The Steve Coleman and Five Elements show last night was pretty good. Coleman has definitely carved out his own world of sound. In a way he reminds me of a "middle weight champion" like Hank Mobley - good, solid and unique, but never quite going for that knockout blow, that over the top thing that demands your attention. The set started late but went on quite long - perhaps too long. The band stretched out on every song, and as the night grew later, I found my attention drifting off a bit. With every piece stretching out for twenty or thirty minutes, and with every piece kind of circling around the same sounds (good sounds, but), well, if a few songs had been cut down and punched up a bit - I think it would have made for an even better night. A little more variety would have went a long way. Nonetheless, many riches were offered, the band worked together great, and all six players seemed at the top of their games (perhaps Taborn seemed a little bored, took several solos working almost exclusively with his right hand for some reason, plinking those high notes, while the left levitated above the piano indecisively?). Coleman got the most solo space and used it well, sometimes drifting into a pleasing, almost post-bop feel, while the Five Elements bubbled around underneath. Pretty good, but not quite great. 1:07 PM >>> 0 comments

Busy as always out here. I’m really looking forward to seeing Steve Coleman tomorrow night at RedCat, supposedly playing with Craig Taborn. Hopefully there will still be tickets at the door, as I’ve yet to pick mine up. They’re also playing there Friday night and I may possibly catch those shows too (depending on the basketball schedule). Tonight I’m listening to Sakura by Susumu Yokota, and it’s definitely helping me calm down. Very nice way to wind down this sweaty 100 degree day (it’s currently still 84 out at almost ten o’clock!). 9:52 PM >>> 0 comments

Wrapped up Gissing’s New Grub Street this afternoon. It was difficult to finish the book because I got so involved with it I was actually having dreams featuring the characters. Twisting and turning thru the last few nights worrying about how it was all going to turn out. Usually I don’t get that caught up with a book. Here, perhaps the length helped. Each chapter seemed especially dense, and I seemed to read much slower than normal, but at a pace I ended up really enjoying. Maybe I just identified with the various characters struggles with money, literature and relationships. It’s actually a strangely evil and cynical book, fucked-up in a subtle way I quite appreciate. 6:45 PM >>> 0 comments

Another very fast weekend, perhaps I spent a little too much time watching basketball (if the first round of the playoffs are going to be this predictable, I really wish they’d go back to the best of five format) and baseball (even tho it’s extremely early, it sure feels nice that the hometown team holds the best record in MLB). I’ve also been reading and enjoying New Grub Street by George Gissing. Watching Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux. Listening to Brahms Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet in B minor, op. 115 (Emerson String Quartet), John Butcher’s Fixations (14), and William Parker’s Lifting the Sanctions. 10:01 PM >>> 0 comments

My latest “untitled” 40 page booklet of drawings is now available in my online shop. I’m very happy with the way this one turned out, but as is always the case, as soon as one project is done my thoughts are already off on the next (and the next). Really can’t wait to get to work on issue three.

In other news: the archives at NewMusicBox make for some great reading. I’ve been printing out the PDFs and pouring over them during my lunch breaks for the past week. I found the interview with Alvin Curran especially interesting (remembrances of a snoring Morton Feldman). Lots more I still want to read over there

Over at pop-up nightmare site JazzWeekly.com I recommend the interview with Joe Maneri... whose complete discography I’m quickly collecting. 9:02 PM >>> 0 comments

The brand new Milford Graves / John Zorn duo CD is absolutely fucking incredible! Recorded very live at the Tonic NYC in September of 2003 during Zorn’s 50th birthday celebrations (sure wish I‘d gone out there), the sustained level of energy and excitement both play with throughout the album is enthralling and completely infectious. I don’t think Zorn’s sax work has ever had a better showcased than this, I mean he’s really incredible here. I’ve never heard him more expressive or more in command of an expanding vocabulary. Graves remains a percussion titan - probably the best show I remember seeing last year was his incredible duo set with Brötzmann at the Vision Fest, and here he may be even better. So much fun can rarely be had simply by putting a CD on your stereo. Highest recommendation! 8:15 PM >>> 0 comments

I’m listening to Loren Connors The Departing of a Dream Volume Two, a record I really love. I was excited to hear a few days back that volume three is scheduled to be released next month. The beguilingly quiet humming guitar soundscapes well fit my mood after having just finished reading Sherwood Anderson’s bleaker (and better) than I thought it would be, Winesburg, Ohio, at the end of a lazy, worn out Sunday evening. 9:41 PM >>> 0 comments

Kind of busy trying to get back into the flow, still haven’t been sleeping much (three and a half hours last night!). I’ve been reading the Cornell Woolrich Omnibus. It starts off with a series of his short stories that I didn’t get too into, to me they breathed hacked out - especially Rear Window which was much less interesting than the Hitchcock film. However, I’ve just finished the novel length I Married a Dead Man and thought it was really good, the prose stretches out and feels more worked over, more poetic somehow - goes more for darkness than straight up twists. In general, I always prefer losing myself in full length works anyway - less into the short story (though I have more than a few collections waiting on my to be read pile that I’m looking forward to).

I’m trying to spend more time with the old CDs I’ve piled up - so much great stuff I hardly ever get to listen to because there’s just way too much new stuff coming out I want to hear, and new/old music I’m always finding out about. I swear I’m going to try to slow down, and concentrate more on what I’ve already accumulated. One new CD that I brought back from Athens though, that really grabbed me on the first listen is Zu and Spaceways Inc’s Radiale (on Atavistic) - very energetic and perhaps a little meatier than some of the recent Vandermark releases (at least after one go through). 8:03 PM >>> 0 comments

I’m just back from Athens Georgia. Had a GREAT time out there. Met quite a few interesting people and heard tons of great music at the ACME festival. If I had to pick only one highlight, I guess I’d pick getting to finally hear the Joe Maneri Trio live, a real blessing. But everything I heard was really amazing, better than I’d even imagined it could have been. Other stand-out performances were the two sets from the Peter Brötzmann Chicago 9-tet - when a band that big lets go at full blast, that’s a sound I can’t resist - completely overwhelming, The Thing w/ Joe McPhee, Atomic/School Days, and of course the incredibly tight Vandermark 5 and their homage to Rahsaan Roland Kirk. 9:07 PM >>> 0 comments