State Capitols

The day after my hope for America came off life support, C and I jumped in the car and drove more than a thousand miles through five states. This took several days and passed through two state capitals (Indianapolis, IN and Frankfort, KY). If we'd had a little more time and stamina, we could have made it to Columbia, SC, but oh well. A couple weeks later we hopped in the same car and drove to my dad's house in South Dakota for an early Thanksgiving. We plotted the trip so as to pass through two more state capitals (Madison, WI and Des Moines, IA). In all four capitals, we stopped to have a look at each state's capitol building. The slide show above is for your viewing pleasure, should you really care.

I mention this as a way of letting you know that I have a nerdy and indefensible goal of seeing all 50 state capitol buildings. This flurry of activity in November allowed me to check of numbers 20, 21 and 22 (I'd already visited Frankfort in 1998, but C had never been there and the building is limestone remarkable).

Here are the simple rules of this geeky quest:

• Driving through a state's capital city doesn't count. Physical proximity to the building itself is required. If it's closed for any reason (after hours, holiday, fumigation, etc.), I still get credit.
• You can't make a special trip just to see the capitol building.

I have a corollary goal of visiting all 50 states (current total 34), but I figure focusing on the capital buildings will take care of that.

What it's all about

With so much in such disorder these day, this video from Denton's own Brave Combo helps to keep everything in perspective.

Subway ride 1905

Beneath the streets of New York, going from 14th Street to 42nd. You'll feel like you're in a century-old tunnel for a while, but the payoff arrives just past 5:05.

Viva P.S. 22 Chorus

Life is still full of pleasant surprises. I wouldn't have guessed that fifth graders singing Coldplay would be so moving. Now I want to hear them tackle The Killers.

More info at their blog.

Tip: My fellow softie over at There Stands the Glass.

Can I get an amen?

Overheard in Chicago: A man on his cell phone in a cafe.

"So you think that your praying got me fired? Well... that's a god I want no part of."

The Annual Leaf Movie

Captured last week in Kentucky and North Carolina.

Ten Albums: A subjective list

Last week someone asked to name my ten favorite albums and write a line or two about each. The hard part was I had less than an afternoon to do it.

Like all such lists the one I came up with is wholly subjective, and subject to change as life and listening go on. My one bit of disobedience was that I refused to rank them. (Regrets: having to bump Wang Chung's long-forgotten Points on the Curve and They Might Be Giants Flood.)

Bleg: What kind of a list would you come up with in a hurry?

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Top Albums (alphabetical by artist)

Common: Finding Forever - Despite all the guest stars and contributors, Common and Kanye West create something that is integrated and whole, at once forceful and majestic.

Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks - There are many peaks and valleys in the mountain range that is Dylan's career, but this really reaches the heights. He's at the top of his form here, no longer the former folkie and not yet the impressionistic pattern weaver he'd become.

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue - Ornette Coleman released "The Shape of Jazz to Come" the same year, but in many ways that title applies more accurately to this collection. This is one of the best-selling jazz records of all time and with good reason: superlative musicians working at the top of their form. (Also see/hear this NPR Jazz Profile on the making of KOB.)

Duke Ellington: Jazz Party - Most of Ellington's brilliant early-career work came before the advent of the long-playing disc and I don't think he ever came to fully exploit the format. Jazz Party is an exception. The several suites and longer compositions seem to work together. Guest stars like Dizzy Gillespie and Jimmy Rushing don't hurt either.

Glenn Gould: The Goldberg Variations - Specifically the original recording from 1955. A true blast from the past, the young Gould picks up Bach's work and blows away the dust and cobwebs of decades of polite deference. It's still a refreshingly brisk experience. (Also see/hear this remarkable film of Gould revisiting the same material in 1964.)

k.d. lang: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Soundtrack - I remember watching this godawful movie in the theater and thinking, "I've got to get the soundtrack!" An impressive demonstration of the broad range of styles that lang and her collaborator Ben Mink are capable of mastering, everything from mid-70s groove to thrashy polka. What's happened to them in recent years is hard to say.

Yo-Yo Ma: The Bach Cello Suites - Dip in anywhere you like, the water is deep and satisfying. And I think this Yo-Yo Ma kid really as a future.

Willie Nelson: Stardust - Never a patient one in the studio, Nelson reportedly found the process of recording this album with Booker T. Jones a little grueling. The results are well worth it. It's also worth picking up the 30th Anniversary reissue for the versions of "Scarlet Ribbons" and "I Can See Clearly Now."

Prince: Purple Rain Soundtrack - The Artist Formerly Etc. has kept up an amazing productivity over the years, but I'm still stunned by just how tightly conceived and executed the music on this album is. Particularly the last four songs (formerly known as Side B). Once "When Doves Cry" starts, I'm there through "Purple Rain."

Cal Tjader & Eddie Palmieri: El Sonido Nuevo (The New Sound) - So maybe the title is a little grandiose, but the combination of Tjader and Palmieri is still at once hot and ultra cool.

Miscellany: Accordion Madness

"ACCORDION, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin."
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

The sentiments of crabby Ambrose aside, here's a random assortment of vids featuring TNLD's favorite instrument.

Richard Galliano performing Piazolla's Libertango


A Tejano Accordion Summit: David Lee Garza, Flaco Jimenez, David Farias, Mingo Saldivar and Pete Ibarra performing at the Texas Talent Musicians Association's Tejano Music Awards show many years ago.


TMBG - The Statue Got Me High

Free: Ari Hoenig's Green Spleen

Word to the budget-wise: A free mp3 of drummer Ari Hoenig's funky-wah-wah composition "Green Spleen" is available here. Check it out.

It's from Hoenig's new CD "Bert's Playground" which dropped last month (on Dreyfus Jazz, a very cool French label).

Hoenig is joined by a raft of top-shelf NY jazzheads: Chris Potter and Will Vinson on their saxophones, Jonathan Kreisberg and Gilad Hekselman on their guitars, and doghousers Matt Penman and Orlando LeFleming (not all at the same time, of course, he's not Ornette Coleman). It's a mixture of new compositions and standards run through a sensibility that Hoenig refers to as "Punk Bop" which explains thusly:

"As a kid, I listened to a lot of punk and hardcore music as well as metal, reggae, funk, hip-hop, house and pop... I wanted to incorporate all my influences in this band..."

Long live the multiverse.

More info at Ari Hoenig's website and/or Myspace page.

