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Human Rights 2006
Marc Cooper has a strong post about Human Rights Watch’s 2006 World Report. The report highlights Bush administration abuses, but also makes the case against Castro and Hugo Chavez, Harry Belafonte’s pal. In the comments, Michael Balter makes an excellent point: Those of us on the left have a particular responsibility to criticize the human rights violations of regimes like
Disc of the week
I’ve been doing cartwheels over Hip-Hop Essentials 1979-1991, Volume Five (Tommy Boy). Why? Because it leads off with “That’s the Joint” by the Funky 4 + 1 and “Freedom” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. I taped these two singles off the radio (WKTU-FM) when I was 12, and I played them over and over and over again. With
The future of music…
or whatever…To quote ZZ Top: “She got legs / She knows how use ’em…” [Hat tip: Noah Baerman]
Writing and truth
The cover of the NYT Week in Review concerns James Frey’s memoir A Million Little Pieces, embellished to the point of fraudulence. Randy Kennedy explores the relativist public response to the fakery, noting that suspicion of the memoir genre stretches back at least to Montaigne. Indeed, in the final chapter of Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American Writing (Princeton U.
Best music writing/videos
Jason Gross of Perfect Sound Forever has a great music journalism roundup for 2005 here. [Via Artsjournal.com] And this page takes you to some incredible music videos (remember those?). [Via Phil DiPietro]
The duty to deliberate
Just finished three pretty intense days of jury service. My only previous one was a state trial in 1994, ending in acquittal. This was federal, ending in three guilty verdicts. One passage from the judge’s written charge to the jury stays in my mind: Each juror is entitled to his or her opinion, but you are required to exchange views
Slate props
Not to toot my horn, but there’s a very generous assessment of my recent jazz/hip-hop piece for Slate here.
Happy New Year
All best wishes for 2006. I kick off the year with jury duty. I’ll take this opportunity to post my top 10 live jazz shows (NYC) of 2005, as published in All About Jazz-New York: BRIAN BLADEJon Cowherd, Myron Walden, Melvin Butler, Chris Thomas, Mark GriffithJoe’s Pub, January 13th PAT METHENYLyle Mays, Steve Rodby, Cuong Vu, Antonio Sanchez, Gregoire Maret,