Beat the Devil

a reader writes

2010-03-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

It's been a year and a week since your last blog entry. Thanks for nothing!

Guy

the sky above, the mud below

2009-02-23T00:11:00.000-08:00

One dark night I found myself in the Selkirk Mountains standing on the highway trying to catch a ride. I looked up and just about fell over. I'd never seen anything like it before. So many stars, billions of them, and so close I could almost grab a handful. I was literally awestruck. Stars the size of grapefruits, brilliant white in a black sky.

Al old Pontiac pulled up into the gravel and I climbed in. A guy not much older than myself, maybe twenty or so, was drunk and pissed off. He'd been thrown out of a bar and was heading east about twenty miles to the next town with a bar. Ten minutes later there were two women standing in the gravel, thumbs out. Get in the back he tells me. One for me and one for you. So I got out and he tells the thin one to climb in beside him and the fat one gets in with me in the back.

I was interested in neither of them, but what could I do? So I sat there in the back with mine and we both stared out our windows while he starts going at it up front. Driving and grabbing at her. Pretty soon he pulls over and and they're going full blast and I ask mine her name, where they're going, etc. She doesn't seem to care either way about any of it. Pretty soon they're done up front and the guy falls asleep. The three of us get out, they go off somewhere and I continue east, gaping at the glorious sky, listening for cars.

There may be a point to this story.

the next president

2009-02-19T13:00:00.000-08:00

Among the many lunatics I've come to know and love (or hate) in my life, there was this guy I knew briefly around 1968 who was known only as "Mac", which was short for "mechanic" since he fixed things. He never spoke, he just stayed in the background and when something needed to be fixed, like a gas generator, he'd take it apart and fix it. He never even said his name was Mac - it's just what we called him because there was nothing else to go by.

One night a bunch of us were sitting around shooting the breeze and suddenly Mac opened up. He told us that he had been followed around for years, in California, by phone company vans; that they had got hold of him and implanted electronic devices in his brain; that they had planned to make him president of the United States; that he would be known as President Andrew McAllister.

The name seemed perfectly presidential and so I felt that although the man was utterly nuts, it might be a good idea, just in case, to keep an eye on future U.S. presidential events.

One day, sometime later, he came by the house where I'd been staying. This was within a day or two of the July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. Mac paced wildly around the house talking non-stop in an incomprehensible (to me) language. He was extremely agitated. Then he left and we never saw him again.

If, by 2012, there is no President Andrew McAllister, I will assume he lied.

a reader writes

2009-02-09T12:38:00.000-08:00

taking your writing to the next level, (as i perceive it), is the structuring -- the content is already definitely in the bag. your writing is top notch and as unique to you as vonnegut's was to him, salinger, allan g., and dostoevsky's was to them.. as finished as any masterpiece that can't be finished can be... -- eat your heart out schubert -- and has had me crackin up out loud -- even when i wasn't stoned -- times too numerous to mention, not to mention trembling with anticipation, desire and longing as I read about your romantic exploits on the road and other locations... or pressed to rethink my philosophy on tobacco, fate, religion while expanding my knowledge of good music, entertained by behind the curtain anecdotes of the geniuses of jazz, and their underground worker bees of the Cellar, City Lights's all over the world as they cross paths with our fav bo-beat-hemianik photojournalist java advocate, whose enlightened taste in chicks, riffs, riff raff and the body politik make this world more than a bit more enjoyable, encouraged to spend more time contemplating beauty, music and the meaninglessness of meaning, and importance of pleasure.

your friend,

j d clement

Guest post : Milt Hinton, Geoff Dyer

2008-10-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

There are lots of really good books of jazz photos. (Books by Wiliam Claxton, Jimmy Katz, Bob Parent, Herman Leonard, Francis Wolff, etc., are just a few that spring immediately to my mind.) But far and away my favourite of the few I own is Milt Hinton's "Bass Line ". Bassist Milt Hinton played and recorded with just about everyone, till his death in 2000. He also had a camera with him most of the time and his pictures capture something none of the others could because he was an insider. He shot his friends under casual circumstances, in private or personal moments. He was an amateur (in the best sense of the word) but also a skilled photographer, so he produced a rich treasury, glimpses into the world of jazz of the classic era.

Geoff Dyer wrote an amazing and unusual book of jazz stories in a style he calls "imaginative criticism". Based on true life stories and photographs of a handful of jazz luminaries, he's composed tales – part fantasy, part biography – that are meant to convey impressionistic rather than literal truth. Rather than being about jazz, they are jazz, in a way.

Hinton's photo below, and Dyer's commentary, which I first came across almost twenty years ago, have had a influence on how I think about photography, jazz, memory, and life.

A Note on Photographs by Geoff Dyer

PHOTOGRAPHS SOMETIMES WORK on you strangely and simply: at first glance you see things you subsequently discover are not there. Or rather, when you look again you notice things you initially didn't realise were there. In Milt Hinton's photograph of Ben Webster, Red Allen and Pee Wee Russell, for example, I thought that Allen's foot was resting on the chair in front of him, that Russell was actually drawing on his cigarette, that ...

The fact that it is not as you remember it is one of the strengths of Hinton's photograph (or any other for that matter), for although it depicts only a split-second the felt duration of the picture extends several seconds either side of that frozen moment to include - or so it seems - what has just happened or is about to happen: Ben tilting back his hat and blowing his nose, Red reaching over to take a cigarette from Pee Wee ...

Oil paintings leave even the Battles of Britain or Trafalgar strangely silent. Photography, on the other hand, can be as sensitive to sound as it is to light. Good photographs are there to be listened to as well as looked at; the better the photograph the more there is to hear. The best jazz photographs are those saturated in the sound of their subject. In Carol Reiff's photo of Chet Baker on-stage at Birdland we hear not just the sound of the musicians as they are crowded into the small stage of the frame but the background chat and clinking glasses of the nightclub. Similarly, in Hinton's photo we hear the sound of Ben turning the pages of the paper, the rustle of cloth as Pee Wee crosses his legs. Had we the means to decipher them, could we not go further still and use photographs like this to hear what was actually being said? Or even, since the best photos seem to extend beyond the moment they depict, what has just been said, what is about to be said . . .

