This has been rattling around the web for ages, but it still rocks. Producer Pete Rock builds a track from Pat Benetar’s ‘Love is a Battlefield’…
Oldie, but a goodie…
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Tsar Bomb!
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I was youtubing this evening and was initially excited to see some chem experiment in making instant ice. Then I crossfaded to this footage of a Russian Tsar bomb. It really beats the instant ice, hands down. Terrifying and beautiful at the same time… at least for me.
Salt Peanuts! Salt Peanuts!
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This is how my friend Dave described it to me. Charlie Parker, whose birthday is today, was scheduled to play a gig with Dizzy in NYC. Don’t know the exact date. But due to his chronic heroin habit, had pawned his sax. The story goes that Charlie ran around the block and bought a toy sax, where I’m not sure, could have been at one of the many music stores that reside around Time Sq… or maybe it was at a five & dime. Anyways, Bird shows up, and smokes the sh*t out of the solo in Dizzy’s composition ‘Salt Peanuts’, using a plastic saxophone… I’m not sure which recording actually contains it, I don’t think it’s the one I’m linking to here. But you’ll know it when you hear it. It’s the version that usually gets stuck in your head.
Many consider the recording”Charlie Parker: 'Jazz at Massey Hall'" or it's also known as "The Quintet, Jazz at Massey Hall, 1953" to be one of the great jazz recordings of the hard-bop era. It certainly has a slamming version of 'Salt Peanuts'.
While Parker isn't in this clip, Dizzy kills it with a fantastic round up of jazz greats with a more formal arrangement of 'Salt Peanuts'.
If A Clown
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Generally speaking, I’m not big on poetry. But last week the New Yorker ran this poem by Stephen Dunn, which I just read today as I was running some errands in Manhattan. Most who know me will attest, I do not like clowns. This poem didn’t try to convince me otherwise, but struck me as oddly emotional and introspective when I least expected it.
If A Clown
by Stephen Dunn
If a clown came out of the woods,
a standard-looking clown with oversized
polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,
a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him
on the edge of your property,
there’d be nothing funny about that,
would there? A bear might be preferable,
especially if black and berry-driven.
And if this clown began waving his hands
with those big white gloves
that clowns wear, and you realized
he wanted your attention, had something
apparently urgent to tell you,
would you pivot and run from him,
or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed
to understand here was a clown
who didn’t know where he was,
a clown without a context?
What could be sadder, my friend thought,
than a clown in need of a context?
If then the clown said to you
that he was on his way to a kid’s
birthday party, his car had broken down,
and he needed a ride, would you give
him one? Or would the connection
between the comic and the appalling,
as it pertained to clowns, be suddenly so clear
that you’d be paralyzed by it?
And if you were the clown, and my friend
hesitated, as he did, would you make
a sad face, and with an enormous finger
wipe away an imaginary tear? How far
would you trust your art? I can tell you
it worked. Most of the guests had gone
when my friend and the clown drove up,
and the family was angry. But the clown
twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird
and gave it to the kid, who smiled,
let it rise to the ceiling. If you were the kid,
the birthday boy, what from then on
would be your relationship with disappointment?
With joy? Whom would you blame or extoll?
(tip of the copyright-infringement-hat to the New Yorker, for this piece,
thanks for turning me on to a new poet.)