The reviews of Robert Greenfield's biography of Timothy Leary have allowed "sixties" revisionists to spread unfounded and uniformly negative opinions on an entire era.
Having been one of the publishers/editors of the same "underground" paper in Baltimore that P.J. O'Rourke, the first of such revisionists, made his mark lying about, I have some expertise on the subject.
Here's the myth promoted by the revisionists: The sixties were all about hedonism and self-satisfaction.
I wish.
First of all, the subject of "The Sixties" is so broad and complex, so full of contradictions and countervailing points of view that to generalize about it at all is not worth the effort. There are a few aspects that need attention, however.
Simply put, the ethos of the era for us can be summed up in these words: fairness, community, freedom of personal choice, and peace. Period. End of sentence.
Fairness in how government treated its citizens, and how people treated each other. After having been told that America was the land of the free, we saw people refused voting rights, freedom to reside where they could afford to, even denied service at lunch counters, hotels and rest rooms.
Imagine that? "Who would make rules like that?" we wondered.
We were told that America stood for peace in the world and then they sent us to fight a war of vanity in Vietnam. That didn't make sense to us and we did everything we could to bring our peers out of that hell. Many of us refused to participate.
The women in our life knocked us upside the head and let us know that things weren't so hot for them. Made sense to us. In the eyes of conservatives, hippies were girlie-men then, and stayed that way. And the hippie women were manly-girls, let's not forget that. This is nonsense and shouldn't be believed any more than any of their familiar lies which have come into current relief so clearly these days, but which are consistent with their history.
We were told that sex was, what a sin? With the development of the birth control pill we were the first generation, and maybe the last to be able to have unprotected sex anytime we wanted, with whom we wanted. Was there something wrong with that? Did we keep on with it? Nah, we got married and had kids. Did we have fun while we tried out everything under God's Red Light? Fuck yes.
Is that hedonism? Only to those who didn’t' get any.
When we dressed or acted in ways that seemed strange to the generation before us we got out asses kicked, literally. Would you like to know how many times I was arrested on trumped up charges simply because I was a long-haired hippie who worked for "that" paper? Don't forget, people were killed and imprisoned for exercising the rights guaranteed them in the Constitution.
What we found out was that the America we were taught existed was a figment of a script writer at best, and the deliberate misrepresentation, at worst.
All this has nothing to do with Timothy Leary, and none of it was taken into account by reviewers, NY Times and New Yorker included, who lashed out at an entire generation.
Did we take LSD? Sure we did. I took tons of it. I loved my hallucinations, even the bad ones. Did I find God? I'm still looking. Did it change my life? Yes, in some ways. It loosened the reins. I think if you asked P.J. O'Rourke if he regrets taking LSD and smoking all that dope, he would say he took some good things away from it.
But don’t tell me that Timothy Leary is responsible for anything except talking a good game. I enjoyed what he had to say. Some of it made sense and some of it didn’t'. I guess a few people bought it all, but that's just human nature.
The bluster and meanness of the revisionists who have attacked an era in which the driving idea was to make a better world reveals their own bleakness of spirit. They build the idea that Leary was much more influential than he ever was.
Take my word for it, he wasn't. The stars of the "counter-culture" (which actually existed) were just that, stars. We liked them. They entertained us. We took from them what we needed.
As those of us who fought for the right to control every aspect of our lives grow old and begin the fight to control the manner of our own death, the record needs to be set straight. Don't fuck with us. We're old, we know the score and we're still determined to "reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it."
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Keyword For Dems: Competence
I started to write this last week. Senator Brownback's sham hearing on assisted suicide intervened and I posted about that instead. Yesterday, this site bannered a story in which exasperating-but-many-times-right Senator Joe Biden used the word "competence."
These should be the Democrats' keywords from this time forth: 1. Competence. 2. Incompetence.
You and I know that those who currently hold power are a pack of lying thieves, religious lunatics, sadistic and immoral perpetrators of evil, and despoilers of the planet.
The problem is that if you say these truths in public, you're branded a left-wing nut. Pointing out these truths hasn't been enough to shake the electorate out of the habit of voting for those who appeal to their worst instincts.
Here's the only issue that matters: competence. Progressives know how to run a government and conservatives don't. It is demonstrable on every level. From the broken furniture of the Medicaid prescription drug plan, to getting food and water to folks trapped in New Orleans.
