Sunday Overnight

Pat Martino, Starbright, 1976.



Jack Lancaster and Robin Lumley with Brand X, Take Off/Sail On Solar Winds/Arrival, 1976.



Branford Marsalis, The Nearness Of You, 1989.

Tell 'Em, Branford.



Count Basie and his Orchestra (arranged by Oliver Nelson), African Sunrise, 1970.



Wayne Shorter, Thanks For The Memories, 1978.

We now conclude our broadcasting day

;>)

Seein' You Next Time Around

Montrose, Space Station #5, 1973.

Grow The F*ck Up, America

Upon observing this so-called controversy - if by 'controversy' one means a giant thumb-sucking circle jerk soaked in sulkily hurt feelings that continues on far too long to be seemly - I have had quite enough of the milking, thank you.

This isn't Osama bin Laden setting up a teen recruitment and travel bureau conveniently located in Midtown, nor is it a school for swarthy assassins using Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh headshots taped to the practice dummies (an infinitely more productive use for those humanoids perhaps notwithstanding)
...And if that's not what we're talking about, then what is the problem?

A multipurpose temple of faith and place of community being built to service the spiritual and temporal needs of fellow Americans and visitors to the U.S. is now the most terrible affront to white Christian values and the memory of the dead ever? Spare me.

With the exception of the 'professional Left' and any citizen with a balanced agenda and more than a double-digit IQ, America always thought 'it couldn't happen to them'...that vast oceans and a fragile universe of presumed and inferred goodwill built up over time would shield them from the simmering rage of those for whom hatred of the West is one of the few reasons for living - a group far from the majority of adherents to the faith in question, albeit a ever-growing demographic as a result of fecklessly declared wars.

This bill of goods was and is sold daily to the citizens via their leaders who tout one set of values and perform quite another interminably, never caring that their inconsistencies may someday come to light since the consumerist ignorance of the governed would presumably reassert itself one way or another.

Well, it happened...And the Great White Father couldn't save them.

In fact, he left the door open for the boogieman to come in, then allowed the subsequent years to devolve into a drunken orgy of destruction and waste, while his pals filled their blood-soaked pockets at the country's expense.

Nice daddy America had there. One of countless pointless tragedies that ensued, but elections (like births) have consequences, yes?

Unfortunately, common sense always struggles to triumph over jingoistic exploitation and cynical demonization for political profit - and the masses who ignore and forgive the shortcomings and predations caused by those of a more 'acceptable' religion have once again rushed to heap ill will upon those who live and worship 'unlike them', yet in the end who are reaching for the same higher places as they themselves purportedly are.

Anyone else see the disconnect in values here? The tolerances implicit and explicit in the words of the Christian savior, and the written declarations of equality and fraternity on which the United States of America is founded on are naught but ludicrously self-serving nonsense, should they emanate from those who so loudly decry the construction of this facility in that location.

For such people, their religious 'faith' is mere cold ashes in the mouth, and their 'patriotism' a form of pornography to stimulate themselves when more conventional impulses fail.
This state of affairs has continued for decades, and the only change subjectively noted is that I'll be refraining from commenting on it anymore with any hope for meaningful progress toward enlightenment.

It's the 21st century, and you've been in existence for almost 250 years.

Grow the f*ck up, America.

;>)

Sunday Overnight

Bill Evans, Some Other Time, 1958.



Ben Webster with Jimmy Rowles and Red Mitchell, Where Are You, 1957.



The Oscar Peterson trio, The Windmills Of Your Mind, 1970.



Mal Waldron, Loser`s Lament, 1966.



Art Farmer, with Jim Hall, Steve Swallow, and Pete LaRoca Sims, Petite Belle, 1964.

Kicking a thawed Dick around

Crooks & Liars:

Officials at the National Archives have curated a searing recollection of the Watergate scandal, based on videotaped interviews with 150 associates of Richard M. Nixon, an interactive exhibition that was supposed to have opened on July 1.
But the Nixon Foundation — a group of Nixon loyalists who controlled this museum until the National Archives took it over three years ago — described it as unfair and distorted, and requested that the archives not approve the exhibition until its objections are addressed.

