Friday, October 31, 2008

So Long, Studs

Studs Terkels Leaves the Coil at 96
Studs is dead. Never really considered Studs ever being dead--I mean he's been alive so long. But, alas, it's now so long, Studs.
http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/j/ap/8ad3052d-421e-4c25-8674-59ba672a0427.hmedium.jpg
From the Chicago Tribune's "Breaking News"
Author-radio host-actor-activist and Chicago symbol Louis "Studs" Terkel died at his home on the North Side today. He was 96.

Beset in recent years by a variety of ailments and the woes of age, which included being virtually deaf, Terkel's health took a turn for the worse when he suffered a fall in his home two weeks ago.

Louis Terkel arrived here as a child from New York City and in Chicago found not only a new name but a place that perfectly matched--in its energy, its swagger, its charms, its heart--his own personality. They made a perfect and enduring pair.

At his bedside was a copy of his latest book, "P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening," scheduled for a November release. He was 96 years old.

It is hard to imagine a fuller life.

A television institution for years, a radio staple for decades, a literary lion since 1967, when he wrote his first best-selling book at the age of 55, Terkel was born in New York City on May 16, 1912. "I came up the year the Titanic went down," he would often say.

He moved with his family when they purchased the Wells-Grand Hotel, a rooming house catering to a wide and colorful variety of people. He supplemented the life experiences there by visits to Bughouse Square, the park across the street from the Newberry Library that was at the time home to all manner of soap box orators.

"I doubt whether I learned very much [at the park]," Terkel wrote. "One thing I know: I delighted in it. Perhaps none of it made any sense, save one kind: sense of life."

Many people reacted to news of his death, including:
------
"He liked to tell the story of an interview with a woman in a public housing unit in Chicago. At the end of the interview, the woman said, 'My goodness, I didn't know I felt that way.' That was his genius." -- Andre Schiffrin, Terkel's longtime editor, publisher and friend.
------
"He couldn't have written a shelf of books after listening to thousands of people and writing down their words if his heart had not been unconditionally open to the world." -- Roger Ebert, film critic.
------
"He liked people like (Nelson) Algren. He liked people like (Mike) Royko because they were larger than life. They were authentic. He found his home in Chicago and he found it in the gritty aspect of Chicago life. The ne'er-do-wells, the outcasts, the bums, all these people were people he was curious about. They intrigued him." -- Russell Lewis, Chicago History Museum.
------
"Studs Terkel was part of a great Chicago literary tradition that stretched from Theodore Dreiser to Richard Wright to Nelson Algren to Mike Royko. In his many books, Studs captured the eloquence of the common men and women whose hard work and strong values built the America we enjoy today. He was also an excellent interviewer, and his WFMT radio show was an important part of Chicago's cultural landscape for more than 40 years." -- Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
------
"The memorable Louis 'Studs' Terkel spoke to Chicago and stood for Chicago. And today we mourn his passing. Studs, perhaps best known in Chicago for his radio program, was also a gifted actor and writer. He will be greatly missed. Our hearts and prayers go out to his family and friends." -- Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

--The Associated Press contributed

Full Chicago Tribune obituary

Photos: The life and times of Studs Terkel

________________________________________________________


Another One Bites the Dust

We also noticed that Clayton Riley has died, too. Anybody remember Clayton Riley?

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Exactness

Mornin' Call
The Morning Call. The one I knew was in New Orleans. I used to go over to the Morning Call early because I hated tourists. I'd get a sack of baguettes and a big jug of French Market chicory coffee--oh my great jumpin' Jesus's, that coffee was so god-damn good! I'm sorry, but you need expletives to describe anything as wonderfully good and inspiring as a big mug of French Market coffee--or Luzanne--though I'd been drinking French Market coffee since I had my initial taste of it in New Orleans in the late forties when I was still almost a baby. I had a Cajun uncle who had a Cajun sister who married a New Orleans Italian gentleman and my parents went to New Orleans at least once a year--plus, there was this preacher and his family there who had been my parents's best friends in Dallas at one time--we knew the whole family--I was madly in love with one of the preacher's daughters, Sarah--of course, Sarah put me down as a child while the other daughter, Ruth, was mad about me from the first time we met--and, of course, I couldn't stand her.

And even as a kid, when I was in New Orleans I was in hawg heaven--I remember whizzing from the preacher's church on Camp in his brand-new '48 Chevvy down Canal, to plough right whizzing-still wild into Decatur--ever since then from that car ride on I was dreamin' of living in New Orleans one day--New Orleans was the most exciting place I'd ever been--even more exciting than the Carlsbad Caverns, which we went to a lot, too, since my dad was intrigued by the caverns--and one of his friends had actually worked with Jim White, the discoverer of Carlsbad Caverns, and this friend had gone down in the bucket that Jim used to go down into the caverns--there were no lights in the caverns in those days--they used kerosine torches--that mystified my father but not me--New Orleans mystified me--also I had by that early age traveled all over already, coming to the East Coast twice from high and dry West Texas back near the end of WWII with my mother in a Continental Trailways bus the first time, going to Washington, District of Corruption, where my mother's sister worked for the Navy Department, then making a second trip that same year in my dad's Oldsmobile, my Navy/Marine brother driving it there and my mother and grandmother driving it back--my brother had been home on a 15-day leave (a furlough) from the Marines. The second time we came "back East" we went to Philadelphia where my brother was stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital in the heart of South Philly.

My dad had run away from home the next summer and he first tried to live in Philly and then he'd gone to New York City, fallen in love with it, and tried to live there until he got homesick and needing to get back under my mother's money-making wing--and I still remember a packet of little miniature photos my dad sent me that showed the famous sites of New York City and I was especially fascinated by the photo of the Flatiron Building in that packet. Then came a postcard from the old man of the Empire State Building with an X on the very top of that magnificent building with an "I'm here" inscription following it. The Empire State Building's magnificence demanded worship of me--I would look at that postcard for hours--the Empire State Building became my icon of Hope (I know, there's no such thing)--I saw beauty in tall buildings and not in stalagmites--I mean, come on, at that time the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world--before Nelson "Son of a Bastard" Rockefeller built the tacky state office building towers that would later become the World Trade Center--even the architect of the World Trade Center pulled out because he said they were using cheap materials and not following his specifics...oh, but that's definitely a dead-and-buried issue now, isn't it?

"Comin' back East" trips I did as a kid; as a teenager I got in some super traveling with my parents--who loved the automobile and the highway--and as a teenager I was out on the West Coast several times visiting my Great Depression-Dust Bowl-refugee relatives in California, Oregon, and the State of Washington; yet, in spite of, yes, awesomely respecting the mountains and deserts and big cities of the West Coast--I remember L.A. and Portland and Seattle clearly--I was still more impressed by New Orleans and New York City--these became the places I mentioned when I'd say, "One day I'm going to live in New Orleans (or New York)"--and then my grandmother went and married a native New York Citian--he was born in Harlem and raised in Yonkers--and my grandmother went to New York City every summer to visit his family and she and my step-grandfather talked about New York City all the time and there was a photo of my grandmother sitting in front of Rockefeller Center--yep, by then I knew New York City was my hopeful destination. And one afternoon, I was walking home from school along Highway 80 West and a car zoomed by me heading west and as they passed by me a Coke bottle came flying out the front window of the car to bounce into the grassy roadside area in front of me. In those days--mid-1950s--Coke bottles were made of thick glass--and the 6-oz bottles were special because of the names on their bases--collectors call them "corseted waist" bottles because they look like women looked in the Edwardian era--heavily corseted to pull their waists almost nonexistent tight--women with thin waists have always turned prolific men on--big legs or giant asses didn't matter as long as they had hour-glass figures--plus, those days are where the excitement of a man undressing a woman came from--nowadays, so few clothes for a woman to take off that there's no anticipatory excitements in struggling to unhook a bunch of button hooks on the back of the dress and then there was getting the bustled skirt off--and then unlacing the corset--and then removing the chemise--and then removing the bloomers--Jesus, by the time an Edwardian rascal got his woman undressed he was limply pooped perhaps--then once you got all those clothes off--think of the smell. I'm a man who's terribly turned off by body odors--one of my marriages was ruined because my sweet wife had vagina odor beyond belief (to me at least)--and like the old adage about "he who sits in his own farts"--she argued that her vagina did not smell bad--she douched every day, she said--it was all in my imagination! Then I met my secretary at Time-Life, a 22-year-old Michigan girl married to a wimp--and lo and behold--she smelled like lavender blossoms in spring all over--everywhere--and I met that secretary one year and the next I divorced my wife of 10 years! All because of body odor. On the bases, bottoms, of these glass Coke bottles was the name of the city of origin of the Coke--which Coca Cola Bottling Plant had filled the bottle--the bottles came from Coca Cola's own glass plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee--the Coca Cola Company being big in my family thanks to my dad and his brothers and sisters having gone to high school with the man who owned the Coca Cola plant in my hometown--and nearly every member of my dad's family--including my brother--worked part time or full time for the Coca-Cola Company--and every summer my dad's family's family reunion was held in the big Coca-Cola lake cabin on the biggest lake in my hometown.

Since these little Coke bottles had the names of the cities were they were bottled, some kids collected these bottles trying to get as many different cities as they could--my friend Don "Urp" we called him--his real name was Earp, same as Wyatt Earp--had 200 Coke bottles from all over in his dad's garage--so when we kids saw a little Coke bottle, wherever, we'd pick it up and check out to see what city it was from--and since my hometown was on the major highway that went straight from the East Coast--New York City--straight across the USA straight into the West Coast at Los Angeles--there were always tons of Coke bottles in its roadside ditch areas. And this bottle I picked up that day that came whizzing out of the car window as it passed me--they may have purposely thrown the bottle at me--anyway, I picked that bottle up and checked out where it was from and by Golly damn, it was from New York, New York, which I knew was New York City! I kept that bottle with me from the time I found it until my wife and I moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to New York City--I threw it out in Santa Fe--I didn't see any need of having it as a charm anymore since we were on our way to live and learn in the Big Apple. That was a Hot Damn Day in my life--"Goin' the New York...."