Bonus viddie: Here's Hoenig's quartet (with Penman, Jean-Michel Pilc on piano and Jacques Schwartz-Bart on sax) perfroming "SKA" at the Fat Cat in NYC.

Music to smash atoms by

A couple weeks back, I had the pleasure of attending the premier of The Atom Smashers at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. (I had this pleasure because my friend Clayton Brown is one of the directors.) The Atom Smashers documents three years in the lives of a group of physicists at the DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Lab (or Fermilab) in Batavia, IL, as they search for the Higgs boson, an elusive and for the moment purely theoretical sub-atomic particle (sometimes referred to as the God Particle), which promises to unlock the origins of the universe.

Clayton and his co-director Monica Ross turn what could easily be a geeked-out, yo-Poindexter snoozefest into a compelling and moving story by focusing on the people behind the search. Their search takes place against a backdrop of increasing cuts in US spending on basic science research as well as the prospect of the opening of an even larger particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland.

One aspect of the The Atom Smashers that works especially well is the score by Kate Simko. I bring it up in this ostensibly (some would say allegedly) musical venue to direct you to a pair of illuminating posts on the subject. Simko's short essay about composing the score appeared on the blog Modyfier (coincidentally on the same day as the premier). This prompted a post by Clayton on the Atom Smashers blog about how creating the score fit into the overall four-year-plus process of putting the entire film together.

The Tevatron (Fermilab's 40-year old particle accelerator) was a beautiful, ugly, advanced and primitive machine with percolating valves, hi-tech computers, rusting bolts, dirty concrete, gleaming surfaces, and a devious personality. What's more, it was located smack in the middle of a prairie, with native grasses and buffalo wandering around. We knew that somehow we needed music to reflect this crazy combination of unfathomable technology and raw nature. A tall order.

In the end, they nail it (and I was pleased to find that Simko had used an accordion, albeit "highly-effected" samples from one to achieve many of the effects). But don't take my word for it. A slightly abridged version of The Atom Smashers will air in November as a part of the PBS series Independent Lens. Check your local listings, dammit. Smashers is also being screened at festivals including the Vancouver International Film Festival last weekend and, later this month, the Bergen International Film Festival in Norway (try the herring).

And someday soon, you'll be able to buy yourself a copy. Stay tuned. In the meantime, congrats to Clayton and the crew at 137 Films. [UPDATE: Here's the link to buy a copy and support 137 Films in the process.]

(Image above pilfered from 137 Films.)

Viddie: Bag's Groove

For your Friday, an YouTube oddity. The great Milt Jackson rehearsing his eponymous tune in 1994 with a Hungarian Dixieland band. Even in a rehearsal room Bags is pure genius. (Stick around until the end and tell me whether it seems like Bags doesn't exactly appreciate taking direction from the helpful Hungarian.)

Groove on.

New to the TNLD Blogroll: The Jazz Session

Pardon the dust around these parts. I promise I haven't forgotten about the three of you.

This is long overdue, but I feel the need to plug The Jazz Session, a fine jazz blog with a great jazz podcast to boot. If I were ever to do a jazz podcast, I'd hope it could be half as good as the podcast that host Jason Crane does every week. Crane brings both knowledge and a genuine enthusiasm to the proceedings and generally keeps the conversation from degrading into arcane shop talk for experts. I'm still working my way through the archives, but recent interviews with Aaron Parks and Eddie Daniels have both been a treat.

Better git it in your feed reader.

A last taste of summer

That's right, another post about watermelon.

Going the extra mile, radio style

In my radio days, I've managed to keep my on-air composure while other people were making faces, mooning me, talking about lingerie and a host of other distractions. But my hat is off to the Greek dude in the video above. Still waiting for a translation of the parting remarks.

Via

Oh, Bob...

A couple weeks back I downloaded the song "Dreaming of You" from Bob Dylan's webdongle (and for a while yet you can, too). It's an unreleased track from 1997 (and will soon be part of Tell Tale Signs, Volume 8 in Dylan's "bootleg" series). The song is all you could hope for from a genius at what from this angle appears to be the onset of his winter years. And may it be a long, healthy and productive winter.

Now word reaches these parts that Amazon has "an exclusive video" of the song. My advice: stick with the download. Sure, it was put together by the label to pimp the album, but who would have predicted that something that features both Bob Dylan and Harry Dean Stanton could feel like such an obvious tool?

Of course, any Dylan video is going to have trouble clearing the long shadow of this:


Failing that I'd even prefer a baldfaced knockoff:

Man on the Street

Try as you may, there's no way to escape it. Believe me, I've tried. But last Friday morning the endlessly hollow coverage of the longest presidential campaign in human history caught up with me while I was walking the dog.

As we strolled past the entrance to Loyola's North Shore campus a reporter from the Chicago Fox affiliate called me over. I'm an involuntarily polite Midwesterner, so I stopped.

And since she is a television reporter in a major market, her hair and makeup were flawless, which meant that she'd probably been up for hours at that point. Her camera operator, as so often happens in television, was scraggly and could have passed for homeless, although he too had probably been up untangling cables and checking batteries for hours. At this point, I'd been awake all of 20 minutes and had only spoken briefly to the dog, who for all his good points isn't much of conversationalist.

The ravishing reporter asked if I had watched John McCain's acceptance speech the night before and I told her no, but that I'd heard some of the news coverage. That was good enough for her. Would I mind talking about it on camera? Uh, I guess so. Ravishing and Scruffy leaned in, she with her microphone and him with his camera, and posed a question, something along the lines of "What did you think of the Republican convention?"

Gore Vidal once famously quipped that a person should never turn down an opportunity to have sex or be on television, but this was back in the days before HIV, AIDS, CNN, MSNBC and other dire acronyms. And of course it also assumes that you're able to organize your thoughts into a coherent arrangement of subjects and verbs and predicates, which Vidal always seems able to do. Problem is that even on a good day I'm no Gore Vidal, but especially not at 6:45 AM, unshowered, uncaffeinated, and holding a bag of dogshit.

Up until the question was asked, time seemed to be clicking along more or less at its usual pace. But as a random assortment of words began to make their way out of my mouth, my voice took on the quality of Charlie Brown's teacher. I rattled on for what seemed an eternity, but what a stopwatch would have clocked at a minute, tops. Unfortunately, it was all rattle, baby, and no hum and made about as much sense as the preceding simile. The term farrago comes to mind. In the middle of my blather a bus roared past. The dog tugged politely at the end of the leash.

