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Goings On
Now playing–Jack DeJohnette’s new electronica project The Ripple Effect (Golden Beams) –Alarm Will Sound, Acoustica (Cantaloupe): New music ensemble does Aphex Twin, acoustically. Reminds me of the Ensemble Modern’s Zappa disc, Greggery Peccary & Other Persuasions (RCA Red Seal). Now writingA piece for Slate (my first for them), on the subtler, less conspicuous impact of hip-hop on new acoustic jazz.
Enough already
Galloway and Hitchens were on Bill Maher last night, both on the same panel (!), sandwiching the BBC anchor Katty Kay. A master politician, that Galloway, I’ll never deny it. On his best behavior on HBO, when not surrounded by his friends and fellow travelers. Making all the reasonable antiwar points, betraying little hint of his radicalism. Maher’s program is
Left-wing insanity watch
Guess who? It’s George Galloway, sitting down to chat with the conspiracy theory lunatics over at “Prison Planet.” Here’s a little taste. Of course, the past masters of government sponsored terrorism were the Zionists, who created the condition in the Arab countries, and in some European countries to stampede the Jewish populations out of the countries they had been living
Right-wing insanity watch
“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”–Representative Richard Baker of Baton Rouge
Right-wing heartlessness watch
Certain Bush defenders are now saying that because the Katrina death toll was nowhere near 10,000, what was the big deal? It was all hysterical political correctness on the part of the liberal media. Jason Zengerle of The New Republic rips apart these arguments, put forward by the likes of Cliff May and Victor Davis Hanson. Zengerle’s closing lines (article
A word on Ani DiFranco
I had harsh words for Ani DiFranco’s 9/11 poem “self evident” in my statement supporting the Unite Against Terror petition. There I cited her description of 9/11 as “the day that america/fell to its knees/after strutting around for a century/without saying thank you/or please.” On my Adlermusic.com website [scroll down] I wrote the following: [T]he trope is familiar: 9/11 was
Muhal bails
At the Katrina benefit held by the avant-jazz Vision Fest last night, I eagerly awaited a solo piano set by the great Muhal Richard Abrams. After taking to the bench, Abrams played three or four notes, got up and told the audience, “I don’t play out-of-tune pianos. It’s not fair to me and it’s not fair to you.” Dismay and
The Next Abu Ghraib
That’s what blogger Eric Muller is calling this demented amateur porn site [warning: porn/depraved gore]. Apparently U.S. soldiers get free access to the porn if they send in photos of dead Iraqis. Some of the photo captions include: “What every Iraqi should look like” and “DIE, HAJI, DIE.” Andrew Sullivan opines: I would think this violates the Geneva Conventions, not