Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever by Salim Washington anmd Farah Jasmine Griffin

Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever by Salim Washington anmd Farah Jasmine Griffin. The University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, 1998.) The collaboration between Miles Davis and John Coltrane is an interesting topic, and it’s especially interesting that it’s framed as such right from the title of this book. Coltrane, after all, started out as a “junior” to Davis, if not in age then certainly in credentials and in the establishment of a personal, individual style. It’d be difficult to argue otherwise, but Griffin and Washington acknowledge this. However, they …

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As Promised: Gorgeous Renaissance Music

The other night, I was saying how the world is so full of beautiful things that one could hardly spare the time to be interested in all of them. (It was really my over-stated reason for not having managed to read any of Kelly Link’s stories yet; the real reason is just there are too many books, and SF pushes my buttons more than fantasy, even good fantasy.) I made some comment on how Renaissance music is utterly beautiful but almost nobody listens to it, and ended up promising to play some for the people who were over at my …

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Symphony of Science

This is for you geeks out there who love Carl Sagan. (Found via a Youtube video somewhere on the blog of my crit groupmate/friend Chris Kammerud, whose blog I finally got around to trawling through for tasty links… of which there are a bunch, so it’s worth a visit; I guarantee that it will rather balance out the pretty negative view of Korea that seems to have accreted around my blog.)

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Jah Wobble on Balance, Another Lovely Subway Encounter, and a Countdown

I was listening to Jah Wobble’s album of William Blake-inspired music, which starts with this track: Doing a little more investigation, I found a neat interview with Wobble from around the time he put that out. He talks a lot about the  struggle to balance anger and integrity with the mental, emotional refreshment and grounding that one needs in order to be creative: He’s right: a certain degree of anger and honesty is energizing, but too much of it will just embitter you, and I know I’m certainly on the unbalanced side of it — and I know how it …

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Bad Luck Comes in From Tampa…

It turns out jbrandt was right. The Mountain Goats… very much my thing, and inspiring in a writing-wise sense: Also, tangentially, for some reason, this is the song I imagine Kenneth from 30 Rock starting his shows with when he starts going out and singing in smoky bars and clubs after he becomes fallen in New York City, takes to deep atheism and hard drink and crazy women, and then exiles himself to some shack in the depths of New Mexico for a few years till he can wean himself off nanodrugs and sexbots, and then finds the only thing …

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The Fleeting, Fragile Spirit of these Creatures Clinging to this Rock

I have a story in my mind, about time travel and moral yearnings and hope and the complete annihilation of everything you hold dear. It feels like this song: … and I don’t know if I can write it so it comes out that way. But it’s a good song, isn’t it? And yeah, I first heard it on Weeds, and couldn’t get it out of my head then.

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Ev’rything I’ve Got

I have fond memories of Holly Cole’s dark and seductive version of this song (on Don’t Smoke in Bed), but that’s not online, and I found something even better — in a sense… Truly bizarre: the music is… well, it feels like a cross between a high school marching band and some TV network’s in-house orchestra. And then there’s the video, which looks like it cost a few hundred bucks to put together, plus the (can’t be too much!) wages for the dancers. What is that, some kind of abandoned train yard or something? Vikki Carr definitely ain’t no Ella …

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Neo-80s Korean Music Videos (From 2008) and some Oldies

I’m busy grading but I thought I’d share this crazy stuff. Despite what it looks like, it was made a couple of years ago. Looks like the 1980s are finally back. I am both horrified and amused: And some more videos for you, by the same weirdoes: Bizarrely, I find these videos way more “authentic” in some way than mainline K-pop. Maybe because the people in the video look like normal Koreans —  by which I mean, not plastic-surgeried beauty queens — just like in old K-pop? And because there’s an exuberant cheesiness in it. Now, some real old K-pop …

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