Since You Asked

By the time I had the pleasure of working with Val Valentin in the mid eighties, I knew him only as the nice, white-haired Venezuelan gentleman who handed Ed McMahon his mic as he came onstage to emcee Star Search. That's Val to Sammy's left wearing the suit and tie. I was young and a bit dense and had no idea the guy was an extreme heavyweight in the recording world. Today online I've seen references claiming Val and Rudy Van Gelder were arguably the two most important jazz recording engineers ever, but back then all I knew about him was that he was friends with Ed Greene, and pleasant to work with. He was also an engineer at Verve Records during their heyday in the late fifties and early sixties, eventually running the engineering side of the label. Several LPs regularly come up when serious vinyl devotees engage in the "you gotta have this one" game. The Soul of Ben Webster often gets mentioned, along with Coltrane's Giant Steps, but one bl

Nice thing about abandoning any supernatural beliefs: you get to decide for yourself every morning what the meaning of life is. Mostly it's exactly the same as before, i. e. participation in H. Sapiens Sapiens' ongoing attempt to fight entropy uphill for a time. But sometimes it's special--sometimes the meaning of life is spending all day preparing a meal for the members of one's immediate tribe, sometimes it's letting your selfish muse lock you in a tiny room for 12 hours in search of the lost chord.  There are infinitely more ways for things to go wrong in the maintenance of life (human or otherwise) than for things to go right. The universe (substitute Mother Nature here if you wish) doesn't really care if you live or die, and definitely has the deck stacked against you.  What then binds all us language-enabled primates together? Well, if you have ever experienced any aspect of physical pain at all, you are likely part of the huge volunteer army tryi

American society is in fact the direct antithesis of Judeo/Christian values. We reject blind obedience to authority (no other gods before me).  We challenge arbitrary limits on free speech (take thy name in vain).  We do not recognize thought crime (thou shalt not covet).  The basic tension in the founding documents is that a set of unalienable human rights exists, but it is up to citizens, through government, to realize them. No matter what this bozo or this one says.

For the three of you who will care about this, here’s the birdseye lowdown about my tentative journey back into the land of tubes and vinyl. First, the ground rules. I will not be dragged into any arguments about the quality of experience of vinyl versus digital, tubes versus transistors, active versus passive, coaxial versus component. In each of these controversies I have held unshakeable convictions only to have them dashed to pieces in the harsh sunlight of experiment, and the only thing I can say for sure is that everything—from the choice of microphones, to whether the musicians had breakfast, to whether the balance engineer actually understood the emotional underpinnings of the music, to whether the listener had breakfast—affects how recorded music is perceived. I only offer my observations from a lifetime spent listening and mixing in a mostly vain attempt to coax the ghosts out of the hidden spaces. Second, a disclaimer. Mine is not by any standard even a lower-mid-level a

A selection from the Jayhawker magazine 1946-48. These were the inside front and back covers--not even Coca-Cola came up with the dosh the cigarette companies did.  First up, Chesterfield. They go for the very upscale Hollywood endorsements with mentions of the latest movie appearances. Dorothy Lamour Hitchcock movie I've never even heard of, to my shame.  I wonder who the heck Valli was. Basil Rathbone Ann Sheridan Chesterfield used a number of approaches, among them sports celeb endorsements.   I note that Ted Williams isn't actually smoking a Chesterfield.  DiMaggio was a handsome devil. Apparently the cigarette lady was your average girl-next-door who looked suspiciously like Ann Sheridan. That's what Dad wants!  A carton of Chesterfields with a ribbon on it from Junior. Alan Hale (The Skipper's Dad) And of course there's always Santa.  Unfortunately Chesterfield didn't have an exclusive with the big

Listening to #6, the Pastoral. And the rain. Actually feeling more optimistic than scared right now. It seems to me in my Pollyanna world that more and more decisions are now getting made with reference to evidence despite the babble of the willfully uninformed, and we're beginning to listen to and take the advice of the smart people who've spent their entire lives studying the fascinating world of infectious disease. The horror of those suffering and dying and the torment  of front-line medical professionals in this moment is forefront in my mind. But the fact that this particular agent is evidencing a kill rate in the low single digits means the present human race has a fighting chance to actually learn something valuable without having to experience the wholesale slaughter y. pestis exacted on the species in the 1350s. Dare I say it, even America might learn something. Who knows--maybe we can finally divorce health care from employment--or house the homeless--or build