Bromancing the Stone: Roger Stone dishes on Trump, Florida and political combat

“They may call me a dirty trickster. I’m a real partisan; I’ve got sharp elbows. But there’s on thing that isn’t in my bag of tricks: treason.” Roger Stone has never backed away from a fight; indeed, he almost relishes starting them. Stone has been a human melee weapon, wielded to great effect in some of the biggest political brawls of the past half-century, dating back to his earliest years in the crucible that was the Nixon White House.

“1968 and 2016 were very similar, in many ways,” he says. “Just as leaders, Donald Trump and Nixon are similar. They’re both really pragmatists, neither is an ideologue, they’re both essentially populists with conservative instincts. … Both of them are very persistent, both of them had to come back from disaster.” The opposition is praying for further disaster, and they may well get their wish. To that end, Stone is one of several Trump affiliates under investigation for their dealings with various foreign nationals whose efforts helped facilitate Trump’s victory.

Stone’s newest book, “The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution” (Skyhorse Publishing) lifts its title from the seminal series written every four years between 1960 and 1980 by journalist Theodore H. White (1915-1986), a quintessential DC Beltway insider who is, no doubt, spinning in his grave as we speak. One can’t help but view this choice as high-level trolling of the first order, which is his forte.

The subtitle is cunningly phrased, as every conceivable meaning of the words “orchestrated” and “revolution” seem to fit in this case. Speaking of which, Stone’s book notes the crucial role of one revolution—that waged in the Democratic primary by Bernie Sanders—in helping foreshadow the future president’s. “In many ways, Trump and Bernie, they’re riding the same wave. Donald’s voters think these trade deals have fucked America, and Bernie’s voters think these trade deals have fucked America. … And also, new voters: Both Trump and Bernie Sanders attract new voters in the primaries. It’s just more people upset about the so-called ‘rigged system’. Bernie rags constantly about the corruption and the power of Wall Street; so does Trump. So I think they’re very similar.”

This similarity was noted early on, and was key to Trump’s victory, according to Stone. “In order to win, Trump had to win three of ten Sanders voters, and he did.” Despite being a nominal frontrunner, Hillary Clinton was burdened with a top-heavy hierarchical campaign, largely disconnected from political reality. For all her billions spent, that money was squandered on failed strategies and poor logistics, reaching a peak as Trump barnstormed battleground states in the closing days, while Hillary had already begun taking victory laps. The Clintons expended so much time and energy fending off the Sanders insurgency that they never really got a handle on what awaited them in the general.

“I think they made the exact same mistake as did Jimmy Carter,” says Stone, who worked for Ronald Reagan in 1980. “The Clintons misunderstood Trump’s appeal. They didn’t think that his simple messaging would be credible; they didn’t understand that Trump talks more like average people than elites. The underestimated both his skill as a candidate, they underestimated his skill as a communicator, and they underestimated his ability to land a punch.”

When Trump first declared for president in 2015, there was almost no one who thought the man had any chance at all—except for Stone, who had raised the very possibility as early as 1988, when he arranged a meeting between Trump and his earliest political benefactor, Richard Nixon. “It certainly seemed possible to me, but let’s recognize that I’m a professional political operative, and I had at that point nine individual presidential campaigns in which I’m playing a senior role as experience. Plus I’ve known Donald Trump for 39 years; I have a very keen knowledge of his management style, his style on the stump, so I understand a lot of the basis of his appeal. … Trump is a giant, and he ran against a lot of career politicians who were essentially pygmies.”

As usual, Florida was a decisive factor in the election, and Stone expects that to continue in 2018. “Florida has proven once again to be the ultimate purple state. It truly is a state that’s always competitive in a presidential race, and less competitive, leaning slightly Republican, in a non-presidential race. The Democrats in Florida, because they have been out of power in the legislature so long, and because they have (generally-speaking) not done well in local offices, they really have no bench. They are yet to come up with a candidate who is a viable candidate for governor. It’s WAY too early to try to determine how Trump’s candidacy will impact the Florida electorate; it’s an entirely open question. Trump could be exceedingly popular, if he sticks to his agenda and gets things done by the mid-terms, or he could be unpopular, theoretically, for any number of reasons. But in politics, a year is a lifetime.”

Speaking of Florida, 2018 will be the first year in nearly three decades in which the shadow of Jeb Bush will not be blanketing the states political landscape, and by Stone’s reckoning, you can thank Trump for putting our former governor into permanent retirement. “If Jeb had stayed in the race, and there had been another debate, Trump was prepared to say, ‘Jeb, the [FDLE] had over 22 individual tips about the 9/11 hijackers training in Sarasota; you seem to have done nothing with that information. Don’t you think you could have stopped the attack on America if you had actually done something?’ That was coming, and I think Jeb knew it was coming, and of course that’s all documentable. Only Trump would’ve had the courage to do something like that.”

Today, at 64, Stone is prepping for what may be his biggest fight to date, waged on behalf of his good friend, President Donald J. Trump, whose election was somewhat controversial, to say the least. Although Stone has not officially worked for Trump since last fall, he remains very much in the mix, as far as the president’s wider circle of advisors and adjutants. Indeed, the fact is that the very idea of Donald Trump as POTUS originates in the always-fertile mind of Roger Stone, who never stops thinking of new angles and novel approaches to shaking up the political status quo. Of course, a lot of folks really wish he would stop, but after last year, that seems unlikely.

Whereas most folks tend to get all shy and introspective when talk of subpoenas begins, Stone is embracing his opportunity to face off with congressional Democrats before a live, mainstream audience. Having served in the White House under presidents Nixon and Reagan, Stone is by no means a stranger in Beltway circles, but his appearance at the Capitol will mark, for many national observers, their initial introduction to a man that, without whom, everything would be different today.

Stone has still not appeared before Congress at press-time, but he has made no secret of his enthusiasm. “They dragged my name through the mud in a public hearing. Several statements made by members were just flatly incorrect, others were chronologically out of order, and still others were written in such a pejorative way that I must have the opportunity to take that language and re-tell it my way, and then bitch-slap the member for his partisanship. … Here’s my proposal: Waive your congressional immunity, so I may sue you, and we’ll let a judge and jury decide if you have slimed me. And you know they won’t do that.”

sheltonhull@gmail.com

March 28, 2017

 

Shifting Into Summer: john Shannon’s newest project debuts in Florida

The Shift

Jack Rabbits

Thursday, June 11

“7^th Direction” is an impressive debut EP from The Shift, a New York-based trio whose show at Jack Rabbits this Thursday comes at the end of their first-ever swing through the Sunshine State, amidst a tour that’s taking them from coast to coast. “The tour has been great,” says lead singer/guitarist John Shannon, writing in from the road. “Our starter went out on our van the other day in Alabama but luckily there was a bowling alley with a bar across the street from the mechanic.”

I’ve known Mr. Shannon for nearly a decade, having met through mutual friends at his old Brooklyn loft back in 2006. Our party watched “An Inconvenient Truth” at the Sunshine Theatre one night, with Questlove’s afro partially blocking the view. I first saw him perform a couple nights later, at Manhattan’s venerable Jazz Gallery, playing guitar in the sextet backing ace cellist Dana Leong; it remains one of the ten best jazz sets I’ve ever witnessed, anywhere. He was then leading his jazz group Waking Vision Trio, which put out a couple of excellent albums a decade ago.

From that first initial meeting through the week spent pacing the circles he runs in, he made an immediate and impactful impression on me, not just as a person, but as one of the most prodigious musical talents in a dense, dynamic scene that was then just beginning to be branded as the borough we know and love (and kind of envy) today. His current group, which includes bassist Ben Geis and drummer MJ Lambert, is his newest and most polished vehicle on a musical journey that has already taken him around the country, more than once.

Born in Pittsburgh in 1980, John Shannon’s released three albums under his own name: “American Mystic” (2008), “Songs of the Desert River” (2010) and “Time Was A Lie” (2012). Critics have compared his work to masters like Tim Buckley, Nick Drake and Paul Simon; the albums have earned praise in places like Rolling Stone, Minor 7th and Time Out NY. His credits include sideman work with Bob Reynolds, Ben Harper, John Mayer, James Maddox, Lauryn Hill and Hiromi Urehara; he’s also recorded with Gary Go and Sonya Kitchell, whom he also backed on tour, as well as composed music for the FX show “Louie”.

In many ways, The Shift represents the present culmination of careers cultivated throughout the 21^st century, a syncretic smash-up of the members’ traditional training, processed through years of long nights working club gigs in one of the most competitive commercial markets in the world. The album was recorded in less than a week, using a mixing board in Brooklyn that had once been used by George Martin to record the Beatles. Shannon writes the lyrics, while his colleagues build the music together.

The New York of their generation is simply not a place where you can last for long unless you’re good, and all three have put in practically a decade, ample time earn the confidence that comes through so clearly on the album. Shannon’s voice evokes nothing so much as mid-70s Robert Plant, while the clean, crisp tonality of the instruments gives it a prog-rock flavor, with the kind of tight, dextrous articulation that one would expect from three alumni of the Berklee School of Music—a school so prestigious that using the word “prestigious” to describe it is practically a cliché in music journalism. “It’s kind of a microcosm of the future music business when you’re there that seems to than move out into the real world—at least it has for me,”  says Shannon, who randomly encounters fellow alumni on a regular basis in his travels.

“If you know you have something strong, unique and a band willing to persevere,” notes Shannon, “you end up in more of a relationship/competition with time than with other bands. If you can use that inevitable pressure involved in the process of getting recognized to be more creative, resourceful and alive, then you are already winning.”

http://shiftwithus.com/

https://www.facebook.com/shiftwithus

http://www.johnshannonmusic.com/

https://www.facebook.com/john.shannon.9047

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shannon_(musician)

Book review: “The Squared Circle”

The Squared Circle: Life, Death and Professional Wrestling, by David Shoemaker, aka “The Masked Man”. New York: Gotham Books/Penguin. 386pp, ill.

David Shoemaker’s The Squared Circle is only the latest entry into a literary market already well-saturated with books about professional wrestling. Most of these books have been hagiographical scribblings by ghostwriters, passing themselves off as memoir; these books are useful, given their access to the subject at hand, but they often fail to pass muster in terms of actual readability. Others have been written by outsiders, by fans and nominal wrestling “journalists”, some of whom are legit, while others are hacks who lucked into a small-press book deal.

Shoemaker’s book, however, is something of an anomaly within the genre—a full-length, hardcover book about wrestling published by a major imprint (or, at least, a subsidiary thereof) and handled with the sort of care that makes clear that, however bizarre and ridiculous pro-wrestling can be, the author retains real passion for a business that, frankly, makes no sense to the average person. In entertainment terms, pro-wrestling may be the ultimate niche market.

“This is a book about dead wrestlers,” he writes in the introduction, as if he’s offering the reader a spoiler alert for a pre-taped wrestling show that you personally attended. That is, there is no way to tell the story of professional wrestling over the past 30 years with any kind of historical accuracy without directly addressing the unprecedented wave of premature death that has befallen the business in that time, starting with that of David Von Erich in February 1984 and culminating with what the wrestling media now euphemizes as the “Benoit Family Tragedy” in June 2007.

Writing as “The Masked Man”, Shoemaker has done some of the most interesting writing about pro-wrestling in recent years, working mostly for Grantland and Deadspin. This book is not an anthology of that material; it’s rather takes a fresh look at a subject that has already been covered extensively from almost every conceivable angle. The fact that he manages to consistently generate new original insights speaks to his skill as a writer and, more important, his almost-intuitive grasp of what makes the business click. Shoemaker is at his best when explaining why certain characters resonated with fans as well as they did, breaking down their inner motivations and our own subconscious affinity with their message. Basically, he writes like someone who actually respects pro-wrestling; imagine that!

