Music Week/Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21440 [21406] rated (+34), 629 [622] unrated (+7).

Lost some ground last week, after a good start which picked up some stragglers, finding some honorable mentions but nothing to add to the A-list. Rated count is up because I've adding things to the Rhapsody Streamnotes file -- including a fair amount of jazz I didn't receive. (Including three new AUM Fidelity releases that finally make me feel not so bad about being jilted and dumped from their mailing list.) No Clean Feed package yet -- probably time to complain. Did get a package from Lithuania with tantalizing obscurities, including a 1974 item with a very young William Parker on bass (Melodic Art-Tet).

Streamnotes will run after A Downloader's Diary, whenever that's ready, certainly by the end of the month. Trying to keep up with the incoming jazz, but not worried about it. More bothered by everything else that's slipping, including a way overdue update to the Christgau website, and lots of seemingly imaginary projects of my own. I did manage to finish my "stone moat" around the back of the house -- just in time for it to get roughed up by yesterday's tornado. We didn't suffer any building damage, so whatever it was wasn't a real ground-touching tornado but it stripped a lot of leaves and twigs and deposited them in swirling patterns on our roof -- something I've never seen before.

Perry Beekman: So in Love: Perry Beekman Sings and Plays Cole Porter (2013, self-released): Guitarist-vocalist, based in Woodstock, NY; first album as far as I can tell, although he's "been playing in jazz clubs, and at private and corporate events throughout New York City for the past 25 years." Fifteen Cole Porter songs, backed by piano and bass. Hard to go wrong. B+(*)

Marc Bernstein & Good People: Hymn for Life (2012 [2013], Origin): Saxophonist, from New York but based in Denmark, lead instrument here is bass clarinet. Fourth album since 1999, quartet with Jacob Anderskov (piano), Jonas Westergaard (bass), and Rakalam Bob Moses (drums), plus featured singer Sinne Eeg. She has a remarkable voice, dark and smoky. B+(***)

Blue Cranes: Swim (2013, Cuneiform): Group, quintet with two saxes (Reed Walsmith and Joe Cunningham), keyboards (Rebecca Sanborn), bass (Keith Brush) and drums (Ji Tanzer); based in Portland, OR; handful of albums since 2007, including a remix of the last one (not counting an intervening EP). Long guest list this time, including strings on 5 (of 9) cuts. Big slabs of sound, nothing but volume to make you think they need more than one horn. B [advance]

Freddy Cole: This and That (2012 [2013], High Note): Nat's little brother, 14 years junior which makes him 81 now, finally found his mature voice a few years back and has been on a steady roll. Backed by pianist John Di Martino, with tasty guitar by arranger Randy Napoleon, and select sax and trombone spots. Scrounging a bit for songs he hasn't done before, but he even makes something of "Everybody's Talkin'." B+(***)

The Jay D'Amico Quintet: Tango Caliente (2012 [2013], Consolidated Artists Productions): Pianist, sixth album since 1983, the last three subtitled "Jazz Under Glass." First tango themed album, although he's done classical- and opera-themes. Expanded his trio to include Andrew Sterman on tenor sax and flute, and Richie Vitale on trumpet and flugelhorn -- nothing that will be mistaken as authentic. Nothing caliente here; don't know the Spanish for "lukewarm," but it's not even that. C+

Marko Djordjevic & Sveti: Something Beautiful 1709-2110 (2013, Goalkeeper): Drummer, from Serbia, studied at Berklee. Recorded first album as Sveti in 1995. Group now is a piano trio (Bobby Avey and Desmond White) with tenor sax added on half the tracks (Eli Degibri and Tivon Pennicott, three cuts each). All originals. B+(**)

Satoko Fujii Ma-Do: Time Stands Still (2011 [2013], Not Two): One of pianist Fujii's many groups, with Natsuki Tamura on trumpet, Norikatsu Koreyasu on bass, and Akira Horikoshi on drums: their third and final album together -- Koreyasu died of a heart attack shortly after. Some typically fine moments from Fujii and (especially) Tamura, but overall a bit subdued, almost poignant in the end. B+(**)

Satoko Fujii New Trio: Spring Storm (2013, Libra): Japanese pianist, has a lot of albums but not many conventional piano trios. This one has Todd Nicholson on bass and Takashi Itani on drums. Some fine examples of her impressive block chording and much more in a more melodic vein. B+(***)

Laszlo Gardony: Clarity (2012 [2013], Sunnyside): Pianist, b. 1956 in Hungary, came to US in 1983 to study at Berklee. Tenth album since 1986, a solo, all original material, inching up to a strong rhythmic vamp at the end. B+(***)

I Compani: Extended (2013, Icdisc): Dutch group, founded by saxophonist Bo van de Graaf around 1985, ten or so albums since then, their favorite subject the film music of Nino Rota, although another is Sun Ra, who provides the only non-Rota cover here, plus a song title. As the title suggests, the band has been beefed up here, to as many as 24 members, which can mean massive or mayhem but is usually slyly amusing. Weak spot is the vocals, a mix of art song and opera that easily rubs me the wrong way. B+(*)

Richard Lanham: Thou Swell (1998 [2013], RL Productions): Singer, started out with his brothers in a doo-wop group called the Tempo Tones -- YouTube has a video dated 1957, and Discogs lists one song on an obscure, undated compilation -- and went on to sing with King Curtis, did something with Wynton Kelly, joined another group called the Boateneers -- can't find any evidence of them -- and so forth, eventually recording this debut album, which in turn was shelved for fifteen years. Tenor saxophonist Jerry Weldon arranged, the songs notably checking Ray Charles and Nat Cole, with some gospel and calypso worked in, all of which are to his taste. B+(*)

Ivan Lins: Cornucopia (2012 [2013], Sunnyside): Brazilian singer-songwriter, b. 1945, scored his first hit in 1970 and has been a major figure ever since, with over 35 albums. This one is a major production, backed by the SWR Big Band, singer Paula Morelenbaum, Themba Mkhize's South African Choir, bassist Nilson Matta, and lots of extra percussionists. B+(**)

Miki Purnell: Swingin' to the Sea (2013, Sweet and Lovely Music): Standards singer, one original on this her debut album. From San Diego, where she maintains a day job as a family practice physician. Likes vocalese (titles like "Bluesette" and "A Night in Tunisia"), doesn't scat much, has a slightly girlish voice that grows on you. Guests Tamir Hendelman (piano) and Lori Bell (flute) produce. Nice, delicate reading of "The Nearness of You," and her "Swinging on a Star" is utterly delightful. B+(*)

Sherri Roberts: Lovely Days (2011-12 [2013], Blue House/Pacific Coast Jazz): Standards singer, fourth album, backed by pianist Bliss Rodriguez and nothing more -- she handles it well, but it doesn't feel like much, especially when the pace turns glacial on "Moon River." B

Wallace Roney: Understanding (2013, High Note): Trumpeter, has at least 16 albums since 1987, basically a mainstream hard bop guy although he's been dabbling with electronics the last few albums. No such electronics here: back to basics, and crank it up a bit. He'a also replaced his brother, saxophonist Antoine Roney, with Arnold Lee on alto and Ben Solomon on tenor. Mostly covers from the hard bop years, including two each from McCoy Tyner and Duke Pearson. One original each by Roney and Solomon. Nothing new here, but it does smoke. B+(**)

Anna Webber: Percussive Mechanics (2012 [2013], Pirouet): Plays flute and tenor sax, originally from British Columbia, studied at McGill and moved to New York. Second (or third) album, recorded in Germany, with clarinet/alto sax, piano, vibes/marimba, bass, two drummers -- no names I recognize -- the emphasis on jangly, off-center percussion. All original compositions. B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Susanne Abbuehl: The Gift (ECM): advance, June 11
• Laura Ainsworth: Necessary Evil (Eclectus): June 25
• David Ake: Bridges (Posi-Tone)
• Kenny Barron: Kenny Barron & the Brazilian Knights (Sunnyside)
• Ketil Bjørnstad: La Notte (ECM): advance, June 11
• Michel Camilo: What's Up? (Okeh)
• The Convergence Quartet: Slow and Steady (No Business)
• Correction With Mats Gustafsson: Shift (No Business): advance
• Roger Davidson: Journey to Rio (Soundbrush, 2CD)
• Gene Ess: Fractal Attraction (SIMP)
• Joel Harrison 19: Infinite Possibility (Sunnyside)
• Julia Hülsmann Quartet: In Full View (ECM): advance, June 11
• Yoron Israel & High Standards: Visions: The Music of Stevie Wonder (Ronja Music)
• Bob James & David Sanborn: Quartette Humaine (Okeh)
• Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette: Somewhere (ECM)
• Eugenie Jones: Black Lace Blue Tears (self-released)
• Annie Kozuch: Mostly Jobim (self-released): June 25
• Brian Landrus Kaleidoscope: Mirage (Blueland)
• Aaron Lebos: Reality (self-released)
• Steven Lugerner: For We Have Heard (NoBusiness/Primary): advance
• Melodic Art-Tet (1974, No Business)
• Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton: Live at Maya Recordings Festival (No Business)
• Gary Peacock/Marilyn Crispell: Azure (ECM): advance, June 11
• Carline Ray: Vocal Sides (Carlcat)
• Cécile McLorin Salvant: WomanChild (Mack Avenue)
• Vandeweyer/Van Hove/Lovens/Blume: Quat: Live at Hasselt (No Business)

Changed previous grades:

• Rilo Kiley: Under the Blacklight (2007, Warner Brothers): If Rkives are outtakes to this, I must have underestimated it -- not that there still isn't room for the outtakes to be better. [was: B+(***)] A-

Weekend Roundup

After a lazy week, some more links to ponder:

• Igor Bobic: Obama Promises to Hold IRS Accountable on 'Outrageous' Targeting: Given the history of the federal government harrassing left-wing political organizations, "outrageous" isn't the first word that pops into my mind regarding the revelations that some IRS personnel singled out "tea party" group applications for review of 501(C) status. My reaction was more like a giggle, but then I found out that none of the "targeted" organizations were actually denied. I'm not expert in the relevant law, but I do know that a peace organization I'm close to has both a 501(C) fund that is strictly non-political ("educational") and another funding stream that isn't tax exempt but can be used for more political activities (although in practice it isn't used for anything partisan or electoral). So it doesn't exactly surprise me that "tea party" groups would skirt that law: they are primarily political propaganda outlets, funded by rich right-wingers who can use the tax-exempt feature to stretch their self-interested bucks. Unlike most of the people who donate to our little peace group. (We haven't itemized deductions in many years, so our donations don't save us a dime on our taxes.) Obama is right that the IRS should be non-partisan, but his reaction shouldn't be an outrage that feeds into enemy talking points. (For instance, I see Glenn Beck now claiming that the "IRS scandal" is "all connected" with the Benghazi attack and the Boston bombings. On the Republicans' ability to keep these pseudo-scandals in the news cycle, crowding out real issues, see Julian Rayfield: Sunday Shows Round-Up: All About the IRS and Benghazi. As for real but ignored issues, see Conor Friedersdorff: The Biggest Obama Scandals Are Proven and Ignored -- a list Republicans don't care about or even applaud.)

  See Connie Cass: A Look at Why the Bengazi Issue Keeps Coming Back for a useful review of what happened there and who said what when. Of the various facts, the one that jumps out at me was that the "US consulate" in Benghazi was actually a CIA station, and aside from Ambassador Stevens the people involved were CIA agents and contractors, so the instinct to lie and cover up is deeply ingrained. The other key point is that the real political issue here was Obama's decision to intervene in Libya's civil war and help ouster Moammar Gaddafi. Obama promised not to put US military forces on the ground in Libya, but it seems inevitable that the CIA were active, routing guns and information to anti-Gaddafi forces -- some of which were bound to be anti-American Islamists (proving again how little the CIA learned from Afghanistan, where US clients included future leaders of the Taliban and indeed Osama Bin Laden himself).

  Of course, intervention in Libya isn't on the Republican's own "talking points": they'd rather attack the administration for trying to substitute "extremists" for "terrorists," mostly in the belief that their language is a more potent stimulus to further US-backed wars in the region. Even there, what they loathe Obama for isn't that he hasn't been belligerent enough for their taste -- excepting McCain and Graham, of course, who never met a war they didn't want to plunge into -- but that Obama isn't jingoistic enough.

• Paul Krugman: How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled: Book review of: Neil Irwin: The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire (Penguin); Mark Blyth: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford University Press); and David A. Stockman: The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America (Public Affairs). But starts off with the Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco -- the paper that claimed that when a nation's debt/GDP ratio crosses the 90% mark the economy sinks into catastrophe, but turned out to be wrong in so many ways:

  The real mystery, however, was why Reinhart-Rogoff was ever taken seriously, let alone canonized, in the first place. Right from the beginning, critics raised strong concerns about the paper's methodology and conclusions, concerns that should have been enough to give everyone pause. Moreover, Reinhart-Rogoff was actually the second example of a paper seized on as decisive evidence in favor of austerity economics, only to fall apart on careful scrutiny. Much the same thing happened, albeit less spectacularly, after austerians became infatuated with a paper by Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna purporting to show that slashing government spending would have little adverse impact on economic growth and might even be expansionary. Surely that experience should have inspired some caution.

  So why wasn't there more caution? The answer, as documented by some of the books reviewed here and unintentionally illustrated by others, lies in both politics and psychology: the case for austerity was and is one that many powerful people want to believe, leading them to seize on anything that looks like a justification.

  Here's a very good explanation of how recessions (depressions) happen, especially following a prolonged expansion of debt:

  All that was needed to collapse these houses of cards was some kind of adverse shock, and in the end the implosion of US subprime-based securities did the deed. By the fall of 2008 the housing bubbles on both sides of the Atlantic had burst, and the whole North Atlantic economy was caught up in "deleveraging," a process in which many debtors try -- or are forced -- to pay down their debts at the same time.

  Why is this a problem? Because of interdependence: your spending is my income, and my spending is your income. If both of us try to reduce our debt by slashing spending, both of our incomes plunge -- and plunging incomes can actually make our indebtedness worse even as they also produce mass unemployment.

  Krugman could have extended these paragraphs into a tutorial on how [Keynesian] macroeconomics has learned how to ameliorate and reverse recessions, but he wound up illustrating the principles negatively, by showing how actual central bankers ignored standard prescriptions and made their economies worse. The key insight is that if my income is someone else's spending, and others in the private sector aren't spending, that deficit can be made up by having government spend more. In other words, all it takes to avoid disaster is the political will to deliberately do something constructive about it. That will power was undone by a coalition of bankers and conservative politicians, partly because they fixated on threats (to them, anyway) that were mostly imaginary, and mostly because they didn't give a damn about the hardships their welfare forced on everyone else.

  Krugman notes how many advocates of austerity see it as a morality play -- as Andrew Mellon put it "to purge the rottenness" from the system (nor is this view limited to curmudgeonly bankers; see Alex Pareene: Kinsley Loves Austerity Because It Is "Spinach") -- and he finds examples in Stockman's book (a tirade against one "spree" after another). Krugman then adds:

  So is the austerian impulse all a matter of psychology? No, there's also a fair bit of self-interest involved. As many observers have noted, the turn away from fiscal and monetary stimulus can be interpreted, if you like, as giving creditors priority over workers. Inflation and low interest rates are bad for creditors even if they promote job creation; slashing government deficits in the face of mass unemployment may deepen a depression, but it increases the certainty of bondholders that they'll be repaid in full. I don't think someone like Trichet was consciously, cynically serving class interests at the expense of overall welfare; but it certainly didn't hurt that his sense of economic morality dovetailed so perfectly with the priorities of creditors.

  It's also worth noting that while economic policy since the financial crisis looks like a dismal failure by most measures, it hasn't been so bad for the wealthy. Profits have recovered strongly even as unprecedented long-term unemployment persists; stock indices on both sides of the Atlantic have rebounded to pre-crisis highs even as median income languishes. It might be too much to say that those in the top 1 percent actually benefit from a continuing depression, but they certainly aren't feeling much pain, and that probably has something to do with policymakers' willingness to stay the austerity course. [ . . . ]

  I'd argue that what happened next -- the way policymakers turned their back on practically everything economists had learned about how to deal with depressions, the way elite opinion seized on anything that could be used to justify austerity -- was a much greater sin. The financial crisis of 2008 was a surprise, and happened very fast; but we've been stuck in a regime of slow growth and desperately high unemployment for years now. And during all that time policymakers have been ignoring the lessons of theory and history.

  It's a terrible story, mainly because of the immense suffering that has resulted from these policy errors. It's also deeply worrying for those who like to believe that knowledge can make a positive difference in the world. To the extent that policymakers and elite opinion in general have made use of economic analysis at all, they have, as the saying goes, done so the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination. Papers and economists who told the elite what it wanted to hear were celebrated, despite plenty of evidence that they were wrong; critics were ignored, no matter how often they got it right.

  It would take a much longer piece, but at some point it would be worth breaking out the things that constitute "immense suffering": the unfairness of so much unemployment; discrimination against all sorts of marginalized workers, especially the old (who policymakers expect to work longer and longer) and the young (who face extra difficulties in starting careers, and in many cases start with unprecedented debt burdens); and much more. Nor is public spending only needed to counterbalance the drop in private spending -- the need for infrastructure and public goods has never been greater, and the austerity fixation is crippling us (physically, mentally, aspirationally).

Music Week/Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21406 [21383] rated (+23), 622 [617] unrated (+5). Not sure what accounts for the fall off, but then don't remember much of last week.

A-list records continue to accumulate at a dizzying pace, a far cry from a couple months ago when they were scarce as hen's teeth -- clever triangulators will note that in addition to the two featured in this rather short week there are two more in the unpacking list that were first uncovered on Rhapsody. Thus far I have 41 A-list records this year, so we're still not quite on track to getting to last year's 125, but not so far behind either.

Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio + Jeb Bishop: The Flame Alphabet (2011 [2013], Not Two): Bishop is the Chicago-based trombone player who left the Vandermark Five about five years ago, and has kept busy since then mostly guesting on projects where he easily adds to the noise level -- his tour with Cactus Truck is fresh on my mind -- but here he takes the lead without the least bit of slop in a showcase of avant-trombone that would turn the heads of Steve Swell, or for that matter Roswell Rudd: a huge improvement over Bishop's previous album with Portuguese tenor saxophonist Amado's trio, Burning Live at Jazz ao Centro. And Amado is sharp as ever, ably backed by Miguel Mira on cello and Gabriel Ferrandini on drums. A-

Jerry Bergonzi: By Any Other Name (2012 [2013], Savant): Tenor saxophonist, from Boston, has a long list of records since 1983 but has never sounded better than in his recent streak -- I have four of his last six albums at A-, the other two just a hair under. So I was surprised when this didn't kick in, but I blame Phil Grenadier's trumpet, which ties the sax up in unison work and takes solos that add up to very little. In his own spots the saxphonist is as brusque as ever -- there just aren't enough of them. Songs are all originals, but parenthetically refer to standards. B+(**)

Jonathan Finlayson & Sicilian Defense: Moment & the Message (2012 [2013], Pi): Trumpet player, first album after quality side credits with Steve Lehman, Steve Coleman, Tomas Fujiwara, and -- most likely; still haven't heard the album -- Mary Halvorson. Quintet with Miles Okazaki (guitar), David Virelles (piano), Keith Witty (bass), and Damion Reid (drums). No second horn keeps his out front, while the guitar and piano players are rising stars, sparkling soloists with an intriguingly complex interplay. A-

Hush Point: Hush Point (2013, Sunnyside): Postbop pianoless quartet, the two horns John McNeil's trumpet and Jeremy Udden's alto sax, with Aryeh Kobrinsky on bass and Vinnie Sperrazza on drums. I initially assumed this would be McNeil's show -- he's about 30 years senior -- but Udden outwrote him 4-to-3, Kobrinsky pitched in, and they picked up two Jimmy Giuffre tunes that seem like a shared connection. The hornwork is tight and sly, the rhythm slippery. Nothing spectacular, but could well grow on you. B+(***)

Steven Lugerner: For We Have Heard (2013, NoBusiness/Primary): Plays double reeds, clarinets, flutes, saxes. Second album, after his ambitious 2-CD debut (also has a group record, Dads, by Chives). Quartet with Darren Johnston on trumpet, Myra Melford on piano, and Matt Wilson on drums. Strong soloists in their rare spots, but the compositions come first, with most of the album is woven around the leader's intricate reeds. B+(***)

Jackie Ryan: Listen Here (2012 [2013], Open Art): Standards singer, six or seven records since 2000; has a deep, flexible voice that over an album gains stature and authority. Arranged by bassist John Clayton, features pianist Gerald Clayton, with Graham Dechter on guitar and selected horn spots -- haven't heard much from him lately, but Rickey Woodard sounds splendid. B+(*)

Alex Snydman: Fortunate Action (2012 [2013], self-released): Drummer, lives in Los Angeles, debut album, mostly piano trio with two cuts adding tenor/soprano sax (Cari Clements). He uses three pianists -- Doug Abrams (4 cuts), Chris Pattinshall (3), and Miro Sprague (2) -- and two bassists, with the pianists writing a bare majority of the songs; Snydman has 3.5 credits, plus covers of Ellington/Strayhorn and Herbie Hancock. Despite the credits jumble, it all sounds remarkably consistent. B+(**)

Al Thompson Jr.: City Mainstream (2012 [2013], Alcalgar): Plays piano/keyboards, sings a bit, based in Connecticut. First album, a high energy groove thing, the horns stronger than anything the smooth jazz crowd favors -- gives it some appeal. B

Jacob Varmus: Terminal Stillness (2012 [2013], Crows Kin): Trumpet player, from San Francisco, studied at University of Iowa, based in Brooklyn. Second album, six tracks cut with guitar (Nate Radley), piano (Kris Davis), bass (Ike Sturm), drums (Brian Woodruff); two with accordion (Jacob Garchik), bass (Gil Smuskowitz), and drums; the closer Varmus himself on piano. B+(*)

Renée Yoxon/Mark Ferguson: Here We Go Again (2012 [2013], self-released): Singer and her pianist, based in Ottawa up in Canada, second album; original songs, slight edge to Yoxon with about half credited to both. Band selectively adds trumpet, trombone, sax, and/or guitar, and they flesh out the sound nicely. She likes to scat, and isn't bad at it. B+(*)

Some corrections on a recent Jazz Prospecting review:

Clipper Anderson: Ballad of the Sad Young Men (2008-10 [2013], Origin): Bassist, originally from Montana, based in Seattle since 1992. Third album, if you count an Xmas with Greta Matassa's name first, plus a lot of side credits going back to 1984. Anderson sings as well as plays bass, moldy standards done in the old Sinatra mold, except that he's not Sinatra, and Darin Clendenin's piano trio doesn't pack much punch. B

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Chris Amemiya & Jazz Coalescence: In the Rain Shadow (OA2)
• David Arnay: 8 (Studio N)
• Lynn Baker Quartet: LectroCoustic (OA2)
• Diego Barber/Hugo Cipres: 411 (Origin)
• Black Host: Life in the Sugar Candle Mines (Northern Spy)
• Will Calhoun: Life in This World (Motéma)
• Ceramic Dog: Your Turn (Northern Spy)
• Etienne Charles: Creole Soul (Culture Shock Music): advance, July 23
• Corey Christiansen: Lone Prairie (Origin)
• Amos Garrett Jazz Trio: Jazzblues (Stony Plain)
• Christian McBride & Inside Straight: People Music (Mack Avenue)
• Bernie Mora & Tangent: Dandelion (Rhombus)
• The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Phalanx (Aerophonic)
• The Rosenthals: Fly Away (American Melody)
• Colin Stetson: New History Warfare, Vol. 3: To See More Light (Constellation)
• Wheelhouse: Boss of the Plains (Aerophonic)
• Zs: Grain (Northern Spy)

Expert Comments

Someone asked about Hugh Masekela:

Hugh Masekela: seven albums makes me far from an expert, but the best I've heard is Home Is Where the Heart Is (1972), followed by Live at the Market Theatre (2006). Both are on Rhapsody, as is one or two anthologies of "The Chisa Years (the 1972 album was originally on Chisa). The Penguin Guide's top pick is Stimela (1994, VSOP, but the music dates from those same Chisa years, 1966-72; I've never seen it).