Having been on the other side of the microphone I could tell that Ravishing and Scruffy were already mentally moving on to the next person on the street, next vox of the populi, hoping for something they could actually use. And I can't blame them one bit.

I kept thinking about it as the dog and I made our way home. After a couple blocks, I had a finally come up with a pithy statement: "I miss the old McCain." You know the one, the actual maverick, not the Stepford/podperson McCain I've been hearing for months now.

As so often happens these days, the fake news folks have the truest take on this.

I don't know that I would have voted for the pre-2006 McCain although it's certainly possible. That guy at least had a soul. And for what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Well, Jesus, just ask Dick Cheney.

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See also: My friend Fred has an astute point and cinematic comparison to make about the Palin nomination.

Remembering Bird 2008

Talk about your hall of mirrors. In the photo above TNLD captures the indefatigable blogger Plastic in Bag capturing this video of this year's Charlie Parker memorial, held last weekend at Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Summit, MO. (The celebration has become a annual event over the last few years, usually taking place on the Sunday before Bird's birthday which is actually today August 29. Happy birthday, Mr Parker!)

Here's the Kansas City Star's coverage of the event, which includes pictures that are much more professional than anything I took. (I was standing nearby as reporter Brian Burnes and his pen tried to keep up with saxophonist Loren Pickford, who didn't so much talk as radiate phrases that rose, fell and darted bebop style. Burnes probably had to soak his wrist that evening.)

Despite ideal (damn near miraculous, really) late-August weather, the attendance was down from last year's event in almost every category: fewer horns around the grave, fewer folks gawking the musicians, fewer Parker family members, and few members of the Dirty Force Street Band closing things out. There were also fewer revelers at the Mutual Musicians Foundation jam session afterward. The number of bigpipers held steady at one.

This could be taken as yet another reason for hand wringing about the state of jazz in old Kaycee and by extension elsewhere else. I see it more as a matter of logistics and chance.

• Logistics: Two months before, Dean Hampton, the events longtime organizer and a longtime local jazz agitator was forced by illness to hand the event over to a group of volunteers including Fanny Dunfee and Bill Doty and some stalwarts from JAM. And for their first time out, they did a very capable job.
• Chance: You can never tell how many folks, especially jazz fans are going to be able to make it anywhere on a Sunday afternoon. This year's event also faced competition from high-flying birds of another sort at the Kansas City Air Show, as well as other festivals and fair in other places.

That said, in the long run, the event will need some youthifying if it's going to stay fresh. Maybe get some of the kids from the jazz program at the UMKC Conservatory to jump in.

One particularly notable moment from the jam session: The band had played through several of Bird's tunes and wound up with about 10 guys on the stand for Billie's Bounce. They went around the band soloing, first longer solos and then back around trading tighter four-bar solos. As often happens, one guy was on fire and that afternoon it was trumpeter Lonnie McFadden. He really tore it up, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up, prompted hollering from the crowd, and when the song ended and the crowd was cheering, the musicians around him reached out, seemingly involuntarily, to touch him, as though they were hoping some of that fire might pass to them. That's the magic of art, that's the beauty of jazz.

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Listen up: My radio piece from last year's event.

Viddie: Sugarbaby

More high-minded posts to come this week, but for now something relatively new (two weeks), low down and exuberantly trashy from the kids at Morningwood.



There's also a NSFW version for fans of puppet sex and drug abuse. You know who you are.

Happy Birthday, Leon Theremin

...you wacky astronomer-physicist-cellist and inventor of the instrument makes that woo-eee-ooo sound in 1950s sci-fi movies. Oh, and he was also a commie double agent.

Today's Composers Datebook (which I love) celebrates the birth of Russian inventor and electronic music pioneer Leon Theremin on today's date back in 1896 (in a helpful footnote, they point out that li'l Lev Sergeivitch Termen was born on August 3rd on the Julian calendar, lest crotchety fans of said calendar get their panties in a bunch, cuz you know how they are).

I would link directly to today's episode if that were teknowlogiklee possible, but as some American Public Media web 1.0 kludge intrudes, I'll just paste the relevant info from their daily "enewsletter." Check it:

Theremin studied astronomy, physics, and cello, and in 1927 he traveled to the West, where he quickly obtained a patent for an electronic instrument he called the Thereminovox. In the 1930s, Theremin arranged concerts for his creation at New York's Carnegie Hall.

Then, in 1938, without explanation, Theremin disappeared. Some said it was because his American business ventures didn't pan out; others that Theremin was married to two women at the same time, and things had started to get tricky for him stateside. The truth was even stranger: Theremin was a spy, and had been passing on American technical information to the Soviets. Ironically, when he did return home, Theremin was immediately thrown into a Soviet Prison camp for 7 years. While incarcerated, he developed miniature electronic eavesdropping devices for the Soviet government, one of which was successfully installed in the American Embassy, another, for good measure, in Stalin's own apartment.

Those crazy Russians. What will they think of next?

Today's episode of Composer's Datebook features music from Bernard Herrmann's classic score The Day the Earth Stood Still and a theremin passage from Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird (not to be confused with Jim Rockford's classic Firebird). Yet even though they titled today's episode "Leon Theremin's good vibrations," host John Zeck and the kids sadly couldn't crack their classical cool to point of including what is by far the most famous musical use of the theremin:



Viddie: The Beach Boys original 1966 promo film for "Good Vibrations" - guess the BBs loved Help! -- but then who didn't?

» More info on Leon Theremin (and the Teremin) at oddmusic.com (whence the image above was ganked).

Slow Blues

Video: Oscar Peterson and Count Basie, back in the day (although not that far back).

Work in other sectors of my life has been hectic enough of late that posting in this space has slowed to a crawl. So I'm posting the slice of nice above as a way of saying that I shall indeed post again, soon.

Still to come:

• Overdue reviews/reflections on recent releases by Bobby Watson and Erin Bode, among others
  
• A brief meditation on Marilyn Maye
• Scenes from the Greenmill

And it looks like I may be able to make this year's graveside Bird memorial after all. (Here's my recap from last year.)

Minus Garfield

Another use for all that Photoshop.

Sure, Dan Walsh's Garfield Minus Garfield experiment may indeed reveal something about "schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life" and lead us on "a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb." But it's also a pretty funny prank played on a comic that stopped being funny in the late 70s.

Now if only we could somehow remove all trace of Bill Murray from those Garfield movies.

