More Jazz

Tonight's selection: some seriously propulsive hard bop featuring Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone; Ken Werner, piano; Santo di Briano, bass; John Betsch, drums.



Here's more le jazz hot with the Archie Shepp Quartet (Massimo Farao - piano, Wayne Dockery - bass, Bobby Durham on drums) from an October 2002 appearance in Paradiso Perduto, Venice.

Tonight - March Madness Psychotronix Film Festival

We're baaaaaaack. . .

For you KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival recidivists - and you know who you are - we return to the infamous Room 5015 of Foothill College in Los Altos for yet another hit of bad pop culture acid tonight! While the show starts at 7:00 pm, get there early, as we, like The Who in 1967, 'sell out'.

March Madness KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival
Room 5015, Foothill Community College campus, March 22, 7:00 to 11:30 PM
Bring five bucks for admission and two bucks for hungry campus parking meters

For more info: check out the following blurbs that preceded last December's holiday abomination:

San Jose Metro

Website of KFJC 89.7

Burt Bacharach Day

Big Eyed Beans From Venus

Some folks like the syrupy smarm of Kenny G - just why I don't know! Mr. Blogmeister likes Captain Beefheart.



Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, merged protean elements from a dozen musical genres and collaborated with the brave musicians of his Magic Band to create brilliant, uneasy, startling, seething, challenging, jagged, complex, melodic while cacophonous, polyrhythmic, powerful and most of all, original music from 1965 to 1982; at that point he abandoned the pothole-filled roads of showbiz - in the Captain's words, "there ain't no Santa Claus on the evening stage" - to pursue a less stressful (and very likely much happier) career as a visual artist.



The Revenant Records five-CD Beefheart box set, Grow Fins, compiles amazing aural artifacts while including a 112 page history of The Cap'n And The Magic Band which is better and stranger than fiction.







Here's the excellent 1997 BBC documentary on this innovative auteur of paint, pencil and sound.




We shall close with a few paintings by Mr. Van Vliet. The same imagination, boldness and originality rampant in his music animates his work on canvas. There's a approach to color unlike anyother visual artist.

Another Under-rated 1960's Rock Band

Behold, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, the quintessential British rock-blues-psychedelia powerhouse - Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer, John McVie (electric bass) and Mick Fleetwood (drums) - in their brief blaze of glory in 1968-1970.













When members of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac appeared as special guests, along with Berry Oakley, Duane and Gregg Allman from The Allman Brothers Band at a Fillmore East concert headlined by the Grateful Dead on February 11, 1970. . . HOO-BOY!!!

Sonny Sharrock (1940-1994)

As an answer to the dare, "name a virtuoso electric guitarist not named Jimi Hendrix", here's a clip of Sonny Sharrock, from a 1988 Knitting Factory performance.

Steve Lacy (1934-2004)

Wishing to answer the question, "what music clip would be the most opposite of Trintje Oosterhuis singing Burt Bacharach & Carole Bayer Sager's awfully sappy but lovely That's What Friends Are For?", my uncontrollable muse responds with reflections of a favorite jazz musician, the great Steve Lacy.

Lacy was a true maverick and giant among giants of jazz, as well as my favorite soprano sax player - Bechet, Sam Rivers, Wayne (Shorter) n' Coltrane not withstanding.



Steve was also one of the finest, most contemplative interpreters of the music of Thelonious Monk and the less known but equally amazing Herbie Nichols; last time I heard him in person, he explored the amazing architecture of Monk's music with the great Mal Waldron on piano.

Here he is, circa mid-1980's, supported by one of his best bands, featuring:

• Steve Potts - alto sax


• Bobby Few - piano


• Irene Aebi (Mrs. Lacy) - violin and vocals


• Jean-Jacques Avenel - upright bass


• Oliver Johnson - drums

We speak Jazz here.

Burt Bacharach Day

Trintje Oosterhuis sings The Look Of Love and That's What Friends Are For.

A Trip To The Comedy Museum

Want a mind-bending experience? Jumping out of airplanes? For amateurs. Trendy designer chemical amusement? Strictly for pikers. Try spending three days in the bizarro universe of prehistoric film comedy. I just willingly did this for the third year in a row, and trust me, my mind is bent.

I am describing the annual Presidents' Day weekend Mid-Winter Comedy Festival at the Niles/Essanay Silent Film Museum, a wonderful and historic venue. The museum's Edison Theatre was built as the town nickelodeon way back in 1913, when "Broncho Billy" Anderson was cranking out westerns down the block.