A sample quote from one of the objectors:

"The real question always comes to, Did the actions that he took that were wrong, did they merit impeachment and removal from my office?
My view is that they did not reach the level of offenses for which he could be impeached and convicted."

It wasn't the crime, it was the coverup. Nixon might have weathered the initial storm - after all, he was reelected with over 60% of the popular vote in '72, and if he had hung the burglary team out to dry (for public consumption, of course - payoffs and pardons in private, natch) and hadn't recorded his utter complicity for posterity...And tried to short-circuit the investigative process in a rather ham-handed fashion...and become frighteningly toxic to the minority GOP in a midterm election year...well, let's just say that Mistah Dick would have been the one doing the kicking around, liberal pansies.

:D

The fact is, Nixon never died. He and his policies continued through Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kissinger and a plethora of other parasites who jettisoned their falling host only to carry on the disease forward into time.
His paranoiac legacy, stripped of its statesmanlike patina is now the world's present (and sadly, its likely future) due to the American public's fear of remembering their past in order not to repeat it.

As always in matters of Nixon, Hunter S. Thompson said it best:

'These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill.
He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death.
When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.
...
He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest.
But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand.

By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.'

Selah

;>)

'America Goes Dark'...?

NY Times - America Goes Dark

YAY! - Oh! - Gosh darn it, Krugman - Why'd ya have to go and ruin my sweet, short moment of fantasy?

The cheering throngs are still echoing in my tiny shell-like ears as I ride in the swimming pool-equipped limo of my ticker tape parade dreams, down the 5th Avenue of my mind betwixt buxom cheerleaders in uniform...and my arms exuberantly outstretched in vindication as America lauds its wayward cousin, home at last.

:D

This is the final output from decades of opportunistic pandering to impulses going against any reasonable and prudent perspective...A latently selfish nation (for what nation in which one is told that one should keep all they make if they merely pull themselves up by their bootstraps and remain beholden to no other could be otherwise?) where politicians can shill the self serving lies needed to dupe the willingly greedy into thinking that the essential infrastructure that surrounds and nurtures them on a daily basis is either an awesomely eternal construct that will never require communal fiscal commitment for upkeep, ever...Or an inconsequential sand castle whose inevitable washing away will matter not a whit, as long as one can keep some leftover change next to the hopeful lint balls in one's pocket.

It's what comes from a society that feels calamitous levels of spending and commitment of human life on two interminably bloody wars designed for long-term oligarchical enrichment is preferable to creating, printing and distributing quality educational materials and hiring dedicated, competent educators to nurture the youthful minds that would use them - as opposed to printing hardbound Jack Chick-style 'pitcher-book' screeds that are jam-packed with overly equivalent ecclesiastical pretense passed off as empirical fact, and dropping them off in a twine-tied bundle at ye olde edumacational warehouse where those who can't read will be those who will lead, someday.

It's what happens when the aggressively regressive elements within a society hold sway and drive the masses away from the light of reason...into the cold embrace of the night.

See you in the dark, kids.

;>)

Sunday Overnight

Oscar Peterson, Laura, 1955.



The Pat Metheny group, San Lorenzo, 1978.



Bud Powell with George Duvivier and Art Taylor, She, 1957.



Weather Report, Dream Clock, 1980.



Sam Butera with Louis Prima and the Witnesses, They'll Be No Next Time, 1957.

'Shouldn't have gone to the airport'

;>)

Stake Your Life Upon It

Robbie Robertson, American Roulette, 1987.

Sunday Overnight

Tony Bennett and Bill Evans, You Must Believe In Spring, 1976.



Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane, They Say It's Wonderful, 1962.



Lenny Breau, 5 O'Clock Bells, 1979.



Chet Baker, Almost Blue, 1988.