Viddie: DJA's Transit

I mentioned Darcy James Argue the other day, referring to him as a "talented composer," among other things. Lee Bob says check him out for yourself. This performance of his composition Transit by the Secret Society was recorded earlier this month at the Red Fish (aka Poisson Rouge) in New York. That's DJA himself conducting.

Thanks to hopenschauer (a.k.a. Sebastian Noelle) for posting.

Quotating

"I sometimes feel as if I would like to scream out to the American public that they are squirting gasoline on the fire. The prison system is now manufacturing offenders, it is increasing the amount of transgression, it is multiplying crimes, it is compounding evil."

Psychiatrist Karl Menninger, from testimony before Congress in 1971.

Post-war Jazz

Talented composer and raggamuffin Darcy James Argue has a great piece over at the New Music Box: "Dispatches From the End of the Jazz Wars." I recommend it to anyone concerned about the future of this thing called jazz.

A few excerpts:

You remember the Jazz Wars? One side—the traditionalist faction—was spearheaded by Wynton Marsalis and his consiglieri, writer, and critic Stanley Crouch—both tireless defenders of the essential virtues of swing, blues, and standards, both deeply suspicious of outside influences, especially those they saw as coming from popular culture or "modern European concert music." The other side, a ragtag coalition of those left excluded by this narrow view,

The truth is that while a lot of critical ink was spilled on both sides of the Jazz Wars, few musicians actually took up arms themselves.

Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I happen to think the outlook is good. Jazz musicians of all stripes have spent the post-Jazz Wars era forging ahead with smart, visceral music that is reaching a new audience—our grounding in jazz fundamentals actually makes it easier for us to reach across genre barriers and engage with the wider musical culture, as jazz musicians have been doing throughout the music's history.

Read it, already.

Update: And don't miss the comment badinage on DJA's blog (aw, all right some of it is worth missing...)

Show: Ringo and Friends

WITH LOVE FROM ME TO YOU | Ringo Starr
Originally uploaded by talented flickr user Leo Reynolds.
Used under a Creative Commons license.

You've got to love Ringo Starr. Seriously. He insists on it. But don't worry that things will be one-sided. Oh, no. The 68-year-old former Beatle loves you right back. Seriously.

Ringo and his All Star Band brought the 2008 incarnation of the Peace & Love Tour to Chicago's Charter One Pavilion on a beautiful summer evening (last Sunday) riding a groovy wave of audience love. The concert may as well have been staged on Ringo's lawn. This was the first time I'd seen Ringo live, but I was clearly in the minority. Tee shirts from Peace & Love Tours as far back as 1999 were sported on many a proud middle-aged torso.

It's a testament to the power of Ringo's personality and reputation that he can front a band composed of people known for fronting bands and do it with such casual grace. It's not bursting any bubbles to say that Ringo is not a dynamic live performer. But he doesn't have to be. He's Ringo, after all, one of the last remnants of that golden, pre-InterWeb age of Superstardom. It's a status that he's all the more deserving of because he doesn't seem a bit concerned by it. The first song of the evening -- "It Don't Come Easy" -- could have been a gentle reminder that there was cost to being Ringo, but if so we were all too beered up and blissed out to take the hint.

It's also a testament to Ringo's self-assessment that, despite recently putting out a solo album (the nostalgia-tinged Liverpool 8 - video), he bypassed the solo tour option in favor of another All-Star expedition. Even Ringo knows that it could be hard to draw a crowd for just Ringo. Plus, why not bring your friends along for the ride?

The All-Star lineup changes from tour to tour, even from date to date. The crew I saw was comprised of Colin Hay (Men at Work) and Billy Squire ("The Stroke," etc.) on guitars; Hamish Stuart (Average White Band) on electric bass mostly; Gary Wright ("Dreamweaver") on keyboards; Edgar Winter on keyboards, percussion and sax, and Gregg Bissonette (Santana, ELO, Joe Satriani, etc.) on drums. (Ringo's Ludwig drum kit had pride of place at center stage, but he sat behind it less than half the time, generally letting the terrific Bissonette shoulder the rhythm load.)

The mix speaks to Ringo's magnanimity but it also kept what could easily have been An Evening with the Old Farts into a eclectic and satisfying musical experience. After three quick numbers with Ringo out front, ("five minutes to love me") they proceeded to "go around the band," as Ringo put it, with each performer taking the spotlight for a song before introducing someone else. Both Hay and Squire also performed solo acoustic numbers. Ringo disappeared backstage for a few numbers, presumably for a quick kip and a nice sandwich.

Colin Hay's solo show at the 300-seat Lakeshore Theater in May was a thoroughly charming and delightful experience, but his presence was muted in this larger setting where he was largely consigned to rhythm guitar. (Coincidentally, one shared theme of both that show and this one was smacktalk about Sting. Introducing "Yellow Submarine," Ringo announced, "If you don't know this song your probably at the wrong venue," adding under his breath, "you're probably here to see Sting." This was greeted by guffaws from everyone on stage.)

Although all the players were in fine form, especially for a lazy summer night, Billy Squire and Edgar Winter really stood out. I admit to not having given a thought to Billy Squire since I was in high school, so it wouldn't have occurred to me that he'd have great chops. In addition to doing great work on his spotlight numbers, he contributed solid lead guitar work on everything from rock to country to blues and even played bass on "Pick up the Pieces."

And then there was Edgar Winter, who seemed to be enjoying himself more than anybody. He's still every bit the freakazoid mystic depicted on his classic album covers, only grown more Gandalf-like with the passing years. I got the impression the rest of the band got to Chicago by plane, while Winter had dinner with Sun Ra on an astral plane and then arrived at the gig by spaceship.

Still, he proved to be an excellent sideman whether it was keyboards or one of his silver saxes. He was a little late joining the ensemble on "Who Can it Be Now?" and then got so into it that he prowled the stage like something out of Jim Henson's Creature Shop. His second turn in the spotlight, a Ringo-less "Frankenstein" (check out the video from 1973) was the evening's showstopper, provoking great jazz-like combo work from Hay, Squire and Bissonette. Ringo, returning to the stage, declared, "That's what I'm talking about!" It was indeed.

Winter goes on tour later this year in support of a new solo album, so expect to hear multiple reports of a wild-haired Wildman loose in the land.

After the 24th number ("Oh My My"), Ringo announced that rather than going back to hide in the dark ("I know it's tradition, but I just don't see the point"), the band was going to move forward with the encore. And just to keep things off balance, he called "special guest" Richard Marx to the stage to help with the obligatory "With a Little Help from My Friends." He then kicked off John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance," which also gave him a chance to disappear back stage and presumably into a waiting limo.