At every turn, even when it comes to running wars, something that conservatives SHOULD be good at, given their love for starting them, they prove that they can talk a good game, but can't deliver.
The only thing they CAN deliver is dollars to themselves and the people who put them in power.
Even then they constantly get caught stealing.
We know how close they have come to making this country a police state. We know that (dare we say?) they staged what amounts to a coup in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Doesn't matter, sounds like whining.
They can't pick up the garbage. This requirement of all local politicians must be required of Federal politicians. They have to do the job. It's simple. Republicans have failed. Democrats must point out how they have succeeded in the past; that they know how to pick up the garbage.
There's nothing more to say: Competence vs. Incompetence. Those are the talking points. No more, no less.
Ok, there is one other thing Democrats can do. When a Republican says you don't support the troops, you say, "OK, I'll make a deal with you, I'll start supporting the troops when you stop having cheating on your wife with the pizza boy.
That might shut him up.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com.
These should be the Democrats' keywords from this time forth: 1. Competence. 2. Incompetence.
You and I know that those who currently hold power are a pack of lying thieves, religious lunatics, sadistic and immoral perpetrators of evil, and despoilers of the planet.
The problem is that if you say these truths in public, you're branded a left-wing nut. Pointing out these truths hasn't been enough to shake the electorate out of the habit of voting for those who appeal to their worst instincts.
Here's the only issue that matters: competence. Progressives know how to run a government and conservatives don't. It is demonstrable on every level. From the broken furniture of the Medicaid prescription drug plan, to getting food and water to folks trapped in New Orleans.
At every turn, even when it comes to running wars, something that conservatives SHOULD be good at, given their love for starting them, they prove that they can talk a good game, but can't deliver.
The only thing they CAN deliver is dollars to themselves and the people who put them in power.
Even then they constantly get caught stealing.
We know how close they have come to making this country a police state. We know that (dare we say?) they staged what amounts to a coup in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Doesn't matter, sounds like whining.
They can't pick up the garbage. This requirement of all local politicians must be required of Federal politicians. They have to do the job. It's simple. Republicans have failed. Democrats must point out how they have succeeded in the past; that they know how to pick up the garbage.
There's nothing more to say: Competence vs. Incompetence. Those are the talking points. No more, no less.
Ok, there is one other thing Democrats can do. When a Republican says you don't support the troops, you say, "OK, I'll make a deal with you, I'll start supporting the troops when you stop having cheating on your wife with the pizza boy.
That might shut him up.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Brownback panders to radical right on Death With Dignity
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), a legislator who believes that the government should control our behavior based on his own religious beliefs threw a pathetic bone to his fanatical supporters on Friday by calling a quick subcommittee hearing on assisted suicide.
In the wake of the Gay Hate amendment that went to down to defeat earlier in the week, this was another attempt by the increasingly rag-tag discredited Republican Taliban to force their rabid fundamentalism on the rest of us.
Appealing to the Republican base which believes that government's place is in bedrooms and hospital rooms but not boardrooms, he demonstrated the cynicism and total bankruptcy of a party on the way out. Even Oregon's conservative Senator Gordon Smith has put the issue to rest.
Oregon voted three times, once in the legislature and twice in ballot initiatives to approve its Death With Dignity law. In 2000, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden blocked a bill sponsored by the Republicans, laughingly called the "Pain Relief Promotion Act," the aim of which was to knock down the Oregon law.
In 2001, the Bush administration tried to block the law again by having Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft rule that doctors who prescribe the lethal dose would be liable for criminal prosecution. It was a flimsy excuse used to pander to the religious radicals and it was laughed out of Federal Court on the State level, in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court and finally ruled against in the U.S. Supreme Court.
But these guys never stop. Brownback was quoted in The Oregonian as saying, "I held a hearing on this topic because I think we should carefully consider the unintended consequences and slippery slope of doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Legalizing doctor-assisted suicide can lead toward involuntary euthanasia, as we've seen in the Netherlands."
He knows this is a lie. There is no slippery slope. Oregonians use the law in very small numbers, and the evidence of several years of the law being in effect points to the fact that the law provides a cushion of peace for those dying.
The arguments against the law have been proven wrong. It isn't abused. Thousands of people have not flocked to Oregon to use it. Relatives aren't persuading their dying loved ones to get it over with. It is a law that works.
