite.

It's also fun on the second time through this to watch the writers see how many of the characters they can get to say some version of the same set of lines. I imagine a running bet in the writer's room where whoever could shoehorn in a line could take what had accrued in the jar. These cycling phrases include: Don't tell me what I can and can't do. Do you think I'm stupid? What's the difference, I'm dead already. I did not see that coming. Oh, yes, and run like the devil is chasing you.

And then there's Locke, the old guy in a primetime show shot in Hawaii where all the men and some of the women have to take off their shirts. A decade ago, Terry O'Quinn, the actor who played Locke, seemed like somebody's still vigorous Sun Belt grandpa who works as a Wal-Mart greeter. Today, as I'm watching I am closing in on the age at which he was cast, and I am thinking, Terry O'Quinn is jacked. Damn, he looks good in a sweaty camo t-shirt. I am man crushing on the old guy. 

When I leave the house to buy food in the middle of this marathon, it takes me a while for ambient Japanese to come back into focus. I realize that for three days I have been immersed in Korean from Sun and Jin. Without trying, I have learned the phrase they say most often to each other -- gwen chan ah, "it's okay." 

But it takes until the last episode, for my own quest of nostalgia and avoidance to make sense.  Something resonates. By the end of season three, Jack, the tortured protagonist, is washed up and strung out on airline cocktails and Oxycontin. We see him in a flash forward but we don't realize at first this is a glimpse of his flawed future. He does not live happily ever after.

Like me, Jack is pining to go back to a place and time he had been in a hurry to leave. He wants to get back to the island. He wants to get lost. The problems he had then seem like nothing compared to what he faces now. He wants nothing more to see his friends together again. He wants a chance to do it over and do it right. Barring that, he will take a state of sedated and suspended animation. And he speaks for me when he says, "We weren't supposed to leave."

Then Kate channels the realistic and healthy people everywhere, the well adjusted people who have not just spent three days holed up somewhere watching this damn show, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. 

Yes, she says, yes we were.

Not Deep Blues

What's the opposite of Deep Blues? Shallow pop? Heck yeah, we're talking an Air Supply concert. No troubling, life-threatening storms here. Just bright California sunshine and sweet, sweet, saccharine music. I couldn't tell if the crowd was getting into the concert or going into insulin shock. I didn't have a chance to find out. Ol' rocky was escorted out by security for wearing an ironic smirk during the show. Definitely a no-no at an Air Supply concert.

(Despite the lameness of this post, it did its job of getting my mug off the top of the page.)

Riot Fest Denver announced!

Calling all middle-aged Clock members! Here's an opportunity to relive your late-twentieth-century glory days:

There are similar events in Toronto (Aug 24-25) and Chicago (Sept 13-15). For more info, go to: riotfest

COLLEGE RULED

for rocky

http://www.archerrecordpressing.com/

Davy Jones, Dead at 66

(That's Neil Young on guitar!)

"Forever Marilyn"

I bet Joe DiMaggio never wore a gas mask.



From the Denver Post:

Nick Valenza helps to put some finishing touches on ''Forever Marilyn'', a sculpture by Seward Johnson, on July 14, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. The stainless steel and aluminum sculpture which stands 26 feet tall and weighs 34,000 pounds will be unveiled tomorrow and remain on display in Chicago through the spring of 2012. The sculpture was inspired by Marilyn Monroe's iconic scene in the 1955 movie Seven Year Itch. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Why Isn't Mickey Rourke in More, Better, Movies?

Edit: "Why Isn't Mickey Rourke in Better Movies?" (See: "More")

I've been a fan of Mickey Rourke's work since first seeing him in Diner. (Jesus, has it really been 29 years since that film was released?) Yes, he's seemingly bat-shit insane, has a reputation of being hard to work with, and has chosen to be in some awful movies, but, if nothing else, his performance is almost always the best thing in those otherwise lousy films. Why not bigger, better, roles? Well, here's a somewhat humorous tidbit that I stumbled upon at NYMag.com that may offer one explanation:

When we spotted Mickey Rourke leaning against a wall at the after-party for a screening of Scream 4 at the Mondrian Soho's Mister H last night, we made a beeline for the man. Was he there because he loves horror movies? Or to support the night’s celebrity headliner, 50 Cent, who he co-starred with in the unreleased 13? Nope, he wasn't there to do either. Rourke isn't a big fan of horror, and he's even less of a fan of 13, which he described as a "terrible" movie. Also "terrible" according to Rourke: Passion Play, his movie with Megan Fox, an actress he previously described as "the most talented" he'd ever worked with. Once you get Rourke talking candidly, he can't be stopped. Enjoy the brutal honesty.

