All You Need...

I've heard nothing but great things about the Tony Palmer TV documentary "All You Need Is Love", a very comprehensive 17 part documentary on the history of popular music. Now I've seen the first few episodes and I'm a little beumsed. The shows I've seen do have some rare performance footage and impressive interviews with the likes of John Hammond and Eubie Blake, but some of the juxtapositions and conclusions reached had me scratching my head.

The four shows I saw were on the African roots of popular music, ragtime, jazz and blues. Understandably there was a lot in these subjects on how black musicians had to dilute their work to appeal to white audiences but two of the seeming examples of this were Louis Armstrong and James Brown!  Even odder, the first part of the Jazz program was narrated by someone named Al Roth who insisted that jazz did not come out of the  Storyville brothels of New Orleans (which writes Jelly Roll Morton out of history) or develop in Chicago speakeasies though he doesn't really give any alternative explanation for where it all came from.

The Jazz show is the oddest of the four. Obviously in an hour TV program it would be impossible to touch on all the essential figures in the genre, but Duke Ellington's only mention comes in passing when Hammond discusses the dishonesty of the music business and Count Basie's sole appearance is in contrast to footage of the Ku Klux Klan.  Later on they have musicians like Dave Brubeck, John Lewis and George Shearing talk about the importance of structure in jazz which would seem to be a rebuke to the 60's New Thing which is not even directly brought up. There's no mention of Ornette Cleman and John Coltrane is only shown in footage of his days with Miels Davis.  Interestingly the show does put some focus on what was then the current scene by showing Chick Corea fooling around on a syntthesizer and, since this was a British production, performance footage of British scenesters Mike Gibbs and Ian Carr.

Then there are other odd things like the Blues episode never mentioning Robert Johnson and ending with ten minutes on Billie Holiday who rarely sang blues. Then there is also the way that the same footage of modern day strippers is somehow shoehorned in to the ragtime, jazz and blues episodes. I'll get back to this series eventually and I'll be interested to see if some of these odd features continue in the future.

My Movies Of The Decade

Lately I've been hit over the head with the fact that it's the end of the decade. I've been seeing all sorts of lists about the best music, TV, news stories, athletes and whatever of the last ten years, so I thought it would be fun to do one myself.

My major love is music but I have no way of figuring out just what CDs I have that came out within the last decade so I'm instead doing my twelve favorite movies of the period. I don't have really mainstream tastes and I'm completely burned out on fantasy epics so you won't find "The Lord Of The Rings" or any comic book movies here (though "The Dark Knight" was under consideration) and as for comedy,  the likes of Will Ferrell, Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith do nothing for me. I tend to be drawn to darker or crazier films. Some of the ones I've listed were substantial hits. Others barely got a theatrical release. The only real commonality is that they all stayed with me long after I watched them. So here goes:

1. Let The Right One In  - This Swedish vampire film lived up to its hype. It was haunting, sad and a troubling meditation on love. A Video Watchdog article pointed out marked similarites between this and the mega-hit "Twilight" but I'll happily take this story about an eternally twelve-yeat-old vampire girl and her new protector over the teemybop version.

2. There Will Be Blood - An epic that could stand beside the silent work of Griffith or Von Stroheim. This story of a ruthless oilman in the early 20th Century was beautfully told and Daniel Day-Lewis well deserved his Oscar.

3.  Frozen River - A simple story about a single mother who turns to smuggling immgrants across the Canadian border to afford a new home for herself and her son. It was gritty and poignant and Melissa Leo at least got the recognition of an Oscar nomination for it.

4.  The Three Burials Of Mesquelaides Estrada - One that got away. Everybody gushed over "No Country For Old Men" but to me, this is a far superior Tommy Lee Jones movie and one which he also directed. Jones plays a Texas lawman who makes a trip to Mexico to give a dead friend a proper burial. As in that other picture, he beautifully plays a man who realizes he's out of his place and time and this movie at least has an ending.