By the way, as far as South African jazz goes, my longtime favorite is Dudu Pukwana's In the Townships (1973, later on Earthworks CD).

By the way, Jazz Prospecting up. Jonathan Finlayson has probably cinched "debut of the year," although Peter Evans' Zebulon is still the year's most imposing trumpet album (unless Slippery Rock is). Just found out that one label has been trying to send me stuff ever since their founding via the Village Voice. Only record the Voice ever (well, since 1980) forwarded to me was a Fall Out Boy advance. Impatiently awaiting the new batch of Clean Feeds. At least I'm still on Rodrigo Amado's mailing list.

Before I finished, Milo Miles posted his answer:

Actually, that's a pretty good starting-place album [The Lasting Impressions of Ooga Booga]. Vintage others I also like a lot are Home Is Where the Music Is and Time. Pretty fond of the recent one Jabulani, too. The only one to avoid outright is Grazin' the the Grass greatest hits, which are inferior remakes.

Cam Patterson:

I finally got around to reading Gregg Allman's autobio Ain't My Cross to Bear, co-written with Alan Light. This isn't the great Allman Brothers history, although it contains some of that -- you won't get the details of Duane's accident, just the awkwardness of the survivors playing over Duane's body at his funeral (as far as I can tell, the last funeral Gregory has attended to this day, although death abides throughout), but you'll find out the personal relationships that brought the band together in the first place in a way no biographer could ever conjure. (First out of town gig that Gregg Allman ever played: the Stork Club in Mobile Alabama, which I can point you to today even though it's long gone.) And if this book isn't written well in the way that the Richard Hell book leads you to think about how that southern boy thought his way out of the narrow Kentucky box he grew up in, it's well written in the sense that it totally nails Gregg's conversational mannerisms. And it's equally naked in its honesty -- the author may not always be right, but I don't think he's lying about anything either.

The big problem, right away, is women. I'm not sure that Gregg Allman has had a satisfactory relationship with a female other than his mom in his whole life. He's respectful to his second-to-last (and longest at not quite 10 years) wife Stacey, who I know a bit. And Cher gets her turn, without any acrimony and with sacks of honesty on the author's part. (And the slightly awkward but incredibly generous shout-out to Chaz Bono makes you love both of them.) But most of the rest of his wives (they are numerous) are addicts, porn stars, or worse. And the remainder of the women mentioned are nameless and disregarded.

Contrasting with this is Gregg's (and Duane's) unreflective, effortless anti-war and anti-racist behavior. I guess their dad being a vet who was senselessly murdered may have seeded the first, but the inclusiveness of the Allmans is natural and honest and not usual for the time. There is no rationalization at all, and the Allman family clearly wasn't an inherent bastion of racial tolerance. But slipping through the cracks of the awful geographical attitudes of the time permitted an awesome opportunity for the Allman brothers (small "b") to expand beyond both the chitlin circuit and the lily-white Beatles/Byrds cover band syndrome that they played against.

So, as I said, I think that Gregg is being honest here, but the truth is a difficult metric. Does he dis the Grateful Dead (who he played with) because he doesn't get their music or their fans, or because Jerry Garcia famously called him a narc? And speaking of which, would Scooter Herring (who never met face to face with Gregg after his 18 months of incarceration) have written about his trial in the same way? Did Gregg really not turn anyone else (other than his bandmates, which he fesses to, and which would have definitely happened anyway) onto King H?

At the end of the day, that's what the book is about anyway, a 12-step journey that few who have sunk to Gregg's depths rise from. He got his new liver and he deserves the chance to be honest (and notably unselfrightious) about how he never got his act together until the very end, and then you wonder.

There are a couple of grace notes here. One is when Derek Trucks makes an appearance. The second is the extended denouement, which is long and rambling and contrasts with the fey coda that Hell tacked onto his own book. Gregg probably wrote this himself, and it's like what happens in "Layla" when the original song stops and the piano riff takes over, Skydog fluttering overheard. Long, jazzy, too long, and gorgeous, that's what it is.

Inspirational quote:

"I would imagine that Lynyrd Skynyrd had more hits than anyone else, but they sure ended up appealing to a real redneck bunch of folks."

When questioned about that "inspirational quote" Patterson added:

I've always had more Lynyrd Skynyrd albums than Allman Brothers albums, and I feel like LS has an impact like Hank Williams that the Allmans lack. But that impact comes at a price, and there is nothing about LS that is ecumenical. At the end of the day, we all need to look out for each other. The Allman Brothers, through hook and crook, did that, and LS did not. As someone who was born in the south, although I don't consider myself a capital-S Southerner, I feel like Lynyrd Skynyrd was a glorious dead end, as much of a dead end as Gram Parsons (who toured with a Dixie flag too). I'm just tired of that, tired of defending it, tired of trying to understand it.

What LS are up to now is something I don't care anymore to think about. I've got my journey and they've got theirs. What they did in the past is fabulous and immediate. That they recoiled to regional jingoism undermines what regional pride I might have.

From Matt Rice, on Facebook (adding my grades in brackets):

My 21 Favorite Albums of 2013

1. Yo La Tengo: Fade [**]
2. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City [-]
3. Rilo Kiley: RKives [U]
4. Kacey Musgraves: Same Trailer Different Park [A-]
5. The Uncluded: Hokey Fright [A-]
6. Bettie Serveert: Oh, Mayhem! [***]
7. Ashley Monroe: Like a Rose [A-]
8. They Might Be Giants: Nanobots [***]
9. Dawn Richard: Goldenheart [*]
10. Pistol Annies: Annie Up [A-]
11. Paramore: Paramore [B]
12. Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold [A-]
13. Jonny Fritz: Dad Country [**]
14. Low: The Invisible Way [-]
15. A$AP Rocky: LONG.LIVE.A$AP [**]
16. Brad Paisley: Wheelhouse [B]
17. Wussy: Duo [-]
18. Tyler, the Creator: Wolf [-]
19. Waxahatchee: Cerulean Salt [A-]
20. Bombino: Nomad [***]
21. Skrillex: Leaving [B]

Weekend Roundup

Another last-minute link grab:

• Nicholas Blanford: Hizballah and Israel Spar as Syria's Conflict Threatens to Spin Out of Control: Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah (effectively Lebanon) should have yielded several clearcut lessons. One is that Hezbollah is a very effective defensive fighting force against Israeli land assaults. Another is that Hezbollah's cache of Iranian or Syrian rockets aren't worth a thing, either as a deterrent against Israeli attack -- if anything, their existence provoked that attack -- or as an offensive weapon. Yet Hezbollah is evidently so concerned about maintaining their Syrian weapons pipeline that they've joined Assad's Syrian army in fighting against the rebels. Hezbollah's presence in Syria, in turn, gives Israel all the excuse they think they need to fly into Syria and bomb targets they think are related to Hezbollah -- presumably pro-Assad forces, although they've also claimed to be neutral in the Syrian Civil War, and some Israelis have argued they would prefer Assad (you know, "the devil you know"; see Israel has no desire for Assad to fall) to stay in power, so they may not care who they bomb. Needless to say, both Israel and Hezbollah are making the mess in Syria worse, adding dangerous factors that make it very likely to spill over into Lebanon, while Israel is just stirring the pot in Syria, giving all sides more reason to hate it and plot revenge.

  Also see Robert Fisk talk about Syria, attesting to the extreme brutality of the war, also questioning the logic of Israel's intervention:

  Are they really bombing missiles going to the Hezbollah, the so-called Fateh-110 missile, which was first test-fired by Iran, what, 11 years ago? Conceivable. But when you consider the Syrians have also used these missiles, according to the Americans, last December against rebel forces, why would they use armaments, which they use against -- in this ferocious life-and-death battle against the rebels, why should they be shipping them out of Syria en route to Lebanon, where the Hezbollah don't appear at the moment to have any need for them, since they have thousands of other weapons, a weapon which I would have thought the government would want to keep in Damascus?

  Fisk also says something about the state of journalism:

  And I think one of the problems is, as I say, this parasitic, osmotic relationship between journalists and power, our ever-growing ability, our wish, to -- you know, to rely on these utterly bankrupt comments from various unnamed, anonymous intelligence sources. And I'm just looking at a copy of the Toronto Globe and Mail, February 1st, 2013. It's a story about al-Qaeda in Algeria. And what is the sourcing? "U.S. intelligence officials said," "a senior U.S. intelligence official said," "U.S. officials said," "the intelligence official said," "Algerian officials say," "national security sources considered," "European security sources said," "the U.S. official said," "the officials acknowledged." I went -- boy, I've got another even worse example here from The Boston Globe and Mail [ sic ], November 2nd, 2012. But, you know, we might as well name our newspapers "Officials Say." This is the cancer at the bottom of modern journalism, that we do not challenge power anymore. Why are Americans tolerating these garbage stories with no real sourcing except for very dodgy characters indeed, who won't give their names?

• E Douglas Kihn: The Political Roots of American Obesity:

  It was during Reagan's first term that the phrase bean counter came into prominent usage. These were the efficiency experts whose job it was to increase profits for the major corporations, mainly by introducing speedups, job consolidations, forced overtime, the hiring of part-time workers -- along with artful and ruthless union-busting.

  This was also the beginning of the "War on Iran," the "War on Drugs," the war against the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador (all of them Marxists doubtless bent on rampaging through the streets of US cities) and a dangerous escalation of threats against the Soviet Union/Evil Empire.

  As social fear and insecurity rise, mental health declines.

  Apparently, so does physical health. According to a new study from Rice University and the University Colorado at Boulder in Social Science Quarterly, despite modest gains in lifespan over the past century, the United States still trails many of the world's countries when it comes to life expectancy, and its poorest citizens live approximately five years less than more affluent people. The United States, which spends far more money on medical care than other advanced industrialized countries, has the sickest residents in every category of unwellness.

Fuzzy Red Lines

A little over two years ago the "Arab Spring" pro-democracy movement broke out in Syria, a nation that nearly everyone agreed could benefit from more political freedom, seeing as how it's been ruled by the Assad family since the 1960s and by one military clique or another even further back. Similar dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt fell quickly; struggles against the dictators of Yemen and Bahrein dragged out inconclusively; but in Libya and Syria demonstrators were met with violence and some fraction of the military establishment broke against the regime, plunging those nations into civil war. Demonstrations in Jordan faded quickly with a few token reforms. And nothing much happened in Saudi Arabia, probably the one nation in the region most in need of a democratic overhaul.

One prism into understanding how these movements played out is to map them against US influence in the region. US interests and actions in the Middle East have been schizophrenic since the late 1940s when US administrations found themselves not just allied but in love with two conflicting suitors: Israel, and Saudi-Arabian oil (although any oil would do, especially Iran's from 1953-79). One problem was that those paramours came with a lot of baggage: Israel was constantly at war with its Arab neighbors and its own [Palestinian] people, forging an elite militarist culture that thrives on conflict, foments hatred against everything Arab, and has turned most of world opinion against them -- the major exception America's own fundamentalist Christians and militarists. The Saudi ruling family, on the other hand, is joined at the hip to the most extremely reactionary Salafist Muslim clergy, and has spent billions of dollars attempting to export their religious orthodoxy throughout the Middle East and into Afghanistan and Pakistan, where it turned virulently anti-American. But America's true obsession was the Cold War, in service of which no tyrant or ideologue could be found too unsavory. The Israelis and Saudis became expert at camouflaging their own obsessions as anti-communist fervor, so the US could embrace them both.

But another facet of America's Cold War obsession was promotion of democracy, not so much for allies as for countries on the other (or no) side, but as a contrast to the "unfree" Soviet-style regimes. So when masses of people demand democracy, our natural tendency is to applaud. In the cases of Tunisia and Egypt -- secure military allies with tired and unsavory leaders -- Obama had little reason to resist, so the US subtly nudged their power structure to go with the flow. In Yemen, one of Obama's favorite drone-shooting ranges, and Bahrein, with its Shiite majority possibly tilting toward Iran, the US was more reserved. But Libya and Syria were rarely US allies, and most of the "brains" behind US policy in the region -- especially the "neocons" -- have spent most of their careers bashing their leaders, so the US had no interests in maintaining them, but also no influence or leverage that could be used to democratize them. Consequently, the more the US leaned against them, the less then had to lose by suppressing their revolts violently. In hindsight, the best way the US could have helped to democratize those nations would have been to develop normal relations with them. (It is worth noting that the only Soviet bloc states that didn't democratize are the ones the US fought wars against, followed by long, grudge-filled periods of isolation: China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba.)

As soon as Libya and Syria broke into civil war, the neocons -- most vociferously, Senators McCain and Graham, who never miss an opportunity to plunge us deeper into hell -- and their "liberal hawk" cronies started crying for the US to intervene. How anyone could think that inserting the US military into a conflict would save lives is beyond me. (The historical basis for that idea was probably the NATO intervention in Bosnia. After just two weeks of bombing, the Serbs accepted a ceasefire and signed the Dayton Accords ending a war between Serbia and Bosnia that had dragged on for more than two years. That intervention surely did save lives, at least if you don't factor in the subsequent Kosovo War, which was made all the more likely by the expectation that NATO would again intervene against Serbia -- as it did.) But you can't judge interventions by simply balancing deaths on one side versus the other. US intervention means that people who wouldn't have been killed otherwise are now being killed by the US -- a fact that won't be easily rationalized by the people the US attacked.

Obama did finally agree to intervene in Libya, but only after France and the UK had committed to do so. US firepower quickly degraded Libya's military power, and the civil war turned against Gaddafi, ending after about three months. Obama was careful not to land US troops, or to put the US into a position where the US would have any responsibility for postwar administration and reconstruction. Nonetheless, last September a group of Islamic jihadists attacked the US consulate in Benghazi -- the center of the anti-Gaddafi resistance, presumably the most grateful city for the US intervention -- killing four Americans, the sort of blowback that should always be expected. The Benghazi attack has since become a cause celebre for the Republicans, who have gone so far as to argue that Obama should be impeached for his "cover up" of the attack. (As far as I can tell, that "cover up" consisted of nothing more than Susan Rice making some erroneous statements the day after, confusing the violent attack in Benghazi with non-violent anti-American protests elsewhere. I would write more about this if I could make any sense out of it, but I can't. The one thing I can say is that attacking Obama for something bad happening after he intervened in Libya isn't likely to be the most effective way to convince him to intervene in Syria, where the number of bad things that can happen is much greater.)

Dexter Filkins has a long article, The Thin Red Line, on Syria, the pressures put on Obama to intervene there, and some of the risks. Filkins is one of those reporters for whom war is just business -- booming, as his book, The Forever War, shows. He recounts much of what I wrote above on Yugoslavia and Libya, while only glancingly mentioning less "successful" US interventions like Iraq and Afghanistan. The title refers to Obama's casual warning to Assad that Syrian use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line" leading to US intervention. ("Red lines" have been much in the news lately, especially regarding Iran's "nuclear program" -- what degree of offense would "justify" Israel and/or the US to preemptively attack Iran.) Consequently, advocates of going to war with Syria are scouring the data for any evidence of poison gas use, under the theory that having drawn a red line there, Obama will have no choice but to intervene -- the entire credibility of the US is put at stake by Obama's careless use of jargon.

The Syrian Civil War has resulted in, to pick two recent estimates, between 70 and 120 thousand deaths, with more than a million refugees, and many more internally displaced. Those are substantial numbers, even if they are still less than the death-and-refugee toll of the Civil War in Iraq that was triggered and abetted by the US invasion and occupation. (At least no one was so stupid as to urge anyone to intervene to "save lives" in Iraq. Of course, enforcing a "no fly" zone against the US would have been difficult, but we are talking about genocide here, something the world has committed to tolerate "never again.")

Filkins reports on three options for US intervention: establishing a "no fly" zone; arming the rebels; and somehow securing Syria's chemical weapon sites. The "no fly" zone is regarded as more difficult than it was in Libya because Syria has more sophisticated anti-aircraft defenses, although they don't seem to cause Israel much trouble. The bigger problem is that in itself it's unlikely to have much effect -- e.g., on artillery and missiles. One suggestion is to use the "Patriot anti-missile system" to intercept Syrian SCUD missiles. (Is this the source of the adage that "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels"?) So it's very likely that a "no fly" zone will be a stepping stone to deeper involvement, as indeed it was in Libya.

Arming the rebels is relatively easy to do, and is already being done by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and possibly others. However, this gets real tricky real fast. There are multiple groups of rebels, and some of them are friendlier to the US than others, and the last thing you want is to send arms to Al-Qaeda-types in Syria -- which are a formidable part of the resistance -- who might wind up using the arms against American targets, so you want to pick and choose who gets what, but in doing so you're not only arming the rebels against Syria, you're arming them against each other. And while you might argue that a "no fly" zone is a neutral way to level the battlefield, arming select groups of the rebels ends any pretense at neutrality or disinterest. You now have a "dog in the fight": which is not only bad news for Assad, it's a challenge for anyone who is wary of American power in the region -- a short list which includes Iran and Russia, even before this revolt provided Syria with arms. The result is surely an arms race, escalating even further the level of violence.

Arming the rebels also means forgoing the alternative, which is to negotiate an arms embargo with Syria's suppliers, and enforce comparable limits on the rebels' suppliers. The desired effect would be to let the conflict degrade into a stalemate, which would give both sides reason to negotiate a power-sharing agreement and move toward a democratic scheme which protects interests allied with both sides. If the US goes in and arms the rebels, that option disappears. The rebels become more convinced in their eventual triumph, cementing their resolve to fight on. From that point the only way to long-term suffering is to shorten the war by increasing the rebels' firepower and leverage, which not only helps them defeat Assad, it also allows them to more completely dominate the social, ethnic, and tribal groups that had favored Assad. And it also makes more likely an internecine war between rebel groups -- as happened when the Russians finally quit Afghanistan.

Even Filkins admits that the third option -- securing Syria's chemical weapons -- is a fool's errand. Nobody knows how many sites there are, how many munitions there are, where they all are, or much of anything else about them. What you really need is a UN disarmament team to set up camp in Syria and track them all down, but for that to happen you have to stop the shooting, in which case you might as well solve the conflict. As for the US doing it directly, Filkins reports an estimate that it would take 75,000 troops: the basic scheme there is to conquer the country, then look for the illicit weapons -- for lessons on how this "works," see Iraq. Even if you could magically wipe the country clean of chemical weapons, it's unlikely that the conflit would be less deadly. They wind up being nothing more than a side-thought: a problem people should have thought of before starting a war that makes their use much more likely.

Obama has managed to frustrate virtually every side in the conflict. He never offered any pretense of neutrality, and has gone out of his way to offend Assad backers from Iran to Hezbollah. He's had better relations with Russia, but not much. Saudi and Qatari arms shipments inevitably smell of US approval, as does Israel's recent bombings of Syria -- one thing the latter does is to test Syria's air defenses, useful research for that "no fly" zone. The CIA is reportedly on the ground in Syria, feeding intelligence info to the rebels. On the other hand, it's hard to tell who's "winning" the war, and nothing Obama has done is likely to tilt the balance, so he's not winning points with the neocon crowd -- nor should he, given the way they've lashed out at him over Libya, which he finessed about as elegantly as any American president could.

As far as I'm concerned, Assad's extremely violent counterrevolt is inexcusable, ensuring his future as an international pariah. However, the more I read of the rebels, the less sympathetic I am to them, and the more I fear their possible triumph. Andrew Bacevich makes an interesting point:

Whatever Obama does or doesn't do about Syria won't affect the larger trajectory of events. Except to Syrians, the fate of Syria per se doesn't matter any more than the fate of Latvia or Laos. The context within which the upheaval there is occurring -- what preceded it and what it portends -- matters a great deal. Yet on this score, Washington is manifestly clueless and powerless.

History possesses a remarkable capacity to confound. Right when the path ahead appears clear -- remember when the end of the Cold War seemed to herald a new age of harmony? -- it makes a U-turn. The Syrian civil war provides only the latest indication that one such radical reversal is occurring before our very eyes. For Syria bears further witness to the ongoing disintegration of the modern Middle East and the reemergence of an assertive Islamic world, a development likely to define the 21st century.

Recall that the modern Middle East is a relatively recent creation. It emerged from the wreckage of World War I, the handiwork of cynical and devious European imperialists. As European (and especially British) power declined after World War II, the United States, playing the role of willing patsy, assumed responsibility for propping up this misbegotten product of European venality -- a dubious inheritance, if there ever was one.

Now it's all coming undone. Today, from the Maghreb to Pakistan, the order created by the West to serve Western interests is succumbing to an assault mounted from within. Who are the assailants? People intent on exercising that right to self-determination that President Woodrow Wilson bequeathed to the world nearly 100 years ago. What these multitudes are seeking remains to be seen. But they don't want and won't countenance outside interference.

If Assad falls, either democratically or by arms, the successor state will very probably be more conservative, more devoutly Islamist, and very likely more aggressively anti-American and anti-Israel -- in other words, it will be a state that most Americans who reflexively clamored for Assad's ouster will find disappointing. And as such it will ratchet America's frustration with the region even deeper. It will also be a war-torn wreck, with few prospects of reconstruction any time soon. Barring US occupation, it is unlikely to become as corrupt as Iraq or Afghanistan, but like those two disaster areas, its people has already fragmented into many conflicting identities, which will continue to tear at the social fabric even after the war ends. Moreover, as far as the US is concerned, Syria will always be on the wrong side of Israel, and for that matter the wrong side of Lebanon, and if those features fade it will revert to no meaning at all. The only reason McCain and Graham and their ilk care at all about Syria is that they smell war there, and they see in every war an opportunity for the US to assert its omnipotence.

I too see war in Syria as a test for the US, and especially as a test for Obama: the test is whether we can finally see clear to stay out of a conflict where in the long run we can only hurt ourselves. The US is so infatuated with itself that it is a sucker for the likes of McCain and Graham, and Obama has repeatedly allowed himself to be seduced by American power -- partly, no doubt, because the Republicans so delight in trash talking to him, taunting him as an apologist, impugning him for every irresolute doubt. Obama once said that he wants to change how America thinks about war, but he seems unable to even change how he himself thinks. Syria is a test of his ability to pit sanity against jargon, for rarely has a course of action -- intervention -- loomed so temptingly yet been so clearly fraught with folly.

