“Last Splash” at 20: The Breeders Ride Again

Original cover of “Last Splash”, 1993.

Full disclosure: From a personal and professional perspective, there is no way to overestimate the significance of the Breeders in my own life and career. If music is a drug, and there have been studies suggesting that the two affects part of the brain in similar ways, then the Breeders were my marijuana, my gateway drug—at least, to the circles in which they ran and rotated. As such, I was thrilled to hear that the original lineup—Kim and Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs and Jim McPherson—was reuniting this year to tour in support of the 20^th anniversary of their most well-known album, 1993’s Last Splash (4AD/Elektra).

The “classic” lineup. Front: Jim McPherson and Josephine Wiggs. Back: Kelley and Kim Deal.

The album, which was a touchstone of the “alternative rock” scene of that era, has been re-released in stunning new form by 4AD’s Vaughan Oliver, who’s been established as a master of album cover design and packaging for a quarter-century. The new “LSXX” version contains 46 tracks, spread across three CDs for a very reasonable price of $23; the same material is also available on a sumptuous seven-LP box set for $90—worth every penny for a serious fan. Both versions of the box set contain not only the entire original Last Splash album, but other key documents from that time, including: the full 16-track Stockholm concert that was previously only available in truncated form through the Breeders Digest fan club; 14 tracks recorded in settings ranging from demos and BBC/Peel sessions to guest appearances on compilations like the epochal No Alternative; and all four of the four-song EPs that came immediately before and after the album—1992’s Safari and 1994’s Head To Toe, in addition to the singles for “Cannonball” and “Divine Hammer”. There’s also a 24-page booklet.

Last Splash LSXX

LSXX, interior…

At this writing, the box-set is in pre-order; the CDs start shipping on May 14, but the vinyl doesn’t go out until June/July. For me, as a longtime fan who’s not gotten my copy yet—although “fan” seems imprecise; the old wrestling term “mark” seems more appropriate—just reading through the tracklist brings back fond memories of not only the music itself, but of the often extreme lengths I once went to in order to obtain this material in the good ol’ days before the Internet, before e-commerce, eBay, Amazon and automated shipping.

For me, a Breeders run usually meant a trip to historic Five Points in Jacksonville, the longtime hub of my city’s alternative/indie scene before the action began diversifying into downtown and Springfield while crossing over into other genres. Last Splash was a hit, so it wasn’t necessary to hit up spots like Now Hear This!, since it could be had at the mall, but I got it from there anyway; it was my first trip to that neighborhood, and I also bought the excellent Copacetic album by Velocity Girl that day, starting a relationship with the area (where I now live) that will always persist in some form or another.

Now, getting hold of the EPs was a chore involving phone calls, special orders and the kind of research I only put now into corrupt politicians or would-be business partners. In the ‘90s, my resource for this stuff was a place called the Theory Shop, on Park St. It was owned by the Faircloth sisters; they also owned the legendary Beaches club Einstein-A-Go-Go, where many of the era’s top alternative bands performed and where a whole generation of artists, musicians, writers, fans and entrepreneurs first met each other, slowly knitting a social fabric that now stretches across most of this country. (A lot of those shows were taped, but sadly I’ve never heard any of it; it probably comprises an indispensable auditory document, and hopefully it sees light someday.) They were geniuses for special orders; if they didn’t have it, they could get almost anything, and usually for far less than one was willing to pay. They had the music, and certain curios that are now almost impossible to find: autographed posters, signed Breeders tube socks, even promo copies of the album on green vinyl.

The 1990s were an especially explosive time in the cultural development of a nation that is always pushing hard toward the future, and a big part of that era was what was then called “alternative music”. The term has fallen out of favor now, even retrospectively, as that music’s pervasive impact ultimately overwhelmed whatever outsider pretentions once existed. But, at the time, it was the perfect description not only of the actual music itself, but also of the intent that drove the many artists, producers, record executives, journalists and fans who were involved in its production and proliferation, starting with the man who was, for a time, at the center of the entire music world: the late, great Kurt Cobain. Had he not existed, a significant portion of the last 20 years of music history would quite possibly have never happened, and that fact is of special relevance in regard to the subject at hand.

Last Splash was officially released on August 31, 1993, but audiences were already primed, myself included. I was 15 back then. I was mostly into jazz and rap music; my tastes in rock and roll at that time were strictly limited to AC/DC, Queen, Hendrix and Guns and Roses; I recall enjoying GNR’s Use Your Illusion double-album, which I bought on cassette, way more than any decent human being should, absurdly, decadently, obnoxiously hyperbolically brilliant as it was. (To this day, I’m still kinda sad that the Axl Rose/Bob Guccione, jr. fight never actually happened; if it ever does, someone please inform me.) The first CD I ever bought was the self-titled debut by Rage Against the Machine, and I enjoyed it, but I was in no way culturally-inclined toward the rock music of that time, not at that point. My favorite rock band then was Led Zeppelin and, as much as I love the Breeders, they remain a very close second.

Many of my peers, of course, came from backgrounds were they were able to experience the genesis of what would evolve into “alternative music” holistically, so the effect of its rise was perhaps not as game-changing as it would be for. At that time, I had no idea what had been percolating in the New York, or Boston, or Athens. Seattle? Other than it being the estranged home of Hendrix, I knew nothing about the rock scene there, or anywhere else, until Kurt Cobain got the big push and methodically began programming names into the collective database of pop-culture. Once he started wearing certain t-shirts, covering certain songs and hiring certain bands to open for his band or sit in with them, I, like most people, spent the rest of the decade playing catch-up to what he had already internalized and regurgitated as the music of Nirvana.

Cobain’s infamous description of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as his failed attempt to write a Pixies song was to the eternally-corrupt American music industry what then-president George Bush’s declaration of “a New World Order” was to geopolitics. It was, in both cases, the start of a new era in mass-consciousness, a new formulation of the context in which we all exist. To be a Nirvana fan meant you had to listen to all these bands you’d often never heard of, because you knew their work was crucial to the development of the stuff you like. It’s like how the British Invasion forced mainstream America to take a second look at the Blues, or how hip-hop helped spur a new appreciation of older black musicians ranging from Clyde Stubblefield to Roger Troutman—or, for that matter, how the “New World Order” concept became the global context in which we placed the many obscure, localized conflicts and atrocities that have happened in the subsequent years. While it is entirely coincidental that Bush made the relevant remarks to a special joint-session of Congress on September 11, 1991—which happened to be the day after “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released, it’s fitting.

By the time Last Splash made its big splash, the Nirvana push was almost two years old, and the; Cobain would be dead within seven months of its release-date, but a significant portion of the time he had left was spent in various ways of giving the Breeders the rub. They were one of the opening acts on Nirvana’s last American tour, and they got perhaps the biggest exposure of their careers when they opened for Nirvana on MTV’s (pre-taped) New Year’s Eve special in 1993, playing the two lead singles from their album, “Cannonball” (released August 9) and “Divine Hammer” (released October 25).

“Cannonball” was released as a single 22 days before the album, which eventually went platinum based largely on that song. To this day, it remains their best-known song, and one of the more recognizable musical documents of that era. It’s been so ubiquitous, in fact, such a pure and perfect song, that it will always threaten to overshadow the depth, diversity and dynamism of their other stuff—a legacy that jumps genres and hews to no particular pre-defined aesthetic. For as the Deal sisters made their way through the business in those years, they did so as themselves; it’s not that their music conformed to people’s expectations, but that the expectations conformed to the music. That seems a trait they shared with Cobain, a trait he recognized, appreciated and did his very best to encourage, on- and off-stage. (Some seven months before Last Splash was released, Cobain praised Pod as one of his favorite albums ever in an interview with Melody Maker; “It’s an epic that will never let you forget ypur ex-girlfriend”, he said, and he was right.)

Cobain was neither the first nor last artist within those circles to meet a tragic, premature and, frankly, suspicious end, but because it was him, the overall effect was much, much worse. Culturally, Cobain’s death was later book-ended by the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, but many great talents fell in the interim. The summer of 1994 was a summer of death for the musicians who knew him most closely, many of whom took their own demons on the road, touring through grief and uncertainty. Among the casualties of that brutal year were the Breeders—that is, the version of the band that recorded Last Splash. After Kelley Deal was allegedly caught signing for a FedEx package of heroin, virtually all of the band’s forward momentum to that point was stopped cold as a corpse. She went to rehab, Wiggs and McPherson left to pursue their own projects, and Kim Deal simply remained Kim Deal—the one constant in all of this. Despite all of the great work they’ve done since then, separately and together, they would never again ascend to a commercial plateau anywhere near their peak, which sucks, but life moves fast, and the fickle tastes of the pop-music business move even faster.

The sisters Deal and their colleagues continued recording their own projects for the rest of the ‘90s and then, like a phoenix of sorts, the Breeders was reborn in May 2002. That Title TK happened at all was viewed by some as miraculous, and by others as a sign of the apocalypse, but not even their most hard-core fans (and I count myself among them, maybe even at the tippy-top of the list) would have expected the album to be as unbelievable epic as it was. It’s not just that it was a good album by the Breeders; it was an amazing album by a version of the Breeders that did not exist prior to that point. With its antecedents in the Deals’ solo work in those frustrating years between Breeders albums, the difference between Title TK and Last Splash, in terms of both form and content, was as dramatic as that between Last Splash and Pod. Aside from the vocals and a couple little musical tricks, the three albums might as well have been by three completely different bands, and to a certain extent they were.

It’s now been over a decade since the revamped Breeders lineup strolled into the new century, recording two full-length albums, releasing two albums and an EP in that time while touring the world and landing high-prestige gigs like Coachella and All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP). Despite this new era of success, some fans remain nostalgic for the “classic” version of the band, with Wiggs and McPherson. With the new lineup gelled and seasoned, it seemed unlikely that would ever happen, but as one has come to expect from the Breeders, anything can happen. As such, the Deal/Deal/Wiggs/McPherson version of the band will reunite and tour this year, in celebration of the 20^th anniversary of the record that made them. I’ve not seen them play in a decade, and I just realized I’ll have to miss their show in Atlanta on May 15; it irritates me beyond words, but that feeling is well-surpassed by the overall joy I feel, just knowing that the Deals are not only alive and well, but thriving. And as they celebrate the 20^th anniversary of their biggest commercial success, it’s really more like a celebration of a scene they helped create—a scene that now holds a dominant position across the scope American culture. As it turned out, with Last Splash, the Breeders were just dipping their toes into the water.

Morrison Pierce and Chance Isbell: “March Dies”/”Pandora’s Box”

Morrison Pierce and Chance Isbell at CORK

Individually, Morrison Pierce and Chance Isbell have crafted two of the more unique brands in this region’s art scene, spanning a range of media in various parts of the country—Pierce as an a painter, musician and maker of short-films, and Isbell as an illustrator and one of the area’s most in-demand tattoo artists. Collectively, they are working together on a new project centered in and around the One Spark event running April 17-21 in downtown Jacksonville. I spoke with them at the CORK Arts District building in Riverside, a place where both men are fixtures and facilitators of the facility’s functions. Each man maintains their own studio spaces in the building.

CORK plays host to their “March Dies” show, which opens on Friday night, March 29. Both men will be displaying some of their newest work for sale, while also offering a variety of items for a silent auction. Live music during and after the show will be provided by Creep City, Burnt Hair (aka Matthew Moyer) and Pierce’s own group, Scared Rabbits. A $10 donation is requested, but not required. All proceeds raised will go to fund the installation project Pierce and Isbell are planning for the epic One Spark crowdfunding event in April. “Pandora’s Box” (# 598) will consist of a large wooden frame with plexiglass panels, creating a large box for attendees to walk through. The artists will use paints to give the box the feel of a stained-glass window, but rendered in their own inimitable style.

I sat down with Pierce in his studio on the 27^th; video of the session can be found on YouTube. He explained that a lot of his motivation/inspiration for doing the piece relates to challenging the sociopolitical status quo, the quiet complacency that has led Americans to embrace extremism while handing over their own civil liberties, all for the sake of fighting an enemy that is spectral at best, and illusory at worse. Having witnessed, first-hand, the chance in people’s attitudes over just the past decade since our disastrous drive into war, Pierce feels obliged to help spur activism through his art.

American English: Matthew Cuban’s transatlantic adventure

As a writer and periodic public speaker, I’ve dabbled in the fine art of spoken-word for years, here and there. If I said I was any good, I’d be lying, but I’ve done just enough of it to inform my deep and sincere appreciation for those who can actually do it well. To that end, I’d say at least two of the best in the business happen to be residents of Northeast Florida. There is, of course, the singularly-skilled Al Letson, whose fans have watched him grow from slam-poetry roots into one-man shows in multiple states, network TV commercials, his own acclaimed show (“State of the Re:Union“) on NPR and even writing comic-books. The other is Matthew “Cuban” Hernandez, who also emerged from the world of slam-poetry and who has also crafted his own unique and compelling career.

That trajectory, which began at open-mic shows in Jacksonville, is now poised to carry him all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, to England, with your help. Hernandez, who is currently working through a three-month spoken-word tour of the west coast, has put together a website at IndieGogo.com (a Kickstarter-type operation) detailing his plans for this year; these plans include not only a slate of scheduled performances in England, but also a project that, believe it or not, is even closer to his heart than his own material. Having already made his name as one of this country’s elite slam-poetry teachers (largely through his work with the Jacksonville youth poetry collective “Shattered Thought”), Hernandez was recently invited to jump the pond and come coach the 2013 UK Youth Slam team, based in historic Leeds. This presents him with not only the opportunity to expand his own personal brand, but to further strengthen the already surprisingly strong connection between the First Coast and the UK.

What Hernandez needs is a dollop of the heavy scratch to fund his adventures, and that is what the web campaign facilitated. Supporters can contribute as little as $1 toward helping Hernandez follow his own dream, while simultaneously helping to school the next generation of spoken-word talent. Larger donations are rewarded with sumptuous swag: $25 gets you two autographed copies of Cuban’s excellent debut CD, which makes a nice gift for fans of the genre; $60 gets you three signed copies; $100 gets you the three CDs, plus a custom-composed poem from him to you. For $500, you name it! So far, almost two dozen people have pledged funds at this early stage of the campaign, mostly in increments of $100, but those numbers are sure to increase–as they should, because Matthew Cuban is an extremely talented artist who really embodies the spirit of Ben Franklin’s words about “doing well by doing good”. One hopes he succeeds, now and in the future.

(Now, this is entirely tangential to the subject at hand, but since we’re discussing spoken-word and the UK, I’ll deviate briefly for purpose of putting over the amazing Brockley-based Kate Tempest, who at just 26 has already distinguished herself as perhaps the world’s #1 performance-poet–a subjective take, yes, but one that is easily arguable. When I heard of Cuban’s project, she was the first person I thought of, so of course one hopes that Hernandez’s run on the island includes at least one summit meeting with the creator of “Cannibal Kids”!)

sheltonhull@gmail.com

Wrestling with Fools: the IOC exposes their business

Kurt Angle, Olympic gold medal winner, 1996

For almost all of its existence, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been a fundamentally controversial organization. From the blatant racism of the Avery Brundage era, to the hookers-and-cocaine taint affixed to the affiliates of Juan Antonio Samaranch, not to mention its historic Keystone Kops approach to doping and overall political cowardice on matters great and small, this venerable and, sadly, irreplaceable organization has been known to the public more for what it has done wrong (which is plenty) than for the many good things it has done right. And that’s a shame, because the Olympics is one of the very few things in this world that humanity has generally been able to rally around, suspend hostilities and truly enjoy as a species, rather than a collection of corrupt nations.