Did we mind? Of course not. He's Ringo, after all.

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Set List (Ringo lead unless otherwise noted)
It Don't Come Easy
What Goes On?
Memphis In Your Mind
Lonely is The Night (Billy Squire)
Free Ride (Edgar Winter)
Down Under (Colin Hay)
Dreamweaver (Gary Wright)
Boys
Pick Up the Pieces (Hamish Stuart)
Liverpool 8
Act Naturally
Yellow Submarine
Are You Lookin at Me? (Hay - solo)
In the Dark (Squire - solo)
Frankenstein (Winter)
Never Without You
Choose Love
The Stroke (Squire)
Work To Do (Hamish Stuart)
I Wanna Be Your Man
Love is Alive (Wright)
Who Can It Be Now? (Hay)
Photograph
Oh My My
With a Little Help from My Friends
Give Peace a Chance


IterWeb bonus
Ringo snaps at Larry King a few days before the show (for mentioning his age 12 times).

Seedy

You can call it summer if you want. I call it watermelon season.

And this year, add seedless watermelon to the long list of Innovations I Have Initially Denounced (online banking, pay-at-the-pump, caller ID, etc.) and Later Wholeheartedly Embraced.

Last weekend I was buying groceries and noticed that the seeded watermelon was 10 cents a pound cheaper. Having now made it through the first quarter of my enormous seedy friend, I'm selling out again.

Seeded watermelon is fine if you're sitting on my dad's porch in South Dakota and spitting the seeds into the bushes. Not so nice in the new third-floor condo, where the seeds require you to transform blameless household articles into spittoons or hover over an open trashcan. So after this ten-pounder is gone, it's back to The Island of Dr Moreau.

Sammy Does them all

A lighthearted little goof for a summer Friday.

Sammy Davis, Jr. is, for my money, one of the greatest live performers ever. That's right, EVER. Of course, these days he's perhaps best known through impressions that other people do of him (and of course for "Candyman"). But back in the day, Sammy was himself an amazing impersonator. Here he is at a benefit in St. Louis, somewhere in the 60s, flawlessly rendering the great male singers of his day. (His Sinatra impersonation, not included here, was also spot on.)

Review: Willie and Wynton and the boys

The gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt made only one tour of the United States. He spent three weeks in November 1946 on the road with Duke Ellington's band, performing for the first time in Cleveland before making stops in Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh before returning to New York for two shows at Carnegie Hall (or almost two - the famously erratic Reinhardt ran into an acquaintance on his way to the concert hall and instead spent two hours at a cafe instead).

The tour was at best a moderate success. (Check out Paul Vernon Chester's account in which he reports that Reinhardt was shocked to discover that Ellington and the members of his band wore underpants of a floral design - although he made sure to picked some up for himself before returning to Europe). Only one obscure recording of the show in Chicago documents their performance chemistry. Still, the event remains on the short list of shows that most jazz fans would have given their right arms to have seen.

I thought of Duke and Django's American adventure last year when I happened on a review of a concert featuring Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. Jazz purists will rattle their dentures at the comparison, but the echoes are there: Nelson, while no gyspy virtuoso, shares Reinhardt's instinctual approach to music and love of swing and the standards that populate much of the jazz songbook. Marsalis, for his part, has made no secret of his desire to inherit Duke the mantle of as both a composer (and snazzy dresser). And I'd have given my right arm to have seen this show.

When the shaggy country star joined the elegantly tailored jazz czar on stage in New York in January 2007, they came together on a program of music from the genre where both styles meet: the blues. The evening apparently got off to a rough start, but five songs in Marsalis's band (drummer Ali Jackson, bassist Carlos Enriquez, pianist Dan Nimmer and saxman Walter Blanding) and Nelson finally found their groove.

That groove is what's on display in the new Blue Note release "Two Men with the Blues," which drops officially on July 8. Nelson is clearly the visiting team here (he gets moral support from his longtime harmonica player, the awesome Mickey Raphael) but he's almost like Jackie Chan's character in the Drunken Master movies in that it's precisely his idiosyncratic (and at times just plain off-kilter) approach that becomes his strength. Marsalis and his men are clearly enjoying the challenge of adapting to the bearded outlaw's at times Zen-like disregard for the beat. On "Stardust" in particular, he's at times so far and so comfortably off the beat that you can feel the rest of the band trying to adjust. The result is kind of a group moonwalk with Willie in the lead.

All this disorder leads to some really fresh and engaging solo work form Marsalis, who I often find a little too calculating in his approach. His vocals on "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It" and "Ain't Nobody's Business" are also a treat. The setting also allows the jazz roots of Nelson's guitar solo technique, always laying there latent, to come to the fore. (As a footnote, the recording also makes clear how integral Mickey Raphael's harmonica is to the Willie Nelson sound. His presence on the band stand is as understated as ever but just as tightly wound into the larger context.)

The essential pleasure of "Two Men with the Blues" is listening to this meeting of city and country styles as the players work it out. It's actually less of a concert than an especially productive jam session. I'll dare to hope that they both Wynton and Willie carve some time out of their rampant touring schedules to see what else they might be able to come up with. And if not, we'll always have this one night in New York to remember.

Free download
Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis - Bright Lights, Big City (mp3)

Linkage
www.willieandwynton.com

Scenes from The Greenmill

Seen from the El

One of the many advantages of our recent move from Oak Park to the Edgewater neighborhood in Chicago proper has been the accompanying switch from the Blue Line to the Red Line for the bulk of my public transportation. The Blue Line runs along the Eisenhower Expressway before going underground as you hit downtown and the Loop. The result is you have a view of cars racing (or often inching) along on the surrounding lanes. It's like riding in a ditch.

Much of the Red Line is truly elevated, allowing for some treetop views and world-class eavesdropping on lives near the tracks. But near the Fullerton stop, as you're passing through DePaul University's Lincoln Park campus, you might get the feeling that someone is looking back at you...



That's Frances X McCabe Hall which (literally) overlooks DePaul's Wish Field and Cacciatore Stadium, and nosy subway riders.

www.transitchicago.com/

The Good Wordle

Here's a cool time waster: Wordle. I used it to create this here word cloud for Oddment of Sandwiches.


And now back to your regularly scheduled life, already in progress.