5.  Bug - This is another brilliant film few people saw a supposed horror film that actually turns out to be an amazing study in psychological disentegration. Ashley Judd gave the performance of her career to date and it's a shame nobody knows about it.

6.  Lost In Translation - At least this movie found an audience. This story of two lonely people finding an unexpected connection in the alien world of Tokyo showed that Sofia Coppola definitely inherited her father's directing chops. As for Bill Murray, he has never been better.

7.  I (Heart) Huckabees - Finally a comedy. This story of self-help gurus, advertising and Shania Twain was so completely insane you just had to let its wacked out logic wash over you. It starred Naomi Watts, Dustin Hoffman, Mark Wahlberg, Jason Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin, Isabelle Huppert and Jude Law among others and not one of them was wasted.

8.  Control - Joy Division is my favorite rock band of all time so naturally I sought out this biography of the group's doomed singer, Ian Curtis. Anton Corbijn diirected with the same somber economy as his photography and the film did a great job of capturing the grim feel of the group's native Macnhester and the cathartic drama of their music.

9.   Dogville - Lars Von Trier is one of those directors who doesn't seem to always have all his oars in the water but he has directed two brilliant films, "Breaking The Waves" and this one. It's an audacious and simply staged fable about human cruelty that reveals itself by the end as a riff on the Brecht-Weill song, "Pirate Jenny". It's been called a criticism of America but with its international cast I really don't see that, the closing use of David Bowie's "Young Americans" not withstanding.

10.  Looking For Comedy In The Muslim World - Other people make comedies about fat schlumps trying to get laid and make millions. Albert Brooks makes a comedy about a comedian hired by the State Department to do the title task and nobody cares. Nevertheless this had Brooks playing the same narcisstic worry wart he did in "Lost In America" and "Modern Romance" and it was terrific. His comic voice is sadly missed these days.

11.  The Brown Bunny - I made this a Top 12 list because I had to get this in. Yes, Roger Ebert hated the rough cut of this and if people know it at all, it's for a miniscule oral sex scene but this is as powerful a study of the effects of guilt and loss as anybody has done recently. Whatever you say about Vincent Gallo he got it dead solid perfect with this one.

12. Million Dollar Baby - There may be the likes of "Bronco Billy" and "Pale Rider" in his past but ever since "Unforgiven" Clint Eastwood has been in his glory as a director.  This is my favorite of his films to date (but I've yet to see "Letters From Iwo Jima" or "Gran Torino"). Ostenibly a boxing story, this really goes back to one of his favorite themes, lonly and abandoned misfits forming a family unit which in this case, leads to a powerful and tragic climax. Hilary Swank's and Morgan Freeman's Oscars were well deserved.

Other movies considered: The President's Last Bang, Battle Royale, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Birth, Melinda And Melinda, Baise-Moi.

CD Impressions

This is the first of occasional posts on music I have been listening to, not necessarily new stuff just what I pull out of my collection:

Lee Konitz, Satori (Milestone)



The great Mr. Konitz from 1974 doing his usual magical liquid improvising, mostly in the company of another iconoclast, pianist Martial Solal. The session is notable for trying to stay up with the times by using electric piano on two tracks, the free-falling title track and "Sometime Ago" where Solal adds burbling keyboards to Konitz's sweeping waltz time playing. Also notable here are the two young turks in the rhythm section, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette.

John McLaughlin, Extrapolation (Polydor)



This is McLaughlin's celebrated first disc as a leader and on of the few that captures him still as a member of Britain's fine jazz scene. Listening to his brawling with John Surman's muscular baritone, you wonder how his career would have gone if he hadn't gone to America to work with Miles Davis and gone the Mahavishnu-Shakti route. This is tough, punchy music of exceptional quality.