Now, in its 118th year of shady operation, the IOC has actually managed to render a decision so wrong-headed, malicious and foolhardy that it comes very close to exceeding that group’s already pathetic standard. On Wednesday, February 12, the IOC made what may be, arguably, the worst decision ever made by any governing body in the entire recorded history of organized sports when they announced that, starting with the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad in 2020, wrestling will not longer an official Olympic sport. And before you ask: Yes, that is exactly what I just said. Now, take a moment, wherever you are, and let the language linger in your mind for a bit…

WRESTLING, among the world’s oldest sports, and one of the core events comprising the very foundation of the grand and glorious Olympic tradition from almost its very inception in 776 BC, is not suddenly inconsistent with the IOC’s vision. Obviously, this has a lot of people really angry, starting with the international wrestling community itself. The IOC, for some ambiguous reason, felt obliged to discontinue a sport, and it came down to five candidates: Wrestling, Modern Pentathalon, Badminton, Table-tennis and Taekwondo. The elimination of wrestling constitutes an especially bitter blow to women, who’d lobbied hard to acquire medal status for women’s wrestling, and only got it in 2004. (So far, the Japanese have dominated in that field.)

If it stands, this decision will in my opinion have a disproportionately negative impact on the United States, which has always been among the dominant countries for Olympic wrestling, and which has built up a massive, complex human infrastructure around its amateur wrestling scene. For amateur wrestlers–indeed, for most of the leading Olympic sports–that gold medal is the Holy Grail for thousands of young athletes, who work like animals to develop the physical skill and mental discipline required of elite-level athletes. They labor for as much as 20 years, just to get the chance to win a medal, which carries a small honorarium but no career stability. Wrestlers aren’t the kind of athletes who often end up on Wheaties boxes or doing commercials for Gatorade or Subway; that gold medal is not a gold-mine for them. At best, Olympic-level wrestlers can hope to parlay their accomplishments into success in either professional wrestling or MMA, which many experts have claimed is even harder than getting into the NFL or NBA. With the prospect of Olympic glory removed, it’s anyone’s guess as to how chilling the effect may be on the amateur scene here, and worldwide, for that matter; it’s doubtful that the IOC gave that matter any consideration at all.

The end of wrestling as an Olympic sport may also be potentially awful for Olympic business. Wrestling is generally a popular sport for TV audiences, especially in the United States, Japan and parts of the Middle East–certainly not on the level of marquee sports like track and field, swimming and women’s gymnastics, but considerable. Obviously, I’m biased, being a longtime fan of all the combat sports, but I think the blow is already being felt among general audiences, as well. Wrestling is a big heartland activity here; in states like Ohio, Iowa, Oklahoma and Minnesota, wrestling may be even more popular than football. The names of men like Dan Gable, Danny Hodge, Verne Gagne, Bruce Baumgartner, Rulon Gardner, Alexander Karelin, David Schultz, Chris Taylor, the Iron Sheik and, of course Kurt Angle, reverberate in the living memory of a large segment of the population like demigods, more mythos than man after a point. The termination of this tradition is an abomination, and like any rube in pursuit of combat against a skilled wrestler, this decision is unlikely to stand for very long.

Kurt Angle, 11-time world champion pro-wrestler, and counting…

sheltonhull@gmail.com

Preview: “Music For Meows”, Feb. 16

This is the flyer. You don’t need one, because you’re reading about it already…

The third annual Music For Meows concert is being held next Saturday, February 16, at Jack Rabbits in San Marco, and I’d totally forgotten until Heather Bruce (whom I’ve known for years) hit me with a flyer at Birdies the other night. Well, she didn’t literally hit me, in the projectile sense–she slid it into the space between our drinks on the table. Ms. Bruce has been volunteering with the sponsors, the Stray Cat Saviors Group, since the event’s inception in 2011, and she counts it among the most rewarding experiences of her life. The purpose of the concert is to raise money for organizations working to reduce the number of stray, homeless and feral cats in Northeast Florida, with the ultimate goal of making Jacksonville a strictly no-kill city–certainly a noble undertaking, albeit formidable.

As to the event itself: “Music For Meows” will comprise a silent auction alongside the actual concert, which features a diverse sampling of the region’s musical fare, including the maniac metal-men of Status Faux, the ferocious folk stylings of Lauren Fincham, the ethereal electro-pop of Shoni and the balls-out bombast of All Night Wolves. The Pinz, Xgeezer, Dixie Rodeo and FFN are also playing, while I know nothing about them at present, I’m familiar enough the artists cited to be sure it’s all well-worth the $10 cover, which goes to help the little kitty-cats, anyway, so it’s money well-spent in any case. The organizers are partnering with local groups like First Coast No More Homeless Pets. (To buy tickets online, click this link.) As the kids say, “Meow!”

DVD Review: John Cage: Journeys In Sound

 John Cage: Journeys In Sound (Accentus Music)

The late composer John Cage (1912-1992) is one of those artists whose legacy is almost impossible to overstate. There was a world before Cage came along, and that world remains long after he’s gone, but those worlds are very different, and Cage’s seminal sound-craft is a decisive factor. He didn’t just change the music business; he changed music itself, in the process recalibrating the way humans make music, how we listen to music and how we think about music at the most basic and fundamental levels, from orchestrations and collaborations with other artists to manipulations of instruments and recording techniques. As a composer, I see him really as the heir to Arnold Schoenberg, but that could be debated.

A new DVD from Accentus Music, John Cage: Journeys In Sound, was released last October in celebration of Cage’s 100^th birthday. It takes a look at the world he left behind, demonstrating in several different ways how the man’s influence persists even now, 20 years after his death. Cage is one of the very few modern composers to have a serious presence in the larger pop-culture, known even to people who’ve never heard his music—and there is a lot to be heard. This release results from the collective efforts of two critically-acclaimed documentary filmmakers, Allan Miller and Paul Smaczny, who together led a production crew numbering some three dozen different people and companies. Miller, a two-time Oscar winner, was a longtime friend and colleague of Cage’s, and he comes armed with archival footage dating back to the 1960s, which he and Smaczny augmented with material drawn from a wide variety of sources around the world. The result is not so much a unified whole, but a series of sketches that all revolve around a central theme: “John Cage”.

The film begins as an old-school 1950s TV set opens up from its place in a sunlit field; the footage shows a young Cage employing various household items to create sounds for an audience whose nervous laughter gives away their general confusion—a common reaction. It then cuts to an older Cage, making meticulous edits to a film project he was constructing out of his famous “Chance Operations”. A scene in Times Square captures a cross-section of people talking about Cage on the street; the point seems to be that, while Cage may be obscure, he is hardly as obscure as one might expect, at least in that setting. The sights and sounds of the city, among other locales, acts as

22 different artists are featured in the film, besides Cage himself. Most of these people would be virtually unknown to the casual observer, with some few notable, indeed crucial exceptions. Topping that list are John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who actually appears in two different incarnations, in her youth alongside Lennon and Cage (bearded, Bob Ross-like), then later in life, after she’d long since become a sort of godmother to the New York avant-garde performance-art circles in which she and Cage both operated for years. Now, it’s not like John Cage needs John Lennon, or anyone else, to lend credibility to his work (which was often controversial to the point of being divisive, like an Albert Ayler or a Lou Reed, circa Metal Machine Music), but his very presence in the film, like some kind of omniscient, omnipresent ghost, elevates the whole affair beyond the quotidian; Lennon, as always, flirts with the sublime.

Journeys In Sound is a documentary about a musician, and not an actual music video, although we are treated to interpretations of Cage’s work in multiple contexts and configurations. Those who may find that there’s not enough actual music on the DVD to suit their tastes will be assuaged somewhat by the bonus material, which begins with a performance of Cage’s infamous exercise in ambient noise, “4’33”, conducted by the great David Tudor. The Schlagquatett Koln applies their percussive skills to Cage’s “Second Construction”, while pianist Steffen Schleiermacher performs a piece from Cage’s “Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano”, followed by his “Water Music”; the latter two pieces really touch on those aspects of Cage’s artistry that has resonated the most contemporaneously. The set is rounded out by interviews with Cage, his longtime companion Merce Cunningham—a former dancer for Martha Graham who later emerged as arguably the leading choreographer of modern dance—and artist Robert Rauschenberg, all of whom were giants in their respected fields but who together pioneered a whole new concept of multidisciplinary art. The DVD booklet also includes a five-page interview with Miller, which helps put the film in context.

John Cage: Journeys In Sound will not add too much to the knowledge-base of serious Cage fans, but it offers a very nice introduction to a man whose work often defies explanation, in part because so many skilled musicians themselves made the effort to put Cage’s influence in their own words. If Cage himself were alive, or could be sent a copy of the DVD in whatever dimension he presently occupies, he would probably enjoy it very much. Of course, if one can construct a documentary whose very subject could watch it and learn something, that is the mark of success—a mark that Messrs. Miller and Smaczny have certainly earned.

sheltonhull@gmail.com

DVD Review: Jon Moxley

Stories From the Streets: The Jon Moxley Story (Smart Mark Video)

 

For most pro-wrestling fans, their first real glimpse of Dean Ambrose in action came on December 16, when he and his colleagues in The Shield won their WWE on-screen debut in a six-man Tables, Ladders and Chairs (TLC) match against Kane, Ryback and Daniel Bryan. It was, without question, one of the most impressive “debuts” in the recent history of the sport. For three “rookies” to not only hold their own, but to win in decisive fashion against two former world champions and a likely future champion in Ryback demonstrated the great value WWE has put on Ambrose, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns.

That said, a certain percentage of the wrestling audience that night was able to put that match in broader context, to see it not only as the brilliant arrival of three new characters, but also as the present culmination of the individual journeys all three young men have taken to reach that point. In the case of Ambrose, that journey is all the more remarkable: Over the course of the past decade, he has worked his way up from the very bottom of the industry to a place that is, if not quite yet the very top, certainly someplace a little bit higher and far more special that the oft-maligned WWE mid-card, which for many talents has proven to be the functional equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. That Shield were able to basically leapfrog so many guys on the roster in their first month on the air shocked many observers, but it was hardly any surprise to those of us who’ve followed Ambrose’s path to success.

A 2011 DVD release in Smart Mark Video’s “Best On the Indies” series helps put all this in context, offering a pretty comprehensive look at Dean Ambrose when he was known as Jon Moxley on the independent circuit. The “Dean Ambrose” character was born upon his arrival at FCW (now a rebooted NXT), the WWE developmental territory in Florida run by Dusty Rhodes and Steve Keirn. This DVD shows the viewer what WWE saw in Moxley when they signed him in April 2011. It would be imprecise to say that Ambrose and Moxley are the same character, although they are portrayed by the same guy. Both are wild and unpredictable, their promos laced with menace, but Ambrose’s fury is much more contained, focused, directed.

Jon Moxley could’ve never been in The Shield, because he didn’t trust anyone. He entered FCW with a head of steam after running wild across the indies in 2010, and set himself apart immediately with the most intense promos ever cut in that company, augmented with a series of game-changing bouts against Damien Sandow and future Shield teammate Seth Rollins (who, as Tyler Black, was Ring of Honor champion for seven months).

What really put him on the mainstream wrestling map, however, was his two matches against William Regal, widely-viewed as one of the greatest pro-wrestlers of all-time. It was a “passing of the torch” kind of angle, which played out over the course of a year: Ambrose baited Regal into a match, which he reluctantly accepted despite a suspicion that Ambrose would end his career someday; Regal beats Ambrose in brutal fashion, giving him a shoulder injury that would allow Ambrose to steal the ol’ Martin Riggs “pop it back into socket” gimmick from Lethal Weapon; Ambrose broods for a year, getting increasingly unhinged as Regal refuses to grant him a rematch; then, finally, he gets it, in the last match of the last episode of FCW, and destroys Regal. Between the stuff with Regal and the stuff with Rollins, Ambrose exposed himself as one of the versatile and convincing workers anywhere, and it’s hardly surprising that WWE saw fit to bring him to the main roster in such strong fashion.

Much like the Sara Del Rey DVD reviewed here last year, this box-set begins with an interview with Moxley; it runs over two hours, and finds him detailing some of his personal background, as well as his entry into pro-wrestling, his experiences in various places along the way, and his overall views on the business. Such features are always interesting, but especially so in this case, because one of Moxley’s drawing-cards in the ring has been his exquisite sense of ring-psychology. Born in Cincinnatti, OH, the six-four, 225-pound Moxley was never a high-spot artist who dazzled the crowd with somersaults, nor was he a suplexing MMA acolyte. Like fellow WWE stars Wade Barrett and Antonio Cesaro, Moxley was a throwback to the old-school; his style was all about aggression, energy and logic. Even when his character was depicted as basically a full-on lunatic, one always had the suspicion that he hadn’t lost nearly as many brain-cells as he would have us think.

Years later, that suspicion would be borne out at TLC, where Ambrose took the finishers of all three of his opponents, yet still somehow managed to leave the ring on his own two feet. Watching the announcers express their shock at Ambrose’s casual facility with the items of plunder laid out for the match was a laugh-out-loud moment for smart marks nationwide; “Of course Dean Ambrose knows how to use a chair,” they might say; “Have you ever heard of Jon Moxley? Duhhh!” Moxley, you see, was a two-time former CZW Heavyweight Champion. His two reigns had a combined length of 357 days, broken up only by a seven-day reign by Nick Gage; during that time, Moxley competed in some of the most brutal matches held in this country in recent memory. What elevated these hardcore bloodbaths from the common, boring “garbage wrestling” shtick was Moxley’s persona.

The 14 matches included in this set are drawn mainly from his run in Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) in 2009 and 2010; there are also matches from his early years in the Heartland Wrestling Association (HWA). Sadly, there is none of his work as leader of Kamikaze USA in Dragon Gate USA, nor his matches from Evolve, though one suspects that material will be packaged for wider release soon enough. There are also none of the promos on which Moxley made such a big part of his reputation. He is, without question, one of the best talkers in wrestling over the last few years, and his work in FCW/NXT/WWE so far offers just a glimpse of what he can do. It’s unclear what specific stuff drew the attention of WWE, though he notes in the interview that he’d already wrestled some dark matches against MNM and the Big Show some years ago, so maybe they were always following his career.

Moxley’s CZW title defenses against Nick Gage and “The Ego” Robert Anthony were incredibly brutal, as well as a barbed-wire match against archrival Drake Younger from WXW; they are among the highlights here. The Death Match style can be widely-seen in the US and Japan, and most of it manages somehow to be boring despite the extreme gore. Moxley’s work in that genre is more reminiscent of a Terry Funk-type, in the sense that all the crazy spots are used to punctuate the psychology, not to define it. It becomes less about “When will Moxley hit the wire?” and more about “Will Moxley hit the wire at all?” It’s a crucial distinction, in terms of keeping the audience’s attention. This creates a lot more narrative tension early on, while nicely offsetting the violence that comes later. The match with Anthony, in particular, belongs in any serious anthology of the modern-day Death Match style.

Moxley following a CZW match with Thumbtack Jack, courtesy http://neverhandover.blogspot.com/

Watching this material certainly helps give last year’s brief, aborted Ambrose-Foley feud some needed context. But what also comes through quite clearly is that, like Funk, Moxley didn’t need weapons to sustain the crowd’s attention; that, of course, made his usage of them all the more compelling when it happened. Two matches feature Sami Callihan, who himself has also become a huge name on the indie scene. As the Switchblade Conspiracy, they were one of the dominant stables in CZW. In this set, they team to face Cheech and Cloudy (aka Up In Smoke) in a tag match where, in a fairly rare occurrence (outside of Dragon Gate, anyway), Moxley is actually the biggest guy in the ring; watching him doing power spots as the heel makes for hilarious viewing, which presumably was the point. Later, they face each other in an excellent match for Moxley’s CZW title.