As the religious radical right sinks, you can bet they will be going down with guns blazing. But we know that their arguments are wrong at best and lies at worst.
This is not a campaign issue. It is just another attempt by a cynic in Congress to pander. He doesn't even have a bill to propose. He just wanted some publicity at the taxpayer's expense.
Other radical right wingers continue to lie about the issue. Lee Edwards, of the Heritage Foundation (they hijacked the word "heritage" too) was quoted in The Oregonian saying, "It's the concept of the scientific or the medical community treating people with less dignity, as expendable. With physician-assisted suicide, life is treated as a burden, that people who don't meet a certain standard, that it is somehow better off for them to be dead."
He pulled that out of his ass. He has no information to back that up, based on the Oregon experience. It's just a lie, made up to scare people. I have personally watched doctors agonize over the issue. Nobody has ever said anybody should be better off dead. Shame on you, Edwards.
The upside is that like the ravings of Ann Coulter, Brownback DOES bring up the subject again. That's not a bad thing. His religious posturing alerts people to the issue and how important it is. And they also turn off the rest of the electorate, weary of such posturing.
California will take up the issue again soon. This time there is a better chance of its passing. The more the radical right wing discredits itself, the more chance the bill will pass.
It's a medical issue, one between the patient and doctor. It's not a political issue. If it is a religious issue for YOU, don't do it.
That's the American way.
In the wake of the Gay Hate amendment that went to down to defeat earlier in the week, this was another attempt by the increasingly rag-tag discredited Republican Taliban to force their rabid fundamentalism on the rest of us.
Appealing to the Republican base which believes that government's place is in bedrooms and hospital rooms but not boardrooms, he demonstrated the cynicism and total bankruptcy of a party on the way out. Even Oregon's conservative Senator Gordon Smith has put the issue to rest.
Oregon voted three times, once in the legislature and twice in ballot initiatives to approve its Death With Dignity law. In 2000, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden blocked a bill sponsored by the Republicans, laughingly called the "Pain Relief Promotion Act," the aim of which was to knock down the Oregon law.
In 2001, the Bush administration tried to block the law again by having Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft rule that doctors who prescribe the lethal dose would be liable for criminal prosecution. It was a flimsy excuse used to pander to the religious radicals and it was laughed out of Federal Court on the State level, in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court and finally ruled against in the U.S. Supreme Court.
But these guys never stop. Brownback was quoted in The Oregonian as saying, "I held a hearing on this topic because I think we should carefully consider the unintended consequences and slippery slope of doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Legalizing doctor-assisted suicide can lead toward involuntary euthanasia, as we've seen in the Netherlands."
He knows this is a lie. There is no slippery slope. Oregonians use the law in very small numbers, and the evidence of several years of the law being in effect points to the fact that the law provides a cushion of peace for those dying.
The arguments against the law have been proven wrong. It isn't abused. Thousands of people have not flocked to Oregon to use it. Relatives aren't persuading their dying loved ones to get it over with. It is a law that works.
As the religious radical right sinks, you can bet they will be going down with guns blazing. But we know that their arguments are wrong at best and lies at worst.
This is not a campaign issue. It is just another attempt by a cynic in Congress to pander. He doesn't even have a bill to propose. He just wanted some publicity at the taxpayer's expense.
Other radical right wingers continue to lie about the issue. Lee Edwards, of the Heritage Foundation (they hijacked the word "heritage" too) was quoted in The Oregonian saying, "It's the concept of the scientific or the medical community treating people with less dignity, as expendable. With physician-assisted suicide, life is treated as a burden, that people who don't meet a certain standard, that it is somehow better off for them to be dead."
He pulled that out of his ass. He has no information to back that up, based on the Oregon experience. It's just a lie, made up to scare people. I have personally watched doctors agonize over the issue. Nobody has ever said anybody should be better off dead. Shame on you, Edwards.
The upside is that like the ravings of Ann Coulter, Brownback DOES bring up the subject again. That's not a bad thing. His religious posturing alerts people to the issue and how important it is. And they also turn off the rest of the electorate, weary of such posturing.
California will take up the issue again soon. This time there is a better chance of its passing. The more the radical right wing discredits itself, the more chance the bill will pass.
It's a medical issue, one between the patient and doctor. It's not a political issue. If it is a religious issue for YOU, don't do it.
