I was listening to MC Lars podcast and watching Dave Burd Lil Dicky tv show with the sound off, but since I have short attention span, I went back to John Oliver and he was with Wendy Williams and she was eating a lamb chop, and it reminded me that I was going to fry up the bacon so that it wouldn’t go bad. So I decided to listen to Lars with Gary Wolf, who is the creator of a series of books that I only know from the Who Framed Roger Rabbit movie and document via my cellphone camera making my lunch.
The podcast is about 90 minutes and I was done with lunch and most of clearn up –the grease is too hot to handle, although Lucky Lee I have a empty dog food can into which it to pour — and pecking away on my blog while they are finishing up. Lars is talking to Gary at Boston University the afternoon before what most of been an inspired show back in November, 2018.
The sandwich was good. It was a hamburger bun, lightly toasted, a small red pepper sweet and a wee bit of lettuce, plus the bacon, sort of a modified BLT: BLP, close enough.
The photos are timestamped, I will add that if it sems to serve.
The rabbit story takes place in Santa Cruz, which is relevant because Lars is originally from Carmel area.
He has a song about Eddie Valient the dick character in Wolf’s sheep clothing. Dick is another word for private detective and has nothing to do with issuing Dave Burd a sub-penis to find out if Jeff Goodby secretly writes his shit. I’m kind of a hater of Dave Burd in that he worked at the ad agency that I haunted back in the 1980s.
Another cool thing is that Gary Wolf uses the word “bacon” around minute 46.
Ok.
So the filming so to speak was all between 11:22 and 11:53 or about a half hour elapsed. And it’s nearly an hour later, mostly waiting for the content to upload to my laptop, given our crappy wifi. And I have to admit that technically although this is deliberately glitch-hop reality hunger David Shields, I actually had to make and eat two sandwiches to get the shot of the chewing action. And as a shout out to Muybridge, I shot two rabit or rapid rather two rather rabbit-like bites.
Lars: what is the name of the instrumental intro? Sounds like 1990s punk, like Offspring or Rancid or AFI? I liked the phrase “standardized four-P stutter” when he says “who plugged Roger Rabbit” unless he says “four piece stutter”.
Also, does Lars always say “lend me your ears” or only if the subject is hippity hop?
My slugline which I’m not sure where you can see it has a bad pun on his name, but I edited it out of the version you can see — I was also watching Cheech and Chong Up in Smoke and they make the same joke about Sgt Stadenko “hard hat” versus “lars bud”…
Bedeep, bedeep, bedeep, that’s all folks….!!!!
edit to add: fair use lift of Who P-P-P-Plugged:
recognized his Oriental rug from the flying scene in Baby Baba and the Forty Thieves. It still bore the stain where Baby Herman had wet his pantaloons during one of Roger’s hare-pin turns.
One whole wall displayed autographed photos of famous celebs. Studio prexy Walt Disney and his adopted nephew Mickey. Roger and Baby Herman flanking publicity agent Large Mouth Bassinger. Benny the Cab out for an evening of engine revving with Fangio, the Spanish race car driver. Baby Herman making goo-goo eyes at Carole Lombard and her making them back. Roger even had one of me and Doris. Together and happy. A collector’s item if ever there was one.
A faded chunk of wall space contained a hook but no likeness. In a nearby wastebasket, I spied a silver picture frame. I eyeballed its eight by ten. Jessica Rabbit, Roger’s hotcha wife. She looked terrific, even scraped and torn by broken glass.
Roger opened the breastplate in the suit of armor he’d worn in Sleepless Knights. With its straight-up-and-pointy iron ears, it would have made a perfect cocktail fork for the giant who lived at the top of Jack’s bean stalk. Roger had a better use for it. He’d converted its hollow innards into a bar. “Drink?”
“Every chance I get.”
He set out glasses–decaled with his likeness–and poured from a bottle of bourbon with more years on it than a perpetual calendar. I’ll say one thing in the rabbit’s favor. He didn’t know when to stop.
MC Lars was in England explaining the relationship between hip-hop Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe to a group of students, on May 2, 2018.
He had them hitting the trochee hard. Upon the trochee hard they hit; something something think of it.