Personally, my favorite match in this set is a time-limit draw with Davey Richards from HWA in February 2010; it’s only 15 minutes, but could have easily gone much longer. Richards, a trained paramedic who studies Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on the side, is one of the best wrestlers in the world today—a former world champion for Full Impact Pro (FIP) and Pro-Wrestling Guerilla (PWG) who’s also held tag-team gold in New Japan. He’s best-known, of course, for his work in Ring of Honor. Out of 17 ROH World Champions, his 321-day reign (which paved the way for Kevin Steen) was the fourth-longest in ROH history; only Bryan (462), Nigel McGuiness (545) and Samoa Joe (645) held that belt longer. In other words, Richards is as technically-adept as it gets these days, and Moxley’s ability to hang with a guy of that caliber with no gimmicks or tomfoolery surely turned some heads, because he won three world titles in the next six months.

Whereas the indie scene and its plugged-in fanbase was once the stuff of ridicule on WWE TV, recent years have seen a massive influx of talent from that very realm. Not only were the talents ready to perform on that level, but social media, YouTube, podcasts and other web-based platforms proved that they were verifiably marketable. That logic has proven spot-on in the cases of CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Sandow and Cesaro, with more coming on an almost weekly basis. As nominal leader of The Shield, Dean Ambrose is the next stage in the evolution of this business model, and he’s already demonstrated his ability to run with the ball. The man’s been calling himself the future of wrestling for years now, and it appears increasingly possible that he may be correct. Stories From the Streets shows us how that future began.

sheltonhull@gmail.com

DVD Review: “Women Of Honor” (ROH)

Women Of Honor (Ring of Honor DVD)

In my opinion, 2012 was one of the best and most productive years ever for the unique artform that is women’s professional wrestling, particularly in the American market, where the ladies have had to struggle for acceptance and respect from fans, the media and indeed the industry itself. But they have succeeded, and then some. At this moment, the active roster of women’s wrestlers in this country is probably the strongest it has ever been, and at the forefront of that movement is Shimmer Women Athletes.

Shimmer has been running its own live events since 2005, as exhaustively-documented on the more than 50 volumes of DVDs released since then. They’ve recently partnered with the Florida-based Shine promotion, whose Internet pay-per-views feature a number of Shimmer mainstays. The new and steadily-evolving “iPPV” market has already been a serious boon to independent promotions over the past couple of years, allowing them to project their products to fans worldwide with minimal overhead, increasing exposure for the companies and boosting revenue for bookers and workers alike. But a significant factor in Shimmer’s success has come through their partnership with Ring Of Honor, which is currently the third-biggest wrestling promotion in America, but stands in good position to eclipse the chronically underperforming TNA/Impact Wrestling in the next couple of years.

During its decade in operation, ROH has put forth some of the very best matches of the 21^st century; their former world champions include currently WWE/TNA stars Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Seth Rollins and Austin Aries, while current champion Kevin Steen has been on fire all year. “Women Of Honor” showcases the best of the collaboration between Shimmer and Ring Of Honor. It also functions as a nice introduction to the women’s wrestling scene in America and its leading talents.

It’s worth noting that, while the stars women’s wrestling strive to be regarded on the same level as the men, of course, in my opinion certain differences between the genders result overall in products that are fairly similar, but very much unique and distinct from each other, while being equally compelling on their own accord. Not everyone cares for the joshi game; many wrestling fans can barely sit through five minutes of Divas action on Monday Night Raw, let alone 20-30 minutes. The apostates can’t even appreciate one of the old Manami Toyota-Aja Kong classics, which basically defined the art-form at its peak; they would have no use for the material discussed herein, and that is entirely their loss.

The ROH DVDs have none of the sweet documentary-style content associated with WWE releases; they are simply compilations of matches, so there’s no backstory of promos to provide context, but the fan-base would already be up to speed on all that. (Curiously, WWE has never done a serious anthology of its own rich women’s wrestling history, which extends from the Fabulous Moolah down to AJ Lee. One would presume that such a thing would be easy to make, and a solid seller; it seems inevitable.) What this disc does offer is more top-notch joshi action than you’re likely to see anywhere, outside of Shimmer itself.

The double-disc set includes 33 matches, featuring 25 different women; there are also three mixed-tag matches. Allison Danger appears eight times. Sara Del Rey appears 15 times. Another standout here is Lacey, who also appears in 15 matches as a singles competitor, and also in a tag-match with Del Rey against Daizee Haze and Awesome Kong. Lacey, who retired to earn a Master’s degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, and who’s now working on her PhD in China, was a major figure in the evolution of both Shimmer and Ring of Honor. Her dealings with Jimmy Jacobs made for one of ROH’s all-time enduring storylines, while in Shimmer she teamed with Rain to form the infamous Minnesota Homewrecking Crew, which was the dominant heel tag-team of Shimmer’s early years, the equivalent of today’s Canadian Ninjas (Nicole Matthews and Portia Perez). Lacey, Haze and Del Rey were the early triumvirate around which the ROH women’s division was built, and this DVD set captures those formative years nicely. Any Lacey fans out there will want this; looking back, thinking mainly of promos and angles she was involved in, one forgets how good Lacey was in the ring.

Certainly the most important thing of all about “Women Of Honor” is that it is probably the closest thing wrestling fans will ever have to an anthology devoted to the work of Daizee Haze, who wrestles in 23 of the 33 matches collected here, including all three mixed-tag matches (all against Lacey, by the way). Besides just wrestling, she was also a trainer for ROH and Shimmer, and she main-evented the latter company’s first four shows; she (along with Del Rey) also helped bring the joshi scene into Chikara.

Haze (who is also notable for being one of the few pro-wrestlers whose real name is not public knowledge) abruptly stepped away from the ring in August 2011, and it’s been almost impossible to find out anything about what happened to her. As such, the best year yet for women’s wrestling in America has taken place with one of its chief architects on the sidelines. One hopes she returns, but whether she does or not, her presence makes this DVD essential. There are also matches featuring the likes of Allison Danger (Steve Corino’s sister), Sarah Stock (aka Dark Angel, aka Sarita in TNA), Alexis Laree (aka Mickie James), Serena Deeb, Sumie Sakai, Jetta, Eden Black, Tracy Brooks, Mercedes Martinez, Nikki Roxx, Persephonie, Jennifer Blake, Ashley Lane, Tomoko Nakagai, Hiroyo Matsumoto, Ayumi Kurihara and former Shimmer champions MisChif, Madison Eagles and Cheerleader Melissa. The whole thing’s a lot of fun to watch, having seen how far all these ladies have already come Now that the industry has taken notice of their abilities, it will be even more fun to see what happens next.

sheltonhull@gmail.com

Album review: Screamin Eagle, “Her Kingdom”

Her Kingdom is the second full-length album by Christopher Alan Nanney, age 24, who performs as Screamin Eagle. It would be hard to imagine a more fitting alias. The sound of his voice—at once high-pitched and nasally, yet also guttural and sonorous—can at times evoke calls from birds of prey, and his musical style could be described as “quintessentially American”, to the extent there is such a thing. His own personal vision is fully-illuminated on his website, with essays and scanned pages from his own hand-drawn chap-books.

Nanney’s a native of Jacksonville. He worked serving sushi at a local café in Riverside over the past year when he wasn’t out performing, but with the onset of autumn he’ll be heading down to Gainesville, where’s he is enrolled in the prestigious Florida School of Massage (FSM). I’ve seen him perform a bunch of times over the past year or so, at places like Underbelly, Dos Gatos and Burro Bar. He was also a regular presence at the now-defunct Thief in the Knight building downtown during ArtWalk, right near where the sumptuous vegan vittles from Dig Foods were offered, and he also performed at the first big CORK event.

The album cover shows him sitting at a table in a dimly-lit restaurant somewhere. He’s wearing a blue t-shirt and placid smile, with silverware and a glass of water nearby; he looks mellow, composed and controlled. It wasn’t always that way: He was arrested for breaking into First Baptist Church in April 2010. The episode is reminiscent of recent incidents involving the Russian band Pussy Riot and MMA fighter/”Bully Beatdown” host Jason “Mayhem” Miller. A report by First Coast News claims police found him “standing on top of a water fountain. He had no shirt or shoes, was wearing a piece of purple cloth like a cape, and was holding a wooden club. Those items are listed in the arrest report as being stolen from inside the church. Police also noticed Nanney had several pages torn from hymnals [specifically, ‘A Hymn For Mother Nature’] stuffed down his pants.” A six-month stay in a mental hospital was followed by the recording of his debut album, Hurricane.

Certainly, it was an unconventional way to worship, but ultimately harmless. In fact, it may have been to his ultimate benefit. As noted on Nanney’s website, he credits the incident with helping to cement his commitment to music, a process that has led right up to the new album, which is excellent. Overall, Nanney’s crafted a collection of several excellent songs that all fit together nicely as a unified whole; there’s little fat, and almost no gristle. The 14 songs on Her Kingdom represent just a fraction of Nanney’s recorded output, which by his estimation may exceed 50 tracks so far. His work has already drawn praises from outlets like Movement, EU and Void. He usually performs as a solo act, using just his voice and acoustic guitar, but the album adds a few dimensions to that sound.

Nanney’s skills on electric guitar are used to nice effect—driving, anthemic—on the opening title-track, then entirely differently on the proto-blues “Rich Man”; it leads right into “The Gift”, which sounds like a cross between early Lou Reed and new Hamell On Trial. “Holy Ground” has a very Led Zeppelin III feel to it, a feeling reinforced by his slide-work in the album’s middle section on “Built To Last”, “King” and “The Meaning Of Life”. “Kundalini Rising” is an instrumental digression running five minutes-plus; it sounds like what a rising kundalini might sound like, if indeed it made a sound at all—and maybe it does, but that’s beyond the scope of this record review. “Pack Your Bags” resumes the electric-blues motif, while the brevity of “Like An Angel” and its repetitive pattern makes it sound like a lullaby. “The Drinkin Song” could, too, especially with its improvised chorus, recorded live at one of his shows. It should have been the last song—13 is an appropriate number, given the elements that combine to make the album—but “To Resist” ends it nicely.

He’s got just a few more shows booked in Northeast Florida before he leaves in September. They include gigs at Underbelly on August 18, Casbah on the 27^th and Nobby’s in St. Augustine on the 30^th. The reader will have probably missed all of those shows by the time you read this, but that’s fine. Without question, we’ve only seen the beginning of Nanney’s career; he’ll be playing around Gainesville’s always-interesting music scene, and he’ll be back in Jacksonville for the occasional set. The Screamin Eagle has only begun to stretch his wings.

Lost In the Stacks: Notes on jazz finds at the Jacksonville Public Library

The title of this piece is stolen from the name of a radio show on WJCT-FM, 89.9 in Jacksonville, Florida. “Lost In the Stacks” is hosted by Matthew Moyer and Andrew Coulon, two of the librarians at the Jacksonville Public Library downtown. The show revolves around music that can be found in the library’s collection, and I was fortunate to be invited as a guest one week in May 2012, as we previewed the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. I’d intended for this to have been online by then, to supplement the material discussed on that broadcast—that did not happen, but better late than never.

SDH at the WJCT studios, May 10, 2012. (Note that I’m holding a set of drum-sticks hand-crafted and signed by the legendary drummer/teacher Von Barlow, who left them there for someone else.)

The tracks referred to here were all obtained via compact disc, and almost all of it can still be found at there. The JPL held a pretty extensive stock of vinyl records, archival-preserved, augmenting that as the CD era took flight in the 1980s. By the early-‘90s, when I first started browsing those stacks in a serious way, the library had one of the most extensive holdings of choice material to be found anywhere—be it a storefront or a private collection. And bear in mind, there was plenty to go around: WJCT had a literal ton or two of records and CDs; UNF still has an excellent collection (in part because they kept their vinyl); local record stores still thrived, and there remained solid commercial chains like Coconuts.

When Barnes & Noble opened in Mandarin, they hired saxophonist Joe Yorio to stock their music section, and he might have ended up doing the same at Borders; I always appreciated his recommendation of Coltrane’s Afro-Blue Impressions, which were the first album I’d heard by him that I loved almost as much as the singular Interstellar Space. It was at places like that where I caught up on the new stuff; at local record stores like Stripmine Records, I’d fill in the gaps of the more obscure labels and musicians—your Hat Art, Tzadik, Black Saint, Leo, Enja material. But my main sources remained the radio and the library.

Like WJCT, the JPL began divesting itself of vinyl as the century turned. I recall buying a dozen first-pressings of Glenn Gould from the library for, I think, seven dollars—since misplaced, but worth a couple hundred if ever found. The jazz stuff had already been liquidated, all for 50 cents or a buck each. But the library has nonetheless continued to thrive in the digital future, or present, whatever. A large portion of my life was spent on the second floor of the old Haydon Burns building, which housed the library’s main branch for 40 years, walking up and down the stacks, neck craned 45 degrees to the right while edging slowly sideways, scanning the discs lined up vertically, efficiently. Back then, it took about 15 minutes to look at everything once, without touching anything, which is not possible; 15 minutes really meant an hour, for practical purposes, and you couldn’t bring coffee in with you.

Now, the music collection is split—the classical stuff (which is pretty nice) is on the third floor (closer to the reference books relevant to that subject), and the rest is down on ground level. It is situated perfectly, in the back; one must walk through the jazz section to reach the Young Adults section, and that’s a good thing for the youth, because it’s their birthright, anyway. Now the CDs are lined up in such a way that you have to flip through each disc, or grab a handful at a time to scrutinize them; it takes a little more time, but you can bring coffee now. Now, as then, folks often come prompted by Bob Bednar of WJCT; his playlists are some of the best ever, anywhere. Everyone has their favorites—stuff they heard there that might have otherwise gone unheard for years, if not forever. The web has facilitated a much faster route to learning about jazz, but there is nothing more holistic than a good public library, and Jacksonville is lucky to have a very good one. My picks (randomly listed) would include:

Charlie Christian, “Waiting On Benny”: Charlie Christian wasn’t the first great jazz guitarist in history—there was Eddie Lang, Les Paul, Freddie Green, Django Reinhardt, Oscar Aleman and others. He was not even the first to electrify the jazz guitar; he was, however, the man who made it stick. He was a game-changer in every aspect of his short career. The library doesn’t have much of his stuff—not the epic take of “Topsy” from Minton’s, nor his sessions with Lester Young—but his run with Benny Goodman’s sextet is well-documented. The high point was, in fact, an afterthought, hence the title: the leader was late, so the remaining five jammed out for five minutes until he showed up. It’s one of the greatest examples of small-group jazz in the immediate pre-war era, ruthlessly swinging the 4/4.

Lennie Tristano, “Turkish Mambo”: The music of Lennie Tristano was a revelation for me from the very first second, as it remains. The library has a CD of Rhino’s repackaging of two Tristano records made for Atlantic Records about 50 years ago. His was a very mathematically precise sort of jazz; he trained Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Billy Bauer and Sheila Jordan, among others, and was friends with people like Charles Mingus, Max Roach and George Russell. I was a big Anthony Braxton fan, and I’d gotten a copy of an album of Tristano songs he did from the late great Stripmine Records (its second incarnation, in Five Points). So I grabbed the Tristano disc, which contains some of the most sublime piano music you’ll ever heard. Folks who say the man played without feeling are delusional. On the first album he plays around with tape-speed, speeding-up and slowing-down certain tracks for effect; the second is straight-ahead solo piano. “Turkish Mambo” is a masterpiece—Tristano overdubs three (or four?) tracks of himself, each in a different time signature. Multi-layered, but seamless. Even the metronome swings!

Sidney Bechet, “The Sheik of Araby”: I remember wondering why the library would bother to have two copies of an old Bluebird compilation of tracks by a man largely unknown outside of musicians and critics—but then I heard it, and understood. Bechet is one of the great characters in jazz, and the comp cut a wide swath, leading off with the definitive version of “Maple Leaf Rag”. The track cited here features Bechet overdubbed on all the instruments using the primitive technology of the monaural era, literally cutting new tracks onto the disc, step-by-step. Any mistakes he made could not be fixed, so he didn’t make any. This was the beginning of so much of what we take for granted, in terms of how music is made today.