John Zorn, "Alhambra Love Songs" (Tzadik)



John Zorn tries out the piano trio format on this disc, writing music supposedly in the style of West Coast musicians like Vince Guaraldi and Hampton Hawes. There is some good mellow jazz here in tunes like "Half Moon Bay", "Moraga" and "Alhambra Blues" but Zorn being Zorn, he can never stay in one genre for very long so there's also exotica, rock, serialism and noir faux-soundtracks. The players, Rob Burger, Greg Cohen and Ben Petrowsky, are very capable but to get the real feeling of the classic West Coast sound, stick with the original Mulligan or Guaraldi recordings.

Far From Reality

When historical films are made about long ago periods like the Civil War or the American Revolution, it's easy for the filmakers to get away with little inaccuracies about those times because there is no one from those times alive today to would know the difference. These days more and more films are made about the 1950's and beyond and those of us who were around then can tell immediately when a certain movie gets things really wrong.

This brings us to Todd Haynes' acclaimed 2002 film "Far From Heaven" which is set in the 50's and has a plot that sounds okay on paper but is grossly off in execution.
The film stars Julianne Moore as a picture book 50's suburban housewife who is stunned to one day discover that her husband is homosexual. She is so ashamed by this that she confides, not in any of her normal circle of friends but her handsome black gardener.

This isn't too implausible a storyline for a "Hidden Life of Suburbia" movie and the film does a credible job in delineating the shame-faced, underground world of 50's gay men. It's the other part of the plot that defies belief. Even in Connecticut, where the film is set, there is no way on God's earth a black worker would be as openly casual and friendly with his white female employer as the gardener, played by Dennis Haysbert, is here in 1957. Also while others react to their public conversations with glares and the occasional menacing remark, the overall responses from the other white characters are way too tame. In the South back then black men were getting lynched if anybody even thought they were looking at a white woman. We're supposed to believe that in Connecticut you could talk to and ride around with a white woman and just get a few dirty looks?

The response from the black characters in the film is just as bad. There is some grumbling from other diners when Haysbert drives Moore to a black roadhouse for lunch but no trace of the anger or fear such a thing would engender in the real world. Even Moore's black maid, played by Viola Davis, doesn't say a discouraging word about all this when in reality she would have been screaming at Haysbert from the rooftops. Rocks are thrown at Haysbert's house late in the film but ony by other blacks. In the real 50's Haysbert would have lucky if his house wasn't burned down, and it wouldn't have been black people doing it.

For all that this is a very well acted film. Moore, Haysbert and Dennis Quaid are all excellent but the story they have to act out makes you shake your head. All this movie shows is how clueless Todd Haynes is about the sad history of black-white race relations in this country. I seriously doubt he's read books like Native Son or Man-Child In The Promised Land. If he had he'd have a different view about how willing black men were to mix with white women in the 50's.

Amazing-Lee

It was said of Miles Davis in his electric period that, no matter what craziness was going on around him on the bandstand, he always played like Miles Davis. The same can be said for one of Miles' innumerable collaborators, the venerable Lee Konitz. No matter what setting he puts himself in, large groups, small groups, duos, solos, with strings, even free improv, he always sounds like himself with that distinctive, high-flying, behind-the-beat sound.

I saw that first hand last night watching him in a concert at the Kennedy Center. At the age of 82, he still has it. He played with a trio called Minsarah whose members looked young enough to be his grandkids. They went through a broad swath of styles and approaches from minimalism to the restless pulse of the Sixties Miles Davis Quintet but whatever the kids threw at him, Konitz was on top of it with unflappable cool. A calypso beat under "Cherokee"? No problem. Ghostly noir sounds on "Stella By Starlight"? Got it covered. A quick dash of Tristano-like unison melody. In his wheelhouse.

Konitz is known as a cerebral player. That is certainly true but he is also capable of great beauty. He proved this when a gorgeous solo alto improvisation led into a ravishing "Body And Soul" that sent lazily sighing notes spiralling out of his horn weith no seeming effort. It was a soft, sensual soundthat seemed to be channeling Lester Young. Through all this he was cracking jokes awith audience and seemed to be having a ball. When drummer Ziv Ravitz ended "Body And Soul" with small tinkling cymbals, Konitz responded with a few notes of "Jingle Bells". This was a fabulous show from a living legend.

