The story of jazz

Anecdote told by Ahmet Ertegun on American Masters, screened on KTEH this evening:

I wound up at a rent party [in Harlem], where James P. Johnson was playing. I'm drinking scotch and sodas. I'm in the seventh grade.

I had already met Sidney Bechet through my brother. He sees me at the party and says, "What are you drinking?" I say, "Scotch and sodas." He takes my drink away and says, "You're too young to be drinking!"

And he hands me a joint.

Compare and contrast

The similarities are eerie.

What was that about escaping genre boundaries?

Swingin' A's

Don't click here if you don't want your Oakland A's viewing experience totally ruined.

Hand me the drumstick, snare, kick

As much as I enjoyed reading the AV Club's interview with Jeff Tweedy today, I think I'd rather share this brief anecdote about auditioning a replacement drummer for Uncle Tupelo, from Greg Kot's biography of Wilco:

"[W]orking out the nuts and bolts in rehearsal, [Mike Heidorn's] drumming could be like a shoe in a dryer. It was work sometimes to hear the kick drum, because Mike wouldn't play loud. And then Ken [Coomer] comes in and is just a powerhouse: tons of experience, tons of chops, and yet not so flashy that he can't come down and play a country beat. As a bass player, I could finally relax. With Mike, I was playing and singing and hoping that I was playing somewhere near where the bass drum was. With Coomer there was no doubt where the bass drum is: it's right up my fucking ass. I couldn't deny it.

...I think there was a certain amount of discrimination against Ken at the time because he had dreadlocks down to his ass. I don't think my concerns or Jay's concerns were ever so pure that we didn't have some vanity about how we pictured out band to be like; everybody does it. It was as simple as he didn't look like our drummer."

Uncle Tupelo went with another candidate named Bill Belzer instead of Ken Coomer. Six months later, Belzer was out and Coomer was in.


FMFM: Aretha Franklin's "See Saw", where the kick drum is right up my fucking ass. From Aretha Now, featuring one of the great session bands of all time. I think that kick goes, um, even farther on "You're A Sweet Sweet Man."

Speak up! I can't hear you, here on this mountaintop.

THE CRITICAL DECISIONS

∙ Re-purposing my Southwest Airlines ticket, originally for Los Angeles, to Salt Lake City, with the intention of driving down to Zion National Park for a few days of hiking and general outdoor relaxation.

∙ Abandoning my Swiss Army knife at airport security. Should've packed it in checked baggage. When I realized I still had it, I stuck it in the part of the backpack that also contained the lensatic compass and other outdoorsy supplies. Didn't fly.

∙ Accepting the "upgrade" from a compact car (Dodge Neon or similar) to a much thirstier 2007 Jeep Compass, because Enterprise had no compacts on the lot.

∙ Bringing the iTrip. The 90-song shuffle sequence made the drive down a pleasure. Thanks, iPod, for spitting out Townes Van Zandt's "Tower Song" somewhere around Panguitch.

∙ Choosing to take US-89 for as much of the trip down as possible. The landscape changes significantly on the way, from the shadow of the Wasatch to the open ranchland of Nephi, to the first spectacular scenery between Sevier and Marysvale, to the red and cream-colored rocks between Bryce and Zion.

∙ Avoiding an afternoon thundershower on Tuesday, and driving to Colorado City, Arizona, instead. Oh man. Separate post forthcoming.


REVIEWS

∙ 2007 Jeep Compass: I really regretted accepting this, but thought vaguely that it'd be useful on some winding, rocky road somewhere. Mostly it kept me from being laughed at in places like Hurricane, Utah, but when the unscheduled snowstorm occurred late Thursday morning on I-15, I sure was glad I wasn't in a Neon. It handled just fine in dry conditions, and didn't really feel like it was too much car. Burned a hell of a lot of gas, though.

∙ Springdale, Utah: Normally I avoid the tourist places. In southern Utah, I assumed that they'd be the only places to find decent food. Keith Richards reportedly once described jail thusly: "The food's terrible, the library is abysmal, and the wine list is very, very limited." That's what I expected from Washington County, Utah, so imagine my pleasant surprise at the vaguely Sedona-like Springdale. It's the home of the Bit & Spur, where I enjoyed a black bean burrito mojado and a Polygamy Porter, outdoors, beside the giant red rocks, with a slight 73-degree breeze wafting across the porch, for a very reasonable $14.

∙ Angels Landing Trail: The signature hike in Zion National Park, a strenuous four-hour journey up 1400 feet or so. I'm sorry to say that hunger and vertigo got the best of me on the dangerous chain portion, but the vistas from Scout Landing were enough to satisfy me. It's a very popular trail, and my experience was almost ruined by a large, loud group from Indiana (I think). I say "almost," because nothing could ruin this. (Hey, what's that driving down the road? Oh, it's a....)

∙ Zion Canyon Shuttle Bus. Few word combinations strike such fear in my heart as "shuttle bus". Once I stepped off the bus, however, the canyon was much more peaceful. They say each shuttle replaces 28 cars in the park, and I don't miss the congestion. The buses are probably faster anyway, during what would be peak vehicle traffic times. Hidden benefit: You can hike from one place to another and take the bus back. That's actually a big deal.

∙ Hidden Valley Trail: The payoff view isn't quite as famous, but I enjoyed this one more than the Angels Landing hike. The chain sections here didn't freak me out as much, for one thing. It's strange that the trail just kind of ends among some puddles. Much less populated in the early morning than Angels Landing. Minor quibble: You can see the parking lot from way too much of the trail.

∙ Weeping Rock Trail: Not solitary. Obese people. Flat, paved, half-hour round trip to an interesting geologic spot. All right. After doing this one, I skipped the walk to the Narrows, a famously great spot in Zion. I'll do it next time, preferably at seven o'clock in the morning.