Sidney Bechet, “Sweet Georgia Brown”: Fast-forward 17 years, and Bechet is in France, a leader of the vibrant expat jazz scene in Europe. Bechet would be dead in a year, but this track, recorded live in Paris, shows that he retained his absolute mastery of the soprano saxophone until the very end. Never has this tune been swung at a faster tempo, never were more notes stacked against the harmony; it was the intersection of Bechet’s NOLA roots and the modernism he spawned. The credible solos of trumpet, trombone and piano are just scenery—the song belongs to Bechet, and drummer Francois “Moustache” Gallipedes.

Django Reinhardt, “Blues For Barclay”: When one speaks of jazz in Paris, thoughts go immediately to the gypsy who changed the game singlehandedly—literally. In 1947, Django Reinhardt brought his quintet into the studios of Blue Star Records and made his first serious recordings on electric guitar. He’d risked death by continuing to perform in occupied France during the war, caught the bop bug, came to New York and was basically rejected by the modernists; his sound was too soft, too dependent on syncopation, too acoustic to be heard in a bop setting. So he came back to Paris with a chip on his shoulder, haunted by not having gotten to assert himself as the rightful heir to Charlie Christian, and you can hear it in damn near every note he played for the remaining six years of his life. The CD Peche ala Mouche collects the cream of electrified Django from 1947-53. To this day, it remains the most slept-on aspect of the man’s legacy, and the CD is out-of-print; I was lucky enough to cop a disc of the 1947 stuff in Chicago, and some of the rest is on YouTube. The song mentioned above was written for Eddie Barclay, who produced the session and was, overall, an invaluable supporter of jazz in Europe, and European Jazz as well. Note the presence of silky clarinetist Hubert Rostaing and Andre Jourdan, one of three amazing French drummers who put in work on these sessions. This is the sound of a man playing for his life, and succeeding.

Larry Coryell/Elvin Jones, “Stiff Neck”: Even five years after first hearing this, it’s still usually the first thing I listen to in the morning; it’s like orange juice for your ears. Elvin Jones was bulletproof for years; his run with the Coltranes (John and Alice) cemented him as the kind of drummer who could do anything—trios with Sonny Rollins, orchestras with Gil Evans, the Pawnbroker soundtrack with Quincy Jones, whatever. He could show up in a movie and just randomly solo in a cowboy outfit, or run through 10-minute fusion workouts in a mesh t-shirt, white leather shoes and disco pants, and it was all good.

Lionel Hampton/Gene Krupa, “Air Mail Special”: It would be impossible to pick one person as my favorite jazz musician ever, but if I were pressed I’d defer to Krupa, since my studies of jazz music initially began as a quest for Gene Krupa records. Damian Lee sold me a Columbia repackaging of Krupa’s epic post-war trio, and it was off to the races. A common fallacy holds that Swing Era icon Krupa, who was in the 1930s the go-to guy for both Benny Goodman and George Gershwin, failed to adapt to post-war modernism, that bop left him in the dust. Untrue. While he could never be construed as a bebopper proper, the man carved his own highly relevant path through that era. Gene Krupa’s 1950s recordings are exceptional.

Sonny Rollins, “What Is This Thing Called Love?”: I’ll be honest—the music of Sonny Rollins took a while to grow on me. I became familiar with his work first through connection to Max Roach, who co-led the quintet with Clifford Brown where Rollins first became a big name in jazz. Rollins’ solo career had already begun before Brown, Richie Powell and their wives were killed in a car accident in summer 1956, but it really began in earnest as well after that; he and Roach both emerged from that tragedy as different, better musicians. Some of their best work was done together in the subsequent two years: Max Roach +4, Jazz In ¾ Time, Saxophone Colossus, The Freedom Suite. All this was nice, and moreso later, but for me what really set me straight about Sonny Rollins’ genius was his awesome 1957 double-album A Night At the Village Vanguard, which is arguably the best recording ever made at that historic NYC establishment. (Similar arguments can be made for the albums made there by John Coltrane and Bill Evans, both of which were made four years after Rollins’. The Cole Porter standard, which is taken full-bore for nearly 15 minutes, also marks one of the first real displays of Elvin Jones’ genius as a drummer. In the mid-50s, Rollins got to work with Roach, Shelly Manne and Art Blakey, among others, but it’s Jones who stands out as maybe the most versatile jazz drummer ever. The whole album is great, but it starts on the best foot possible.

Chick Corea, “Matrix”: Blue Note’s Best of Chick Corea compilation features highlights of his run fronting mostly acoustic trios for the label. I’m not the biggest fan of his stuff, but I like that era, and “Matrix” (from the 1968 album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs) is one of my favorite piano trio recordings ever. Much of the credit is due to his colleagues, bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Roy Haynes.

Machito, “Tanga”: The library once had a Verve CD entitled “The Original Mambo Kings” (taking off from the movie released around that same time in the 1990s), and it remains my favorite Latin-Jazz album ever, even though I haven’t heard it in 15 years. A lot of material would just disappear from there, and this was one of them. I don’t really blame them, because it was a great album that, like Peche A La Mouche, is ridiculously hard to find even now, let alone back in the days of special-orders. Still though, they could have just taped it, and not robbed all the rest of us of its pleasures.

Don Byas/Slam Stewart, “I Got Rhythm”: I’d heard a little Slam Stewart’s stuff with Slim Gaillard, whose nonsensical “Vout” style of slang reportedly remained a favorite with the Reagans well into their dotage. Stewart was known for vocalizing along with his with upright bass, sounding much like a bow being dragged across the low strings, creating its own sort of harmony alongside the string-plucking. It was an acquired taste, one that frankly didn’t resonate with me most of the time. But there were two occasions when Slam Stewart was The Man, and this five minute duet with pioneering bop tenorman Don Byas (who can also be heard on the Charlie Christian bootleg sessions) was one of them. The other was a gloomy, ethereal solo version of “Angel Eyes” (written by Matt Dennis, and old running buddy of my old friend, the late great Robert Eskew, whom I met through Alan Justiss).

Gil Evans Orchestra, “La Nevada”: Having noted the supreme versatility of Elvin Jones earlier, here’s another example. Out Of the Cool (Impulse!, 1961) was the greatest Gil Evans album; the man best-known for arranging Miles Davis’ big-band epics was a star in his own right, and “La Nevada” marks the peak of his compositional and orchestral achievements—15 minutes of swirling, throbbing, pulsing perfection from an all-star band driven by Jones, with some assistance from Dizzy Gillespie alumnus Charlie Persip. (Incidentally, the two also turn up together, along with Art Blakey and Philly Joe Jones, on the impossible-to-find Gretsch Drum Night At Birdland album.)

Turtle Island String Quartet, “Milestones”: In the 1980s, Turtle Island String Quartet took jazz to new levels by arranging a number of classic tunes for their group. Songs like “A Night In Tunisia” and “On Green Dolphin Street” not only opened the door to new perceptions of jazz, but crucially made the classical world more accessible to my young ears—a process accelerated shortly after by Glenn Gould and Martha Argerich. Among the classic TISQ efforts of that era are their versions of Bud Powell’s “Tempus Fugit” (which is hard enough, arranged for solo piano, let alone a string quartet) and the track I consider their masterpiece, “Milestones”, a song that always lends to excitement. They played the song at a much faster tempo than the original version, and the finger-picking is just brilliant. When I got to see them perform at the Church of the Good Shepherd (as part of the Riverside Fine Arts Series), it was like a pilgrimage, and one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen.

Joe Lovano/Ed Blackwell, “Modern Man”: For me, all this music represented seismic shifts in my cultural consciousness, but almost all of it was classic material from the Swing Era on through 1950s post-bop and the broader explorations that would culminate with Free Jazz in the 1960s. If the library had a weakness, in terms of their jazz collection, it was that there just wasn’t much new stuff; it was not the place to catch up on the innovations of my own time; that’s why places like Barnes and Noble and Borders became so useful. But, as one might expect, the little bit they did have was the best. Joe Lovano’s album From The Soul (1991) was the point of a spear being thrust by a resurgent Blue Note Records into the future, and it’s one of the finest jazz albums ever recorded, in any era. It was a lineup of future hall-of-famers, most of whom had yet to make their greatest contributions to the music, and one aging legend who took that moment to make a final stand that will never be forgotten. Lovano was joined by bassist Dave Holland, who went on to lead arguably best large jazz group on the planet, and pianist Michel Petrucciani, whose legacy as the heir to Bill Evans’ absolute dominance of jazz piano remained unimpeached until his premature death in 1999. The opening track, “Evolution”, catches the whole band on fire, but neither Holland nor Petrucciani appear on “Modern Man”. Instead, that track is a duet between Lovano and drummer Ed Blackwell, who was probably best-known for his work with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp and Mal Waldron.

Dinah Washington, “Cry Me A River”: No one sounded like her—maybe the purest, most resonant voice in the entire history of music. Like all the great singers, hers was an utterly unique vocal instrument. Dinah Washington died way too young, but the stuff she left behind will last until the end of time, starting with “Cry Me A River”. It defies my ability to explain why’s it such a game-changer.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; May 30, 2012

Quick notes on the massacre in Syria

Although I’ve never been to Syria, and can’t claim to be an expert on their affairs by any measure, I feel obliged to comment on the current situation, for three reasons: 1) The recent massacre(s) rise, in my opinion, to a standard of universal evil and should be condemned immediately. 2) The situation in Syria has direct implications and ramifications for US policy, and the ongoing efforts being waged in the United States to redirect the thrust of these policies away from the prevailing modes of industrialized warfare that we’ve seen to such devastating effect in this century so far. 3) The situation, and adjacent matters, do touch on some points of great relevance for all of us, regardless of whatever particular feelings one may have for Bashar Assad and his so-called “resistance”.

I say “so-called” not out of disrespect for their cause, because it’s one I generally support: neutralization or nullification of despotic regimes. No matter who you are, or who you’re connected to, mass-murder of your own civilians on-camera is mad-dog action, and the “Old Yeller” solution comes into play at that point. We saw that last year with Qaddafi, whose grisly death was the result of cooperation of multiple governments, intelligence agencies and military/para-military assets. It turned, ultimately, on a Judas Goat in Qaddafi’s own camp–he trusted someone who sold him out, just like Saddam did, and he got lynched for it, just like Saddam did. And hey, bravo–that’s the business.

The rat-fink who gave up Qaddafi was, one presumes, at cross-purposes, like most traitors are. To sell out your benefactor is cold-blooded–a compromise of the soul that usually guarantees a similar end. (Insert NKVD joke here.) It wasn’t just the money, but self-preservation, because Qaddafi had himself already crossed the point of basic decency or sanity. Even by his own standards, he’d gone too far, and he had to go before he brought down the whole thing. That is the position being faced now by Syrian insiders who saw what happened the other day and recognize the potential for–indeed, the certainty of–lethal blowback. Methods evolve to suit the purpose, and the Syrian resistance understands now that failure probably means death for all of them.

The tragic subtext is that had the international community levied real consequences for the blatant assassination of Rafik Hariri and dozens of innocent bystanders on Valentine’s Day 2005 (a massacre that even Al Capone would balk at), the 108 bodies laid out in mass-graves across America’s TV screens would still be animated. Collectively, two thousand years of unlived life were snuffed out in a couple of hours, and the atrocity will probably be repeated any day now.

Assad could have just let up, had some rigged elections and claimed a narrow mandate for the status quo, but instead chose to escalate. If he didn’t order the killing of all those women and children and harmless unarmed civilians, then he should be serving up the bodies of those who did as blatantly as they butchered those people in front of the entire world. The notion of a globalized, comprehensive revolution directed by unknown forces for unknown ends may or may not be true, but what is indisputable is that Bashar Assad’s termination will likely precede that of the Mayan Long Count calendar. And when it happens, expect an inside job.

 

“She Who Is Without Sin”: Notes on Angela Corey

She Who Is Without Sin

Angela Corey’s Folio dis merits greater scrutiny

[Full disclosure: I voted for Angela Corey in 2008, and will probably do so again.]

As a general rule, writers spend Sunday morning asleep—phone calls sent in their direction are, in a word, doomed. But there are exceptions. Case in point: May 20. This writer was enjoying the only day of the week with no pressing business, when a reader called up at 9:33am to report that perpetually-embattled State Attorney Angela Corey had taken the opportunity to opine with vigor on Folio Weekly while appearing WJXT’s Sunday chat-fest, “This Week In Jacksonville”. Because, of course, the best time to criticize someone is when they’re asleep.

In the pro-wrestling business, it’s called “cutting a promo”; in her business, it’s called “hearsay”. Without naming Folio specifically, she noted that “[I]t’s a small paper, not many readers because they aren’t saying much, no one buys it. In fact, they have to give it away for free.” First of all, all that is fair game. She had every right to say those things; Folio hasn’t been exactly nice to her in its reporting, which is a consistent complication of telling the truth. Any critiques she has are worth listening to; in fact, her every public utterance is always worthy of intense focus—for entertainment value, if nothing else. But, given that an elected official was willing to characterize this publication using words designed to denigrate and delegitimize its work, one feels compelled to analyze her statement in greater detail—especially as it offers some useful insight into the thinking of Northeast Florida’s leading legal light.

When Corey says Folio has “not many readers”, that’s an impossible charge to rebut. Our current readership stands at just over 127,000, and like any business the publisher would like to see that number increase, because there is certainly room to grow. As for the idea that we’re “not saying much”, the industry insiders who give out Association of Alternative Newsweeklies awards tend to disagree, several times a year, for as long as we can remember. However, if she meant to imply that our readership makes us somehow obscure or not credible, she should note that 127,000+ readers equals double her vote total in 2008. There were 495,316 registered voters that year; almost 80% didn’t even show up, so her mandate basically amounts to about 8% of the city’s population—which may explain why she draws so much heat.

Is Folio Weekly the most-read print publication in Northeast Florida? Certainly not. That honor goes to the Florida Times-Union, which has been bleeding both staff and money for over a decade, leaving a franchise worth, at best, half of what it was 20 years ago. Nothing wrong with that; thinning-out a paper before sale is a lot like fattening an animal before slaughter. Is it given away for free? Of course—that has been the alt-weekly tradition since the industry’s flagship, the Village Voice, was founded in 1955. Many publications in this region are free, because they have developed a business model that allows them to do so. Folio can’t just raise the cover price to close gaps in revenue; it has to actually make a product people want.

While the daily papers are like commercial music, overpriced and trading on bad-faith, losing money on CD’s every year, the alt-weeklies are like vinyl records, slowly but steadily picking up market share every year, while stimulating the kind of broader changes needed in the industry. Alt-weeklies are showing print media how to remain relevant and vital in the Internet age, and the lack of a cover price makes their achievements all the more explicit. And during an era where even alt-weeklies have lost readers, Folio has only gained in circulation. Our coverage of Angela Corey’s hijinks has certainly helped—thank you!

It’s hardly surprising that Corey has little love for Folio, as our coverage hasn’t always put her in the best light, but one would think she could at least appreciate some of the things we have in common. We both began serving this city in the 1980s, we are both local institutions, and we both share the contempt of the political establishment. Despite whatever flaws she may have, the fact is that Corey never had a chance to prove herself; the basic caricature that most citizens mistake for the real Angela Corey was not created by the media—it was created by her fellow attorneys, then leaked to the media so we could feign loyalty while the sharpened daggers stayed firmly tucked into their sleeves. But when the next election comes, look for them to unbutton their French cuffs and do their best impression of the Roman Senate.

The election that installed her as State Attorney was a debacle. It marked the dissolution of Harry Shorstein’s legacy, as he came off as someone without the authority to ensure a smooth transition of power, which would have sent a strong message at a time when this city’s identity is built largely around violent crime. Instead of running a clean campaign and presenting a unified front to the bad guys, Shorstein’s underlings, Corey and Jay Plotkin, took the “scorched-earth” approach, which ensured that the credibility of whomever won would already be compromised by the time they took over. If the job were about competence and credibility, our State Attorney would be Bernie de la Rionda, who is not only undefeated in murder cases but has no record at all of saying ridiculous things into live microphones.