Photograph of Red Allen, Ben Webster, and Pee Wee Russell (1957) from Bass Line by Milt Hinton.
Text by Geoff Dyer, from But Beautiful , 1991.

2008-10-05T23:46:00.000-07:00

photo by jillian lebeck

who knows me

2008-09-30T23:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was nice. Today, too. It's been so bad this year that a nice day is worthy of comment. Barbara and I sat on a bench by English Bay for a long time, talking and not talking. Observing and opining on this and that. beat the devil came up. I mentioned writing a new item, the first in months. (I thought I'd quit.)

"Everyone knows you better than I do."

Barbara doesn't read any of this because she has no computer.

"You know me better than anyone, I said. What do they know? I'm very selective, what I write about, obviously. Like one day I did something cool . . . then for a year I sat in a room miserable, lonely, and depressed . . . couldn't even get a date."

"Put that in your blog", she said.

Maybe I will.

COMMENTS

Thanks Barbara!
Zubromak, Dim Valley. November 3, 2008

Sarah Silverman for Vice-President

2008-09-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

When I spotted this button on Obama's website back in the spring of 2008, I had to get one. What was I doing on his web site anyway . . . I don't know. Maybe for a few minutes I thought I wanted him to be the next U.S. president, as though anything could possibly save U.S. America. Still, I wanted the button. The Hebrew reminded me of my dad reading his yiddish newspapers , or walking past the kosher grocers on the Main when i was ten.

They wouldn't ship them outside the U.S. so I asked David in Florida to order me one. When I met Sarah Silverman backstage at the River Rock Casino in March I wanted to leave her with a memento of my undying crush and lacking a fraternity pin I gave her the button, which I had to read to her. (I can read Hebrew but only if I already know what it says.) Lately I've wondered what, if anything, it really meant to her. Well, clearly, it meant a lot because although I'm pretty sure she was probably not a republican previously, she's gone all out for Barack Obama.

I've said all along Obama should have chosen Sarah Silverman as his running mate. He'd have won or, at least, I'd have taken up U.S. citizenship and voted for him. Now if he loses McCain will die in office and the wrong Sarah, neo-nazi Pailin, will be president. Oy Gevalt!

a reader writes

2008-08-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

Mr. Nation,

your photography inspired and intrigued me, as all art should do in my opinion. it
lead me to several questions but it was your biography that really motivated me to
wright to you. i recently moved from northern california to the bahamas, a beautiful
place and i am not regretting my decision. but in seeking tranquility and balance
ive found it but hand in hand came monotony and contentment. i dont want to fullfill
nietzche's quote "show me a content man and ill show you a failure" ( i believe),
and it sounds like you have found some stagnance in vancouver. as well as that i
noticed your view on how capitalism has destroyed the avenues of artistic living,
well thats my spin on it but it sounds like you might agree. i hope that you have
the time and the opportunity to respond to the question thats arisen in me and has
been festering for some time now, what do we do now?

respectfully,
[name]

2008-07-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

CODA Magazine turns 50 but is still younger than me

2008-05-07T20:31:00.000-07:00

Coda celebrates its 50th anniversary today. This Canadian magazine was once one of the best jazz magazines in the world. Maybe it still is but I don't read jazz magazines these days so wouldn't know. I first came across it around 1960, at the Record Centre on Crescent Street in downtown Montreal. Run by the professorial but cool Edgar Jones, the Record Centre was a lending library with a fair-sized and eclectic collection of albums. Every week or so I'd go down and get a few albums, fifty cents each for one week's rental, everything from Wozzek to Wilbur Ware. Jones asked me what kind of music i liked when I signed up and I said everything. "You're tastes are catholic, then?" and I went home and looked up what he meant by "catholic" to make sure i wasn't gonna have to confess my sins at some point. There was usually a small stack of these Coda magazines on a table by the door – a mimeographed and stapled letter-sized journal which I picked up regularly, thereby enhancing my musical scholarship. There were so many places in those days outside of so-called school where i was coming by my real education.

Some years later Jane and I hitchhiked to Toronto for a couple of days . . . my first and second-to-last time in that city. She took me to Sam's Records to introduce me to John Norris who presided over the second-floor all jazz and blues department. Norris was the founder, editor, and publisher of Coda. Due to confusion and disarray where Jane and I were staying, later that day I went back to the store and asked Norris if he'd put me up for one night. He didn't hesitate, suggesting I come by his apartment around six and have dinner with he and his wife. As impressive as the Norris' hospitality, was John's record collection taking up an entire wall in the sizable living room. I'd never seen anything like it and I'm telling you it was mind-altering experience, just looking at it. I'm guessing 10,000 albums. "Put something on," John says. Are you kidding??? I was nonplussed. John eventually found something to play. It took many years to get that great wall of vinyl out of my mind and have since seen bigger collections, but still . . .

As it turned out, the newest issue of Coda was being put together that night, which involved a bit of a party, including a half-dozen or so friends and Coda contributors, plus plenty of wine and snacks. Stacks of mimeographed pages had to be collated, stapled, some stuffed in envelopes to be mailed to subscribers. I was an expert at this type of thing so was happy to be able to organize the work, cutting the usual amount of time it took so that there was more time for partying and listening to some of John's records.

Among the partyers/collators was a handsome young man (six years older than me) from Bristol, England – William Ernest Smith, better know, oddly enough, as Bill Smith. Bill was eventually an editor of the magazine, in addition to his other contributions to modern music as saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, editor, photographer, and film and record producer. He eventually moved to Hornby Island and I'm happy to report that all these many decades later we are still friends. Norris I haven't seen since the mid-seventies, sad to say.