Expert Comments

Someone makes an Adorno joke, and suddenly an avalanche of Adorno-bashing. I wrote:

Crawled out of bed this afternoon and found to my dismay . . . it's Adorno-bashing time again. It's been a long while since I read him -- I got a little too close to the flame 40 years ago and pulled away when the mojo became too, uh, automatic (a reaction Adorno himself should have approved of). Still, it bears repeating that fascism was (and is) nasty stuff, and searching for its roots and reverberations in intellectual history and popular culture has not been fruitless -- indeed, as JM Keynes (a fellow spirit in more ways than most realize) argued, what else is there? I'm more convinced than ever of the rottenness of our mass culture -- not that I don't occasionally enjoy it, and I certainly don't see any point in trying to escape it, but even so I'm filled with dread.

What I have been reading is Tony Judt's "Thinking the Twentieth Century" -- which provides plenty of opportunity to think about fascism. The section on Hayek suggests it would be witty to argue that both Hayek and Adorno took their anti-fascism to ridiculous extremes, in the former claiming that all economic planning leads to doom, in the latter that all popular culture does the same -- except, of course, that in Adorno's case that's only a strawman argument, whereas dangerous people actually believe in Hayek. I also finally realized that Judt's antipathy to the individualism of the new left was deeply rooted in his Trotskyist upbringing. Obviously, he was sheltered from a whole tradition that I, for one, feel deep in my bones. Doesn't mean he doesn't have a point about the political inefficacy of the new left, but he does suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding -- a blind spot even for a gifted historian. Take Adorno or Hayek out of history and you get nothing. (Keynes too, although his history is less past.)

I figured that's probably a dead end, but Jeff Hamilton wrote:

Yeah, I did an earlier post on Adorno, didn't like the tone it took toward our host, but didn't have time then to make the changes, so withdrew it. Xgau is, after all, welcome to his resistance, as is anyone.

But two points: one is that Adorno's writing lives, especially in a volume like Minima Moralia which has launched many a philosophical ship. Other is that we don't get feminism in its most bracing, radical insight without a figure like Shulamith Firestone, about whom a recent NYer reportorial biography by Susan Faludi was very interesting to me, not least because I teach Ellen Willis and was aware that together they led, for a short time in 1969, a NY feminist cadre called NY Radical Women. I don't read much anymore in Adorno's Dialectics, but Faludi's piece led me back to Firestone's Dialectics of Sex (1970), where several crucial Willis' ideas get their first airing. No one will doubt that Adorno had his critical effect on Brecht, Benjamin, & Dwight Macdonald. But how about Firestone's effect on Willis? It ought to be a subject of study, but instead Firestone was a hot-head and was trashed in within radical feminist circles. I share Tom Hull's "dread" of mass (or pop) culture -- not the first time I've said that here. Nor am I in any way in a position to deny it as a crucial part of what makes my life worth living. Critical negativity is something Adorno does not dodge, though in the connoisseurship on this site, it can be easy to resign oneself to sheepish cataloguing.

Looking at other posts, including a sheepish one from Joe Yanosik, I also wrote:

Two more comments unrelated to my last one:

I think it was completely appropriate for Joe to question the math on Bob's "30-40" assertion, even if there was no chance that Bob would document it himself. Those are pretty incredible numbers, especially relative to a pretty good benchmark album. Milo, Chris, and I all checked and responded that the numbers do indeed make sense, and Bob at least hasn't backed down. Moreover, while we may have minor differences of opinion and haven't all heard everything, our lists are pretty consistent. But that doesn't mean it's not worth asking the question.

One thing I do suggest is that since he is interested in pre-1970 music, Joe should broaden his list of gurus. "The Gramophone Jazz Good CD Guides" are very reliable. And Tom Piazza's "Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz" is very useful (over the top on Parker, but who isn't?) But pre-1970 (actually, about 1967) there isn't a lot of disagreement about what jazz records are most worthy of your attention -- later, of course, is a different matter.

My other comment is: I like Milo's suggestion of more George Coleman. One thing to keep an eye out for is Coleman's 1991 album, "My Horns of Plenty."

Christgau:

Willis and Firestone met in NY Radical Women but led Redstockings, insofar as "led" meant anything in those days. My memory is that for the two of them (and third "leader" Kathie Sarachild, who now owns the franchise--you could look it up--but according to Alice Echols's Daring to Be Bad moved to Gainesville early in the game) it functioned three-four months on the outside, conceivably six, but by then the women who thought anyone smarter than them was guilty of "classism" were on the rampage. That was the best thing about Faludi's piece as far as I'm concerned. Faludi was criminally irresponsible about schizophrenia, a mental disorder with a clear somatic cause that afflcted Firestone at least as much as sexism--there used to be a YouTube video about her hoarding you might check out. Having sat listening to records in the living room while Ellen and Shulie talked for hours on the phone in the bedroom, it's my guess that Shulie got more from Willis than v[ice]v[ersa], but I am prejudiced. Shulie had probably read more Marx and Engels. Ellen had no use for Adorno when I knew her but could have changed her mind in her much longer Aronowitz period. Probably not, though--Aronowitz reported at her funeral that she didn't really read much theory, preferred Victorian novels. I recently reread her Marcuse obituary in her first collection and recommend it. It's a pan.

Hamilton:

Thanks, Xgau, for that emendation of my radicals-comparison (btw, I wouldn't trade Willis for Adorno, no way). I keep a time-line for students of Willis' activities during the late 60s-late 70s period, and this will inform it. I had wished that a Willis-planned book on the radical Freudians Goodman/Marcuse/Reich had at least reached a stage where we might see some of it, but Aronowitz's remarks don't make that sound too hopeful.

Christgau:

My understanding, as I recall from public rather than private sources, is that early chapters of Ellen's book were completed--maybe she softened on HM, that obit was pre-Aronowitz as I calculate (I don't really know when that relationship began) and it was Aronowitz who introduced us both to Marcuse in 1966. Her daughter Nona's working on an omnibus that I suppose may include some of that stuff. Nona maintains an Ellen Willis website of some sort that I assume you're aware of.

Several things: I don't get Faludi's "criminal irresponsibility" re Firestone's schizophrenia. Maybe he knows something clinical that Faludi missed? He clearly knew Firestone, but mostly through Willis, which means probably not much after 1973 or so. I've long been partial to Bateson's "double-bind theory of schizophrenia," since that seemed to explain me when I was so diagnosed, but if schizophrenia has to be a long-term degenerative chemical imbalance then clearly I never was. On the other hand, Firestone seems to have had more than her share of double-binds.

Willis and Christgau were lovers in the early 1970s, maybe a bit earlier, and had a complicated intellectual relationship I don't know much about, mostly because I've never found Willis very interesting. (I've read little of her early writings on rock; mostly scattered pieces in the Voice on feminism. I'm also familiar with an exchange between Laura Tillem and Willis on Zionism, and I'm aware that Willis was a post-9/11 hawk -- as was Christgau.)

Christgau married Carola Dibbell shortly before I started working with him. Willis married Stanley Aronowitz, a lefty sociologist I met once when Paul Piccone invited him to St. Louis for a lecture, probably about the same time. (I met Willis once, in the Catskills, just a bare introduction.) Could be that I underestimate Willis -- Hamilton no doubt has read her more closely. I don't, by the way, have any real commitment to Marcuse. I've read a lot of Adorno and Benjamin, but not much Marcuse -- I blew off Piccone's assignment to read Reason and Revolution, and never did more than skim One Dimensional Man, nor did I ever pay much attention to what anyone had to say about Freud.

Recycled Goods (109): April, 2013

New Recycled Goods: pick up text here. Total review count: 3616 (3179 + 437).

Expert Comments

Christgau gave *** to the 1969 Miles Davis bootleg 3-CD box, the same grade I originally wrote down before I had second thoughts and nudged it up to A-, but he also noted, "There are probably 30-40 Miles albums I'd rather play." Joe Yanosik, predictably (Bob later estimated the chances at 95-98%), asked for the list -- at least for the pre-CG years, which would have to had provided 20 or so albums on top of those in the CG reviews. Milo Miles compiled such a list, hitting 20 by 1963's My Funny Valentine. I have a bunch of those down in the B+ range, and don't even recognize some (Blue Haze? Blue Moods? By any chance are those the 1952-54 Blue Notes I don't have? I know them simply as Volume 1 and Volume 2.) So I wound up writing:

I originally had the Miles Davis '69 bootleg at *** before nudging it up to A- (in fact, just found the old grade still in my database). It's very close to the line, and I gave it a bit of a bump for historical interest: it's one of the most avant-oriented records Davis ever did, and despite Holland they weren't really all that good at it -- gives it an air of failure, not that there isn't an intrinsic interest in listening to Shorter try to channel Ayler.

It's so close to the line I can take everything I have rated A- or better as "albums I'd rather play" and count them up, in which case I get 24 titles (with 32 cds) -- a lot of early stuff drops out from Milo's list (and I don't have the Blackhawks) plus (and there's a lot of redundancy here) I have eight boxes for another 47 cds. So Bob's 30-40 number is in the right ballpark.

BTW, average Jazz Prospecting yesterday; big Recycled Goods tonight, plus if you follow the links more on that Spin 1960s list feature. Not linked, but not that difficult to find, is a y1965 file that isn't ranked but follows up on your last big poll -- had I had it earlier, I might have voted.

Chris Monsen:

I reviewed the Miles album above to the equivalent of an A- for a Norwegian daily earlier this spring. I stand by that grade. I enjoy following the tentative steps ahead as well as the ruckus (though the poor sound on the last disc is no plus), and -- like our host -- have rarely found Corea more tolerable.

As for my personal take on the 30-40 bracket, let's try an experiment:

Prestige period: Walkin', Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', Steamin'. Maybe Quintet/Sextet. - That's 6

Columbia period: 'Round About Midnight, Milestones, Kind of Blue, E.S.P., Miles Smiles, Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Filles de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, On the Corner - That's 13

Live albums (not counting Live-Evil again): Newport '58, Miles & Coltrane, At the Blackhawk, In Tokyo, Plugged Nickel, Black Beauty, Agharta, Pangea, Dark Magus -- That's 9

I can't stand any of the Warner discs. Sue me!

28 in total, 'though my rough'n'tumble list above may miss one or two (e.g. comps, boxes), so claiming there are 30 preferable MD's to In Europe wouldn't be too far a stretch for me either.

Music Week/Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21383 [21338] rated (+45), 617 [615] unrated (+2).

Not sure how the huge rated bump happened, but the Rhapsody work doesn't stop with this coming week's rather robust Recycled Goods. Losing a bit of ground on Jazz Prospecting, but also pulled a couple old things out of the queue: the Zingaro was literally under a pile of papers on my desk, something I was vaguely aware of having missed. The old Moffett album was in the wrong queue, and being an advance with no spine was impossible to see without rifling through the discs. Also note two high-B+ piano records (Caine and Taborn).

Clipper Anderson: Ballad of the Sad Young Men (2008-10 [2013], Origin): Bassist, originally from Montana, looks like he's based in Spokane after various stretches in Portland and Seattle. Third album, if you count an Xmas with singer Greta Matassa's name first, plus thirty or so side credits, notably with fellow Montanan Jack Walrath. Anderson sings here, moldy standards done in the old Sinatra mold, except that he's not Sinatra, and Darin Clendenon's piano trio doesn't pack much punch. B

Lary Barilleau & the Latin Jazz Collective: Carmen's Mambo (2009-10 [2013], OA2): Conga player, b. 1958 in Seattle, still based there, first album as far as I can tell, cut in two sessions, with trombonist Doug Beavers the only other musicians straddling both. B

Michael Bates/Samuel Blaser Quintet: One From None (2011 [2013], Fresh Sound New Talent): Bassist and trombone, leaders because they do the writing, 5-3 in favor of Bates if you're counting. Each as 3-5 records already, solid work, as is this. Band includes Michael Blake (sax), Russ Lossing (keybs), and Jeff Davis (drums). B+(***)

Geof Bradfield: Melba! (2012 [2013], Origin): Tenor saxophonist (also credited with soprano sax and bass clarinet here), fourth album since 2003, a tribute to trombonist and big band arranger Melba Liston (noting also that two songs are named after band leaders she worked for: Dizzy Gillespie and Randy Weston). Septet includes two brass (trumpet and trombone), Jeff Parker on guitar, and Ryan Cohan on piano, with Bradfield the sole reed player. The arrangements swing, the horns slide. Ends with a brief Maggie Burrell vocal. B+(***)

Cactus Truck with Jeb Bishop and Roy Campbell: Live in USA (2012 [2013], Tractata): Dutch sax-guitar-drums trio, guitarist Jasper Stadhouders also playing some bass; has a previous album, which got them this US tour, attracting trombonist Bishop and trumpeter Campbell to join in the mayhem. Three sets packed into one long CD, all but the tail end flat-out noisy, something I've never enjoyed unless I managed to find some coherent strand to organize the chaos around. No evidence of that here. B-

Uri Caine/Han Bennink: Sonic Boom (2010 [2013], 816 Music): Piano-drums duet, going by the order on the spine instead of the front cover. Recorded on the drummer's home ground -- "live at the Bimhuis" -- with Bennink's artwork both inside and out. Looks like joint improvs aside from "'Round Midnight," which isn't the only debt to Monk. The drummer is especially superb, and Caine gets hotter and harder as he learns the ropes. B+(***)

Tommy Flanagan/Jaki Byard: The Magic of 2: Live at Keystone Korner (1982 [2013], Resonance): Two major pianists, live, start out with duets on standards (first three: Charlie Parker, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington), later on alternating solos. Bright and tinkly, Flanagan seems more at home with the material. B+(*)

Nick Fraser: Towns and Villages (2012 [2013], Barnyard): Drummer, based in Toronto, has at least one previous album under his own name, several as Drumheller, a dozen or so side credits. Quartet, modeled loosely on Ornette Coleman's recent two-bass quartet, this one with Rob Clutton on double bass and Andrew Downing on cello. They provide an ever shifting substrate for the horn: Tony Malaby on tenor (and soprano) sax gives a bravo performance, one of his finest ever. A-

Noah Haidu: Momentum (2012 [2013], Posi-Tone): Pianist, second album, a trio with Ariel de la Portilla and McClenty Hunter. Wrote 4 (of 9) cuts, covering Keith Jarrett and Joe Henderson along with more standard fare. Postbop, energetic, complex, hard to say more. B+(*)

The Bill Horvitz Expanded Band: The Long Walk (2011 [2013], Big Door Prize): Guitarist, has a handful of albums since 1997; wrote this for his late brother Phil Horvitz (1960-2005), performed by a 17-piece band including a lot of orchestral instruments (oboe, bassoon, French horn, tuba, violin, cello) -- mostly musicians I recognize. Interesting bits here and there. Can't find anything that suggests that pianist Wayne Horvitz is related, but he's in the band here. B+(*)

The Alex Levin Trio: Refraction (2012 [2013], self-released): Pianist, from Philadelphia, based in New York, third album, all standards, none remarkable but the appeal of hearing bits of great songs floating up from the mainstream piano jazz matrix is undeniable. Looks like they manage to make most of their living playing private engagements (first time I've run across Gig Salad). That's a niche they fit nicely. B+(*)

María Márquez: Tonada (2012 [2013], Adventure Music): Singer, from Venezuela, studied at Berklee, moved to San Francisco area; fifth album since 1985, second on this label. Folkish arrangements, mostly guitar, some accordion, although there are more upbeat pieces, even some brass. Has a distinctive voice, slowly grows on you. B+(*)

Charnett Moffett: The Bridge: Solo Bass Works (2011 [2013], Motéma): Bassist, has ten albums since 1987, many more side credits. This is all solo, and rather than searching out the far out sounds one can create with bass -- as, e.g., Peter Kowald and William Parker have done on their solo albums -- Moffett sticks to basics, picking and a little arco, and features a dozen proven melodies, adds in eight originals, and keeps them all short and to the point. B+(**)

Charnett Moffett: The Art of Improvisation (2009, Motéma): Checking on his new record, I noticed that I had never rated this old one, which I only got an advance promo of and file it in a queue that I almost never look at -- a risk that wouldn't have happened had they sent me a final copy. (Actually, this is two records back; never got the intervening Treasure in any shape or form.) Don't have the credits, so I don't know how chores were split up between two guitarists and three drummers, or which bass Moffett plays where -- my impression is that the fretless bass guitar gets a workout here. All originals, except for a Langston Hughes poem spoken by Angela Moffett and a warbly "Star Spangled Banner"; one more vocal is by Yungchen Lhamo -- no clue what the language is. The bass is always prominent, driving the groove, incorporating the world, and elaborating on it. B+(***) [advance]

Craig Taborn Trio: Chants (2012 [2013], ECM): Pianist, from Minneapolis; cut an early album for DIW in 1994, two "Blue Series" albums that established his reputation as one of the few distinctive electric keyb players in jazz, a couple avant exercises on European labels (Clean Feed and ILK), and a very well received acoustic solo for ECM. This trio, with Thomas Morgan and Gerald Cleaver, should be his crowning success, but I keep coming up a bit short with it. B+(***)

Rich Thompson: Less Is More (2012 [2013], Origin): Drummer, third album, basically a hard bop quintet, with Gary Versace in piano and organ, the two horns Terrell Stafford and Doug Stone. One original, the title cut (although bassist Jeff Campbell also kicks in one), two Rodgers & Hart covers, most of the rest from a who's who of jazz in the 1960s (Kenny Dorham, Ornette Coleman, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson). B+(*)

Carlos Alves "Zingaro"/Jean Luc Cappozzo/Jerome Bourdellon/Nicolas Lelievre: Live at Total Meeting (2010 [2012], NoBusiness): Violin, trumpet/bugle, flutes/bass clarinet, percussion, respectively, a prickly combination. Zingaro, b. 1948 in Portugal, came out of the postclassical avant-garde with a long discography. Cappozzo has a few albums, including one with Herb Robertson called Passing the Torch. Don't know the others, but the drummer is terrific, someone to watch out for. Three long improv pieces, difficult but dazzling, kept a smile on my face all the way through. A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio + Jeb Bishop: The Flame Alphabet (Not Two)
• Anomonous (Prom Night)
• Dieuf-Dieul de Thiès: Aw Sa Yone Vol. 1 (Teranga Beat)
• Marko Djordjevic & Sveti: Something Beautiful 1709-2110 (Goalkeeper)
• Satoko Fujii Ma-Do: Time Stands Still (Not Two)
• Satoko Fujii New Trio: Spring Storm (Libra)
• Trilok Gurtu: Spellbound (Sunnyside)
• Harifinso: Bollywood Inspired Film Music From Hausa Nigeria (Sahel Sounds)
• Lynn Jolicoeur and the Pulse: World Behind Your Eyes (self-released)
• Roger Kellaway & Eddie Daniels: Duke at the Roadhouse: Live in Santa Fe (IPO)
• Kenya Special: Selected East African Recordings From the 1970s & '80s (Soundway, 2CD)
• New York Art Quartet: Call It Art (1964-65, Triple Point, 5LP)
• Nick Sanders Trio: Nameless Neighbors (Sunnyside)
• Sedayeh Del (Pharaway Sounds)
• Sweet Talk: Glitterbomb (Prom Night): advance
• Frank Wess: Magic 101 (IPO)

Purchases:

• Steve Earle & the Dukes (& Duchesses): The Low Highway (New West)
• The Knife: Shaking the Habitual (Mute)
• Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba: Jama Ko (Out Here)
• Rilo Kiley: RKives (Little)

Added grades for remembered LPs from way back when:

• The Shocking Blue: The Shocking Blue (1970, Colossus): Dutch group, fluke single but deeper and darker filler. B+

• Ian Whitcomb: You Turn Me On! (1965, Tower): Fluke hit, decent filler, more notable for his book than for his music career, which shouldn't be judged too harshly. B+

Weekend Roundup

Didn't squirrel away any links last week, but came up with a few anyway.

• Ed Kilgore: America Haters: A recent poll found that 29% of Americans agree with the statement, "In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect out liberties." The poll also found that 25 percent of voters "believe the American public is being lied to about the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting 'in order to advance a political agenda.'" The NRA had a convention last week where the incoming president called for a "culture war" but at least they stopped short of adopting a new slogan like, "Guns: they're not just for self-defense any more."

  Why is revolutionary rhetoric becoming so routine these days? Some of it stems from the kind of "constitutional conservatism" that raises every political or policy dispute to a question of basic patriotism or even obedience to Almighty God. But a big part of it can also be attributed to cynical opportunists who manipulate those fearful (usually without much cause) of tyranny for their own very conventional ends -- usually power and money.

  Wherever you think it's coming from, it needs to stop, and if it can't stop, it must be made disreputable as part of ordinary partisan politics.

  At a minimum, those who toy with the idea of overthrowing our government to stop Obamacare or prevent gun regulation need to stand up to the charge that they hate America. It will make them crazy to hear it, but it's the truth.

  This puts several observations together. One is that nearly everything conservatives put forward these days is objectively damaging to the lives and welfare of large segments of the American public. Austerity is a good example: it directly hurts everyone the government had previously attempted to help, plus it drags down the economy weakening the labor market -- i.e., the job security and prospects of everyone who works for a living. Another observation is that many of the people who support conservatives clearly do hate large segments of the American people. Add those up and you have to wonder whether conservative policies aren't just foolishly misguided but deliberately malevolent. And since then intend to hurt some Americans, how many targets does it take to add up to hating America?

• Robert Kuttner: Austerity Never Works: Deficit Hawks Are Amoral -- and Wrong: An excerpt from his new book, Debtor's Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility (Knopf):

  In today's economy, which is dominated by high finance, small debtors and small creditors are on the same side of a larger class divide. The economic prospects of working families are sandbagged by the mortgage debt overhang. Meanwhile, retirees can't get decent returns on their investments because central banks have cut interest rates to historic lows to prevent the crisis from deepening. Yet the paydays of hedge fund managers and of executives of large banks that only yesterday were given debt relief by the government are bigger than ever. And corporate executives and their private equity affiliates can shed debts using the bankruptcy code and then sail merrily on.

  Exaggerated worries about public debt are a staple of conservative rhetoric in good times and bad. Many misguided critics preached austerity even during the Great Depression. As banks, factories and farms were failing in a cumulative economic collapse, Andrew Mellon, one of America's richest men and Treasury secretary from 1921 to 1932, famously advised President Hoover to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate . . . it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life." The sentiments, which today sound ludicrous against the history of the Depression, are not so different from those being solemnly expressed by the U.S. austerity lobby or the German Bundesbank. [ . . . ]

  The combination of these two trends -- declining real wages and inflated asset prices -- led the American middle class to use debt as a substitute for income. People lacked adequate earnings but felt wealthier. A generation of Americans grew accustomed to borrowing against their homes to finance consumption, and banks were more than happy to be their enablers. In my generation, second mortgages were considered highly risky for homeowners. The financial industry rebranded them as home equity loans, and they became ubiquitous. Third mortgages, even riskier, were marketed as "home equity lines of credit."