For voters, it was a harsh lesson in the reality of our judicial system, in which the only thing that matters is who your friends are. If you have the right lawyer, who knows the right people [names omitted, for legal reasons], you’re getting off, no matter what you did. But if you’re one of the poor saps stuck with a public defender, you might as well just hang yourself—and some of them do, allegedly. It’s not Corey’s fault that she was put in such a bad position, and it must have sucked to know how little regard her own mentor and colleagues had for her. She purged her office of veteran prosecutors because they backed the wrong candidate; some of them are now working against her, in the private sector.

The Marissa Alexander situation is a case in point. If Corey is so adamant that justice was done in this case, and that the 20-year sentence was justified, then why was she willing to let Ms. Alexander plea-out to a three-year bid? Same reason that many of the killings here are done by people who should have still been locked-up for previous violent crimes: Because justice serves political interests, not the other way around. Corey’s appointment to run the prosecution of George Zimmerman was, too, motivated by politics: Our weak, embattled governor (who’s only there because of the fecklessness and treachery of state Democrats) made his smartest move to date by picking someone with even more of a knack for controversy than he, to serve as the scapegoat for the inevitable fiasco. Put simply, Angela Corey is his Katherine Harris.

All of this is by way of clarification. At the end of the day, it’s no big deal what Angela Corey says about Folio Weekly, or what Folio Weekly says about her. It’s about a jail that’s almost full, with no possible short-term solution short of giving more plea-bargains to more violent thugs, so they can get out earlier and kill people sooner. It’s about a courthouse that the Mayor and judiciary are treating like a child in a custody hearing between two drunk parents. It’s about a citizenry that feels vulnerable and unprotected, and a criminal class that feels empowered to violate people by the perceived weakness and corruption of our justice system. It’s also about a tourist market, worth millions to local businesses every year, whose decision to mostly bypass Northeast Florida is partly based on what they see of us in national media—which is to say, a steady stream of preventable tragedy, and a nonexistent response to it. It’s not about Angela Corey. The sooner she realizes that, the better off we’ll all be.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; May 20, 2012

Book Review: Bill Banfield

Representing Black Music Culture: Then, Now and When Again? By William C. Banfield. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. 263 pp, illustrated.

Professor William Banfield, director of the Africana Studies Center at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, is what one might call a “Renaissance Man”; “Harlem Renaissance Man” is more like it. This book is, first and foremost, a book about William Banfield, and that’s a story well worth telling. Born in Detroit, 1961, his matriculation was shaped by his local music scene, which was then one of the world’s best. He was playing guitar in bands as a teenager, writing his own music in college, and released his first recordings in the early ‘80s. As such, he knows a lot of people, and he doesn’t mind dropping names; it’s pretty cool. The index runs ten pages, and includes many of the leading figures in Black Music over the past 40 years; odds are he knows anyone who’s living among them. In fact, there’s probably a picture.

While most of the narrative transpires in native haunts like Boston, New York and Minnesota, it was a pleasant surprise to see that pages 58-65 relate to events in Jacksonville, where William Brown died in October 1994. Banfield was a longtime friend and collaborator of Brown, who sang tenor at high-end spots around the country (ending with a run at Friday Musicale) while teaching at the University of North Florida and other places. Banfield’s only trip to the city was for the funeral; it was the second time in three days that he had to bury a close friend, which is the hard part of being a creative artist in any field. Life is short, and one is constantly reminded of that in that business.

The selections from Banfield’s journal entries offer slices in the vital life of a full-time academic and veteran musician. The rest of the book consists of Banfield’s essays on matters related to the art today, and they’re fine enough. The author’s prose modulates from pedantic to ponderous; the second half doesn’t read quite as breezily as the front. There are some splendid interviews that he conducted with artists like Don Byron, Wynton Marsalis, Nnenna Freelon, Maria Schneider and Dr. Billy Taylor, and an awesome section near the end with sketches of key colleagues and concepts built around photographs. The pictures are, in general, a real highlight here. Mr. Banfield is only 50 years old, but has already had a tremendous run in the business; this new book looks back on that past, while laying the groundwork for a prosperous future.

 

sheltonhull@gmail.com; May 10, 2012

One Man’s Treasure: Sonny Sivack, painting his way up.

[Update, July 5, 2012: I received word earlier today that Sonny Sivack had passed away following a three-week stint in the ICU at St. Vincent's Hospital. My condolences to his friends and family, and my thanks to him for the handful of conversations I got to have with him. He was a good guy. RIP]

Objectively-speaking, there is nothing about the art of Sonny Sivack (not to be confused with SAVAK) that gives any indication of his amateur status, other than his preference for recycled paper and other found materials. It defies belief to appreciate that he hasn’t even been doing this for six months yet. Now, his presence at places like First Wednesday ArtWalk, First Friday in Five Points and the Riverside Arts Market promises to take his creativity to new levels.

All this marks a dramatic shift in Sivack’s personal fortunes, while opening the door for positive changes to a life that has been, for lack of a better word, difficult. A Duval native, the 51 year-old Sivack is a regular fixture in Riverside, as is his Korean-born wife of 26 years, whom he describes as “more American than Korean”; some call her “the Ghost Lady”, but the hipsters who predominate in the neighborhood call her “Yoko No-No”. It is unclear how that moniker strikes her, or if she’s even aware of it, but he says she’s been “very supportive” of his art career, which began completely by accident.

Sivack’s life began falling apart many years ago, after sustaining serious head injuries during a training accident while serving in the US Army. “I hear ringing and stuff all the time,” he says. “I have to take medicine and stuff to calm it down and all.” The resulting permanent disability, along with other health problems, makes it difficult to find or keep a regular job; he can’t walk or stand very long, so whenever you see him, he’s probably sitting down.

Husband and wife are both long-time members of the city’s homeless population, which currently numbers nearly 5,000, with more joining them every day. It turns out that this part of his story—the “back-story” to this art-related “angle”—has been documented before, by the estimable Florida Times-Union back in October 2005. “They use the surrounding brick walls to dry their clothes and socks. A grocery cart sits off to the side, serving as the chest of drawers that holds bags of clothes, bottles, newspapers and styrofoam cups. Sometimes they eat. Sometimes they don’t.” That story was about the Hope Team, an outreach project for the Sulzbacher Center that delivers bagged lunches and other essentials to the displaced in downtown Jacksonville. (Maybe Sivack’s art will prove useful to future fund-raising efforts.)

These days, Sivack pushes a baby-stroller that functions as much as a walker as it does as a cart for transporting possessions, sometimes including a dog but more lately his art supplies. He found the materials—paints, colored pencils, paper—beside a dumpster in Avondale late last year, and that may well turn out to be the most interesting stories of “bonepicking” (collecting found objects thrown away by others) you’re likely to ever hear.

Less than a year into his new career, and Sivack has already picked up one powerful and influential patron in the local art scene: the infamous Lee Harvey, who is himself undergoing a sort of creative renaissance following a successful battle against cancer. “I think it’s a fascinating story. Sonny is very talented,” he says. Sitting at a Starbucks, within a few yards of Sivack (his wife was not around), Harvey held court like he does, while watching him add to a painting he did on an ancient pull-down projector screen (a piece he ended up selling for $300 a couple weeks later). Sivack is particular—he only paints with watercolors, and he only paints on either recycled or found materials.

“If Sonny was selling in a gallery, he’d be making money,” he adds. “Given more time, and the materials, Sonny could be a professional artist—and this is the right neighborhood to be doing this in. He’s a very nice man; he’s having a rough time, but it just goes to show that just because someone is going through a rough time, they can still make beautiful art. “It’s a blessing that he found those art supplies—things happen for a reason,” says Harvey, whose attitudes toward religion are well-known.

Having discovered this newfound talent, Sivack is wasting no time. By his own account, he has already completed about 60 paintings in the first four months of his career. Storing them would be a huge problem, if not for the fact that he’s already sold them all to collectors around the neighborhood, at prices ranging from $25 to $100; he keeps pictures of them all on a flash drive. “It’s been a real eye-opener, I tell ya—it’s been a 180-degree turn,” he says. “I used to have a bunch of free time on my hands, being disabled and all. Now I wake up in the morning, clock-in and join the world, you know?”

Even if Sonny Sivack doesn’t prove to be the next great folk-art sensation, art itself has already transformed his life, in a way that nothing before was able to do. “[Disability] set me back for a while,” he says, “then I gave it all up, really. No family, local boy; I’ve always been out by myself, like a traveling nomad. I pretty much gave up on life, and look what God’s given me!” We often hear the old cliché about one man’s trash being another man’s treasure; Sivack is here to remind us that, trash or treasure, it’s ultimately about the man.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; April 24, 2012

Jazz Festival Preview: Sonny Rollins

The Lion In Winter: Sonny Rollins, the last best hope of Hard Bop

 

Sonny Rollins, who headlines this year’s Jacksonville Jazz Festival, was born in New York City on September 7, 1930. His arrival is a triumph for local jazz fans who’d lobbied for his inclusion for years, perhaps as long as the festival itself has been in existence. I know that, in my ongoing conversations on the subject of jazz with Bob Bednar, host of WJCT’s “This Is Jazz” program (and recently a member of the festival’s Hall of Fame), Rollins’ name was in circulation since the late-1990s. We’ve both mentioned his name repeatedly, not that doing so was necessarily necessary, due to his legend status—but, then again, it’s only happening in 2012, and we should consider ourselves lucky to have had the chance for so long.

In the years just after Charlie Parker’s premature death in 1955, Rollins emerged as the dominant new saxophone star of the jazz world. He was then a member of the great Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, sharing the front-line with Clifford Brown, whose meteoric rise was halted by a 1956 car-wreck that also killed the group’s pianist, Richie Powell—whose older brother Bud Powell was in fact one of Rollins’ old employers. When Max Roach pushed through his grief to reemerge with a new band, just a few months later, Rollins was key to its sound. Max Roach + 4 found Rollins out-front with Kenny Dorham, one of the most underrated trumpeters ever, with Roach now taking unprecedented amounts of solo space; the Max Roach that most jazz fans think of today really began in 1956.

Rollins’ work on Roach’s seminal Jazz In ¾ Time helped cement the drummer’s place as a leading figure in the jazz mainstream, while adding further shine to Rollins’ reputation, which even then, in his 20s, was approaching mythic status. The years 1956-‘62 saw him cranking out a string of perfect records: Sonny Rollins+4, Newk’s Time, Tour de Force, etc. For the newcomer who wishes to hear the purest distillation of Sonny Rollins at his peak, one is advised to immediately get ahold of Live At the Village Vanguard. It was his first time recording in what would become, in time, his ideal setting—the trio.

Also, Tenor Madness featured a rare recorded meeting between Rollins and John Coltrane, who was also then beginning to get a serious push as well. Theirs was not a rivalry, so much as it was a case of two relentless perfectionists evolving on parallel tracks. Saxophone Colossus was the Rollins sound encapsulated; “Blue 7” features a solo by Roach that is a masterpiece of minimalism. Way Out West sees Rollins reinventing shopworn tunes of the Old West, while drummer Shelly Manne turns in one of his all-time finest efforts.

The Freedom Suite marks Rollins’ first experiments recording in a more expansive style, a form he’d return to often in later years. His trio includes Roach and bassist Oscar Pettiford, in one of his last major efforts before dying just a couple years later. It also led to a favorite musical curiosity: While waiting for Rollins to arrive at the studio, Roach and Pettiford jammed on the standard “There Will Never Be Another You”, which is 1) the high-point of Pettiford’s recorded legacy, 2) one of the greatest bass solos ever recorded in jazz, and 3) one of only a handful of recordings documenting Max Roach’s singular style when playing brushes.

Rollins returned from sabbatical with a new band built around the sumptuous harmonies of guitarist Jim Hall, who’d spent the previous period making key contributions to two of the most unique groups (in terms of their sound and approach to composition—Chico Hamilton’s quintet and the original Jimmy Giuffre Trio. The title-track of the group’s first record, The Bridge (1962), sounds exactly like what it is: a formal announcement that Sonny Rollins was back, and ready to reclaim a tenor crown that Coltrane effectively abdicated with his brilliant but polarizing excursions in the stellar regions of free jazz.

One of the true jewels in Rollins’ output, and one that doesn’t get enough attention, is his 1966 collaboration with master post-bop trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, East Broadway Rundown. The 20-minute title track evokes “The Freedom Suite” with its length—which wasn’t nearly as big a deal by then, just four years later; credit Coltrane for that—but the sound was completely different. Typically for Rollins, there is no piano; he probably became convinced of the value of this approach while working with Roach, who abandoned the piano chair entirely in ’58. This quartet also includes bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, who were at that time also the backbone of Coltrane’s quartet—surely no coincidence. The sound is also reminiscent of Ornette Coleman’s quartet, circa Change Of the Century.

Incredibly, there may be many jazz festival fans for whom Sonny Rollins is actually an unfamiliar name. When dealing with a man who’s recorded at least 38 albums to date (not counting the copious live sets, bootlegs and sideman gigs), one may be challenged to find an appropriate jumping-in point. While any record makes for a good jumping-off point, the essence of Rollins’ artistry can be gleaned from an excellent double-disc set released by the Concord Music Group to commemorate his 80^th birthday in 2010. The Definitive Sonny Rollins on Prestige, Riverside and Contemporary includes 21 of the key tracks recorded between 1951 and 1958, including “Blue 7”, “Tenor Madness” and “the Freedom Suite”.

Rollins’ most recent album is Road Shows, Vol. 2, released last September. Rollins has continued to record and tour into his ninth decade, winning three Grammys in the 21^st century so far. For those of you who are truly newbies to Rollins’ music, there is no better place to start than the Main Branch of the Jacksonville Public Library, which has almost every major recording by or featuring Sonny Rollins; you can check out his entire career, fit it all into a canvas tote, and (if so inclined) load it all up onto your computer. It’s some of the best music ever made.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; April 16, 2012

Jax Jazz Fest preview: Madeleine Peyroux

[For the May/June issue of Arbus.]

The Pop-Jazz Prototype:

Madeleine Peyroux: A Musical Change-Agent

 

For years, Madeleine Peyroux (born April 19, 1974) has been a darling of public radio, a perdurable presence in every Starbucks, Borders and Barnes & Noble—a singer-songwriter who anticipated the massive shift in the music industry over the past decade. Her evolution from anonymously busking on Parisian streets to global acclaim is a story she’s told herself, in songs written for five albums on three different labels. The reason it took so long for Peyroux to get over in the business is that it simply was not possible when she started, 20 years ago; there was no market structure to support and sustain her artistry.

In a sense, the story of Madeleine Peyroux can be viewed the story of seismic shifts in the industry itself. Her presence as one of the top acts at this year’s Jacksonville Jazz Festival can be also viewed as a shift in the festival, which is making more of an effort to embrace the traditional jazz artists favored by fans and critics alike. Peyroux has always been one those artists hard-core jazz fans would have loved to see here, but never thought they actually would. When her name popped out from the lineup sheet, it was like a pleasant hallucination.

After three albums for Rounder, Standing On the Rooftop is Peyroux’s first for Decca Records, a legendary British imprint founded in 1929 and now owned by Vivendi/Universal. It holds a special place in the hearts of jazz fans for its early advocacy of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, but it has also been a major contributor to the American vocal tradition, in all its many forms. The Decca catalog is, arguably, the most extensive cross-section of American and British indigenous music ever compiled. (This year’s jazz festival’s headliners, Sonny Rollins and Chick Corea, are also currently signed to Decca.)

Decca has maintained that tradition into the present. Peyroux, an early auteur of the new hybrid style, joins a roster featuring Melody Gardot, Sarah Harmer, Sonya Kitchell, Imeda May, Jane Monheit, Krystina Myles, Hayley Westerna, Laura Wright and Nikki Yanofsky, in addition to a whole crop of up-and-coming crossover classical talents.