When Jane and I hit the road back to Montreal, Norris asked if I'd deliver some copies of the new Coda to his friend and Coda contributor, Len Dobbin. So that's when I first met Dobbin, for about fifty years the dean of the Montreal jazz scene.

John visited Vancouver around 1974 and was a house guest of Fraser Nicholson, owner of the famous Record Gallery on Robson Street, my main source of jazz records for many of my Vancouver years. By then I was working at the Georgia Straight, heading up the distribution department. Besides the Straight itself we handled a number of the hipper papers and magazines, including Rolling Stone when it was actually a small alternative news, music, and culture rag. I suggested John send me fifty copies of every Coda and I'd put them into book and record stores and a few of the bigger newsstands. He agreed, observing, "Gosh, we've never had a distributor before." So, adding to my achievements, I became the first distributor of Coda Magazine.

By the late seventies author and musician David Lee was co-editing Coda with Bill Smith. I met him during one of his visits to Vancouver. He told me that the notices I was sending to Coda via John Norris, about the series of concerts I was producing here, were being greeted with amazement. I treated David to dinner at the Nanking in Chinatown for the sole purpose of talking his ear off for a couple of hours about all that I was up to, my hopes and dreams, and pretty much my whole life story as it pertained to jazz and its variants in the last third of the twentieth century. After that I took him to a party at Patricia LaNauze's place and for all I know it was the best night of his life. But there was no payoff for me because . . . I don't know . . . I thought there'd be something at some time in the magazine which, as far as I know, there never was. That would have been pretty helpful to the cause, I think.

As of 2000 the magazine has changed hands twice and is still being published. I can't compare the current magazine to what it was in the early years but it seems to still be a very good jazz magazine, despite the fact that my name has never appeared in it. Although my first effort as a record producer made two top-ten lists in their Best of 2007 issue a few months ago. More about that tomorrow.

Photo above of Bill Smith (left) and John Norris in the seventies by unidentified photographer.

COMMENTS

You've never been mentioned in Coda?! Not even in passing? For shame. Now I have to question everything I've ever read, or not read, in that magazine.
Guy - Monday, May 12, 2008

You are NOT older than CODA as I happen to have the very first issue that was published on May 20,1917. It was a single issue only and was edited by Sarto Fournier Sr. and it told the story of how Jazz was created by the French famers and peasents on Anticosti Island and was then carried by musical sailors and fishermen to the great cities in the West on the St. Lawrence River. Unfortunately Sarto Fournier Sr. was kidnapped and held prisoner in Toronto by members of the Family Compact where he was forced to speak English and change his name. His son ran for city councilor in Montreal in the riding of Papineau-Nord but was unsuccesful and became Mayor Camilien Houde's chauffeur. CODA was resurrected by John Norris and the rest is history.

I'm shocked along with Guy that you and the Vancouver Jazz Society never had one mention in CODA. Now with the creation of vancouverjazz.com....this oversight should be addressed.

CODA is still worth reading and it is now a high end publication on quality paper, however with Jazz Times and Down Beat costing with tax $5:40, why does the great Canadian Jazz Magazine cost with tax, $9:40 on the newstand? That's hard to figure as they get support from the Canada Council and other government agencies like the Publications Assistance Program and the Canada Magazine Fund, plus ads as well. I guess we pay more to be Canadian.
Gavin Walker - Saturday, May 17, 2008

From Coda, June 1977, page 26:
"Brian Nation's Vancouver Jazz Society (2613 W. 4th Ave.) continues its incredible activity, having so far presented, for four days at a time, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Cecil Taylor, Warne Marsh with Lee Konitz, Dollar Brand, Ted Curson, Sam Rivers and Mary Lou Williams. Most certainly one of the most important musical events ever to occur in Vancouver. - John Norris"
Mark Miller - Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Good work, Miller! That calls into question everything Brian's ever written. What should I believe? I think someone should go through all his posts and ferret out the truth.
Guy - Tuesday, May 20, 2008

sarah silverman part 2

2008-03-31T21:15:00.000-07:00

sarah and i get a little closer

photo by Guy MacPherson

Sarah Silverman is hot, isn't she? The hottest. Even Barbara thinks so, except she wouldn't say hot. And she's funny as hell. The funniest. Sharp. I'm crazy about her. Her TV show is one of only about three that I ever watch. I'm very particular. Or do I mean peculiar? I get those words mixed up.

Two years ago I explained how I was seduced by a photo of Sarah Silverman in an old New Yorker magazine that lay open on a pile of other magazines in my apartment for several weeks or months. It was sort of like the portrait of Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) that Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) eventually falls for, except that I knew Sarah hadn't been murdered. And I didn't actually fall in the usual sense of "falling". Since then I've become her biggest fan, although not as crazed as the boys who've been going around town stealing piles of Georgia Straights out of vending boxes for her cover photo. And these Straight boxes are two or three on every block around here so I've been seeing a lot of Sarah lately.

The reason for the cover story is that Sarah blew through town on the weekend for a show at the River Rock Casino in Richmond, to which our mutual friend Guy MacPherson (who wrote the story) invited me. I had to pass on seeing Bill Coon's guitar genius band at Cap College to catch her. In fact I risked my life as despite being the end of March a freezing sonofabitch hailstorm blew in from Russia (I thought the fucking Cold War was over!) and I don't like being on the roads here at the best of times. I thought I'd probably die an icy death on the way to Richmond but I took that chance.

Sarah's show was great. I'm not a comedy critic (that's Guy's job) so won't elaborate. I loved it. How could I not? Some familiar stuff and some new stuff and Sarah's just fun to be around when she's on stage, and off as well, as it turns out.

We went backstage and hung out for an hour I'm guessing. I haven't met many comics but the few I have were not that funny in real life. I'm funnier in real life but if I got on stage I'd be shot. But Sarah's funny and warm and well . . . as much as you can tell in an hour . . . real . . . and a sweetheart! I'm still crazy about her.