That's the American way.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Thank You, Ann Coulter
Thanks, Annie! Keep up the good work.
Every time you open your mouth you put another Republican out of business. You are the poster child, the personification, the pure essence of Republicanism.
Orrin Hatch, after the defeat of the Gay Hatred Amendment today, asked Ted Kennedy if he thought that 49% of the American public were bigots. Ted can't say yes, but I can.
That's why we need more Ann Coulter on national TV. Please let her open her mouth and spew hatred and dishonesty. I welcome it. The more she talks the more quickly the demise of the Republican party.
For all of Rush and O'Reilly's lies and distortions, even they don't go as far as she does.
Her Today appearance might be the last straw, but maybe not. What else could she say after making fun of widows. WIDOWS! And 9/11 widows besides.
That's like something a political humorist would write as the next logical but ridiculous statement she might say. What's left?
She comes out against victims of child rape, telling them to stop whining.
She says Adolph Eichmann was only following orders, telling Jews to stop kvetching.
She says Martin Luther King asked for it.
See what I mean? I can see her saying those things.
Big Annie is a national treasure. She has helped define Republicans as cruel bigots, haters whose evil is unsurpassed in American life. It's not something I made up. It's something she brays and sprays every time she opens her mouth.
Keep talking, girl.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Every time you open your mouth you put another Republican out of business. You are the poster child, the personification, the pure essence of Republicanism.
Orrin Hatch, after the defeat of the Gay Hatred Amendment today, asked Ted Kennedy if he thought that 49% of the American public were bigots. Ted can't say yes, but I can.
That's why we need more Ann Coulter on national TV. Please let her open her mouth and spew hatred and dishonesty. I welcome it. The more she talks the more quickly the demise of the Republican party.
For all of Rush and O'Reilly's lies and distortions, even they don't go as far as she does.
Her Today appearance might be the last straw, but maybe not. What else could she say after making fun of widows. WIDOWS! And 9/11 widows besides.
That's like something a political humorist would write as the next logical but ridiculous statement she might say. What's left?
She comes out against victims of child rape, telling them to stop whining.
She says Adolph Eichmann was only following orders, telling Jews to stop kvetching.
She says Martin Luther King asked for it.
See what I mean? I can see her saying those things.
Big Annie is a national treasure. She has helped define Republicans as cruel bigots, haters whose evil is unsurpassed in American life. It's not something I made up. It's something she brays and sprays every time she opens her mouth.
Keep talking, girl.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Monday, June 05, 2006
The Emperor's New Buildings
Note: This is a piece the MSM in Portland didn't want you to see. It was rejected (roundly) by everybody to whom I pitched it.
Every so often it falls upon a citizen to tell the emperor he is naked. That the new suit made by those "swindlers," as Hans Christian Anderson called them in the original story, is a hoax. That the "swindlers" have put one over on us, and have convinced us that something wonderful exists where, in reality, nothing exists.
The architecture with which similar "swindlers" have clothed Portland…the Pearl District, most of the new buildings downtown, and the inevitably-to-be-flooded River District are is as ugly as sin and will obviously deteriorate faster than cheese left out in the sun.
We want to believe that these awkward, clunky manifestations of "build-fast-on-the-cheap-and-sell-high-as-possible" scheming are making us look beautiful. Remember the "honest old minister" sent by the emperor to check on how the new suit of clothes was coming? He said, '"Oh, it is very pretty, exceedingly beautiful. What a beautiful pattern, what brilliant colours! I shall tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much.'"
Is that what the rich residents of "The Henry" said when they looked up at their new home? Perhaps they really saw a dull green bunker, more fit for a small city in East Germany, when there was an East Germany. Instead, they said they liked it very much, just like the old minister.
Portland architecture has always been built on the cheap, but some of it was good cheap, The Portland Building, or the Art Museum, for example. But the collection of unconnected, graceless buildings in the Pearl, some of which are already showing signs of deterioration, barely five years into what should prove to be a short lifespan has apparently fooled the moneyed class into believing that their city is making itself attractive.
As Hans put it," Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing…"And we gave them huge tax breaks to build, don't forget that. Elected officials and the unelected whom they appoint also looked at models and drawings of these buildings and saw what? Maybe they saw money. They certainly didn't see beauty or longevity. Was Hans writing the story of Portland in the 21st Century when he said "(T)he swindlers asked for more money, silk and gold-cloth, which they required for weaving. They kept everything for themselves, and not a thread came near the loom, but they continued, as hitherto, to work at the empty looms."