To say that The Squared Circle is a page-turner would be a gross understatement. Making the point more finely, it’s one of the more interesting wrestling books ever written by a non-wrestler. It has a good bit of new material that even seasoned fans will be unfamiliar with, but much of the stories spin around plots well-ingrained in the memories of casual fans from the ‘80s and ‘90s boom periods. Even so, Shoemaker renders all his information in a peppy, easy-to-digest style that, in itself, offers an object lesson in how the wrestling business has managed to achieve a new level of mainstream appeal that, while not as lucrative as in previous eras, is far more pervasive in the long-term, as well as the tragic price that so many stars paid for their success.

November 27, 2013

sheltonhull@gmail.com

Notes on Gannett layoffs, and the business in general…

I just finished reading about the latest round of layoffs in the newspaper industry, in this case Gannett, arguably the most powerful media organization in America today. Props to Jim Romenesko for breaking the story, which is Brutal–just brutal. As a journalist based in Florida (where Gannett owns seven newspapers, three TV stations and four radio stations), I’ve watched in horror as this process has unfolded over the past decade.

This is the first generation of newspapermen who’ve proven incapable of doing business correctly. The number of veteran reporters, photographers, cartoonists, etc. laid off over the past decade could fill a medium-sized arena–and the papers and magazines they left behind are, in most cases, either shells of their former selves or just out-of-business altogether. A number of papers have installed pay-portals in hopes of increasing revenue, but that has the effect of limiting the size of their audience; even The New York Times, the greatest newspaper of all-time, is suffering, although it appears new editor Jill Abramson has done a really great job getting the “Old Gray Lady” back in fighting shape.

Consumers of media need to be more aggressive about using their power to make clear what they want from the product, and editors and publishers around the country need to grow some balls and stop playing a defensive game with new media. The web caught fire in the late-’90s, right as the old guard of print media management was exiting the stage; having weathered multiple storms in the post-war era, they might have managed the transition more effectively, but their replacements seemed to instinctively view the Internet as an existential threat to their operations. Around the country, editors and publishers alike were largely dismissive of the potential of “new media”, and the bias can still be discerned from their public statements. As a result, most papers did not begin to develop their digital game until it was almost too late–and once they did, the transition was handled badly, because their heart wasn’t really into it.

I’ve always likened the dynamic to that of the radio industry at the dawn of television. Many performers and executives for those networks similarly dismissed the new technology’s potential, and either refused to familiarize themselves with it altogether, or waited until it was too late. As a result, many careers ended, and several companies went defunct. But those who were open to the new technology, and made sincere efforts to acclimate themselves to it, ended becoming the people we now recognize as the pioneers of television; most of the top stars thus remained viable for the rest of their lives, and their families benefit from the royalties to this day. Likewise, print media outlets should stop thinking of the web as competition for the business, while engaging in counter-productive, reactionary decision-making, and instead start appreciating it as simply a powerful new tool to augment and enhance their business. Those who prove capable of doing this correctly will end up as the dominant forces in the media environment of the future–a future that may already be upon us.

Interview with Alessandra Altamura, author of “Music Club Toscana”

Music Club Toscana: Music time stories, by Alessandra Altamura. Piombino, Italy: Edizioni IL FOGLIO. 192 pp. www.ilfoglioletterario.it

It was mid-afternoon in late March when the postman’s knock interrupted my nap. (Being in journalistic exile leaves much room for napping, and other forms of self-reflection.) The package I signed for had ten stamps on it—five depicting the Terme Di Bonifacio VIII, and a row of five up top depicting the late singer Nino Reitano (1944-2009)—totaling 12.50 Euros, the equivalent of $16.07. Interesting: I hadn’t even opened the package yet, and I’d already learned something! That was to prove a useful omen.

Inside the envelope was a fresh new copy of the debut collection of 22 short-stories by Alessandra Altamura, an Italian-born literature teacher who turns 40 this November and graduated from the Liceo Classico Macchiavelli and the University of Pisa. The contents were pleasant, but of no surprise; I’d been waiting for it for a few days. Altamura, the author, had sent it off from her home in Lucca (near Pisa), in Tuscany in the great historic country of Italy on March 12. Two weeks days to travel across the Mediterranean, the European continent and the Atlantic Ocean seemed quite reasonable.

I was looking forward to seeing it for myself, and I was in no way disappointed. Music Club Toscana: Music time stories is a labor of love in the most literal sense; it combines her dual passions for music and her own native culture. Translated from the original Italian, the writing is vibrant and briskly-paced; the text moves fast over 192 pages. The book’s contents are like its packaging: smooth, compact and colorful. Speaking as someone who no longer makes regular practice of reading much fiction, I enjoyed the book immensely. After reading her book, I got the chance to briefly interview Ms. Altamura via email from New York City, where she arrived to begin her book tour last week.

SDH: How long did it take to write this book? Where did the idea come from?

AA: I wrote my book in a few months, less than one year, but I collected the material for these stories [over] my whole life. The idea comes from my love for music, especially live music. I have many friends who are musicians, also my brother plays the guitar. Other than that, music clubs are full of stories and characters.

SDH: Are your characters all real people, all fictional, or a combination?

AA: Some characters are real, with their real names, some are fictional and some are a mix of reality and fantasy.

SDH: What kind of music do you like?

AA: The first story was born in a club in Florence where my friends usually play, then came all the others. In the book there are many kinds of music, because each person needs a different kind of music. Personally I prefer jazz, the great songwriters and in general a music that makes people meet and think.

SDH: Which of the venues did you visit first?

AA: I visited first the places closest to my town. Lucca, Pisa, Florence. Then I went to the farest, like Siena, Arezzo or Grosseto, just to have a complete vision for my book.

SDH: Which venue in the book is your favorite?

AA: My favorite venue and also my favorite story is the one that takes place at Le Murate, that was the prison of Florence before becoming a club.

SDH: Tell me a bit about the lady who translated the book into English…

AA: Shayna Hobbs is a friend of a friend, who lived some time in Italy and taught me English. Now they live in Georgia and they will host me after Florida. oh, this is a funny thing, because each story is translated from a different friend. So in English there are really many characters and voices. Then a lady read it to see if there were mistakes. Maybe there are still some mistakes, because we did all quickly when I was leaving to London, but the English version is a proof that my friends love me…

SDH: Do you plan to write more books? Have you decided on the topic yet?

AA: I think to write another book, with stories that take place all over the world. In fact I’m trying to travel and know better other countries.

SDH: Who are your favorite Italian musicians?

AA: My favourite Italian musicians are the big songwriters, who are also poets: de Andrè, Fossati, Guccini, De Gregori and others. I went to the concerts of many of them and I liked much, but I’m sorry, because I never listened to a concert of de Andrè, before he died.

[She will be at Chamblin’s Uptown, in downtown Jacksonville, on Sunday, July 21 to sign copies and give a presentation on her work. If you’re into travel literature or jazz, it’s well-worth checking out.]

sheltonhull@gmail.com

July 19, 2013

Gang War (1940) [a.k.a. Crime Street]

Really grimy, even by Harlem 1940 standards. Not sure why this film isn’t a classic; it hits the marks like Brody in Japan. Star Ralph Cooper went on to become the long-time host of “Amateur Night” at the Apollo…

“Cast (IMDB): Ralph Cooper as Bob ‘Killer’ Meade; Gladys Snyder as Maizie ‘Sugar’ Walford; Reginald Fenderson as Danny (Meade’s chief henchman) (as Reggie Fenderson); Laurence Criner as Lew Baron (as Lawrence Criner); Monte Hawley as Bill (Baron’s henchman); Jess Lee Brooks as Lt. Holmes (as Jesse Brooks); Johnny Thomas as Phil (Meade’s driver); Maceo Bruce Sheffield as Bull Brown (as Maceo Sheffield); Charles Hawkins as Tip (Brown henchman); Bobby Johnson as Waxy (Baron henchman); Henry Roberts as Slim (Meade henchman); Harold Garrison as Slicum (Meade’s publicity man); Marie Bryant as Dance Specialty (uncredited); Willie Covan as Dance Specialty (uncredited); Louise Franklin as Phil’s Girl (uncredited); Halley Harding as Baron Henchman (uncredited); Ray Martin as Man in Bar (uncredited); Ernest Morrison as Gang Member (uncredited); Edward Thompson as Man in Courtroom (uncredited).”  

Notes on Gene Krupa: “Dial M For Music”, 1967

May 11, 1937: Krupa sweats through his suit as the Benny Goodman band challenges Chick Webb at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Some estimates suggest that between 4,000 and 20,000 people went in, through and around the venue that night…

Multi-instrumentalist Eddie Shu did epic work with Gene Krupa in the mid-’50s, following up from Charlie Ventura in the ’40s. Parts of this were in the old DCI VHS on Krupa (which, like the whole series, never went digital); so was the session with Sid Catlett on “Boy, What A Girl!” For some reason, after 20 years, the full videos of both find their way online, entirely unrelated–in this case, thanks to Shu’s children. Here Krupa, a devout Catholic, lays it down for some teenagers in Chicago, and basically does a shoot interview; truly essential stuff. He’s 58 here. If Krupa were a wrestler, he’d be Lou Thesz…

EAUF Presents Brotzmann/McPhee at the Karpeles, June 4

Peter Brotzmann/Joe McPhee, presented by Experimental Arts Union of Florida Karpeles Manuscript Museum, 101 W. 1^st St., Jacksonville Tuesday, June 4, 8pm Tickets: $20 (advance) $30 (at the door); brotzmannmcphee.eventbrite.com/ http://

Brotzmann/McPhee, at the Karpeles…

Free-jazz is a niche market within a niche market, so all of those involved in making, marketing and presenting such music are engaged in a labor of love—as are the fans, of course. Literally so, in the case of Jamison Williams: The saxophonist, who helped found the Experimental Arts Union of Florida (EAUF) late last year, took a financial leap to bring the pioneering saxophonist Peter Brotzmann to town for a duet concert with Joe McPhee on Tuesday, June 4. Williams spent much of the two months prior to the performance working random jobs to cover his ass in case the ticket-buying public flaked on him the way local media often does with such material. (Although my colleague Nick McGregor did write an excellent article and inteview with Brotzmann/McPhee previewing the show for Folio Weekly.) Thankfully, Williams is used to thankless work on behalf of the cause. This writer has heard him sing the praises of Brotzmann since we were both teenagers in the Clinton Years, building our out-jazz skill-sets via retailers like Stripmine Records, Coconuts, CD Warehouse, and public assets like the Jacksonville Public Library and the one at UNF, both of which maintain boss jazz collections; and one can’t forget the libraries in Gainesville and Orlando—studded with out-of-print titles like precious jewels in brass knuckles, glorious. Trade notes, trade fours, trade mix-tapes, building archives. Being a jazz fan is fun, first and foremost, but it’s also the hardest work in fandom, and Williams embodies that spirit. A former punk-rock drummer, Williams abruptly shifted into jazz over a decade ago, becoming largely self-taught on alto and soprano while founding his own Vantage Bulletin Publishing label to market the music being made within his circles. After years of performing in random bars, clubs and coffee-shops (often as part of the region’s burgeoning “noise” scene), Williams made the jump into opening his own place. +SoLo Gallery opened on Bay St. in 2012, right by Underbelly, and it was a hub for improvised music of all kinds prior to its premature demise that same year.