And now I live in New York City--two blocks directly south of and in the shadow of the Empire State Building that is ironically since 9/11 once again the tallest building in New York City--

And before New York City, I did finally get to live in New Orleans, my first home after I married my young Tex-Mex-Choctaw-Welsh hot-cha wife and we set up "housekeeping" in the Vieux Carre on Chartres first and then over on Dumaine.

When I first got to New Orleans, the first thing I did was trundle my ass over to the Bourbon House on Bourbon St., to sit at the table that William Faulkner had sat at writing his New Orleans novel--and I had read it three times just before getting to NOLA--Mosquitos--and there was a brass plaque on the wall of the Bourbon House behind this table that said it was the table where Faulkner had worked on Mosquitos--and I sat at that table and wrote like a maniac and daydreamed and checked out all the beautiful gals and the flamboyant Gays and drank Dixie beers--I never liked Jax or Regal, the other New Orleans beers--Regal being Lager spelled backwards--Jax being a shortened form of Jackson since the Jackson Brewing Company was right off Jackson Square on Decatur Street and the levee and the railroad tracks and the big brown muddy Mississippi River. I liked Dixie beer because it was rotgut beer and I'd grown up as a beer drinker drinking cheap Colorado rotgut beers like Walter's and Bergdorf--you know, the fermented-grain-tasting beers--I never liked Budweiser--never--nor Miller's, nor Falstaff, nor Pabst, nor Schlitz, nor Griesedick--Milwaukee and Saint Louis beers...

And where my wife and I lived in New Orleans was a French-Quarter cauldron of so many fresh and inspiring smells, of the always prevalent river smell and its accompanying fish smell and oceany salty-air taste and smell, wafting in off the river to conjoin with the brewery smells, and then the coffee smells--the Luzanne Coffee Company was right down Decatur just down past the Jackson Brewing Company--and the Morning Call was the other way up Decatur at the upper end of the French Market--and it had the freshest baguettes dusted in confectioner's sugar and the biggest jugs of that great chickory coffee.

I left New Orleans one July morning when I saw the developers comin' in to build hotels all over the Quarter--and then I overheard the Mayor of New Orleans, Vic Skiro, say one morning at breakfast he had gotten a plan submitted to him from some NOLA businessmen that would mean building a 6-lane thruway right over the French Market--I told my wife that night it was time we split New Orleans--and I walked in the very next day and told my boss, "Fuck you, I'm walkin'"--not "Walkin' to New Orleans" but riding away from New Orleans to fly away to Mexico City--and my wife and I left New Orleans without looking back in my old Cajun friend Couvillon's cab--this blessed man had picked me up every afternoon for over a year and a half from my job on Poydras at the Orleans Parish Court House and had driven me directly every weekday afternoon down Canal to Decatur Street then over and up to Ruggiero's Restaurant on Decatur where I was soon swilling down Dixies by the case and raw oysters by the dozens--85 cents a dozen in those days--6 Dixies and three dozen oysters cost around $5.00. Yep, then my young wife would show up around 6 and we'd move back into the dining room where Mrs. Ruggiero would cook us up a great dinner, featuring a special spaghetti with her amazin' old-country pesto sauce and then the steaks, then the Alaskan king crab legs--oh Holy Wonder Woman, what glorious luculean meals we had at Ruggiero's--with the Yugoslavian bartender/oyster opener who looked just like Lyndon "Big Balls" Johnson--"Come, let us reason together" and Lyndon was a Texas reasoner--same as me, I guess.

Later in New York City I dated an actress--I stole her from Harvey Kleitel--and I went home with her one weekend to Allentown, PA, and I was surprised to see the Allentown newspaper was the Morning Call--however, the coffee in Allentown tasted like burnt mud!

There is a "morning call" in the US Army, too.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

A Tribute to Jimmy Knepper--From 2003
Memorial
Trombonist Jimmy Knepper died June 14


By Butch Berman

I first became affiliated with the recently deceased jazz trombone legend Jimmy Knepper quite by accident. Let me tell you a little story. I think you’ll get a kick out of it. I know Jimmy would have dug it.

Jimmy Knepper at the Zoo Bar (Photo by Rich Hoover) In the early days of the BMF (around 1994-5) with since-departed (not dead, just split) ex-partner, Susan Berlowitz, who actually started this jazz rag, we brought some great players to Lincoln. The Zoo Bar was an early venue until former owner Larry Boehmer and I also parted ways. (Gee, can’t I get along with anybody?) Anyway, our first projects to try to indoctrinate ourselves into the art community were presenting these mini-jazz concerts at anyplace that would have us. We also hosted events at the now-defunct Huey’s, the 7th Street Loft and Ebenezer’s, to name a few.

Susan and I had just returned from a trip to NYC where we for the first time caught our old friend Claude “Fiddler” Williams backed by an all-star band for his 85th birthday at the also-no-more Metropolis. We thought how Lincoln had only heard Claude being backed by our local cats, and how cool it would be to let the folks hear this amazing musician with a real top-notch group behind him.

We had recently befriended the leader of the famed Duke’s Men, trombonist Art Barron, who promised to put together a similar bunch of players to make the trip, and he’d help keep things in order. Taken from the guys we had heard was bass player Earl May (still a dear friend to this day) as well as drummer Jackie Williams. We couldn’t obtain pianist Junior Mance, but were thrilled to get the wonderful Jaki Byard instead. We also had just become acquainted with newcomer, singer Kendra Shank, who we thought would be the perfect extra to augment this killer bunch to back the “Fiddler.”

Well, to make an already long story a bit shorter, just days before the show, Barron pulled out for a better-paying job. He said we should get used to this kind of situation, but in nearly nine years only one other jerk has pulled that song-and-dance on us. Nevertheless, he said he’d found a replacement for us—who else but Jimmy Knepper.

So, on my way to the airport I’m thinking to myself, “How cool is this to have the two remaining living gentlemen from the Mingus dynasty hanging out at my pad?” Only problem was, I never had seen a picture of Mr. Knepper, whom I was just about to greet. So while scanning the people filing off the plane, looking for an older black dude carrying a trombone case, here comes this rather disheveled, funky-lookin’ old white guy wearing a beat up old cap. Yup, that’s Jimmy, but looks are usually deceiving. As soon as we met, I felt an immediate connection with this brilliant, totally lovable man.

Even then, you could see he was in the early stages of the Parkinson’s disease that later took his life. His slow, stumbling gate made me wonder if he could still cut it, but he played his ass off all weekend. He fell once getting on the Zoo’s high stage, and I caught him twice as he nearly fell backward just standing around. Still, however, he and Jaki (who was murdered a few years later in his NYC home, unsolved to this day) had a ball sharing tales of the old days with me, Susan, and the multitudes of fans who came over to our house that weekend to pay homage to these great people. I still get a kick out of how Jimmy couldn’t get over the fact that he and I had both been sent to military schools as youths.

The boys and Kendra sounded great, playing three sets over that swinging weekend. The videos of their practice session at my house, as well as the gig, will forever remain prized possessions in my vast collection of jazz artifacts.

As soon as everyone went home, I started a search of as many Knepper albums and CDs that I could find. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to discover how everything he recorded was simply fantastic. I once proclaimed on my old KZUM show “Reboppin’” “Knepper is Jazz, Knepper is Jazz, Knepper is Jazz,” and to this day I still feel he exemplifies the true essence of jazz. By the way, he of course used his old cap for a mute, and I will cherish his memories for the rest of my life.

Jazz scribe Whitney Balliett called Jimmy “the first original trombonist in the modern idiom since J.J. Johnson.” Amen to that, and may his soul rest in peace forever. Jimmy was 75.

I’ll never forget my old pal Jimmy Knepper. Recommended listening? Everything he ever recorded.

Butch Berman was both a rock and jazz musician--he founded the Berman Music Foundation--Butch has since joined Jimmy Knepper in the Charlie Parker All-Star Band in that big Birdland in the sky.

www.bermanmusicfoundation.org/bmfmain.htm

Monday, October 27, 2008

Odd Time Signatures

Sittin' Around Rockin' in My Old Rockin' Chair
"Swattin' at the flies 'round my old rockin' chair...."
And I'm listening to Louis Armstrong from way back when...
When music was like a baby snake crawlin' 'round on a waxed dance floor...
of fast-stepping dreams...
dreams full of youth...
condemned by the reality of age...
"You young'uns'll git yurs one fine day"
and by God they do.

Louis Armstrong is so strong...
biting with his blues...
jabbin' that trumpet and that little cornet straight into your dancin' heart.

A big, fat, fartin' trum-bone...
damn that son of a bitch is fartin' his slidin' ass off...
shut up there's ladies present...
that's no lady, that's the queen...
that's Louis's wife...
cute...
no touch...
wait'll she's pissed at Louis and maybe...
just maybe...
but don't get a hard on about...
but you can sure dig her wailin'...
and you can sure shuffle your ass to the raggedy moon and back to her rockin'...