  State legislatures, meanwhile, paid for tax cuts by reducing funding for public universities. To make up the difference, they raised tuition. Federal policy increasingly substituted loans for grants. In 1980, federal Pell grants covered 77 percent of the cost of attending a public university. By 2012, this was down to 36 percent. Nominally public state universities are now only 20 percent funded by legislatures, and their tuition has trebled since 1989. By the end of 2011, the average student debt was $25,250. In mid-2012, total outstanding student loan debt passed a trillion dollars, leaving recent graduates weighed down with debt before their economic lives even began. This borrowing is anything but frivolous. Students without affluent parents have little alternative to these debts if they want college degrees. But as monthly payments crowd out other consumer spending, the macroeconomic effect is to add one more drag to the recovery.

  Had Congress faced the consequences head-on, it is hard to imagine a deliberate policy decision to sandbag the life prospects of the next generation. But this is what legislators at both the federal and state levels, in effect, did by stealth. They cut taxes on well-off Americans and increased student debts of the non-wealthy young to make up the difference. The real debt crisis is precisely the opposite of the one in the dominant narrative: efficient public investments were cut, imposing inefficient private debts on those who could least afford to carry them.

  The 1929 and 2008 crashes are more similar than most people recognize: if you look at charts of economic output, they start at almost the same trajectory and spread equally fast throughout the world. The difference is that the latter crash was arrested in early 2009, the result of three things: a much larger public sector which was (at least initially) free from the crash mentality; automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance and welfare; and extraordinary government intervention to prop up failing banks. Perversely, since so much of the recovery was pushed through the banking system, the rich were the first satisfied by the recovery, and they celebrated by engineering an economic pogrom against the middle class: they used the crisis to depress the labor market, and they lobbied for more austere government to cut services and put further pressure on wages. Consequently, the human costs of the current recession rival the 1930s -- the big stories of the last few weeks concern the number of long-term unemployed and the stigma against them, and a sudden increase in the suicide rate of Boomers -- but there is scarcely any viable political effort to help out. To me, the most striking difference between Obama and FDR was that the latter was pre-occupied with keeping both wages and prices up, whereas Obama doesn't seem to grasp that there is even an issue here.

• Jordan Smith: The Real Reason Not to Intervene in Syria: Well, one real reason:

  More generally, a significant body of international-relations scholarship suggests that not only can outside intervention in humanitarian emergencies in places like Rwanda not ameliorate the situation -- it can actually make things worse. Even simply dispensing aid can prolong suffering, in what the former Doctors Without Borders leader Fiona Terry calls "the paradox of humanitarian action."

  Why are humanitarian interventions so difficult? Kuperman theorizes that when rebels are assisted by outside forces, they are unintentionally encouraged to become more reckless in fighting a regime or provoking it, resist negotiations, and expand their ambitions. Intervention can thereby produce a perverse situation of prolonging a conflict that results in more deaths. He calls this the "moral hazard of humanitarian intervention." Even the expectation or the mistaken belief of outside support can encourage rebels to continue fighting or resist settlements.

  Another real reason is that military interventions in other countries is a bad habit that the United States sorely needs to break. The reason is not just because it doesn't work out very well -- Afghanistan and Iraq are recent examples, but you can go back to 1898 and find more examples in Cuba and the Philippines, and most of the cases in between (especially including CIA operations) are more/less as unambiguous. But even if we (or, say, a more appropriate body, like the UN) could push a button and magically bring the conflict to a close, ask yourself what that solution would look like. It wouldn't be to tilt the arms balance so the rebels could take over, since doing that would only create a new regime at war attempting to suppress yet another segment of the Syrian public. No, such a solution would be to arrange a ceasefire, an amnesty, and a democratic path forward with sufficient minority protections. I don't know whether Obama has tried to do that, but many decades of hostilities between the US and Syria have resulted in the US having very little leverage there. (Egypt, for instance, was a different case: the US had a longterm military alliance there which helped to ease Mubarak from office.) Maybe Russia, China, and Iran could have more influence on the Assad regime, but the US doesn't have a lot of influence with them either.

  Smith goes on to write:

  The humanitarian impulse is a noble one, spurred by good intentions. But good intentions, even if they don't pave the road to hell, can sometimes take us a good way there.

  I would caution, though, that not every "humanitarian impulse" is a noble one. Individuals, perhaps, but nations rarely practice foreign policy to attain nobility. They usually have some sort of interest or agenda, and one should be especially suspicious of a nation that claims to be the advocate and defender of free markets, since the only acts expected in the market are ones that advance self-interests.

• Ben White: Sidelining Palestinians in Israel Will Doom Prospects for Peace: Headline's a bit off as there are no "prospects for peace," but the real point to draw here is that the longer Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza continues, the more the brutality Israelis -- both the IDF and settlers often acting on their own -- is reflected back on the second-class citizens of Israel.

  In mid-April, the United States state department published its annual human rights review -- and the country report for Israel makes for interesting reading. An ally praised in public as the embodiment of liberal democratic values in a "tough neighbourhood" is described as practising "institutional discrimination" against its own Palestinian citizens (the so-called Israeli Arabs).

  Even in a far-from-comprehensive summary of Israel's systematic racism, the report notes discrimination in the education system, the land regime and housing, and the legal restrictions on a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza living with his or her spouse in Israel. [ . . . ]

  But it is not just discrimination and segregation that raise concerns. There are those in Israel who would like to be rid of Palestinian citizens altogether -- and see an opportunity to do so in the context of the "peace process."

  Responding to recent protests by Palestinian citizens to mark their expulsion in 1948, the former foreign minister and current chair of the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee, Avigdor Lieberman, called the Nakba commemoration events proof that "any arrangement with the Palestinians must include Israeli Arabs as well".

Music Week/No Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21338 [21302] rated (+36), 615 [618] unrated (-3).

Probably spent more time last week working on Rhapsody Streamnotes (posted) and Recycled Goods (still in progress) than Jazz Prospecting, but got off to a good start when two (of three) Ivo Perelman titles came through, then two more albums got big lifts from their sax players. Result is probably the best quality week of the year so far -- actually even better if I count two Rhapsody A- albums (Allison Miller, already posted, and Roscoe Mitchell, in the file for May). More promising things in the mail, too.

JD Allen: Grace (2012 [2013], Savant): Tenor saxophonist, from Detroit; has a handful of albums since 1999. Originally a hard charger, has backed off quite a bit lately, especially here. Quartet includes Eldar Djangirov on piano, playing with exceptional delicacy. B+(**)

Duo Baars-Henneman: Autumn Songs (2012 [2013], Wig): Ig Henneman on viola, Ab Baars on tenor sax, clarinet, shakuhachi. Henneman tends to lead, pushing the limits of high lonesome. Baars is complementary, especially on clarinet. B+(***)

Michiel Braam: EBraam 3 (2012 [2013], BBB): Dutch avant pianist, just credited with "keys" here, his bassist Pieter Douma on bass guitar, with Dirk-Peter Kölsch on drums, a group he calls "eBraam (in which case the album is just 3). Closes with a Hugh Hopper song -- not sure who does the vocal, but it comes as a surprise. B+(*)

Cristina Braga: Samba, Jazz and Love (2012 [2013], Enja): From Brazil, plays harp and sings, tenth album since 1998 (according to AMG), some classical, but her 2010 Harpa Bossa started to recast classic samba using harp instead of guitar, and this continues in that quest. Group includes trumpet, bass, vibes, and percussion, the harp not all that obvious until your clued in. Voice reminds one of Astrud Gilberto. B+(**)

Kaylé Brecher: Spirals and Lines (2012, Penchant Four): Singer, based in Philadelphia, fifth album since 1992. Don't see song credits but most seem to be originals -- obvious covers are "When Johnny Goes Marching Home" and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," but she segues the latter into a corny patriotic anthem ("The House I Live In") and updates a Mingus blues for the white collar world. Long list of musicians, none I had heard of, shuttle in and out, including four trumpet/flugelhorn players and three trombonists but her favorite accompanist is Jimmy Parker on sousaphone -- mine too. B+(***)

Boyd Lee Dunlop: The Lake Reflections (2012 [2013], Mr. B Sharp): Pianist, b. 1926 in North Carolina and spent most of his life in Buffalo, working in steel mills and railyards and playing piano in clubs at night; a local Hall of Famer but only cut his first album after turning 85. This is his second, solo piano improvisations; doesn't try to dazzle you, but keeps the ideas flowing. B+(**)

Ross Hammond Quartet: Cathedrals (2013, Prescott): Guitarist, based in Sacramento, CA; has a handful of albums. Last cut here is a duet with drummer Alex Cline, a good chance to hone in on Hammond's attractive technique. But the rest of the album is dominated by Vinny Golia (tenor and soprano sax, flute) in an amazing tour de force that reduces Cline to keeping metronomic time. Steuart Liebig plays bass. A-

Barbara Morrison: A Sunday Kind of Love (2010-12 [2013], Savant): Singer, b. 1952 in Michigan, got her start opposite Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson in 1974, toiled a couple decades in the Johnny Otis Show, has a dozen records since 1995. I haven't heard any of them, but would be real surprised if any hold a candle to this one. The secret isn't a fine-but-who-are-they pianio trio -- Stuart Elster? Richard Simon? Lee Spath? -- so it must be Houston Person, who is more than just featured here. But it's the singer who hits one softball after another out of the park: "I'm Just a Lucky So and So," "The Green Door," "A Sunday Kind of Love," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "Let's Stay Together" -- only "I Cover the Waterfront" is out of her zone. Exquisite: the medley of "Smile/Make Someone Happy." I dare anyone not to. A

New York Voices: Live: With the WDR Big Band Cologne (2008 [2013], Palmetto): Long-running vocal group, down to a quartet here -- Darmon Meader, Kim Nazarian, Lauren Kinhan, Peter Eldridge -- with seven albums since 1989. This is a live shot backed by the WDR Big Band Cologne -- a sharp group we've heard with damn near everyone, and here they provide uniformly solid support, a big help for a group where the voices slide all over the place. B-

Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp: The Art of the Duet, Volume One (2012 [2013], Leo): The Brazilian avant-saxophonist has been releasing records at a furious pace recently, including two batches of three each last year, and three more recently. All of this batch include Shipp, who played piano in David S. Ware's now-legendary quartet among much else, including a 1996 duet with Perelman (Bendito of Santa Cruz). Over the last two years no one has produced more top flight music than Perelman, but I'm starting to wonder if we're getting too much of the same thing. At least that's where I was stuck on the two new quartet albums, but the duets here are clear and sparkling, both sides coherent and connected. Not that the inevitable Volume Two won't be too much . . . On to the quartets. A-

Ivo Perelman: The Edge (2012 [2013], Leo): Tenor sax quartet with Matthew Shipp (piano), Michael Bisio (bass), and Whit Dickey (drums) -- Dickey goes way back with Shipp, and Bisio is the current bassist in Shipp's piano trio. Perelman indeed seems on edge early on, where the going is rougher than need be, but he does finds himself by the end. B+(**)

Ivo Perelman: Serendipity (2011 [2013], Leo): Another tenor sax quartet, reportedly accidental: session was originally scheduled to be trio with Matthew Shipp (piano) and Gerald Cleaver (drums) -- that trio was recorded a week later as The Foreign Legion -- but when one was late they called in bassist William Parker and wound up with a quartet. Sometimes hard to judge exactly what Parker adds, but Perelman is remarkably relaxed and fluid from the start, and builds up to some of his most impressive blowing ever. A-

Jan Shapiro: Piano Bar After Hours (2012 [2013], Singing Empress): Standards singer, came out of St. Louis and wound up teaching at Berklee. Has at least three previous albums. This one is almost only accompanied by piano, with five pianists in rotation -- one cut has bass and drums. A very precise, disciplined vocalist, she doesn't need much help, but great songs work better than not-so-great ones. B+(*)

Melvin Taylor: Taylor Made (2012 [2013], Eleven East): Guitarist, sings some -- one song here, with another sung by Bernell Anderson, no better -- has a half-dozen albums going back as far as 1982. Band includes bass (a second Melvin Taylor), keyboard, and drums. Six songs, one from Isaac Hayes. Nice little groove record. B+(*)

Uptown Vocal Jazz Quartet: Hustlin' for a Gig (2012, Housekat): Ginny Carr, Robert McBride, André Enceneat, and Holly Shockey, with all but one of the songs penned by Carr ("This Is the Life"). Third group album, but they (Carr and McBride, at least) claim to have been together for twenty-some years. The spirited interplay and cleverness wears on you (or me, anyway). B-

John Vanore & Abstract Truth: Culture (2012 [2013], Acoustical Concepts): Trumpet player, came up in Woody Herman's band, should explain his taste in bright and brassy. Fourth album with his unconventional big band Abstract Truth. Pieces include a 3-part suite and an arrangement of "Footprints." Strong solos, some interesting quirks in the arrangements. B+(***)

Bob Wolfman: Transition (2012, self-released): Guitarist-singer-songwriter, from New York, first album, produced by Larry Coryell with piano, bass, and drums. Aside from the blues cover ("Born Under a Bad Sign") Wolfman's a truly awful singer. Some nifty guitar work here and there -- until proven otherwise, I'd chalk that up to Coryell. C

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Lucian Ban/Mat Maneri: Transylvanian Concert (ECM): advance, May 28
• Perry Beekman: So in Love: Perry Beekman Sings and Plays Cole Porter (self-released)
• Jerry Bergonzi: By Any Other Name (Savant)
• François Carrier/Michel Lambert/John Edwards/Steve Beresford: Overground to the Vortex (Not Two)
• Freddy Cole: This and That (High Note)
• Steven Lugerner: For We Have Heard (NoBusiness/Primary)
• Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom: No Morphine No Lillies (Foxhaven/Royal Potato Family)
• Sex Mob: Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti: Sex Mob Plays Fellini (The Royal Potato Family)
• Marlene Ver Planck: Ballads . . . Mostly (Audiophile)
• Yellowjackets: A Rise in the Road (Mack Avenue): advance, May 27

Purchases:

• Georg Graewe/Ernst Reijseger/Gerry Hemingway: Sonic Fiction (1989, Hatology)
• Theo Jörgensmann: Fellowship (1998, Hatology)
• Manuel Mengis Gruppe 6: Into the Barn (2005, Hatology)

Weekend Roundup

Some scattered links I squirreled away during the previous week:

• Eric Harvey: Writing the Record: Interview with Devon Powers, author of Writing the Record: The Village Voice and the Birth of Rock Criticism, which focuses on Richard Goldstein and Robert Christgau. Lots of stuff here, and I should probably dig into the book. One comment I have, based on this quote:

  When Christgau talks about monoculture, he's talking about the idea that there was a period before fragmentation. A period before audiences were segmented, where all kinds of people were listening to the same thing, some of it out of necessity just because there weren't other options. When you have people who are listening to the same kind of things, they have something in common to talk about that they simply don't when there is more variance in the media landscape.

  Two problems here. One is that monoculture means something else: not a single all-encompassing culture but an isolated stripe of only one thing -- as in agriculture: wheat, soybeans, oranges, etc. -- which may coexist independently with lots of other monocultures. Music has never been that formally constrained, and never will be, in large part because it's always being mediated and deconstructed, and most often as a social activity. The other is that the idea of integrating most musical strands into a common pool of experience was new in the late 1960s, itself a political project rooted in the newfound equal integration of all divisions in a relatively classless society. It didn't exist earlier because people grew up in a divided (segregated) world, and since then the right-wing counterrevolution with its increasing inequality has done all it could to strain the ideal.

  Paul Krugman and others have made a big point recently about "the great compression" which reduced income and wealth inequality and culminated in the 1960s. I must say that it didn't feel like much of a class-free utopia at the time, but the idea was present, and there was a sense of it being progressively realized -- and that sense of progress helped fuel the great upheavals of the decade, including the civil rights and women's movements. Still, that atmosphere of equality was propitious for critics inclined to jump from genre to genre, to poke into music from all over the world, and who believed that popular music could storm the citdels of "high culture" -- the last refuge of the ancien regime.

  Circa 1973, I dropped out of college, stopped reading critical theory, and took up rock crit. Seemed like the way forward, and was practical at the same time.

• Alex Parrene: Bush Family Furiously Selling Itself to Americans Once Again: As ever, Bush realizes the importance of timing when rolling out a new "product" -- his library, of course, but that's the easy part given that every ex-president (at least from Truman on) has one (and a figure as insignficant as Gerald Ford has two). The harder part is rehabilitating the entire family brand name, but polls indicate the ignorance of the average American is hard to underestimate -- I very much blame Obama and the Democrats for letting Bush off the hook.

  More Bush links:

  • Kathleen Geier: What Was the Single Worst Thing About George W. Bush's Presidency? "Lying was institutionalized to a degree that we rarely see outside outside of explicitly authoritarian, anti-democratic regimes."
  • Paul Krugman: The Great Degrader: "Bush brought an unprecedented level of systematic dishonesty to American political life, and we may never recover."
  • Alex Seitz-Wald: How to Debunk George W. Bush's Attempts at Revisionism

  My vote for the single worst thing about George W. Bush goes to his instinctive, visceral attrraction to violence as a way of solving problems. Even before 9/11, Bush rejected the Saudi peace plan for Israel-Palestine by saying (as Ronald Suskind reported), "Sometimes a show of force can really clarify things." His green light for Sharon destroyed eight years of fitful progress toward resolving the most intractable conflict in the Middle East. He reacted to 9/11 the same, only with more vigor and ambition, going after Iraq as well as Afghanistan, and threatening wars against Iran and North Korea. Then there was his encouragement of Israel's brutal 2006 carpet-bombing of Lebanon, an act of war that his secretary of state memorably described as "the birth-pangs of a new Middle East."

• MJ Rosenberg: Time to Admit US Policies Can Cause Terrorism: To prevent something you have to have some concept of causation. The Boston bombings again raise the question of terrorism, but we are stuck within an officially sanctioned blind spot.

  There is one change that the United States could make in response to the terrorism threat that is never discussed. That is to consider the part U.S. policies have played in creating and sustaining it.

  I understand that we are not supposed to say this, as if discussing why we are hated justifies the unjustifiable: the targeting of innocent Americans because of the perceived sins of their government.

  But nothing justifies terrorism. Period. That does not mean that nothing causes it.

  Acts of terror do not come at us out of the blue. Nor are they directed at us, as President George W. Bush famously said, because the terrorists "hate our freedom." If that was the case, terrorists would be equally or more inclined to hit countries at least as free as the U.S., those in northern Europe, for instance.

  No, terrorists (in the case of the Boston Marathon bombings Muslim terrorists) target the U.S. because they perceive us as their enemy.

  One reason they perceive us as enemies is that we regard them as enemies. Nor is this just a matter of opinion: the US has, ever since FDR met with King Saud in 1945, backed the most repressive regimes in the Middle East, training and arming their secret police, their armed forces; we've backed wars, and in a pinch we've jumped in and invaded countries ourselves; and we've fomented civil wars, creating massively destructive contagions, such as the Sunni-Shiite divide in Iraq. (For some of this history, see Tom Engelhardt: Field of Nightmares, on Jeremy Scahill's new book, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.) If we don't like this "blowback," the place to start is in reconsidering our own actions.

  But even if there was no terror blowback, the US record in the Middle East has been an unmitigated mess. Most often we've backed forces based on the shabby enemy-of-my-enemy principle: from the Saudi regime to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan, we've repeatedly backed the most extremely reactionary Islamists because they were anti-communist, only to discover that their anti-communism was part of an anti-western agenda bound to bite the hand that feeds them. We've backed Saddam Hussein's war against Iran, then backed Iranian-backed militias against Hussein. We've backed Israel against everyone, even against our own policies -- we even backed Israel when they attacked and sunk a US Navy ship in 1967. Presumably some arms and oil companies have profited along the way, but what has the average American gotten out of this incoherency? Nothing but the task of fighting a series of useless, hopeless wars.

  Yet the right-wing still clamors for more -- see the recent Cal Thomas rant: "How many more Americans must be killed and wounded before we fight back, not just overseas, but here?" As Mort Sahl said about someone else, "if he were more perceptive, he'd be a happy man." Still, Thomas is as incoherent as anyone. He notes the vast size of America's homeland security force, yet bemoans their inability to stop two disaffected young men from "shutting down a major city." Aside from calling for a more bigoted immigration policy and a fevered, nativist witch hunt mentality, how exactly are we supposed to "fight back"? And is it even justified in a democracy to talk about enemies at home? The Tsarnaevs, after all, were US citizens, Americans, entitled to dissenting opinions. When weren't enemies, and when they set off those bombs, they didn't become our enemies -- just criminals.

• Tom Engelhardt: The Enemy-Industrial Complex: Or, "How to turn a world lacking in enemies into the most threatening place in the universe." Out of alpha order, but this follows up nicely on the above entry. Consider 9/11 as a "Wizard of Oz" facade:

  The U.S., in other words, is probably in less danger from external enemies than at any moment in the last century. There is no other imperial power on the planet capable of, or desirous of, taking on American power directly, including China. It's true that, on September 11, 2001, 19 hijackers with box cutters produced a remarkable, apocalyptic, and devastating TV show in which almost 3,000 people died. When those giant towers in downtown New York collapsed, it certainly had the look of nuclear disaster (and in those first days, the media was filled was nuclear-style references), but it wasn't actually an apocalyptic event.

  The enemy was still nearly nonexistent. The act cost bin Laden only an estimated $400,000-$500,000, though it would lead to a series of trillion-dollar wars. It was a nightmarish event that had a malign Wizard of Oz quality to it: a tiny man producing giant effects. It in no way endangered the state. In fact, it would actually strengthen many of its powers. It put a hit on the economy, but a passing one. It was a spectacular and spectacularly gruesome act of terror by a small, murderous organization then capable of mounting a major operation somewhere on Earth only once every couple of years. It was meant to spread fear, but nothing more.

  When the towers came down and you could suddenly see to the horizon, it was still, in historical terms, remarkably enemy-less. And yet 9/11 was experienced here as a Pearl Harbor moment -- a sneak attack by a terrifying enemy meant to disable the country. The next day, newspaper headlines were filled with variations on "A Pearl Harbor of the Twenty-First Century." If it was a repeat of December 7, 1941, however, it lacked an imperial Japan or any other state to declare war on, although one of the weakest partial states on the planet, the Taliban's Afghanistan, would end up filling the bill adequately enough for Americans.

  Engelhardt then tries to put 9/11 into perspective by bringing up stats for "suicide by gun and death by car" -- numbers which annually dwarf even the 9/11 death toll. Actually, it would make more sense to write off 9/11 as a fluke and look at more typical terrorist tolls. You don't have to look hard. On the same day as the Boston bombings, a fertilizer plant in West, Texas caught fire and exploded, killing many more people. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't pay attention to terrorist threats -- indeed, one reason we should is that many could be avoided by policy changes that we should implement anyway; but we should keep them in perspective. Even the 9/11 death toll was ultimately topped two times over by the number of US soldiers we sacrificed in post-9/11 wars -- wars meant to do little more than restore the invincible lustre of US imperial power, and perhaps blindly punish people only vaguely related to those who actually planned 9/11.