We've got a lot of empty looms. Some of them are rising before our eyes at the moment in the flood plain near the OHSU tram boondoggle (which was brought to you by the same folks).
Yes, the same folks that brought you East Berlin in the Pearl are bringing you Budapest 1957 by the river. All you have to do is look. This lack of architectural self-awareness in a town that prides itself on self-awareness leaves a relative newbie (nine years) like me in the dark. 'But he has nothing on at all,' said a little child at last," wrote Hans. Twenty years from now, when the buildings in The Pearl have fallen apart and the money has moved elsewhere, people around here are going to want to know who the "swindlers" were.
Start with Homer Williams and list pretty much every other person or corporation who has foisted this "swindled" result on the rest of us. But blame yourself, because you're the one who looked at the new and said, like the "honest courtier" who, "praised the cloth, which he did not see, and expressed his joy at the beautiful colours and the fine pattern. 'It is very excellent,' he said to the emperor."
Every so often it falls upon a citizen to tell the emperor he is naked. That the new suit made by those "swindlers," as Hans Christian Anderson called them in the original story, is a hoax. That the "swindlers" have put one over on us, and have convinced us that something wonderful exists where, in reality, nothing exists.
The architecture with which similar "swindlers" have clothed Portland…the Pearl District, most of the new buildings downtown, and the inevitably-to-be-flooded River District are is as ugly as sin and will obviously deteriorate faster than cheese left out in the sun.
We want to believe that these awkward, clunky manifestations of "build-fast-on-the-cheap-and-sell-high-as-possible" scheming are making us look beautiful. Remember the "honest old minister" sent by the emperor to check on how the new suit of clothes was coming? He said, '"Oh, it is very pretty, exceedingly beautiful. What a beautiful pattern, what brilliant colours! I shall tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much.'"
Is that what the rich residents of "The Henry" said when they looked up at their new home? Perhaps they really saw a dull green bunker, more fit for a small city in East Germany, when there was an East Germany. Instead, they said they liked it very much, just like the old minister.
Portland architecture has always been built on the cheap, but some of it was good cheap, The Portland Building, or the Art Museum, for example. But the collection of unconnected, graceless buildings in the Pearl, some of which are already showing signs of deterioration, barely five years into what should prove to be a short lifespan has apparently fooled the moneyed class into believing that their city is making itself attractive.
As Hans put it," Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing…"And we gave them huge tax breaks to build, don't forget that. Elected officials and the unelected whom they appoint also looked at models and drawings of these buildings and saw what? Maybe they saw money. They certainly didn't see beauty or longevity. Was Hans writing the story of Portland in the 21st Century when he said "(T)he swindlers asked for more money, silk and gold-cloth, which they required for weaving. They kept everything for themselves, and not a thread came near the loom, but they continued, as hitherto, to work at the empty looms."
We've got a lot of empty looms. Some of them are rising before our eyes at the moment in the flood plain near the OHSU tram boondoggle (which was brought to you by the same folks).
Yes, the same folks that brought you East Berlin in the Pearl are bringing you Budapest 1957 by the river. All you have to do is look. This lack of architectural self-awareness in a town that prides itself on self-awareness leaves a relative newbie (nine years) like me in the dark. 'But he has nothing on at all,' said a little child at last," wrote Hans. Twenty years from now, when the buildings in The Pearl have fallen apart and the money has moved elsewhere, people around here are going to want to know who the "swindlers" were.
Start with Homer Williams and list pretty much every other person or corporation who has foisted this "swindled" result on the rest of us. But blame yourself, because you're the one who looked at the new and said, like the "honest courtier" who, "praised the cloth, which he did not see, and expressed his joy at the beautiful colours and the fine pattern. 'It is very excellent,' he said to the emperor."
Saturday, June 03, 2006
My June Playlist
While waiting for the new John Ashcroft/50 Cent a capella collaboration to be released, I’m listening to.
1. Sun Ra, Untitled LP
On one side the label is hand-colored orange and green. Somebody wrote "Sun Ra" in black above the hand lettered list of four tunes which include "Space is the Place, "Dedicated to Natures, "The Cosmos Me," and "Space Shuttle." Under that is a crinkle-cut pasted-on piece of paper that has "compositions by SUN RA" typed in black.