A Musical Epiphany

I've been both an idiot and a snob.

When going out to see live music I normally go for people I've heard of, touring musicians I've read about or heard somewhere and ignore all the local talent that constantly plays in this area. I was emphatically reminded how dumb that is tonight by seeing some local musicians at Twins Jazz tonight, the Brad Linde Quartet.

They did include one out-of-town guest, pianist Dan Tepfer but the rest of the group lives here and they played a blazing set of Lennie Tristano-Warne Marsh-Lee Konitz derived "cool" jazz that had all the things I love about this music, intelligence, logic, imagination and musical telepathy. Tepfer was amazingly versatile going from Keith Jarrett rhapsodies to minimalist swing dead on the beat with accents reminiscent of Monk, Powell and others. His long florid introduction to "Stella By Starlight" was jaw-dropping. The two saxophonists, Linde on tenor and Sarah Hughes on alto, looked ridiculously young but they were both expert at explosive unison play and their solos had immaculate behind the beat phrasing that touched on all the "cool" shamans, Konitz, Marsh, Getz, Mulligan, all the way back to Lester Young.

I've been feeling a little jaded from going to local free improv shows which are often mostly people making squealing random noises on laptops. This show was a powerful reminder of the beauty of real instruments improvising on melody, chords and rhythm, a joy I've denied myself far too much lately. It's high time I checked out local jazz much more frequently.

Death Of A Pieman

I'm the age where I'm seeing a lot of my heroes pass away. Just over the last few months Hugh Hopper, Chris Connor, George Russell and Les Paul have all left us, and now Soupy Sales.

I don't remember seeing Soupy here in the Washington, DC area as much as he was in other parts of the country but I do remember a Saturday show on ABC and a show on Channel 20 when it first started in the late 60's. I fondly remember the shows though, all the goofy vaudeville jokes, his "dogs" White Fang and Black Tooth, the singing lion puppet Pookie, the hipo jazz and rock music and of course the pies. Watching a fedw clips on YouTube I see his goofy humor still holds up today and that many people have moved to write little tributes to him in the last few hours. He was someone that radiated a sense of fun and whenever I saw interviews with him in recent years he always seemed proud and happy of the work he did and all the people who loved him. Here are a few clips I pulled out from his glory days:

First a rendition of his hit single "Do The Mouse"...



Then Pookie doing Stevie Wonder...




And finally a few minutes with White Fang and "Daniel Boone" star Fess Parker and the classic Soupy finish.

The Overtone Quartet

Unfortunately I got sick the weekend after my last post so I couldn't make the Parker - Rothenberg show but I did get a couple of good ones in the last few weeks, including the Overtone Quaret at the Kennedy Center.




The Overtone Quartet is one of those "band of bandleaders" deals, a group comprising three musicians well known as leaders, bassist Dave Holland, pianist Jason Moran and saxophonist Chris Potter along with celebrated drummer (as well as ordained minister and model) Eric Harland.

They were at the Kennedy Center on October 10 and played with fire and virtuosity for over an hour. Holland lived up to his fearsome reputation in his features. Moran played tricky bop to gospel to ragtime in one spot and dreamily funky electric piano for an ambiance that recalled the Miles Davis electric bands that Holland played in. Harland, who I knew the least about, was a wonder working in African and hip hop flavors on one long solo turn with extreme shifts in dynamics.

The audience was properly appreciative though I got the impression this was all pretty new to them. From the little talk I overheard as I left, I had a feeling there were a lot of moonlighting classical fans there, which isn't that much of a shock considering the venue. The same place will have McCoy Tyner and Lee Konitz playing there separately next month. Hopefully I can make it to one of those shows.