And I'm listening to Louis Armstrong...
Is that the world I hear whirring out of control?
Reading Count Basie's autobiography and the Count keeps talking about how the guys in his band were so close they had good eyes out for each other...
and I remember the irritating sound of a parent thinking they're hip at a Little League baseball game..."Good eye, Little Willie! Good eye."
Count was talking about how Herschel Evans got sick on stage in Hartford, Connecticut, one night, and the Count sent him back to New York City to the hospital...and then they heard in Chicago that Herschel had passed and how it affected the band and especially Lester Young who would refuse to play without his pal Herschel challenging him--he just wouldn't show up for the gigs--or when he did he'd refuse to sit next to Herschel's empty chair--Herschel played a different tenor than Lester and they countered each other, working off each other's solos in a battling sort of way--when one was on, the other got further on...and vice versa.

And I'm listening to old, old, old, old Louis Armstrong...with Perry Bradford for God's sake...
Does God drink saki?
Ohhhh, damn, and this is so far back in the past long-gone corners of my life...
My dad played these kind of old records by my baby bed when I was a swee' pea right fresh out of the pod and I remember the lilting swing of those old records--those cakewalkin' babies of mine--and those old records being played right by my baby head made me a cakewalkin' baby...
Those dusty corners that haven't been swept out in years...
Count said he didn't like arrangements that got "webby" fast...
He didn't like webby music...
Webby anything...
When I was an alert 10-year-old I appeared on the Webster Webfoot teevee show in Dallas, by God, Texas...me and a kid named Eugene went down to the WFAA-TV studios in downtown Dallas in the Santa Fe Building by ourselves...on the city bus, then on the streetcar down to the Santa Fe Building area. I was pitted in this quiz-show--I represented my grade school--against a worthy constituent from another Dallas Public School and I was pitted against this beautiful 10-year-old named Mary...and I had a bone on as I went up to join Mary behind a little podium area that was situated where when you stood there you could look over and see Officer Jimmy with his hand up Webster Webfoot's butt working old Webster's duck bill a mile-a-minute as poor old Officer Jimmy had to play both cop and duck at the same time--it was hilarious--got me to giggling--giggling to the point where Officer Jimmy said a curse word at me...
The question I got was, "What's the world's largest island?" I quickly said, in my little wiseass way, "Australia...." The minute I said it...dammit to hell...I knew...and sure 'nuff Mary said, more wiseass than I had been, "Greenland"--looking at me as she smartass answered, as if to say, "Get your little prick back in your pants, this cutie don't want a dumbass for a lover." My first teevee appearance and I lost out to a girl! I did get an autographed photo of Webster Webfoot and Officer Jimmy...
And years later, I was an adult, and I was sittin' watchin' teevee out in L.A. one afternoon and son of a bitch, from out Anaheim way, or somewhere rightwing like that, came the Webster Webfoot Show--son of a bitch, I kid you not, and there was a sagging but still kicking Officer Jimmy and the same old Webster. He hadn't aged a bit--some of his feathers looked a little moldy's all.

Somewhere in the background of the city air there's music wafting loudly through the air...
I can't call music noise...
These cats are good, too, but they are seeming to make every Monday night theirs in this neighborhood, playing last Monday night from 7 pm to past 10--and they are very loud and irritating and for that reason they are disruptive...
They could be rehearsing...
I can't imagine where they are...
There's a trendy very expensive twentyish restaurant in the max-tacky tower up toward Fifth Avenue but surely it's too cold for a band to be playing outdoors...they sound like they're playing outdoors...they could be rehearsing...it's hard to rehearse when you're a musician here in New York City...in fact, music has turned into just so much noise to a lot of New York Citians these days--
I was just looking at a listing of all the jazz clubs here in New York City...this dude has run a jazz Website since back in the nineties--he's OK, except I got pissed as I read his review of one of the last remaining blues clubs in NYC--he said he knew a jazz Website was no place for blues...Whaaaaaaaaaaaa! There'd be no jazz without the blues, you dumbass Euro bastards...
And most of today's recording jazz musicians are white guys...
well educated guys...
do they know jazz though?
jazz according to Wynton Marsalis...
Let me duckwalk out of here...

"I ain't gonna play no second fiddle, poppa's gotta play the lead...."
__________________________________________________
Raise a Toast in Belated Memory of...
Jimmy Knepper...1928-2003

I just read where Jimmy Knepper had died...
Back in 2003...
And I remember Jimmy Knepper...
with Mingus..."Mingus Ah-Um"--
a trombonist who reminded me of Peewee Russell when he played...
or like another trombonist of his day...
Willie Dennis...
And Mingus loved both 'bones...
Willie Dennis's and Jimmy Knepper's...
"Blues for Some 'Bones."

http://www.hollywoodmuse.com/joe_maini_website/images_maini/Knepper-Bird.jpg
Jimmy Knepper...yep the white guy...with Bird...and who dat? Roy Haynes?

Here's an excerpt from Jimmy's NYTimes obit:

The jazz critic Leonard Feather wrote that Mr. Knepper's ''solos with Mingus are intricate, beautifully structured and complete statements.''

But relations between the plain-spoken Mr. Knepper and the notoriously volatile Mingus were often tense, and they came to an abrupt and violent turning point during preparations for a New York concert in 1962. Mr. Knepper recalled in a 1981 interview with Lee Jeske of Down Beat magazine that in the course of an argument about Mr. Knepper's role as music copyist for the concert, Mingus ''just kind of slapped me in the mouth,'' and the blow ''just happened to break off my incisor.''

The injury seriously affected Mr. Knepper's embouchure; it took him several years to regain his full range on the trombone.

Mingus was convicted of third-degree assault (his sentence was suspended), and a fruitful collaboration was seemingly ended forever. Surprisingly, though, Mr. Knepper worked with Mingus again in the 1970's, appearing on the album ''Let My Children Hear Music'' in 1971, at a Carnegie Hall concert in 1976 and on the last three albums Mingus recorded before his death in 1979.

Mr. Knepper characterized his return to the Mingus fold as a kind of grim inevitability.

''It was very depressing to think that I'm linked with this guy for the rest of my life,'' he told Down Beat in 1981, referring to his earlier days with Mingus. ''And now I feel the same way.''

By Peter Keepnews, NYTimes, 2003
___________________________________________________________
In case you doubt my memory:
http://www.jimmyweldon.com/images/JW%20WFAA%20TV.JPG
Check It Out! It's Webster Webfoot and there's that god-damn Jimmy...and look what the camera says...I found this on Google after I'd written the above...

Here's more Webster and Jimmy: www.jimmyweldon.com

"Old rockin' chair got me, daddy...with my cane by my side..."

thefliesbuzzin''roundthegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Another John "Nutjob" McCain Sunday

What a Life!
New York City's pompous and very rich mayor can't stand giving up his power as mayor--since becoming mayor, this already filthy-rich man (he was sort of handed the Bloomberg Network--you know, as an electronic means of getting the stock market results out before they were printed in the late afternoon newspapers), has moved from 65th richest MAN in the US to 8th richest man in the US--a phenomenal rise in wealth-power in less than 8 years, all the while he was supposedly being mayor of New York and not still running the Bloomberg Network--so you bet this already rich man doesn't want to give up his power-elite role as mayor of one of the world's largest metropolitan areas--

The wealthier men like the Mayor of New York City get, the less wealth there is for those UNDER the safety net--

And, yep, John "Jowl-shakin'" McCain was all over commercial teevee again this Sunday--special guest on this mornin's Eat the Press with the has-been news anchor and limp-nuts interviewer, Tom "Broke" Cow...

And Sweet Sarah of Alaska was still all over the celebrity show-off shows though it seems that that Fey chick that impersonates Sweet Sarah is now more popular as a parody of Sweet Sarah than Sweet Sarah is as a parody of herself, an Alaskan hick--"Hey, waitress...oh, it's Governor Palin, sorry, I thought you were the waitress, Governess."

Goof on her...

In the meantime the most criminal president in the history of this country is fixing to get to retire to his faux ranch and play golf or eat barbecue ribs and drink Jacks and branch waters and tell off-color jokes the rest of his privileged life--and think of the perks this bastard's gonna get, too--his presidential salary for the rest of his life--free healthcare--free postage--free office space--free secret service protection--a library for his worthless papers (what papers, didn't he shred them all?), cleared of all the criminal charges that could be made against him--for instance, reducing lands to massive killing floors he created with his stupid, unnecessary, and horribly immoral (unscientific) invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq (we're losing both wars big time--you see, this proves military might does not reap peace--no, it reaps only more conflict, more polarities, more "my dog's bigger than your dog" attitudes)--very fiercely pompous shenanigans that have totally drained and wrecked our economy--G.W. Bush promised his pack of cronies that by capturing Iraq's huge oil reserve, taking it over and stealing it from the Iraqis and Kurds and whoever else claims it's theirs just because their sovereign nation sits atop it, he'd pay off all our national debts, put the money he's stolen from Social Security back, and replenish the nation's oil reserves--don't cha know he's depleted our oil reserves--he'd also be able to use this stolen Iraq oil to pay for his little pet war against Saddam Hussein (who made Junior's old Pappy look like a wimp!), which if you remember, was over in a matter of days--"Mission Accomplished." If we'd of impeached his ass back in 2003, then all of this bullshit race for the bottom would never have come about--AND still 30 or 40 Iraqis and Afghanis are killed every day--and we no longer count civilian casualties or even the casualties suffered by the contracted workers, they don't even count Blackwater and Dimecorp casualties--old Colon's Pal was an expert on death and wounded counts in Vietnam (another war we lost!)--and no longer are American soldier casualties important--back-page news now! But no, the Dumbocrats said, oh no, we can't impeach this man--he's got files on our asses, don't ya see! and Unka Dick has files on us! and Cousin Karl Rove has files on us! and don't forget the CIA and the FBI and Homeland Security and the NSA, they all have files on us! Look what happened to Paul Wellstone! How sick is it that Bill Clinton could be impeached for lyin' by sayin' that a blow job or using a Cuban cigar on a young plump chickie's wet-slot isn't SEX--"I did not have sex with that woman!" (And Hillary immediately had visions of herself becoming the poor hurt little woman thus enhancing her own political career--carpetbagging her big wide ass to New York State where hell yes she whipped Rudi "Mussolini" Guiliani's mob-like ass)--and yet we can't impeach G.W., the only "president" EVER appointed by the Supreme(ly) White and Stupid Court-- Doesn't this piss anybody off? I growl like a maddog at Obama--I mean this guy has gone soft on G.W. Bush--doesn't blame him for wrecking this country--I mean Hank Paulson (sic) is Bush's man--Bernackeee (sic) at the Federal Reserve is his man! Jesus Christ, how gullible we Americans are--

These men have wrecked our economy, sold our factory machinery to foreign countries, sent most productive jobs overseas, ruined our white-collar jobs, ruined our home ownership, ruined our credit system, ruined our national security by deploying all our troops to these unnecessary wars of his and Unka Dick's concoction--yet only Scooter Libby has had to do some jail time so far--Karl Rove is living well in Alabama now on a nice 6-figure income from Rupert Murdoch's Australian-American TV network, plus he makes a million or two as a John "Nutjob" McCain campaign advisor! And old fat prick Unka Dick Cheney--I mean this bastard shoots a man in the face and it's not even investigated--let's see you get away with that! Ah the privileged classes--how they hate us commoners--

They really do see themselves as royalty...