Photo by Anna Funk…

The EAUF emerged from those experiences, as Williams and his colleagues wanted to devise a more formalized mode of streamlining their collaborative efforts. It may well be that, the less structured the music is, the more necessary it is to organize the musicians, so as to make the most of what is ultimately a limited audience. Williams has shown infinitely more patience in that regard that most could muster, and it is for that reason only that Brotzmann, 72, is coming here from Germany for what may be his only performances in the state of Florida ever. There was no other alternative, no second choice. Williams has gone 180 degrees, and then 360, and then another 180, coming back around to the place he began with Brotzmann: as a fan. “I used to go to the Jacksonville library three times a week, checking out stacks of discs,” he says. “I wound up picking up an album with a great cover, simple, clean, and resonated with me, called ‘Machine Gun’ by Peter Brotzmann.” Recorded in May, 1968, “Machine Gun” is the seminal document of the European free-jazz scene, a commercial tipping-point in both the LP and (later) CD formats. Brotzmann’s sidemen include other heavyweights of that scene like saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Peter Kowald and ace drummer Han Bennink; the music burns with an intensity appropriate for what was, at that very moment, the height of disorder, discord and discontent in the post-war western world, and small wonder that resonated so quickly. Its re-release in 1971 helped put the Free Music Productions (FMP) label on the map, helping to spawn an explosion of this type of material in the 1970 and ‘80s through labels like ESP-Disk, Soul Note, Hat Hut, etc., running parallel to stuff like the AACM in Chicago. The album was first issued on CD in 1990, and ended up at the Jacksonville Public Library soon after; I listened to the same copy Williams did, but it not leave as profound an impression. Today, there is a global network of improvised musicians and labels and venues catering to that stuff, including hundreds of musicians and fans just here in Florida (for whom the EAUF was created), and Peter Brotzmann’s contributions are a very big reason why. “Black Flag is ultimately my rooted source of musical passion, [and] everything Brotzmann said just seemed like a perfect and natural communicated message for my ears. I could listen to ‘Machine Gun’ all day, and I did. ‘Machine Gun’ reminded me of Black Flag, only with horns, and much much bigger. I could understand it. I can appreciate that sound, brute power, acoustically; he makes a non-amplified instrument instantly electric. Listen to his tone, the power, his musical constitution; that is singularly the most powerful projection a horn has ever made; I mean, people talk about [Pharoah] Sanders’ sound, [Albert] Ayler’s and [Ornette] Coleman’s, [but] Brotzmann is a living sonic beast: he is hardcore punk gone jazz.” The Karpeles is a really interesting choice for hosting Brotzmann/McPhee. It’s got a very scenic exterior, sitting just a couple blocks back from downtown—well within walking distance of the jazz festival action. Imposing columns and high stairs lead into big wooden doors; the place was built as a church in 1921 and reborn as the Karpeles in 1992. The building is part of an organization comprising a dozen privately-owned museums working together to house and present key documents and manuscripts from history. With over a million items in the collection already, a steady stream of new materials are rotated freshly through the buildings; other nearby branches can be found in Charleston and Shreveport. The acoustics are great, as you’d expect from an old-school church; voices from the stage can be heard in the balcony, without amplification, and there’s an an in-house piano, which usually sits on the stage and may well come into play—or, shall we say, interplay. The Karpeles has hosted all kinds of events over the years; there was an exhibit of Alan Justiss memorabilia last year, and I helped judge an oratory contest there for the American Legion just a few weeks ago. For years, it was obvious that the Karpeles was an ideal spot in which to present chamber music or jazz, but as far as I know it’s not really happened before; it was the vision of Jamison Williams and the EAUF that finally put that notion into motion. Joining Brotzmann will be Joe McPhee:“He’s a powerhouse, a tentet contributor, and an American asset,” says Williams; “his direct involvement with outstanding historic free jazz figures since the 80’s is unsurpassed: Borah Bergman, Rashied Ali, Evan Parker, [Ken] Vandermark, and Brotzmann.” To call him an “instrumentalist” would be putting it lightly. Born in Miami in1939, McPhee trained on trumpet and flugelhorn, then self-taught himself on a variety of saxophones, as well as valve trombone; Williams cites Ornette Coleman as a rare example of someone proficient on brass and reeds, and I’d add UNF’s Bill Prince to that list. HatHut has released over 300 recordings since 1975—featuring artists like Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, Sun Ra, Matthew Shipp, Lee Konitz, Max Roach, Mary Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Clusone 3, John Zorn and Braxton [whose “Eight (+1) Tristano Compositions 1989, for Warne Marsh” is my favorite; bought it at Stripmine Records]—and has now spun off into five distinct labels under a 15-year sponsorship deal with UBS (who’ve also helped underwrite Art Basel operations in Switzerland, Spain and Miami Beach) but the Swiss label was founded specifically to document the music of Joe McPhee. Brotzmann/McPhee are working nine cities in 13 days, from May 31-June 12: Austin; Chicago; Orlando; Jacksonville; Philadelphia; Peterborough NH (a stacked bill with Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley and saxophonist Paul Flaherty); Washington DC; Montreal; and Buffalo. In terms of the cities, and the organizations involved in booking all nine of those events, that’s really good company for Duval. It’s worth noting, also, that Florida and New York are the only states hosting Brotzmann/McPhee twice, and both shows were put together essentially by artist-run collectives. (The Civic Minded 5, in Orlando, is also hosting a free show by the Mary Halvorson Septet on Monday, July 1; more about that elsewhere.)

Poster for Brotzmann/McPhee’s Orlando show…

These two masters of modern music will work duets that night, their highly individual sounds contrasting each other, unadorned by sidemen. Coming just days after the yet another successful Jacksonville Jazz Festival (where Williams led EAUF members in a tribute to Ayler at Burro Bar), this show further cements this city as a hub for free and improvised music, which is proving an increasingly lucrative market. Tickets start at $20 for advance tickets, with some prices at $30 on the day of the show. To say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime musical opportunity puts it mildly; most American jazz fans won’t have the chance to see this even once in their lives.

Jamison Williams at work. Photo by Anna Funk…

sheltonhull@gmail.com

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: “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

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

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

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

 

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

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.

Money Jungle: Weakness Is Provocative

Weakness Is Provocative

Since the Occupy Jacksonville movement began, I’ve studiously avoided making comments about it in this space, mostly so I could see how it was handled by the authorities. Having witnessed much of their disgraceful behavior firsthand, I feel now obliged to speak my peace. The city’s crackdown on the Occupation going on outside of City Hall is humiliation for all citizens of a city that, let’s face it, routinely goes out of its way to humiliate itself.

Those of us who labor daily against the perception that Jacksonville is a sub-literate cesspool of racism and religious dogma, a place whose land, air and water are so polluted that the only things that grow here consistently are criminals, have seen our effort rebuked yet again. Whether it was corrupt fire inspectors in the 1990s or the disastrous DART raids of a couple years ago, our “leaders” have remained keen to waste law-enforcement resources on bullshit, despite ample evidence that their methods have actually empowered the organized crime groups that, let’s face it, control far more of this city than any silly old church.

The situation also tends to confirm the mayor’s political cowardice to those handfuls of observers for whom the question remained in doubt. Brown’s tenure has mostly been defined by throwing key supporters under the bus, while retaining much of the core of the administration that preceded his—the one he was elected largely in opposition to. From day one, Brown has acted like an embattled incumbent; it’s almost like he anticipates being there for just one term, a historical aberration, a failed experiment in the craven new style.

The Occupy movement represents, perhaps, the last significant opportunity to address the issues of corporate greed and economic and social inequality in non-violent fashion. It’s scary to think that, when young people organize to assert their constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assembly and association, the establishment reaction is viscerally negative.

Councilman Don Redman has been a constant presence at Occupy events, playing the role of amiable scold. Unless he’s secretly a part of the 99% (and some think he may be), he has devoted extraordinary amounts of his personal time harassing a bunch of kids who have not yet been trained in how to deal with hatemongers. Whatever the needs of the voters in his district, they should know those needs fall second to Redman’s need to bother the protesters. The recent crackdown indicates that it’s Redman, not Brown, who calls the shots as far as how this was handled. Speculation has already begun that the term-limited Redman may join what will surely be a wave of politicians seeking to unseat an already-weakened mayor Brown; Sheriff John Rutherford, who’s been at odds with the mayor and his own union, remains at the top of most lists, but more will come. Because weakness is provocative.

But let’s say this much for Redman: At least he showed up. Brown and other members of the Council have basically adopted the policy of other city leaders nationwide—that of running their mouths about things they have no understanding of. It makes sense that Brown, who bounced back and forth between the Beltway and Corporate America, would be ignorant of the underlying economic reality. It makes sense that his populist campaign rhetoric would be a front for more of the same-old, same-old. It makes sense that our visionary new leader is a just a cut-out caricature, eager to conform to stereotype.

Because as we’ve seen with President Obama, the first job for any black executive-branch pol is to act forcefully to retain the confidence and support of the white business leaders who brought them to power. Hence, the firings, politically-motivated. Ironic that a mayor who was elected largely on a promise to encourage growth downtown has signed-off on suppressing the only people who can actually draw numbers into downtown on a weekend without promising football or free food. It’s further ironic that most of the local Occupiers either voted for Alvin Brown or actively worked for his campaign. Well, they won’t next time!

Our mayor has apparently forgotten that he won by the closest margin in local history, and that it was the support of young progressives that kept him in the game back when elites were focused on that shoddy Hogan-Moran-Mullaney horserace. I’ve heard many Democrats in recent months wish aloud that Audrey Moran had just a little bit more guts, hadn’t been so passive in response to conservative attacks, had tried to reach out to progressive a little bit more instead of prostrating for the business community like everyone else has. Of course, it’s unlikely that she would have handled OccupyJax any differently because, overall, this movement exists to show the people of this country that our leaders have not only abnegated their responsibilities, but have deliberately acted against the best interests of this country.

Why? Because they are on the take. Every single politician in this country is hopelessly corrupt, whether they want to be or not. The system of campaign finance ensures that whoever wins any election is probably already bought and paid for by foreign capital. Those of you who complain about Brown now have forgotten  that he was trained by Bill Clinton, arguably one of the most morally bankrupt human beings to ever walk this earth. He learned his lessons well, but it remains to be seen how much the voters themselves have learned.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; December 24, 2011

Notes on Occupy Orlando

Raising the Bar: Occupy Orlando sets the regional standard.

This reporter, who lives in Jacksonville, recently spent a couple of days visiting Occupy Orlando, which was then in its third week. The Occupy movement began in New York City, then quickly went national as graphic evidence of police misconduct inspired others to start their own local offshoots in solidarity. As such, while each Occupy location does have certain features common to all, they mostly reflect the distinctive character of the cities and towns they are situated in.

Having already spent hundreds of hours researching the subject in general, including communications with insiders, observers and other journalists at Occupations around this country, the chance to sprint south and check out the scene in Orange County was welcomed eagerly. It certainly helps that Orlando is a beautiful city with great food, from eateries like Dandelion Community Cafe and Ethos Vegan Café, multi-media madness at Rock and Roll Heaven and Park Avenue CDs, which is the best record store in all of Florida. Right around the corner, Stardust Video and Coffee makes epic soups and sandwiches and a massive selection of DVDs for rental. Each Monday evening, their parking lot hosts the Audubon Park Community Market, while the Homegrown Local Food Cooperative (HomegrownCoop.org) provides sustainable fruits, vegetables and dairy to homes and restaurants throughout Central Florida.

The city’s impressive development in the half-century since Disney’s arrival makes it an ideal location in which to weigh the costs and benefits of the corporatized society the Occupiers stand opposed to. The fact that so many of them (the students, in particular) are beneficiaries of this system does not invalidate their position; rather, it reinforces their responsibility to get involved.

After putting the word out via social media (the author maintains the greatest Facebook page ever, full disclosure), about two hours elapsed before receiving a phone call from Brook Hines, part of their Media Relations team. At 45, her experience in the media and public relations world was put to good use. This type of rapid response and vigor in regard to outreach efforts has been crucial to their rapid success in a state that is generally almost devoid of large-scale progressive activism of any kind. As she puts it, “We want to work with the city, rather than crash it.”

There were veterans of the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars. Some got their first taste of politics via the Obama 2000 campaign. Others are veterans of older movements, including the assorted presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader, Ross Perot and Dennis Kucinich. A smaller segment comprised folks old enough to have participated in the seminal protest movements of the 1960s; for many old-school activists, these may be the final act in their political lives.

As Hines wrote in one of the group’s press releases: “Like Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Orlando is a leaderless movement, but it is far from disorganized. Coordination takes place online and at daily General Assemblies where … participants present ideas and dialogue until reaching consensus. Then, we take action to accomplish out collectively approved goals. The formation of multiple committees, including media, medical, peacekeeping, legal, transportation, food, event facilitation and materials preparation, enables all participants to contribute to the movement.”