Let’s start with horror movies: You a fan?
Depends.

On what?
If there’s nothing else to watch. I came here to see Harvey. I don’t know nothing about the movie.

What about 50 Cent? He’s hosting.
I haven’t seen him.

You guys are in a movie together, right?
A really bad movie, yeah.

What?! Is it out?
No, it’s so bad it can’t get out.

Tell me why you made it.
For the money.

But you think the movie’s bad.
Terrible.

Why?
You have to watch it.

What about your movie with Megan Fox and Bill Murray?
Terrible. Another terrible movie. But, you know, in your career and all the movies you make, you’re going to make dozens of terrible ones.

You called Megan Fox, like, one of the best actresses of all time.
That I worked with [smirk].

That movie’s getting limited release.
That’s because it’s not very good.

I know a good movie we can talk about: your rugby movie.
That’ll be a great movie. We start shooting February.

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Bill Hicks vs. David Letterman, a Definitive Overview

Plus, a bonus comment from YouTube uploader saprissa30:

1 9 9 4
♣♣WORST YEAR EVER♣♣
You don`t belive me
Charles Bukoski die
Kurt Cobain die
Bill Hicks Die
Justin Bieber born

Robert Nighthawk

...was referred to in the previously linked-to Dale Beavers article (see The True Story of This Mother...)


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USA! USA!

Hey, remember when I was a member of the Chubb Sessions Band? Neither do I, not really. But here's my former bandleader, starring in a video posted on Funny or Die:

Slice of Freedom - watch more funny videos

the aforementioned Water Hill Music Fest

The Hazy Past

Thought Experiment of the Day from Mother Jones

Is 2011 Really Better Than 1973?
— By Kevin Drum
Sun Feb. 6, 2011 9:47 PM PST
Here's the thought experiment of the day: If you could be transported back to 1900 with your current income, would you take the deal? The answer is almost certainly no. Sure, your current income would go a hell of a long way in 1900, but you'd still swelter in the summer because all the money in the world couldn't buy you an air conditioner. Ditto for plane travel, penicillin, automobiles, etc. etc. Even with a lot of money, 1900 looks pretty crappy.
But change it up: would you take the same deal if you could be transported back to 1973? Again, your income would go a lot further (about 5x further, in fact), which means you'd be pretty well off, but you'd....
Well, you'd what? Obviously you'd miss your cell phone and the internet and your HD television with 300 channels. But a car would still basically be a car, and interstate highways are about the same as now. Ditto for plane travel, antibiotics, air conditioners, etc. etc. So what do you say? Would you take the 1973 version of this deal? Scott Sumner says he would. Bryan Caplan, and Arnold Kling say they wouldn't.
In my case, I almost certainly wouldn't take the deal. Partly that's because I've never been much of a money hound and I already lead an upper middle class life, so having 5x my current income just doesn't appeal to me all that much. Also, the biggest difference between 1973 and 2011 — personal computers and the internet — are really, really important to me. It would take a lot of other stuff to make me give that up.
Still, unlike the 1900 deal, it's not a slam dunk. If a big house in a nice location means a lot to you, and traditional entertainment (film, books, theater, etc.) could easily take the place of the internet in your life, then maybe 1973 on a big income starts to look pretty good.
But it depends a lot on circumstances, doesn't it? If you suffer from chronic depression and Prozac has turned your life around, then 1973 doesn't look very appealing. If you like dining out on good ethnic food, 1973 would be something of a wasteland in most parts of the country. If you're a woman who wants a career as a corporate lawyer or a business executive, 1973 probably looks a little grim. If you're gay, you'd be insane for wanting to go back no matter how much they paid you.
(This conversation was originally kicked off by a discussion of how impressive productivity gains have been since 1973, something that this thought experiment is meant to help us get a handle on. So you might object that social inequities really shouldn't count. But I say they should. Progress is progress, and the utility of a person's life depends on a lot of things, not just material wealth. So this stuff counts for everyone who's not a straight, white, WASPy male.)
Of course, we're all so used to our current goodies that it's hard to imagine that we'd be happy without them. That's loss aversion for you. But what if you'd never experienced them before? Would they sound all that great? Or would you be happy with your current stuff? Things probably look a little different from 1973 looking forward than from 2011 looking back.
And income level matters too. If you choose a middle-class 2011 income level, then 1973 gets you an upper class lifestyle. But the difference between middle class and upper class isn't all that big, so you'd take 2011 because of all the goodies we have. But if you choose a poverty-level 2011 income, then 1973 would turn that into an upper middle class income — and that makes things look a lot different because the difference between middle class and abject poverty is huge. All the goodies in the world probably don't make up for it.
POSTSCRIPT: Alternatively, this just means that nominal dollars are a lousy way of comparing eras. It would be pretty easy to convince me of that, in fact.