  Without an enemy of commensurate size and threat, so much that was done in Washington in these years might have been unattainable. The vast national security building and spending spree -- stretching from the Virginia suburbs of Washington, where the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency erected its new $1.8 billion headquarters, to Bluffdale, Utah, where the National Security Agency is still constructing a $2 billion, one-million-square-foot data center for storing the world's intercepted communications -- would have been unlikely.

  Without the fear of an enemy capable of doing anything, money at ever escalating levels would never have poured into homeland security, or the Pentagon, or a growing complex of crony corporations associated with our weaponized safety. The exponential growth of the national security complex, as well as of the powers of the executive branch when it comes to national security matters, would have far been less likely.

  Without 9/11 and the perpetual "wartime" that followed, along with the heavily promoted threat of terrorists ready to strike and potentially capable of wielding biological, chemical, or even nuclear weapons, we would have no Department of Homeland Security nor the lucrative mini-homeland-security complex that surrounds it; the 17-outfit U.S. Intelligence Community with its massive $75 billion official budget would have been far less impressive; our endless drone wars and the "drone lobby" that goes with them might never have developed; and the U.S. military would not have an ever growing secret military, the Joint Special Operations Command, gestating inside it -- effectively the president's private army, air force, and navy -- and already conducting largely secret operations across much of the planet.

  So there is a lot of money at stake on convincing you that we have to fight such unscrupulous enemies. But it also fits a political agenda: conservatism, as Michael Tomasky explains below, depends on fear to promote its political agenda.

• Michael Tomasky: The Conservative Paranoid Mind:

  The common thread through all of this is the conservative need to instill and maintain a level of fear in the populace. They need to make gun owners fear that Dianne Feinstein and her SWAT team are going to come knocking on their doors, or, less amusingly, that they have to be armed to the teeth for that inevitable day when the government declares a police state. They need to whip up fear of immigrants, because unless we do, it's going to be nothing but terrorists coming through those portals, and for good measure, because, as Ann Coulter and others have recently said, the proposed law would create millions of voting Democrats (gee, I wonder why!).

  And with regard to terrorism, they need people to live in fear of the next attack, because fear makes people think about death, and thinking about death makes people more likely to endorse tough-guy, law-and-order, Constitution-shredding actions undertaken on their behalf. This is how we lived under Bush and Cheney for years. This fear is basically what enabled the Iraq War to take place. Public opinion didn't support that war at first. But once they got the public afraid with all that false talk of mushroom clouds, the needle zoomed past 50 percent, and it was bombs away.

  Conservatism, I fear (so to speak), can never be cleansed of this need to instill fear. Whether it's of black people or of street thugs or of immigrants or of terrorists or of jackbooted government agents, it's how the conservative mind works.

• Matthew Yglesias: The Koch Brothers Might Be Just What Conservative Journalism Needs: Sometimes smart people can be pretty stupid, especially when they let their logic run away from reality. The Koch brothers are rumored to be in the market for the Tribune Company, which would give them control over the largest newspapers in Los Angeles and Chicago, among other cities. Yglesias writes:

  Certain niches -- talk radio and cable television -- are very friendly to a conservative editorial product but others are not. Which is exactly why what conservative media needs is a couple of extremely rich people to buy a newspaper company and lose a ton of money building a great conservative media product.

  After all, the big problem with right-leaning media in America isn't that it doesn't exist. It's that it's terrible. There is a large audience out there that's so frustrated with the vile MSM that it's happy to lap up cheaply produced content from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and you can make lots of money serving that kind of thing up. By contrast, to build a great media company that's top-to-bottom staffed with conservatives is going to be very expensive. The possible talent pool of great reporters is tilted toward liberals. The talent pool of great photographers and graphic designers is probably even more tilted toward liberals. Finding the great conservatives out there and hiring them is going to be relatively costly, and there's no real economic point to doing so. Is your much worse cost structure going to get you a larger audience than Rush? No, it won't. It's a bad bet.

  But the Kochs have plenty of money. If they want to see it happen, they can make it happen. And America would be better off for it.

  The obvious problem here is that there is no latent pool of "great conservatives" ready to move into newspaper journalism at any price, because they simply don't exist. Conservatives in media are hacks, not because they're lazy but because their message is nothing more than a crock of lies and distortions. The net effect won't be "a great conservative media product" -- it will just reduce marginally decent newspapers into ever-deeper hackdom. And America will be worse off on two counts: one is that it increase our current trend toward shoddiness in all manner of work; the other is that it will reinforce the notion that politics is purely cynical -- a fixed game controlled by the rich (the Kochs a particularly egregious example).

  One cautionary note is that the Kochs have never gotten into a business to lose money, which makes it unlikely they would jump on such a losing proposition. On the other hand, they have shown a deep commitment to undermine democracy, both through their political spending and through their use of corporate control as a channel for pushing their political beliefs. Major urban newspapers have a huge "first mover" advantage -- it's impossible to capitalize new competition, so they are effectively monopolies, and as such should be subject to public trust. Allowing them to be taken over by extremist political ideologues like the Kochs will irreparably destroy that trust, and America would be worse off for that.

Also, a few links for further study:

• Kevin Drum: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead.

• Susan Faludi: Death of a Revolutionary: on Shulamith Firestone.

• Jacob Heilbrunn: Israel's Fraying Image: No breaking news here; indeed, this is well behind the learning curve.

• Bill McKibben: Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

• Matt Taibbi: Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever: Explains the Libor scandal.

• Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Zionism's Colonial Roots

Over a Barrel

One thing about the gun debate is the lack of specific case examples, especially for arguments that putting more guns into the hands of "good" people will limit the amount of gun violence perpetrated by "bad" people. The contrary argument, that reducing the number of legal guns -- which, by the way, simplifies the task of enforcing prohibitions against illegal guns -- reduces the overall amount of gun violence, can be argued with gross statistics. That argument, by the way, seems convincing, but we aren't just statistical aggregates. We're individuals, and even if more guns in general endanger us, it seems at least possible that there are some cases where a gun could save one's life or thwart a crime. So why don't "second amendment rights" advocates give us more concrete examples? (Aside, of course, from the fact that it's a lot easier to spout pieties, a form of laziness and sloppiness you hear on all sides of virtually every issue.)

Someone could (and should) do some actual research on shootings: map out what kinds of confrontations happen -- e.g., home invasion where perpetrator is shot by home resident (or vice versa, in which case was resident armed or not?) -- and count them all up. (As I understand it, the government is prohibited from undewriting any such study, thanks to the NRA, which seems to fear any actual research into gun use or abuse.) But not every confrontation has an obvious right and wrong side. For example, consider the case of Dustin Cheever, here in Wichita.

What happened was: Cheever suspected that the son of a neighbor, Robert Gammon, had stolen a motorcycle. Cheever didn't take his suspicions to the police. Instead, he and a friend (Steve Grose) searched for the motorcycle in Gammons' backyard -- they entered Gammons' property without his permission or knowledge. Gammons confronted them, pointing a BB pistol (which plausibly appeared to be a real gun) at them, and threatening them. Cheever, however, was carrying a real gun. Rather than backing away, he decided that he needed to defend himself and/or his friend, so he pulled his gun, shot, and killed Gammons. Cheever is currently being tried for second degree murder, which seems about right.

Had Cheever pulled his gun and Gammons killed him, Gammons would have been in a stronger legal position. He was, after all, at home, whereas Cheever and Grose were trespassing. Gammons misjudged twice that his gun would protect him: first, as is so often the case, the gunfight was determined not by right or wrong, good guy or bad guy, but by who was quicker with more deadly aim (a fact which, by the way, tends to favor the more experienced bad guys); but second, had he not brandished the gun, had he instead just threatened to call the police, Cheever would have had no excuse to defend himself with his gun, and most likely the pair would have just left.

That Gammons' gun was actually a non-lethal BB pistol is pretty much irrelevant here: it looked like a real gun and was given extra credibility by Gammons' threats to kill with it, plus Cheever had no reason to doubt that Gammons could have owned a real gun, since guns are pretty much the norm here in Wichita. Also, Cheever may well have belatedly understood that Kansas's Stand Your Ground law gave Gammons a legal excuse to shoot first -- had Gammons realized that Cheever was in fact armed (something he might reasonably have suspected). It is often argued that the expectation that the other person is armed leads to more moderate behavior -- that seems to be a big part of the argument that all "good guys" should carry guns -- in this case such expectations pretty clearly escalated the conflict.

So this case, at least, doesn't provide much support for the notion that we are better off with more guns: one gun owner, attempting to defend his property from trespass, is dead; another, intent on taking the law into his own hand in searching for his stolen property, faces second degree murder charges. Neither of those outcomes would have happened had either (much less both) parties been unarmed, nor would they have happened had either (again much less both) turned to the police to settle their dispute.

There may be other gun confrontations where it's easier to tell who is "good" or "bad," where it's clearer who's right and wrong, but I suspect this sort of mess is more common. Moreover, it's more reflective of the mentality of people who think guns are an answer for their problems dealing with other people: they overestimate the value and grossly underestimate the risks; and they almost never have the skills and judgment they'd need to make the gun work for them, and often lack the self-awareness to realize when they're getting into trouble. Indeed, the police, who are trained both in the law and the proper use of guns, often screw it up. Why would a random individual expect to do better?

There are simple solutions here, but not practicable ones. The statistics are clear, but no one wants to be a statistic. As long as people think they need guns for self-protection, it's awfully hard to take them away. Moreover, it's hard to say "trust in the police" when the police aren't all that trustworthy, nor can one say "have faith in our system of justice" when that system is far from just. Those are, I'm tempted to argue, bigger and more urgent problems than guns. On the other hand, so many of the reasons that people give for insisting on arming themselves are so patently false you have to argue with them just to attempt to open up a space for public sanity.

No such argument is more ridiculous than the one that you need guns to protect yourself from the government -- although the one that the government needs guns to protect itself from you is every bit as specious, not to mention the one -- which costs us about a trillion dollars a year -- that the government needs armies and navies and air forces to protect us from foreigners. War doesn't protect us from war: war is war. Guns don't protect us from gun violence: aside from a few museum pieces, they create gun violence.

Rhapsody Streamnotes (April 2013)

Pick up text here.

A Downloader's Diary (29): April 2013

Insert text from here.

This is the 29th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 715 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Book Roundup, Part Drei

Still trying to unpack the overhang accumulated up to the March 14 post, with a second installment on March 16, although this one is delayed about as much as I should normally do -- one result is that the queue isn't getting noticeably shorter. So here's another batch of forty more/less recent book titles, with more to follow relatively soon.

Nicholson Baker: The Way the World Works: Essays (2012, Simon & Schuster): Fifteen years of short pieces by the mostly novelist, including a couple I would certainly want to read ("The Charms of Wikipedia," and "Why I Am a Pacifist," the first of three in the section on War). I haven't read his fiction, but Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization is a great book.

William J Baumol, et al: The Cost Disease: Why Computers Get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn't (2012, Yale University Press): An important subject, although it's not clear that Baumol has got the answer right: health care is a dysfunctional market with a lot of hidden (and frankly cancerous) monopolies. Other factors may add to this, including some Baumol identifies (labor costs, lack of productivity improvements).

William Blum: America's Deadliest Export: Democracy: The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else (paperback, 2013, Zed Books): Longtime critic of US foreign policy. Previous books include: The CIA: A Forgotten History (1986); Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (2000); West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (2002); Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (2000; revised 2003); Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (2004).

David Byrne: How Music Works (2012, McSweeney's): Talking Heads frontman, Luaka Bop honcho, applies his experience to a big topic, although I can imagine lots of different tangents for "works" to take off in. Most likely: how music works for me. Still, a topic of some interest.

Caitlin Carenen: The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel (2012, New York University Press): The US has lots of reasons for being exceptionally sympathetic to Israel, ranging from the founding bond of both being white settler nations to the symbiosis of our overbloated arms industries, but one of the most important is how Israel has played in protestant thought -- both early on with liberal guilt over the Holocaust and later with evangelicals pining for the apocalypse.

Victor Cha: The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (2012, Harper Collins): Former Bush admin NSC Korea hand -- you know, the folks who concocted "the axis of evil" meme -- tries to explain North Korea, something I'm not sure anyone can do. A couple years ago, when Barbara Demick wrote Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009) there weren't many books, but that's started to change. Relatively new: Andrei Lankov: The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (2013, Oxford University Press); BR Myers: The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters (2010; paperback, 2011, Melville House); Bruce E Bechtol Jr: The Last Days of Kim Jong-Il: The North Korean Threat in a Changing Era (2013, Potomac Books). Still, I doubt if any on these shed much light on the latest round of threats and condemnations.

Noam Chomsky: 9-11: Was There an Alternative? (2001; revised paperback, 2011, Seven Stories Press): Right then, right now. Wish he could write better, but decades of being right and ignored have taken a toll on his patience.

Noam Chomsky: Occupy [Occupied Media Pamphlet Series] (paperback, 2012, Zucotti Park Press): Short (128 pp.) pamphlet, meant to advise the Occupy movement. Looks like there will be a series of these things, with additional titles by Stuart Leonard (Taking Brooklyn Bridge), Mumia Abu-Jamal (Message to the Movement), and Marina Sitrin/Dario Azzellini (Occupying Language).

Noam Chomsky: Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to US Empire (paperback, 2013, Metropolitan Books): Continues a long series of interviews with David Barsamian, a context which draws out his wisdom without cluttering up the page.

Climate Central: Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas, and the Weather of the Future (2012, Pantheon): Written by Emily Elert and Michael D Lemonick but credited to their "nonprofit, nonpartisan science and journalism organization"; with just-the-facts-style reporting, not that they ignore the applicable science.

Susan P Crawford: Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age (2012, Yale University Press): Argues that the 2011 merger of Comcast and NBC Universal "create the biggest monopoly since the breakup of Standard Oil a century ago." During much of that time AT&T monopolized the telephone industry, but at least it was recognized as such and tightly regulated -- so much so that it begged for breakup. The new monopoly combines content as well as networking, which is what makes it not just too expensive but far more dangerous.

Guy Debord: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1987; third edition, paperback, 2011, Verso): Debord's original essay was written in 1967. When I first read it (in Radical America, 1970) it illuminated all sorts of things, but the basic idea is simple enough it requires little elaboration. The essay is short, as are the comments (94 pp.); still, I've never figured out what you do with the concept -- more likely than not it just leaves you awestruck.

John De Graaf/David K Batker: What's the Economy For, Anyway?: Why It's Time to Stop Chasing Growth and Start Pursuing Happiness (2011; paperback, 2012, Bloomsbury Press): Good question, one also explored by Robert Skidelsky/Edward Skidelsky: How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life (2012); Juliet B Schor: Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (2010); and Joseph E Stiglitz, et al., Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Ad Up (2010). [link]

Ross Douthat: Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (2012, Free Press): Conservative New York Times columnist, tries to appear reasonable and rarely succeeds, wants to bring back that old time religion, or something like that. We would at long last do us a favor if he helps break the binds between religion and partisanship, but the old time religion never was much good at respecting others.

Peter Dreier: The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (paperback, 2012, Nation Books): Thumbnail biographies, 4-6 pages each (adding up to 512 pp.), political people you should know at least something about, even though one can nitpick the roster coming and going. Only two are younger than me (Michael Moore and Tony Kushner). Three of the last ten are musicians, and two are athletes, so the spectacle seems to have won out, especially over the writers who have provided so much insight and kept the flame going (Chomsky and Ehrenreich are about it since C. Wright Mills).

Jeff Faux: The Servant Economy: Where America's Elite Is Sending the Middle Class (2012, Wiley): Previous book was The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future -- and What It Will Take to Win It Back, so presumably this returns to American specifics. Lots of recent books on the destruction of the middle class, the ripe corrollary to the same old, same old of rich-getting-richer and poor-getting-poorer.

Jonathan Fetter-Vorm: Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb (2012, Hill and Wang): Much shorter than Richard Rhodes' epochal The Making of the Atomic Bomb, but they say a picture is worth a thousand words. I've toyed with the idea of writing graphic histories on the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli Conflict -- critical assumption here is that I can get my nephew to illustrate -- mostly because I wish to sharply focus on key understandings rather than to just spew out a lot of narrative, and graphic histories seem to offer a unique opportunity to state and reinforce basic points.

Robert K Fitts: Banzai Babe Ruth: Baseball, Espionage, and Assassination During the 1934 Tour of Japan (2012, University of Nebraska Press): Previously co-edited Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game and wrote Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball, reports on one of the most famous exhibition tours in history: a key event in Japan's adoption of America's pastime as its own favorite sport, but also cover for Moe Berg's espionage. Not sure who got assassinated.

Stephen M Gardiner: A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (2011, Oxford University Press): A philospher's take on the problem, seeing ignorance and inaction as a lapse in ethics, looking into geo-engineering, etc.

Brandon L Garrett: Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong (2011; paperback, 2012, Harvard University Press): DNA evidence has shown that quite a few innocent people have been convicted of serious crimes. Analyzing those cases should help identify how the justice system gets it wrong and winds up creating injustice. Other recent books on this: Jim Petro/Nancy Petro: False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent (2011, Kaplan); Daniel S Medwed: Prosecution Complex: America's Race to Convict and Its Impact on the Innocent (2012, NYU Press).

Wenonah Hauter: Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America (2012, New Press): "Local food" farmer, director of Food & Water Watch, explains how agricultural policy has been designed to aid Cargill, Tyson, Kraft, and ConAgra.

Tim Kane: Bleeding Talent: How the US Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It's Time for a Revolution (2012, Macmillan Palgrave): Right-wing economist (Hudson Institute, John McCain), former USAF "intelligence" officer, "startup maven" (to quote Bush economist Glenn Hubbard). I suspect his thesis is right, but I have my doubts that "great leaders" is something the we need the military to have, right now, or just about ever. Bean counters and shrinks, that's another story.

Frederick Kaufman: Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food (2012, Wiley): Starting with Domino's Pizza, hits all the usual stops surveying the contemporary food industry, how it's all related and tied more to finance than to old-fashioned interests like agriculture. Related: Kara Newman: The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Supermarkets (2012, Columbia University Press).

George Lakoff/Elisabeth Wehling: The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic (paperback, 2012, Free Press): Lakoff thinks we can solve all our problems by coming up with better terminology to frame our arguments -- i.e., something other than what Frank Luntz comes up with. Supposedly this is that.

Chris Lamb: Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball (2012, University of Nebraska Press): Previously wrote Blackout: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training, digs deeper here into the press attitudes that reinforced the color line in baseball, and a few journalists -- mostly blacks and/or communists, by the way -- who thought differently.

Charlie LeDuff: Detroit: An American Autopsy (2013, Penguin Press): Local journalist, has watched Detroit decline from 1.9 million people to fewer than 700,000, as people left the city for the suburbs or beyond while industry crumbled. I recall that when I was visiting Detroit it was hard to find books on the city, but that at least is looking up. For example, another is Mark Binelli: Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis (2012, Metropolitan).

Jonathan Lethem: The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc. (2011, Doubleday): A novelist based in Brooklyn dumps off scattered essays, mostly lit, some about music. Poking around Amazon's "look inside" I can't get a sense of the whole, but one fragment on "Disnial" is certainly sharp.

Jonathan Lethem: Talking Heads' Fear of Music (paperback, 2012, Continuum): Part of their 33 1/3 series of short books, where a writer picks out a single record and riffs on it. This is number 86, a rare case with a celebrity author.

Audrea Lim, ed: The Case for Sanctions Against Israel (paperback, 2012, Verso Books): Twenty essays here, including Omar Barghouti, Naomi Klein, Ilan Pappe, Joel Beinin, John Berger, Neve Gordon. Sanctions are a relatively non-belligerent way of expressing concern over Israel's manifest unwillingness either to free occupied Palestinians or to treat them equitably. Sanctions helped to tip the balance in South Africa to end the apartheid regime. At some point I fear they will be necessary to make any degree of progress toward peace and justice in Israel-Palestine. Also see: Omar Barghouti: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (paperback, 2011, Haymarket Books).

William Marsden: Fools Rule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change (2011, Knopf Canada; paperback, 2012, Vintage Canada): Canadian journalist, so good chance this focuses more on Canadian politics than on riper targets in the US, not that the anti-science opposition in both countries isn't driven by the same oil and coal companies. Author previously wrote a book on oil shale: Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and Doesn't Seem to Care).

GJ Meyer: The Borgias: The Hidden History (2013, Bantam): Of interest mostly, I suspect, if you've followed Neil Jordan's TV series and want to fill in some details, although it looks like this book takes some unexpected turns. Also available, and perhaps more conventional: Christopher Hibbert: The Borgias and Their Enemies: 1431-1919 (2008; paperback, 2009, Mariner Books).

Loretta Napoleoni: Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists Than We Do (2011; paperback, 2012, Seven Stories Press): Previously wrote Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality (2008), and ups the snark quotient here. Certainly is the case that China's economic growth has outpaced ever corner of the capitalist world for at least the last decade.

Mark Owen/Kevin Maurer: No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (2012, Dutton): Also subtitled, The Autobiography of a Navy Seal. Second guy up the stairs. First guy to cash in. Isn't that -- making a killing out of a killing -- what America is really all about?

Joel Salatin: Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World (2011; paperback, 2012, Center Street): The Virginia farmer who loomed so large in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma speaks for himself -- not for the first time, either: previous books include: You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farming Enterprise (paperback, 1998, Polyface); Holy Cows & Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food (paperback, 2005, Polyface); Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front (paperback, 2007, Polyface); The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer (paperback, 2010, Polyface).

Josh Schonwald: The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches From the Future of Food (2012, Harper Collins): Enthusiastic survey of speculations about how food will be engineered and manufactured in 2035.

James Gustave Speth: America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy (2012, Yale University Press): Environmentalist, previously wrote The Bridge at the Edge of the World, which questions growth for growth's sake. Should expand on that here.

John Swenson: New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans (2011; paperback, 2012, Oxford University Press): A rock critic of my generation goes to post-Katrina New Orleans and finds inspiration in the music -- where else would one work?

Gary Wills: Why Priests? A Failed Tradition (2013, Viking): Always an interesting writer, although his commitment to Catholicism has always baffled me, the issue here seeming like someone else's personal fight.

Bob Woodward: The Price of Politics (2012, Simon & Schuster): Another inside-out first draft of history, his second on Obama after four volumes on Bush, the first extolling his genius for leadership and the last wondering where all that went. Focuses on the budget battle with congressional Republicans, not anyone's best hour. New Yorker review: "Woodward, who has here the elements of a devastating study of Washingtonian pettiness, has instead written a book that in many ways exemplifies it."

Luigi Zingales: A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity (2012, Basic Books): Chicago economist, argues that American capitalism is dying as the market gets ever more regulated not just by "anti-market pitchfork populism" but by crony corruption he associates with "Europe and much of the rest of the world." Quick fix: trust the markets.

Still don't have the paperback report together. Maybe next time.

Music Week/Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21302 [21275] rated (+27), 618 [606] unrated (+12).

Big week in that I have three -- count 'em, three -- A- records, but the inside story is that two of them took an awful lot of plays (more than a dozen each) before I set aside my usual rule-of-thumb ("if you can't make up your mind, go with the lower grade"). The exception was Halley, which clicked so fast I didn't get around to writing anything substantial about it. His sax has nearly always been so my minor reservations about past his quartet albums concerned the second horn, but they play less in sync here, with the trombone most often either comping or jumping out front, either of which helps.