The actual Occupation of Orlando commenced on Saturday, October 15, but planning began two weeks earlier, including two General Assemblies held at the Orange County Regional History Center. The date was announced in advance, a website was set up, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds built, supplies gathered, responsibilities designated and promotional materials (flyers, buttons, posters, etc.) prepared. They even sent out a letter soliciting the support of local businesses. The work paid off. The first event was arguably the biggest political protest ever held in Orlando, drawing between several hundred and a couple thousand participants, depending on who you ask.

Beth Johnson Park is just a quarter-mile or so down the street from Boom Art Gallery, a shop showcasing the brilliant hand-crafted work of Glenn and Sandy Rogers, which they describe as “the fusion of functional furniture and nostalgic art”. Their client list is awesome, and includes Ann-Margaret, Jay Leno, Paul Shaffer, Jeff Foxworthy, Mandy Moore, Robert Plant, Carrot Top and Shaquille O’Neal.

The art is must-see, and the artists are two of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. Glenn’s dual backgrounds in fine art and as an International Flooring and Home Furnishings Designer led to a diverse career that included technical work on Broadway, shows, art exhibits in SOHO, storyboarding the “Mr. Whipple” commercials for Charmin, acting credits in Hollywood and the New York stage; he also helped create the Yellow brick Road used in The Wiz. The Rogers met and married during their 15 years spent touring together as clowns in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Sandy was, for seven years, Director of it Clown College, in which capacity she helped train Steve-O. Unsurprisingly, they offered full support for Occupy Orlando.

“This is redress of grievances, not a wedge-issue protest,” said Matthew, a 23 year-old student and musician part of a group of young people sitting on blankets in the park one day. His group included several people who’d been part of the OWS group, but were reticent about sharing further details with a journalist.

Over 2,000 people had taken part in the occupation, over 200 of whom spoke at the General Assemblies; and another 10,000 people had expressed support online in just the first five days, and those numbers spiked in subsequent weeks as Occupy caught steam nationally and Occupy Orlando started getting mainstream attention.

Like many of their fellow Occupy operations, the Orlando group maintained a camera streaming content directly to UStream.tv. Depending on the size of the crowd and the amount of activity in a given city at any given time, most full-time occupations run live video 24/7, while others fill the “dead” time with video of earlier activity; some cities have more than one feed, in addition to whatever is being done by individuals. This type of instant connectivity isn’t just great for outsiders (advocates and critics alike) to watch what’s going on directly and interpret for themselves. It is crucial for the actual occupiers in each of those cities, who can now learn from each other in real-time, share knowledge, adjust their methods, streamline tactics and goals, as well as networking.

Maybe no other city in Florida has brought in as much money from multinational corporations than Orlando, but there are many ways to quantify it. But its public image is tied-in with Disney and Universal Studios in a way no other city is with the many large companies doing business in them. Theme-park money spurred tremendous growth, and the landscape reflects it, especially compared to the relative bleakness and desolation of the outlying areas like Winter Park, Casselberry, Maitland and Ocoee. (The blank-yet-knowing looks on the faces of the kids working at the Walgreens and Steak and Shake in Apopka made me want to adopt them all, or at least write them recommendation letters to the UNF.) Mass-transit out there sucks, putting the lower-income families living out there at a persistent competitive disadvantage for jobs and schooling, the youth in particular.

The reader has probably seen the video(s) from Zucotti Park, where those three wee lasses felt the hot stuff (which really hurts, by the way). Note that at least one officer was already conducting a discussion with the ladies related to their refusal to get up and leave. While not exactly cordial, it was civil until his colleague imposed his own will upon the proceedings. The original cop’s agitated response, directed toward the one who deployed the burning, stinging mist into a group of civilians and fellow NYPD officers, presaged later confirmation of prior complains against the same guy at political events.

The nefarious action of one cop means little compared to the historic reputation of a department that saves and improves the lives of people every day, nor does it mean that the women sprayed that day were necessarily right. But the incident was recorded from a number of angles, and the targets were highly intelligent, well-connected members of a well-organized protest operation that was already ongoing in New York, with affiliated groups already starting elsewhere. The hardest part of civil disobedience is to not fight back when violence is used; that’s why most people generally want no part of it.

NYPD handed Occupy an image to, for lack of a better word, brand their movement, and like all good brands, it has staying power: young people being pushed around for engaging in political protest. Thanks to cell-phone cameras, YouTube and streaming video sites, a huge portion of the thousands of Occupy-related arrests have been documented, replete with scores of clear-cut incidents of abuse. The situation in Oakland alone could fill a book; surely a number of student protesters will apply their field experience directly to the classroom.

It only took a few good squirts of poorly-aimed pepper-spray to transform Occupy Wall Street into a national movement, and Florida is doing its part

 Beth Johnson Park sits at 57 S. Ivanhoe Blvd. It curves off the I-4. Whether approaching from any angle, the first thing one will see is the American Flag. Currently, Beth Johnson Park closes at 11pm. All citizens must vacate by then, but the sidewalk is not subject to those rules. As such, Occupy Orlando adopted what’s called “Sidewalk Solidarity” by standing on the sidewalk in shifts, 24/7. However, the law does prohibit sleeping on the sidewalk, sitting down on it, or sitting in a chair (all activities that are allowed in the actual park when it’s open). Sleepyheads make use of a privately-owned parking lot across the street, 20 feet away. Although trespassing charges was raised by police, they did not occur because the lot’s owner either refused to make a complain, or was otherwise not present.

This is just among the many examples of how, despite the anti-capitalist talking points and the alarmist rhetoric of commercial media, sizeable portions of the business community around the country are exerting subtle forms of support for Occupy activities. Another is that the nearby Doubletree Hotel offers its bathroom facilities for the occupiers. (Note also that Zucotti Park, the epicenter of Occupy Wall Street, is itself owned by a billion-dollar corporation that clearly has no issue with their presence, as long as they clean up after themselves.)

Most occupiers have chosen to heed those rules, but as expected others forced the point. Occupy Orlando took a huge, risky step forward on the night of October 22, when a small group of activists chose to openly defy city rules and remain in the park after 11. They, as individuals, chose to stage their own independent action without the approval of the General Assembly; some 200 people were doing Sidewalk Solidarity at the time. Some allege it was a blatant publicity stunt, others that it was an attempt to be more aggressive in the face of political power.

This civil disobedience resulted in Trespassing arrests for 19 people, including two women and a juvenile. By all accounts, the police were entirely professional in doing their job. (It’s always worth noting that law-enforcement has very little actual influence on the crafting and implementation of our nation’s laws, and citizens are worse off for it.) If it was a publicity stunt, it worked perfectly by forcing the occupation into commercial media, thus helping to grow the numbers. Another 13 arrests were made a few days later, as activists refused to vacate the park following the teach-ins on November 5—Guy Fawkes Day, incidentally, and also a day after the epochal success of Bank Transfer Day.

 

Among those 19 arrested that night was a wheelchair­-bound young man who had been doing unpaid volunteer work for President Obama’s national reelection campaign, similar to his activities in 2008. His disability leaves him unable to do most types of work, so he lives at home with his family, on a fixed income, while he pursues his studies. Like many people in his position, he’s felt the heat of price increases and the pressures exerted on many Americans as state legislatures around the country clip strategic holes in the social safety net; those concerns manifest as political action.

His involvement with Occupy Orlando was as a private citizen, not as any type of representative for an Obama campaign that many critics allege the Occupy movement is designed to help, much as the Tea Party ultimately served Republican interests. However, after the news of his arrest became public, he was dismissed from his official duties and rendered persona non grata, on the pretense that his arrest brought negative publicity to a campaign that hasn’t even been officially declared yet.

Further, the fellowship that made the delicate balancing act of his student life possible was immediately pulled, throwing his educational future into some doubt. The crushing news was delivered by telephone, by a supervisor who was either unwilling or unable to say exactly who made the decision, or to delineate the process by which his life was ruined. He was still emotionally wrecked, visibly and palpably so, as I spoke to him ten days later; the police who arrested him were downright kind, compared to the allies who shafted him, over a petty charge that will most be dropped.

Yet, despite this life-altering humiliation, the young man was insistent that his name not be used here, because that’s how strongly he feels about reelecting Obama. That, in a nutshell, in what the Occupy movement is about: Young (and not-so-young people doing what they think is right, despite the extreme consequences that may result. His plan now is to hit the road, visiting and collaborating with other Occupy operations in places like New York, DC and Chicago, culminating with the ongoing actions in the city of his birth, Philadelphia.

Many activists on the scene gave vocal credit to students from the University of Central Florida. Many of those UCF “Knights” have lived up to the moniker, in terms of their contributions to the effort, from logistics to publicity.

           

            October 25 saw 15 Occupy Orlando activists expanding outreach efforts even further by sitting in to show support for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1596, which was negotiating with the Board of Directors for LYNX, Orlando’s bus system. According to a press release, “Drivers have not seen wage increase in three years and are being offered only a 0.5 percent wage increase at a time when inflation for food is forecast to rise as much as 4.5 percent.” They had no obvious effect on negotiations, which remain calcified, but it made for valuable experience.

            Such action has become a worthwhile habit.      The day before, Occupy Orlando sent  27 people in business clothes to the Orange County Legislative Delegation meeting, where they had meetings with state representatives from both parties. Occupy has also become a regular presence at meetings of the Orange County School Board and the Orlando City Council.

November 1 was Day 18 of the occupation, and coincided with the “Awake the State” rally. The day’s most popular whipping boy was the local Chamber of Commerce. It operates out of a large multi-story building adjacent to the park, yet reportedly pays only $1 in property taxes per year. Spicing the brew, Mayor Buddy Dyer had apparently, a couple days prior, made the astoundingly absurd claim that there was no corporate money at all in Orlando. 

A low makeshift stage was laid out near the entrance to the park, placing the Chamber building (and the sunset) behind the speakers. Their modest PA was sufficient. Speakers included an older activist whose rights to vote had been forfeited via felony; he copped to his mistakes, and urged everyone else to cast the votes he could not. The owner of Dandelion talked about the wildly disproportionate environmental impact fees that undermined profitability and her ability to hire new workers. A member of the teachers’ union noted that Florida teachers haven’t received a cost-of-living wage increase in three years; “Education cuts don’t heal”, she said. The delightful Sundrop Carter brought glad tidings from the United Auto Workers, who are stepping up organizing efforts in Florida, a state basically built around the automobile.

Although no elected officials made their presence felt on Day 18, the crowd did include a number of veteran political insiders, as well as a couple of candidates. Mike Cantone, 28, is seeking to unseat mayor Buddy Dyer in next year’s elections (scheduled for April 4, 2012). He comes off as a smart, earnest young man who’s quickly developing a certain facility with the lingo of leadership. Having myself run for Jacksonville City Council in Jacksonville earlier this year, I was curious about how his new-reality based, grass-roots approach would fare against an entrenched incumbent like Dyer.

 He began smartly, with a streamlined and systematic approach to his platform. He broke it down into seven key components; for each he created quick, one-line synopses of his vision, then identified a number of forward-thinking proposals he would implement in order to methodically each component of the larger agenda. Listed alphabetically, they are: Clean Energy (4), Coordination (3), Education (4), Innovation (10), Public Safety (7), Quality of Life (6). As a Jacksonville resident, I appreciate the catchphrase “A Bold new Vision for Orlando” even more than his slogan, “I Like Mike!”

As one might expect, he’s fully-synchronous with social media, and his promo materials are well-done; they’re also union-made. The aesthetic centers on soothing blues and greens, reminiscent of the city’s waters and lush plant-life. The candidate’s picture is good, with a nice sunset background, but it can be improved upon.

We both agreed that the non-partisan, “unitary”-style elections held at local levels offer the best chance to get new progressive talent into office, as opposed to the standard process, which allows Democratic gatekeepers to freeze out any dissenting voices. As we have both noted repeatedly, the great efforts made by Occupy so far will be wasted unless they translate to serious political gains in that epochal year of 2012.

