BRANDO VS. COPPOLA

This article comes too late (thanks to my old friend Wright Harris for hipping me to it) to save Brando's (acting) reputation while he was still alive, but it confirms my own suspicions and arguments when this topic was actually important to many of us who hold Brando up as the greatest screen actor ever (including his failures, which were based on choices always braver than most film actors' successes). (And at the end it includes a responsible summary of Brando's faults in his personal life, so it's not a hype job, it's a scholarly correction to the historical record.)

(I remember making my brother the ex-cop and brother-in-law the ex-cop watch the interview Larry King did with Brando with them scratching their heads but me being overwhelmed by seeing this icon treat that interview like no one ever had before on TV, talking to the cameraman and actually asking him his opinion, kissing King on the lips (!), etc.  Brando was a genius, flawed, inconsistent, but nonetheless at his art he was a genius.)

SOME COMIC TAKES FROM FACEBOOK

PS TO LAST POST

I suck at camera photos but this is Norah Jones and her new group, Puss'n'Boots. They were the closing act in the weekend music festival that happens every summer in my little Jersey town. People came from far away to see Norah Jones and some were disappointed at what they got. She and two other women played covers and some original tunes (their "record" comes out tomorrow I believe) and did a lot of it very nicely, but all in a country style.

A lot of folks were looking for the kind of sultry jazzy Sade style crooning and keyboard playing that made Norah Jones famous. But in this trio she just plays guitar and sings, sometimes lead, sometimes back up. One of the other women, Sasha Dobson, plays drums on some songs and guitar on others. The third woman, Cat Popper, plays bass and now and then guitar.

Their harmonies are worth the price of admission (though this festival is free, but you know what I mean). Beautiful, sometimes stunning. Jones' voice is as amazing as ever. As are the other women's. Their playing is good but none of them are instrumental virtuoso's. Jone's picks her guitar mostly in the single note stick-mostly-to-the-melody style of early country.

Most of the crowd loved it, though some wanted the old Norah Jones. But that's what makes her so interesting and unique, I think. What other music star can you think of who would change a style that made them famous and wealthy to one their fans might not like, and then not name her band after herself, and in fact seem to want to make it perfectly clear that she's just one of the gals on stage with the other gals (and they all seemed to really be having a lot of fun which is maybe why she decided to do it).

Hey, the weather held out, the crowd was the biggest yet, and they covered a song no one around me knew or maybe ever heard before, but was a standard at my clan's parties when I was growing up, that always brought tears to the grown ups eyes, even the ones who weren't drunk, and which I hadn't heard since then but remembered every word to and ended up teary eyed myself, despite the fact that they did it, as they did a lot of their set, in a very slow tempo and that early country style, when the way my clan sang it was with an Irish lilt (I always thought it was an Irish song because of the whole "shanty" angle, and though our homes weren't shacks we lived pretty near the railroad tracks and my Irish immigrant grandparents down the street were even closer to them) and then my third oldest brother (the one who became a cop)—and some cousins of his generation and maybe my big sisters—would follow with a swing version that as a kid made me very happy.

Though the ending still made me cry: "There's a queen waiting there with her silvery crown in a  shanty in old shanty town..." even when swung, which also meant the lyrics were "hepped" up. But the version Puss'n'Boots did was with the original lyrics as they do in this recording on YouTube that looks like maybe the first time they did the tune (it's Cat Popper singing and playing bass, though I can't hear the bass, with Jones on guitar and joining in singing harmony later—you can hear but not see Dobson on drums):




And here's the swing version my brother sang, Johnny Long's version. (As a kid I thought my two oldest brothers, who were in the military in WWII but played in swing bands before and after their service, I thought as a kid that they were actually in Johnny Long's band!)

ROBERT RANDOLPH AND THE FAMILY BAND

Years ago my old friend, the poet Robert Slater, turned me on to the music of slide guitarist Robert Randolph, saying Randolph came from my part of New Jersey and I should definitely catch him live when he played. But though he was known and headlined at festivals and other venues around the world, and appeared on Letterman and other live TV shows, he never seemed to play in Jersey.

Then last year he played in Morristown which is up in the hills about twenty-five minutes away but I couldn't make that and was disappointed. Until last night. Our little local summer music festival known as Maplewoodstock which has been running for a decade or so and started out with just local bands on a small riser open to the elements, is now a summer weekend party that showcases dozens of musical acts and culminates on Sunday night with the final and most famous act (that'll be Norah Jones tonight).

But Saturday night is often the most raucous party time and last night was no exception with Robert Randolph and The Family Band (his "little" sister sings and one or two cousins are among the instrumentalists though Robert introduces all his sidemen and women as "cousins" and the line up seems to vary from year to year and even month to month or day to day with the bassist and drummer the constants) ending the night in an orgy of swing your hips funk drive.

I was too busy boogieing to remember to use my phone to record anything, so all I have are a few mellower (by comparison) clips from other live performances with various line ups, but it might give you a taste of why Randolph has been called "the Jimmi Hendrix of the slide guitar" and was included in Rolling Stone's list of the top 100 guitar players of all time [make sure you listen to the second half of the second clip for a very rare taste of his talent, and though the third clip cuts off early catch that one for an introduction to his more usual funk, and sorry about the quality of the sound but it's good enough to get it].

CHARLIE HADEN R.I.P.

I just found out the great and uniquely talented bassist Charlie Haden passed today, well I guess it's officially yesterday, July 11th. This man's music inspired me, elated me, taught me, engaged me and in some instances enlightened me, and everything he did always moved me.

From what some were calling at the time "one of a kind experimental jazz" and others just heard as  "cacophony" of his late 1960s early 1970s ventures with his Liberation Orchestra, to the simplicity  of the spirituals he recorded with the equally inimitable Hank Jones in the 1990s, and his later return to his folk and country roots, as well as other adventures in music, that made him a master bassist period, not just a master jazz bassist, Charlie Haden was always a gift to those of us who listened.

My heart goes out to his talented children and all his family and friends and fans. He will be missed, but his music will live on. Here's one example, a recording that when I first played it for my bassist oldest son, Miles, brought both of us to tears, moved not only by the spirit embodied in the music, but almost overwhelmed by the distilled musical genius in the purity of both Haden's and Jones's playing:

WHAT MAKES A CURVE BALL CURVE?

This isn't a very good copy, but someone found it on YouTube and it brought back some nice memories. This ad actually won some awards, and though it only ran for about a month it was ubiquitous on TV. And for months after it stopped running wherever I would be—whether L.A., New England or New York—strangers wold invariably make the motion of throwing a curve ball at me.

NUMBER ONE

Here's a thought. Little tiny Jordan and little tiny Lebanon have taken in hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of refugees fleeing violence in nearby countries costing them tons of money they don't have, and big bad USA USA WE'RE NUMBER ONE wealthiest country in the world is freaking out over tens of thousands of kids fleeing violence in nearby countries. I'm ashamed of ourselves.