Eskelin is doing more of a ballad thing this time, so he's not as aggressive as usual, and Versace doesn't push him much, but the record has some really gorgeous passages. Douglas is just being Douglas: fantastic chops, really explosive at times, but his songs can get strange and veer off in unsettling directions. Irabagon, at least, is too much of a scrapper to get boxed up in a harmony role, so this never goes splat like some Douglas albums have done. I've had an advance (and only that) for a long time, so I was tempted to wait and see if a final arrived.

More plays might help push Snidero over the edge. He's very sharp here, as he was on 2009's Crossfire. The other HMs are certainly just that. Wanted to work in the latest batch of Ivo Perelman records, but it's hard to juggle three at once, and thus far they're all sounding pretty much the same. Also held back potentially good records by John Vanore and Craig Taborn.

Should have a Downloader's Diary this week, followed by a (currently short) Rhapsody Streamnotes -- latter may cut into my jazz time, but got a lot of mail this week.

Berserk! (2013, Rare Noise): Collaboration between singer Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari (aka LEF, has appeared in groups Transgender, Litania, Ashes, Costituto, Somma, Owls, Obake) and bassist Lorenzo Felicati. Extra musicians include some jazz names -- Gianluca Petrella (trombone), Jamie Saft (keybs), Eivind Aarset (guitar) -- but record is rockish, veering toward doom near the end. B+(*) [advance]

Jaimeo Brown: Transcendence (2012 [2013], Motema): Drummer, first album, has a few side-credits going back a decade. Front cover shows an old black church, and features two additional names: JD Allen (tenor sax) and Chris Sholar (guitar, electronics). (Geri Allen might have been a better marketing pick, but she plays on only one track, where Sholar is always there.) The sax is a huge asset here, but everything else is swamped in gospel vocals -- Falu, Marisha Brown, Selah Brown, samples from Gee's Bend Singers -- a meditation on Afro-American history (including a side trip to Ghana) that doesn't seem to resolve much. B+(*)

Dave Douglas Quintet: Time Travel (2012 [2013], Greenleaf Music): Same lineup as last year's Be Still -- Jon Irabagon (tenor sax), Matt Mitchell (piano), Linda Oh (bass), Rudy Royston (drums) -- minus the singer and the solemn tone, which gives them space to repeatedly flare out, even if the compositional matrix is the same fancy, slippery postbop Douglas has honed for years. The main thing you get is chops: he remains in a class by himself, so confident he's game to take on the hottest saxophonist he can find -- Potter, McCaslin, Strickland, now Irabagon, who is having one helluva year. A- [advance]

Ellery Eskelin: Trio New York II (2013, Prime Source): Sax-organ trio, with Gary Versace on the B3 and Gerald Cleaver on drums; second album together, the first dedicated to the tenor saxophonist's organ-playing mother. Likewise, this one is all standards, with a Monk piece, ohers like "Just One of Those Things," "After You've Gone," and "Flamingo." Versace stays clear of the usual soul jazz moves, giving this an odd delicacy, undercutting the spark but bringing out some of Eskelin's most poignant ballad craft. A-

Ken Fowser/Behn Gillece: Top Shelf (2012 [2013], Posi-Tone): Tenor sax and vibes, respectively; fourth album together, songs split 7-3 for Gillece. Backed by a sextet, with trombone, piano, bass, and drums. Postbop, runs fast and slick. B

Rich Halley 4: Crossing the Passes (2012 [2013], Pine Eagle): Tenor saxophonist, has recorded since the 1980s, more so since he's approached retirement age. Quartet adds a second horn -- Michael Vlatkovich's trombone -- to bass (Clyde Reed) and drums (son Carson Halley). A-

Curtis Hasselbring: Number Stations (2012 [2013], Cuneiform): Trombonist, studied at New England Conservatory and played in Boston bands like Either/Orchestra, then moved to New York, recorded in groups as disparate as Slavic Soul Party and Ballin' the Jack, finally recording his own album as The New Mellow Edwards. That band name is "featured" here, on his third album, and they're a motley bunch: Chris Speed (tenor sax, clarinet), Mary Halvorson (guitar), Trevor Dunn (bass), Matt Moran (vibes, marimba), and two drummer/percussionists: Ches Smith and Satoshi Takeishi. Compositions have something to do with numeric codings read off shortwave radio broadcasts, but what you get is a mish-mash studded with brilliant solos, much as you'd expect if a band this talented just winged it. B+(***)

Joe Locke: Lay Down My Heart: Blues & Ballads Vol 1 (2012 [2013], Motéma): Vibraphonist, has close to 30 albums since 1983, most paired off with pianists -- Ryan Cohan here, plus David Finck on bass and Jaimeo Brown on drums. Two originals, seven covers, the most immediately appealing the ones that skip around the edges of the familiar, like "Ain't No Sunshine" (Bill Withers) or "Makin' Whoopee." B+(**)

Chuck Owen & the Jazz Surge: River Runs (2011 [2013], Summit): Composer/arranger, has three albums on Sea Breeze (1995-2004), one on MAMA. Jazz Surge is his big band, introduced on the 1995 album, so it's not like he's jumping on a bandwagon. He subtitles this "A Concerto for Jazz Guitar, Saxophone, & Orchestra," and aside from the prominence of guitar (LaRue Nickerson) and tenor sax (Jack Wilkins), this really is contemporary classical music more than jazz, especially with the added orchestra (flutes, oboes, bassoon and harp, three French horns, and a phalanx of strings, the violin solos reserved Rob Thomas). Seems like I should hate it, and I started to, then lots of little things won me over. Nice booklet. B+(*)

Shamie Royston: Portraits (2011 [2013], self-released): Pianist, first record, piano trio, with Ivan Taylor on bass and her father Rudy Royston on drums, plus a Camille Thurman vocal. Nice piano work, with a gentle swing. Can't say the vocal is a plus. B+(*)

Markus Schwartz/Monvelyno Alexis: Vo-Duo Nou La (2011 [2013], Lakou Brooklyn): Drummer, b. in Copenhagen, Denmark, based for the last twenty years "in the heart of Lakou Brooklyn," "learning the wealth and complexity of traditional Haitian religious music." Alexis, born and raised in Haiti, plays guitar, sings, and co-wrote most of the songs. B

Jim Snidero: Stream of Consciousness (2012 [2013], Savant): Alto saxophonist, 17 albums since 1987, generally a mainstream/postbop guy, but looking for "strong, free-spirited younger players" this time, coming up with Paul Bollenback (guitar), Linda Oh (bass), and Rudy Royston (drums). Actually, he winds up running away from them more often than not. B+(***)

Jacqui Sutton: Notes From the Frontier: A Musical Journey (2012, Toy Blue Typewriter): Interpretive singer from Houston, second album, some kind of concept on discovering America. Starts with an interesting banjo-paced take on "Summertime," then segues to something unsingable. Album continues to teeter like that, with some hot trumpet the high spot. B-

The Verve Jazz Ensemble: It's About Time (2012 [2013], self-released): Five musicians are credited, but only four pictured: Tatum Greenblatt (trumpet), Jon Blanck (tenor sax), Matt Oestreicher (piano), and Josh Feldstein (drums) -- odd man out is bassist Chris DeAngelis. First album, six bop-era standards plus three alternate takes, nice job on each. B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• JD Allen: Grace (Savant)
• Michael Bates/Samuel Blaser Quintet: One From None (Fresh Sound New Talent)
• Han Bennink/Uri Caine: Sonic Boom (816 Music)
• Blue Cranes: Swim (Cuneiform): advance, May 21
• Marc Cary: For the Love of Abbey (Motéma): June 11
• Racquel Cepeda: I'm Confessin' (Peonia Music)
• Michael Dease: Coming Home (D Clef)
• Jonathan Finlayson & Sicilian Defense: Moment & the Message (Pi): May 28
• Ross Hammond Quartet: Cathedrals (Prescott)
• Deborah Latz: Fig Tree (June Moon Productions)
• Liberation Prophecy: Invisible House (self-released)
• Matt Parker: Worlds Put Together (Bynk)
• The Kim Richmond Concert Jazz Orchestra: Artistry: A Tribute to Stan Kenton (MAMA)
• Wallace Roney: Understanding (High Note)
• Alex Syndman: Fortunate Action (self-released)
• Craig Taborn Trio: Chants (ECM)
• Anna Webber: Percussive Mechanics (Pirouet)
• Mark Winkler: The Laura Nyro Project (Cafe Pacific)
• Jon Wirtz: Tourist (self-released)

Expert Comments

I wrote:

I just got a notice that Richie Havens died. I can't mention his name in my house without eliciting moans -- Laura still blames him for her worst concert experience ever. (Same one that haunts Bob? I never bothered to ask.) I went to update my database and see that I never graded any of Havens' albums. I know that I've heard at least one, and it was awful.

decherre replied:

even Coyne never played for more then 45 minutes in open D without a beer run.

Correction: Laura tells me that she never saw Havens perform, so her intense distaste for him comes from elsewhere. (She just came into my office-space and complained about all the love for Havens filling her facebook feed.) I do recall Bob describing a concert he had just seen (Smashing Pumpkins or Nick Cave, don't recall which since they were at the same festival and evidently really bad) as the worst he's seen since Havens.

Jon LaFollette wrote me, asking for a list of 8-10 recommended albums "which feature jazz from A) the New York / East Coast scene and B) the 1920s." I wrote back:

Mostly off the top of my head, although I looked up some titles. What I know is mostly summed up here:

http://tomhull.com/ocston/nm/jazz-20s.html

Really just New York, at least up to the 1940s when Philadelphia starts to matter, and Boston in the 1950s, although neither ever come close. The 1920s cutoff is pretty arbitrary, and I've gone beyond it here. A better division would be around 1933, with the advancement of stride piano and the introduction of swing. That's also about the point when New York starts capturing the rest of the nation's jazz stars.

First pick is the Fletcher Henderson 3-CD box, A Study in Frustration (1923-28 [1994], Legacy). Nearly everything that mattered happened first in Henderson's band, including Louis Armstrong's initial arrival (before he went back to Chicago to cut the Hot Fives and Sevens) and Coleman Hawkins' invention of the jazz saxophone. May be out of print, but looks like Essential Jazz Classics has reissued it with some extras, and it's pretty cheap.

Next, you want some Duke Ellington, especially 1926-29, the so-called "Bubber Miley Era." Ellington recorded many of his songs three times, for Bluebird (RCA), Brunswick (Decca/MCA/Universal), and Okeh (Columbia), and they are desirable in roughly that order, and they look to all be out of print, for reasons I find not just unfathomable but criminal. RCA had three Bluebird CDs, of which Early Ellington is absolutely prime (slightly expanded from the Flaming Youth LP which was a big Christgau favorite). The Brunswicks were available in a 3-CD complete edition (Early Ellington) and a single sampler (The Best of Early Ellington), and they sound terrific. The Okehs were in 2-CD The Okeh Ellington, and they're a lot rougher. Jazz Legends issued a single called The Bubber Miley Era: 1924-1929 that is near-perfect. JSP had a 4-CD box called Mrs. Clinkscales to the Cotton Club that loses a bit, especially with the early Washingtonians tracks, but is a bargain. Ellington's 1930s material is generally less well regarded, which is probably unfair. Legacy never reissued this material, so it's only been available on Classics (a French label that issues everything chronologically), at least until the expensive Mosaic 11-CD box set (that I don't have) appeared. (There's also a second 4-CD JSP box, which I don't have and don't know how far it goes.) Ellington's 1940-42 RCAs are his second peak period, but that's beyond your time frame.

Next thing I'd recommend is a Don Redman compilation, Doin' What I Please (1925-38 [1993], ASV), if you can find it. This covers a variety of groups Redman led or arranged for, notably McKinney's Cotton Pickers. ASV is a British reissue label, with a huge number of long (75-80 minute) single-CD compilations, generally good if the subject holds up that long.

Another important group leader is Luis Russell: a good, pretty comprehensive set is The Luis Russell Story 1929-1934 (Retrieval, 2CD), which seems to be in print.

The preeminent NY pianist of the 1920s was James P. Johnson. My favorite there is Snowy Morning Blues (1930-44 [1991], Decca), a little late and out-of-print. In the 1930s the key pianist becomes Fats Waller, followed by Art Tatum. A fine Waller intro is the 3-CD box, If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It (1926-43 [2006], Legacy), although The Joint Is Jumpin' [1987] and The Very Best of Fats Waller [2000] try to reduce that to a single CD. Tatum's best stuff wasn't cut until the 1950s, although ASV's The Art of Tatum (1932-44) catches you up.

Coleman Hawkins is mostly covered by the Henderson set and to some extent by the Redman, but there's more, especially after he goes to Europe in 1934 and comes back and revolutionizes jazz improv. The King of the Tenor Sax (1929-43 [2003], Jazz Legends) is a good for its focus. There's also an expensive Mosaic box, which largely duplicates the old 6-CD Affinity box I own.

Henry "Red" Allen is a New Orleans-born trumpet player who was big in New York from about 1929 on. He shows up on the Redman, Russell, and (I'm pretty sure) Henderson boxes, and has some 1933 sessions with Hawkins. The first three volumes of his work on Collectors' Classics are real good.

Jimmie Lunceford (Stomp It Off, For Dancers Only) and Chick Webb (Spinnin' the Web) are important bandleaders from the early 1930s -- those three titles are from out-of-print Decca CDs, all highly recommended. I think there's a Mosaic box of Lunceford. There's a 4-CD Properbox of Webb.

Count Basie moved from KC to NY in 1936 and had a huge impact right away. The 3-CD Decca box is monumental, the 1-CD "best of" a good selection. The 3-CD Columbia box is mostly later, although it starts off with the 1936 Jones-Smith sessions.

Louis Armstrong moved back to NY around 1930, with a big band. Nothing in the 1930s is as important as his late 1920s recordings, but the RCAs are still pretty great, and there's good stuff for Decca if you bother to dig for it. (Again, don't have the Mosaic box of the Deccas.) Sidney Bechet and Jelly Roll Morton probably passed through NY. Both recorded a lot of fine music for RCA. Benny Goodman started in Chicago, but probably wound up in NY, and becomes hugely influential from 1935 on. Artie Shaw appears a couple years later, and John Kirby's 1939-42 band is superb. Benny Carter probably passed through. His most famous pre-WWII work was cut in Europe, including the "Crazy Rhythm" session with Coleman Hawkins and Django Reinhardt and a good album in England with Spike Hughes, but he spent most of the 1940s working in LA on movie soundtracks, and his best stuff came out in the 1950s-60s.

Not sure where to slot folks like Cab Calloway and Stuff Smith. Billie Holiday appeared in the late 1930s, mostly in Teddy Wilson's bands, but all of his tracks are under her name now. Wilson was a very important pianist.

There was a Bluebird CD called The Jazz Age: New York in the Twenties (Christgau liked it) with Red Nichols, Ben Pollack, Phil Napoleon, Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang. The Lang/Venuti stuff is worth pursuing (JSP's Volume 2 is my top pick -- guitar/violin jazz, much like Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. Retrieval has a good Red Nichols with Miff Mole 1925-1927 set.

Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune compilations collect an extraordinary amount of early jazz, not limited to New York but NY increasingly dominates the art, at least up to 1950 when LA and SF start to matter, and he tends to focus earlier than most compilers.

I bought most of this stuff in the early CD era. I'm shocked at how little of the major label stuff is still in print. There is a lot more than is readily obvious from European labels, and I've barely scratched those sources. For instance, Frog Records is regarded as having good sounding transfers. I don't have any of their releases, but they have a Miff Mole comparable to the one I cited, and three volumes of McKinney's Cotton Pickers. Glancing through their catalog, I noticed one called Thumpin' & Bumpin': New York Volume 2: only one I was familiar with there was Bubber Miley -- Ellington's first great trumpet player, died real young, but I never knew he led his own groups -- so I guess I'm not that much of an expert.

Weekend Roundup

Some scattered links of special interest. Caught most of them today, which shows it isn't all that hard to find trouble these days:

• Joe Conason: Protecting the 'Second Amendment Rights' of Thugs and Terrorists: The NRA used to push the mantra, "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." Now they seem to be saying, if criminals are denied guns, no one will be permitted them.

  As Will Saletan pointed out in Slate last January, the NRA has consistently (and successfully) sought to kill the most basic efforts to keep guns away from convicted criminals and other dangerous characters -- including abusive spouses under court protection orders, drug dealers and even individuals listed on the Justice Department's terrorist watch list.

  In the wake of the Boston bombing, as the nation ponders how to bolster its security, the gun lobby's tender concern for the Second Amendment "rights" of terrorists and thugs ought to permanently discredit them and their political servants.

  Background checks and registration should not prevent people who have legitimate reason for owning guns from doing so, nor establish a "slippery slope" leading to gun confiscation (as is routinely asserted). They would, however, do much to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them, and they would help law enforcement track gun violence. There is, after all, enough gun violence in America to warrant precautions, and it should be clear that there are people who should not be entitled to own or use guns. Reasonable people should be able to find some common ground here, but the NRA has taken a position far beyond reason, and it's time to start calling it what it is: their main purpose is to safeguard the gun-owning rights of criminals, because if criminals can't own guns, no one can.

  As near as I can tell, the NRA is mostly a front for gun manufacturers, and their business is booming because they're able to promote fear -- of crime, of terrorists, and of the government -- into ever more gun sales. For an example of his this works, here's a Wichita Eagle letter from Hank Price, of Goddard, KS:

  I need an AR-15. Furthermore, I need several 30-round magazines to go with it.

  Why, you ask? Well, let's put aside the fact that it is none of your business or, for that matter, none of government's business to ask. (The Second Amendment affirms my right to keep and bear arms.)

  I need an AR-15 because the bad guys have them. I need an AR-15 because the police, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have them. If someone is attempting a home invasion with semi-automatic or even automatic weapons, I don't want to wait the 15 to 20 minutes it takes for the police to arrive with their semi-automatic weapons.

  I need an AR-15 because as long as I and other law-abiding citizens have them, the government will think twice before infringing on the other rights affirmed by the Constitution. That is the real reason we have the Second Amendment. Not so we can hunt. Not so we can target practice. Not so we can defend our home and family until the police come to file their reports. But to protect our rights.

  This is a good example of the NRA business plan: let the "bad guys" have X and "good guys" like Price will have to buy the same thing -- an arms race, which certainly won't stop with AR-15s. Moreover, if the "bad guys" include the US government, Price is already way down the technology curve: they already have helicopters, tanks, snipers, noxious gas, and enough firepower to obliterate your house -- no need to merely "invade" it. Also, that bit about using guns to protect your rights, how's that worked out over time? From the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791 up until any recent example you can cite, not very well. To pick one relatively recent example, Leonard Peltier is in jail for life for allegedly defending himself against federal agents. Why should Price expect to fare better? The fact is that the only way to defend yourself against the government is through the courts -- your best friend there, by the way, is the ACLU. Better still, elect a government that will respect your rights -- shouldn't be that big of a problem, if you really are one of the "good guys." If not, at least you have the NRA working for you.

  By the way, here's today's Crowson:

  

• David Graeber: There's No Need for All This Economic Sadomasochism: More on austerity politics, piling on the Reinhart-Rogoff debacle:

  The morality of debt has proved spectacularly good politics. It appears to work just as well whatever form it takes: fiscal sadism (Dutch and German voters really do believe that Greek, Spanish and Irish citizens are all, collectively, as they put it, "debt sinners," and vow support for politicians willing to punish them) or fiscal masochism (middle-class Britons really will dutifully vote for candidates who tell them that government has been on a binge, that they must tighten their belts, it'll be hard, but it's something we can all do for the sake of our grandchildren). Politicians locate economic theories that provide flashy equations to justify the politics; their authors, like Rogoff, are celebrated as oracles; no one bothers to check if the numbers actually add up.

  Also on Reinhart-Rogoff: New Tools for Reproducible Results.

• Glenn Greenwald: What Rights Should Dzokhar Tsarnaev Get and Why Does It Matter?: When I heard Sen. Lindsey Graham insisting that the Boston Marathon bomber should be declared an "enemy combatant" I thought that was the dumbest thing I've heard him say in, well, weeks. As I understand it, the main purpose of the "enemy combatant" designation is to allow the Feds to hold people indefinitely they suspect but don't have any evidence against, at least that wouldn't hold up in court. Assuming they got the right person, the odds that they wouldn't be able to secure a conviction are vanishingly small -- unless they did something really stupid, like waterboarding him in Guantanamo. Tsarnaev is a US citizen, captured in the US after (allegedly) committing a major crime on US territory. Isn't that what the US justice system is about? Then I read that Obama's DOJ decided not to "Mirandize" him, as if not reminding him that he has rights under the constitution strips him of those rights. To get on top of this, I consulted Glenn Greenwald, and he explains it all here.

  Now, the cheers for this erosion of Miranda are led not by right-wing Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist (who wrote the opinion in Quarles), but by MSNBC pundits like former Obama campaign media aide Joy Reid, who -- immediately upon the DOJ's announcement -- instantly became a newly minted Miranda expert in order to loudly defend the DOJ's actions. MSNBC's featured "terrorism expert" Roger Cressey -- who, unbeknownst to MSNBC viewers, is actually an executive with the intelligence contractor Booz Allen -- also praised the DOJ's decision not to Mirandize the accused bomber (if you want instant, reflexive support for the US government's police and military powers, MSNBC is the place to turn these days). [ . . . ]

  Just 30 years ago, Quarles was viewed as William Rehnquist's pernicious first blow against Miranda; now, it's heralded by MSNBC Democrats as good, just and necessary for our safety, even in its new extremist rendition. That's the process by which long-standing liberal views of basic civil liberties, as well core Constitutional guarantees, continue to be diluted under President Obama in the name of terrorism. [ . . . ]

  Needless to say, Tsarnaev is probably the single most hated figure in America now. As a result, as Bazelon noted, not many people will care what is done to him, just like few people care what happens to the accused terrorists at Guantanamo, or Bagram, or in Yemen and Pakistan. But that's always how rights are abridged: by targeting the most marginalized group or most hated individual in the first instance, based on the expectation that nobody will object because of how marginalized or hated they are. Once those rights violations are acquiesced to in the first instance, then they become institutionalized forever, and there is no basis for objecting once they are applied to others, as they inevitably will be (in the case of the War on Terror powers: as they already are being applied to others).

  Also see Greenwald's earlier post, The Boston Bombing Produces Familiar and Revealing Reactions. Greenwald also links to an interesting piece by Ali Abuninah: Was the Boston Bombing Really a "Terrorist" Act? Aside from the specialized legal aspects, I have no problem describing any bombing as an act of terror (including those bombs released by US drones in Pakistan and elsewhere), just because of its intrinsically indiscriminate nature. But at this point there is very little that can be said about the motivations and intentions of the perpetrators. But somewhere I read that this was the first "terrorist attack" on US soil since the November 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Hasan -- a statement that overlooks dozens of mass shootings since, many (e.g., the recent murder of schoolchildren in Newtown, CT) truly terrorful. At the very least, we've managed to muddle up the language here: the 9/11 attack were both terrorizing and a radical affront to the image of US power as projected across the world. The Boston bombing and the Newtown shootings were both terrorizing, but what they have to do with US power is still mostly confined to the fevered imaginations of US politicians, who, as always, are happy to use whatever tragedy is at hand to further their own interests.