These ladies are the latest in a line that has included many of the all-time greatest female singers of jazz, blues, pop, gospel, country and classical music, people like the Andrews Sisters, Tori Amos, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Judy Garland, Connie Boswell, Jenny Lou Carson (first woman to write a #1 hit country song) Patsy Cline, Rosemary Clooney, Kathleen Ferrier, Ella Fitzgerald (youngest woman to lead a big-band), Jane Froman, Marilyn Horne, Kathy Kirby, Brenda Lee, Peggy Lee, Ute Lemper, Annie Lennox, Loretta Lynn, Vera Lynn, Dolly Parton, Leontyne Price, Lita Roza (first British singer to chart #1, with “how Much Is That Doggie In the Window?”), Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Kitty Wells (the first female country star) and Aziza Mustafa Zadeh. Note also that Billie Holiday, to whom Peyroux’s voice has been so frequently compared (although it’s changed so much over the years), recorded one album for Decca, The Lady Sings (1956), at their famous studio at Manhattan’s Pythian Temple.

For this album, Peyroux—who started out singing alone on streetcorners—has assembled a sterling cast of collaborators, including pianist Allen Toussaint, violinist Jenny Scheinman, guitar master Marc Ribot and Meshell Ndegeocello. Listeners will by now have an established idea of Peyroux the singer, but she challenges those perceptions with her most adventurous album yet, taking bold risks with an already-lucrative commercial brand. Producer Craig Street is best-known for his work on Norah Jones’ first album, arguably the most important record of the 21^st century, as well as people like John Legend and Cassandra Wilson. He crafted a great sound, dense and haunting, but clear—a fine sonic foundation for Peyroux’s voice.

Peyroux wrote or co-wrote eight of the album’s 12 songs. Scheinman co-wrote two, as did David Batteau; “The Kind You Can’t Afford” was co-written with Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman. The album opens with “Martha My Dear”, a Lennon/McCartney chestnut. “Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love” is a sleek, sophisticated lullaby for grown-ups, written by Ribot and Wyston Hugh Auden. The title-track sounds almost like indie-rock—anthemic affirmations over dissonant chords. When she sings “I have conquered all my fears”, the listener believes her.

For this writer, the album peaks with Peyroux’s lurching, ethereal cover of Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vain”—one of the finest things she has ever recorded. Even experiments like the soft summery funk of “Meet Me In Rio” come off nicely; it’s iPod-ready for beach runs. But through it all, that voice is like the center-line on a road stretching and winding through past eras of music history, on into those unfolding as we speak. With a serious new album on a major jazz label, the years ahead may be her best yet. And even if she never quite eclipses the brilliance of Dreamland, to simply survive, thrive and progress is a victory, in and of itself.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; April 16, 2012

 

“Justice Deflected: Notes on the Marissa Alexander case

[For an upcoming issue of Folio Weekly.]

Justice Deflected:

“Stand Your Ground” runs aground in the Marissa Alexander case. 

Marissa Alexander owned a 9mm semiautomatic handgun for nearly five years prior to March of 2010, and by the time most of you are reading this, Marissa Alexander will have already begun serving a 20-year prison term for the only shot she ever fired with it. What she thought was a “warning shot” to stop her abusive boyfriend from coming toward her was, in fact, a lethal error that has destroyed her life, and that of her three children.

Had she just killed the guy, she would probably be walking free under terms of “Stand Your Ground”, and that is why her case has suddenly attracted such attention in the wake of L’Affair Trayvon. Members of Alexander’s family, flanked by supporters, have been holding rallies on her behalf; the most recent happened in the courthouse parking lot on May 30. It was booked for six, but crowds had already gathered an hour earlier on the Riverwalk, 100 yards away. Turns out they were there for Yacht Week; if the mezzo-soprano following our anthem with “God Save the Queen” was no clue, the wall of pinched white faces was. This reporter was, in fact, the only point of overlap between the two groups.

Local news-crews had already done their remotes for the 6pm broadcast, before things had started; they were nice enough to stick around for a while, turning their cameras on here and there. The two cameramen, a teacher from FSCJ and my bike-riding bartender friend were the only Caucasians in a crowd numbering almost 50, which is to be expected. There were hymns, prayers, lots of nice words and good Christian fellowship, none of which will save her. It was not a time or place for asking hard questions, like: Why didn’t Alexander’s ex-military father just shoot the guy who was beating his daughter?

Sentencing is scheduled for Thursday, May 10. Any mercy, reason or compassion Judge James Daniel might or might not have is negated by political expediency: Mandatory minimums were designed to win elections, not the fight against crime. Disproportionately high sentences handed down to small-time criminals keep the facilities full and allow pols to play crime-fighter, while the real dirt is done out of public view. Unless the judge accepts the motion for retrial filed by her attorney, Keith Cobbin, it’s a wrap.

With stories like these, context flies at you from all directions. Walking down Bay St., after making a loop around the lot, a headline leapt out from a row of newspaper boxes: “Sluggish Economy Fuels Domestic Violence, Police Report”, from that day’s USA Today. It followed on a survey taken of some 700 law-enforcement agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum; the headline reflects the view of 56% of respondents, up from just 40% in 2010. The CDC estimates that 1.3 million women are victims of domestic violence every year. These incidents occurred at 111,681 times in Florida in 2011, according to the FDLE, but consider CDC’s claim that three-fourth of such incidents don’t even get reported, and we’re talking more like half a million. (With 7,604 reported incidents, Duval County is only third-worst in the state.) A woman in this country is attacked by an intimate partner every nine seconds; at least three of them are killed every day.

Domestic violence is estimated to cost this country nearly $6 billion a year–$4 billion for medical care, and another two for the 64 million productive work-hours lost from victims who miss work because their injuries can’t be concealed. At least ten million children have seen this stuff happen right before their eyes, including Marissa Alexander’s; the step-children who saw the shooting are, statistically, twice as likely to become abusers themselves someday, which is bad news for somebody out there. (Chris Brown is the most obvious example of how the “cycle of violence” concept plays out in real-life.)

There is an old Chinese saying: “He who will not listen, will have to feel.” That is the story of Marissa Alexander, in a nutshell. The woman’s life was hard enough, but soon it will be ruined beyond repair, simply because she made the same fatal mistake made by countless women over the years—she showed mercy and compassion to an abusive man. She could have fled into the street and taken her beating there. That she fired into the ceiling, instead of into the sternum, suggests to some that maybe she didn’t feel so threatened, after all.

Had she, in those desperate moments, done what any man would do in her situation—fixed the gun squarely on the attacker’s head and put a bullet right between the eyes, where it belonged—odds are that we would have never known who she was. We wouldn’t be writing about her, and you wouldn’t be reading about her. At best, her story might have been added to the accordion-file of “good news” about guns, next to all those old-timers who stood up to Hitler, and had no patience for some body bluffin’ street urchin who spent too much time listening to the wrong records. The NRA and affiliated lobbies like touting these tales, because it’s the only thing that balances the fact that NRA-licensed gun dealers knowingly sell weapons to criminals.

I would suggest that Alexander was simply blinded by her emotions, the same emotions that kept her in that terrible position, like thousands of other women here in Florida. As I write this (and it’s not even 11am), there’s probably a woman getting her ass kicked in all 67 counties of the state, and odds are that they will tell no one. Over the years, I’ve spoken with many dozens of victims of rape and/or domestic violence, and the vast majority of them never went to the authorities, because the pointlessness of such an endeavor has become the stuff of legend. The social cost of going public is, frankly, punitive, and everyone knows the odds of conviction are slim—the dynamic is about as “top-down” as you can get.

Florida now enjoys a national reputation built mostly around pills, dead children and mediocre football. Well, games are decided on the field, and addiction fights occur in the mind and soul. The continued abuse of innocents is a slap in the face to every single citizen of the state—and those who you saying “Oh wait, this has nothing to do with me” are the worst of all. This is a state of transients, dilettantes and northeastern washouts who come here because, if you can’t make it in Florida, suicide is your last option. The scum has risen because they were allowed to, and they’re just getting started.

More details can be had from justiceformarissa.blogspot.com, and the @Justice4Marissa Twitter feed. Ultimately, the lesson of all this is: Ladies, don’t breed with men who beat you. That such a statement might prove controversial nowadays only reinforces the point. Alexander never learned that, so now she’ll learn in prison, while the daughter she bore him (and whose pictures set off the incident) will be raised by him—really badly, one would guess. But the girl’s already been gifted with a perfect name for the life that lies ahead: “Rianna”. You just cannot make this stuff up!

sheltonhull@gmail.com; May 1, 2012

Notes on Names Divine and Christopher Bell

[I’ve seen lots of musical acts so far this year—the more, the better. They’ve been mostly local, but plenty have come through on tour; here’s a few quick notes about two of my favorites:]

On a recent Monday evening—Feb. 13, to be exact—I had the great pleasure of watching a band from Chicago called Names Divine perform at Burro Bar. It was their second time playing this city, but surely not their last, as local audiences have already taken to them, and vice-versa. It was a crowd filled largely with other musicians. The Infinitesmal Records crew was out; bought a Kevin Lee Newberry CD, which is excellent and well-worth having.

Names Divine is a large band, led by singer/guitarist Kendra Calhoun, a spectral young woman who’s the only person I’ve ever heard cite Jendak as their favorite musician. Lukas Wolever played a drum-set that appeared to be missing its bass drum; it is unclear whether that was a matter of course or a concession to the inefficiencies of van-travel. The band has at times numbered up to nine; the show at Burro had seven, all shrouded in dark, a whooping whirlwind of sound built around Calhoun’s guitar, the clarinet of Kalina Malyszko (which rhymes with “Zbyszko”) and Ike Floor’s violin.

Names Divine has a two-song EP (containing the songs “Something Vague” and “Maybe Rotten”) available for download via Bandcamp, with more recordings planned for the year. The EP was originally released in a limited cassette-only edition of 100; the hemp cases, hand-woven by Calhoun, are useful for all kinds of things, but those versions are surely gone by now. Another two-track EP was released last December, and hopefully all this is building to a proper full-length release, along with another trip to Florida, at some point this year.

Watching Christopher Bell performing at Burro Bar, where he opened for the sumptuous Canary In The Coalmine on March 3, was something of a revelation. The music was excellent, but his means of making it was even more compelling. Bell’s approach to crafting a full-band sound for his solo sets begins with his instrument of choice, the cello. While almost all cellists prefer to play from a seated position, which is better for bowing, Bell plays his standing up, like an acoustic guitar, with more emphasis on finger-picking than the bow.

His style with the instrument reminds me, oddly enough, of the late jazz bassist Oscar Pettiford: After breaking his wrist playing baseball, Pettiford was unable to comfortably play the double-bass for a time, so he went with the cello; his recordings during that period are marked by a delicacy of sound that almost anticipated Chico Hamilton’s groundbreaking groups.

Bell’s cello is augmented with a self-contained wooden box full of effects pedals, as well as a keyboard that he uses to sample himself, as he crafts his beats in real-time. It was fun, and instructive, to watch each song come together, piece-by-piece, and it speaks to his dedication to performance that he does this for every show, instead of just playing over pre-recorded tracks. Despite his affable demeanor on-stage, which comes off somewhat geekish and slightly goofy, his command of the tools before his gave the performance a professional sheen.

His new album, Cashing In On My Mistakes (2012) represents a huge step forward—more songs, more complex, better-recorded. It’s the sound of a musician who, after years of experimentation, has finally found his mature sound. That was how he sounded at Burro. It would be interesting to hear him performing with Robin Rutenberg & Friends next time he’s here, just to hear the contrast in cello-work between him and Ms. Naarah Strokosch, who is my favorite cello player in the world right now—not because I’m some expert on the instrument, but because she’s cool, and so is that band’s music–a new CD out now.

DVD Review: Sara Del Rey

Best of Independent Wrestling Series Presents: Sara Del Rey (Smart Mark Video)

Is Sara Del Rey the best women’s wrestler in America? That the question even needs to be asked speaks to the depth of the women’s wrestling scene today. While the Japanese promotions have utilized their female talent as serious athletes pretty consistently for the past 30 years, the United States has been inconsistent, at best, in the modern era. That’s a sharp departure from territory days, when audiences could see legends like Mildred Burke, June Byers, Fabulous Moolah and the sublime Vivian Vachon plied their trade with no quarter given or taken.

With some notable exceptions (Moolah’s last run, GLOW, the AWA, portions of mid-‘90s WCW), women’s wrestling was put on the backburner in the ‘80s and ‘90s. While there were plenty of awesome wrestlers in that era—Sherri Martel. Medusa Miceli, Jackie Moore (aka Miss Texas)—women were used mostly to great effect as valets/managers and, in WWE, to get crossover appeal via Playboy spreads. Even with the arrival of ladies like Trish Stratus and Lita, the physical viability of the women’s roster was actively downplayed, with excessive gimmick matches and embarrassing storylines that stunk of misogyny and alienated audiences.

By most accounts, Fit Finlay was responsible for helping to transform the WWE’s women’s division into what is now one of the most important components of their overall product. The men’s magazine spreads still happen sometimes, but you’re more likely to see the Divas doing charity work, anti-bullying or pro-literacy campaigns, or maybe putting out yoga DVDs or sitting-in on martial-arts instructional tapes. Over the past decade, the match quality has spiked upward as the women have been allowed to wrestle more, wrestle longer and with more credibility. The current Divas division is probably their best ever—certainly in terms of sheer numbers; a Diva-for-Diva comparison between the 2012 roster and their counterparts from a decade ago would be interesting, some other time.

WWE’s success helped inspire the competition, as the emergence of TNA/Impact has offered another opportunity to evolve the structure of women’s wrestling, and their Knockouts division has regularly had some of the highest-rated segments of their programming. Their roster contains a nice mix of established stars from WWE and girls who came there straight from the many independent promotions out there. They are the only company to ever put a women’s steel cage match on TV, as far as I know. The Knockouts suffer from the same issues as everyone else who has to work with that material, but they manage to do well nonetheless.

The increased visibility of women’s wrestling on national TV via WWE and TNA, and the platform it creates for wider success, has acted as a rising tide lifting all boats—that is, the indies. WWE has an infrastructure for training new female wrestlers, but like TNA they mostly recruit women with some experience on the indie circuit; there is no real female equivalent of men’s amateur wrestling system, besides maybe Judo. So, for them, the independent circuit is truly essential, not just for learning their craft, but for perfecting it.

As good as the very best ladies in WWE and TNA are, their colleagues on the indies are as good, or better. And—with all due respect to Daizee Haze, Nicole Matthews, Madison Eagles, Melissa Anderson, MsChif, LuFisto, Portia Perez—Sara Del Rey is at the top of that list. She’s never worked for WWE but, at 31, it seems inevitable that she will. She’s already been able to claim key roles in the evolution of arguably the top three independent promotions in the country: Ring of Honor, Chikara and Shimmer.

Del Rey and Melissa Anderson are standing in the back of the picture, on either side of the chandelier.

For the record: Sara Del Rey is of no relation to singer Lana Del Rey. She was born Sara Amato, she was trained in California by a fella named Bryan Danielson, who at this writing is WWE’s World Heavyweight Champion. (He was also named PETA’s 2011 Athlete Of the Year, but that’s another subject.) In some ways, she can be considered a feminist icon of this era, with her insistence on training and wrestling right alongside the guys; given that they included folks like CM Punk, Chris Hero, Claudio Castagnoli and Samoa Joe, is commendable. She’s known for her arsenal of kicks and her finishing maneuver, the “Royal Butterfly”, best described as a double-underhook neck-crank into a suplex; it’s one of the signature moves of the women’s scene, right up there with the “Glam Slam”.

