He calls that religion

Here's just a little more of what the matter is with Kansas.


FMFM: Curtis/Live!

If you say Grace...

...remember Ruth M. Siems.

I'm looking forward to dinner tomorrow with my three godchildren, their parents, and about a half-dozen more friends new and old. I'm still not used to these warm November afternoons though. Happy Thanksgiving to all.


FMFM: The Greatest Garner, which seems like a casual, fun trio date. A pretty clean 50s (or earlier!) pressing mysteriously found in the buck bin. It does smell kind of funny though.

Old skull

Some news from my front yard. A little creepy.

I have to say, if I were looking for a place to dump a couple of skulls somewhere in San Francisco, the Sutro Baths ruins would be a very strong candidate.


FMFM: Some very nice Stanley Turrentine pieces from his 1960s Blue Note years, on a well-organized twofer compilation. Side one, for example, is all Jobim compositions. Turrentine would go on to make some serious elevator Muzak in his career -- and some of this comp foreshadows that -- but he definitely had his moments.

Encore

For its first anniversary, I'd just like to revisit Aubernica.


FMFM: "The Rover." Amazing what the power of suggestion will do.

The rover

I'm hoping my link helps push a friend toward a unique kind of stardom. (That's how Google PageRank works, right?) Now, kindly move along.


FMFM: A Shearing Caravan, a 1955 effort for MGM on which the George Shearing Quintet attacks the Ellington classic with bongos and a bizarre harmonica lead from Toots Thielemans, among other things.

Also, I love the photo of the NRA logo -- the other one -- on Shelly Manne's kick drum, found inside the gatefold of Empathy.

I can hear you, can you hear me?

It's been suggested that noise pollution will be the secondhand smoke of the twenty-first century. Here's an unusual LATimes piece that says quiet is going extinct.

Garret Keizer wrote about this in the March 2001 Harper's; this person has remarks too. But who knew these people were out there?

My block's pretty quiet, for a residential district in a city of this size. But it's only since moving out here that I've found myself irritated by the garbage truck or the street cleaning vehicle. Perhaps the quieter the neighborhood, the more noticeable loud sounds become. It never bothered me to live on 33rd Street in Baltimore, even on Sundays when the Ravens were playing a few blocks away and traffic was awful. Maybe I just expected noise.

Can it really be that an 80-year-old Sudanese villager has better hearing than a 30-year-old American? Unsurprising, I guess.

Funny that the NASCAR track in New Hampshire -- the site of noise-related controversy with the neighboring town of Canterbury -- is located in a place called Louden.


FMFM: The Jimmy Giuffre 3, featuring the masterful "The Train And The River" and a very nice reading of "The Song Is You"

Tracks on wax

And now, Amoeba Records is a label, too.


FMFM: Bad Benson on CTI, from their dollar bin, and Maiden Voyage on Blue Note, priced to move at $2.99.

Variety

It's sort of antithetical to the entire idea of blogging to collapse more than a week's worth of topics into one post. But time's been tight, my friends.

*Make It Funky! isn't a very good name for a very good film about New Orleans music. I spent a worthwhile hour and a half with this one at the Roxie Cinema last week. A lot of good writing has been done over the past two months regarding the music and culture that may have been lost forever when the waters rose upon the Crescent City -- the current ND mag is one place -- but seeing a street parade through the Tremé neighborhood really fills in the picture. And, as someone who dirties his fingers in the dollar bin once a week, I felt a different kind of sorrow when I saw the shots of the inside of that record store. Nobody grabs a stack of Ernie K-Doe 45s when he's evacuating, does he?

The concert performance in the film, a spring 2004 celebration event, is pretty darn cool (and, apparently, well-edited too!). High-flying trumpet battles and halfway-to-hip-hop tuba beats, the stylish Lloyd Price still singing "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" at age 71, a couple of singers whose diction is virtually incomprehensible to these Yankee ears, and the incomparable Allen Toussaint working the piano voodoo as Bonnie Raitt sings "What Is Success?" Toussaint's remarks on writing "Southern Nights" are truly beautiful too.

I don't know how frequently the film will be screened, but this is worth queuing in Netflix, if you do that sort of thing.

*I'm not really into the handgun ban or the anti-military-recruiting resolution passed by San Francisco voters this week, but for the most part Election Day was almost completely a success. There were victories around the country -- knocking out Schwarzenegger's hotly contested props and dismissing the Dover, Pa., school board, to name two. I hope this signals that the tide is beginning to turn in most of the country, but the un-intelligent Kansas ballot may simply be a sign that our two Americas are continuing to grow farther apart. I do hope that the Dems gain ground -- or at least don't lose ground -- at midterms next year, though.

*The highlight of my week was jumping onstage with The Oranges Band late last night. I didn't see it coming, and forgot how my heart can pound onstage. "Hey, it looks like Roman is opening up the piano lid in the middle of 'OK Apartment.' Hey, now he's motioning that I should get up there and take a solo for the last section of the song. Hey, I can do that." They're very likely at the peak of their powers as a live band, and their whole set was enjoyable. I forgot how much fun it is to watch Dave play drums too. What an inventive, creative player. Well-rehearsed, too. A pro.

*Doubleheader tomorrow in GG Park. Is that really seven hours of baseball? (And: Oh no, is that my cleat damage?!?)


FMFM: Robert Parker's fabulous "Barefootin'," and the rest of my new New Orleans mix

There's only one bad kind of love

Mike Love.