Not so helpful

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* Romeo and Juliet: BBC Dramatization (BBC Radio Presents)

And I Love You So

In 1969, Don also recorded his first album, “Tapestry”, in Berkeley, CA. The student riots were going on outside the studio door as Don was singing “And I Love You So” inside.

From About DOn page on Don McLEan's AMerican Pie.com

An Up to Date jazz up

Another spate of new jazz is on its way. The Great Kraskini and I will spin and speak to some new CDs.

The Short List:

• Frank LoCrasto - an amazingly gifted young pianist, composer, arranger
  
• Tia Fuller - Leaving Beyonce behind for the love of jazz
• Oscar Peterson, Bags and Ray Brown, too - I'm down with OP, see?
  
• Also, new local from the Kerry Streyer Quartet and loco guitar organ trio
  

When to tune in

• Friday, March 9 at 11:45 Central (or thereabouts)
  

Where to tune in

• KCUR FM 89.3 on your radio
• kcur.org on your interweb dongle

More complete list to come after the show (with links)

An Up to Date jazz up

Hello, long lost blog readers. Long time no post.

Another spate of new jazz is on its way. The Great Kraskini and I will spin and speak to some new CDs.

The Short List:

• Frank LoCrasto - an amazingly gifted young pianist, composer, arranger
  
• Tia Fuller - Leaving Beyonce behind for the love of jazz
• Oscar Peterson, Bags and Ray Brown, too - I'm down with OP, see?
  
• Also, new local from the Kerry Streyer Quartet and loco guitar organ trio
  

When to tune in

• Friday, March 9 at 11:45 Central (or thereabouts)
  

Where to tune in

• KCUR FM 89.3 on your radio
• kcur.org on your interweb dongle

There's also an "appreciation" of Andy Summers's new memoir over at the New Low Down.

One Train Later - Andy Summers

As literary genres go, the celebrity memoir is by and large a garbage dump. The books are either ghostwritten or, worse, written half-heartedly by someone best known for something other than writing books. For example, Bob Newhart's memoir I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This, published last year, more than anything else transmits the author's reluctance to write a book about himself (but may he do standup forever). For most would be celebrity authors, that's an instinct to honor.

Not so with Andy Summers, who turns out to be a gifted writer. Rather than being a rehearsal of regrets or grudges, his memoir One Train Later is an engaging tale of one man's love of music and his attempts to make a life out of playing it. Whether it's all true, I'm not qualified to say. It is definitely of a piece.

The Police, in fact, don't even enter the picture until halfway through. That's appropriate since Summers already had a decade of professional playing under his belt when he met a drummer named Stewart Copeland and bassist calling himself Sting in 1976.

He had been a jazz obsessed teen in the south of England (Page 33: Although I still like Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Kind of Blue and "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" make "We're All Going on a Summer Holiday" seem like a piece of fluff.) before heading to London, arriving just a few years ahead of the hippie psychedelic era. He dropped the acid, wore the crazy pants, hung with Clapton and Hendrix and was briefly a member of Eric Burden's New Animals.

That gig got him to southern California where he spent the later end of the 60s, even dropping out of the band life to get a degree in music. In the 1973 he moved back to England with his new wife, a few years before the punk scene exploded.

At first the whole thing, with its gobbing, violence, and nihilism, seems faintly repellent to me. Coming from another era and still foolishly embracing bourgeois values like wanting to be able to play your fucking instrument, I think it's the latest model of rage and fury that signifies nothing, looseness mistaken for a political concept. But this new movement hasn't come out of a vacuum. The peace and love of the previous generation didn't accomplish any real change: corruption and capitalist propaganda continue and a lot of the kids feel it. What is there to do but get numb and stay numb or rage and spit against the machine?

Recently one of the clever chimps who writes for the lifestyle section of the Kansas City Star referred to The Police as "Sting's old band." From this distance it may look that way. What the book makes clear (and what a listen to the Police's best work confirms) is that they were at their peak working as a trio, a very powerful trio at that.

Putting the "ill" back in socroiliac

My lower back turned on me over the weekend, making sitting in a chair painful but many icepacks later I'm ready-ish to head back to work tomorrow.

But every snowbank has a silver lining. My achey-breaky spine gives me a reason to skip shoveling the 3-6 inches of white stuff that fell on old KC last night.

It also gave me extra time for the book I'm in the midst of reading, and enjoying: Andy Summer's One Train Later, a fascinating (yes, dammit) memoir of his life before during and after the Police.

Romero Lubambo

With Valentine's Day upon us (hubba hubba), something romantic seems in order.

The most romantic album to come my way last year (apart from Johnny Hartman's "I Just Dropped By To Say Hello" which I checked out of the library)
was "Softly" by Romero Lubambo. The title is apt. Lubambo plays all the guitars (and on two tracks one of those Brazilian whistles Pat Metheny applied so liberally in the 80s). It's a mellow dream that makes you long for a warm breeze and a hammock for two.

The video above features the Brazilian guitarist with pianist Cesar Camargo Mariano performing Clifford Brown's "Joy Spring."

My unlimited love to y'all.