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Gaza
My remarks on the Gaza crisis are up at Z Word. [Update: Eamonn’s response.]
First principles
Marc Cooper has posted some New Year hopes and reflections, one of which touches on a theme dear to my heart: why it’s important for staunch liberals to attack authoritarian thinking on the left, and not care about the grief they catch for it. And so, dear reader, the question is not why I expend time and energy railing against
Freddie Hubbard
In the late ’80s I got caught trying to walk out of the Blue Note without paying. I had hoped the $18 in my pocket was enough, but it wasn’t. But that’s how badly I needed to see Freddie Hubbard. It wasn’t just Hubbard’s ferocity on the trumpet that got me. It was his bands. And at that time I
On Mario Pavone
My preview of Mario Pavone at the Iridium (Wednesday, Jan. 7), in the current Time Out New York. [Note: An error on my part. Notwithstanding his ample catalog on Playscape, Pavone does not help run the label, although he contributed cover art for a number of years.]
Village Voice poll
I participated in Francis Davis’s annual Village Voice jazz poll, the results of which are in. Francis’s reflections here; plus 79 individual ballots, A-O and P-T.
Pinter passes
Harold Pinter may have been an innovative playwright, but in death he is receiving accolades as a great moral force in politics as well. Pinter’s political views were in fact fanatical, irresponsible and utterly without nuance. (See my previous remarks here.) As Johann Hari reminds us, Pinter was an apologist for Serbian fascism and ultra-nationalism, going so far as to
The week on disc (34)
In case you missed the last one… Achim Kaufmann/Mark Dresser/Harris Eisenstadt, Starmelodics (Nuscope) Garaj Mahal, Woot (Owl Studios) Guillaume de Chassy, Faraway So Close (BEE Jazz) Peggy Lee Band, New Code (Drip Audio) Dred Scott Trio, Free (Robertson Music) The Wee Trio, Capitol Diner, Vol. 1 (Bionic)
Ethan on Wynton
A classic, obviously. It’s funny: blogging is thought of as the medium of the short and quick, nothing too in-depth, as we jump from screen to screen with a minimum of reflection. It’s not always so. Even without digesting it fully, Ethan Iverson’s multipart analysis has taught me a lot about music I thought I already knew well. It’s the