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Great videos of our time
Via email from the wonderful pianist/composer Noah Baerman, check out this insane video clip from Norway. And then there’s this from the Chicago band OK Go — I first saw it on a Paste magazine DVD compilation, and I’m happy to report it’s online.
Tarik Shah, continued
The jazz bassist who stands accused of conspiring to aid al-Qaeda is up for a hearing tomorrow. (See my earlier post for background.) Again, avant-jazz promoter Margaret Davis has emailed urging us to support Shah: I think we should all be there to show solidarity for Tarik Shah as well as for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom
Great minds, thinking alike
I’ve already remarked on “antiwar” activist George Galloway traveling for the second time to Damascus to grovel before the dictator Bashar Al-Assad. Turns out the neo-Nazi David Duke has just traveled to Damascus to grovel before Assad as well. Here are highlights of Duke’s speech: It is only in America and around the world, it is only the Zionists who
Fresh bylines
Please be sure to link to my latest article, in Slate, about jazz and hip-hop. And just out: Jazz Times, December 2005, with my profile [PDF] of guitarist Ben Monder, a featured CD review (Brad Mehldau’s Day Is Done), and a tense exchange of letters [PDF] with saxophonist Gilad Atzmon, who, you’ll be glad to know, is “a fierce enemy
“The manufacture and distribution of prestige”
Just as I’m turning in my “Best Of” jazz 2005 votes to various publications, I read this essay by A. O. Scott in the NY Times Book Review, about James F. English’s book The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value (Harvard U. Press). I’m ever more conflicted about the critics’ polls and such, not entirely
The Guardian retracts
The Guardian has retracted the Emma Brockes interview with Noam Chomsky, about which I commented here. It appears that Brockes was sloppy on some key points, yet the Guardian‘s correction statement is just as misleading. Bill Weinberg gets it right, I believe: Chomsky did not merely come to the defense of Johnstone’s freedom of speech. He praised her work as
Items of interest
Time’s been short for the past few days, but these items merit comment: **Rep. John Murtha’s call for troop withdrawal: I approve, with a sigh. Responsible writers like Spencer Ackerman at TNR have been calling for withdrawal for some time. It has to be done. But I tremble for the Iraqi people. On “Meet the Press,” Murtha dodged some tough
Music in space
Alex Ross, in this week’s New Yorker, writes about the late composer Giacinto Scelsi and his use of monotone patterns. (Now I’m kicking myself for missing the five Scelsi string quartets at the Miller Theather recently.) Ross ends on an astronomical note about the mother of all monotones: Scientific researchers have recently observed a musical event that employs a curiously