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The week on disc (50)
In case you missed the last one… Southern Excursion Quartet, Trading Post (ARC) Terence Blanchard Group, Choices (Concord) Oran Etkin, Kelenia (Motéma) Sean Nowell, The Seeker (Posi-Tone) Eldar, Virtue (Sony) Roy Hargrove Big Band, Emergence (Groovin’ High/Emarcy)
Devil in details
One of the more interesting aspects of this whole Libya-Scotland affair is thoroughly buried: The Foreign Office said Friday that it was reconsidering plans for the Duke of York to attend the 40th anniversary celebrations in Tripoli…. A member of Britain’s royal family was planning to attend a commemoration of Qaddafi’s 1969 seizure of power in a coup, four decades
Hentoff?
Didn’t see this coming. Nat Hentoff, dean of American jazz commentators and civil libertarians, my fellow Jazz Times contributor, buys into the “death panels” nonsense. How sad. He’s better than that. I thought.
Health care and fringe politics
Which is to say, mainstream Republican politics. Let me explain. About that now-famous Barney Frank clip, in which a maniac health-reform opponent accused the (Jewish) congressman of supporting “a Nazi policy” and was rebuked and humiliated by Frank in turn: It turns out that this woman is a Lyndon LaRouche cultist. And so now, right-wing pundits like Michelle Malkin are
Jazz and the young, PS
Thank goodness, Nate eviscerates Terry Teachout’s ill-informed, poorly conceived “Can Jazz Be Saved?” column. Imagine that: a piece that actually talks about the music, the venues, the musicians, instead of speaking in generalities and dubious crunched numbers. Nate, in other words, performs the task of a critic.
On Marcus & E.J. Strickland
My preview of their dual-CD-release show at Joe’s Pub (Friday, Aug. 21), in the current Time Out New York.
Philadelphia haps cont’d.
In the current Philadelphia Weekly: Avant Ascension Wed., Aug. 19, 9pm-2am. $5. Tritone, 1508 South St. 215.545.0475 www.tritonebar.com How time flies! It’s been a year since Avant Ascension, one of Philly’s bootstraps, artist-run jazz series, got off the ground at Tritone. Hosted by two young colleagues from Bobby Zankel’s big band Warriors of the Wonderful Sound — trombonist Larry Toft
Guns and health care
There’s nothing about the current healthcare reform “debate” I could say that hasn’t already been said, and said brilliantly, by Rachel Maddow and other liberal commentators. But I will say this about reform opponents showing up to Obama town halls with guns, including assault rifles, in recent days: Right-wing ideologues, including members of Congress, can mouth all the platitudes they