Occupy Orlando has a lot of electoral activity they can exert potential influence on. Senator Bill Nelson is up for reelection, and the popular Democrat will have several marginal Republicans chasing his rear bumper; a strong progressive turnout helps bolster what looks so far to be an fairly easy win, and be crucial if conditions change. All seats in the US House are up for grabs next year, and those are always volatile; Occupy’s exact place amidst is impossible to guess..

Locally, besides Dyer’s seat, four of the seven School Board seats in Orange County are up for grabs, as well as three of six seats on the Board of County Commissioners and three of five seats on the Soil and Water Board. The offices of Sheriff, State Attorney, Public Defender, Clerk of Courts, Comptroller, Property Appraiser, Tax Collector and Supervisor of Elections are all on the ballot in 2012, so the stakes are huge. This election will decide the future of their city.

In real terms, a guy or gal like Cantone would need a massive groundswell of progressive activity statewide, the rising tide to lift all boats. He (or any other, similarly-inclined candidates elsewhere next year) can probably build a formidable street team, but to keep them all activated at full efficiency, it takes money. 2012 will be the most expensive election cycle in history; to win in that environment does not necessarily require more money, but it does require a substantial amount of ready cash. My campaign, for example, did not result in victory because I was not an effective fundraiser, and could not find anyone who was. Cantone and his ilk must be a lot better, a lot faster, and it’s quite possible.

I also met a fella named Curtis Southerland, also from Jacksonville. His path into the realm of political activism was neither planned nor voluntary. His obscure, outsider campaign to unseat Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford as a write-in candidate in 2011 was motivated by his desire for redress after his brother Mark[?] was killed in a one of those “police-involved shootings” that have now become an unfortunate trademark of the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office. He lost, of course, but that’s fine because the fix was in from the start; former JSO Public Information Officer Ken Jefferson had an excellent chance to win, but regional Democrats stymied his fundraising, for unknown reasons. Southerland’s campaign was more of a protest against the system and a means of telling people about the tragic death of his brother.

Local media coverage was generally fair, though laced with the same snarky cynicism typical of Occupy reporting in general. Leading the pack, surprising, was the nominally liberal Orlando Weekly, which functions in the case as a gatekeeper for an Establishment Left that has been uncomfortable with Occupy from the get-go. In its October 27 issue, staff writers Billy Manes and Jeff Gore flog the standard commercial media talking points: That Occupy has no “list of demands, a chief goal or an overarching political philosophy”. While conceding their sidewalk strategy to be “brilliant”, they repeatedly note the “(ostensibly) leaderless nature of their organization” and keep the focus squarely on the negative aspects, like arrests and shady characters.

Granted, this was published only 12 days into the Occupation, and surely there is more left for them to say on the subject. But as a visitor to the city, I was disappointed to see its leading liberal publication projecting a generally dismissive attitude toward young people whose political views are basically consistent with the values of alt-media in general. It’s the sort of reductionist thinking that has essentially tanked political-based print media in general, in particular an alt-weekly market that has become aggressively corporatized and unresponsive to the needs of their audience.

Ironically, that issue’s cover features a snarling, broken-toothed Tea Party caricature as part of a series of poorly-done humorous Halloween masks. Occupy gets a nod, too, with a cut-out version of the now-ubiquitous Guy Fawkes mask adopted from “V” For Vendetta, which is now a universally-recognized symbol of Occupy and the larger (and more amorphous) Anonymous movement. “Initially dismissed as iPad-wielding hippies, the occupiers leered and groaned in the face of authority, anxiously anticipating police brutality and pepper spray,” writes Manes.

“The very notion that this leaderless movement had come to life as a pseudo-political monster is enough to cause apoplexy and anxiety among those in power [including, apparently, OW itself]. ‘Give us your list of demands!’ they screamed at the occupiers in a panic, only to realize that there really wasn’t a list of demands.” Imagine, two completely contradictory ideas coming from the same writer, in the same publication, just nine pages apart. This kind of cognitive dissonance certainly helps explain why the mainstream media still struggles to comprehend the depth and complexity of Occupy.

http://www.occupyorlando.org

http://www.occupythehood.org;

othorlando@gmail.com 

http://www.mikecantone.com

http://www.ocelections.com

http://www.HomegrownCoop.org

http://www.stores.ebay.com/boomart

sheltonhull@gmail.com; November 7, 2011

Interview: Kathleen Hanna

[The piece below is for Folio–runs Tuesday. But, since Ms. Hanna’s birthday is today, it made sense to preview it now, for the one-half of one-millionth of the world who actually checks this thing out–and thanks, by the way. I should also note that the section of downtown Jacksonville with MOCA and the newest Main Branch library are the best investments made in local public infrastructure in the past decade, a decade with many nice moves made.

The library’s music section is probably the best in Florida, in part because the collection is old, and in part because their acquisitions game is tighter than the Carlyle Group. The record collection alone was worth perhaps $100,000 before it was sold off piecemeal; WJCT did the same thing, and the cognoscenti worldwide sez “Thanks!” The zine collection is the most recent addition, and it touches on an aspect of regional culture crucial to its current leviathan status.

And next time you’re in Gainesville, make sure your visit includes a) the Butterfly Museum, b) Hear Again Music, and c) the legendary Civic Media Center, of which I could never say enough. Etc. and so forth, here ya go.]

Leader of the Pack
Kathleen Hanna on zines and scenes and feminist things.2011 Zine Symposium
“Zines: The Personal Is Political”
Jacksonville Public Library, Hicks Auditorium
Panel Discussion, 11am; Keynote Presentation, noon
Back when people wrote actual letters, I sent one to Kathleen Hanna, former singer for Bikini Kill, whose three imperfectly perfect albums in the ’90s set a sonic standard whose emulators have dominated the 21st century. Between her sound and their fury, Hanna (who turns 42 on the 12th) helped establish the continuity that ensured “girl singers” could do what they want, however they want to do it. What was next? I wondered. She sent back a package with some of the zines she was doing then; soon, Julie Ruin emerged, followed by Le Tigre. The original Rebel Girl is now an established veteran of all aspects of media, and one of the most influential women of her generation. She’s recorded eight albums since 1991, three EPs, seven singles featured on nine different compilation albums and, most tellingly, appeared on 17 different albums by other artists. She’s also the subject of two documentary features: The Punk Singer and Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre On Tour. (And, of course, her cameo in the video for “Bull In the Heather”!)

Hanna’s first visit here comes this Saturday, November 19, by invitation of the Jacksonville Public Library, where she’ll sit on a panel convened by curators of the library’s game-changing zine collection. Panelists include author, musician and FSCJ art professor Mark Creegan; artist/author Adee Roberson (http://www.pineappleblack.blogspot.com–very nice!); zine writer Travis Fristoe (whose credits include Maximum RocknRoll, Library Journal and Gainesville’s legendary Civic Media Center); and myself, a big fan of all their work. Hanna will then deliver the keynote address for the 2011 Zine Symposium. For adepts and adherents of the art form, this cannot be missed. Folio caught up with the ever-busy Hanna via Internets:

FW: Did the Internet kill the ‘zine trade, or somehow make it better?
KH: I think the internet gave certain obscure zines a place in the modern landscape they never would’ve had without it. Having said that, it is annoying to me when people buy older zines and then scan them and put some pages up on the internet without the author’s permission. They lose their original context that way, and often zines that were written in a specific time and place come off as overarching and ahistorical when, really, they were responding to specific things that were going on in local scenes at the time. Zines kind of were our blogs before blogs existed; they were meant to be quick and rough and
local and not overworked.If we wanted to write books, that were more permanent, we would’ve, but we didn’t. They were meant to be ephemeral and function in a specific time period.

FW: Have you ever worked with the Future of Music Coalition(futureofmusic.org)?
KH: I know Jenny and Kristin but I’ve never worked with FMC. [Note: Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson co-founded the band Tsunami.] They were, I believe both at the first Riot Grrrl meeting and were verysupportive and involved early on. I went to Junior High with Jenny Toomey.

FW: What are your thoughts on Occupy Wall Street? [Note: OccupyJax has
been in Hemming Plaza since Nov. 5]

KH: I think it’s great. I am pretty inspired by what young people do in general (not like it’s all young people, but it seems like quite a few young people were the instigators). It is interesting to me when people criticized it in the beginning, claiming it was all young, middle class people, and I was like “They are the ones who can manage to physically be down there sleeping on the bricks, and so they are, and that’s awesome, not a bummer!”FW: How do you feel about the “SlutWalk” trend?
KH: I am always happy when women are taking it to the streets and starting discussions.FW: What are your thoughts on the late Slits singer Ari Up?
KH: She was an innovator and I can’t believe she is gone. We lost her and Poly [Styrene] in a 2 year time period [note: both to cancer] and I think many of us are still reeling from this.

FW: Tell me about Lydia Lunch?
KH: LOOOVE HER. There are many spots on the album I am working on with my new band The Julie Ruin where my vocals are totally influenced by her style. She has influenced culture on such a deep level and never really been given her due.

FW: Is it possible for women to take positions that contradict the larger feminist community, while retaining feminist credentials? What must she say or do to be “expelled” from the movement?
KH: There are so many different ways to enact one’s own feminist ideas that it is pretty hard to come up with a unified list of feminist do’s and don’ts, and I personally hate that way of thinking. I am way more into allowing women to define feminism for themselves and keep on stretching its meanings. More arguments, more questions, more disagreements, this is what leads to a vital movement, not lists and rules.

FW: What’s it like seeing yourself on film?
KH: Um. Weird and embarrassing pretty much sums it up, but I have a distance from it now. After Who Took the Bomp? came out, I started being filmed for an upcoming documentary called The Punk Singer and my main thing is that I don’t really care if I come off like a jerk. I just want the movie to be engaging so people will go off on their own and check out my work and the stuff me and my bandmates made together.  I mean, on one hand I have a huge ego and love attention and all that, that’s why I’m a performer, but on the other hand I don’t take any of it too seriously, cuz I really am just an ant on anthill like everyone
else and my time here on earth is finite.

FW: Which of your recordings stands out as most representative of your aesthetic?
KH: I am most proud of the Rebel Girl 7″ Bikini Kill did and the first Le Tigre album. The song “Hot Topic” on that album is very much indicative of my aesthetic. Poppy yet still DIY with a big nod to the past.

FW: Who are the “Riot Grrrls” of today?
KH: Brontez Purnell of The Younger Lovers is my favorite modern riot girl. Also the women who run the website http://www.girlgangunderground.org/.

FW: Why have you never appeared in Jacksonville before?
KH: I don’t really know why, it was always hard to book stuff in Florida for some reason. Le Tigre played in Gainesville and Miami, but BK never played Florida at all.

jplzinelibrary.wordpress.com
jaxpubliclibrary.orgsheltonhull@gmail.com; November 7, 2011

G. Jerome Jones on Hip-Hop

Jones and Justiss, 2006

[We don’t often get guest posts at the “Money Jungle Safari”, but this is a welcome exception. G. Jerome Jones is one of my oldest friends, a multitalented multimedia pro who’s been a major influence on myself and others in the business. He’s done short-stories, plays, recorded a couple albums (one with DJ Zane III, the other with Jay Cole and the late, great Alan Justiss)–but he may be best-known for his spoken-word skills. I met him in 1997 at the old Nicotine Meltdown, through Justiss, when I came to write a story about it; I met Al Letson, Nestor Gil, Matt Butler, Troy Lukkarila, Chris Spohn and others all within the same couple weeks–a good summer!

Later, Jones was a founding editor of the original Section 8 Magazine, which ultimately delivered over 1,000 pages of original “local, national and international art, music, and information” to hundreds of readers. It would be impossible to say succinctly how important he was to building the organization to the global (and, quite possibly, intergalactic) status it hold today.

Jones reads from the 8, Elevations 2000

A graduate of Florida A&M University (one of the very best HCBUs), Jones hasspent most of the past decade in his native Barbados, where he continued to crank out material while developing his own greeting card/postcard business that shows great promise to fill some sizable gaps in that industry. He’s also working on a series of new releases related to his first love, poetry.