And T Boone Pickens, that crooked-as-a-snake-at-night son of a bitch, he's all over commercial teevee today blowing his own horn blaringly--owning the largest holdings of natural gas leases and stocks in this country--he's from up in Pampa, Texas, a place I know really well--the Pampa baseball team in my youth was the Oilers--and just down the road south of Pampa was Borger, Texas, and their baseball team was called the Gassers. I grew up in the midst of a huge oil and gas field that stretched from down below where G.W. Bush grew up in Odessa, Texas, on up into T. Boone's ranch at Pampa and then on up north into Wyoming, Unka Dick's phony home (Unka Dick's originally from Texas), which is just full of coal deposits and natural gas wells and filthy rich Texans--Unka Dick, don't you worry, owns a heap of natural gas wells himself. My own brother owned natural gas wells in Utah--so you see I grew up around these characters--I grew up in Dallas, the home of oil tycoons--sorry bastards all of them, the worst H.L. Hunt, who used to brag about only having a 3rd grade education--sayin', "You all don't need no edjee-ka-shun to git rich!"

Wealth. These independent entrepreneurs--like Warren Buffett and T Boone (think junk bonds when you think of these creeps)--are hogging all our wealth--these goons open our bank vaults to foreign investors...oh but I'm so tired of this! Fuck 'em all--I'm retreating into writing poetry...

Everytime I start writing poetry again I'm losing myself in thought to get away from the willies of reality--in celestial thought--in ethereal thought--in diverse thought...

And today in New York City was a perfect day. In the high sixties all day--and the best thing was--the city was the quietest I've heard it on a Sunday for many a moon...

Tomorrow will be another story--noise piled upon noise will greet me around 8 am--

Progress will ruin my day tomorrow...

Under the earphones I must go all day tomorrow...

Tonight--it's 8:30 pm--it's deathly quiet...

I took advantage of the quietness and slept till noon...

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Addendum:
I forgot to mention how pissed I am at this British girl fop, Tina Brown--ask her about Talk the magazine that was an instant failure--no, she can't go back to England--how the hell is she gonna make the bucks over there she can make over here failing! The privileged class, once they get known as having even the slightest power, can fail at will, move on to another project and fail at that and keep on movin' on up failing--like our faux president for instance--failure pays as well as success when you're in the privileged class...

And Tina Brown has stolen the name of The Daily Howler and The Daily Growler by starting her blog and calling it The Daily Beast. Why not The Daily Breast? She's backed by failed Hollywood goon Barry Diller (QV Network)--and it's a slick site, too--fuck her, though, I keep thinking...

www.thedailybeast.com/

And more insulting, here's an article that says...well read it!

www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-tina-browns-dailybeast-starts-with-a-growl-not-a-roar/

They ain't talkin' about wolves here--wolves don't roar--but you'd better watch out for their growl!

Back to England, Tina. We flush it down if it's brown in this country.

theGROWLINGwolf
for The Daily Growler addendum

Friday, October 24, 2008

Is Solvent Green Inevitable?

Sittin' Here Thinkin'
In my hometown on one of the college's football teams, the Wildcats, there was a quarterback...

I love traipsing into word jungles and then trying to worm my way out of them...

...but anyway whaaaaa? this quarterback's name was Ted Sitton.

That was when the T-formation had just come into football, and Ted Sitton worked out of the T...

A few years before that when the T-formation was really new, the Wildcats had a running back named Vitamin (real name Verda, or something like that) T Smith. Vitamin T Smith was a running back (a halfback) out of the shotgun formation, where the quarterback stands back 5 yards or so behind the center where the center then snaps the ball to him on the correct signal-- in the T-formation, V.T. would be in the fullback position (running back) about 8 yards in back of the quarterback who in the T is right up dog-style behind the center, taking the snap from the center's crotch...

And at about the same time, late 1940s early 1950s, as Vitamin T Smith was a running back for the Wildcats, across town at one of the other colleges, their team, the Cowboys, was a quarterback named John "Model T" Ford. And the Cowboys were a higher-ranked football (1A) team than Vitamin T Smith's Wildcats (2A) and Model T Ford for a brief moment was the leading quarterback in the USA, leading the country in passing and total yards...the Cowboys having the distinction of holding the NCAA record for number of post-season (bowl) games, 4, in one year, 1948. This caused the NCAA to make a rule that a college team could only go to one post-season game a year.

Vitamin T. Smith went on to play with the Los Angeles Rams NFL team--the 1950 team that had Bob Waterfield, Glen Davis, Tom Flear--setting a pro-kick-off runback record that still stood in 2005--Vitamin T. left the mortal coil in 2000.

All because of the T-formation--how the "T" got in their names--the formation still used in football today--it's hard to innovate off the T. The T's just a perfect American football formation. Yes, there's the I formation, but its the T without the crossbar, what used to be called half-backs are now boiled down to running backs. The current crop of young pro coaches is experimenting constantly--even using two quarterbacks, one in the fullback (running back (old tail back)) position--straight behind the quarterback about 8 yards...and some young coaches are putting a running-back-quarterback in that slot (the Steelers's coach, for instance), the big-time quarterback taking the snap then handing off to this fullback/quarterback and he has several options: he can run with the ball; he can pass the ball; or he can shovel it back to the big-time quarterback who can then try a Hail Mary since their pass protectors would be...oh shit...that's too damn much already.

L Hat recently wrote an interesting post at www.languagehat.com about reading and trying to understand without knowing the game a book explaining the Brit sport of cricket, from which the Brits brag baseball is a derivative, and they perhaps are correct, though baseball is a much finer and more beautifully wrought a game, based on the fairness of a diamond-shaped infield and a fan-shaped outfield--from dirt to lawn--a game you must concentrate on and not be wandering around the lawns drinking gin rickeys and "I sayin'" conservative crap with your old college chums while a long boring test match is going on in the field--all Brit sports, soccer, rugby, tennis, golf (actually a Dutch sport (Kolf) the Brit's now take credit for inventing) are interminably long in terms of time and endurance--it's that Brit determined White Man energy--ah, the glorious empire--and the irony here--ah sweet irony, old chap, and the irony to which I'm cutting against the grain of my overbearing mind trying to get to comes after the Brits took boring cricket out to its colonies during the heyday of the glorious empire to impress the "savage natives or slaves" (the woolly boogers and woggies) as to how truly STRONG and determined the WHITE MAN is, in spite of the White Man's Burden, at sport, war, and rule, that strength enforcing the Brit civilization and Anglican-Catholic divine rule and laws and orders on these untamed savage beasts just out of the jungle (evil Nature)--next stop after Nature is Hell, the core of the earth--remember, that place Captain Nemo journeyed to! The irony I was meandering to get to: check it out, the best cricket teams in the world now ain't no more in Mother England--they're now in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the Caribbean (especially Jamaica), and evil Africa ("I say, the Dark Continent...and the Lordy Lord told the White Man to take The Light into the World whether the Heathens god-damn liked it or not")...

Part of that evidence is the etymology of the word "golf" itself. "Golf" derives from the Old Scots terms "golve" or "goff," which themselves evolved from the medieval Dutch term "kolf."

The medieval Dutch term "kolf" meant "club," and the Dutch were playing games (mostly on ice) at least by the 14th Century in which balls were struck by sticks that were curved at the bottom until they were moved from Point A to Point B. Sounds a lot like hockey, doesn't it? Except that it sort of sounds like golf, too (except for that ice part).

The Dutch and Scots were trading partners, and the fact that the word "golf" evolved after being transported by the Dutch to the Scots lends credence to the idea that the game itself may have been adapted by the Scots from the earlier Dutch game.

Something else that lends credence to that idea: Although the Scots played their game on parkland (rather than ice), they (or least some of them) were using balls they acquired in trade from ... Holland.