Toast to Neal Cassady

From the Denver Post:

Forty-three years after the death of Beat Generation icon Neal Cassady, Denver is lauding its most famous prodigal son as one of its favorite ones.

Friday marks the Neal Cassady Birthday Bash, honoring the man who was muse to such creative spirits as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey.

The free event, hosted by the Mercury Cafe, coincides with the anniversary of Cassady's death — his birthday is four days later. It will feature music, poetry readings and a clip from a new documentary about the man's life and times.

Mayor Guillermo "Bill" Vidal has proclaimed Friday "Neal Cassady Day," and there's a cake, too.

Not bad for a kid who grew up in Larimer Street flophouses, did time in jail and
Neal Cassady (The New York Times )
bragged about boosting 500 cars by the time he was 20, largely for the pure joy of getting behind the wheel and going — anywhere.

Cassady, after all, was the charismatic model for Dean Moriarty, the lead-footed, highway-loving hero of Kerouac's "On the Road."

More than a half-century after the novel's publication, Cassady — who would have turned 85 on Feb. 8 — remains a revered figure, captivating yet another youthful generation.

"There is just something about Neal Cassady that fires the imagination of people," says Mark Bliesener, one of the event's organizers. "This is a community birthday celebration. I think it's great that Denver is honoring him, since he grew up here and loved this city so much."

Although in his prime in the 1950s and 1960s, Cassady remains part of the culture. Along with appearing in Kerouac's work, including "Visions of Cody," Ginsberg gave his friend and sometime lover a shout-out in "Howl" — (N.C., secret hero of these poems.)

He appears in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." In the Grateful Dead song "The Other One," he is "Cowboy Neal at the wheel of the bus." And he's been immortalized in film: Nick Nolte played him
Cassady introduced Jack Kerouac to jazz at the Rossonian Hotel in Five Points. (Photos by Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post )
in "Heart Beat," a 1980 film about his circle.

Another film, a documentary, is on the way. A local team is putting the finishing touches on "Neal Cassady: The Denver Years." A 12-minute trailer will be screened at the Mercury Cafe bash.

"It's been a labor of love," says Heather Dalton, 38, director and producer of the film. "I'm a born and bred Denver girl. When I read 'On the Road,' I became enamored with the Dean Moriarty character. I felt such an affinity.

"Being able to tell Cassady's story and seeing the city through his eyes was like opening up a new world of Denver to me," she says.

Like so many indie filmmakers, Dalton, creative services manager at Colorado Public Television, "maxed out a few credit cards" since starting on the movie in 2006. And she has some ideas on why Cassady and company still enthrall so many young people.

"I think it's because they represent a uniquely American rite of passage," Dalton says. "It's about questioning authority, figuring out your spirituality and sexuality and place in the world.

"They broke free of social norms," she said. "The end result for many of them was rather tragic, but it's their searching that is what's so compelling."

Cassady died Feb. 4, 1968, four days shy of his 42nd birthday, in a hospital in Mexico. He had been found in a coma alongside railroad tracks after attending a wedding in San Miguel de Allende.

Although a handsome, muscular man who was catnip to both sexes, Cassady's health had been taxed by years of drug use, notably the Benzedrine that fueled his marathon cross-country jaunts.

That's the Cassady of wild-man legend. Others knew a more thoughtful, introspective man.

"To me he was just our daddy," says his daughter, Jami Cassady, who grew up in the Bay Area and still lives in California. Now 61, she was in second grade when "On the Road" came out.

