Zubatto Syndicate Passes the Hat

I caught the Zubatto Syndicate's premier last fall at Seattle's Town Hall. The group includes some of the city's top jazz cats in a delightfully reed-heavy mix. (How can you not love a band with a bassoon?)

They're getting ready to record their first studio sessions and could use your help. See below for details. [Full disclosure: I'm a backer, yes I am.]

The Gottlieb Jazz Photo Collection on Flickr

Stumbled upon a treasure trove the other day. According to the Library of Congress Flickr stream, "In accordance with the wishes of William Gottlieb, the photographs in this collection entered into the public domain on February 16, 2010." Well, hallelujah.

Gottlieb covered the jazz scene in New York for Downbeat from 1938-48, when jazz was king. Many of his subjects have since become icons of American culture: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and that skinny Sinatra kid. One of my favorites of this first batch is a shot of a very young Miles Davis brooding in the background while Coleman Hawkins takes a solo.

The first 200 or so are now up, with more to come every month until all 1600 are online. Here's a slide show link to the collection:



Or you can go here to see for yourself. Either way, it will be time well spent.

For the birds

By David Ocker (Tip: Andrew at J:TMOU)

OK, Go ahead and embed

Hadn't intended this to become an OK Go fansite, but oh well. When I got wind of this last week, two days after they'd posted it, there had already been millions of views. And why the hell not?

Now, apart from the fun of the Rube Goldberg mechanism involved, the most significant to note about this video is that it's embedded in this post. As noted in the post about the marching band video for this song, the group's label (EMI) had forbid them from making their videos embeddable (a fun word to say over and over and over). Why? Because YouTube has yet to figure out a way to track embedded videos and EMI wanted to make sure it was squeezing all the sugar they could out of Google (YouTube's parent). The fact that fewer people would see it or write about it or eventually buy it apparently didn't occur to them.

All if took to change EMI's hivemind, apparently, was the screeching of millions fans and an op-ed in the NYTimes by frontman Damian Kulash. Maybe we should turn these kids loose on the healthcare debate.

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Update: OK Go leaves EMI 3/10/2010.

Also: NPR is streaming a pair of tracks from the new album (and has been since January).

Got it covered

She also makes a heck of a floor lamp.
(Add your own caption in the comments.)

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I've been enjoying the antics over at Crap Jazz Covers since getting wind of them a few weeks ago (tip: Uno Blog Supremo). So when I happened across the cover above today on Amazon, it occurred to me to add them to the blogroll. Other recent additions, both tellingly from my new home in the Northwest):

One Working Musician - News and views from tireless trumpeter and jazz entrepreneur Jason Parker. Yeah, Seattle!

Jazz: The Music of Unemployment - Provocative thoughts on musical and cultural intersections from Industrial Jazz Group's Andrew Durkin. Yeah, PDX!

Dogwalk audio: Woodpecker streetlight

A minute of your time, please (literally):

2010: This Too Shall Pass

Where does the time go, he asked rhetorically. Belated New Years greeting, TNLD faithful.

We kick off another year of sporadic posting with something new from TNLD favorites OK Go. (Who told you this was a jazz blog?) Like most of their videos, it's a tasty slice of joy.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Recommended reading (before or after viewing, because it's your choice) is this fascinating um, essay by lead singer Damien on why fans can no longer embed the group's YouTube videos.

We’re stuck between two worlds: the world of ten years ago, where music was privately owned in discreet little chunks (CDs), and a new one that seems to be emerging, where music is universally publicly accessible. The thing is, only one of these worlds has a (somewhat) stable system in place for funding music and all of its associated nuts-and-bolts logistics, and, even if it were possible, none of us would willingly return to that world. Aside from the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats? All the same, if music is going to be more than a hobby, someone, literally, has to pay the piper.

OK, 2010, here we go!