(Tip from Good Evening)

What Though The Way May Be Long

This delightfully odd little film, set to the song "What Though The Way May Be Long" by Sweden's Esbjorn Svensson Trio, shows how much can be done with very little, on a number of levels. Today it takes on an additional melancholy layer of meaning with the news that pianist Esbjorn Svensson died over the weekend.

More over at The New Low Down.

RIP Esbjorn Svensson

Video: A Picture Of Doris Traveling With Boris

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Sad news for a Monday: A bright light in the musical firmament has gone out, and much too soon. Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson died over the weekend in a scuba diving accident near Stockholm. He was 44.

When I first heard the Esbjorn Svensson Trio (a.k.a. est), it felt as though the music was arriving from the future and the past simultaneously. Although generally labeled as "jazz," their music drew from classical and Baroque influences even as it reached out the hip hop generation, touring with Bjork and other "rock" groups. I'm proud to have his statement above serve as the motto for this here blog. To say he'll be missed is a severe understatement. est's 12th album, Leukocyte, is scheduled for release in September.

Read also:

• A video tribute and survey of est's development at AllAboutJazz.com
  
• This remembrance of Svensson from Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus, est's American fellow travelers
• My paltry musings about the band from last year

See also:

• This video for the song "Goldwrap" from the group's most recent CD
• This haunting fan video of "What Though The Way May Be Long"

Who's Watching

Here's an update on activity in my other blogs.

The New Low Down

• KISS and Condoleeza Rice

An Oddment of Sandwiches
This purposely un-bloggy thing has turned into a story collector, of all things, thanks to a writing exercise I came up with back in November. I take the Word of the Day from two word-of-the-day services and try to sketch out a scene that makes use of both words, for example "garboil" and "lacuna". One time what came out was a poem. I try to keep this to a single page in a 7x5 notebook, so most of them come out pretty short. Initially, I tried to use both words in the story which was fine at first, but quickly began to feel forced.

It's been a profitable exercise, artistically speaking, although being in control of all these characters can be a burden. Bumping off a talking penguin is one thing, but with one poor sap I needed two edits to make sure he was dead.

So we'll see where this goes. Most of the pieces I've sketched are still in the notebook, where they will remain. No use crying over spilled ink. But there are several characters who keep turning up asking me for fresh scenes. I get the feeling that two of them are going bound to meet sometime.

Condi: Behind the Music

The things that catch a person's eye.

Not long ago I was on the phone, idly perusing the webdoggle while my father informed me about the weather in South Dakota, when this surreal snippet derailed my rapt filial attention:

Condoleezza Rice meets rock band Kiss

The link led to an Associated Press report on the chance meeting of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the members of "legendary glam rock quartet" KISS. Seems they were all staying in the same hotel in Stockholm and when Gene Simmons and his cohort found out, they invited the secretary to stop by and say hello.

Sadly, no reporters were present at the actual meeting (which sounds like the setting for either a Don DeLillo novel or a Bullseye Rooster post) but the AP's Matthew Lee, dutifully passes on the official gloss: Rice said it was "fun" to meet the undead novelty act and noted that Kiss "seemed well informed about current events." State Department spokespersons told Lee that the band signed autographs and handed out backstage passes to Rice's staff. The story doesn't indicate whether the Secretary herself accepted a backstage pass.

And then, as so often happens, the interesting details are consigned to the bottom of the piece:

Rice, a classically trained pianist, said she has eclectic musical tastes ranging from Beethoven to Bruce Springsteen [nice alliteration, Mr. Lee]. Hard stadium rockers like Kiss are included in the mix and Rice said her favorite tune of theirs is "Rock and Roll All Nite."

But, she conceded she had never seen the group in concert.

In fact, although she frequently attends classical music performances, Rice claims to have been to only four rock concerts in her life [hopefully the AP has a summer intern verifying this "claim"]. The first was in the early 1960s when she went as a 10-year-old to see Paul Revere and the Raiders in her home state of Alabama.

After her family moved to Colorado, Rice went at the age of 16 went on her first date with an Air Force cadet to see Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. She later saw Earth, Wind and Fire in Denver and her last rock and roll show was a U2 concert in Washington, she said.

Suddenly the painfully stiff, prickly-defensive, seemingly constipated public figure we've become familiar with over the last 7 years makes a lot more sense, at least to me. I look at the face in the State Department photo above and I can picture a young Condi, alone in her room, dorky-dancing with her headphones on, hoping no one catches her.

None of this will make listening to her woman-on-the-verge-of-a-hissy-fit style of speaking any easier to take. It also doesn't absolve her of complicity in prodding us into and stubbornly defending an unnecessary war. But barring a vice-presidential nod, the end is at hand. Rice has given every indication of wanting out of the spotlight once an ignoble dusk settles on the Bush era.

I've never subscribed to the whole "music will set you free" school of thought. But I have to wonder what might have happened if Ms Rice had gotten out to a few more rock and roll shows as a youngster. Given the line up above, you could argue she hasn't been to a "rock and roll show" yet. Big ups to Smokey and EWF, but I'm just saying...

Preposition trouble

A little something for the Word Dorks from this morning's Chicago Tribune Daywatch:
So many questions: Is the governor's desk on wheels now? Can he raise and lower it like a bus? Are free rides the only way to get the disabled off his desk? What are they doing up there to begin with?

(And yes, the title of this post is a reference to this classic cartoon. Money line at ~3:06)

A Day with Harvey and Bo

I spent much of the morning following a string Harvey Korman videos on YouTube (starting here), which led to a string of Carol Burnett show clips and outtakes. Then this afternoon email brings word that the great Bo Diddley has passed. So it's back to YouTube where a retrospective of this sui generis pioneer is there for the searching.

All in all, a pretty good way to spend a day.

The clip above features the now foundational Bo Diddley riff stripped down to its essence. Why bother with lyrics about buying diamond rings? The riff is the man, as the man is the riff, world without end, amen. (To see just how wound that riff is into rock's DNA see this.)

Requiem in eternas, Bo. And Harvey. You made this world a happier place.

---
Korman clip tip from XO and TT (who are unlikely to ever share a sentence again).

Reunited

Sometimes it's the little things.

We just spent six months camping out in a rented place in Oak Park. It was less than half the size of our place in Kansas City but had a full basement. The idea was to put most of our stuff down there and unpack minimally so as not to get too comfortable there while we learned our way around Chicago. The plan worked, almost too well. (I'd forgotten how much I hate camping.)