• Glenn Greenwald: Margaret Thatcher and Misapplied Death Etiquette: Missed this post from April 8, but still timely. The fact is, when you hear that someone has died, you remember what they did. If what you say then usually seems positive, that may be because we are predisposed to forget or forgive the bad and cherish the good. Or perhaps one feels a tinge of relief that the threat of the bad has passed. But the threat of someone like Thatcher hasn't passed with her, and it would be grossly unresponsible to gloss over much of what she actually did. As Greenwald says:

  This demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous. That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. "Respecting the grief" of Thatcher's family members is appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize, but the protocols are fundamentally different when it comes to public discourse about the person's life and political acts. I made this argument at length last year when Christopher Hitchens died and a speak-no-ill rule about him was instantly imposed (a rule he, more than anyone, viciously violated), and I won't repeat that argument today; those interested can read my reasoning here.

  But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms.

• Ed Kilgore: Fertilizer Explosion Update: Weak Inspections and Strong Kolaches: While the nation's media was fixated on the bombings in Boston, a far larger (and deadlier) explosion occurred in the place where you might most expect it, a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, but nobody was looking there:

  The explosion shone a harsh light on the US fertilizer industry and the weak, toothless regulation thereof. One problem Plumer notes is that, "the Occupational Safety and Health Administration tends to be understaffed and inspections are relatively infrequent. The Texas fertilizer industry has only seen six inspections in the past five years -- and the West Texas Fertilizer Co. facility was not one of them." This was despite the West facility receiving a $2,300 fine from the EPA in 2006 for poor risk-management planning. The last time the facility had been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was in 1985. Think Progress reports that the plant had been inspected in 2011 by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), which resulted in a $10,100 fine for missing placards and lack of security plans. The fine was reduced in 2012 after improvements were made at the plant.

  Fertilizer explosions are relatively common in history. There have been 17 unintended explosions of ammonium nitrate causing casualties since 1921. The worst of these was the explosion of a cargo ship in the Port of Texas City that killed 581 people and injured 3500.

• Mike Konczal: Mapping Out the Arguments Against Chained CPI: Konczal has been linked to by everyone commenting on Reinhart-Rogoff recently (see Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff and There Are Serious Problems, followed up by Andrindrajit Dube: Reinhart/Rogoff and Growth in a Time Before Debt). Here he analyzes another real bad idea: Obama's budget proposal to cut Social Security by fudging the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). (If you were really paying attention, you'll recall that this has already been done once before, by Clinton as a favor for Greenspan: in the 1990s, the government changed how the consumer price index (CPI) was calculated, nominally lowering inflation and thereby reducing Social Security COLA increases.) With "friends" like Obama (and Clinton) you enemies are already halfway home.

  If you look into the data, the elderly spend a lot more of their limited money on housing, utilities, and medical care. Health care costs have been rising rapidly over the past several decades, and it is difficult to substitute on other necessary, fixed-price goods like utilities. With the notable exception of college costs, the things urban wage earners spend money on haven't increased in price as quickly as what the elderly purchase. As a result, the CPI-E (the index tailored to the elderly) has increased 3.3 percent a year from 1982 to 2007, while the CPI-W (tailored to wage earners) has only increased 3 percent a year. [ . . . ]

  You'll hear arguments that a Grand Bargain is necessary, so it's better to bring Social Security into long-term balance now, with Democrats at the helm, than in the future, when there will be less time and an uncertain governance coalition. You can get fewer cuts and more revenue than you would otherwise and take the issue off the table for the foreseeable future to concentrate on other priorities.

  But if that's your idea, then this is a terrible deal and sets a terrible precedent, because this deal would accomplish none of your goals. You'd cut Social Security without putting in any new revenue. And it wouldn't be sufficient to close the long-term gap, so the issue would stay on the table. Indeed, the deficit hawks would probably be emboldened, viewing this as a "downpayment" on future cuts, and require any future attempts to get more revenue for Social Security, say by raising the payroll tax cap, to involve significant additional cuts.

  Konczal also points out that the longer you live, the more "chained CPI" eats into your check; also the more likely you are to have exhausted your savings. The net result is to plunge the very elderly into poverty. One thing he didn't mention is that some big expenses, like nursing home care, are means-tested. The effect of this is to first confiscate all of your savings before making you a ward of a state that has never been known for generous welfare policies. Over the last twenty-some years, we've done a lot to lighten estate taxes for the rich, never noticing that for the poor the effective tax rate is 100%.

• Matthew Yglesias: Banning Late-Term Abortions Reduces the Quality of Late-Term Abortion Providers: Same for extra-legal bans, like murder. Talks about the Kermit Gosnell case in Philadelphia, but he starts with a more commonplace example:

  I used to buy illegal drugs sometimes and in addition to me, personally, not being a huge fan of said substances I really didn't enjoy the purchasing process. The quality of customer service was just deplorable. And the problem, roughly speaking, was that even though it was not in practice all that difficult to obtain marijuana you still had to get it from a drug dealer rather than, say, a highly efficient global retailer operating with industry best practices and huge economies of scale. And for better or for worse, that's one of the goals of drug prohibition in the United States. It's not simply that making something illegal deters some people from use. It inhibits the emergence of above-board providers with strong franchises and brand value and robust competition between multiple high quality providers.

  It also opens up opportunities for police to profit through bribes or other favors, and it makes it easier for criminals to rob drug dealers, and it opens up drug dealers to further crime, etc. But back to medicine: any operation is more likely to be performed competently by someone who does it often, thereby developing skill and experience. One reason universal health care is better even for the people who can afford whatever you call our health care system is that doctors learn from experience.

Burial Rites

Wrote this to Jan, after she vented her displeasure with the decision to ultimately bury Aunt Freda with her second husband, Ralph Bureman, instead of with my uncle, Allen Brown. Freda Shelby was born near Moline, KS in 1915. She dated Ralph before marrying Allen in 1938. They had three children (Lou Jean, Jan, Ken) before Allen was killed in a car wreck in 1951. Meanwhile, Ralph vanished from her life. He got married, have five children. Many years later, Freda and Ralph met through church contacts -- he was a minister in Disciples of Christ. His marriage had fallen apart. After reuniting with Freda, he divorced and they married. They lived together, first in Kinsley then in Newton (both KS), for ten years before he died in 1987. Ken moved to Independence, KS after college. He taught political science and tennis at Independence Community College, retired there, but still runs the high school tennis program. Freda moved from Newton to Independence about five years ago as she started to suffer from dementia, which is currently rather severe.

I know Ken prefers Independence. He goes to the cemetery a lot to remember Yona, and would be better able to take care of things there. I don't relate to cemeteries like that. I don't think I've been to my parents' graves in the last decade; probably only twice since they were buried. I go to the cemetery in Arkansas because it's one of those customary things we do down there, plus it has some deeper family history. (Same for the cemetery in Spearville, although the only time I've been there in many decades was to bury Zula Mae.) I've been to a few other cemeteries -- where Lola and Melvin are buried in Stroud, OK; my grandparents in Marquette, MS; Ruby and Bob in Lincoln, KS; Rebecca in Vienna, OH -- but only once each. Rebecca is buried in her family plot, next to her father, but no one suggested reserving a spot for me and putting my name on the headstone. It would have seemed awfully presumptuous to me at the time, and as it turned out I've been with Laura much longer (and quite a bit happier; her preference, by the way, is to be cremated and scattered; my own view is that when I die my disposal will be someone else's problem).

I don't know why Freda decided to put her name on Allen's tombstone -- I can imagine, but I've always found it to be a little unsettling too. Maybe she felt pressured, or just that it was the normal thing to do, but she certainly didn't make it knowing how the rest of her life would unfold. I do recall her talking about Ralph even before they met up, and also recall her talking about how she sent letters to each of you, and you responding that you only had one question: whether getting together with Ralph would affect her plans to be buried in Arkansas with Allen. At the time she promised no. I hardly ever saw them when they were married. They only time I recall meeting Ralph was when they came to Wichita and he married Rebecca and me. Evidently some time she changed her mind, because her name is on Ralph's tombstone as well. When we talked about it later she said that Independence would be close to Ken, that he would visit more often and take better care of the plot, etc. -- didn't seem to have much to do with Ralph vs. Allen, but she probably didn't want to think of it like that.

As my disinterest in my parents' graves suggests, I don't think of them as being there, or anywhere else, except in memories and imagination. The markers evoke those memories (or in the case of ancestors I never met, imagination), and they'll do that regardless of the contents of the dirt around them. Regardless of what you do with the body or ashes, I'll still recall Freda every time I visit Flutey Cemetery (or drive by the cemetery in Independence). Most likely, you (and Lou Jean and Ken) think differently, so pay me no heed, but it is ultimately your collective decision.

Didn't say this, but my preference would be to cremate the body and not bury it either place -- maybe scatter the ashes, or split them up and let the three widely scattered "kids" (Jan lives in Idaho; Lou Jean in Buffalo) build their own little memorials. On the other hand, my mother always assumed she would be buried, and we more/less automatically just put her down next to dad, following other instructions like burying her barefoot. Similarly, we buried Laura's father in a plot he had purchased for that purpose. (On the other hand, we cremated Laura's sister, and gave her ashes to a childhood friend. No idea whatever ultimately happened there.)

I'd also add the missing dates to Freda's two gravestones. For most people the disposition would remain uncertain, like Schrödinger's cat.

Midweek Roundup

Some links and comments. Originally started last week, then postponed to mid-week, then a bit later:

• Gerry Adams: Thatcher's Legacy in Ireland: On the late UK prime minister:

  Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. Her right wing politics saw Thatcher align herself with some of the most repressive and undemocratic regimes in the late 20th century -- including apartheid South Africa and Chile's Pinochet. Her description of the ANC and Mandela as terrorists was evidence of her ultra conservative view of the world.

  She championed the deregulation of the financial institutions, cuts in public services and was vehemently anti-trade union. She set out to crush the trade union movement. The confrontation with the miners and the brutality of the British police was played out on television screens night after night for months. The current crisis in the banking institutions and the economic recession owe much to these policies. And she went to war in the Malvinas.

  But for the people of Ireland, and especially the north, the Thatcher years were among some of the worst of the conflict. For longer than any other British Prime Minister her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights.

  Her most immediate impact on the US came out of the Malvinas (Falklands) War, which played so jolly well on British TV that she got a big popularity boost. She later used it to convince the first George Bush how he could use war in Kuwait to push up his own ratings, a lesson Bush's idiot son not only learned but refined, thus sparking the neverending War on Terror.

  Thatcher has been all over the pundit-world recently. On two succesive days, the Wichita Eagle had opinion pieces that doted on her: one by the Kansas Republican chairman extolling Brownback as a Thatcherite; and one by Cal Thomas on how the left is full of hate for pointing out her supposed faults. One thing that I haven't read about recently was how Thatcher was so extreme in her reactionary views that she eventually became an embarrassment to the Conservative Party, which replaced her with John Major. Now the efforts to canonize her are reminiscent of the much more organized efforts to name things after Ronald Reagan.

• John Cassidy: The Crumbling Case for Austerity Economics: Starts off with a nod to Thatcher, who put austerity into practice back in 1979, a prescription for national impoverishment that the current Conservative cabal running the UK has embraced, once again disastrously. Cassidy then moves on to "glaring faults and omissions in the widely cited research of Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff" -- turns out that their paper predicting doom when a national debt exceeds 90% of GDP was severely fudged ("omitted relevant data, weighted their calculations in an unusual manner, and made an elementary coding blunder," slanting their results in favor of their thesis). For more on Reinhart-Rogoff, see Mike Konczal (wonkish), and Paul Krugman (although if you rumage through his blog you'll find several more).

• Maureen Dowd: Courting Cowardice:

  Swing Justice Anthony Kennedy grumbled about "uncharted waters," and the fuddy-duddies seemed to be looking for excuses not to make a sweeping ruling. Their questions reflected a unanimous craven impulse: How do we get out of this? This court is plenty bold imposing bad decisions on the country, like anointing W. president or allowing unlimited money to flow covertly into campaigns. But given a chance to make a bold decision putting them on the right, and popular, side of history, they squirm.

  "Same-sex couples have every other right," Chief Justice John Roberts said, sounding inane for a big brain. "It's just about the label in this case." He continued, "If you tell a child that somebody has to be their friend, I suppose you can force the child to say, 'This is my friend,' but it changes the definition of what it means to be a friend." [ . . . ]

  Charles Cooper, the lawyer for the proponents of Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, was tied in knots, failing to articulate any harm that could come from gay marriage and admitting that no other form of discrimination against gay people was justified. His argument, that marriage should be reserved for those who procreate, is ludicrous. Sonia Sotomayor was married and didn't have kids. Clarence and Ginny Thomas did not have kids. Chief Justice Roberts's two kids are adopted. Should their marriages have been banned? What about George and Martha Washington? They only procreated a country.

  As Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out to Cooper, "Couples that aren't gay but can't have children get married all the time."

  Justice Elena Kagan wondered if Cooper thought couples over the age of 55 wanting to get married should be refused licenses. Straining to amuse, Justice Antonin Scalia chimed in: "I suppose we could have a questionnaire at the marriage desk when people come in to get the marriage -- you know, 'Are you fertile or are you not fertile?'"

  Scalia didn't elaborate on his comment in December at Princeton: "If we cannot have moral feeling against homosexuality, can we have it against murder?"

• Paul Krugman: Europe in Brief: A good basic summary of what's happened to the Euro:

  The first effect of the euro was an outbreak of europhoria: suddenly, investors believed that all European debt was equally safe. Interest rates dropped all around the European periphery, setting off huge flows of capital to Spain and other economies; these capital flows fed huge housing bubbles in many places, and in general created booms in the countries receiving the inflows.

  The booms, in turn, caused differential inflation: costs and prices rose much more in the periphery than in the core. Peripheral economies became increasingly uncompetitive, which wasn't a problem as long as the inflow-fueled bubbles lasted, but would become a problem once the capital inflows stopped.

  And stop they did. The result was serious slumps in the periphery, which lost a lot of internal demand but remained weak on the external side thanks to the loss of competitiveness.

  This exposed the deep problem with the single currency: there is no easy way to adjust when you find your costs out of line. At best, peripheral economies found themselves facing a prolonged period of high unemployment while they achieved a slow, grinding, "internal devaluation."

  The problem was greatly exacerbated, however, when the combination of slumping revenues and the prospect of protracted economic weakness led to large budget deficits and concerns about solvency, even in countries like Spain that entered the crisis with budget surpluses and low debt. There was panic in the bond market -- and as a condition for aid, the European core demanded harsh austerity programs.

  Austerity, in turn, led to much deeper slumps in the periphery -- and because peripheral austerity was not offset by expansion in the core, the result was in fact a slump for the European economy as a whole. One consequence has been that austerity is failing even on its own terms: key measures like debt/GDP ratios have gotten worse, not better.

  One thing to note is that aside from his concern about the human costs of austerity programs little in Krugman's critique of the euro is political. The euro could easily be seen as a liberal project, and as a failure of liberalism. And while one could argue that the failure had less to do with its liberal intent than with an implementation that was overly controlled by conservative bankers -- regulation of those capital flows would have helped -- Krugman tends not to do so.

  Also see Brad DeLong: The Future of the Euro: Lessons From History:

  How did this come about? Why didn't Maastricht set up a single Eurovia-wide banking regulator and supervisor to align financial policy with monetary policy? Why didn't Maastricht set up the fiscal-transfer funds that would be needed when -- as would inevitably happen -- some chunk of the future Eurovia went into recession while other chunks were in boom? Why did Maastricht leave a good chunk of lender-of-last-resort authority in the hands of national governments that could not print money and so fulfill the lender-of-least-resort function rather than placing all of it in the European Central Bank, which could? And why -- given that one country's exports are another's imports -- does the adoption of policies in deficit countries to reduce their imports and boost their export not automatically trigger the adoption of policies in surplus countries to boost their imports and reduce their exports?

• Barry Ritholtz: 12 Rules of Goldbuggery: Mostly about gold as a speculative investment, which is easy to see as a psychological disorder. As for tying the economic system to the gold standard, that is the all-time number one stupid idea in the history of economics.

• MJ Rosenberg: Netanyahu to US: Drop Dead: What's the difference between Binyamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak Shamir? Netanyahu will make a bit of effort to string you along, whereas it was obvious even to Americans that Shamir would never budge on anything. The first Bush administration's displeasure with Shamir led to his downfall, replaced by Yitzhak Rabin, which led to the ill-fated Oslo Accords. Lots of things made them ill-fated, but pride of place went to Netanyahu, who when pushed hard enough agreed to things he'd never get around to implementing. Well, Netanyahu's back, but with Oslo dead and Congress in his pocket, is reverting to his inner Shamir:

  The good news is that Netanyahu has made everything so clear. He has no interest in peace, negotiations, any kind of territorial withdrawal or even freezing settlements. Like Shamir, he just wants to buy time until it will be absolutely impossible to create a Palestinian state, if it isn't already. As for the United States, Netanyahu is not interested in what it wants.

  The only question left is what the Obama administration will do in response. It could follow Baker's example and take a walk. Even better, it could tell Netanyahu that future aid from the U.S. will be linked to its occasional compliance with U.S. wishes regarding the occupation. Or it could say, it won't keep following Israel's dictates on sanctions or Palestine's right to recognition by the United Nations. Or it could, as Bush and Baker did, squeeze the Israeli prime minister until the Israeli public dumps him.

  It could do any of those.

  Will it? I'm taking bets.

  But here is a sure one. There is no possibility of serious negotiation so long as Binyamin Netanyahu is prime minister of Israel.

  I personally thought that was obvious when Netanyahu became prime minister shortly after Obama won his first term. Netanyahu's victory and coalition were so shaky that it wouldn't have taken much to nudge them apart, but Obama did nothing and got nothing (but a second term for Netanyahu).

Expert Comments

Christgau gave Brad Paisley's Wheelhouse a B+, a pretty modest grade given how hard he fell for Paisley's last two albums. Rod Taylor on Brad Paisley's "Those Crazy Christians":

Both Jason and Robert have expressed admiration for "Those Crazy Christians," a song which pissed me off when I first listened to it. It came across more as a cynical sop to a core part of the country audience rather than a thoughtful reflection of a nonbeliever. I think what bugs me most is that I can see groups of evangelical Christians singing along and walking away thinking how wonderful they are.

"'Those crazy Christians, I was gonna sleep in today
But the church bells woke me up and they're a half a mile away
Those crazy Christians, dressed up drivin' down my street
Get their weekly dose of guilt before they head to Applebee's"

So, Paisley's clearly not one of them, but what's the problem? Church bells and guilt trips. The first is humorous, the second the kind of thing that only seems compelling to outsiders.

"They pray before they eat and they pray before they snore
They pray before a football game and every time they score
Every untimely passing, every dear departed soul
Is just another good excuse to bake a casserole"

Paisley's having fun gently poking at their religiosity, but in the end, with the casserole remark, he slyly pats the Christians in the audience on the back for their good deeds, which sets up the next verse.

"Those crazy Christians, go and jump on some airplane
And fly to Africa or Haiti, risk their lives in Jesus' name
No, they ain't the late night party kind
They curse the devil's whiskey while they drink the Savior's wine"

The first part of this one is the bit that angered me so. There's a whole industry built around mission trips that do very little in terms of humanitarian good and do almost nothing to place the lives of people in danger. I've been on these trips. They are often little more than opportunities to tell Bible stories to kids and give them candy. Not all are like that. I went on one to Honduras where we helped fix up a community school and did none of the evangelical stuff all week. The others were glorified vacations, however. And my life was never in danger. The people who plan these trips are meticulous in making sure that doesn't happen. Yet Paisley makes it seem like you have a bunch of evangelicals putting their lives on the line while nonbelievers like him sit back and do nothing. And I'm pretty sure that's how it will play out to a evangelical Christian audience (again, a crucial part of his audience).

"A famous TV preacher has a big affair and then
One tearful confession and he's born again again
Someone yells hallelujah and they shout and clap and sing
It's like they can't wait to forgive someone for just about anything
Those crazy Christians"

Again, Paisley starts out gently mocking, but the second half turns it around. Now it's admiration. But that "just about anything" is the key. Because while they might forgive one of their own, God forbid you be outside the Jesus camp and be gay or something, because then you are an abomination.

"Instead of being outside on this sunny afternoon
They're by the bedside of a stranger in a cold hospital room
And every now and then they meet a poor lost soul like me
Who's not quite sure just who or what or how he ought to be
They march him down the aisle and then the next thing that you know
They dunk him in the water and here comes another one of those crazy Christians

They look to heaven their whole life
And I think what if they're wrong but what if they're right
You know it's funny, much as I'm baffled by it all
If I ever really needed help, well you know who I'd call
It's those crazy Christians"

The admiration continues, less infuriatingly, and builds to those final words. Sure, he's not one of them, but if the whole world went to hell, well, we know who he'd turn to. And his delivery of the last line, the way his music drops out and the religious music comes in . . . well, I'm pretty confident the evangelical element of his audience will just smile, figuring it's just a matter of time until Paisley has the come to Jesus moment.

What bothers me is the way the song plays into the self-righteousness that does permeate so much evangelical Christianity. Paisley grants them undeserved praise and ignores the limits of their charity. And just to be clear, I'm not bashing Christians. I'm bashing a song that lets them off the hook instead of challenging them. The reason I think the song is cynical, is because it lets Paisley state his difference in such an inoffensive way that you would never guess someone might have more substantive criticisms of evangelical Christianity than noisy bells, casserole brigades and a zeal to convert. Paisley gets to proclaim his difference without ever challenging that segment of his audience or threatening his record sales to them. My two cents.

Christgau responds:

Some of what Rodney says about Those Crazy Christians has merit--the "risk their lives" part is definitely overstated. On the other hand, the idea that evangelicals all hate gays is a serious oversimplification that's becoming moreso as more evangelicals have children or friends who come out; the so-called Biblical prejudice is still a major source of homophobia in this country, but there has been real movement. But what I disagree most with is his characterization of Paisley's motive as "cynical." Two problems: first, his assumption that Paisley shares every detail of his analysis, and second, Taylor's failure to acknowledge that in order to remain a mainstream country artist Paisley has what I called a "God quotient," which I referred to originally (not in that phrase) in my B&N piece on Paisley. The idea that Paisley of all people has an additional obligation to "challenge" his chosen audience is moralistic piffle--no mainstream country artist I'm aware of has ever tried harder to do just that, not even Bobby Bare or Tom T. Hall.

Taylor again:

Actually, Robert, you are right to call me out on the cynicism point. That's a crap argument on my part. I have no idea what's going on in Paisley's head, so it's stupid to jump to a worst-case interpretation. To use language appropriate to the topic, I repent.

But I still think the song fails. Paisley has no obligation to challenge his audience, but if he does, I think it's fair for me to judge whether he does that well or not. If he's challenging his Christian audience, it fails because he dances around why someone like him (not literally just him, but the "him" we are invited to become in the song) might not be on the "crazy" Christian bandwagon. Maybe -- and I didn't think of this earlier -- he's challenging the critics of Christians by pointing out that those "crazy" people do wonderful things. But if that's the case, it still fails because generosity becomes sycophancy. You can challenge bigotry against Christians without losing sight of why they might deserve some of those criticisms.