The greatness of “Queen of Wrestling” is celebrated in a recent triple-DVD release by Smart Mark Video. While not as fancy as the amazing releases being done by WWE, it’s no-nonsense, straightforward style fits perfectly with its subject. Disc one consists mostly of an interview conducted in late-2011; it runs nearly an hour, and features her talking about how she got into the business, telling stories—the usual shoot-interview fare. The rest of the package is filled-out by 21 matches recorded over the past six years of her career. She appears here for nine different promotions with 22 different opponents, including three men (Castagnoli, Icarus and Chikara founder Mike Quackenbush).

One thing that comes through crystal-clear from the DVD is Del Rey’s versatility. She can play power-games with smaller women like Daizee Haze and Portia Perez, but she can be the versatile underdog when facing opponents like Amazing Kong (who’s had a rough year as the WWE’s Kharma). As for the inter-gender matches, the best compliment one can give them is that they don’t come off as gimmicks. There are two matches with Castagnoli in the collection, and one almost forgets that Del Rey is a woman; it seems more like a match between two guys, albeit with a significant size advantage. Their second match here was one of his last for Chikara before going to FCW, and one of the promotion’s greatest moments; the post-match angle was also the last time anyone’s heard anything from Daizee Haze, who’s really one of the best performers in all of pro-wrestling in the last few years.

Eight of the last nine matches on the DVD are from her run with the BDK in Chikara, starting with one of my favorite matches ever: Del Rey and Daizee Haze against Amazing Kong and Raisha Saeed. (Melissa Anderson appears in four matches, more than anyone else; Haze and Castagnoli appear three times.) She tags with Castagnoli against Quackenbush and Manami Toyota, widely-viewed as the best women’s wrestler of all-time, and later faces off against current Shimmer champion Madison Eagles. Also included is her match with Quackenbush in the semi-finals of the 12Large Summit tournament that ultimately crowned Eddie Kingston as Chikara’s inaugural Grand Champion. I’d also like to point out that Tim Donst’s commentary in the Del Rey vs. Icarus match is a highlight of the whole package.

WWE and TNA have so far been remiss in featuring their women’s rosters on DVD, in part because neither company has really given any of their women time to put together enough material to do such a thing. Of course, both companies have enough to each do at least one nice historical overview of the divisions. Ratings and web-hits would suggest the market is ripe, but we’ll see; a rumored Trish-Lita “Rivalries” package would be an interesting start. More so than any DVD package released so far, this collection finely skims the cream of women’s wrestling in America, and makes a pretty compelling case that Sara Del Rey is, as the cliché goes, “every bit as good as she says she is.” For those looking to get themselves up to speed with the best crop of women’s wrestlers in American history, this release is a great place to start.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; March 12, 2012

Notes on Chris Brown, Rihanna and notable woman-beaters of recent history…

Anyone who’s spent any portion of the past couple of years perusing either my Facebook page (arguably the greatest of its kind, ever) or my recently award-winning Twitter feed (thanks again, Jax Mag!) can discern two facts straightaway: 1) I love pro-wrestling; 2) I hate Chris Brown. If I need to explain why, I can only offer congratulations on getting out of your vegetative state, or GITMO, whichever applies to your specific case. My fiery distaste for this glorified minstrel was inflamed yet again by his feuds with WWE Champion CM Punk and country singer Miranda Lambert (both of whom could probably kick his ass), as well as the news that he’s collaborated on two new tracks by Rihanna, who of course is best-known for being repeatedly punched in the face by Chris Brown, and not really minding that much.

To each his own—and these are two peas in a pod. Whereas Brown has spent the past few years trying to balance his need for public absolution against his obvious inability to change the mentality that got him that situation to begin with, Rihanna has spent that time glorifying her abuser and his type in songs, videos and elaborate stage shows built around the single unifying theme of all of Rihanna’s music: S&M. The world erred in viewing that incident as domestic violence, and Rihanna as a helpless victim of an abruptly abusive male. In reality, the beating was just one small, public part of a long-term sadomasochistic relationship between two people who grew up being abused, and whose profession requires them to project self-destructive messages to the urban fans who, being rubes in the most fundamental sense, take their gimmicks seriously. Their job is to help normalize this shit, and make it cool.

The Chris Brown camp—aka the “I don’t hit girls, but if any girl ever gives me a halfway plausible excuse, I look forward to doing so” crowd—makes a very good point in his defense: He did nothing unusual in the larger context of pop-culture. To single him out is unfair, and hypocritical. Brown is not the first famous guy caught beating the crap out a woman, but he is the first who’s ever had to apologize more than once, if only because there were pictures.

A short list would fill this column; a full and detailed list would fill this entire issue, and it’s surprising no one’s actually tried that yet. After looking into the subject, I was disturbed to see that many of my favorite artists, writers and musicians hit their wives, girlfriends, or even strangers; some are well-known, others less so. This list is meant to include only convictions or plea bargains, admitted incidents, incidents that occurred in front of witnesses, or individuals who have been accused by multiple women.

Marv Albert, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Chris Benoit, Big Pun, Biggie Smalls, Riddick Bowe, Jackson Browne, Jim Brown, Bobby Brown, Glenn Campbell, Jose Canseco, Nick Carter, John Daly, Miles Davis, Elijah Dukes, Eminem, Mel Gibson, Jimi Hendrix, Terence Howard, Joe Jackson, Rick James, Sean Penn, Jason Kidd, Sugar Ray Leonard, Lex Luger, Sugar Ray Robinson, Tommy Lee, John Lennon, Norman Mailer, Moses Malone, Steve McQueen, Shawne Merriman, Harry Morgan, Mos Def, Bill Murray, Tito Ortiz, Pablo Picasso, Kirby Puckett, Busta Rhymes, Axl Rose, Randy Savage, George C. Scott, Charlie Sheen, Christian Slater, Dick Slater, Wesley Snipes (accused of beating Halle Berry), Phil Spector, Kevin Sullivan, Tone Loc, Stalin, Daryl Strawberry, Hunter S. Thompson, Ike Turner, Mike Tyson, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sid Vicious, Yanni. And you know who was one of the most notorious woman-beaters in recent memory? Mr. “peace and love” himself–John Lennon! Hell, even Ric Flair has been accused of domestic violence. (Note: For legal reasons, and to save space, no local examples are cited here, but everyone knows who I’m talking about.)

What can we learn from all this? Nothing.

Let’s also note that the Chris Brown/Rihanna debacle points to a common problem in dealing with domestic violence: What do you do when the woman forgives and embraces her accuser? Rihanna fans who were disgusted by the beating she took have now been forced, by her, to put money into the pocket of the man who did it. All her so-called “friends” and family who went to her birthday party just a couple weeks ago were compelled not only to tolerate Brown’s presence as he nuzzled up to her, but also to reportedly sign confidentiality agreements saying they wouldn’t tell the media he was there—and they did it!

And, lest the world come down too hard on Rihanna’s deplorable behavior in all this (which sets a new low, even in this category), let’s not forget that things could be worse. The example of Halle Berry looms, pointing toward her future, in a best-case scenario. At worst, well, one shudders to think. Hopefully she does, as well.

OccupyJax: The End of the Beginning

Much like music (especially jazz), politics has been an obsession of mine since adolescence, which now covers a period of nearly 20 years. And in that whole time, I’d say that the first Occupy Jacksonville rally on October 8, 2011 was without question one of the greatest days in my life as a political junkie. The part of me that once scoffed at Hunter S. Thompson’s assertion that politics is “Better Than Sex” can now almost appreciate his sentiments, having seen that movement develop over the past six months or so, and the tremendous upside it’s had since.

Within a few weeks, members of Occupy had decided to take up the full-time, 24/7 encampments that defined the movement nationally, voting almost unanimously to begin the Occupation downtown on November 5, 2011. The four-month anniversary of the Occupation’s start arrived on March 5, but by that point there was no Occupation to celebrate, because the General Assembly voted the evening of March 3 to break down the camp two days earlier. I walked by, during a break in the Warehouse Studios benefit show at Thief in the Knight, and found out shortly after. I sat with four of the leaders at Burrito Gallery, debriefing over tacos and beer. It wasn’t a sad time—more like watching a friend’s graduation.

OccupyJax was one of the last of its kind in this country; where other cities saw the end weeks ago, ours stuck around long enough to do what no one ever expected was possible—to end it on their terms. Having run the most progressive political campaign this state has seen yet in this century, I can appreciate the patience and stamina that entailed. (Funny: While writing this column, at 6:23am on the morning of the 5^th, news broke via WJXT that Occupiers in West Palm Beach had chained themselves to an old courthouse building downtown—further proof that, no matter what the haters say, they’re absolutely serious.)

So, what was accomplished in this stage of the movement, besides pedagogy? Well, it offered a disgusting display of widespread, coordinated police misconduct, which has been called out by professionals in that industry–like the police chief of Seattle during the WTO protests of 1999; the actual inventor of pepper-spray (who personally trained 10,000 officers to train most of the others) went on the radio to cite multiple cases of his own directions regard the use of these chemicals being disregarded. Had he not done that, we’d probably not know that the tear-gas being used to brutalize pro-democracy protesters in Egypt was actually supplied by US corporations—a useful tidbit.

It showed folks that even our most liberal politicians aren’t acting quite as progressively as their supporters might “hope”, and that conservatives are willing to violate the Constitution if it means suppressing political dissent. Occupy should have been the beginning of a progressive surge that stymies the upward trajectory of, how you say, “lunatic right-wingers”, in this state and nationwide. Instead it stands right now as another example of how Democrats have kept a defensive, compliant posture instead of challenging for those big-money spots the President needs to implement the policies he’s promised.

And it provided many thousands of people (especially young people) with direct, useful experience in political science, which they can carry on into the high-schools, colleges and professional careers; it’s the birth of the new political elite.  Around the country, friendships were forged, love affairs begun and ended, strengthened and made more complex (in ways surely both good and bad). It won’t be long before the first batch of Occubabies is born; sadly, the first one died, in utero, after its mother was tear-gassed and kicked in the stomach while Occupying Seattle—the movement’s first martyr.

Occupy also generated millions (if not billions) in economic stimulus for most cities where it occurred. Locally, the failed initiative to give $1.25 million in taxpayer money to JP Morgan Chase was stalled-out in large part because of the efforts of OccupyJax, along with Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County and others. Personally, I think it was great for downtown business, but others would certainly disagree.

OccupyOne thing is certain, here and nationally: The end of formal Occupation does not, in any way, mean the end of the movement itself. In fact, they may be now poised to achieve on a level previously unseen in the realm of progressive politics. Having already done the impossible, the next logical step is moving on to the extremely unlikely, and there is no better time than 2012. All the critics, who wanted the Occupiers off the sidewalks so badly, may now end up wishing they had just left well enough alone.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; March 6, 2012

Interview: Luiz Palhares and the Gracie Jiu Jitsu legacy

Passing the Torch: Luiz Palhares and the Gracie Jiu Jitsu legacy

Luiz Palhares, in-studio.

Fight fans will remember that day, two decades ago, as if it were yesterday: November 12, 1993. Denver hosted the inaugural Ultimate Fighting Championship that day, and Americans were introduced to the dominant martial-art of the last 20 years. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was already 50 years old by that point, yet fighters tasked with countering it got played like cheap fiddles, over and over. What began in a little facility in Southern California has now become a global industry as big as anything of its type, ever, and Duval is helping to lead the way.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is, along with kickboxing and amateur-style wrestling, the foundation of MMA as a sport and as a distinct, uniquely American art-form with real, inestimable value. Its practical applications are obvious, in an increasingly unstable world; close-quarters combat is what civilians face on the streets, and if you’re ever in a situation where escape is not an option, BJJ will save your life. It’s being taught to police officers, football players, pro-wrestlers; even the US Military has sought to integrate BJJ into methods that are already pretty gosh-darned effective. The Gracies have started teaching it to kids as part of their anti-bullying stance, and women are embracing it in unprecedented numbers, to the point that women’s MMA is itself a multi-million-dollar business.

The State of Florida has one of the country’s biggest and best BJJ scenes, with Northeast Florida right out in-front. Most of the major cities (Orlando, Tampa, Miami) have good schools now, and smaller cadres are training everywhere else, especially at college campuses, YMCAs and such. Many people consider Luiz Palhares one of the very best Jiu jitsu teachers in the US today, and his skills will be on display when his Jacksonville Gracie Jiu Jitsu studio in Mandarin (founded 2007) hosts the 5^th Annual Jax BJJ Open on Saturday, March 24.

A native of Rio de Janeiro, Palhares began training under the late Rolls Gracie from 1976-82, then continued his studies under his brothers Carlson and, since 1982, Rickson, widely viewed as the most dominant professional fighter of his generation. Palhares, 53, is currently a 7^th Degree Black Belt; he’s taught in the US and Canada, as well as Paris, London and Belfast, and his students have included US Army Rangers, Green Berets and Navy SEALs. He was the multi-time champ of Rio, the 1998 Brazilian National Champion and the Pan American Champion for 2000, 2003 and 2004, all in the super-heavyweight senior division. In the big, wide world of BJJ, it doesn’t get any more authentic than Luiz Palhares. He’s worn the black belt for almost 30 years, and he earned it from the absolute best. His presence speaks directly to Northeast Florida’s growing international appeal.

SDH: What’s it like to learn the art-form in such an intense environment as Rio in the 1970s and ‘80s? Was it as tough as we’ve heard from legend (and the “Gracie In-Action” tapes)?

LP: The 1970s where a lot of fun even though they were intense, and I was fortunate to be present when the Gracie family challenged Karate, Tai Kwan Do and other martial arts styles to prove as Rolls did in the first 2 UFCs that jiu jitsu is the best martial arts to defend yourself. Also it was the same time that Brazilian women started to wear the teeny bikini, so it was tough to dedicate the hours we did. It was a very intense and dangerous environment.

 

SDH: Most fans never got to see Rolls Gracie, and even those of us who know a bit about the Gracie legacy know very little about him, but he was your first teacher. What was he like? How would he feel to see how far Gracie Jiu Jitsu has come over the past 30 years?

LP: Rolls was very important for the development of jiu jitsu because he was studying different martial arts such as wrestling, Sambo etc. and started to use the best techniques from these martial arts to mix with jiu jitsu. Besides this, he was one of the best competitors and one of the best coaches I saw in my life. He would be very proud to see jiu jitsu spread on all five continents. I’m sure he would be happy to know that all his students are traveling and teaching jiu jitsu all over the world.

 

SDH: What brought you to Florida, specifically Jacksonville? How long have you been here?

LP: I came to Florida for the warn weather, escaping from Virginia Beach where I was teaching the Navy SEALs and at a few schools. Since I was born and raised on the beach, I really missed that environment. I have now been living in Jacksonvlle for 5 years, opened two schools, one in Mandarin and the other one in Orange Park. Also, for more than four years I have been teaching at the JSO on a regular basis.

When the toughest men in the world want to get even tougher, they train in Gracie Jiu Jitsu...

SDH: What are your favorite and least-favorite things about living here?

LP: What I like most about Jacksonville are the people and the beach. What I hate is the traffic.

SDH: Could you explain to readers the differences, if any, between the Jiu jitsu associated with the Gracies and the style you teach? How much variety exists among the approaches taken by the trainers you’ve encountered?

LP: I have been teaching the jiu jitsu lifestyle, the same way I was taught by the Gracies. Jiu jitsu is a type of martial arts that continues to develop and I keep up to date on these new techniques for my students. This doesn’t mean that I left the roots of self-defense and I always explain to my students that martial arts is also about friendship and loyalty. There is a lot variety among the trainers, but a big concern is the large number of inexperienced instructors teaching jiu jitsu.

SDH: Who are some of your favorite students?

LP: It’s difficult to answer who my favorite students are, because I am teaching my two sons and most of my students are friends including the kids. If I start naming some of them I’m sure to forget others. Some of my students have gone on to start their own schools all over the US and Europe.