My records indicate that at approximately the same time depending which way the earth turns I forget I had made a meatloaf:
I was in Palo Alto California not England which also means I was not far from where MC Lars had done university. Coinkydinky – that’s a coined term here in Plastic Alto – -and shout out to Rachel Garlin who went to Harvard and played varsity basketball there and has a podcast live thingy starting, actually with a rapper on the same show Whitney Peyton, it’s called Curve, I’m hoping my wife will help me load it on her computer – she’s the one with Zoom — we did our Sedar with Zoom this year although we couldn’t deprivatize our mic so the could see us and not hear us – -just as well — we had meat loaf last night and today, while the lamb that was supposed to be for Easter is still lingering or languishing but not marinating — Rachel has a new cd called Greenmode or Mondegreen rather which is a word that is in my Webster’s Ill but not my Webster’s Ninth its a new word and it means when you mishear a lyric or poem and invent a substitute. the Mondegreen is from some poem about a lady who is actually not green. Excuse me while I kiss this guy, that sort of thing.
Anyways, two out of three ain’t bad. (And Rachel teaches junior high so maybe she and Lars can collaborate too..)
This muddles my narrative a wee bit but is promising
Stella Brooks(1910-2002) is earning money, 18 years after her death and, in effect, loaning the money back to the people of the United States for cultural purposes. The San Francisco singer has seven songs among the 60,000 in the catalog of Folkways, part of the Smithsonian, which is a public cultural trust. I received by snail mail her royalty statement that shows she earned $25 (twenty five dollars) in the second half of 2019, and has a total of $108 on account, which is what I mean by a loan back to the system. She sold eight cds to earn $4, and 57,000 streams to earn another $21 for her performances. Although I have a comp copy of a cd compilation or EP with just her songs, the searchable title is a split EP with Greta Keller called “Diverse Songs and Moods of the 1940s…” Her songbook comprises these seven standards, of six standards and her signature song which is a chesnut or novelty song: “Ballin’ the Jack” — 12,308 (earns the label $52 and she $3; “I’m A Little Piece of Leather” — 8,426 ($50 and $2.50); “As Long As i Live” — 8,399 ($86 unless that’s a typo and $4); “I’ll Never Be The Same” — 8,147 ($44 and $2); “Jazz Me Blues” — 6,967 ($39 and $2); “West End Blues” — 6,739 ($52 and $3); “St. Louis Blues” — 6,085 ($27 and $1).
The composers include, in order, Harlold Arlen, W.C. Handy.
The producer was Mo Asch, the label founder. Woody Guthrie wrote the liner notes; some people might find these recordings if they are fans of the sidemen and instrumentalists which include Joe Sullivan, piano; Sidney Bechet, clarinet.
“Ballin’ the Jack” refers to the railroad culture and the history of a type of code wherein a full ball means “go” and no ball means slow or stop; it’s slang for “go fast” more than the sense of “balling” to mean have sex. The vernacular expressed itself as far as the Grateful Dead song or songs about railroad speeds.
Although there are other people’s versions of “She’s a Little Piece of Leather” and a northern soul disco version in the UK, for a minute there it seemed like Stella had a writer’s credit here, which might have triggered additional royalties. As a red herring, the Beatles have a version captured during a sound check. The singer of the most famous blues version, Peetie Wheatstraw is himself the subject of several controversies about his actual identity — and a different character in a movie that used that name.
When I saw Stella’s obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle, I was struck by just the intensity of her stare. I reached out to the family and offered to try to promote her legacy and to try to get her recordings re-released or prioritized at the label — it would be great if her performances were used as needle drops in major movies.
Because of her friendship with Tennessee Williams, Stella was recently the subject of a play by Terry Abrahamson at a festival in Massachusetts, “Jazz Funeral for Stella Brooks“.
At one point I imagined she could become some sort of a patron or matron saint of underappreciated singers and artists in San Francisco.
I’m not planning to collect a share, but I would think that she should be able to make more than $25 per term; David Lowery a few years ago wrote an article that said his hit single for Cracker only earned enough to buy a t-shirt thru a major streaming platform.
I believe that eventually writers (and performers) will get a fair shake from the streaming platforms.
