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Know your enemy
And über-fashionable leftist author Naomi Klein does not, according to Jonathan Chait’s dismantling of The Shock Doctrine: Klein’s relentless materialism is not the only thing driving her to see conservatives merely as corporate puppets. She pays shockingly (but, given her premises, unsurprisingly) little attention to right-wing ideas. She recognizes that neoconservatism sits at the heart of the Iraq war project, but she
On Ronnie Mathews
In the better-late-than-never department, I have to double back and say a brief word about the recent death of pianist Ronnie Mathews. Because when I entered the New School jazz program in 1987, Mathews was the first teacher I had. It was a jazz harmony course, and my memory of it is hazy (I turned 40 this year, folks). But
The week on disc (22)
In case you missed the last one… Jeff Gauthier Goatette, House of Return (Cryptogramophone) Ben Wolfe, No Strangers Here (MaxJazz) Joel Harrison, The Wheel (Innova) Scott DuBois, Banshees (Sunnyside) Torben Waldorff, Afterburn (ArtistShare) Jen Chapin & Rosetta Trio, Light of Mine (Purple Chair)
Mandela at 90
One of the high points of my adult life was watching Nelson Mandela, Mario Cuomo and David Dinkins ride past in a motorcade in New York on June 20, 1990. The legacy of Mandela, or “Madiba” as South Africans affectionately call him, is a complex one. His reaching out to Castro, Gadhafi and other autocrats during those days is still
Verse for the day
The passageof a life should show;it should abrade.And when life stops,a certain space —however small —should be left scarredby the grand anddamaging parade. — Kay Ryan, U.S. poet laureate From “Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard”
Jazz wars
A must-read from Darcy James Argue on the aftermath of the jazz culture wars.
New Yorker cover
Jack Shafer rejects the argument that the cartoon will merely reinforce anti-Obama prejudice: Calling on the press to protect the common man from the potential corruptions of satire is a strange, paternalistic assignment for any journalist to give his peers, but that appears to be what The New Yorker‘s detractors desire. Forcefully put, but I still think the cover image
CD reviews
I have a few in the current Jazz Times: Jason Ajemian, The Art of Dying (Delmark) James Carter, Present Tense (EmArcy) Anthony Braxton, Quartet (GTM) 2006 (Important) Steuart Liebig’s Tee-Tot Quartet, Always Outnumbered (pfMentum)