David Adler
On John O’Gallagher
This review appears in the July 2009 issue of All About Jazz-New York. [Correction: This review will appear in the September issue.] — John O’Gallagher TrioDirty Hands (Clean Feed) David R. Adler Saxophonist John O’Gallagher and bassist Masa Kamaguchi have a history. They documented their intense, ruminative interplay on O’Gallagher’s two-volume CIMP session of 2004, Rules of Invisibility, featuring Jay
Six Picks: July 2009
My monthly list of recommended CDs, as published in All About Jazz-New York, July 2009: Kevin Hays Trio, You’ve Got a Friend (Jazz Eyes) Ron Horton, It’s a Gadget World… (ABEAT) Tony Malaby, Paloma Recio (New World) Tim Posgate Hornband, Banjo Hockey (Black Hen) Alan Sondheim & Myk Freedman, Julu Twine (Porter) E.J. Strickland, In This Day (Strick Muzik)
On Steve Kuhn
My preview of Steve Kuhn at Birdland (Tues., July 7), in the current Time Out New York.
Jacko and the Jews…
A friend prompted me to remark on Michael Jackson’s apparent antisemitism. Nothing to say, except it’s deeply disturbing, and something to remember at a time when people like Sean Combs are lecturing TV networks that they mustn’t say anything bad about the departed legend.
Scahill’s million
On June 6, Jeremy Scahill appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher and stated that a million Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq. Maher was correct to greet the figure with skepticism. Scahill based his remarks on a much-discussed Johns Hopkins study published in The Lancet in 2006. The methodology of the study was promptly discredited by Iraq Body
Rock With You
Just wanted to endorse the following remarks by Jody Rosen of Slate: Increasingly … [Michael] Jackson’s music was warped by megalomania: huge production budgets, Wagnerian ballads, songs that swung wildly between self-pity and grandiosity. “Heal the World,” he sang, but his own face, rent by plastic surgery, revealed the sickness within. At the 1995 Brit Awards (the U.K. equivalent of
Go, Adam
Just one of many pop fingerstyle arrangements by my friend Adam Rafferty…
R.I.P. Steven Wells
My Philadelphia Weekly colleague Steven Wells has succumbed to cancer. His final column is here. I met him only once, when I stopped by PW’s offices and chatted about my “A-list” pitch on a Kimmel Center speaking engagement by Salman Rushdie. “So, what’s your take on Rushdie?” he asked, and before I could form two sentences, Steven gave me his