I have no idea when this is from. I know it's before the summer of 1977, because that's when I got it.
You've got to pull out some Ra now and then. It's as fresh as it was the day it was recorded, and has never been surpassed on a lot of levels. Ra was the ultimate trickster, a genius who might have, indeed, been from another planet.
The brilliance and cheesiness, the great musicianship and the head-shaking weirdness of it all proves Ra's famous quote, "It ain't necessarily so that it ain't necessarily so."
And it ain't.
2. Stanton Moore "All Kooked Out!" CD
Best known as Gallactic's drummer, he's already in the pantheon of great New Orleans drummers, having studied at the feet of some of the current masters. This is from 1998 and has Charlie Hunter on 8-string guitar, Skerik, the little-known but much admired saxophonist. This is Moore at the start of his career, all young and bursting forth.
The interesting thing about Moore is that as good as this is (I had it on in the car for a week), he's gotten that much better over the years.
I once heard a street argument in Portland, Oregon over who was the best drummer in New Orleans, Russell Batiste or Stanton Moore. I voted for Russ between the two at the time, but you can find great drummers on any street there. Or you could before Katrina.
I could get started on the current diaspora in New Orleans, but you can read about that here, in a piece I wrote on Jazzfest 2006. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-dantoni/the-real-jazzfest-anger-_b_21045.html
3. Phillip Glass "Mishima" soundtrack CD
I was driving from Portland to Seattle to see the Orioles game and suddenly remembered the delights of driving fast with Phillip Glass blasting out of the speakers…especially Mishima, with its electric guitars, and martial drums.
Even though it evokes the persona of Mishima, the music itself is more effective by itself than it is in the movie it was written for. The opening is one of the most thrilling two minutes and forty-five seconds ever written.
When they used to let you use electronic equipment on planes during takeoff, this or The Photographer would always be in my ears. I still think about it when I'm taking off….or driving 85 on I-5 between Seattle and Portland.
Is that dishonoring Mishima? He can't get to me. He daid.
3. The Meters "Kickback" CD
Sundazed Music released all of The Meters LPs a few years ago. This is a collection of tunes that never got on any Meters' albums. There's some great stuff on here, and some not-so-great. They take pains to point out that the previously unreleased "Love The One You're With" is based on the Isley Brothers' version and not the original. Doesn't really matter though, there's a reason it wasn't released.
These are from the Warner Brothers/SeaSaint days of the mid 1970s.
The gem is "All I Do Everyday" which I re-discovered because New Orleans/now Portland, Oregon saxophonist Reggie Houston does it in nearly every set his Earth Island Band plays. I think I played this song 5 times in a row one day in the car. I'm going to go play it again now.
When the Meters played their famed reunion concert at Jazzfest 2005, they pulled out "He Bite Me," a song that's also on this. It could be the funniest song they ever recorded. It's about a dragon. Zig and George growl. Don't ask.
"Keep On Marching (Funky Soldier)" used to be in the regular set list of The Funky Meters, Art and George's band with Russell Batiste and Brian Stolz who kept the Meters' music alive until they finally figured out how to get along.
4. Michael Haberman "Plays Sorabi—The Legendary Works for Piano"
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) wrote dense solo piano music, which Habermann discovered in a little shop in Mexico City in the 1970s. He became the only pianist Sorabi would trust to play his music.
It is not Cecil Taylor-like pounding and histrionics. A lot of it is just flat-out beautiful, if difficult. Some of these pieces have 8 staves for two hands. It took Habermann years to get them down.
He used to live in the apartment next to mine in Baltimore in the 1980s and I could lay in bed and listen to him practice. Before he knocked on my door to ask if he was bothering us, I thought angels lived next door.
5. Brian Eno "Music for Films" "Music for Airports" LPs
Although he never really disappeared, Eno has wormed his way back into public consciousness by working on Paul Simon's latest album. What's fun about these is that they're LPs and have scratches, adding to the "ambience."
I bought into the whole concept when they were released in the late 70s. They hold up. Could have been made today. In the back of my head there's a voice saying, "It's not New Age. It's not New Age. Really, it's not."
The music on here works the way it was designed to work.
It's isn't New Age. Really, it's not.