From this jolly golf-info Website: golf.about.com/cs/historyofgolf/a/hist_golfbegin.htm

Thanks for letting me get my Anglophobic bitterness out of my system.
_____________________________________________________

I was listening this morning to John "Nutjob" McCain claiming Barack Hussein Obama's a Socialist! McCain's idea of Socialism is tied up in what Jowl-shakin' John calls "a redistribution of the wealth"--taking money away from the rich and GIVING it to the poor! Oh what a dastardly way to think! Jowl Shakin' John's really meaning "Liberal"--but that's a used-up negative now that Americans are turning back left due to the Repugnicans having fucked up their Neo-Conservative "Drive to the Bottom" Plans. So a redistribution of the wealth from the filthy rich down to the struggling poor (struggling because the rich have stolen all their jobs, their productive worth, their unions, their rights, and their paychecks), that's Socialism to Jowl Shakin' John. HEY, JOWL SHAKIN' JOHN, nationalizing the banks and nationalizing the debt of banks and financial institutions, you dumbass son of a bitch, that's Socialism--and that makes you a Socialist, too, you dumbass...

A serious Socialist is for nationalizing industry--like France took over Renault Motors rather than let it fail after WWII--restored Renault to a profitable company. National Socialists are Fascists.

Does Socialism come from Britain? George Bernard Shaw was a Socialist and a promoter of a world language--like Esperanto (ESP--yes, and all the texts on ESP recordings back in the late 70s (Albert Ayler was on ESP; Bud Powell in Paris right before he died was on ESP) were in both Esperanto and English).

Socialism in its "utopian" form should truly take from the rich and spread that fallow wealth out equally among the workingclass, the means of production--bring these people up to high-productive state...fuck the lumpenprolitariat!

But, hell, I'm just a stupid blogger. I love the way commercial television totally puts down blogs and bloggers; yet, the truth is, all these networks and newspapers and shit all have blogs--check 'em out on Google's blog search.

I listened last night to Allen "One-Foot-in-the-Grave" Greenspan denying he had anything to do with this Wall Street mess--a mess he actually created--with the help of Robert Ruben (Goldman-Sachs/CitiGroup), who is now one of Obama's top advisers. Obama said in his book that he admired Wall Street investors, etc. Another hypocrite, but what the hay...
______________________________________________________

The hammers have begun hammering on yet another New York City Friday morning! The hammerers also jabber loudly between themselves as they hammer. Yapping and hammering--

This noise is a factor that has to be faced if you live in New York City these days...the citizens of New York City count for nothing according to our little-man, billionaire, pompous-ass mayor--the current citizens of New York City are scumbags to this mayor--we don't make enough money for his rich ass. You know what, and check out the mayor's track record as a wealthy motherfucker in the Forbes Rich-Boy List--he was the 65th richest man in the US when he took office as mayor back after Rudi "Mussolini" Guiliani, Captain Courageous and Genius Crime Fighter (he swept through black and Latino neighborhoods and put every son of a bitch that got in his SWAT teams's way in prison from 25 to Life or they were convicted to death on the spot by pumping 46 bullets in their suspicious asses) got thrown out of office--and that bastard was sayin' this city needed his ass, too, and had to give him a third term--Rudi was just declaring he wasn't leaving office--as a result of the rightwingers in this City loving Rudi then put billionaire little-man Bloomingidiotburg into power since the citizens of NYC decided to not let Rudi have a permanent mayor job--and since our billionaire mayor has been in office--GUESS WHAT? This little developin'/rezonin'-fool asshole has risin' from 65th richest man in America to now the 8th richest man in the US. He was mayor during that time--bragging about how he took only one dollar a year salary--which means this bastard only pays W-2 taxes on $1 a year--something fishy there isn't there? Why shouldn't we the citizens of New York City be shown just how this billionaire bastard made so much money while he was supposedly working hard as mayor--rezoning and ruining neighborhoods--allowing a huge block of city-private-developed land to be sold to his development-mad buddies (like good ole tacky-haired Donald "Pompous Hick Asshole" Trump)--I'm spittin' in the wind, I know! It did give me a thrill though seeing protesters railing at the little-man-billionaire-mayor's ass as he walked, he thought triumphantly, out of the City Council meeting that had just illegally given him permission (and them too don't forget) to run for an illegal third term (the vote was close--29-to-22)--and the little bastard gets so pissed off when people rail at him and boo his pompous little ass--he demands worship--he's RICH and he's PRIVILEGED and he's a member of the POWER ELITE--whether he runs again and loses or runs again and wins, he's already CHANGED New York City into a traffic-tied-up crazy (the mayor's crosstown traffic plan a total failure) metropolitan DisneyLand with tacky tour buses and phony rubberwheeled streetcars and fast-food garbage strewn all over most of the streets in Manhattan--a place where high rents, taxes, and hotel rooms are driving the cost-of-living in New York City now through the fucking roof--only a billionaire mayor and his billionaire cronies can afford to live here--a place that used to be full of jobs because all the industries were headquartered here and there were plenty of front-office and back-office jobs with great benefits (health care was considered an incentive to interest the best workers into applying for your jobs--incentives included health care, a 35-hour work week, two weeks' sick leave, two weeks' vacation --increasing the longer you stayed with the company--and, yeah, you stayed with companies your whole careers in those long-forgotten now and good ole then days--and I guarantee you, folks, young or old, that was the best time ever in the history of New York City--a good times that started in the mid-sixties with the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-All-War Movement and lasted until the AIDS epidemic hit us in 1982! Free at last attitudes all around in the city then--blacks, Latinos, Asians, whites, Jews, Arabs mingling--and then along came Reagan and AIDS and that was the end of the secular humanist party. And what plans WE had for this country--unisex fashions and styles, feminists going braless and wearing miniskirts and Gays and Lesbians coming eagerly out of their closets to join the fun in this town...
______________________________________________________
One good thing I've read by an upstate NY pundit, out of Rochester, was that he's saying rent controls will have to be reinstated in New York City to save affordable housing in this economic-disaster crisis that G.W. "Dumbass Rich Boy" Bush and the Bush Family Empire got us into and out of which this little crooked self-pleased asshole will come out of free as a bird--

Americans are scared to death of rich people--and they should be. The biggest terrerists in this world are the wealthy, the Plutocrats, the biggest terrerist organization in the world is our own Military Industrial Complex--we depend on WAR for our economy...

How nice it is to disappear under my awesome stereo earphones and get lost in music still relevant even though some of it is 100 years old now--still calming--still cooling....

theluxuriouslyrelaxedgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Check Out the Hardin-Simmons University Records in 1942 and 1946--1946 Model T Ford Was Their Quarterback:

1946-Hardin-Simmons (Border)

9/21vs.McMurry (non-IA)W310
9/28vs.Kansas State (0-9)W217
10/5vs.San Jose State (non-IA)W347
10/18@*New Mexico (5-5-2)W490
10/26vs.*Arizona State (2-7-2)W466
11/2@*Arizona (4-4-2)W198
11/9vs.*West Texas A&M (5-5)W287
11/16@*Texas-El Paso (3-6)W207
11/23vs.Howard Payne (non-IA)W330
11/30vs.*Texas Tech (8-3)W216
1/4vs.Denver (5-5-1)W200@ San Antonio, TXAlamo Bowl

11-0-0


32248

1943-1945 - not rated

1942-Hardin-Simmons (Border)

9/19vs.Howard Payne (non-IA)W120
9/26@Baylor (6-4-1)W136
10/3vs.North Texas (non-IA)W340
10/10vs.Southern Methodist (3-6-2)W76@ San Antonio, TX
10/17vs.Louisiana Tech (non-IA)W4713
10/24vs.*Arizona State (2-8)W210
10/31vs.*Texas-El Paso (5-4)W397
11/7@*West Texas A&M (7-2)W400
11/14@*Arizona (6-4)W3426
11/21@*Texas Tech (4-5-1)T00
1/1vs.Second Air Force (Washington) (non-IA)L713@ El Paso, TXSun Bowl

9-1-1


25471

Note: An asterisks before a team name means they were in the Border Conference (New Mexico, Arizona, Arizona State, West Texas A&M, Texas School of Mines, Texas Technological College (Texas Tech) and HSU--only 7 teams in that conference; later New Mexico State came in to make the 8th team). Texas-El Paso in those years was the Texas School of Mines; later it became Texas Western (won the NCAA basketball championship under that name); West Texas A&M later became West Texas State (it's in Canyon, Texas); Howard Payne was a small Baptist college in Brownwood, Texas--they used to have tough football teams and world-champion cross-country track teams, plus Baptist colleges were obligated by divine intervention to play each other; McMurry was a small college in Abilene, Texas, a Methodist college. HSU being a Baptist school wouldn't play the other Abilene college, Abilene Christian College, because it was a Church of Christ institution opposed to Baptists and Methodists in their fundie-side religious beliefs, but ACC had some great NAIA football teams--undefeated in 1950--played Gustavus Adolphus in the Refrigerator Bowl in Indiana that winter/Abilene Christian had one of the world's best track teams in the late 50s--the great 100-yard-dash and relay-team champion (he won 3 gold medals in Melbourne Olympics) Bobby Morrow went to ACC).
____________________________________________________________

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Notes From Above Ground

The View From the Mousehole
"Giant salamanders!, Batman!" Batboy (Robin) watching the stock market drop.

In the meantime hobbling in from left field comes ass-dragging Allan Greenspan to do some more Wall Street/Federal Reserve PR-ing. What pack of lies has old grizzled Allan come up with now we wonder?

Yes, C. Wright Mills knew it back in 1956, but, hell, 1956! That's long before our twentyish trendsetters and neo-pundits were born. They think of 1956 as being somewhere back about the time maybe their parents were born--"Oh, god, that was awesome years ago! Have you got the latest cell-phone-internet-handheld-electro-magnetic-gadget-made-in-Singapore-yet? War? What's war? The VietNam War--didn't we win that one? When was that one again? Oh, and Jeez, I'd forgotten about the Persian Gulf War--I was only 8--Normin' Stormer, I remember my dad talking about him--who was president then? Bush? Oh, that's right, G.W.'s grandfather, right?--oh, his father! Jeez, I'm so awesomely not with history!"