Guy MacPherson and Sarah Silverman

Tomorrow: Running into Woody Allen at City Lights Books in 1963

Links:
Sarah Silverman at Wikipedia
Sarah Silverman Show at Wikipedia
Sarah Silverman Show at Comedy Central
Sarah Silverman article by Guy MacPherson, in the Georgia Straight

COMMENTS

I see Sarah's #14 on the People magazine list of the 100 most beautiful people in the world. Where do you think you'd place, Brian?
Guy (Vancouver) - May 11, 2008

does jimmy kimmel know about you and sarah?
naan (cornwall asylum) - Monday, May 26, 2008

Henry Miller

2008-03-27T17:40:00.000-07:00

One day I decided to call Henry Miller. I dialed "O" and asked for Monterey California information. The operator I got sounded like someone Miller and I would have fought a duel over. "I'm looking for the number for Miller, Henry Miller, in Big Sur". She was sympathetic. "Oh," she said, "people like that never have their numbers listed." We chatted for about two minutes. If I knew then what I know now (which isn't all that much more, really) I'd have persisted and gotten the number somehow . . . maybe.

This is my favourite photograph of Miller, taken by Harry Redl. I don't think it's ever been published or shown anywhere. Harry described the day he visited Miller and was taking a few pictures of the author with his tripod-mounted Rollei. Miller asked him to take some pictures of his watercolours and brought them out and leaned them against a stone wall. Harry got out another camera, took some shots, and turned around just in time to see Miller sneaking up on his Rollei, to grab a shot of him.

I never did talk to or meet Henry Miller and despite all my unsubtle hints Harry never gave me a print of this photo. The one you see here is taken off Harry's business card and is reproduced twice the original size – thus its inferior quality.

This almost insignificant anecdote was prompted by having just watched this wonderful short film:

Dinner With Henry (1979)
Director: Richard Young

a score for cecil taylor

2008-03-09T01:09:00.000-08:00

this is the photo of cecil taylor taken by the lovely and talented leslie bell, sister of the handsome and loquacious bob bell, at the legendary vancouver jazz society hall on fourth avenue when i presented the cecil taylor unit (with jimmy lyons, david ware, raphe malik, and beaver harris) for four nights in the spring of 1977

about 1964 somewhere in a magazine or anthology i read a poem entitled a score for cecil taylor (whose name at that time was as yet unknown to me) that so intrigued me that when some time later i spotted an album called cecil taylor live at the cafe montmartre in a record store on ste catherine street i bought it instantly, sound unheard, got home and put it on the Lenco turntable and although i grasped little of what i heard i was nonetheless enthralled by the sounds pouring out of my single mono speaker. everything i heard in music from that point on in my life was altered by this single experience. that night dave and harvey came by and as usual we got high and listened to jazz but when i put this on they decided i had lost my mind and on subsequent evenings it was only by upping the dosage that they were able to yield to my advanced musical choices. (eventually i absorbed taylor's language and his music not only made sense but it was just as likely to move me as a lester young improvisation or johnny dodd's solo on perdido street blues

i wanted to go back and re-read that poem that first sparked my interest but couldn't find it in the volume where i was sure i'd first seen it and i eventually went through every anthology, magazine, broadside, chapbook, and everything else and could never find it. was it a dream?

when i met cecil taylor for the first time in the mid-seventies i told him about how i first became aware of his name through that poem and asked if he knew who had written it and he said he had never seen or heard of it.

so this is a mystery

--

tomorrow: ornette coleman

just another broadcast from Sydney

2008-03-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

In his biography of William Burroughs Ted Morgan describes the time in 1975 when Burroughs was visited by Robert Bly.

Bly told the story of how a tribe of Australian aborigines reacted to their first experience with a battery-operated radio. The first thing they heard was the news from Sydney. “Two women were killed this morning and two others were badly burned in a fire that destroyed a roominghouse for the elderly.” Disturbed by the plight of these distant people, the aborigines gathered food and blankets to take to the survivors. Only with difficulty were they convinced that there was nothing that they could do to help. After that, gradually, they began to lose their ability to react to the human and social needs around their village. “So the medicine man breaks a leg,” said Bly, “and they figure, oh well, it's just another broadcast from Sydney.

Literary Outlaw p. 486

press

2008-03-02T01:20:00.000-08:00

I forgot to post this review of Benway's Deathbed, by Only Magazine's esteemed film critic, Adam O. Thomas.

As a film critic and writer it is my pleasure to watch all kinds of work whether it be big Hollywood blockbusters or little independent films. As such I have watched your "experimental" film Benway's Deathbed a few times now as it is thankfully short and feel like I may be able to offer some insight as to what it means.

Take the first frame. It is a perforated film frame that precedes the title. This obviously intentional recognition of source is a welcome reminder of a time now long gone. That single frame signals an awareness of the artifice of cinematic construction about to follow, a powerful signal that this is just a film. The simple credits underscore the complicated imagery that lies at the heart of the film and the playful cast credit of "unknown saxophonist" underscores the mystical and philosophical possibilities the film reflects. As if saying "the name is not important but the effect remains." A truly brave statement in a time of endless categorization.

The lingering camera work blends with the tender jazz score to create a haunting atmosphere of uncertainty. We watch, constantly searching for clues, yet the images languish back and forth denying us any, what we film writers would call, action. Murky and bewildering, comparisons to Bergman are inevitable and are overtly reinforced by the scene of a man playing chess against the stuffed bird. Which also invokes a sense of tension because it could also be Hitchcock...but with far fewer birds, so its not quite as scary.

The simplicity of the relationship to music and muse as reflected in the relationship between the saxophonist and the girl is a tender reminder of the simple beauty in life, being sensual or sonic and this operates in powerful contrast to the nihilistic imagery of the aforementioned man versus bird chess match.