Jones recently took time to expound on a subject central to all our lives: Hip-Hop. He helped chronicle the formative earlier years of Duval’s stellar hip-hop scene in his reporting, and was the charismatic force behind the “Elevations” hip-hop nights held at Jack Rabbits under the 8 banner a decade ago. Artists like Willie Evans, Jr., Astronautalis, Paten Locke and dozens of others (a full list would be nice) all performed at those shows. Evans debuted “Underground Utilities” there, while Astronautalis once did a 30-minute freestyle while waiting for everyone else to show up. Epic. Enjoy.]

In Retrospect: An Old Head Takes a Look Back

Lord Monsta Ty battles Triclops; Zane III on the decks, 2000.

In many circles the question is often asked “what is Hip-Hop?” or “is that Hip-Hop?”  I’m sure most would agree that Hip-Hop is steadily evolving, and has come a long way from when it was birthed in the mid to late 70’s in theNew York Cityborough of theBronx.

As with any growing entity Hip-Hop has passed through many phases in its development and sadly many of today’s Hip-Hop heads don’t know, or care to know, about these changes. Most are caught up in the now, and really, why should they care about the history? No reason. But true Hip-Hop heads care about the history if for no other reason than that it did happen and without a doubt there was some timeless music that was produced and wonderful events that took place way back when. 

To many over the age of 35 the true essence of Hip-Hop was found in the “golden era” of the decade of the 80’s. In this time a great deal took place that shaped the styles of today. So let’s rewind a bit, sit back, as I bounce around through some of the moments and happenings that make Hip-Hop the lovely thing that it is to me. Me, an old geezer on the other side of 40, who by no long stretch of the imagination is an authority of this beautiful movement, but who, like many, is just another rabid fan and, thanks to time, has seen some thangs.

THE GOLDEN ERA- 1979-1989            

A cat by the name of Kool Herc is often mentioned as the one who started it all. Herc, originally fromJamaica, would take his sound system into the parks, set-up and throw a park jam, while doing this he would sometimes talk (or toast) over the instrumental records and do a bit of mixing. More DJ dexterity came with cats like Grandmaster Flash who was basically the man who started the whole scratching deal.

From the DJ came the rapper. Names like the Sugar Hill Gang with their hit “Rappers Delight” came out in 1979 with the lyrics by Grandmaster Caz who never got the credit. Kurtis Blow whose big hit was the “Breaks” and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five also began their careers in ’79-’80. In 1982 Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five dropped a bomb that showed Hip-Hop could be more than party music with their infamous “Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge…” the line that started the classic jam “The Message.” Also in ’82 Afrika Bambatta and the Soul Sonic force had a big hit with “Looking for the perfect Beat.” But it was RUN DMC who took it to the proverbial next level with their debut in ’83 – “It’s like that/Sucker M.C” and their success and “push” of the artform is still very much respected.

In the mid 80’s Hip-Hop was twisting in many different positions. New variants were sprouting from the main root. There were big tunes like Kraftwerk’s “Tour De France” andShannon’s “Let the music Play” which were examples of electro funk and freestyle or Latin Hip-Hop, but the so called pure shi8t was still being represented.

 A young, lean and hungry cat full of testosterone came forward in ‘84 with his debut “I need a Beat” and shook up the game. He was James Todd Smith, or LL Cool J as most people know him. LL was tight, but other cats were approaching it a bit differently. Folk like Doug E Fresh – the original beat box- and the group Whodini who dropped their album- “The Escape”(with classics like Friends, The Freaks come out at night and 5 minutes of Funk) also repped hard in ‘84.

The group UTFO also came out in ‘84 with “Roxanne Roxanne” and created the response trend, estimates are given that between 50-100 responses came off of that song. Another significant record released in late ’84 was 2 Live Crew’s “It’s gotta be Fresh”. This record, from down south, birthed the Miami Bass sound. In ’84 The Fat Boys were also around doing their thing and they became known as the most comical characters in Hip-Hop. Yea, Hip-Hop comics; something hardly seen in present times.

Fast forward to 1985. Many call this the last great year of Old school Hip-Hop. It was before the advent of overblown sampling. In ’85 RUN DMC collaborated with ‘70’s rockers Aerosmith and came with “Walk this way” and the early rumblings of  “gangsta rap” began with a track called “Batterram” by Toddy Tee.

A massive hit in ’85 was by the sexy Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam with their joint “I wonder if I take you home” causing intense reactions on dance floors. But it was Doug E Fresh who owned that year with his big tunes “La Di Da Di” and “The Show” which took Hip-Hop in a new direction.

In my opinion the years 1986 -1989 are the pinnacle years in Hip-Hop. I say this because so many important groups emerged in this time and so many other things came into fruition that pushed the culture along. 

In ’86 DJ Polo and Kool G Rap made their debut with “It’s a Demo b/w I’m Fly” produced by Marley Marl. The shi8t Kool G Rap was spitting back then could still rock crowds today. The Juice Crew and Boogie Down productions went to battle with “The Bridge” and “The Bridge is over” ,  and MC Lyte stepped into the mix with “Cram to understand”. Salt & Pepa represented for the females as well with their joint “Push it” and the Beastie Boys released “License toIll”. But without a doubt, the debut of Eric B and Rakim with “Eric B is President.” takes the cake and when they dropped the full length album in ’87 – “Paid in Full” everybody and they Mama was checking for this dynamic duo.

In ’87 rap began to spread strong on the West Coast with Ice T dropping an album that did some high numbers and got him a lot of criticism. Ice T showed that life on the West Coast was different from the East.  One of the most influential, controversial and revolutionary groups in Hip-Hop also stepped up in ‘87, this was the mighty Public Enemy, mixing hardcore rap with strong socio-political messages they were a shock to the system of America.

In 1988 MTV created a show dedicated to all things Hip-Hop with Yo! MTV Raps and the Source Magazine printed its first issue. NWA released “Straight Outta Compton and Slick Rick came with “Children’s Story.”

In 1989 came the birth of Hippy-Hop with the Native Tongue collective emerging. Artists that comprised this collective were people like Queen Latifah and the groups De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers. Their music promoted tolerance, respect, fun and harmony a sharp contrast from what many of their contemporaries where doing.

Okay let me, pause and admit something here. This info is readily available on the internet, that’s were I got it, and if you are interested it takes only a couple of seconds to google it up, but for me, writing this article and looking this stuff up, I must admit, was a lovely stroll down memory lane. Time traveling at its utmost. To me many of these songs conjure up images of what I was doing at the time: the chica I was checking, the different haircuts I had, the clothing styles me and my friends use to wear the different dances we use to do, the slang we use to sling, basically all the things that go into making you who you are. The memories, some of them lovely and bringing forth a chuckle, some not so lovely and bringing forth a sigh…ah the memories.

While all this was happening with the musical part of the movement the other aspects were also flourishing i.e. gaining notice among the masses and spreading.

Some of the first movies that featured break dancing where classics like Wild Style and Flashdance, these films showed audiences near and far what the kids in the NY ghettoes were up to and people took notice. Without a doubt the two main Breakdance crews at this time were the New York City Breakers and the Rock Steady Crew.

On the Graff side things were bubbling too. Although still illegal, some of the artsy fartsy crowd in the big-up art galleries in downtown Manhattan, and elsewhere, were becoming interested in the inner city art that they saw on the subway trains and on the sides of buildings, and art exhibitions started to feature some of these artists. In most Graf circles the name that often comes up at least once is the lord of Graf, Phase II who started taking Graf to another level in the 70’s.

Sadly many still think that the term “Hip- Hop” only pertains to the man or woman on the mic, when in fact Hip-Hop is the DJ, the M.C, the Graffiti artist, and the Breaker. The Four Elements. In the early days these elements intertwined and fed off of each other, the classic early 80’s movieBeat Streetshows this interaction in its entire splendor and is a good one to check if you’ve never seen it before. To me it’s fresh and innocent, undiluted by the bling  playa and gangster mentality of today.

Another movie that shows that Hip-Hop was bubbling not only on the East Coast but the West Coast as well was Breakin’ which came out around ’84 and featured two dancers- Turbo and Ozone- doing more of the “up top” dancing moves than the floor moves. Breakin’ also featured a young Ice T with his big hit of the moment “Reckless”.

THE ESSENCE

The simple answer to the question “What is the essence of Hip-Hop?” is that Hip-Hop is the DJ, M.C, The Breaker, the Graf-artist….but it goes deeper than that Hip-Hop is a culture a way of existing and expressing. It permeates the way you walk, talk, dress and view the world. It shapes the way you interact with others and is the soundtrack of your triumphs, dreams, wishes and frustrations. It’s not just something you listen to. Folk who embody the essence do more than just listen to the music they are a part of it. They are involved in the creation of all or parts of the whole. They follow the dramas and characters of it like house wives do soap operas. They discuss it and debate on certain aspects of it and they do so regularly. Simply put, it’s their religion and some folk are downright fanatical

In my life I have encountered quite a few individuals who I would say embodied the essence of Hip-Hop. My involvement with Hip-Hop culture dates back to 1984 that’s when I first became aware of it, when I bought my first album (Kurtis Blow “The Brakes”). It was new and the thing to do and I was like 14 years old and had a bit more independence. I can recall that summer clearly. 

Break dancing on a beach inBarbadoswith my cousin and some friends, in many ways that was my coming of age summer, we formed a lil crew called the Renegades, nothing much just playing around. After that summer I was in a crew with the boys from my neighborhood a crew called Rock City Crew although we were nowhere close to a city we were island boys after all. We took it a little more seriously though, battling other crews at downtown nightclubs, behind grocery stores when they were closed on the weekends, and on school compounds, moving with a roll of congoleum and a boom box we were ready.

Some of the people in my crew were my cousin Russell who was crazy on the floorwork, his specialty was swipes and the windmill. He would get so high and he was quick, nice and smooth with it. Then there were the brothers Thorne, Nigel and Ian, who were both deep into it. Nigel was the up-top man and had the perfect waves, and Egyptian Tuts, while Ian was a jack of all trades Djing and MCing along with the dancing. I remember many nites just sitting out on their front wall trading line for line scenes from  Beat Street which we had memorized or chilling in their front room listening to their old man’s  LP’s and 45’s.

There comes a time however in every teenager’s life when nothing else matters but the opposite sex and during this time I must admit that Break dancing took a back seat. When I moved to theU.S.in ’89, I was into other music as well as Hip- Hop. Going through college in the early ‘90’s I remember the different fads and dances that came, like the Polka dots and shiny black shoes and the -“ouch”- MC Hammer pants. Dances like the wop and the cabbage patch and others with names I can’t recall. I even remember riding around one Friday with my boy Harv, skipping class, just playing Dr. Dre’s The Chronic over and over again, killing the cassette.

It was only after my college days when I moved back toJacksonville,Floridathat Hip-Hop moved squarely back into my focus. Living there I met many folk who breathed it- too many to name- DJ’s with vast collections of vinyl who made beats and played at different clubs.  MC’s, with immense skill, trying, giving it all they had, honing their craft and believing the pie in the sky dream that they would get that ever elusive record deal. Breakers, full of black and blues who still pushed their bodies to the limit striving to execute that perfect move; and Graf-artists with Burners of intricate detail and tags on many surfaces throughout the city.

Along with some friends, I started a monthly Hip-Hop show called Elevations and tried to do some positive things with it. We strived to promote the culture and give it a home where it could grow, where cats (and kittens) could sell their independent product and make contacts. We also made it a point to hit folks-especially the youngsters- over the head with some new and innovative, fun ideas and also tried to provide a forum where it could get political and make changes. But more than anything Elevations was a show where the four elements could exist.  Some cool things happened and some things that weren’t so cool as well, such is life.

Lately I been working on a Play and the four Elements is one of the main ingredients in it, so I’m still doing my thing. From vinyl- to cassette- to C.D.- to MP3…..things change, that’s one fact that remains the same. But in my mind the essence of Hip-Hop is not in the tools, the trends, the flash and the posturing. Hip-Hop is in the people who live it, and when I say live it I mean they turn to it when they are up or down, not necessarily to make money off of it, although that is not a bad thing, but the rewards are basic….you do it because you enjoy it.

