Sunday, November 29, 2009

Sunday Overnight



The Ed Bickert trio (with Don Thompson and Claude Ranger), Easy To Love, 1979.



Joni Mitchell, A Chair In The Sky, 1979.



Charles Mingus, with Jimmy Knepper, Shafi Hadi, Wade Legge, and Dannie Richmond, Invisible Lady, 1957.



Albert Ayler, with Niels Brosted, Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen and Ronnie Gardiner, Billie's Bounce, 1963.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Name A Newspaper, Bitch

Name A Newspaper, Bitch

My pal Blue Gal has put forth another contest amongst her compatriots...Some lighthearted japery involving Katie Couric and another media personage who has received far too much media attention of late...although, perhaps, not exactly in this way.

;>)

Monday, November 23, 2009

Like, totally bogey

Party Girl

Some people pay good money to get booted in the nuts, but when there's no shortage of out-of-work placekickers willing to do it for free why bother, right?

Well...

Case in point - say somebody gets a nice job, even though their reputation for truthtelling and non-partisanship is verifiably sketchy, insofar as they were the last in a long line of professional prevaricators and timewasters hired to keep the Bad Ship Lollipop stacked to the gunwales with fresh bullshit for eight long years.

No biggie - somebody else wants to look professionally magnanimous, extend a hand, build a bridge to...where?
Meh, looks good for the networks...On in five, boss. Kiss kiss.

Not so fast.

First, this legacy hire on the half-shell's former employer claimed he quit golf 'in solidarity' with the troops on a day deemed convenient to do so
(In the reality-based world, a dense executive's poorly timed piece of optics management theater) even though that story of staunch sacrifice wasn't quite true...OK, make it a whole lot untrue, but that was sort of par for the course with that fellow, pardon the pun.

Fast forward, he's gone bye-bye...probably out golfing, shooting smack with some caddies in the arbusto behind the 15th hole, who cares?...He's not there anymore.
In the words of Bette Davis - 'Good'.

Meanwhile in the Now, this rogueish ingrate's not even in the saddle of a cushy job for a week and already she's shit-talking her open-armed buddy with the sweet job offer, right there on the teevee, about the same thing she ham-handedly pimped for in a briefing a week after her old pal busted out his feckless fib for the feebleminded...

Golf.

Plainly put, this poison plum's not even smart enough to shut her mouth and keep from drawing attention via her mere presence to the fact that her former boss, his sidekick, and every other operational body within that place of employment for that period of time is a kleptocratic war criminal or hearts them very much.

President Obama - with all due respect, your countryfolk spent a lot of time and effort to get people like this out of American government jobs so that people who don't bend truth for a living could help float the ship of state a while.

You're bringing them back in.

Indulge an old carny, pal - what's the angle?

;>)

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Sunday Overnight



The Charles Lloyd quartet (Keith Jarrett, Ron McClure, and Jack DeJohnette), Love Ship, 1968.



Kenny Burrell with the Gil Evans Orchestra (featuring Lee Konitz, Jimmy Knepper and Ron Carter), Moon and Sand, 1964.



Hampton Hawes, with Cecil McBee and Roy Haynes, The Shadow Of Your Smile, 1973.



Teddy Wilson and Lester Young, with Gene Ramey and 'Papa' Jo Jones, All Of Me, 1956.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

That Ever Made A Fool Of Me



Albert Collins, Cold, Cold Feelin', 1978.

"Hey, we're headliners, baby!"

We Blew It

Raw Story:

Fire Geithner and Summers, prominent Democrat says

'We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans'

President Barack Obama "is being failed by his economic team" and should replace Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House economic policy director Larry Summers, says US House Rep. Peter DeFazio.

The prominent member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told MSNBC's The Ed Show that he and other House members are growing increasingly frustrated by a White House economic policy that focuses on maintaining the financial stability of Wall Street firms while largely overlooking Main Street concerns.


Geithner and Summers have been looking for America, and they can't seem to find it anywhere...But Wall Street.

;>)

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Will I Be Back Tomorrow For The Punchline Of The Joke?



The James Gang, The Bomber (Closet Queen/Boléro/Cast Your Fate To The Wind), 1969.