Of course all of this could be "bullshit" and the film, made something like 40 years ago could simply be the work of a drug addled beatnik on pot or in the throws of an LSD bender, but it is unlikely you were drunk at the time because so much of the film is in focus. I hope this helps you understand the film you made and also gives you some insight into the powerful and fascinating job we film writers have. Please if you have other films, don't hesitate to send them somewhere else.

You can watch the film again here, no extra charge.

mugs

2008-02-07T22:41:00.001-08:00

The jackass in the middle is Gordon Campell, premier of British Columbia. At the time the photo was taken, around 1990, he was mayor of Vancouver. He wanted to be a much, much bigger jackass so he became premier of the whole damn province. Sorry . . . calling him jackass is being too kind. Anyway . . . to his right is Blaine Culling who parlayed a successful restaurant into owning most of the clubs on Granville Street and on the far right is Leonard Schein who parlayed half-ownership in a funky old movie house where his opening night show was Casablanca into a string of semi-artsy movie theatres around town. When I asked him to help me show Jazz on a Summers Day back around 1979 he said it was too much trouble. Yawn. The guy at the other end of the shot . . . I have no idea who that is.

I was riding my bike down Granville Street one morning, on my way to my postal gig, when I spotted these clowns standing around with brooms. Some kind of "let's clean up Granville Street" publicity stunt, I guess. Hauling Campbell outta there would have made it clean enough for me.

Herewith more cute pictures of Campbell, these from 2003, courtesy of the Maui Police Dept. Busted for drunk driving. Had it been me I'd probably have lost my job. But not Campbell. He's only premier.

[To be deleted. No creeps in my blog, please.]

tales of the airport (no. 6)

2008-01-31T23:34:00.000-08:00

Al called to ask a favour. Can you pick up Mingus' band at the airport? I had a VW bus and was always happy to help out. Besides . . . Mingus! Of course! He'd been my musical hero since I was 14. Would you drive out to the airport to pick up Mozart? Of course you would. Mingus was an even greater genius.

I called Deborah. I'm picking up Mingus at the airport . . . wanna come along?

It so happened that Warner Bros (Mingus' label at the time) had a guy in Vancouver who loved Mingus. He also showed up at the airport. He brought a limo, a box of Montecristos (Mingus' favourite cigar) and a photographer. To this day I resent that I wasn't the one to wind up in that photo.

More about me and Mingus.

evolution

2007-12-29T13:02:00.000-08:00

On July 20, 1969 I'd been staying for a couple of weeks at my friend Marian Seinen's place, in a house so small it was hardly bigger than a doll's house, in the back of a lot by the alley behind the normal sized house in the Kitsilano neighbourhood of Vancouver. My girlfriend at the time, Tassillie, and I had had a bit of a misunderstanding and were temporarily apart. She was a couple of blocks away and visited regularly. Thankfully, we solved our differences and were soon back together. I say "thankfully" because a few weeks later, after we moved together into the communal house at Stephens and Trafalgar (which included amongst the communards the future founder of Caper's stores where I now buy my oats and occasionally have a bowl of their excellent soup), we discovered that she was bearing our child – a condition that directed the course of my life from that point on and resulted in the dynasty of children and grandchildren over which I preside, saving me from a life of aimless wandering and pointless, abeit pleasant, solitude.

But on that date in 1969 this was all as yet unknown to anyone. That morning I sat alone in Marian's tiny living room eating a bowl of oatmeal with the TV on, watching the descent of the lunar module Eagle onto the Moon's surface. At the same time that I was thrilled to be seeing, live as it was happening, human beings jumping around on the moon, I was thinking, for all we know this could have been filmed at any time in a vacant lot in Texas. Or Odessa. But in fact I chose to believe it and still do.

It seemed to me that I was the only person on Earth who heard Neil Armstrong say "that's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind" and thought, "huh?"

Then a golf ball shot through the window, shattered glass flying in every direction. I went out to investigate, finding the landlady (who lived in the normal-sized house at the other end of the yard) and five or six of her boyfriends playing golf on the lawn, drunk, stupid, and belligerent. Before I opened my mouth they were already yelling at me, the lady informing me that it was her house and she could fire golfballs through any window she pleased. Who the fuck are you? Where the fuck's Marian? Fuck you, she explained. The boyfriends all yelling in agreement. I went back inside to contemplate homo sapiens.

I'd read a lot of science fiction. We met inhabitants of other planets. They'd be wise and benevolent. Or evil and murderous. It was one or the other. Stunted imagination, I think. What would a Martian find on Earth? Astronauts headed for the Moon? Billie Holiday singing Fine and Mellow with Lester Young on tenor? Or assholes whacking golfballs through windows? What about evolution . . . how come we don't all evolve?

My next topic: What did Khrushchev mean by "we will bury you"?

The drawing at the top was one of my first made on a computer . . . with Windows Paintbrush on a 286 PC, around 1989.

saxe

2007-12-24T23:12:00.000-08:00

David Saxe, photographed at his home somewhere in a southern U.S. state, via the Internet on December 22, 2007. [See note below.]

Saxe, whom I've known longer than just about anyone still living on this planet, has hardly been mentioned in these pages. That's partly due to the fact that I know he's a regular reader here and so I hesitate to embarrass the fellow.

We were in the same eighth grade class at West Hill but I barely knew him then. Marvin Minkoff whispered to me once that David's brother was a "beatnik" and that was good enough for me. Henry's an artist and that alone made him a beatnik in Minkoff's view. Minkoff once spotted me walking home home with a jazz record in hand (Jazz in Transition, a rare item these days) and that made me a beatnik, too, so there ya go.