The fest runs the gamut from the iconic (Chaplin, Keaton) to the obscure (Eddie Boland). It's a bonanza for students of comedy.

The festival reinforced several conclusions on my part:

1. The Hal Roach Studio rules. Sorry, Mack Sennett. Sorry, Jack White.



2. No silent comedy short outside the 'polite drawing room farce' category is more than one degree of separation from The Three Stooges, even if Bud Jamison or Vernon Dent does not appear in it.



3. Subtle acting seals the deal, even in slapstick. The best comedians get laughs with expertly timed expressions before and after the joke. And the comics who don't do this are often the ones who missed the brass ring of fame.



4. If, well into the comedy short, you hear audience members asking who the star of the film is. . . it features one of the most forgotten of comics.



5. If a brazen fur-bearing scene stealer is way more memorable than the star, the featured comic is only known by historians.



6. Real lions and elephants are way funnier than CGI lions and elephants.



7. Since comedy, like romance, is highly subjective, don't take any review seriously, even by the most reputable writers. Watch the film instead!

The fest offers an off-kilter nirvana for comedy buffs and film historians - and there were lots of them in the house for all three days of this event.

What (No - I Mean WTF) Is This Thing Called Love? by Paul F. Etcheverry

Painting: "Love Hurts" by Joe Zona

"Maybe I wanted to hear it so badly that my ears betrayed my mind in order to secure my heart." Margaret Cho

"We're not meant to be - see." Herbie Nichols

"Love is like a faucet. It turns on and off." Billie Holiday

"The object of my affliction." Anonymous or Norm Crosby

Dear reader: This is my homage to Valentine's Day, a consumerist holiday that excludes hordes of humanity - and even ardent, passionate lovers lacking that do-re-me - if there ever was one.

In my experience, relationships in real life happen SLOOOOOOOWLY; slower as you get older - and tortuously slow when you have not been with anyone in a very long time. The issues of how you convey to a new person in your life that you love and care for them, how you deal with doubts and each other's idiosyncracies, how to differentiate between what's real and what's strictly static (i.e. something you or your friend/partner may be feeling physically or emotionally in a given moment that has nothing to do with the relationship) are not easy. Relationships? Not for cowards.

I wrote the original version of this last March, just after losing my job, my place to live and all hope of finding even a badly bruised valentine.

Well, it's almost a year later and these days, I'm significantly more mellow, realizing that things worked out at least okay after all. Most of the setbacks led directly to good things.

And while I wax snidely and cynically, don't believe for a heartbeat that I would pass up an opportunity to offer something floral, sumptuous and beautiful for the fetching woman companion I fancy most, just to see her smile.

"What Is This Thing Called Love?" is the title of a timeless standard, recorded by the giants of 20th century music: Art Tatum, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Clifford Brown, you name 'em. It's also a question that your at times humble correspondent absolutely cannot answer.

So what is this thing called love? I have no freakin' clue. I'm like about 50% of the public; past attempts at 'love and marriage' have traditionally either aborted gruesomely, ended abruptly, or crashed and burned like The Hindenburg, no survivors, baby - but, like the genteel and refined "Jimmy The Gent" Conway in GoodFellas, I'll take a whack at it . . .

When I speak of love here, I do not mean infatuation (aptly described in the 1960's ditty by The Temptations: "it was just my imagination running away with me"), momentary sexual or emotional fireworks, or deeper yet fleeting connections between people. All of the above - all of it - comes and goes.

Close relationships are not for the faint of heart; the real thing strikes abject terror into our souls. The very hint of love makes publicly stout-hearted men and women quake in their cowboy boots, tennies, high heels or Gucci shoes! It's the scariest, the riskiest, most daunting and brutally intimidating of all those terrifying motherfuckers, messing with your thought and behavior patterns whether you want it to or not.

If the genuine item - directly from considerable meaningful interaction between two people, tangible and mutually supportive, reality-based - looks like a possibility, start a betting pool predicting just when one or both potential partners do everything in their power to screw it up, make the other person have second thoughts or go away. And if the intrepid pair have previously seen long-term relationships tank, make all this exponential!

Did I learn anything from my past experiences? Just common sense stuff we all know but have difficulty practicing. First and foremost, if you don't take care of the precious sapling, it dies, kind of like those lil' turtles you'd bring home in elementary school. Needs TLC, just like your pet or house plant - and, indeed, this also applies to close friendships and family.

Yes, love dies - I've seen it happen - and here are a few surefire ways to annihilate it!

