Old And Leading The Way

I appreciate that I'm not getting any younger and that much new rock and rap music doesn't speak to me by virtue of differences in life experience. That hardly disqualifies it from excellence, but it does disqualify me from grasping it well enough to give it either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. That being said, I'm nonetheless struck by the exceptionally high quality of music released in 2008 by older artists, even if I am predisposed to appreciate it.

Seven of the performers on the following list are over 60, and three of them are over 70. Other older artists who released outstanding music in 2008 include Jackson Browne, Dr. John, Emmylou Harris, Richie Havens, and Andre Williams. This year, I saw outstanding performances from Joan Baez (67), Kevin Burke (58), Dick Gaughan (60), Charles Lloyd (70), Robert Plant (60) (with Alison Krauss), Bruce Springsteen (59), James Blood Ulmer (66), and Johnny Winter (64). 74-year old Leonard Cohen toured Europe and received scintillating reviews. If I had to pick, the best live performance I saw last year was by the 70-year old Lloyd. It's enough to make me believe that my most creative days lie ahead.

Anyway, here's some counsel on how to use some of those gift cards you got for Christmas. I reviewed each album on Citizen K.; click on the link for my original review.

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Tell Tale Signs, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8 (1989-2006), Bob Dylan.

This collection of demos, alternate versions, old folk songs, live cuts, and previously unreleased songs coheres unexpectedly into a sweeping statement of Dylan's world view as he heads toward old age. He has become the master curator of his own work. Brilliant. 

HONORABLE MENTION

These albums had the heaviest rotation on the Citizen K. sound system. 

Con El Permiso De Bola, Francisco Cespedes with Gonzalo Rubalcabal

Black Ice and Propane, Erik Friedlander

Traveling, Steve Poltz

Hernando, The North Mississippi All Stars

Recapturing the Banjo, Otis Taylor

Just A Little Lovin', Shelby Lynne

Accelerate, R.E.M.

Rabo de Nube, Charles Lloyd Quartet

Lumiere Dans le Noir, Zachary Richard

Exit to Mystery St., Paul Sanchez

Good Neighbor, John Boutte

Peace, Love, & Understanding, Big Sam's Funky Nation

Gaughan Live! At The Trades Club, Dick Gaughan

Note: The link is to a review of a Dick Gaughan concert.

The Cole Porter Mix, Patricia Barber

About Time, Paul Bley

Day After Tomorrow, Joan Baez

South Pacific, New Broadway Cast

The Unreleased Recordings, Hank Williams

Shake Away/Ojo De Culbra, Lila Downs

Simply Grand, Irma Thomas

Liejacker, Thea Gilmore

Gracias, Omara Portuondo

WWOZ anticipates a tough 2009. "If a jazz station in New Orleans can't survive, what chance has jazz to survive?" Good question. I'll be sending in my contribution. How about joining me?...

R. I. P., Freddie Hubbard...

The Charles Lloyd Quartet shows its stuff in a montage of their performance at Antwerp's Jazz Middleheim 2008:

This Morning...

Here's what we woke up to this morning. And BTW, WWOZ has some great Christmas music going right now...

R. I. P. Slingin' Sammy Baugh, Washington Redskins and TCU Horned Frogs great. My father saw him play...

Way Down In The Hole

From McCarthyite yowls accusing Obama of socialism to false accusations of sexual assault, the end game of the McCain campaign and its supporters recalls the death throes of a mastodon, a prehistoric elephant trapped in the tar pit it walked into and every effort to extricate itself making matters worse...

Larry David writes that waiting for Election Day is worse than waiting for the results of a biopsy...

WWOZ of New Orleans broadcasts live this weekend from the Voodoo Music Experience. Schedule here...

The New York Times endorses Barack Obama: "Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems..."

Several more reasons why I'm glad I don't have to date...

The Number That Explains It All: Obama has tailored his campaign to middle class concerns and McCain has not, at least in a meaningful way. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight explains...