She left seven songs and a little trove of datum don’t you know.
bw
MENDOZA LINES AND SQUIGGLES
Mario Mendoza had 90 hits in 441 at bats but the Topps trading card lists his lifetime major league average as “.278”. This is problematic because “the Mendoza Line” is somewhat famous as a mark of futility; it’s really closer to .200. There’s a band called The Mendoza Line.
I have my theory about the concept. To me the answer is not simply “.200” it has to do with concept that your batting average should be higher than your body weight, “he can’t hit his weight”. There’s a related taunt about him being “the strongest man in the league” because the Sunday paper’s used to print the entire table of batters – roughly 500 players – -and if you were very last, around .180 or .199 you had all the other names, in a sense, piled up on top of you. So this 1979 card is troubling in its error in his favor. Also, I think he looks like he weighs more than the 170 lb listed here, at age 30. If Mario Mendoza really weighed 170 and hit .278 he would not me immortalized in this joking manner. He is really batting .204 and I’m guessing he runs about 210 here, just like me. Mario turns 70 this Christmas season.
Good fielder, better than Cecil or Prince, there
and 1: Mendoza Line has a sad powerful song about an immigrant losing his life in an industrial accident if Mario’s country of origin is very commentary and a good segue; Maybe Shannon McArdle wants to re-record the songs of Stella Brooks, circling the bases. May 12 coming up is the fictional date of the accident in this song:
Lee Konitz is not really from here, and his melody composition is as likely about New Jersey than here, but I want to note his passing.
Lee recorded a song “Palo Alto” in 1950.
I tried to get City Manager Jim Keene to have this recording go over the phone wires if you call City Hall and you are on hold. He wrote the words “Lee Konitz” in his notebook, but it goes on the long list of projects that so far have not come to fruition.
I believe he played Stanford a few years ago. Unclear if he ever played Palo Alto proper.
I read somewhere that “Palo Alto” is a contrafact of “Strike Up The Band”, based on the same structures.
I asked a couple musicians to record a custom version of this song, for that purpose.
There was a jazz group in Italy led by Danilo Gallo called Palo Alto that played his music.
edit to add, 3 minutes later:
Not to put the guy on the spot — he’s very busy and prolific and we’ve never met:
Hi, Jacob. (from July, 2011 — nearly nine years hence)
I am hoping to produce a performance or recording of “Palo Alto” by Lee Konitz. I could use a performer and or producer and or arranger, maybe you can help.
The performance (recording) would be submitted as a demo to Palo Alto City Manager James Keene along with a proposal for the City of Palo Alto to add the song or the performance to its cultural collection. Maybe the song or soundbyte could be used as “hold music” when people call City Hall. Or as a ringback.
I think producing a unique version there might be opportunity to simplify or alter the hook so that people hear the hook better. The melody is kinda subtle. I am wondering about like a :15 or a :30 edit plus an entire song.
I am thinking of the fact that I went to Gunn High School here and at football games, the band goes into Peter Gunn theme song after touchdowns. Just first few measures.
Or years ago, at 49ers game, a band (maybe it was Turk Murphy) would play first few measures of “San Francisco, Open Your Golden Gates” after touchdowns.
Or people easily identify the melody (but who knows the name of the composition) of “the Tonight Show” theme, just the first few bars.
I want all Palo Altans to know there is a song called “Palo Alto” by a man named Lee Konitz and I would like them to recognize that melody (or our proposed simplified or enhanced version of it).
I think doing a little session is better than re-mixing someone’s session, or editing a sample from someone’s catalog.
What might this cost?
Mark Weiss
concert promoter, artist manager
ran for Palo Alto City Council in 2009 on an arts platform (and lost)
Leah Garchik is somehow a big muse for me; I respond strongly to things she writes about. I occassionally contribute a printable item for her.
I offer locally a host of ideas for our cultural life here; some get adapted and developed, some don’t. I did mention this to our City Manager Jim Keene once who wrote “Konitz” in his notebook. I could always just check out from our library the relevant cd and drop it on his desk, but producing a small session seems more elegant.
