Last week I went to an advance screening at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) of <I>Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life</I>, a new film about the short, creative, and ultimately kinda sad life of songwriter/arranger Billy Strayhorn. "Strays" or "Sweet Pea" as his friends knew him was part, some would say most, of the brains behind Duke Ellington's success in the forties and fifties. The film will be shown on PBS around the country in February.
As history goes, the U.S.A. is weird shape these days. But not all is lost. Yeah, we got our shit: the war in Iraq, a warped, unconnected, hilariously inarticulate jackass for a president, a porous border with Mexico (oh wait, the republicans billion dollar fence will solve that). But just when it looks like it's all sliding down a rat hole it's good to remember that hey, we still got Ted Nugent. U!S!A!U!S!A!U!S!A!
Moving. Who Doesn’t Love It?
So <I>Stereophile</I> has once again moved, fortunately only three floors down in the same building this time out.
Watched James Brown's widow Tomi (not Tammy, she’s touchy), on <I>Larry King</I> last nite. Larry, who was at low ebb last nite and looked real bored by being used as a platform in a marriage dispute, wasn't buying any of it. Larry, bad manicure and all, looks like he's interviewed enough grieving, flaky–as–hell rock star widows.
Except for Al Sharpton's shameless hogging of the spotlight, James Brown's funeral was quite a production. Televised live on NY1 (New York One), the local cable news channel, this extravaganza was held in the James Brown Arena in Augusta, Georgia.
"Fellas I'm ready to get up and do my thing. I want to get into it man, you know. Like a, like a sex machine man. Moving. Doing it you know. Can I count it off. One!! Two!! Three!!"—"Get Up (I feel like being a) Sex Machine."
There's almost no gray area when it comes to Christmas music. You either love it and feel it's charming, or it's a holiday plague that you endure, cringing instinctively every time a bell jingles and someone wants a "figgy" pudding.
<B>JERRY LEE LEWIS: <I>Last Man Standing</I></B><BR>
Shangri-La Entertainment 2006. (CD) Steve Bing, Jimmy Rip, prods. No eng listed. AAD? TT: 66:45<BR>
Performance ****<BR>
Sonics ****
I was very sad to learn of the death of Ahmet Ertegun, one of the three visionaries behind Atlantic Records. Having met him several times, it makes perverse sense that he would have met his end due to complications from a fall at a Rolling Stones concert. He was a man of music to the end.
Whenever I fly into one of those, "I gotta get rid of some of these CDs" moods, I inevitably settle on my seemingly endless boxes of blues records. But then like magic, hard–edged questions like "Do I really need 15 B.B. King records" eventually morph into expressions like, "Damn, I haven't heard this record in a hundred years." I am genetically unable to dump blues records.