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5
Jul

Doobie break

Let me preface the video below by saying I’m not a real singer, but I don’t let that stop me from investigating songs like the Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes,” which Jane Krakowski tried to sing in a Michael McDonald voice the other night on “30 Rock.” (McDonald actually co-wrote it with Kenny Loggins.) It made me want to

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5
Jul

On Nathan Eklund

This review appears in the July 2009 issue of All About Jazz-New York. — Nathan EklundTrip to the Casbah (Jazz Excursion) David R. Adler Trumpeter Nathan Eklund’s first two CDs as a leader, The View from Afar and The Crooked Line, both featured pianist Joe Elefante as the harmonic anchor. Eklund’s newest, Trip to the Casbah, finds guitarist John Hart

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2
Jul

On John O’Gallagher

This review appears in the July 2009 issue of All About Jazz-New York. [Correction: This review will appear in the September issue.] — John O’Gallagher TrioDirty Hands (Clean Feed) David R. Adler Saxophonist John O’Gallagher and bassist Masa Kamaguchi have a history. They documented their intense, ruminative interplay on O’Gallagher’s two-volume CIMP session of 2004, Rules of Invisibility, featuring Jay

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1
Jul

Six Picks: July 2009

My monthly list of recommended CDs, as published in All About Jazz-New York, July 2009: Kevin Hays Trio, You’ve Got a Friend (Jazz Eyes) Ron Horton, It’s a Gadget World… (ABEAT) Tony Malaby, Paloma Recio (New World) Tim Posgate Hornband, Banjo Hockey (Black Hen) Alan Sondheim & Myk Freedman, Julu Twine (Porter) E.J. Strickland, In This Day (Strick Muzik)

1
Jul

On Steve Kuhn

My preview of Steve Kuhn at Birdland (Tues., July 7), in the current Time Out New York.

30
Jun

Jacko and the Jews…

A friend prompted me to remark on Michael Jackson’s apparent antisemitism. Nothing to say, except it’s deeply disturbing, and something to remember at a time when people like Sean Combs are lecturing TV networks that they mustn’t say anything bad about the departed legend.

28
Jun

Scahill’s million

On June 6, Jeremy Scahill appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher and stated that a million Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq. Maher was correct to greet the figure with skepticism. Scahill based his remarks on a much-discussed Johns Hopkins study published in The Lancet in 2006. The methodology of the study was promptly discredited by Iraq Body

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28
Jun

Rock With You

Just wanted to endorse the following remarks by Jody Rosen of Slate: Increasingly … [Michael] Jackson’s music was warped by megalomania: huge production budgets, Wagnerian ballads, songs that swung wildly between self-pity and grandiosity. “Heal the World,” he sang, but his own face, rent by plastic surgery, revealed the sickness within. At the 1995 Brit Awards (the U.K. equivalent of

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