∙ Canyon Overlook Trail: It's on the other side of a very long, dark tunnel, and was surprisingly lonely despite being highlighted in the park newspaper. I had a moment to myself here. If I had more time, I would have gone to the real "other side" of the park, Kolob Canyon, but that might have meant getting trapped in a snowstorm.

∙ St. George, Utah: This fast-growing town is one of those places that reportedly "has it all". What does it have, exactly? A shopping mall, every fast food joint you can name, an airplane-hangar-sized Wal-Mart and a distribution center, too much traffic for its little streets to bear, retirees, and a conspicuous lack of nighttime entertainment. Oh, there's golf, I guess. A suburb without a city.

∙ Hurricane, Utah: Pronounced "hur-ken" by locals; maybe there's a third syllable in there somewhere. This is much closer to Keith Richards' description of jail. It's definitely closer to Warren Jeffs' idea of jail.

∙ Talk radio in Utah. I heard the phrase "red-haired pickaninnies" used by a caller without irony, explanation or censure, in reference to children allegedly produced by Thomas Jefferson's affair with a female slave.

∙ Colorado City, Arizona/Hildale, Utah: See below.

Married my cousin in Arkansas, married two more when I got to Utah

It just so happened that my visit to Utah's Dixie coincided with PBS's airing of The Mormons and my reading of Under The Banner Of Heaven, Jon Krakauer's enthralling tale of polygamist Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints. During an afternoon thundershower, I found myself with little else to do but drive around the dry, profoundly empty, red-rocked region. After a moment's consideration, curiosity got the best of me: I had to go to Colorado City, Arizona, the border town (with Hildale, Utah) inhabited by thousands of Mormon polygamists.

I'd seen the pictures before, but something told me I had to go. I didn't quite have a handle on it: How big is this place, really? Are people out walking around? Are there businesses open, that I could patronize? If they're not allowed to talk to outsiders, how will they treat me? (Yeah, I know. Live and let live. There are enough polyamorists in San Francisco that I'm not really shocked by Mormon polygamy, although the part of it that resembles institutionalized child molestation is pretty tough to get over.)

So into town I drove, greeted by a little sign announcing Hildale as I approached from the northwest. There's a drugstore, a gas station, and a lube-and-filter place. Some farm equipment, construction equipment, tanks and silos. And the houses are big. Very big. Like, eight-bedroom houses, with small parking lots instead of driveways. It's a town of unusually large houses in a region of unusually large houses. Extended cab pickups and minivans sit in the yards. I cross into Arizona on the main highway, and see that just beyond the gas station is the Merry Wives Cafe. (Coffee? They can't drink coffee here.) And so I turn left, off the drag and into town, with a red pickup on my rear bumper. He turns into the dirt driveway of the first house, and I am now unaccompanied.

It's windy and a little cold with a storm on the way, and no one's out walking in the wide streets. Most of the houses are at least two stories high, have hastily-constructed additions, and are surrounded by wooden fences so you can't see much of what's going on. I turn left on Center Street, and approach a tiny business district, and there they are.

There's a sad little Food Town, with a small parking lot full of large vehicles. Loading groceries and packs of children in and out of their vans are women dressed in nineteenth-century-style ankle-length dresses. All the women and girls look like Melissa Gilbert on Little House On The Prairie; the boys have their shirts tucked into neatly pressed pants. I settle into a parking space before losing my courage. I can't do it. I can't walk into the weird polygamist grocery store, not even to buy a bottle of water and leave. Am I already being watched? Is there some guy in a pickup, eyeing me, packing heat? Shit. Must move.

I turn the car around and pull back into the street. What's across the street? Radio Shack! (I guess polygamists need coaxial cable too, although the community leaders have banned television, newspapers, and other means of contact with the outside world.) There's something that might be a private school or day-care center, a little florist-type business that seems to cater to kids' birthday parties, and an inauspicious pizzeria (five stars!). I make sure to stop completely at all the stop signs, and move back toward the Hildale side.

I see more ankle-length dresses. Three people, possibly including a teenage mom, are riding around on bicycles. A girl crosses my path on horseback. A child of about eight pushes a mower around his family's lawn. Two blocks later, two more equestrians cross my path. I remember to take photos, but can't bring myself to snap shots of them. Not wanting to be seen waving a digital camera around, I inconspicuously snap two poor shots of people's houses. (This guy got some pictures too.) I see a crappy old blue Pontiac Sunbird approach and slow down, and the driver looks me in the eye. (I'm glad I'm not in my gray Honda Civic at this moment.) This is the same car that was behind me on the twenty-mile journey from Hurricane. It's time to go.

Whew. Colorado City creeped me out completely in the roughly ten minutes I spent there. In the eyes of the state, the town is mostly populated by single mothers with out-of-wedlock children. They're all collecting welfare, and sharing the money in something called the United Effort Plan, which owns all the land and is managed by a prophet who assigns and re-assigns wives and children to various men. (Part of the Taliban-like situation in town involves kicking out teenage boys who misbehave, thereby reducing competition for young brides.) Although Krakauer mentions that most people in the town live below the poverty level, it wasn't until I got there that I realized the obvious: The place is a fucking dump. It's a never-ending construction site, with shabby little businesses. The backyards you can see all seem to have rusty little swingsets and rotting toys. Somehow, Colorado City manages to be highly unsightly, despite the majestic cliffs rising behind it.

On the way out of town, I spotted a sign for something called Barlow University. That's the name of a large clan in town (how could they not all be related somehow by now?), which includes the mayor and one of the defendants in the current prosecution of various polygamists/molesters in the town. Right near it was a billboard for Mohave County College, whose north campus is located in Colorado City. But the spirit of the billboard implied something else: Get an education, and find a way out. Hope some of those girls do.