SDH: How would you assess the Jiu jitsu scene in Florida, relative to other parts of the country? How many schools/students would you estimate there are right now?

LP: The jiu jitsu scene in Florida is over-crowded, which speaks to the success of the true jiu jitsu lifestyle. There are hundreds of jiu jitsu schools across Florida with tens of thousands of students.

SDH: If someone reading this wanted to begin training in Jiu jitsu, what can they do to prepare themselves before calling you? Does one need to be at a particular level of conditioning first, or can someone out-of-shape start immediately?

LP: Jiu jitsu was made for the weak, out of shape or regular people who do not have enough time to work out to defend themselves on the street. Remember jiu jitsu is not about strength, it’s about leverage and technique. Anyone who brings a copy of this article to either one of my two locations, or the JSO, can have one free week.

SDH: Who would you consider the top-five best Brazilian Jiu jitsu practitioners active today, and/or of all-time?

LP: I consider Carson, Royler, Rolls, Rickson and Helio Gracie all-time best jiu jitsu practitioners. Active today among my top best are Roger Gracie, Michae lLanghi, Lucas Lepri, and Rodolfo Vieira.

http://www.luizpalharesjiujitsu.com/

http://www.facebook.com/jacksonvillegraciejiujitsu

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Luiz-Palhares-Jiu jitsu/160973310596945

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_Palhares

http://www.bjjgrandprix.com

sheltonhull@gmail.com; March 12, 2012

Review: “The Journals of Spalding Gray”

The Journals of Spalding Gray, by Spalding Gray, edited by Nell Casey. New York: AA Knopf/Random House. 326 pp., illustrated.

“I know that there’s a part of me so in love with death that I feel like I have already died and am looking at the living.”—Spalding Gray, 1976

It took some time for the dire circumstances surrounding Spalding Gray’s premature death to enter the public record, but time finally filled-out the final chapter of a brilliant life, lined with tragedy. Gray was last seen alive aboard the Staten Island Ferry, of which he apparently jumped. His fans were mostly shocked and confused. For many, Gray was the epitome of cultured, cultivated calm, the kind of person one might have assumed would be always graceful and resilient under any kind of pressure. But the truth fell well-short of that impossible standard.

The Journals of Spalding Gray document Gray’s graveyard spiral in painful, intimate detail, but there’s much more to it than that. Few public figures of his era were as open and honest about their history, their secrets, their feelings. Where other celebrities existed in a sealed bubble of hype and hagiography, armored-up inside characters created by their press agents, Spalding Gray walked the Earth virtually nude, intellectually and emotionally. It’s that quality that made him the greatest monologist of our time. He breathed life into a tired, stale format by bringing the audience directly into his mind, and his heart.

His Journals were published in 2011, presumably to coincide with what would have been Gray’s 70^th birthday. Editor Nell Casey sorted through boxes of material containing over 5,000 pages of text, hours of audio tapes and countless other related documents, then supplemented that by interviewing some two dozen of Gray’s friends, relatives, colleagues and collaborators. The book, which spans the years 1967-2004, is more than just a collection of journal entries; the editor has duly rendered the closest thing to a memoir there will ever be.

Its pages are laced with pathos and tragedy from almost the very start. He was never really, truly, totally happy with himself. The brilliant and beloved public figure we all admired from afar was, at his best, deeply neurotic and reckless, even by the standards on post-war New York City. At worst, he was a full-on sociopath whose exit was foretold by the man himself from very early on, as this book documents. Few people could even pretend to be comfortable with the level of intimacy Gray displayed throughout his career, and the journals take it even further. While he was apparently writing with the intent of future publication, one presumes he had no intention of ever living to see that day. (It’s kind of like the Nixon Tapes, in that sense.) Any future scholarship on him must take these “journals” as primary-source material.

Not unlike its author, the book is at their best in the 1970s. The early entries burst with fresh-eyed optimism, sometimes in spite of himself; one instantly hears that voice, a voice like none other. The early entries are breezy and pretentious, as one might expect. He writes like a poet in love for the first time—which, in a sense, he was. These were heady times. He spent a few days in a Vegas jail, and even appeared in two old-school porno flicks, “Little Orphan Dusty” and “The Farmer’s Daughter”, where he helped invent a now-common group-sex position known in porn as “the split-roast”. (He also cried on the set.)

Yet, the dualism is set early. On a trip to Mexico, he writes: “I think now that I want very much to live.” He was only 26. Upon returning home, his father told him a) that his mother had killed herself; and b) to go collect her ashes at the post office, allegedly. It’s impossible to conceive of the cataclysmic shock this moment must have been to him; his journals don’t even contain full, complete sentences for nearly a month afterwards—just fragments.

It’s fun reading the first-hand, real-time experiences of someone who played such an important role in the 1970s theatre scene in New York. The trope has been exhausted, but it’s still true: In this book, the city exists almost like a character in and of itself. For Gray, the city was where he escaped from a tumultuous youth; it was the place where he created the persona we now associate with him, and where he found the first in a series of women who served as muses, lovers and victims of his own self-destructive behaviors.

Elizabeth LeCompte was a writer, director and occasional actor in the same Wooster Group Gray helped found; she oversaw the development of his first monologues. Their love, slightly fictionalized, forms much of the plot of Gray’s only novel, the underrated Impossible Vacation, whose laborious composition is the subject of one of his best monologues, Monster In A Box. His years of peak professional success were also the years in which he did the least amount of journal-writing. Maybe the success helped satisfy something in him, making the ol’ existential hand-wringing less necessary in that period, or maybe he was just too busy. Either way, even in 1985, when his life was outwardly perfect, he was writing: “If I continue being who I am now, I see disaster written on the walls.”

Noted names float throughout the text: Laurie Anderson, Eric Bogosian, Annie Liebowitz, Craig T. Nelson, Steven Soderberg, Sam Watterston. For years, he shared an apartment with LeCompte, his first great love and herself a pivotal figure in that scene; they continued to share it even after splitting. She had a child with Willem DaFoe, who moved in, and Gray moved on to Renee Shafransky, who exists in a sort of parallel world as a character in his best-known works; she is the only one of his great loves who did not participate in this book, for reasons pretty easily guessed after reading it.

Kathie Russo (who was exceptionally brave to have permitted this portrayal of her, which is not often that complimentary) would become his widow, the mother of his children, the driver of the car in which they almost died, through no fault of her own. She tamed Spalding Gray, got him domesticated and primed for what should have been the next 30 years of their lives together. Instead, they only got a decade.

They were in Ireland on late-June, 2001, on a vacation he was reluctant to take (in part because their host had died a month earlier), in the back-seat of a rental-car without his seat-belt. “Gray fractured his hip, which would leave him with a drop foot, a limp on his right side, and permanently in need of a leg brace in order to walk,” Casey writes; “he also suffered an orbital fracture … Later, in surgery, hundreds of shards of bone were found lodged in his brain. Russo, meanwhile, got fifteen stitches in the back of her head where Gray had hit her with his own head as he flew forward in the accident.” Everyone else walked away.

And then 9/11 happened, and the city where he had the greatest moments of happiness in his life was deluged with negative energy. A man who’d spent his entire life trying desperately (and unsuccessfully) not to think too much about death had, within just three months, had the subject forced into the forefront of every aspect of his personal and professional life. Gray was physically broken and in constant pain, mentally distressed and traumatized, and struggling to cope with the impact of an ill-advised move into a new community and a home that was a money-pit, all while his output was slipping. As the dust-clouds floated up and away from Ground Zero, the shadows rolled in on his soul.

In the last 19 months of Gray’s life, he spent parts of at least six of them in mental-health facilities. He was given prescriptions for drugs including Aventyl, Celexa, Lamictal, Neurontin and Zyprexa. He also received approximately 21 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) “treatments”, despite concerns over giving such treatments to a man with a metal plate covering his brain. The ECT treatments occurred in 2002: Gray had committed himself, but he, his family and friends (and at least one trained neuropath) had begun requesting his release after six weeks. The hospital refused, keeping him for three more months, during which time the ECT happened. By the time he was released, he had less than a year to live.

In November 2001, two years before he died, he wrote: “I’m a dead man. A ghost.” It’s remarkable to read the moments of lucidity and focus in his journals in the final years and recall that, no matter what, he kept working. Despite a six-hour operation to insert a titanium plate into his forehead, Gray was back on-stage within ten weeks of the accident; his last performance, at PS 122, was about a month before his death, which was apparently incited in part by watching the movie “Big Fish”. The journals document how hard he tried just to maintain, but much like his mother a quarter-century earlier, the conclusion was foregone. It was an act of will.

As a fan, someone who once sought out VHS copies of “Swimming To Cambodia” and “Monster In a Box” as was entranced by the man’s abilities, the experience of reading Gray’s own account of his last days was just heart-breaking. Casey’s additions are indispensable at this point; reconstructing the circumstances of the car accident, the awful extent of his injuries and his final descent into total madness, dissolution and death was, as with the book in general, an impressive display of journalistic skill. The whole situation never made sense to me until I read this book, and got the story from Spalding Gray himself.

His confessional style may have evolved as it so often does, in response to his repressed conservative upbringing, in particular by seeing how his mother suffered and eventually perished under those conditions. Many of the unique and now-legendary personalities to coalesce in New York’s performance-art scene of his era wrestled with similar issues, and slipped those surly old bonds. But he never quite slipped them fully, no matter how far he went.

 

sheltonhull@gmail.com; February 28, 2012

Top Billin’: Sonny Rollins booked for 2012 Jacksonville Jazz Festival.

Mayor Alvin Brown was the star at a press conference held Thursday morning, Feb. 9, to formally announce the 2012 Jacksonville Jazz Festival, which will be held downtown May 24-27. The big news coming out can be summed-up in just two words: “Sonny Rollins”. Jazz fans will need no further embellishment, but for the uninitiated (and becoming a hard-core jazz fan is kind of like an initiation): With the sole exception of Dave Brubeck, Rollins is the world’s greatest living jazz musician, a man whose influence permeates almost the totality of the music in the 60+ years since he first made his name in post-bop New York.

One must note, also, the presence of two other masters among a lineup that is still being finalized: Chick Corea and Terence Blanchard. But the booking of Rollins, who at age 82 does not play concerts that often anymore, and rarely outside the areas more epicentric to the music, is a major coup of historic proportions. He is probably the most important musician to work our festival since those peak years when Dizzy Gillespie headlined multiple festivals toward the end of his life. But that was the ‘80s—a whole different world. The idea of Sonny Rollins appearing in Jacksonville, Florida in 2012 will, for some, be interpreted as a sign of imminent apocalypse; a heavy cynic might wonder if the world is destined to end the day before.

By attaching his name to the festival, Brown does it a service by basically making the festival brand symbiotic with his own. This is a great move, for his own interests, and it also puts a bit of pressure on him to make sure the festival’s long-term momentum is maintained. There were deep initial concerns about its very future coming into this year. Funding for Office of Special Events (which also oversees things like the World of Nations festival and Veterans Day parade) had been in some jeopardy during the last few years of budget battles; while truly significant cuts were not made, the specter of such cuts—and their disastrous effect on the city’s cultural identity—was often invoked by the Peyton administration in its later years.

Those fears, stoked by Peyton, caught fire soon after Brown succeeded him. Those now-infamous staff cuts last year hit the OSE hard, resulting in the elimination of its two top people. Theresa O’Donnell-Price and Christina Langston-Hughes were two of the unsung heroes of city government in the first decade of this century, skillfully implementing the mayor’s mandate to restore the vitality of a festival that had seen better days. Last year’s festival turned out to be their last at the OSE and, headlined by Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers, one of the best ever. But Brown, at that point less than a month in as Mayor-Elect, was on vacation at the time, so he missed seeing what they could actually do—and within a few months, they were shown the door as unceremoniously as everyone else.

Losing them both, simultaneously, was the biggest blow to the festival as an institution since the scandalous staff cuts at WJCT that led directly to the collapse of the festival under its direction in the late-‘90s. It was a dark day for local jazz fans, that’s for sure, and anxiety about the future has only built-up since. Initial buzz on the 2012 festival has already gone a long way toward assuaging many of these concerns, but more can be done. In a nutshell, there should be a heavy representation of local artists at the festival, the businesses of the Urban Core need to be better-integrated into the overall experience, and the City should take the lead in establishing an even stronger presence for the festival in media, both in terms of social media, as well as trying to strengthen relationships with local and national media.

After WJCT basically washed their hands of the logistics, and the country caught its first taste of the post-9/11 economic instability, it was a gamble to invest public money in the Jazz Festival. (Bear in mind, there are people who oppose its public funding even now, despite the overwhelming evidence of disproportionate upside, in terms of economic impact. If all public monies could generate such direct and visceral return on investment, the whole world would be different right now.) But Peyton did it anyway, in early signs that he was far more moderate than he ever got credit for, and I think we can all agree that the gamble paid off.

It’s entirely likely that, had anyone else become mayor in 2003, the Jacksonville Jazz Festival would have never survived into the 21^st century—the third century of jazz music, which was born in Storyville, New Orleans, in the late 1800s. For this, Peyton will surely someday join Jake Godbold among former mayors enshrined in the festival’s Hall of Fame. At this rate, Brown may end up there, too. He’s got a real gift for the kind of retail politics that work so well in the south, and initiatives like this put those skills out-front.

Having written more about the festival’s modern incarnation than any other reporter (if not all of them, combined), I can say that he’s done the two things I’ve always recommended the political leadership do: 1) Take advantage of the festival’s ability to bridge gaps among citizens, and 2) Bring Sonny Rollins to town. It will be curious to see if the national jazz media gives the festival a bit more hype now; we’ll see about that.

New Kids On the Block: Whistling Princess brings vintage style downtown.

The historic W.A. Knight Building has been through several incarnations since it was built back in 1926. The upper floors currently houses some of the most interesting apartment-spaces in the city’s urban core, while its ground-floor was best-known as the home of Chew, one of the city’s best restaurants and anchor in the mini-renaissance that’s happened downtown over the past decade. But now, with Chew closed, destined for relocation into the new complex being built by its owners in Five Points, Adams Street now sees its identity changing.

The newest addition to Adams Street is the Whistling Princess, which proprietor Lynn Alaia describes as a “boutique thrift-store”. For years, Alaia (who also works right around the corner at Chamblin Uptown) has evolved her hobby of collecting vintage clothing into a viable business, run through her Etsy.com store, “ThriftShark”. It’s a more than just a nickname for her—it’s a brand. She spends countless hours scouring the region’s thrift-stores, estate sales, etc. (usually while wearing gloves) in search of the kind of unique and valuable rarities she stocks online. Over time, the stock overwhelmed her Riverside apartment, so she decided to put some of it into a store-front, which saved her space at home while opening new avenues to promote and expand upon the online business. Sitting just yards away from Laura Street, it would be almost impossible to find a more highly-visible location.

Whistling Princess appeals to the same clientele, but with an emphasis on accessibility and rapid turnover. Most items in the store cost less than $20, and nothing costs more than $40. There will be bins of items for $5 and even just $1; there are rumors that they might actually have a bin of free stuff, which can only be had if the customer consents to be photographed wearing it out of the store. (I suggested calling it “the Blackmail Bin”.)

The store also carries items from Burro Bags, as well as jewelry hand-made by Rayna Reichstadter (who also maintains an Etsy store: “BijuBee”); her husband Richard is caretaker of the building and a driving force behind many of the art-shows, concerts and such featured in the space to-date. With his father and brother both veteran jewelers themselves, it’s no surprise that his wife has taken to the art so adeptly, and in less than a year, at that. They will also be hosting monthly vegan dinners prepared by Dig Foods, whose products have already attracted a passionate following from working ArtWalk in the same space. It will instructive to see how this project proceeds through 2012.

http://www.etsy.com/people/ThriftShark

http://www.etsy.com/shop/BijuBee

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Magickwrapper

sheltonhull@gmail.com; January 19, 2012