• Give of yourself to get something in return (guys, I know this is a tough one, but trust me, no good ever comes of this).



• Abuse the person you're with - or take abuse - and it's beyond all over - rigor mortis has set in.

• Apply tons of unrelenting energy into steering that relationship towards a specific outcome, one way or another. Keep your mind resolutely closed to anything but the outcome you want. That will kill it, every time.

• Obsess about the relationship. You want it? Want it badly? Does the one you love know you want that close connection desperately, even if the desire is unspoken (and even when a deep connection actually exists)? Find yourself obsessing even more when your would-be paramour resists and avoids you? Then it's definitely a done deal, oversville - time to move on, pronto, and absolutely not do the exact same thing with the next person.
• 
  
• Always want more! The more you expect, the more you demand of your beloved, the more you crave, the more you fantasize, the more specific conditions you have, the more you must have to be happy, the more likely you will not just destroy what may have started as a wonderful love, but absolutely obliterate and demolish it, kill love dead, stone cold dead. The harder you grasp, the more likely you will crush that love in the palm of your hand..
  

Timing and that inexplicable thing called karma, which you just can't make happen, are always of the essence; you're either both ready to take the plunge or you're not. And sometimes the planets just aren't aligned for you, even when the relationship is the real deal, wondrous and supportive, a thing of beauty. The reality, not just that it isn't your time, but that the two of you, as magical as your time together may be, just aren't meant to be a couple or have a life with each other - can be difficult to accept, but there is no other choice.

Can you accept such realities, or the end of a long-term relationship, or a special someone's baffling inability to reciprocate by trying Socratic Inquiry techniques or the "four simple questions and a turnaround" method developed by author Byron Katie ( a.k.a. ways of examining your opinions about and internal reactions to life events)? I have serious doubts. Maybe it's possible to make a little smidgen of progress with these methods - and maybe it's not. Healing sure as hell doesn't come fast or easy, although there are certainly worse ways of coping, such as embracing a program of assured self-destruction, signing up with the French Foreign Legion or joining a cult.

The Zen masters insist that "we are love" - but are we? Ideally, yes - but only ideally. At times humanity can be shining examples of such a thing. While it may be due to destructive thinking and attitudes (which in many cases can be dealt with), the bottom line remains that so many human beings are much more inclined to flee from love, torch it or chase it away with a baseball bat than practice it.

Then again, let's drop the subject altogether and listen to those swingin' cats who recorded that great standard right now! And I promise to return to the pet topics of this blog - classic movies, comedy, animation and music clips - after listening to that fantastic version of What Is This Thing Called Love? on Frank Sinatra - In The Wee Small Hours. Really!

The Pampered Soulless Honky's Guide To Singing The Blues

Here's an item that has circulated around the web for awhile. I have no clue who started it. Every time it goes around, another latte-swilling honky would-be writer (I plead guilty) tweaks with the copy. I encourage readers to do the same.

HOW TO SING THE BLUES
by Lame Mango Washington (attributed to Memphis Earlene Gray with help from Uncle Plunky, revisions by Little Blind Patti D. and Dr. Stevie Franklin, with a few tweaks by Lazy-Eye Raspberry Kennedy and Phat Lemon Johnson)

1. Most Blues begin, "Woke up this mornin'.



2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin The Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line, like "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town."



3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes ... sort of: "Got a good woman - with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher - and she weigh 500 pound." Well, not that rhyme.



4. The Blues are not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch; ain't no way out. Unless you're the 43rd President Of The United States.



5. Blues cars: pre-milennium Chevys and cigarette-stained Caddies, broken-down trucks. The Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft? State-sponsored motor pools? Ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in The Blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die.



6. Teenagers can't sing The Blues. Most of them ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing The Blues. In The Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.



7. The Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in St. Paul or Tucson? Just depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City? Still the best places to have The Blues. You can't have The Blues in any place that don't get rain.



8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't The Blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg cuz an alligator - or a scorned lover - chomped it is.



9. You can't have The Blues in an office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster. No, make that in the dumpster, way in.



10. Good places for The Blues:
    a. highway
    b. jailhouse
    c. homeless shelter
    d. empty bed
    e. no bed
    f. bottom of whiskey glass #17
    
    Bad places for the Blues
    a. ashrams
    b. gallery openings
    c. Ivy League institutions
    d. golf courses
    e. $1000/plate fundraisers
    



11. No one will believe it's The Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you happen to be an older person who remembers the Great Depression, doesn’t resemble Richard Simmons - and you slept in it the past three nights.