"Until I was 14 I didn't know anything about any of this," she says. "He was the man who took me to ballet class. We lived in the suburbs, and he went to work each day for the railroad."

Granted, there were lots of interesting friends traipsing through the house, which Neal Cassady shared with his wife, Carolyn, until their divorce. Kerouac and Ginsberg were regular visitors and her surrogate uncles.

But she didn't read "On the Road" until a few years ago, and found in a bit unsettling. "I thought, 'Ew, he was kind of a creep,' or at least that character (Moriarty) was."

Jami Cassady, who will attend the bash with her brother, John Allen (their sister Cathy Sylvia won't be along), does recall a moment when she realized the household was a tad different than her classmates'.

She was 15 and smoking marijuana for the first time with a friend. "So we lit the joint and I thought, 'Whoa, so that's what I've been smelling in the house,' " she said with a laugh.

Jami Cassady will be accompanied by her husband, and the two will celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary during their visit. They were married on her dad's birthday.

"My father was so in tune with children," she says. "Even at my age it's a vibrant and wonderful memory. I feel really blessed."

David Amram, a pioneering jazz French horn player who was friends with Cassady and Kerouac, will travel from his home in upstate New York for the event. He will play "Pull My Daisy," his collaboration with Kerouac.

"Neal was an extraordinary guy who grew up struggling but managed to educate himself," Amram says. "He was a brilliant guy. He reminded me of certain great athletes, like Mickey Mantle or Muhammad Ali, who had more talent and drive and desire than their systems could handle.

"Neal never really found an outlet for his talent, but he really worked hard to be a full-time writer." Cassady did manage to produce an autobiography, "The First Third."

Amram remembers a conversation with Cassady in the late 1960s, when his friend was driving author Ken Kesey's busload of hippies and hangers-on around the U.S.

"He told me he was so tired of being used as a clown and a sort of trained bear," Amram says. "They expected him to live up to his character in Jack's book."

That still bothers Amram.

"Neal was just an amazing person who never really found his outlet," he says.

But Cassady's spirit endures. The Rossonian Hotel, where the jazz-mad Cassady turned Kerouac on to the music, still stands in Five Points.

And if you go to My Brothers Bar at 2376 15th St., you'll find a framed letter an 18-year-old Cassady wrote from the reformatory in Buena Vista, where he was doing time for possessing stolen goods. He asked Justin Brierly, his mentor and teacher at East High School, to settle his $4 tab.

An American original — and one of Denver's own.

Toast to Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady, who grew up in Denver and became a major figure of the Beat Generation before his death in 1968, will be honored Friday from 8 to 10 p.m. with a bash at the Mercury Cafe, 2199 California St. The event is free.

Along with poetry and prose readings, two of Cassady's children, Jami and John Allen Cassady, are slated to appear.

A 12-minute trailer of a documentary film, "Neal Cassady: The Denver Years," will be shown. Musician David Amram will perform "Pull My Daisy," a collaborative piece he created with Jack Kerouac.

Information: 303-294-9281 or mercurycafe.com

Bad Ideas in the History of the Clock

Remember the time we thought it would be cool to start our own hair band.

Freddie Hubbard's "Straight Life"

Not the original lineup, but a sweet performance from 1975. (Sartorially speaking, disco is definitely in the studio.) The sound is akin to Davis' contemporaneous "electric period", e.g., Dark Magus, but more melodic (and listenable), and with a welcome dose of Tropicália. Feral Boy likes. Thanks for the heads up, rocky.

Stoner with Strings

In the late '70s-early '80s, whenever I burned out on Detroit rock radio for the day (usually shortly after sundown), I would slide down to WJZZ (105.9 FM) and stay there until they drove me away with Manhattan Transfer or Al Jarreau.

Most of that old WJZZ playlist, as I remember it anyway, is well-represented on the new box set CTI Records: The Cool Revolution, which I picked up yesterday.

Creed Taylor, Inc. was as well known for striking album covers as it was for producing commercially-successful music that pissed jazz purists off.

Check out the blogger at the link for more of the story; or, if you just want to feel as cool and adult as Stoner did for minutes at a time at age seventeen, pick up a copy of Kenny Burrell's "God Save The Child" and give it a listen after dark.

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