So now, more than six months after packing them, most of the boxes are coming open and it's like Christmas everyday. Pictured above is some of the beloved crap that will once again clutter my workspace:

• A rubber Snoopy, prone (acquired in grade school)
• A Mr Creosote action figure (when you squeeze him a green goo protrudes from his mouth)
• A weird ceramic kangaroo caddy that used to sit in my dad's office
• A rubber chicken Tootsie Pop holder (still, for some reason, in its original packaging)
• An Abe Lincoln beanie doll, purchased at Mount Rushmore
• And behind them a yard stick from Jay Egge's service shop on East Highway 38 in Sioux Falls (now the site of a Wal-Mart, I believe).
  

I also moved some dumb stuff...

So long, Spindle

I've seen Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower. I've been to the top of the Empire State Building and I used to spend part of every summer near Mount Rushmore. Now I'd never suggest that "Spindle" (a.k.a., The Car Kabob) in Berwyn, Illinois, was on a par with any of these monumental structures, but I will confess to feeling a thrill when I discovered we were living a short hop away in Oak Park.

I'll also confess that I owe much of that thrill to Spindle's appearance in Wayne's World. Not a great film but WW did rise above its SNL spin-off cohort thanks to the ridiculous, pneumatic optimism of Mike Meyers' character and to some fine second unit photography of Spindle and other bits of suburban Americana. The two reverberated against each other, elevating the end result clear of the realm of cornball sketch mishagas. (The less said about Wayne's World 2, the better.)

When news of Spindle's demise surfaced last year, a local group tried to save it. They raised donations but not enough. Last week, the mall owner tried to sell it on eBay but there were no bids. So last Friday night, Spindle came down. Instead, the Cermak Plaza shopping center will get a new Walgreens. Doesn't seem like much of a trade.

And now the Chicago Tribune reports that Spindle may return, somewhere, some day. We shall see. All I know is that I'm even more motivated than ever to see Carhenge - before it gets replaced by a Bass Pro Shop.

Tiny hamlet

One more post before I disappear into a pile of packing paper.

I haven't even been paying attention to the Pennsylvania primary coverage. Yet somehow the phrase "hardscrabble town in western Pennsylvania" has popped out of the media cloud enough in the past few days that I now have Bill Murray's rant from Groundhog Day running on a loop in my mind. I consider this a blessing, so I thought I'd share.

Once again the eyes of the world turn to this "tiny hamlet in western Pennsylvania," blah blah blah... There is no way this winter is ever going to end as long as that groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don't see any way out of it. He’s got to be stopped. And I have to stop him.

Not for nothing (as they say further east), but don't look for any relief come Wednesday. The Groundhog Day we're all in looks to last all summer. To quote Phil Connors, again, "You wanna throw up here, or you wanna throw up in the car?"

Here come the boxes

At long last, we're finally going to be moving into our new place next week. I'm psyched.

Of course with all the packing, shuffling and settling there's going to be even less time to blog. See you in a couple of weeks.

Alternate Alto

Finally a warm breezy day in Chicago! It's been almost six months since the mercury hit 70 around here but today the streak is broken. In tangential honor of the event, please enjoy a smooth and easy alto saxophonist. Charlie Parker is likely to remain at the top of all any "best alto" list, but today I bring you my (and supposedly Parker's) favorite.

Paul Desmond, best know for his years with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. He also wrote the groups monster hit Take Five. Desmond described his approach as "wanting to sound like a dry martini." I think he pulled it off in this performance of "Three to Get Ready" from godknows what year, somewhere in the 70s.



Desmond's low-key lyrical approach to inhabiting a tune had magical results. I remember hearing his version of Paul Simon's "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" and thinking that it sounded like Simon wrote it for Desmond.

Sadly but not surprisingly, Desmond the three-pack-a-day man died of lung cancer in 1977, at the age of 52. But that's too gloomy a thought for such a beautiful day.

Further reading

• The official Paul Desmond website
  
• All About Jazz also has a fine collection of Desmond's witty remarks that includes this wisecrack about Ornette Coleman's music: "It's like living in a house where everything's painted red."

Free: Balitsaris and Bandoneon

I was on the Palmetto Records site earlier today checking out the new Bobby Watson album when I came across a couple of fine freebies:

• Bluegrass Girl, from the CD Big Black Sun by Matt Balitsaris & Jeff Berman
  This acoustic guitar and bass number (with shimmering vibes) conjures a beautiful sunrise in the woods. Reminiscent of "Under the Missouri Sky" and eminently diggable.

• Oblivion, from the CD Zonda by Conosur
  Conosur features Al Di Meola guitarist Hernan Romero and guitarist/producer Tony Viscardo leading an ensemble that also includes Weather Report percussionist Manolo Badrena. Oblivion is the group's tribute to Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla and features Argentinian bandoneon artist Raul Jaurena. Sad beautiful stuff.

• The other freebie up at the moment is a straight-ahead jazz number, which did nothing for me. Go figure.
  

Both Big Black Sun and Zonda are on sale for $8.99 which isn't free, but it is cheaper than iTunes and that's something.

TNLD says check it out.

Suess speaks (sort of)

Stop Making Movies About My Books

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide / In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside / Gleamed another adapting of one of my books / CGI-ed and digitized by another sly crook...

I have a VHS copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Someday I'll get around to buying a digital copy from iTunes or something. But as for adaptations of books by the good Doctor, that's as far as I'm prepared to go. As such, I haven't seen any of the bloated big screen adaptations to come out since Theodor Seuss Geisel was translated to a less corporeal format.

So with glee I recommend reading the Onion op-ed above.

"Why it's simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin."

Geisel's widow Audrey gets roughed up near the end, but else what's a First Amendment for? Besides, April is supposedly "the cruelest month" and National Poetry Month, to boot.

Then I recommend buying one of the actual books.

City folk

I've heard it said that Chicago is like New York but with nicer people. Having lived in both places and approaching the six month mark of my Chicagoland residence, I'd say that in general the description fits. (There are assholes everywhere, after all, and, yes, I am talking about the pituitary case who manages that motel just off I-80 in Youngstown, Ohio).

As an illustration, take the image above, the snapping of which required me to stand in the middle of a busy sidewalk in the Loop and strike a number of modern dance poses. Most of the passersby gave me what felt like a polite berth and kept moving. In New York (by which I mean Manhattan), I would have expected to get an aggrieved berth accompanied by an annoyed grunt or possibly a remark.