12. Do you have the right to sing the Blues?
    Yes, if:
    a. you're older than dirt
    b. you're blind. . . and older than dirt
    c. you shot a man in Memphis. . . and you’re older than dirt
    d. you can't be satisfied, ever
    
    No, if:
    a. you have all your teeth
    b. you were once blind but now can see
    c. the man in Memphis lived and makes big bucks via infomercials
    d. you have a retirement plan or trust fund.
    



13. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the Blues. Gary Coleman could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.



14. If you ask for water and Baby give you gasoline, it's the Blues. Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
    a. wine – must cost less than “two-buck Chuck”
    b. whiskey or bourbon – single-malts do not count
    c. muddy water
    d. black coffee – NOT from Starbucks
    
    The following are NOT Blues beverages:
    a. mixed drinks
    b. Manischevitz
    c. Diet Snapple
    d. Perrier
    e. SlimFast
    f. Decaf latte with soy milk
    



15. If it occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse, and dying lonely on a broken down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or getting liposuction.



16. Some Blues names for women:
    a. Bad Luck Bessie
    b. Fat River Dumpling
    c. Big Bloody Mama
    d. Sadie Da Man Killa



17. Some Blues names for men:
    a. Joe
    b. Willie
    c. Joe Willie
    d. Little Willie
    e. Big Willie
    f. Joe Bob Willie (country blues)
    



18. Your name Sierra, Sequoia, Amber, Rainbow, Heather, Brittany, Muffy or Buffy? You can't sing The Blues - no matter how many men you shot in Memphis.



19. Make your own Blues Name (starter kit):
    a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.) OR
    
    b. acceptable first name (see above) or name of fruit (Lemon) PLUS
    
    c. last name of U.S. President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)
    
    For example, Big Mama Washington, Joe Willie Nixon, Blind Apple Jefferson, Jakeleg Lime Johnson, or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.")



20. I don't care how tragic your life is: you own a computer, you cannot sing The Blues. You best destroy it. . . by spilled fifths of Mad Dog and/or Wild Turkey, a crack pipe-induced fire or a sawed-off shotgun.

Corn Flakes And Presidential Candidates

The preference is to NOT get political here, but this is hilarious. Kudos to whoever put this together!

For further reference, read The Selling Of The President: 1968 by Joe McGinniss. You probably won't find it in bricks-and-mortar bookstores, and the hardcover version has been out-of-print for eons, but this wry piece of journalism is very likely available through your friendly and undervalued public library.



Until the election in November, at least we have the film noir festival in San Francisco to make things a tad more palatable.

Happy New Year

And remember, when you've had a few - or many - belts, there is no such thing as an expensive cab ride. Cheers!

Merry Christmas With Bob & Doug McKenzie

Burt Bacharach Day

"Loneliness Remembers (What Happiness Forgets)" is my favorite collaboration between Dionne Warwick - a vocalist who makes the difficult look easy - and Burt Bacharach/Hal David. Here's a clip from a 1970 episode of Kraft Music Hall of Burt and Dionne rehearsing this great song.

The KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival, December '07 by Robert Emmett

The whole world doesn't get to be Martin Scorcese, Burt Bacharach, or Jude Law. Far too often they end up being the almost-made-its. The directors of television commercials, composers of jingles or soundtracks for forgotten cartoons; actors who weren't sure what was worse: being in this low-budget movie or not being in this low-budget movie. Still, they got a shot at being involved with their chosen profession.

On Saturday night, December 8, 2007, these almost-made-its get their day, or night, as part of the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival. In a program of 16mm films (the analog of video), some of the corners of pop culture live again. Old commercials, weird short subjects, trailers from obscure films and other cinematic oddballs make up the program. So weird, in fact, you can't even find this stuff on YouTube.



The Psychotronix Film Festival shows only 16mm films, the vinyl of visuals, an archaic medium that brings us wondrous images of a near forgotten time. Antiquated commercials, neglected cartoons, previews from old movies, various short subjects which may have been intentionally educational then that are now just unintentionally funny. These films are the vox populi, not the master's voice, made by people looking for a paycheck, not immortality. The Psychotronix wants you to experience something not old enough to be precious nor young enough to be contemporary. A black and white world of irradiated, enormous insects, big hair, large cars, and happy people satisfied by the mild, mild, mild taste of tobacco. When the only worrisome foreign ownership was the prevalence of Canada Dry soft drinks.