I'm not sure what happened between eighth grade (I quit school the following year so that I could get on with my real life) and the Guilbault Street days by which time we were hanging out on a regular basis, listening to and exchanging jazz records, drinking beer nightly at the Swiss Hut, smoking weed, playing snooker at the Montreal Pool Room, and the like. Saxe was a student at the École des Beaux-Arts and was never without his Rapidograph, drawing endlessly on everything and his talent was impressive, to say the least. Eventually he was also carrying a camera around and was already a better photographer than I would ever be, so it's not surprising he's now one of the best and most interesting photographers on the planet.

Speaking of the Internet, I have to say that amongst its many miracles it is wholly responsible for David and I continuing our friendship after all these years. Without it we'd see each other once a decade and perhaps exchange a letter or two in alternate centuries. But in 1992 he was the only person aside from myself with an email address and so we began a correspondence that continues to this day and now comprises over 20,000 pages of text which elucidates the entire history of the second half of the twentieth century. At least as it applied to us.

David is a little older than and an thus I regard him as a mentor and role model. He's not only a better photographer and visual artist in general, he's the world's foremost crank. Next to him I'm a veritable Pollyanna.

David Saxe's photoblog is here. And more photos are in his web gallery here.

NOTE

This is a repost of a previous item. At that time I had not yet taken the photo of Saxe seen above.

I haven't seen him since about 2001, give or take. Thanks to advances in human ingenuity I was able to take that stunning portrait over the Internet using my Olympus digital and David's web cam. What will we think of next, I wonder?

The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet

2007-11-29T11:51:00.000-08:00

When I walked in the door this was playing. It was so loud I heard it half a block away. Then I plooped down on the sofa and didn't move till it was over.

The album wasn't even out, yet. I think it was Linda who brought it back from San Francisco. She knew all these guys and was always ahead of everyone in all things rock and roll. (Linda was the one responsible for the Grateful Dead spending the night in my room.) A month later I was in Montreal. A friend was coming to visit from New York and I told her, go to Sam Goody's and get me this record. (I figured it had to be out by now.) A week later people were coming by my place just to hear the album.

A couple of months after that the Mothers of Invention were in town for a two-week gig at Gary Eisenkraft's club, the New Penelope. That was just a few doors east of the Swiss Hut where I did most of my drinking. When the Swiss Hut hotties started getting very friendly towards me I had to wonder what made me so attractive all of a sudden. One sweetiepie in particular sat down at my table and asked, batting her eyeballs at me, so how long you guys gonna be in town? That explains it! They think I'm in the band. It was the hair.

This portrait of me, taken by Serena when she was a student at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, might explain some of the confusion on the part of the Swiss Hut Hotties. Long-hair on guys hadn't come in yet, so basically in Montreal it was me, Armand Vaillancourt, and the Mothers of Invention. I wasn't going around with a rose stuck in my teeth and could easily be mistaken by horny girls as a member of a famous U.S. American rock band.

Of course I went to see the band. I might have gone five times. Maybe six. It's all a blur though, by now. I hung out a bit – just a bit – with a couple of the guys including Zappa and Herb Cohen, the Mothers' manager. Cohen's phone number is still in my address book but probably not current. Maybe I'll call him up. Zappa was cool, and a very nice guy, but to recall any conversations at this point I would have to reconstruct my brain as it was then and there aren't enough drugs for that.

So that's as close as I ever got to enjoying rockstar groupie hotelroom frolics and possible plastercasting. If I'd been a little less honest . . . or maybe . . . if I could just remember . . .

AFTERTHOUGHTS

I wouldn't have thought that "tune" would stand the test of forty years – that's how long since I last heard it. After all, the avant garde isn't so avant garde anymore. But I must confess it holds up well and is as subversive as ever. When you consider this was released on MGM records . . . in 1966 . . . it's a kind of miracle.

Calgary

2007-11-12T23:21:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not at one time Calgary was, and maybe still is for all I know, the friendliest city on Earth. Well at any rate, on a weekday morning in 1963 it was the friendliest place I'd been to so far in my short life. In just my first couple of hours after being dropped off by my last ride I had been given money by strangers, without my having asked anyone for anything. They could see I was on the road and could probably use a few bucks. At a downtown diner my meal was paid for by another stranger with a smiling face who'd struck up a conversation with me and decided I was worth helping out just because I came from somewhere and was going somewhere else. Where didn't matter.

It didn't stop. My backpack and dusty clothes were an open invitation to everyone to talk to me, give me a buck or two, or just wish me good luck. Someone mentioned that Calgary was a boom town, everybody had money, and so I supposed this in some way explains the everpresent good vibes. On the sunny sidewalk of a downtown street an older gent sidles up next to me and asks me who I am and where I'm headed. What's your name? Smith, I say. In spite of everyone's good nature there still lurks in me a bit of the old suspicions. Really, what's your name, he insists. Why would you lie? So I tell him my name. You're Jewish, aren't you? I confess I am. Well, you should be proud and not making up names. And wherever you go in your travels you should always seek out other Jews. We help each other out. Well, I never thought about it that way before.

Walking along together we came to drycleaner, or it might have been a shoestore, or anything else. It was a long time ago. My name is Engel. This is my business, he said. Why don't you come by at noon, I'll take you to my home for a nice homecooked meal. I have a daughter about your age you can meet, too. Oh boy, I thought. Is this the end of the road for me?

I went back at noon and we drove way out to god knows where. Calgary seemed so huge and empty. We drove past nothing in the way of bars, clubs, joints, or anything, like a vast suburban nowhere. This man was obviously a nice guy and generous but he kept driving in his point about sticking with my own kind. Till then I didn't even realize I had a kind. But there it was. Avoid strangers, he added. It became clear that by "strangers" he meant gentiles. I kept my mouth shut. Well, he's an older guy, probably survived the war in Europe, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. But inside I was thinking, why travel the world if I'm only going to stick with one kind?