The three key parts, for me, are those two verses I talked most about and the way he closes off the song. I won't say more about the mission trips (except to reiterate that they are not all bad). I realize Christian attitudes toward gays and lesbians are complex and changing, even among evangelicals. The generational divide is significant on this topic in conservative Christianity as it is in society as a whole. What bothers me is the way Paisley, as I hear it, praises the Christians for mercy while acknowledging the limits of that charity in a throwaway phrase "just about anything" that obscures some serious moral questions. Referring to gays was just an obvious (and perhaps clumsy and stereotypical) way of making that point. (And every community, not just Christians, tends to be more generous to insiders than to outsiders.)

And those final lines -- "If I ever really needed help, well you know who I'd call/It's those crazy Christians" -- give way to the church choir that closes the discussion sonically. Instead of presenting "those crazy Christians" in their ambiguity, the breaking in of the divine, via the choir, at the end tries to overwhelm any lingering doubts.

My being pissed off is a personal response. I live, work and, yes, go to church in this world. And the sentiments in this song are exactly the kinds I wouldn't want my students to take on because -- and this isn't Paisley's fault -- I worry about how the song might play out socio-politically in a context where people think they are first century Christians being persecuted by the wider culture, while failing to reckon with the reality that they are persecutors who are in charge (maybe not in Seattle or NYC, but definitely still so in plenty of places in the States). But I hope, beyond that, I've given some decent reasons as to why I think the song doesn't work.

Me, but this didn't come together well enough to post:

I drove across northern Arkansas a few years ago, and only noticed an endlessly repeating pattern of three kinds of churches: Baptist, Pentecostal, and Church of Christ. My relatives belonged to the latter, and somehow I never thought of them as being the crazy ones. Here in Wichita we have many more varieties of both Christian and crazy, and there's some intersection. . . .

One thing "Those Crazy Christians" made me wonder about was whether "crazy" hasn't become a term of endearment these days. That seems to be the gist of how my nephew and his friends use it, with just a hint of surprise. Back when I was growing up it was more like deranged or even insane -- "crazed" -- . . .

Jacob Bailis posted results of his 1965 albums poll [my grades in brackets]:

1. Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited 290 (Paul Albone, Jacob Bailis, Richard Cobeen, Peter Gorman, Jeff Hamilton, Paul Hayden, Mike Imes, Thomas Lane, Joe Lunday, Chris Monson, Greg Morton, Cam Patterson, Matt Rice, John Smallwood, Liam Smith, Bradley Sroka, Rodney Taylor, John Tiglias, Tom Walker, Aidan Wylde) [A]
2. The Beatles, Rubber Soul [U.K.] 217 (Paul Albone, Jacob Bailis, Peter Gorman, Jeff Hamilton, Paul Hayden, Mike Imes, Chris Monson, Greg Morton, Cam Patterson, Matt Rice, John Smallwood, Liam Smith, Bradley Sroka, Rodney Taylor, Tom Walker) [A]
3. Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home 169 (Paul Albone, Jacob Bailis, Richard Cobeen, Peter Gorman, Paul Hayden, Mike Imes, Thomas Lane, Chris Monson, Matt Rice, John Smallwood, Bradley Sroka, Rodney Taylor, John Tiglias, Tom Walker, Aidan Wylde) [A]
4. John Coltrane, A Love Supreme 155 (Peter Gorman, Jeff Hamilton, Mike Imes, Thomas Lane, Chris Monson, Greg Morton, Cam Patterson, Matt Rice, John Smallwood, Liam Smith, Bradley Sroka, Rodney Taylor, John Tiglias, Tom Walker) [A+]
5. The Rolling Stones, Now! 152 (Paul Albone, Jacob Bailis, Richard Cobeen, Peter Gorman, Paul Hayden, Mike Imes, Joe Lunday, Greg Morton, Cam Patterson, John Smallwood, Liam Smith, Bradley Sroka, Rodney Taylor, John Tiglias, Tom Walker, Aidan Wylde) [A-]
6. Otis Redding, Otis Blue 132 (Paul Albone, Richard Cobeen, Peter Gorman, Paul Hayden, Mike Imes, Joe Lunday, Chris Monson, Matt Rice, John Smallwood, Liam Smith, Bradley Sroka, John Tiglias, Tom Walker, Aidan Wylde) [A+]
7. The Beatles, Help! [U.K.] 114 (Paul Albone, Jacob Bailis, Richard Cobeen, Peter Gorman, Paul Hayden, Thomas Lane, Matt Rice, John Smallwood, Bradley Sroka, Rodney Taylor, Tom Walker, Joe Yanosik) [A+]
8. The Rolling Stones, Out of Our Heads [U.S.] 110 (Jacob Bailis, Peter Gorman, Paul Hayden, Mike Imes, Thomas Lane, Joe Lunday, Matt Rice, John Smallwood, Bradley Sroka, John Tiglias, Tom Walker, Aidan Wylde) [A]
9. The Beach Boys, Today! 67 (Jacob Bailis, Thomas Lane, Joe Lunday, Greg Morton, Matt Rice, Aidan Wylde, Joe Yanosik) [A-]
10. The Beatles, Rubber Soul [U.S.] 66 (Richard Cobeen, Thomas Lane, Joe Lunday, John Tiglias) []
11. The Who, My Generation 47 (Paul Albone, Peter Gorman, Paul Hayden, Matt Rice, Liam Smith, Joe Yanosik) []
12. B.B. King, Live at the Regal 45 (Paul Albone, Richard Cobeen, Mike Imes, Thomas Lane, John Tiglias) [A-]
13. The Miracles, Going to a Go-Go 43 (Liam Smith, Greg Morton, Cam Patterson Aidan Wylde, Joe Yanosik) []
14. The Rolling Stones, December's Children 38 (Jacob Bailis, Paul Hayden, Rodney Taylor, Aidan Wylde, Joe Yanosik) [A-]
15. Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage 37 (Jason Gubbels, Mike Imes, Thomas Lane, Joe Lunday) [A]
16. The Beach Boys, Summer Days 33 (Jacob Bailis, Mike Imes, Joe Lunday, Joe Yanosik) [A-]
17. The Byrds, Mr. Tambourine Man 32 (Paul Albone, Peter Gorman, Paul Hayden, Joe Lunday, John Smallwood, Rodney Taylor) [A-]
18. Albert Ayler, Spiritual Unity 32 (Chris Monson, Tom Walker, John Tiglias) [A]
19. Junior Wells, Hoodoo Man Blues 27 (Cam Patterson, Bradley Sroka, John Tiglias) []
20. Beatles, VI 21 (Joe Lunday, Joe Yanosik) []
21. John Coltrane, Ascension 18 (Jason Gubbels, Greg Morton) [B+]
21. Archie Shepp, Fire Music 18 (Chris Monson, Tom Walker) [A-]
22. Wayne Shorter, Speak No Evil 16 (Jeff Hamilton, Rodney Taylor) [B+]
23. The Horace Silver Quintet, Song for My Father 15 (Paul Albone, Richard Cobeen, Matt Rice) [A-]
24. Miles Davis, ESP 15 (Jason Gubbels, Jeff Hamilton) [A-]
24. John Fahey, The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death 15 (Jeff Hamilton, Greg Morton) [A-]
24. The Temptations, Sing Smokey 15 (Richard Cobeen, Joe Yanosik) []
24. Them, The Angry Young Them 15 (Jeff Hamilton, Joe Yanosik) []
25. Albert Ayler, Spirits Rejoice 10 (Jason Gubbels) [B+]
25. James Brown, Papa's Got a Brand New Bag 10 (Aidan Wylde) []
25. Marvin Gaye, Stubborn Kind of Fellow 10 (Aidan Wylde) []
25. Bobby Hutcherson, Dialogue 10 (Jason Gubbels) [A-]
25. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Rip Rig and Panic 10 (Jason Gubbels) [A]
25. Julie London: All Through The Night: Julie London Sings the Choicest Songs of Cole Porter 10 (Cam Patterson) []
25. Loretta Lynn, Blue Kentucky Girl 10 (Cam Patterson) []
25. Loretta Lynn, Hymns 10 (Cam Patterson) []
25. Lee Morgan, Cornbread 10 (Joe Yanosik) [A-]
25. Jackie McLean, Right Now! 10 (Jason Gubbels) [A-]
25. Willie Nelson, Country Willie: His Own Songs 10 (Cam Patterson) [A]
25. Sam Rivers, Contours 10 (Jason Gubbels) [B+]
25. Wayne Shorter, The All-Seeing Eye 10 (Jason Gubbels) [B+]

Cam Patterson expanded his ballot:

All points equal:

1. The Beatles: Rubber Soul My parents bought me a cassette player in the early 70s, an early handheld cheap-o, and the tapes that came with it were a Petula Clark greatest hits and Rubber Soul. I'd like to hear the Pet Clark again, but how lucky I was that the Beatles' effortless amalgam of folk, soul, and pop (-art) melted my mind. If there ever was a blueprint of all pop music from then til hip hop, this is it.

2. Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited The title is the greatest conceit in 20th century music, with lyrics that can suit any situation that involves being fagged out from (political, sexual, social, personal) oppression and getting hostile about it.

3. John Coltrane: A Love Supreme Such a disservice to this one-day session when jazz naïfs like me heard A Love Supreme inspired the Byrds and Television. Because those bands aren't even close to a gateway drug for this ecstatic meditation. I listened to this album for fifteen years before it fully engulfed me, and it's been revealing ever more in the fifteen years since.

4. Loretta Lynn: Blue Kentucky Girl The title track is (maybe) the one you know, but screw the lazy tripe that country music albums are "hits plus filler." And Lynn's own "Night Girl" is the story that sucks you in -- avoiding the easy rhyme "misery" for the realer and tougher "poverty" in a narrative about a young girl determined not to become a whore is what guts is all about. That this brassy ma can swagger through covers as rich as "I Still Miss Someone" and "The Race Is On" (actually, in her version, "The Race is ON"), that she can pin a note to your heart with originals like "Love's Been Here and Gone" -- in her own way, she did for some Nashville girls what Cassius Clay did for African-Americans in the 60s.

5. Willie Nelson: Country Willie: His Own Songs Well, the songwriter here is Willie freakin' Nelson for one thing, and this is his first and maybe greatest showcase. Instead of ****-kicking honky tonk, he makes his first real record the closing-time saga of our dreams. Goes toe to toe with In the Wee Small Hours in certain parts of the country.

6. The Rolling Stones Now! Of course this is punk rock. Only the Allman Brothers among (mostly) white artists ever created such a transcendentally, earthily Pagan, original permutation of the blues.

7. The Miracles: Going to a Go-Go Yeah yeah yeah screw the lazy tripe that Motown albums were "hits plus filler," since there is no room for filler on albums like this. There is the sense here that every note, every inflection, every beat is intentionally placed to drive some emotional response, some moment of jejune drama, some frisson, some gay bonhomie.

8. Loretta Lynn: Hymns The best country gospel album ever, in part because it lacks the pseudo-reverential piety of Elvis's religious albums. That the first (Lynn-penned) lines are "Everybody wants to go to heaven/but nobody wants to die" just seals the deal.

9. Julie London: All Through the Night: Julie London Sings the Choicest Songs of Cole Porter Oh holy lord, please cuddle up with me right now.

10. Junior Wells: Hoodoo Man Blues A swirling Leslie speaker version of the Chicago blues, well-timed for things that are in the air, like race riots.

Other ballots can be reconstructed from the above, except for the occasional oddball choice. These include:

• The Beatles: The Early Beatles (Greg Morton) []
• The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Greg Morton) [B+]
• Eddie Palmieri: Azucar Pa' Ti (Bradley Sroka) []
• Sun Ra: The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra (Volume One) (Jason Gubbels) [B-]

And the 1965 singles poll results:

1. James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, Pt. 1" 170 (Richard Cobeen, Peter Gorman, Jeff Hamilton, Paul Hayden, Mike Imes, Thomas Lane, Chris Monson, Matt Rice, Rocambole2, John Smallwood, Bradley Sroka, Rodney Taylor, John Tiglias, Tom Walker, Joe Yanosik)
2. The Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction" 116 (Paul Albone, Jeff Hamilton, Thomas Lane, Joe Lunday, Chris Monson, John Smallwood, Liam Smith, Rodney Taylor, John Tiglias, Joe Yanosik)
3. Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone" 102 (Paul Albone, Richard Cobeen, Peter Gorman, Paul Hayden, Thomas Lane, Chris Monson, Greg Morton, Matt Rice, Rocambole2, John Smallwood, John Tiglias, Tom Walker, Joe Yanosik)
4. The Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears" 81 (Richard Cobeen, Paul Hayden, Chris Monson, Matt Rice, John Smallwood, Rodney Taylor, Tom Walker)
5. The Temptations, "My Girl" 63 (Jeff Hamilton, Thomas Lane, Greg Morton, Liam Smith, Joe Yanosik)
6. The Beatles, "Ticket to Ride" 58 (Paul Albone, Jeff Hamilton, Peter Gorman, Paul Hayden, Chris Monson, Rocambole2, John Smallwood)
7. The Beatles, "We Can Work It Out" 56 (Paul Albone, Peter Gorman, Joe Lunday, Bradley Sroka, John Tiglias)
8. The Impressions, "People Get Ready" 55 (Richard Cobeen, Paul Hayden, Greg Morton, Joe Lunday, John Smallwood, Rodney Taylor, John Tiglias)
9. Sam Cooke, "A Change Is Gonna Come" 55 (Paul Albone, Jacob Bailis, Peter Gorman, Rodney Taylor, Tom Walker)
10. Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour" 44 (Richard Cobeen, Thomas Lane, Rocambole2, Liam Smith, John Tiglias)
11. The Beatles, "Day Tripper" 41 (Mike Imes, Joe Lunday, Liam Smith, Rodney Taylor, Joe Yanosik)
12. The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic" 40 (Chris Monson, Greg Morton, Rocambole2, John Tiglias, Joe Yanosik)
13. The Beatles, "Help" 40 (Paul Albone, Richard Cobeen, Chris Monson, Greg Morton)
14. Stevie Wonder, "Uptight" 38 (Richard Cobeen, Peter Gorman, Joe Lunday, Tom Walker)
15. Martha & the Vandellas, "Nowhere to Run" 36 (Peter Gorman, Jeff Hamilton, Rocambole2, Bradley Sroka)
16. Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" 35 (Paul Albone, Jacob Bailis, Chris Monson, John Smallwood, Tom Walker)
17. The Who, "I Can't Explain" 35 (Jacob Bailis, Richard Cobeen, Joe Lunday, Rodney Taylor)
18. The Supremes, "Stop! In the Name of Love" 35 (Jeff Hamilton, Liam Smith, Joe Yanosik)
19. The Who, "My Generation" 34 (Chris Monson, John Smallwood, Rodney Taylor, Tom Walker)
20. The Rolling Stones, "Get Off My Cloud" 31 (Richard Cobeen, Peter Gorman, Greg Morton)
21. Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs, "Wooly Booly" 30 (Richard Cobeen, Mike Imes, Rocambole2)
22. The Beatles, "Yesterday" 27 (Paul Albone, Jacob Bailis, Thomas Lane)
23. The Beach Boys, "California Girls" 26 (Mike Imes, Rodney Taylor, Joe Yanosik)
24. The Mamas & the Papas, "California Dreamin'" 25 (Paul Albone, Thomas Lane, Tom Walker)
25. James Brown, "I Got You" 25 (Bradley Sroka, Mike Imes)
26. The Beach Boys, "Help Me, Rhonda" 23 (Jacob Bailis, Matt Rice, Tom Walker)
27. Bob Dylan, "Positively 4th Street" 22 (Paul Albone, Peter Gorman, Joe Yanosik)
28. Otis Redding, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" 22 (Peter Gorman, Chris Monson)
29. The Beach Boys, "Kiss Me, Baby" 21 (Jacob Bailis, Joe Lunday)
30. The Miracles, "Ooh Baby Baby" 20 (John Smallwood, John Tiglias, Joe Yanosik)
31. Bobby Fuller Four, "Let Her Dance" 20 (Jason Gubbels, Paul Hayden)
32. The Byrds, "Turn! Turn! Turn!" 20 (Jacob Bailis, Rodney Taylor)
32. The Rolling Stones, "The Last Time" 20 (Paul Hayden, Joe Lunday)
32. Them, "Here Comes the Night" 20 (Greg Morton, Matt Rice)
33. Fontella Bass, "Rescue Me" 20 (Jeff Hamilton)
34. The Righteous Brothers, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" 18 (Thomas Lane)
35. The Four Tops, "It's The Same Old Song" 16 (Paul Hayden, Liam Smith)
36. Jr. Walker & the All Stars, "Shotgun" 15 (Thomas Lane, John Tiglias)
37. The Beatles, "You Won't See Me" 15 (Matt Rice)
38. The Who, "The Kids Are Alright" 13 (Matt Rice)
39. The Beach Boys, "Girl Don't Tell Me" 12 (Bradley Sroka)
39. The Beatles, "I'm Down" 12 (Jacob Bailis)
39. Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited" 12 (Rocambole2)
39. The Kinks, "Tired of Waiting for You" 12 (Rocambole2)
40. The Byrds, "Mr. Tambourine Man" 11 (Paul Hayden, John Smallwood)
41. The Animals, "It's My Life" 10 (John Tiglias)
42. The Beach Boys, "Please Let Me Wonder" 10 (Joe Lunday)
42. Bobby Fuller Four, "I Fought the Law" 10 (Mike Imes)
42. Cannibal & the Headhunters, "Land of a Thousand Dances" 10 (Tom Walker)
42. The Castaways, "Liar, Liar" 10 (Jason Gubbels)
42. Count 5, "Psychotic Reaction" 10 (Mike Imes)
42. The Dovers, "What Am I Going to Do" 10 (Jason Gubbels)
42. Bob Dylan, "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" 10 (Mike Imes)
42. The Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself" 10 (Jeff Hamilton)
42. Kim Fowley, "The Trip" 10 (Jason Gubbels)
42. The Fugs, "Nothing" 10 (Liam Smith)
42. Marvin Gaye, "I'll Be Doggone" 10 (Jacob Bailis)
42. Marvin Gaye, "Pretty Little Baby" 10 (Greg Morton)
42. John Lee Hooker, "Boom Boom" 10 (Mike Imes)
42. George Jones, "Take Me" 10 (Liam Smith)
42. Barbara Lewis, "Baby, I'm Yours" 10 (Greg Morton)
42. The Miracles, "Going to a Go-Go" 10 (Joe Lunday)
42. The McCoys, "Hang On Sloopy" 10 (Mike Imes)
42. The Nightcrawlers, "Little Black Egg" 10 (Jason Gubbels)
42. Ognir & the Nite People, "I Found a New Love" 10 (Jason Gubbels)
42. Otis Redding, "I Can't Turn You Loose" 10 (Liam Smith)
42. Otis Redding, "That's How Strong My Love Is" 10 (Matt Rice)
42. The Righteous Brothers, "Unchained Melody" 10 (Greg Morton)
42. The Seeds, "I Can't Seem to Make You Mine" 10 (Jason Gubbels)
42. The Sonics, "Strychnine" 10 (Jason Gubbels)
42. The Standells, "Dirty Water" 10 (Jason Gubbels)
42. The Wailers, "Out of Our Tree" 10 (Jason Gubbels)
42. The Who, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" 10 (Liam Smith)
43. The Beach Boys, "Let Him Run Wild" 8 (Bradley Sroka)
44. The Sonics, "Psycho" 7 (Paul Hayden)
45. Shirley Bassey, "Goldfinger" 5 (Jeff Hamilton)
45. The Beach Boys, "You're So Good to Me" 5 (Bradley Sroka)
45. The Beatles, "I Feel Fine" 5 (Jacob Bailis)
45. Lee Dorsey, "Ride Your Pony" 5 (Rocambole2)
45. Marvin Gaye, "Ain't That Peculiar" 5 (Matt Rice)
45. The Kinks, "All Day and All of the Night" 5 (Jeff Hamilton)
45. Little Richard, "I Don't Know What You've Got but It's Got Me" 5 (Matt Rice)
45. Roger Miller, "King of the Road" 5 (Thomas Lane)
45. The Shangi-Las, "Out in the Street" 5 (Bradley Sroka)
45. The Toys, "A Lover's Concerto" 5 (Bradley Sroka)

A Random Walk Through the 1960s

Started this post a couple weeks ago. Doesn't look like it's ever gonna get wrapped up.

Paul Williams, the founder of Crawdaddy, died last week, at 64, evidently the delayed result of a 1995 bicycle accident that left him with an increasingly grievous brain injury. He wrote a couple dozen books but the only one I ever read was the first, Outlaw Blues: A Book of Rock Music (1969). I picked it up 4-5 years later, when I shelved my interest in critical theory and spent a couple years reading nothing but rock crit. I read practically everyone at the time, but my touchstones were Williams, Lester Bangs, and Robert Christgau. One thing I liked about Williams' book was the thrill of discovery, and how such surprises correct themselves over time: at one moment he's listening to Hendrix and proclaiming he'll never listen to surf music again, then a new Beach Boys album appears. It's all very subjective, which must have felt liberating to me after hacking my way through Adorno and Benjamin, even Althusser's webs of overdetermination. Bangs and Christgau were hedonists in principle, but with moral and/or ideological streaks, but Williams seemed to indulge his pleasures more immediately.

I had listened to a lot of pop radio in the mid-1960s, watched all the music programs on TV, and even managed to buy a few records, but I lost track of all that when I crawled into my shell a few years later. When I emerged in the early 1970s, one thing I noticed was that everyone liked music. Everyone had record collections, and I found the same music everywhere I went: it was, after all, popular, and as such common, which made it a common interest. So I started by getting into what everyone else was into, then I read and wandered some, then a lot, and wound up into a lot of shit hardly anyone else knew about. Still, my muse started as a social bond, and if it wound up as something else, I never lost the hope that other people would like what I like if only they knew about it.

So when Williams died I thought first on our shared experience of pop music in the 1960s -- and early 1970s, although by the end of the decade that had vanished, dissolved into what we called "adventures in diffusion." But then came Spin's "Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s" (link here: some rock that wasn't very popular at the time (although a few items did crack the Billboard 200 album list), other things further afield, ranging from folk-rock to jazz to postclassical electronica to Kraut rock, with a couple items from France and Brazil to represent world music. I checked my database and found that I had rated only 42 of the records -- maybe 50 if I added in later compilations which more or less cover the cited records. One can quibble with the list on many counts, but one thing it does show is that not everyone was listening to the same things even in the 1960s.

When I was in St. Louis (1972-74), I eventually ran into two guys who significantly broadened my listening -- Don Malcolm and Paul Yamada, founders of Terminal Zone -- but other friends, more casual music consumers, had already turned me on to Fairport Convention, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and other list staples. (I found Pink Floyd's debut after everyone got into Dark Side of the Moon, reissued with its sequel as A Nice Pair.)

---

Mar 2001