Book Review: The Turnaround, George Pelecanos. Disappointing offering from Pelecanos jumps back and forth from the Seventies to present day, exploring the impact of a street incident when the principles converge years later. The events of the Seventies represent Pelecanos at his best -- you can practically hear the music as bored teenagers cruise looking for action -- but he stumbles badly in the contemporary setting. The novel becomes surprisingly talky -- never a flaw of Pelecanos until now -- as the characters orate at each other rather than converse. Moreover, an unnecessary (and unbelievable) twist and a pat, Hollywood closing mar the conclusion. Pelecanos attempts to personalize the societal forces bearing down on the working class; it's a worthy theme held back by stock characters and wooden dialogue. To read Pelecanos at his considerable best, try Hard Revolution...

Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, and Richard Price -- all of who wrote teleplays for The Wire -- are often cited as America's premiere contemporary crime novelists. The Turnaround notwithstanding, Pelecanos is the most consistent although arguably the least ambitious of the three. Lehane's reputation rests on the Kenzie-Gennaro series and Mystic River. (His new novel, The Given Day, has gotten strong reviews.) While Mystic River is superb, I personally find the Kenzie-Gennaro series to be dull and turgid. Price is the most highly regarded, but he needs an editor badly: With the exception of The Wanderers, anything I've read by him could have been cut by at least 100 pages.

This is all a long way of giving a shout-out to a crime writer whose work stands with these three: The Baltimore novelist Laura Lippman. Lippman, whose husband David Simon produced The Wire. Lippman writes an engaging series featuring the insouciant private detective Tess Monaghan. But the literary strength of her work lies in three standalone novels: Every Secret Thing, To The Power Of Three, and What The Dead Know. Lippman's milieu is the leafy suburbs and the middle-class neighborhoods hiding desperate secrets. She creates three-dimensional characters with flaws and strengths and presents them sympathetically. Moreover the mysteries at the heart of the narratives are involving and well-plotted. As anyone who reads mysteries knows, a compelling plot with credible twists and peopled by strong characters is the Holy Grail of crime writing. I hesitate to call anyone the best crime writer around, but the best of Lippman's work belongs on the A List...

Friday's Choice: This Friday's choice goes out to John McCain and the Republican party.  Each season of The Wire featured a different version of Tom Waits' "Way Down In The Hole," starting with the Blind Boys Of Alabama in Season 1:

Tom Waits introduced Season 2:

Season 3 featured The Neville Brothers:

Season 4 (the best season and the best credits, IMHO) featured a group of Baltimore teenagers called DoMaJe:

Last, Steve Earle and Season 5:

Back, Barely

I hate JFK airport. It's got to be the...oh, why bother to relive yet another hellish encounter with this monument to corporate, bureaucratic, and design inefficiency? At least our plane was only an hour late leaving...

We arrived in mostly on piece, sans a suitcase that was delivered this morning. I slept until noon and want to go back to bed. It is awfully nice outside, or so Premium T. keeps assuring me. The restaining and refurbishing of our deck was completed while we were gone -- rotten boards replaced, remaining boards sanded, all boards restained, nails leveled. You can walk on it bare foot. Looks great...

On the flight back, I read Dermot Bolger's The Family On Paradise Pier,  a fascinating fictional account of the life and times of the Anglo-Protestant Goold Verschoyle family, whose idyllic life in Donegal becomes shattered by World War I, the Irish revolution and Civil War, as well as long-simmering sibling rivalry and family guilt about its relative wealth amidst poverty. Two of the three brothers turn to Communism while their sister -- the sheltered, romantic Eva -- learns to accommodate the realities and compromises of life without surrendering herself to them. Events take the family from rural Ireland to Dublin to London to the Spanish Civil War to Moscow and to Stalin's gulags. 

Threaded throughout is the antagonistic relationship of the Irish Catholic Church to the Stalinist radicals who sought to elevate Ireland's poor. Bolger shows how the Church's deeper understanding of the fears and traditions of the Irish people easily triumphed over Stalinist ideology even in the face of economic devastation. Compulsively readable -- I devoured most of it in one sitting -- it's one of the most insightful novels about class and the personal relationship to it that I've read. Includes cameo appearances by Brendan Behan, his indomitable mother Kathleen, and James Gralton, among others.