You hear a song, or create a song, or see a performance that gives you a lil energy boost and gets you through a tough day. You observe or create a tight Graff piece and you feel good, simple. You check a Breakdancer, or bust a move yourself, and you are still thinking about it many days later. Alone in your room you scribble verses down in your notebook and share with your bro and you both get a chuckle or little enlightenment.

On the turntables- 1 and 2- you are totally in the zone and if you at a club you get a wonderful feeling seeing the people respond to your selections, but if you are alone it’s cool  too ‘cause you totally immersed in it. With nothing in your pocket and hunger pains in your stomach you throw up your tag on a wall just to let folk know “Heh, I’m here…and I am Hip-Hop….”     

gjrome@hotmail.com

sheltonhull@gmail.com; August 19, 2011

Money Jungle: Deficits and Debt, Credit and Control

I’m writing this on August 1, as President Obama is trying to secure a deal with Congress to raise the ceiling on our national debt (currently hovering around $14 trillion, or 98% of GDP) and avoid possible default on America’s financial obligations. This is the kind of political theate rWashington specializes in.

Of course, longtime readers of this column already know the subtext: America is broke, and has been for the better part of a decade. Osama bin Laden’s master plan to bankrupt the “bleed”Americadry through a series of ill-conceived, poorly-planned and ineffectively-executed military adventures in all of the wrong countries worked so well that we had to blow his brains out just to silence his constant snickering. The national debt has more than doubled (from $5.7 trillion) since 2000, and is projected to exceed $22 trillion by 2015, or 134% of GDP. Anyone who thinks any of this will ever be paid back, or that it’s even possible, is either lying or insane. Maybe both.

Looking at the legendary US Debt Clock website, which belongs on everyone’s list of favored sites, the brutal truth now being revealed to the population is laid bare in cold statistics. On Saturday, July 30 (three days before the deadline) one sees the national debt hovering just above $14.5 trillion. At that moment, our GDP was only $14.8 trillion (a debt-to-GDP ratio of 98%), and the amount of currency currently in circulation was less than $10 trillion. The interest on debt stands at $3.6 trillion for this year alone, which is only slightly less than the total national debt a decade ago, pre-war.

The debt debacle unfolding on Capitol Hill offers the nation’s youth an ideal object lesson in the dangers of a debt-based economy. Not only has theUnited Statesruined its own economy, and helped undermine the financial stability of its allies, but our dependence on foreign countries to sustain our lifestyles has forced us out of the position of global leadership that we’d held since World War II. Just as our addiction to OPEC oil left us unable to check those nations’ continued support of Islamic terrorism (which is essentially funded by the money we send to OPEC, as well as military aid to Pakistan), our slavish dependence on China leaves us impotent to check its expansion into the Western Hemisphere. Centuries of evolved political wisdom faded, like old cotton candy, under the heat of economic expediency.

Let’s make this country-simple: The bailout was a mistake. President Obama laid down like a prostitute for Wall Street, because the underwrote his campaign. He stacked his economic team with people who were directly complicit in the illegal and unethical behaviors that led to the recession, and their time has been spent throwing good money after bad, while working hard to ensure the guilty never face the consequences of their actions, either fiscal or physical. Having demonstrated that you can cheat the system and destroy human lives in the process, while being rewarded for it, Obama eliminated any possibility that Wall Street’s excesses can be reined-in.

Federal finances are in shambles, but under that is a whole matrix of personal and institutional debt that could also collapse if triggered by federal default. Like the abusive spouse who gets a second chance, Wall Street now feels empowered to do anything—and that makes it almost a certainly that our recession is going to get much, much worse. Nearly 15 million Americans are out of work, and millions more labor at jobs that pay poorly, offer no benefits or room for advancement. A majority of citizens are stuck in this cycle of revolving debt, but no one has suggested any relief for them.

No one suggests putting a moratorium on the fraudulent foreclosures that have ruined millions of families, or forgiving student-loan debt, or exempting certain key public workers (like nurses, teachers, cops and firemen) from the federal income tax, or cutting through the labyrinth of paperwork that impedes so many from starting businesses in this country, or containing the artificially-high medical costs that are the primary cause of personal bankruptcy. The only wisdom we’re receiving from our political “leaders” consists of calls for enhanced austerity on one hand, tax hikes on the other—approaches that will only cause economic growth to stall even further. Which means this whole debate will not end with any deal struck this week or next, this year or next. Our nation is in big trouble, but the only people who don’t know are us.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; August 1, 2011

 

To Swing, Wildly: Notes on The Flail

[Note: Like the piece following it, this was written for  the current Arbus, but tightness of space precluded its publication. This is more biographical, touching on their backstory and the dynamics of the festival gig this weekend; their excellent  “Live At Smalls” CD itself is reviewed below.]

The word “flail” commonly refers to a European device used alternately for threshing grain or thrashing people. Two lengths of wood or metal, joined with chain or rope, measured and made to suit specific tasks. We may recognize it most readily in the form of nunchaku, which have a variety of applications. In its verb form “flail” means “to swing wildly”, and it’s in that sense that The Flail can be regarded. The Flail: Live at Smalls (SmallsLIVE) is their fourth album, and it captures them at their very best.

The Flail play what could be called “mainstream” or “traditional” jazz: straight-ahead, build around a defined melody played by a frontline of trumpet and saxophone, with a consistently swinging rhythm section. But words can’t do justice to their attack, which is informed by the broad diversity of the members’ experiences. There is no leader, per se; it is a group of individuals working toward a common purpose.

Dennis Cook, of JamBase.com, notes: “Despite a name that suggests spastic movement this is measured, gorgeously executed and warm. … [They] move with seamless, telepathic grace.” Jazz great Kenny Barron (best-known for his work with Stan Getz) wouldn’t have to pay a dime to gain entry to any jazz gig anywhere, so when he says “I’d pay good money to see these guys play,” it carries extra weight.

Most of their songs are their own compositions, though they’ve done excellent interpretations of Monk’s “Trinkle Tinkle”, Duke Ellington’s “Oclupaca”, “Remember” by Irving Berlin and “The Chooch” by George Garzone (who has employed several of the band members). The new album is entirely original, with three of the eight tunes written by bassist (and Jacksonville native) Reid Taylor, including the lead burner “Mr. Potato Bass” and the closing “Under the Influence of Stereolab”.

They specialize in loping mid-tempo grooves, evoking a mood of smoothness and sophistication—think luxury car commercial—but prove adept at any pace. Note “Better Watch What You Wish For” or “Light At the End of the Tunnel” (both by pianist Brian Marsella), which phase through entire moods so quick you barely notice it. “We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet” sees a New Orleans second-line beat give way to soul-jazz harmonies Roland Kirk would savor. The overall picture is of a very mature, forward-thinking group of jazzmen rooted in the tradition.

They have infused the word “flail” with fresh new meaning, just as they have the concept of jazz quintet, which was once revolutionary but was long since so leaden from the baggage of a previous era that modern musicians often avoided it on purpose. With a frontline of tenor and trumpet, and piano-bass-drums rhythm, the challenge is to define a signature sound within a format where the listener has preconceptions based on what they have heard before. It’s the same challenge faced by a rock quartet of guitar-bass-drums-charismatic front-man or, for that matter, a symphony orchestra.

Reid Taylor, whose 80 year-old French bass anchors the rhythm section, made an interesting point about their dynamic. Speaking via phone from New York, while preparing for a gig at Fat Cat later that day, he noted that all the members of the band maintain full schedules working in all kinds of groups besides The Flail, and that’s true for their colleagues. The critical and commercial emphasis has shifted from the bands themselves to the individual—there are fewer “sidemen”, as such. This, ironically, strengthens the unit, as each member brings a lot of diverse experiences to the table. The same could be said for the jazz scene in Northeast Florida.

Born in Jacksonville in 1973, Taylorwas first drawn to music as a profession by the extremely influential electric bassist Mike Watt, formerly of a seminal punk band called the Minutemen. It was just a few years later that the influence of Charles Mingus inspired a shift toward the acoustic upright; he currently plays a French model built in the 1920s and uses gut-strings, as opposed to the newer steel strings used by some 80-90% of jazz bassists today. Taylorwas first trained by Steve Novosel while attending American University in Washington, DC; he later studied under the great Butch Warren for four years before he moved to NYC to train under Steve Irwin.

After graduating, Taylor dove deeper into the deep pool of opportunity for a skilled bassist in the New Yorkscene, working for artists as diverse as bop baritonist Cecil Payne to avant-garde standard-bearer Charles Gayle. Besides his work in the Flail, he also does a weekly gig at the WestVillage’s Fat Cat Jazz Club with Ned Goold and plays in a noise-rock band called Gunnar; he also recorded an album of his own pop music under the nom-de-bass “Balk”. All in a day’s work.

It was while attending the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music (founded 1986), that the members of the Flail first met and began working together in 2001. Trumpeter Dan Blankinship is fromRichmond,VA, and counts Wynton Marsalis and Lee Morgan as inspirations; he was classically-trained at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory before turning to jazz full-time. Tenor saxophonist Stephan Moutot moved toNew Yorkafter building a career in his nativeFrance. Pianist Brian Marsella hails fromPhiladelphia, which has produced countless jazz greats. Drummer Brian Zebroski was raised inPittsburghbefore training under masters like Billy Hart and Charlie Persip at New School; he’s also a member of the acclaimed Alex Skolnick Trio. (Hipster alert: he also played with Bonnie Tyler, of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” fame.)    

Over the years, the Flail has burnished their international appeal, starting inFrance. Moutot’s connections in his homeland’s music scene enabled him to open the door into one of the most passionate jazz markets in the world. Quoting their bio: “Over the course of several tours in France they have played to packed houses in Paris, Lyon, Grenoble, Renne, Ardeche, and Marseille; highlights include Jazz a Vienne (2002, 2004), the Marseille Festival du Jazz des Cinq Continents (2002, 2005), and the College d’Espagne at the Cite Universitaire Internationale de Paris (2009).” They’ve even played with rappers and b-boys in Villefontaine, recalling Max Roach’s work with Fab 5 Freddy and the New York City Breakers some 30 years ago. 2007 saw their debut in Madrid, where they hope to return this year.

This aspect of their aesthetic has evolved during the group’s decade together, dating back to the very onset of their output. Their first album, Live In France, was recorded during a concert in Grenoble (birthplace of Andre the Giant) in 2002; the second, Never Fear (2006), was recorded at Paris’ Acousti studios. Their self-titled third album was, like the newest one, recorded live at the venerable Smalls Jazz Club inNew York, which has hosted nearly every big name of the past 40 years at one time or another.

Much like the Village Vanguard, which is arguably the all-time greatest setting for jazz recording (with all due respect to the Columbia Records studios on 5^th Street, and Rudy Van Gelder’s living room in Hackensack, NJ), the character of Smalls comes through in the sound; a skilled listener could probably discern the location just by listening.

Over time, the band has come to prefer recording live, as it better captures the immediacy of their sound, from the nuances of improvisation to crowd response and the ambient noises that, in proper amounts, adds a texture to the music that no studio can. “There’s a lot of clinking glasses,” notes Taylor with a laugh.

And other musicians agree: The Flail’s is just one among many jazz albums recorded there in just the last few years. It’s a brilliant business model that other venues for live music could utilize to bring in extra revenue and get their name around to new customers. (The Knitting Factory had great success using this model in the ‘90s, in the process helping undergird the scene as it exists today.) Among those who appear on albums released by the club: Cyrille Aimee, Spike Wilner, Omer Avital, Bruce Barth, Ben Wolfe, Ari Hoenig, Jimmy Greene, Ryan Kisor, Kevin Haynes, Ethan Iverson, Jason Linder. That’s just a drop in the bucket, but it’s a very well-documented drop.

With the new album already generating strong critical buzz in pre-release, and shows already booked in three countries 2011 is looking to be the Flail’s biggest and busiest yet. Their performance at the Jazz Festival comes at the start of a summer that will take them well outside their NYC base to other hotspots like Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and WashingtonDC. They are also building toward their first West Coast tour, which runs from Los Angeles up to Vancouver via Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, etc. And, of course, they will be returning toEurope.