6. Eric Dolphy "Out There" LP
Oh man. Dolphy on alto, flute, clarinet and bass clarinet. Ron Carter on CELLO and George Duvivier on BASS and the young Roy Haynes at his young and gnarling best. Recorded FORTY-SIX years ago….jazz players today should BE this innovative.
What ever happened to the avant-garde?
Dolphy's tribute to Mingus, "The Baron," a Randy Weston tune and the rest Dolphy originals.
This album jumps out the speakers and runs away begging for new listeners and the long life it deserves.
I have the 1969 re-issue with notes from Ralph Berton in which he says, "…you won't 'know where you are;' you won't hear the well known chords and changes; you're on your own with the music being flung your way, music representative of a great deal that's happening now. Are they speaking to you? Or just thinking out loud? And do you like listening in?"
Is it me, or did the avant-garde stop? Somebody called today's scene "museumification of the music." The music on here is bright life. A museum couldn't hold it.
7. Oregon "Crossing" CD
The final recording with Colin Wolcott, and possibly their best. Well, it's the best one of theirs I've listened to this month, anyway. I have never gotten tired of Glen Moore's "Pepe Linque" and I've heard it a million times.
They are still huge in Europe. They are still little-known in America. Don't get me started. Sometimes I think most of the greatest music will never be discovered by most people. Oh well, that's show biz.
Glen Moore once unlocked Oregon for me, even though I had always loved them. He told me that when they started out, their objective was to make music as beautiful as Bill Evans'. Makes sense, huh?
8. Joe Turner "In The Evening" LP
Back when Joe had to sit down to sing. On the stool, becalmed until it was time for him to sing a verse, he would fill with some sort of inspired helium and belt out his lines, only to slump back on the stool until it was his turn to sing the next verse.
This is a Pablo release from 1976 backed by a quintet, including piano and guitar. Joe was a blues droner as well as a blues shouter by then. He's lanquid and old and world-weary. This makes "I've Got the World On a String" especially effective.
I've pretty much destroyed this record over the years by playing it when I've been pretty much destroyed, myself. It works every time. Like I said before, scratches help.
This also appears on counterpunch.org
1. Sun Ra, Untitled LP
On one side the label is hand-colored orange and green. Somebody wrote "Sun Ra" in black above the hand lettered list of four tunes which include "Space is the Place, "Dedicated to Natures, "The Cosmos Me," and "Space Shuttle." Under that is a crinkle-cut pasted-on piece of paper that has "compositions by SUN RA" typed in black.
I have no idea when this is from. I know it's before the summer of 1977, because that's when I got it.
You've got to pull out some Ra now and then. It's as fresh as it was the day it was recorded, and has never been surpassed on a lot of levels. Ra was the ultimate trickster, a genius who might have, indeed, been from another planet.
The brilliance and cheesiness, the great musicianship and the head-shaking weirdness of it all proves Ra's famous quote, "It ain't necessarily so that it ain't necessarily so."
And it ain't.
2. Stanton Moore "All Kooked Out!" CD
Best known as Gallactic's drummer, he's already in the pantheon of great New Orleans drummers, having studied at the feet of some of the current masters. This is from 1998 and has Charlie Hunter on 8-string guitar, Skerik, the little-known but much admired saxophonist. This is Moore at the start of his career, all young and bursting forth.
The interesting thing about Moore is that as good as this is (I had it on in the car for a week), he's gotten that much better over the years.
I once heard a street argument in Portland, Oregon over who was the best drummer in New Orleans, Russell Batiste or Stanton Moore. I voted for Russ between the two at the time, but you can find great drummers on any street there. Or you could before Katrina.
I could get started on the current diaspora in New Orleans, but you can read about that here, in a piece I wrote on Jazzfest 2006. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-dantoni/the-real-jazzfest-anger-_b_21045.html
3. Phillip Glass "Mishima" soundtrack CD
I was driving from Portland to Seattle to see the Orioles game and suddenly remembered the delights of driving fast with Phillip Glass blasting out of the speakers…especially Mishima, with its electric guitars, and martial drums.
Even though it evokes the persona of Mishima, the music itself is more effective by itself than it is in the movie it was written for. The opening is one of the most thrilling two minutes and forty-five seconds ever written.
When they used to let you use electronic equipment on planes during takeoff, this or The Photographer would always be in my ears. I still think about it when I'm taking off….or driving 85 on I-5 between Seattle and Portland.
Is that dishonoring Mishima? He can't get to me. He daid.