We pander to children. Children all over teevee--children tell mom and dad which SUV to buy--children even tell mom what detergent to buy! Children on teevee promote McDonalds--yet, we'll bet more adults eat at McDonald's than kids--and kids promote toilet paper--we love the "bear shits in the woods" toilet paper commercial--remember when Scott's Bathroom Tissue advertised it had more sheets (read: "shits") per roll than all the other brands--because of that ad we use Scott's here at the fabulous downtown underground hi-rise-the-other-way offices of The Daily Growler--"Hey, this 'up' elevator is going down."

We say fuck children! Put Miley Cyrus back in a B.F. Skinner box and calm her hormones down! Except, if you put Miley in child protection, how's her old hick daddy, Billy Ray, gonna make a living? We can't wait for Miley's first Playboy lay-out (legs open we hope)--it won't be long--when's she 18, 2 years?--OK, she'll be really ripe and nice for old Heff by then--even at 86, old Heff still likes 'em blonde and bombshelly--he'll probably have to pay for a breast enhancement job on Miley!
thesarcasticstaff
for The Daily Growler

From thegrowlingwolf
I'm under the earphones for real today--they've started construction on the 18-story hotel that's going up next to my building--only about 20-feet east of my bay window--they are beginning digging out the basement of that building--that's usually when these illegal immigrant construction crews accidentally dig into your building's foundation--"Hay, carumba, mucho malo"--right next to this site a five-story building collapsed back about 15 years ago--plus for two years there'll be a twenty-five story crane hanging its collapsible head right over my apartment.

I'm listening to myself under the earphones--in September and October I laid down 10 tracks trying to get recognized as both a performer and composer (actually a songwriter, though I've written a lot of instrumental renderings, too)--it's the best shit I've done in a long time--the most mature--I'm still a blues idiom advocate but I've toyed with contemporary rhythms--working off drum beds--oh well, that's just me, my way of composing! I think I hear a trend of contemporary music going back to melodies--we haven't had any good melodies written in this country since the 1950s--as Tony Bennett pointed out to Chet Flippo back in the 90s when he talked about the obsolescent factor in the music business today.

I saw the Backstreet Boyz last night singing the National Anthem (that boring, hard-to-sing, overversed bullshit war chant) at the World Series opener, and god-damn, how old do those dudes look now! They ain't boyz no more! They did F. Scott Key's battle hymn the normal way of doing it at sporting events these days--like a black person would sing it--and I laughed my backstreet-boy-wolfie ass off when the dyed-blond BS boy started singing like he was black--you know that stretching out of notes--getting four modulations out of one word! Like the Righteous Brothers used to sing white as though they were black--and they sold more records imitating Sam and Dave than Sam and Dave did giving out their real thing. The Righteous Brothers singing r and b was the same as Pat Boone singing Little Richard's "Tutti Fruitti"--and what a fruity job that was.

You see, black music is the Devil's music to white people--the power elite--and to some overholy-rolling black people, too--and white people can't stand a music that makes a young girl's hips start to shaking and bucking and a young boy trick-dancing his best all around her--a mating ritual, YES! All male animals have their trick dances to attract females--who dance away in tease--dance away, until the conquering male spins her around into his arms--the dance award comes--"said our plumber still plumbing, it's me!"--after the dance.

I'm twisted. Politics is such bullshit. Low bullshit at that. Fuck both candidates now, I'm hollering--growling about how I'd love it if Nutjob McCain and Paleface Palin stole the election--and they'll try--they have Karl Rove on their team, 'cept they're both so fucking dumb and possessive and self-important. I can't wait until on election eve when Sarah Palin announces she, her husband, Nutjob McCain and Go-Go Cindy have video tape of Obama in some bugged hotel room banging his white mistress! Oh that's'a comin' surely--racism is Nutjob McCain's only ace in the hole now--and damn right he'll use it in Florida, North Carolina, Virginny, West Virginny, those white hick states (Tallahassee's in the swamps, man)--and, yes, folks, Florida is a hick state--I know, I've lived in Boca and Key West! Miami scared me it was so wildly fatalistic!

Remember "the Narrative." To steal elections you need a narrator with a narrative--McCain & Palin's basic message in putting Ob(s)ama down is a racist one--they're white privileged so they have more experience than a young, dichty, uppity black man--except both McCain and Palin I'm sure use the N-word liberally. Remember, McCain can cuss like a sailor and I'll bet Sweet Sarah of Alaska can cuss like a mean-ass moth'a 'ho.

You ever heard of "bundlers"? I've come across some words during this too-long presidential race I don't remember hearing ever used before--like the word "vetting." Since when did someone getting "vetted" come onto the scene?

Remember the blues idiom vote song: Sunnyland Slim's "Be Careful How You Vote."

Why not a receipt when you vote--like the receipts you get when you use an ATM machine?

The sandwich line at the Subway Sandwich Shop in my neighborhood is getting longer and longer day by day--long lines of working class folks coming in for their "full meals"--a footlong sandwich, a big 16 oz killer sugar cola, and a bag of transfat chips or Cheetos, whichever's worse for you--all for under 9 bucks--unless you tip to poor buggers who work their Indonesian (in the store in my neighborhood) butts off a buck or so! The Sandwich Generation has been born. No more cat and dog food for the down and out--it's too expensive now--more expensive than a Subway footlong.

My meal last night at my favorite Irish pub was $38.90--$47 with tip. Sheeeeshhh! It was good though--sesame chicken in a honey-mustard sauce--crisp and nice--with a big pile of rice--a couple of beers--ah sweet truckin'--good eating.

Saw a documentary on Abbie Hoffman and the '68 Chicago absurd trial for the Chicago 8--and it was good to see Abbie at his best--his wittiest and sarcastic best. What a wit; what a quick mind; what a funny dude! And they had some old tapes of Abbie on Bob Fass's NYC-WBAI all-night radio show back in them thar days--and I remember Abbie on Bob Fass's Thursday night show and then on Steve Post's Saturday Evening Post back when I arrived in NYC in 1969--and Post's show went all night long--and Abbie would be on with Paul Krasner and Marshall Efron--Holy Moley Rounders--those days are long gone--Abbie committed suicide in a chicken coop in New Jersey after running from the fucking FBI for 20 years--even on the run he still managed to keep involved--finally being homesick and depressed brought Abbie back to New York City--and Abbie starred briefly once again on the Howard Stern KRock morning show here when he came back--in fact, it was on Howard's show that I first heard, Howard announced it, that Abbie had died. The late sixties and early 70s were good years in New York City--we were all so sure we were taking over and kicking the rascals and the old fucks out--free pot in Central Park--women going natural and being naturally beautiful--fuck make up and fuck bras and panties--and fuck shoes--and there was nothing more beautiful than a barefoot hippy girl wearing a guinea tee-shirt with no bra and a big full floral-patterned skirt--wrestling around maybe with a fellow hippy chick...on the ground; in the mud at Woodstock...oh, but I'm roaring back into those days through sentimental journeys...I have no time in this present tense for reminiscing.

And son of a bitch, just as we real New Yorkers thought we were getting rid of our god-damn, little man, billionaire mayor the son of a bitch looks down his nose at We the People and announces, fuck the law, he's gonna run again--the city's broke due to the Wall Street mess and by god we need his expertise--so he's running again! The bastard. The snooty little prick--he's running again because he knows the truth about how wrecked this city's economy is and how wrecked the city treasury is and how there are no longer any jobs in NYC and the real estate market even here in NYC is fixing to blow skyhigh! Get ready to jump, you bastards! And the NYC city council--those crooked assholes get most of their money to run for their illegal third terms from the real estate industry--poor bastards! Jump, you sons'a bitches--jump off those penthouse balconies!

They are now selling hi-rise penthouse apartments down on the Lower East Side for 33 million bucks a piece--based on so much a square foot now--like $2,000 a square foot!

Disgusting.

thedisgustedgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Monday, October 20, 2008

Damn, It's Already Tuesday--Tempus Fugit

An Apology From thegrowlingwolf
A post or so back, I said we could stop calling Colon's Pal Colon's Pal now due to his, I thought, confessing how wrong he'd been as Sec'y of State under War Lord Bush by saying he was backing Obama! David Sirota has set me straight on this and god-damn, son of a bitch, he also made me kick myself in my wolf-man ass for letting myself be such a ninny when it comes to trying to find something decent in these political zombies we've created that now humbug all around us spending half-a-billion dollars trying to get elected (chosen by the Electoral College or maybe appointed by the Supreme(ly backward) Court) to a job that pays at most what $350,000 a year? POWER! I keep forgetting what I learned reading C. Wright Mills--

And I have to stop here and give you some C. Wright Mills. He's a Sociologist! He's a Sociologist from my era of studying Sociology and its many influences--he's one of the Sociology masters who instructed me in sociological reasoning. C. Wright Mills is famous for a book he wrote in the early 1950s, published in 1956, The Power Elite, written a decade after WWII ended, that the "righteous" war--the war in which America and the Christian god Yahweh (the Corporations) got together big time, thus the reason for C. Wright's writing this book--HERE, read this--and remember this is what my generation of Sociologists have known since reading this--how pro-fucking-phetic is this?

The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family, and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern. 'Great changes' are beyond their control, but affect their conduct and outlook none the less. The very framework of modern society confines them to projects not their own, but from every side, such changes now press upon the men and women of the mass society, who accordingly feel that they are without purpose in an epoch in which they are without power.