It was a special thrill for Taylor to bring his group down to his former hometown for last year’s Jazz Festival, where they were booked in the 2pm opening slot on Sunday. This time, expect a more central spot, where audiences can see one of the rising young jazz bands in the country at a key point in their musical development. The fact that they view our festival as being as important as all this other stuff speaks to the role it plays—and can continue to play—in the jazz world. Hopefully they will make a regular practice of appearing here.

Figure 8: Expanding the Jacksonville Jazz Festival (In Eight Steps)

[Not sure if this had been posted before. Originally written for Arbus.]

As we prepare for yet another Jacksonville Jazz Festival, it’s worth noting what a great job has been done by the city’s Office of Special Events in moving festival activity from Metropolitan Park to the Laura Street corridor. The move made things much more scenic and accessible; it also helped spread the wealth to local businesses nearby. All involved will admit, though, that no amount of success is any reason to disregard the potential for even more in the years ahead.

The suggestions below are not just this writers. They result from years of chatter with people involved in every aspect of the festival business—musicians and festival bookers here and elsewhere, journalists, fans, bystanders. Everyone has an opinion, and if you’re patient enough to listen, great insight can be had. These concepts all involved very small outlay of money, if any at all, but can quickly grow festival business.

1.) Expand the whole scope of the festival: The old saying “Less is more” does not apply to the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. The huge success that it’s been in recent years should provide the impetus to make it even bigger, allowing organizers to book more artists over more days and generate even more revenue for the city, its citizens, and the jazz industry itself. The festival is already profitable, and it’s worth the money the city puts into it. But the brutal fiscal and political realities mean nobody can predict what may happen in the next few years. The Jazz Festival needs to be profitable, and there’s no reason why it can’t be. One thing we know about jazz fans, historically, is that they will pay whatever it takes to get the music they want to hear. Jazz impresarios (and their counterparts in the classical world) built the music industry as we know it—everything from mic placement to global distribution to the concept of systematized concert tours.

2.) Exploit connections to NYC, etc.: Historically, the jazz industry has been based inNew York City, ever since Louis Armstrong arrived there from Chicago in the mid-1920s. It remains so today: Most of the musicians, clubs, record labels and jazz media are there, including a literal ton of talent fromNortheast Florida. Every Jazz Festival should have a solid contingent of the hottest, freshest players from the Apple, to reestablish ours as one of the country’s great festivals.

3.) Push for more involvement from local media: As with everything involving local culture, local media remains the weak link. They need to be strongly encouraged to cover things like this, instead of constantly reaching out for negative stories. The personalities alone make for easy content, and it will probably spike ratings upward. All it takes is a few cameras roaming the area, and even visitors from other cities will instantly know that we take our jazz seriously.

4.) Reach out to the national media: Our Jazz Festival is one of the oldest and best in the country, and that point needs to be reiterated to the national jazz press, most of whom have no idea there’s a jazz scene here anyway.

5.) Scout statewide talent: As it stands, the Jacksonville Jazz Festival is the oldest and best-known in the state; we have connections in the jazz industry that the other cities can only dream of. Our festival should be a showcase for the best jazz talent in the southeast, in addition to our own and the big names from up north. By incorporating more regional talent, we will encourage more tourist traffic from those cities.

6.) Integrate the surrounding venues as part of the festival experience: The bars, clubs and restaurants of our Urban Core can play a vital role in expanding the festival’s scope. There are many fine jazz artists who may not command enough of a draw to warrant placement on the main stages, but their critical appeal is such that having them here sends a strong message about our commitment to the music. Most nights, the festival wraps up around 11pm (except for the ‘Round Midnight Jazz Jam on Saturday nights). It seems a big mistake to let those crowds die down, when we’ve got a captive audience ready to experience more of the city. Festival organizers should reach out to nightspots like TSI, Marks, Dive Bar, De Real Ting, Burrito Gallery, etc., and encourage them to do their own jazz booking for festival weekend. All that activity should be included as part of the festival lineup, with all-access passes gaining entry to these places (or, at the very least, a free drink).

7.) Make better use of the festival’s own history to sell its future: Ideally, the Jazz Festival’s history could be on permanent display somewhere downtown, like the Ritz or even City Hall.Jacksonville has hosted some of the greatest musicians of all-time, but that sterling record is inaccessible to anyone younger than a certain age. If our history was better-defined, it would be even easier to chart the city’s future.

8.) Use social media to direct traffic: Social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others cost virtually nothing, but their impact on business can be huge. Local artists and musicians, having had to develop in what amounts to a media vacuum, have already helped establish the value of such technologies; Facebook, in particular, renders local media irrelevant, as far as concert listings and such. The Jazz Festival should set up accounts with these sites and use them to direct traffic to various parts of the festival. Bret Primack’s eyeJazz.tv site is a great new resource. They want short, quickly-made videos of jazz activity, but not performance stuff; more like interviews with artists and fans and tours of venues. We’re already working on connecting with that site to show off more of the nuances of our jazz scene.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; April 8, 2011

Sherman Skolnick book review (2004)

Ahead of the Parade: a Who’s Who of Treason and High Crimes—Exclusive Details of Fraud & Corruption of the Monopoly Press, the Banks, the Bench and the Bar, & the Secret Political Police, by Sherman H. Skolnick. Tempe, AZ: Dandelion Books, 2003. 315 pp.

Sherman Skolnick is probably best-known as the founder of Citizens’ Committee to Clean Up the Courts, founded in 1963 to conjure up concepts of corruption and criminality that could be used as political leverage against judges and lawyers. While many of his targets would dispute his version of events then and now, it can’t be denied that more judges and lawyers have gone to jail because of his efforts than any journalist or politician who immediately comes to mind. I could not imagine what price Skolnick has paid to pursue his particular line of dialogue with history, nor, perhaps, what price has been paid to him. I do know, however, that he’s almost 80 years old and knows enough HTML to get a book deal.

His take on politics is less reliable, as demonstrated in his book Ahead of the Parade. It’s technically his second book, but The Secret History of Airplane Sabotage (1973), which examined in excruciating detail the crash of United Airlines 553 at Chicago’s Midway Airport in December, 1972, never actually made it through the first printing—perhaps because he concluded that the crash occurred at the request of Richard Nixon, the master of dirty tricks, who wanted to silence the wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt; she died alongside a US congressman and a CBS News reporter.

So he could be viewed as credible on the subject of judicial affairs, especially in his hometown of Chicago, a tough place to come up doing that kind of work today, more so especially if crippled by childhood polio. Apparently Skolnick’s parents appealed to FDR to personally intervene in obtaining hard-to-find medical care, and he did, even having the boy out to visit with him in Hot Springs, where he made available some of the “alternative therapies” developed for the (usually) sitting President. In later years Skolnick would accuse FDR of complicity inPearl Harborand the squandering of US gold reserves, though he remains fond of the old autocrat. More recent Presidents get harsher treatment, and W is depicted as fundamentally illegitimate.

The challenge here is to describe Skolnick without using the phrase “conspiracy theory,” which isolates the reviewer from heat associated with the author’s arguments but is nonetheless prejudicial. Where once the phrase enjoyed a certain cachet, just a few years ago, in the years since the most flamboyantly destructive conspiracy in modern history was executed by associates of Osama bin Laden the phrase has been used to slur a lot of content that is verifiably true. The liberation of Iraq, for example, was widely and vociferously opposed on the basis of arguments since proven correct, even endorsed by those who argued most stridently for war—and apostates before and since have to worry about being labeled as “conspiracy theorists” by professional conspirators.

Skolnick’s writing style has real old-school punch, like a cross between William S. Burroughs and Walter Winchell. It would be fun to read on almost any subject, but that his chosen field is sabotage and dirty tricks is just delightful! His skolnicksreport.com is loaded with what is, at the very worst, the very best political satire available in English, and at best the finest conspiracy theory this side of Lyndon LaRouche. Until a better phrase comes along, it will have to be called that, though doing so begs the question of whether it is possible for conspiracy theory to ever be true. Having written more about Mr. Skolnick than any other living journalist, and being reasonably educated in many of the matters that come up in his work, I would say: Yes. Conspiracy theory permutates from game theory, and is a fundamental component of political science as an art form.

A number of individuals and organizations come under suspicion within this framework, including the CIA, FBI, MI-6, Mossad, McDonald’s Federal Reserve, Bank of America, Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, CREEP, BCCI, Jesse Jackson, Marc Rich, Rahm Emanuel, Timothy McVeigh, Saddam Hussein, Al Gore, Gore Vidal, and “William Rockefeller Clinton” (don’t ask). All the great dynasties are here: Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kennedy, Windsor (whose matriarch is Queen of England) and five different men spanning three generations of the Bush family, including the current “occupant and resident” of the White House. Now, even those of us who doubt that China uses Wal-Mart’s transportation channels to move drugs into the US and pays law enforcement to look the other way, or that JFK was supposed to be killed at a Chicago Bears game a month before Dallas, can marvel at the audacity with which Skolnick hammers out his theses.

If a fifth of Skolnick’s reports on national and international politics were ever proven true, the shock would reverberate across the world. A fun mind-game to play when reading Ahead of the Parade is to assume that, amidst all the questionable content, there is one line in it that is absolutely true—but which line?

A large portion of the book is devoted to theIllinoisjudicial scene—namely, the details of a lawsuit that sought to overturn copyright protection for Coca-Cola. He writes of judgeships and media anchor-spots being purchased, and of secret courts that do the elite’s bidding behind the scenes. Unless one has a passion for jurisprudence (or lack thereof), or like collecting dirt on one of the world’s most successful brand names, the reader will skip through much of this material for the meat—the dirty deeds of our nation’s elite. Bush, Clinton, Gore, the Pope, the Queen of England, the Rockefellers, Jesse Jackson, Marc Rich, Chandra Levy, even Simon Wiesenthal—very few escape his poison pen, and those who do are excoriated repeatedly on the website.

The visual of an 80 year-old man speaking quite sincerely about how the Pope has killed people to keep up margins in the soybean trade, or how Al Gore was nearly killed twice by air power in the week before JFK, Jr. died in similar fashion (which he has done at length on his cable access show, “Broadsides”), is plenty amusing, like a senile relative rewriting history. But there is a method to his madness, which centers on dissolving the reflexive belief that it is possible to exert real power in this nation while also holding true to professed morality. In that sense, Ahead of the Parade could be viewed as the sequel to the late William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse (1991), that classic of conspiracy theory that reads as more legit with each passing year.

The most obvious lesson to be taken from Skolnick’s opus is that most if not all the major global powers have people hard at work on behalf of their interests right here in America. Another lesson would be that bribery is a very specific art form, the mastery of which can greatly relieve the pressures of an aggressive life. I doubt that anyone would seriously question such notions anymore, but it was flatly dismissed as late as the Enron collapse in summer 2001, which to outsiders looked much like a controlled implosion done for the benefit of shadowy forces, and whose perpetrators escaped justice by throwing money at our government.

If this book has any real flaw, other than the questionability of its content, it is that the book could never come close to the sheer vicious joy of the website. A better idea would have been for Skolnick to anthologize his infamous “Overthrow of the American Republic” (OOTAR) series, now numbering 66 parts. But that would be too easy. There is something clearly quixotic about Skolnick’s quest to piss of the entire Western ruling structure, so to see a book under his name at all is pretty heartening for those Americans who truly value our (current) freedom of speech.

The distinct possibility that our country, for better or worse, has already been sold out from under us to people whose identities we won’t know until it’s too late has not been articulated in this way since William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg got really deep in the early 1970s, and I would hazard to guess that they would enjoy Skolnick, in moderation. If nothing is true unless you see it with your own eyes, then most of what we know to exist really doesn’t, which is an infinitely more frightening prospect than if everything was true. As the recently pardoned Lenny Bruce once said “Chicago is so corrupt, it’s thrilling.” Indeed.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; December 13, 2004

*Note: Sherman Skolnick died in 2002, but his website remains intact.