His wife cooked up the best meal i'd had in weeks. Maybe months. Engel licked his lips and got up from the table. I have to get back to work but you can stay a while and relax. Come see me later. His daughter and I retired to the livingroom. Sad to say she was not the least bit attractive to me. A little on the plump side with a plain doughy face but she was sweet as could be. We talked about jazz of all things and what else I can't remember. Plans for the future, no doubt. I wish I could have dug her more. Was the old man in a hurry to unload her? Imagine bringing home a hobo – Jewish hobo, but a hobo – to have lunch and sit in the livingroom with his zaftig princess. Well, she was nice and I hope today she's a happy jazz-loving grandmother but I got up and she told me where to get the bus back downtown. I stood on a hot summer streetcorner in an empty Calgary wasteland till the bus came, then wandered around and went back to the drycleaner's as requested. Or shoestore.

I own an apartment building, Engel told me. There's always an empty apartment. Go see the manager, Mrs Monk, and she'll let you in. You can stay as long as you want. Mrs Monk! I hoped she was distant cousin of the jazz genius, but it was not so. I wandered around Calgary the rest of the day and believe it or not ran into Murray and a little later the rest of the guys with whom I'd recently shared a bit of my westward journey. I was the King of the Road that day because I actually got us an apartment. Later that night the five of us went to the apartment and crashed. There was no furniture and we were all sprawled out on the carpeted floor the next morning when we were woken up by the sound of a key in the lock. The door creaked open and, after a short pause, creaked back shut. We all got up and a while later Engel was there demanding the return of the key. Monk had turned us in. I trusted you and you betrayed me . . . you let “strangers” stay in my apartment. It was clear what he meant by “strangers”.

Evicted.

Dale and I decided to head west and made it to Banff within a couple of hours where we soon hooked up again with the others for further adventures in the real world, involving breaking and entering, another eviction, mountain climbing, and a night in jail, to be revealed in an upcoming episode.

baseball

2007-11-09T00:29:00.000-08:00

For Bowering

I don't ordinarily dedicate things but I notice that all the best authors and poets do it and so perhaps by doing so I will raise myself a notch in the view of those who might throw me a testimonial dinner one day. In any event, I was looking up George Bowering in the Vancouver Public Library and practically fell over when I saw 83 books listed under his name. I don't have anything under mine, except overdue fines and the like.

Bowering is known to be a lover of baseball and some of the books are either about baseball or have some baseball content. It got me thinking. I'm not a fan of any sport and in fact hate the whole concept of sports, except for pool. I almost got good at pool myself but then my eyes went. Glasses didn't help. Lining up shots the rims always got in the way. By the time I discovered that they made special glasses for pool players it was too late. Also, the only sport I could bear to watch on TV, when I had one, was snooker. Because on TV they can show you the table from directly above, a view not available in most poolhalls.

But I love the sound of baseball. When I was eleven or twelve I spent a few weeks one summer with my cousin who lived in a third-floor walkup on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn. Of course he loved the Dodgers and at night we hung out in his room listening to the Dodgers games. He filled me in on who was who but very little of it stuck, nor did I care much, but I found the sound of the play-by-play, crowd noises in the background, and the thwack of bat on ball a great pleasure to hear. It was like a leisurely sonata that ambled along for a couple of hours on summer nights. After that when my Dad was listening to ball games in the kitchen while my mother watched old movies on the TV downstairs I'd go in there and hang out with him, paying no attention whatsoever to the game itself but just enjoying the sound of it as I putzed around the kitchen.

One day, a year or so after that Brooklyn summer I received a gift from my cousin. He'd caught a home run ball hit into the stands by Duke Snider. After the game he waited by the Ebbets Field exit and got Snider to sign the ball and in a gesture of the greatest generosity I have ever benefited from he sent it to me. I absolutely did not deserve that ball because within weeks, after taking it out to the street to play with . . . or whatever I did . . . I lost it. I hope I'm not being too unsentimental when I say that today that ball would be worth a million dollars.

Some years after that I watched a TV interview with a guy who had done baseball play-by-play for an independent radio station somewhere in some small town in the middle of America. Small stations couldn't afford the live network feed so guys like this kept track of game action via the incoming teletype and re-enacted the game as though live from the stadium right there in the studio complete with a battery of sound effects. Tape loops of crowd sounds (ooohs, ahhs . . cheers . . . and ambient noises) the bat on ball thwack, etc. Rather than being disillusioned I loved the idea of a game broadcast so pure there was no game itself. The teletype-announcer was a musician of the highest order.

Listen to The New York Giants vs The Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, August 31st, 1951:

My last pool game.
With Melody Diachun, Kitsilano Billiards, Vancouver. December 15 2002.

[Ebbets Field and Duke Snider, unidentified photographers]

Ahhh . . . we were young.

2007-11-06T09:02:00.000-08:00

This is my proudest achievement both as a photographer and as a presenter. Mary Lou Williams dwelt amongst the gods of jazz from her teenage years when she began her professional career. That would be in the nineteen-twenties. She played piano and wrote tunes and arrangements for Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy and went on to write for and/or perform with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Earl Hines, and others, and remained a modernist as the music evolved. In 1942 she formed a band that included Art Blakey on drums. Monk, Bud Powell, and others hung out at her Harlem apartment and revered her. As did Cecil Taylor, who came up with the idea that I should present her in concert in Vancouver and got the two of us in touch. She came and played four nights here with bassist Wyatt Ruther. She was scheduled to play with Larry Gales but just days before the gig Larry's wife dreamed he was in a plane crash and wouldn't let him travel. She aslo played a concert for kids on the Saturday afternoon, which I have on tape and will post one of these days.

I brought Mary Lou and Wyatt to the CKVU-TV studios for an interview on the "Vancouver Show" a live, two-hour nightly broadcast of local affairs. They'd play a tune, as well, and when they practiced a little before going on the air I took this picture.

