Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress by Roman AkLeff (first installment can be read here; second here; third here).
The bar across Broadway between 113th and 114th Streets, the West End, was supposedly famous. Or at least the orientation materials had seemed to consider it an important part of Columbia history because it had been a hangout for literary figures, some of them Columbia men, though he had not yet read anything by any of them. Of more interest to Walter, there was jazz there. In passing by one Saturday afternoon on the way to Citibank, he'd seen a sign boasting that the Louis Armstrong All Stars were playing.
That night, he walked the half block south from his dorm to the West End. Inside there was a huge semi-oval bar in the center of the room. Following the sound of music, he found...
The bar across Broadway between 113th and 114th Streets, the West End, was supposedly famous. Or at least the orientation materials had seemed to consider it an important part of Columbia history because it had been a hangout for literary figures, some of them Columbia men, though he had not yet read anything by any of them. Of more interest to Walter, there was jazz there. In passing by one Saturday afternoon on the way to Citibank, he'd seen a sign boasting that the Louis Armstrong All Stars were playing.
That night, he walked the half block south from his dorm to the West End. Inside there was a huge semi-oval bar in the center of the room. Following the sound of music, he found...
- 3/16/2015
- by RomanAkLeff
- www.culturecatch.com
Yusef Lateef, who died on Monday after a bout with prostate cancer, was a devout Muslim who did not like his music to be called jazz because of the supposed indecent origins and connotations of the word (although those origins are still debated). He preferred the self-coined phrase "autophysiopsychic music." Furthermore, his music encompassed an impressively broad range of styles, and the only Grammy he won was in the New Age category -- for a recording of a symphony. Think about those things amid the flood of Lateef obituaries with "jazz" in the headline.
That said, certainly Lateef's own musical origins indisputably revolved around jazz. Growing up in Detroit, a highly fertile musical environment in the 1930s and beyond, Lateef got his first instrument, an $80 Martin alto sax, at age 18. Within a year he was on the road with the 13 Spirits of Swing (arrangements by Milt Buckner).
A Detroit friend,...
That said, certainly Lateef's own musical origins indisputably revolved around jazz. Growing up in Detroit, a highly fertile musical environment in the 1930s and beyond, Lateef got his first instrument, an $80 Martin alto sax, at age 18. Within a year he was on the road with the 13 Spirits of Swing (arrangements by Milt Buckner).
A Detroit friend,...
- 12/25/2013
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Jazz pianist Borah Bergman died the same day as David Ware, but as he was a more obscure figure known mostly to hardcore devotees of the avant-garde, the news traveled more slowly. Famous or not, his talents and imagination were prodigious, as his peers knew. John Zorn called him "one of the greatest pianists of our time," and Peter Brötzmann declared, "Borah Bergman was my favorite pianist. One of the few pianists who can work with me at all." Chris Kelsey, both a saxophonist and a critic, proclaimed him "perhaps the most technically accomplished pianist in jazz -- and if he's not at the top, then he's certainly on a short list of two."
One of the things that us critics do, of course, is make comparisons, but there were no valid comparisons for this unique player, who created a stunningly distinctive technique unlike that of any other jazz pianist by working,...
One of the things that us critics do, of course, is make comparisons, but there were no valid comparisons for this unique player, who created a stunningly distinctive technique unlike that of any other jazz pianist by working,...
- 10/23/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
By Michael Atkinson
Like a missing-link hominid stepping out of the jungle, famous photographer William Klein emerges on 21st century DVD as the great bullgoose Art Film-era satirist we never knew we had. Hallowed for his still images and his documentaries, the Paris-based Klein also made three furiously hostile lampoons that were nominally released, ignored and then forgotten. Until now, you could only find "Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?" (1966), "Mr. Freedom" (1969) and "The Model Couple" (1977) in scruffy bootlegs from pro-am vendors like Pimpadelic Wonderland . and given the movies' paucity of reputation, you would've had little reason to do so. A busy '60s shutterbug for the French Vogue, Klein more or less fell in with the Left Bank New Wavers (Resnais, Demy, Marker, Varda) and the Panic Movement (Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor both show up in "Polly Maggoo"). But his perspective was New Yawk pugilistic, his humor was mercilessly...
Like a missing-link hominid stepping out of the jungle, famous photographer William Klein emerges on 21st century DVD as the great bullgoose Art Film-era satirist we never knew we had. Hallowed for his still images and his documentaries, the Paris-based Klein also made three furiously hostile lampoons that were nominally released, ignored and then forgotten. Until now, you could only find "Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?" (1966), "Mr. Freedom" (1969) and "The Model Couple" (1977) in scruffy bootlegs from pro-am vendors like Pimpadelic Wonderland . and given the movies' paucity of reputation, you would've had little reason to do so. A busy '60s shutterbug for the French Vogue, Klein more or less fell in with the Left Bank New Wavers (Resnais, Demy, Marker, Varda) and the Panic Movement (Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor both show up in "Polly Maggoo"). But his perspective was New Yawk pugilistic, his humor was mercilessly...
- 5/27/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
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