3. The Meters "Kickback" CD
Sundazed Music released all of The Meters LPs a few years ago. This is a collection of tunes that never got on any Meters' albums. There's some great stuff on here, and some not-so-great. They take pains to point out that the previously unreleased "Love The One You're With" is based on the Isley Brothers' version and not the original. Doesn't really matter though, there's a reason it wasn't released.
These are from the Warner Brothers/SeaSaint days of the mid 1970s.
The gem is "All I Do Everyday" which I re-discovered because New Orleans/now Portland, Oregon saxophonist Reggie Houston does it in nearly every set his Earth Island Band plays. I think I played this song 5 times in a row one day in the car. I'm going to go play it again now.
When the Meters played their famed reunion concert at Jazzfest 2005, they pulled out "He Bite Me," a song that's also on this. It could be the funniest song they ever recorded. It's about a dragon. Zig and George growl. Don't ask.
"Keep On Marching (Funky Soldier)" used to be in the regular set list of The Funky Meters, Art and George's band with Russell Batiste and Brian Stolz who kept the Meters' music alive until they finally figured out how to get along.
4. Michael Haberman "Plays Sorabi—The Legendary Works for Piano"
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) wrote dense solo piano music, which Habermann discovered in a little shop in Mexico City in the 1970s. He became the only pianist Sorabi would trust to play his music.
It is not Cecil Taylor-like pounding and histrionics. A lot of it is just flat-out beautiful, if difficult. Some of these pieces have 8 staves for two hands. It took Habermann years to get them down.
He used to live in the apartment next to mine in Baltimore in the 1980s and I could lay in bed and listen to him practice. Before he knocked on my door to ask if he was bothering us, I thought angels lived next door.
5. Brian Eno "Music for Films" "Music for Airports" LPs
Although he never really disappeared, Eno has wormed his way back into public consciousness by working on Paul Simon's latest album. What's fun about these is that they're LPs and have scratches, adding to the "ambience."
I bought into the whole concept when they were released in the late 70s. They hold up. Could have been made today. In the back of my head there's a voice saying, "It's not New Age. It's not New Age. Really, it's not."
The music on here works the way it was designed to work.
It's isn't New Age. Really, it's not.
6. Eric Dolphy "Out There" LP
Oh man. Dolphy on alto, flute, clarinet and bass clarinet. Ron Carter on CELLO and George Duvivier on BASS and the young Roy Haynes at his young and gnarling best. Recorded FORTY-SIX years ago….jazz players today should BE this innovative.
What ever happened to the avant-garde?
Dolphy's tribute to Mingus, "The Baron," a Randy Weston tune and the rest Dolphy originals.
This album jumps out the speakers and runs away begging for new listeners and the long life it deserves.
I have the 1969 re-issue with notes from Ralph Berton in which he says, "…you won't 'know where you are;' you won't hear the well known chords and changes; you're on your own with the music being flung your way, music representative of a great deal that's happening now. Are they speaking to you? Or just thinking out loud? And do you like listening in?"
Is it me, or did the avant-garde stop? Somebody called today's scene "museumification of the music." The music on here is bright life. A museum couldn't hold it.
7. Oregon "Crossing" CD
The final recording with Colin Wolcott, and possibly their best. Well, it's the best one of theirs I've listened to this month, anyway. I have never gotten tired of Glen Moore's "Pepe Linque" and I've heard it a million times.
They are still huge in Europe. They are still little-known in America. Don't get me started. Sometimes I think most of the greatest music will never be discovered by most people. Oh well, that's show biz.
Glen Moore once unlocked Oregon for me, even though I had always loved them. He told me that when they started out, their objective was to make music as beautiful as Bill Evans'. Makes sense, huh?
8. Joe Turner "In The Evening" LP
Back when Joe had to sit down to sing. On the stool, becalmed until it was time for him to sing a verse, he would fill with some sort of inspired helium and belt out his lines, only to slump back on the stool until it was his turn to sing the next verse.
This is a Pablo release from 1976 backed by a quintet, including piano and guitar. Joe was a blues droner as well as a blues shouter by then. He's lanquid and old and world-weary. This makes "I've Got the World On a String" especially effective.
I've pretty much destroyed this record over the years by playing it when I've been pretty much destroyed, myself. It works every time. Like I said before, scratches help.
This also appears on counterpunch.org
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