Not sure how mechanical royalties work for such usages but certainly we would want composer credited and paid. And yes, I know that he may be thinking of a different “Palo Alto”
When I was (…..)’ manager he recorded a cd in Mike Brorby’s studio in Brooklyn — seems like the right kind of room for this, if its still there. Or a home set up could work, pro tools.
I could think of ten other “palo alto” related compositions if you wanted to go deeper into this. Jason Olaine the former Verve Producer and current Yoshi’s booker is from here; I have thought about producing “palo alto the jazz album” with him, maybe i mentioned it to him.
and1:
This one is from 2007: (and it says that Konitz played Stanford in 2007)
Hi Mark. Here I am, sorry for delay…
Thank you for writing me… Yes Palo Alto is a band , a quartet, italian one, we made 2 records, the first was a tribute to the music of Lennie Tristano & Lee Konitz ( http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=10993 ) and the second “Crash Test” consists of original compositions released by a german label (www.jazznarts.de )
The former band is a quartet with me on double bass, Nicola Fazzini on alto saxophone, Dario Volpi on guitar and Zeno De Rossi on drums… We made a lot of concerts all around Europe, both Tristano/Konitz project and our music…. We still exist, even if we do not so much as before, but it’s a band that I love it!!
It could be great to come there and perform in Palo Alto, this town ispired our name and many stories…
as soon as possible I send you cds.
thank you again, danilo
From: mark weiss <earwopa@yahoo.com>
To: danilogallo@hotmail.com
Subject: Palo Alto “crash test” lee konitz lennie tristano
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:56:54 -0700 (PDT)
Danilo Gallo
jazz musician
Venice Italia
Dear Mr. Gallo:
I am a jazz journalist, artist manager and concert
promoter in Palo Alto, California, USA.
I was happy to learn that there is a jazz group in
Italia named “Palo Alto”, si? It is a tribute to
Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz, si?
Please give me more information. Maybe I can help
arrange a tour or visit here to perform.
Mark Weiss
Earthwise Productions and Management
PO Box 60786
Palo Alto, CA 94306 USA
April has been the cruelest month to Laura Veirs and her fans down here in the Six-Five-Oh. Instead of both a workshop at Stanford and a show at The Mitch, we have various examples of woodshedding.
Using my magic box, I reached out to some proxies, whom collectively I am calling The Earthwise Siphonphore Chorus — a siphonophore is a very long creature, you might see under the sea.
1. Ben Davis of Brisbane area:
2. Beauman Edwards of Palo Alto, Boston and sometimes Montreal chimes in (8 pm Thursday):
3. Thursday evening, Eric Cohen (Los Angeles and Stanford, CA):
4. Friday evening — and I have a couple more reports from friends of mine pledging to learn Laura’s song, maybe over the weekend. My goal would be to have a day where there are more Earthwise Siphonophore Chorus “Galaxie” demos than Covid-19 deaths reported in Santa Clara County…
Carla Wray (Palo alto)
5. Saturday afternoon Steve Cohen (Los Angeles, Stanford, California)
And by the way, this is Plastic Alto post #2,600…
This one, number 6, does not really count because it’s just me, I had created a couple short vines more to shame my friends into doing a better job. I could probably learn my way to those chords, with an in-person tutor, but it would take me several hours of focus, and I cannot focus on things that well these days, plus the whole self-cancelling thing — my previous guitar teachers were named Hershel Yatovitz and Laura Chavez, by the way. Plus, Rob Lederer showed me a few drills, and my nephew Ben and sometimes Eric, help me, by opening my tuning, for instance, which is a cheat and wouldn’t count here.
I find that I resort to humor to compensate for the lack of musical prowess — but I feel I tell the same two or three jokes over and over again or as permutations. To the extent I try to perform at all or endeavor at a facility or faculty with a tool of music, it is to increase my profound respect for the actual masters of those tasks.
Monday, early afternoon:
Sylvie Simmons (San Francisco and I think England: London — I know I asked her her team and I think she answered Chelsea)
I want to point out that this is a cover, meaning she does the entire song, beyond the chords and the chorus.