So I got to hang out with a true jazz legend for four days and I confess that I regret not taking the opportunity to ask her more about the glory days of the birth of this greatest music on Earth. Frankly, I don't remember much conversation. (Fortunately, though, there is a great biography, which I highly recommend, Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams by Linda Dahl. Even if you have no interest in jazz history this book will fascinate you, plus the feminists among you will love it because you must realize that Williams was pretty much the only woman to make her name in the male-dominated jazz world, at least until Jane Fair came along. )

I made up for this lapse when Jay McShann came along a few years later. I had nothing to do with this gig, which was a week at the Anchor in Gastown. McShann came up around the same time as Williams, in what for me was the greatest period of jazz before the New York Fifty-Second Street bebop period of the mid-forties. Thirties Kansas City. I found out where McShann was staying and went to the hotel one day in the early afternoon. I didn't call ahead, I just took my chances. I used the hotel phone to call the desk and ask for McShann's room. He happened to be in and I just said I was no one in particular and could I just come up and hang out with him and he said sure, c'mon up and for a couple of hours we sat in his room talking about Kansas City. McShann knew Mary Lou of course. He was the first to hire Charlie Parker, as is well known. He talked about Bird, Mary Lou, Art Tatum, Basie, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, all people he played with, hung out with, got high with, all personal pals and he loved jiust talking about all these people. It was one of the best moments of my life and maybe I should have had a tape recorder with me because I've forgotten ninety-nine percent of everything, although the one percent that's left still electrifies me.

One thing I remember best, as I was leaving I said I had one more question.

I've read a lot of history of that time in Kansas City, about, for example, how you'd play dance gigs from six at night till six in the morning and then go and jam! Mary Lou Williams mentioned how they'd bang on her window in the early morning to say the piano player was worn out and packed it in and they needed another piano player and she'd get up and go take over. Was all that really true?

Yes, it was. Yes, it was.

How could you play a twelve hour gig and keep going, playing a jam session after that???

Ahhhh . . . . we were young.

narc

2007-11-02T21:53:00.000-07:00

My neighbour's a Mountie. Raymond, on the fourth floor. I run into him now and then, in the lobby or elevator and once he spotted me at the bus stop downtown and gave me a ride home. He drives a red Miata and so I cultivate his friendship in the hope that one day he'll lend me his car. The other day we were in the elevator, he was loaded down with a big jacket and a gun in its holster. Just getting off work, it looked like.

What exactly do you do?

Narcotics.

Oh shit, I whispered, backing into the corner.

I don't want to know about it.

I was kidding around, of course. I haven't indulged in illegal drugs since I got high with Sam Rivers in 1979. Even then it had been a long time and I only joined Sam because he's one of the best jazz musicians in the world and I thought if we got high together I'd learn something new but all that happened was I waited for the effects to wear off. I have no idea why I no longer enjoy what was once a favourite pastime. So much so, in fact, that I'd planned to move to North Africa because I understood that hashish was plentiful and legal. Of course, the people that told me that were very stoned, so who knows?

Hey, whatever happened to Abe Snedenko?

Who the fuck's Abe Snedenko?

Are you kidding me? You don't know about Abe Snedenko? There must be a plaque with his name hanging down at headquarters. Next time you're in the office ask one of the older guys to tell you about Abe Snedenko.

Abe Snedenko was Vancouver's number one narc in the sixties, his name synonymous with all the forces against peace, freedom, love, nudity, and addled consciousness. He was immortalized as "Sargent Stadanko" by Cheech and Chong on their 1973 smash album, Los Cochinos. Oddly enough I had to leave Vancouver to finally run into him myself. I was spending most of the summer of 1968 at Galley Bay, up the coast about 150 miles. Accessible only by boat or float plane. No roads, no powerlines, just pure natural beauty. It started out as a small commune but by the end of that summer there were, I'm guessing, close to sixty people there at one time. Most of them high most of the time.

It was a beautiful scene. Really . . . it's not just the hippie in me talking. We grew our own food, fished, and beachcombed for stray logs for the little money we needed. We cavorted au naturel amongst the trees and flowers and lay upon the rocky shore gazing out at the distant . . . etc. Of course they had to bust us.

There was a forty-foot ketch tied to the dock and sometimes I liked to sleep on it because the gentle rocking soothed me. In the morning I'd open my eyes and see the expanse of still water with the peaks snowcapped in the distance. Perfect in every way. But one night I had trouble getting to sleep because the dozen or so dogs that lived up there kept barking without letup. The were going nuts. I thought perhaps they'd cornered a bear but in any case I got up and dragged my sleeping bag back up to the big house.

Everybody had been rounded up and corralled into the main living room of the big house as five or six mounties asked stupid tough-guy questions and searched sleeping bags and backpacks for drugs. If you ever needed a picture of how utterly and irredeemably ridiculous society's reaction to the phenomenon of young people having a fun life was, this was it. Singing and guitar playing kids having a good laugh while these stern, super-serious gendarmes flashlighted their stupid way around an old ramshackle house hundreds of miles from anywhere in pursuit of nothing.

The head pig was the esteemed Abe Snedanko. After a while he rounded up his Mounties and slinked off into the night on their Mountie boat, threatening to return only next time he'd find something and throw everybody on earth under the age of 18 not wearing a suit into the clink. Now, four decades later, down on the corner from here scabrous shit-stained sleazebags hang out openly dealing not just some harmless weed, but crack cocaine, crystal meth, and worse, by the 24-hour inconvenience store.

Raymond, how come you don't bust those scumballs on the corner.

Nah . . . who gives a shit?

Man, they don't make narcs like they use to.

By the way, just to set the record straight, I'm not now nor have I ever been a "hippie". For one thing I'm too old. I came along more in the earlier "beat" timeframe when the term "hippy" was coined to describe young girls emulating the Joan Baez look who wanted to hang out and make the hipster scene. I knew many hippies, of course, and whenever possible enjoyed the liberated lusts of their females, although not as often as I'd have liked or as I imagined, but often enough. Amen.