But not all men are in this sense ordinary. As the means of information and of power are centralized, some men come to occupy positions in American society from which they can look down upon, so to speak, and by their decisions mightily affect, the everyday worlds of ordinary men and women. They are not made by their jobs; they set up and break down jobs for thousands of others; they are not confined by simple family responsibilities; they can escape. They may live in many hotels and houses, but they are bound by no one community. They need not merely 'meet the demands of the day and hour'; in some part, they create these demands, and cause others to meet them. Whether or not they profess their power, their technical and political experience of it far transcends that of the underlying population. What Jacob Burckhardt said of 'great men,' most Americans might well say of their elite: 'They are all that we are not.'

The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences. Whether they do or do not make such decisions is less important than the fact that they do occupy such pivotal positions: their failure to act, their failure to make decisions, is itself an act that is often of greater consequence than the decisions they do make. For they are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.

The power elite are not solitary rulers. Advisers and consultants, spokesmen and opinion-makers are often the captains of their higher thought and decision. Immediately below the elite are the professional politicians of the middle levels of power, in the Congress and in the pressure groups, as well as among the new and old upper classes of town and city and region. Mingling with them, in curious ways which we shall explore, are those professional celebrities who live by being continually displayed but are never, so long as they remain celebrities, displayed enough If such celebrities are not at the head of any dominating hierarchy, they do often have the power to distract the attention of the public or afford sensations to the masses, or, more directly, to gain the ear of those who do occupy positions of direct power. More or less unattached, as critics of morality and technicians of power, as spokesmen of God and creators of mass sensibility, such celebrities and consultants are part of the immediate scene in which the drama of the elite is enacted. But that drama itself is centered in the command posts of the major institutional hierarchies.

[from the first chapter of The Power Elite, by C. Wright Mills]

Now, holy Jezebel, how god-damn relevant is the above TODAY? My cynical ass has always hollered, "Nothing changes, you bastards, saying you're going to change things if you get elected! Bullshit!" As C. Wright points out, the President, Congress, and politicians are second-level power elites! In that position, neither Obama or Nutjob McCain can change a god-damn thing! Only the Power Elites above them, the heads of corporations, the owners of the wealth, etc., can affect change!

And that's why I'm callin' Soldier Nutjob Colon's Pal Colon's Pal again--pissed off--because David Sirota outscooped me on this one--I totally flipped over on my back and foolishly was wanting to be tickled because I thought it hilarious--but god-dammit, that so now pisses me off--so I've loosed myself from the leash of political correctness--Colon's Pal is a lying son of a bitch--a god-damn house Knee-Grow to the Power Elite--lyin' like a dog in Viet Nam where he was house boy under General Westmoreland the dickhead South Carolinian bigot who fouled up so badly in leading the troops to their deaths and certainly their insanity in that extremely stupid VietNam Tragedy--it's no longer a war--it's a tragedy now--so, fuck Colon's Pal! And then how dare Obama to not just simply accept Colon's endorsement, he couldn't do much about that, but then to go on and say Colon's Pal was going to become one of his advisers--and then, Jesus Holy Christ! to go on and say he was going to find a place for this lying military-warmongering dick in his administration! Fuck you, Barack, you ain't president yet! And yes I know I'm using white privilege, but, hey, if you want you can vote for Cynthia McKinney, a black woman, who's telling it very much like it is and who has well-thought-out ideas and suggestions, though she ain't got a chance in hell of being elected since she's totally been pushed out of the political arena by the ruthless Repugnicans and the two-faced Dumbocrats--totally ignoring our supposedly multi-party system--though it's never been anything but a ONE-PARTY system--the party of the Power Elite--and these assholes are still partying, baby--partying hearty on their yachts or on their private islands--trying to come up with some more changes to put us all through!

Fuck these bastards--put 'em in dungeons and feed 'em bread and water for the rest of their worthless, robbing, crooked lives! Why can't the people take POWER away from these assholes? Cause the people no longer control the commonwealth! The way to get it back? Don't pay taxes, of course, is the easiest way--that's the way the white Revolutionaries did it back during the Boston Tea Party days--where they disguised themselves as Native Americans--"Fuck paying taxes to fucking King George III, that schizo morganatic goutish bastard!"--without taxes what the hell is the POWER ELITE gonna do? Also, stop buying their products--put 'em all out of business--and without taxes, these second-story power elites like the politicians and the president, faux or otherwise, can't steal your money and your rights and bail the Power Elite out of the fixes it got itself into! But, in my anger, I forgot, the Power Elite have created Blackwater and Dimecorp as their private armies--and they certainly control our police, local and national, and all our security industries and data-gathering search engines--and they control our voting machines--and that's why voting now seems to me to be ridiculous! Vote by not paying taxes--pool what you would be forced to pay and use it in a revolutionary way. Flood these assholes with summonses not tons of money like Barack Obama and John Nutjob McCain are wasting running now for almost two years for president in the meantime allowing this country and now the rest of the world to sink deeper into what's gonna turn out to be one of the worst son of a bitchin' hard-times depressions you ever did see!

Yahoo, Chaos is here. I can hear Henry Miller cheering in his grave--"YOU were right, Henry! Chaos like abstract art and atonal music is wonderful!"

theapologeticgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

The Hammer, a filler essay by The Wolf-Man Hybrid
--Without the hammer where would man be? Still living in tree houses; sod houses; hay-bale houses, paper houses, animal-skin homes? My dad had about 5 hammers--he had his precious Stanley claw hammer with the cherrywood handle--that was HIS royal hammer--no one else in the world, especially not a son, could use it. Then came his "ball-teen" hammer--I'm pronouncing it phonetically--which was a hammer with a standard hammerhead on one end and a round ball-like head on the other end. My dad taught me how to hammer using the ball-teen hammer. His next hammer was his tack hammer. Tack hammers were slender-headed with a small standard hammerhead on one end and a magnetic head on the other end. A good tack hammerer could hammer tacks in a mile-a-minute, like carpetlayers--what the best ones did was put several tacks in their mouths, you see, then they'd put the magnet end on the hammer up to their mouths, capture a tackhead on the magnet head, to then with a whip-like action hammer the tack down into the wood, then twirl the hammer over and drive the tack home with the slender hammerhead end--like furniture upholsterers, too, were major pros with tack hammers. It was an art that only a professional carpenter like my dad could pull off, always babbling as he hammered away about carpenters he'd known who'd accidentally swallowed three of four tacks while laying carpet and to then pop four more tacks in their mouths and keep on layin' that carpet. That's one reason I never wanted to follow in my old man's footsteps--the carpenter route--I kept wondering how it felt to shit with a bunch of tacks coming out your tight ass--or what havoc were tacks in your stomach or gut wreaking--not for me.

Then my dad had this big rubberheaded hammer that he called his mallet. They used these big hammers mainly in automotive repair shops--to do fender repairs and such--but my dad used his when changing flat tires. When you had a flat in those days, you had to take the tire casing off the wheel rim to get the innertube out so you could find the leak, put a monkey grip tire patch over it, put the innertube back in the casing so the air input valve poked through its proper hole in the casing, then you had to pry the casing back over the rim with the rubberhead mallet and the prior bar and then you filled the innertube with air--filled it with air up to the proper pressure. So you used that rubberheaded mallet and a prior bar (tire iron) to get the casing off the rim and back on the rim--oh surely thou doth get it!

To check the pressure of your tires, you used a pressure gauge--my dad carried his tire pressure gauge around with him everywhere he went, clipped in his shirt pocket along with his ball-point pens--you put too much air in these innertubes and they would blow out inevitably while you were say cruising along say at 60 mph--next thing you know you hear a loud POW and the next thing you know your car is skidding toward the roadside ditch with such a force you end up with your car flipped upsidedown and you maybe buying the farm. I can remember when traveling how conscious my dad was about blowouts. He'd check the tire pressure every time he pulled in for gas or when we stopped in roadside parks to eat or pulled into motels at night, then of course before we pulled out the next morning. My dad had been taught that temperature affected tire pressure. I still remember the dire statement, "Mister, you sure you got enough air in them tires? This 'un back here looks a little low to me."

Among my dad's hammers was also a small all-steel hammer--a silver hammer that shined like the moon when he polished it up good. It was his utility hammer but I never remember seeing him use it--he'd let me handle it but I don't remember ever using it either. He carried the silver hammer away from the other hammers in his small metal tool chest. The other hammers he kept in his huge wooden tool chest he'd built himself following a pattern his father, a master carpenter and contractor, had created back in the late 1800s--a huge wooden chest with tons of compartments in a removable shelf that hanged over a deep bottom--it was painted a bright orange and it had a big stainless steel lock on it. These tool chests contained all my father's many tools: ratchet wrenches, monkey wrenches, the big screwdriver, several smaller screwdrivers (including always a Phillips head screwdriver), a small T-square and a big metal T-square, his handmade bubble leveler, a drop line chalk marker, his many rulers--his big wooden one and his big metal one that was in a case that when you had finished measuring with it you pushed the button on it and it would suck the tape back up into the case automatically--his caulking gun and tube of caulk, his sortering iron and his big spool of sorter, his cotter wrenches, and tons of little cardboard boxes full of nails, tacks, bolts, nuts, screws, etc. My dad's tool chest. I wrote a song years ago about my dad leaving home one day during the Depression--leaving his family and going off to find work--and a little kid wondering where his dad had gone and the family kept telling the little kid not to worry about his daddy because his daddy was gone off on the railroad off looking for a job--and the little kid went to his dad's closet and looked in it and first saw his dad's hat still hanging where he always hung it and then he saw his dad's tool chest where it always sat and then he knew his dad would be coming back--it was a good song though when I tried to introduce it to the band I was with at the time, they rejected it.

Every carpenter's belt has always had a loop on it in which he or she kept their best hammer. The hammer. The tool that rules. And as I write this a whole flock of hammers are hammering away madly far across the building roofs over on Sixth Avenue where they are building a 72-story hotel--they've already got 4 floors up--working on a fifth--they hammer constantly over there starting at 8 am and going on until about 3:30 pm when most construction workers quit for the day.