An invisible art, this collection of films would never be celebrated by the academy. Monsters and clowns, the goofs and the gallants, products long gone and quaint notions of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. All this and more at the Psychotronix. Free snax, (with an "x") and door prizes. There will also be surprise guests as well as a roomful of people who like the same things you do- and how often does that happen?



These are films with never-weres not has-beens, though that doesn't mean that they are without talent, even if only a talent to amuse, at this point. You will want to see the Psychotronix- for the history, for the hysteria, for the histrionics. You'll laugh and wonder how it was that this corner of culture could ever have escaped your attention. See the shocking, eye-staggering truth, the follies and foibles, the catchy tunes, and the tidal waves of terror that are all part of the Psychotronix Film Festival.



Before you get too smug, remember that the distance of time allows us to see a culture's conceits. How will the future look at you, look at us? The future is now and the Psychotronix Film Festival is just days away. Previous Psychotronix have sold-out, so for best seating, get there early. Doors open at 6:00 PM.



Where? Room 5015, Foothill Community College campus, Los Altos Hills, CA (El Monte exit off of Highway 280)
When: Saturday December 8th, 7:00 to 11:00 PM
Admission: $5.00 donation benefits KFJC 89.7 FM
Why: You are a glutton for punishment and desire a cheesy door prize

On Hiatus (Yet Again)

For the most part, I will be taking a break from this blog for awhile. There will, no doubt, be an item plugging the next film show, the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival, December 8th at Foothill College. If I find a clip of Sonny Rollins, Johnny Griffin and John Gilmore riffing into the cosmos on an insanely fast hard-bop rendition of Burt Bacharach's "This Guy's In Love With You" (rhythm section: Walter Davis, Jr. - piano; Bob Cranshaw - bass; Billy Higgins - drums), I'll post it. And you may find a scholarly article (well, once I've finished writing it) which will answer that question about who was the best Polish dialect comedienne from classic pre-Code movies on the other blog I occasionally post on, Aaron Neathery's The Third Banana.

Carnival Of Stars

Hot off following blazing retro-surf band The Phantom Jets at the Sacramento Horror Film Festival, the footage-obsessed rapscallions of the Psychotronic/Lobotronic/Thrill-O-Tronic/whatever-tronic Film Fests will present next Saturday evening's show for the Carnival Of Stars event. Here's the official YouTube promo:



This event features comic book artists, belly dancers and John Stanley of KTVU-TV's celebrated "Creature Features" late night show of the 70's and 80's. We'll fit right in. Movies follow the 6pm costume contest.

We present our customary hallucinatory excursion through the irritated bowels of popular culture (in glorious 16mm): vintage TV commercials, surreal and obscure classic cartoons, campy musical shorts, well-meaning but now ludicrous educational films, indescribably bizarre short subjects, non-union actors in cheap monster suits, anything involving double entendres and coming attractions trailers from plump, Cheese Whiz-fed turkeys that would invariably make the heart of the late Edward D. Wood Jr. go pitty-pat.

Film program co-producers "Sci Fi Bob" Ekman and Paul F. Etcheverry consider the evening a smashing success when the audience starts heckling the movies before the projection lamp goes on. Mr. Lobo and the fabulous, always-fetching Queen Of Trash from KTEH-TV's Cinema Insomnia will be the hosts with the most.

The Carnival Of Stars transpires this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, November 10-11, from 9 AM to 9 PM, at Centennial Hall, 22292 Foothill Boulevard (at City Center Drive), Hayward, CA.

Burt Bacharach Day

Nice vocal work by songwriter Rufus Wainright, accompanied by Burt on the keyboards, on Kentucky Bluebird/Message To Martha. Too bad he didn't sing it as "Message To Michael".

Shameless Self-Promotion

My day before the calcium lights in 2007, playing the "obnoxious villager heckler" in "Now I Lay Thee Down", a music video by metal gurus Machine Head, is now out for the world to see. And I would like this video even if I wasn't in it!

Machine Head's excellent headbanging performance is wrapped around a tragic and operatic play that could be described as "The Elephant Man" meets "Romeo And Juliet"; the former, a shunned and reviled outcast, decides to end it all and asks the latter, the sole person who loves the good-hearted but miserable grotesque, to do him in.



The play was shot at San Francisco's historic Regency Theater (built 1909) in the style of equally operatic silent movies, those from around 1918-1919 - I think of D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms in particular. It closes, appropriately, with the cast taking a bow.

This music video in the style of silent movies premiered on October 4th, the birthday of Buster Keaton, that most visionary of all silent screen artists.