Is it safe?

Are You Safe?

...To release a self-laudatory memoir in the wake of a near decade of staggering malfeasance and hubristic ineptitude that one had an active hand in creating and promoting?

Karl Rove thinks so. No doubt George W. Bush will be adding this tome to his superhuman reading list next year, right between the Going Rogue coloring book and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

;>)

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Sunday Overnight



Sarah Vaughan, with Maynard Ferguson, Chuck Mangione, Don Cherry, Al Hirt, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Billy Higgins, Bags' Groove, 1986.



The Hampton Hawes trio (Red Mitchell and Shelly Manne), Walkin', 1955.



Charlie Mariano, Autumn In New York, 1951.



John Coltrane and Stan Getz, with Oscar Peterson, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, Hackensack, 1960.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

In Memory Forever

Eleventh

They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
We will remember them.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

And Now We're Just A Little Too Late



Whatever shape they end up in...viva Aerosmith.

Nobody's Fault, 1976.

Ah, those carefree days of innocence

Wolfie Hill

Raw Story:

CNN host Wolf Blitzer admitted on the air Monday that while he may not know what a marijuana plant looks like, he'd certainly be able to identify the smell.

Retorting, co-anchor Jessica Yellin jokingly asked, "How would you know what it smells like?" -- a question that drew more than a laugh from CNN pundit Lou Dobbs.

Both hosts were engaged in a discussion of Rep. Barney Frank's (D-MA) recent comment that because he is not an "outdoorsman," he would not recognize a marijuana plant if he came across one. The aside was made in response to a follow-up question by a reporter who discovered that Frank was present when his partner was arrested for possession of marijuana in 2007.




Frankly, I find this bit of public discombobulation somewhat hilarious.

People who attended higher education (oops, I meant 'university') in the 1960's and 70's who wouldn't know what a pot leaf looks like, but they know it by the smell, and they might, perhaps en passant have put what the jazz musicians and other scruffy bohemians called a 'joint' or 'reefer' to their lips once or thrice, purely in the spirit of noble scientific research, but of course they didn't inhale it - - and henceforth managed to stay blissfully unaware of same throughout the 'If it feels good, do it' and 'Just Say No' eras, in spite of constant media bombardment (increased by a factor of eleventy bazillion by the Internet) right up until, say, their life partner gets busted running a grow-op in his own house while they stood obliviously by...and then circumstantially proposing federal legislation that would remove penalties for adult possession of the leafy villain.

But they wouldn't know what it looks like... That being reserved exclusively for the provenance of 'outdoorsmen'. Of course.

Baked In A Tie

Oh look, it's Paul Bunyan

;>)

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Sunday Overnight



Elvin Jones
, with Charlie Mariano, Hank Jones, Sir Roland Hanna, and Richard Davis, Everything Happens To Me/Smoke Rings, 1965.



Hubert Laws, The Rite Of Spring, 1971.



Mose Allison, The Seventh Son, 1957.



Al Hirt, Pete Candoli, Don Ellis, and Dizzy Gillespie, late 1960's TV.

Friday, November 06, 2009

I Know My Enemy

Putting the Che in Michelle

Hey, Michelle Bachmann and Eric Cantor...When your little flock of tea partiers without a clue start comparing Nazi death camps to programs for affordable health care in America, and you stand right there looking at it, urging it on, feeding the beast to satisfy your ego's immature need for attention...Godwin's law stops applying and mental health laws start.

Only utter jackasses with no sense of perspective or history could countenance such a thing, and stand by grinning while it is done.
'Revolution'? Don't make me laugh, motherf*ckers.
You and yours are the reactionary status quo looking to get busy killing anybody you don't like to 'show your freedom'.

May your god have mercy on you, because I won't.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Sunday Overnight



Bill Evans and Eddie Gomez, Waltz For Debby, 1975.



The Phil Woods quartet (Bob Corwin, Sonny Dallas and Nick Stabulas), Easy Living, 1957.



The Buddy Rich big band, Straight No Chaser, 1971.



...And one for my pal SteveAudio...Weather Report, Port Of Entry, 1980.