Another picture of Laura, slightly nicer; it’s surpassed 1,000 views:
I saw Leonid and Friends live at an industry showcase last fall in Nashville and thought of them while reading Elif Batuman’s essay about the Ice House in Russia, based on something that some weird powerful actual Russians did a long time ago.
In 1740, Peter the Great’s niece, the Empress Anna Ioannovna, commissioned a fully furnished palace made entirely of ice, the world’s first piece of purely aesthetic ice architecture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_wtqSSp5I
I recommend playing both videos simultaneously but only for the first minute….
b/w
a parody of an old Elvis Costello song which summarizes sort of the plot of an old Wallace Stegner story, I’ll call “Thomas and Tenney”
A man walks up cuz he sees them playing tennis
And sits down with two much cooler duu-uuu-udes.
They joke about another guy,
Older and an Englishman
They trap him into to playing a set but he gets a shoulder injury.
You can fake what you want
You can want what you have
You can swing and a miss
The young lady, a fish
Yesterday’s old Wallace Stegner tennis story
is tomorrow’s parody song
But not by WS or KK
Ok, get over it
Don’t sneeze on me
I won’t come to your pout
is your “party” a boat, a dude
Sailfish or Sailboat
The Hammersmith Hotel but not the Hammerstein ballroom, yo.
Bridge about Benny Siegal or Bernie Siegal going to college with the uncle of the chick from My First Earthquake and Chris Knipp getting kicked out of Dartmouth for having trouble acting normal when he’s nervous and Buck Henry wearing a beanie in 1961 the upside down year and Beanie Siegel — is he black or Jewish or both – -it’s never black or white — being better off with a N95 in this day and age
How dirty is your dingus, Mr. Magee?
Yesterday’s Wallace Stegner story — 1945 Rocky Mountain View
“Cow College’ “Cow College’ “Cow College”
Self referential rap riff by the promoter or blogger or interloper in chief: I was taught tennis at the old school the dick gould camp at the farm and we were taught — I was sent their by my Aunt Annica — very flat swings which is now obsolete with you large-headed folks and you don’t swivel your hips or “pivot” “pivot’ like the token jew on Friends — but we would never be caught dead or in bed going “ooh” “ooh” “ooh” — hey I wonder if Stevie Nicks played tennis, growing up here — with each hit.
Yesterday’s 1945 Balance Yours Swing Mine mixed with Elvis Costello Trust as squeezed thru a spaghetti slicer by
Save if for later, big guy.
Don’t swing it, swat it.
You can fake what you want
You can want what you have
You can swing and a miss
The young lady, a fish (My mother is on fiche, Faulkner)
Don’t sneeze on me, please
edit to add, or adendum or sometimes i go “edita” or “and1”: Hal Wilner died and there is a guy in my neighborhood named Stan — I’ll leave it at Stan no last name because these people can be touchy and by these people I mean people who have been shot at — he said he went to high school with Hal, in Philly. Fair enough. But he also said “Beanie Sigel” although he pronounced it more like “Bernie Sea gull”. And I meant to look it up more directly, it’s been almost a week and even SNL had a big thing already, singing a Lou Reed chestnut. But although Beanie Sigel the rapper is from Philly, maybe I knew that, he is much younger than Stan or Hal. Maybe he meant that Beanie Sigel went to the same high school as Hal Wilner yet years later. I met Stan because I knew that Uri Caine’s brother lived nearby but had never met him. I literally stopped Stan on the street and said “Are you Uri Caine’s brother?”
andand:
Sigel, 40, whose real name is Dwight Grant, grew up on Sigel Street in South Philadelphia and was nicknamed “Beanie” by his grandmother.
As a student at Delaplaine McDaniel Elementary School, he was a good storyteller, he told The Inquirer in 2012.
“You would get 10 or 20 spelling words,” he said, “and you had to write each one in a sentence. But instead of just writing a sentence, I would write a story.”
Come to think of it, I might have met Beanie Sigel, although he wasn’t wearing a beanie, so nut likely. When I was hanging in Philly I for whatever reason stopped this well-dressed black guy on the street, coming out of his house or apartment and said “Are you a priest or something, a preacher?” and he said “No, far from it”.
this is the man man jukebox ghost clicktrack not the tennis thing
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 