Mrs. Voltaire
On Amy Goodman's Democracy Now show Monday morning, she had Mrs. Voltaire (a Haitian-American) on air with the woman who founded Code Pink. Mrs. Voltaire was haranguing she was so pissed--you see, a month or so ago, her eldest son had been killed in Iraq. She said one government source said he committed suicide--but another source told her he was probably shot by friendly fire--plus, they first told her she had to come up with $15,000 to get his body shipped back to her--then that figured went up to $25,000, which she said couldn't pay so she still hasn't gotten her son's body back yet. This story is so wild it's hard to write about--a jumbled mess. While all of the bullshit between her and the Offensive Defense Department was going on, a friend called Mrs. Voltaire last Thursday and told her that they saw her home listed on the Internet as going up for auction as a foreclosure the very next day. Turned out the company foreclosing on Mrs. Voltaire was her subprime mortgage lender, she had remortgaged her home to send her eldest son now dead to college, was none other than good ole Larry "Treat 'Em Like Irresponsible Shit" Litton's Litton Loan Sharking Inc.--a division of WHAT company? Why Goldman-Sachs! I'll be a monkey's fucking uncle! Old Sec'y Treasure Hank Paulson's company--and you bet that son of a bitch is still connected to Goldman-Sachs--look at the supreme-control (power elite) position this bailout has given Goldman-Sachs--and the Federal Reserve head, too, another Goldman-Sachs goon--and Larry Litton believes if you don't make your mortgage payments you're a bum so he puts your house up for the highest foreclosure-predator to bid on! Larry Litton does not believe in remortgaging or reducing interest payments and refinancing loans where they are easier to pay off! Hell no. Larry says an N-worder is an N-worder and these dumbass N-worders shouldn't have taken out these loans if they couldn't pay them back--WITH INTEREST! Fortunately for Mrs. Voltaire, Code Pink gathered up $30,000 and paid her mortgage up but she's still not forgiven yet and is still subject to foreclosure.

Dumbass suckers here in New York City who bought million-dollar apartments during the phony boom that only a few years ago were $300,000 apartments (condos)(suites) with awfully low interest rates are now seeing their mortgage payments going skyhigh, which means their interest on these loans is now maybe 11% where it once was 6%--so even these poor suckers who want to live a sky-high phony life in NYC are now cryin' the blues and trying to sell their apartments--with these silly fools hoping there are Europeans, Arabs, and Israelis still out there prowling around New York City with huge pools of money behind them buying up condos and big buildings and low-level buildings and hotels and shit--but NOW--even these crooks are suffering. I just saw where in London where only a year ago everyone was spending money big time on art and big cars and castles and penthouses, you know conspicuously consuming, we used to call it "Keeping up with the Joneses," but now, just a year later, the fine arts major head of Sotheby's in London says collectibles sales are down 50%--a recent sale of Andy Warhol's pop-shit failed to even come close to the estimated catalog value of the stuff--way off by millions. All the little new rich bastards are losing their crisply laundered shirts--even though I notice Prince William and Prince Harry, those charming worthless fop brats of a morganatic royal family full of bastards--Nazi if you trace it back far enough--and remember when one of these dopey princes tried to symbolize his family's heritage by wearing an authentic Nazi trooper uniform to a classy social blast in London a few years back?--well, these young assholes are currently riding motorcycles with a bunch of other spoiled-brat and privileged fops, totally worthless to me and you and the rest of the struggling world, on motorcycles--I say, cycling about South Africa, for charity's sake, they're ballyhooing--Prince Harry was heard saying, "I say, blokes, my old worthless sot grandmother used to own this N-worder-choked country--oops, did I say the N-word--oh, that's so like me, isn't it, I say!"--One close to the Prince with his lips tight on Harry's filthy asshole was heard to mumble, "Oh, Prince Harry, your high-ass, you're so brilliantly witty, I say"--but I'm bias, don't forget.

And what a bunch of fops artists and art buyers are anyway these days. Andy Warhol for instance was a great American commercial artist who in making fun of himself and commercial art and the art public created what the "experts" labeled pop art--and then op art--and now we have oops art--this British fop who makes these very tacky and gaudy animals and toilets and shit--I can't recall his name but he's the latest art sensation out of England, where America unfortunately gets a lot of its "arts" from these days. Funny how British artists are accepted over here...oh, I forgot, we white folks in this country love Brits--we worship them--Brits are all over our commercial teevee. Brit salesmen, for instance, are thought to be the greatest salesmen in the world--watch a bunch of infomercials (those beastly devices that made commercials television shows in themselves) and on nearly every one of these marketing trick-bag shows you have a fast-talking limey shoveling the shit a ton deep as he tries to hustle you into buying a piece-of-shit product that's probably made in China by babies--like these stupid plastic mops that miraculously wash your floors and wax them at the same time or all these varieties of exercise machines or these vulgar-looking little tiny bullet-shaped machines that chop onions and fruits and shit up--something you could do just as fast with a good knife--or even a hammer!

But fuck all that. I'm currently under the earphones listening to a fascinating orgelmeister piece written by American composer Charles Jones entitled, "Emblemata for Organ," played by Justin Bischof. It floats like gently flowing stream--only to build and then keep building, amassing more and more energy as though gaining strength in order to face the inevitable coming cataract of a totally flooding stream of jammed sound! Soon the god-damn organ just spills out its most-pedal-to-the-metal skyscraper of organ energy--though not as majestically as Charles Ives's "Variations on America" can be played or the organ work of the great French master Marcel Dupre. [I once left the Hotel Colbert on a soggy Paris Sunday afternoon and strolled over to Saint-Sulpice Place to check out the famous Saint-Sulpice Church (supposedly built over an Egyptian pagan temple--I did not know at the time anything about the Di Vinci Code--I now understand this church plays a big role in that stupid book due to a brass line that goes from S to N across the church floor to end at the foot of an Egyptian obilesk that sits in the northern corner of the church), and as I walked into the tight street I heard coming from this church a forceful organ music pouring out the opened front doors--I went up the steps and peeked in--there was a dude playing the organ--way back deep in this high-vaulted baroque church. I stood on those steps and listened and then it stopped. An American guy was doing the same across from me and I asked him, "Who the hell is that playing that organ--the dude's a genius" and he said, "That's Marcel Dupre, the greatest"]. [When I first came to NYC, one Saturday afternoon in the Loeb Student Center at NYU I accidentally met a guy who told me his name was Calvin Hampton and he told me he gave organ recitals every Sunday afternoon at this church using the donations to buy a new organ for the church--and I went and found Calvin to be one hell of an talented organist and an interesting lecturer too on organology--and besides, he was playing contemporary organ music--he even played Ives's "Variations on America," and what a great work that is--there is a holy-moly great orchestrated version of it by Morton Gould--I've only seen it on LP, one of which I have, though there must be a CD or an MP3 version of it somewhere on the Internet. I find it quaint how I now get most of my information off the Internet. What a great idea! Thanks, Al Gore, for giving us such a broadband of flowing information that has so many fountainheads!]

Let me hammer this post down to an end. Going, going, sold to the highest bidder.

thehammerheadedgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler


Addendum: I'm currently listening to a CD entitled I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart that features James Clay, a tenorman from Dallas, Texas, and a man I had the pleasure of knowing on a more than just a one-time-hand-shake-glad-to-meet-ya kind of relationship in college. I saw James nearly every day in those days, we were in the same jazz music department, me hanging out there, him studying there, and he playing in the band there and me digging the band there--and then 5 years later when I had my first job in Dallas, James was workin' in the Ray Charles band, becoming famous, and I'd go to the Green Parrot and sit on the steps (whites weren't allowed in the club) and listen to James blow when he'd come home on tour breaks with Brother Ray and play there--and what a sound he had on tenor and flute--and James would come out of the club on his break to smoke and take a little nip and he'd always know me and trade skin with me--and James went on to the West Coast and made one album with Lawrence Marable the drummer on the Pacific Jazz label (?)--a great album--the CD or LP are too expensive for me right now because the recording has the pianist Sonny Clark on it and that makes it hot--but then in 1989, John Snyder took James along with Cedar Walton, David Williams, and the truly great Billy Higgins out to Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and made this recording I'm listening to now--a beautiful CD with a lot of space for James to do his thing--plenty space for Cedar Walton, too--a surprisingly more attacking pianist than I remember--each track is around 7 minutes long--10 tracks, including "Trane's Blues" also known as "John Paul Jones a.k.a. Trane's Blues," as it is on this CD. James is blowing his ass off on this CD--being punched up by Billy Higgins's all-star drumming and Cedar Walton is hot on this one, too, hot as a pistol with fingers flying firing off bird-flight runs all intervaled and broken perfectly--though how can you miss with Billy Higgins drummin' behind you? David Williams is a walker of solid time--he dragged a beat just then, but we'll forgive him that--it's probably a head arrangement--James simply sayin' "Trane's Blues in D" then stompin' it off--and boom no problem for Billy and Cedar but maybe a little problem for David...still it rocks me into an ease and mellowness--fuck Obama, Nutjob McCain, Colon's Pal, Hank Paulson, Sweet Sarah of Alaska--and I was proud to hear Father Lawrence E. Lucas, my favorite priest and a member of The Daily Growler Hall of Champions to boot use the phrase "Sweet Sarah" on Mrs. Granpa Al Lewis's WBAI radio show t'other Saturday. I'd be proud as Punch to know Father Lucas was reading The Daily Growler.

Peace out!
therelaxedgrowlingwolf
in Addendum