I loved living in New York, but I always suspected that people occasionally stepped in front of cabs so they could let loose with a Ratzo Rizzo "I'm walkin' here!" My own crackpot theory about this is that there's something about the crush of humanity on the island combined with the awareness that so many people want your space (despite the fact that their space is probably so much better than yours ever will be) that results in a kind of neurotic territoriality.

One time I took a date to a movie on the Upper West Side. The place wasn't even a quarter full when my companion and I arrived and we were standing near the back trying to decide how close to the screen to sit when a woman in her 60s approached us and barked, "Excuse me!" I moved aside so she could enter the empty row I had been unintentionally blocking. We watched her shuffle along that empty row (one of at least a dozen on that side of the theater) until she got to the center aisle, which she then followed to the treasured and magical seat down front, the one she had earned by asserting hierarchy over me and my date. We shrugged. The movie looked fine from where we sat.

Whereabouts

The decent fellow who poses as the crusty blogger XO recently posted a post about the lessons he's learned in two years of blogging. They're worth reading, as is XO, generally. So go ahead and do that some time.

My point in posting today (and I purposely waited a day so this wouldn't come off as an April Fool's post) is to fess up to breaking Lesson #9:

Lesson #9 - POST! To paraphrase an old axiom "Bloggers blog." No one is going to add you to their Google Reader if you only post a couple of times a year. WRITE GODDAMNIT! Nobody is going to read a blog that only gets updated when the seasons change.

This brings up several issues:

• I don't know if you can "break" a lesson, but I respect your pedantry.
• It hadn't occurred to me that I might be on anyone's Google Reader.
• Spellcheck notwithstanding, I support the presence of the N in "GODDAMNIT!" I also support pronouncing the N sound which results in a satisfying Yosemite Sam impersonation if you say the word with sufficient vim.
• I wholeheartedly support Yosemite Sam impersonations. And adverbs.
  
• I actually have been writing quite a bit recently, although most of it has been on paper, which seems deliberately obscurantist but wasn't intended as such. It's just that I still have a thing for pens and paper. I'd take an hour in a good stationers over a museum anytime.
  
• There have been numerous things posted over at Oddment of Sandwiches, but let's face it that thing really isn't technically a blog, but more of a sheep in blog's clothing.
  

Still, it would have been considerate of me to inform all five of my readers when I felt this most recent hiatus coming on.

So, sorry about that. And as they used to say on the Carson show: More to come.

Dennis Irwin on the bass

Video: Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts performing Pat Metheney's "The Bat."

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Bassist Dennis Irwin passed on March 10th, just a few hours before a benefit concert held at Jazz at Lincoln Center to raise money for his battle with cancer. His brother Dave recounts the concert on his blog. It sounds like an amazing show: Jon Hendricks, Mose Allison, Joe Lovano, Bill Frisell, Wynton Marsalis, Tony Bennett, and John Scofield among many others. You have to hope that the bassist's departure secured him a front row seat.

Darcy James Argue has collected a fine list of Irwin tributes and memorials on his blog and they are all worth reading.

I saw Irwin play with Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts at the Blue Room in Kansas City last year. In addition to generously anchoring the ensemble with his work on bass, he also broke out a clarinet for a couple of numbers. In my post about the show, I described it as feeling like a house party. This intimacy is one of the many advantages that small clubs have over festivals and larger venues. Proximity to the musicians is particularly helpful with a music that has never been primarily about volume.

I went to the show mostly on the strength of the buzz around Wilson and because I'd been intrigued and wowed several recordings featuring the ensemble's keyboard wiz Gary Versace. They were both outstanding, as was trumpeter Terrell Stafford. Sitting there a piano's length from the bandstand I could see how intently all three of them listened when Irwin soloed. Several times all three of them would nod in unison at things that I couldn't hear.

So one of the lessons I took away from hearing Dennis Irwin play how much I still don't know. That's almost always a good thing, in life or art.

Hope for the future

Watch as rude camera-shoving on the streets of L.A. develops into a serious discussion of the future of healthcare in the U.S. Simply awesome.



Tip from the Hodg-man.

Snow crazy

Today's big dump of snow made Cyrus very happy. It always does. Little Lady, the dog next door, did not approve.

Amazon makes strange bedfellows

... or, more accurately, shelf fellows:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated books by William Shakespeare, you might like to know that "Outlaws of Poplar Creek / Bowdrie Follows a Cold Trail / His Brother's Debt" will be released on February 12, 2008. You can pre-order yours at a savings of $4.80 by following the link below.

Outlaws of Poplar Creek / Bowdrie Follows a Cold Trail / His Brother's Debt
Louis L'Amour

List Price: $14.99
Price: $10.19
You Save: $4.80 (32%)

Release Date: February 12, 2008

> Extra credit link for word dorks cultural literacy: Shakespearean origins of the expression "Politics make strange bedfellows."

Wrecking Ball Blues

The ice house is melting.
Originally uploaded by maltoodle.

On my most recent trip back to Kansas City, I noticed that one of my favorite Kansas City landmarks is coming down. I forgot to pack the camera, but fortunately Maltoodle braved the snow recently to capture the dramatic image here.

The American Ice building hasn't held any actual ice for many years. Word has it barbecue baron Ollie Gates who owns the land has plans for commercial development in the area. And Bog knows that's much needed and long overdue in a part of town that has long been overlooked by developers. (Further scuttlebutt and some fine pictures here.)

All the same, I'm having trouble fending off nostalgia for the old brick pile. The American Ice building used to greet me every morning just after the 6:06 newscast when I'd step outside to grab the Kansas City Star from the loading dock. At least every other month I'd make a trip to the community recycling center that sat on the west side to drop off a load of gin bottles, egg cartons and cardboard boxes. A snap I took of it in '04 has also served as the wallpaper on every computer I've used over the last four years, a kind of anchor in the whirl of digital flotsam in which I seem all too often to abide.

The American Ice building was also reminder of the turn-of-the-20th, corrupt-expansive, meat-packing-City-Beautiful Kansas City that has been slowly crumbling away, as these things often do, especially in a city as demolition-happy as is the City of Fountains. It's probably a sign of my age but I realize that I've come to associate Kansas City with demolished architecture: the Mill Creek Viaduct, the Trolley Barn Neighborhood, Twin Oaks, the Mission Center Mall. If the paranoids are right, they may even aim the ball at Union Station some day.

There is a new crop of turn-of-the-21st, hocked-to-the-eyeballs, glass-euphoric new architecture sprouting in Kansas City (the Sprint Center, the Nelson's Bloch addition) but so far I'm having trouble warming to it the way I did to the old ice house.