And, Family is based on the on an actual family named Goold Verschoyle. Bolger met the character based on Eva over 30 years ago, taped many of their conversations, and waited for them to ferment into a novel. Accomplished and highly recommended. More on the Verschoyles here...

New Orleans writer Julie Smith says that it's the secrets, not the crime, that make the Crescent City a great setting for mystery novels...

Besides sitting around listlessly and reading depressing accounts of racial divides and near bank runs, I've spent the morning trying to wake up to the strains of some new music that arrived in my absence:

• The Band Of Heathens, The Band Of Heathens. Austin band that wears its allegiance to Little Feat proudly. How can you miss when Ray Wylie Hubbard produces and Patty Griffin joins in for three songs?
• The Long Black Line, Spencer Bohren. Slow blues from New Orleans' Bohrens describes the long black line left by Katrina on every home it affected, then goes down from there, introducing a cycle of songs related by "tragedy, disaster, and the hardships of the human condition." Bohren mixes his own material with songs by blues masters of the 20's and 30's to make a strikingly original album unified by its theme and by his spooky Delta blues guitar.
• 504 And Then Some. Assortment of live performances available to WWOZ donors and subscribers, many taken from the Piano Night they sponsor every year as part of Jazz Festival. I was already glad I'd subscribed, but this is the icing on the cake.

Oh, the president says that everything is peachy keen.

Spencer Bohren performs "Wade In The Water":

The sound of the leaves, the cry of the river...

Last night's Valentine's dinner at Cafe Juanita was, hmmm... Exquisite? Edenic? Exalted? Erotic? You get the idea. Suffice to say that the execution of the menu was as flawless as the menu was inspired. For Valentine's Day, C Juan offered this tasting menu:

Local Spot Prawns, Butter Poached with Prawn Bodetto and Kaffir Lime Leaf

Rising C Ranch Citrus with Avocado and Hearts of Palm

Raviolo of Sky Valley Pastured Egg and Celeriac with Parmegiano Reggiano

Wagyu Tenderloin with Foie Gras Sauce

Praius Chocolate Souffle with Vanilla Crema and Candied Citrus

or

Carmelized Meyer Lemon Tart with Blood Orange Marmallata and Creme Fraiche

Plus, an optional and superbly chosen wine flight culminating in a Vin Santo paired with the Chocolate Souffle. The Italian Chardonnay paired with the citrus salad just about revised my disenchanted perspective on Chardonnays. (They inevitably taste as if they've been kept in oak for the better part of century. Not this one, though.) More about this meal and the nature of food and cooking tomorrow.

Quote of the Day: 

"The mountains were tumbled about, in a thousand fantastic ways."

-William Makepeace Thackeray, writing of Connemara in 1842

You can see what he meant here. And if you haven't read Vanity Fair, what are you waiting for?

Ever since Foxessa put me on to WWOZ last week, I've been investigating their DJ's recommendations of the top New Orleans' CDs of 2007. I've got some stuff on order that should start trickling in next week. Stay tuned!

He's red and she's blue. Diane Mapes explains the pitfalls of dating someone who is your political opposite. Hey, we knew all along that liberal girls were more fun.

It's Friday, so it's also Coach Gibbons day. Today's routine:

1000 meter row

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Five sets of:

15 dumbbell dead lifts (two dumbbells @ 35 pounds each)

15 kettlebell swings (35 pounds)

100 feet of lunges

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Three sets of:

Row sprints designed to maximize power generated. Four strokes to build power, then five, six, and seven strokes at at least 200 watts.

Three dive bomber pushups

I'll leave you with the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen's "Valentine's Day." It's a beauty.

Killian Heard: Sound Grammar, Ornette Coleman. 78 years old and the guy hasn't lost a thing, either as a composer or as a musician.