This Week: Theme? We don't need no stinkin' theme!

This article is cross-posted from the Miles to Go Before I Sleep blog...

This week on Miles to Go Before I Sleep, I decided to ditch that trite, old convention of the theme (until next week) to just bring you a great assortment of jazz. Intern Dan Rasch joined me in the studio, and together we spun tunes from some of the greats.

We also paid homage to Clifford Brown this week, as he would've celebrated his 80th birthday on 30 October 2010. Brown, aka "Brownie," was an influential and highly rated American jazz trumpeter, and played with the likes of Max Roach, Horace Silver, and Sonny Rollins, among others. He died at the age of 25 in a tragic automobile accident, leaving behind only four years' worth of recordings. Even in such a short time, Clifford Brown made a name for himself as one of the greatest to ever pick up the horn, and is still regarded among the greats today.

We enjoyed a great listenership this week, many of whom wrote and called in to the show. We even featured a reading from the talented Paul Dougherty over the air, and I gave my regards to Kenyon (in Hindi) from one of my friends abroad. But enough of that - here's a look at what we played this week:

1. Cosmic Rays - Charlie Parker
2. Dream a Little Dream of Me - Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
3. Don't Get Around Much Anymore - Duke Ellington
4. Lazybones - Leon Redbone
5. Mean to Me - Paul Desmond
6. Heart of Glass - The Bad Plus
7. Mètché Dershé - Mulatu Astatke
8. 21st-Century Schizoid Man - The Crimson Jazz Trio
9. Theme from M*A*S*H (Suicide is Painless) - Bill Evans
10. Lover, You Should've Come Over - Jamie Cullum
11. Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michaelson) - Tom Waits
12. Stardust - Clifford Brown & Max Roach
13. Butch & Butch - Oliver Nelson
14. Someone to Watch Over Me - Ella Fitzgerald
15. Aurora en Pekin - Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos
16. Rebel Rebel - Seu Jorge
17. Nuages - Django Reinhardt
18. Sing, Sing, Sing [Live] - Benny Goodman
19. Sweet Rain - Stan Getz
20. Milestones - Miles Davis

Talk-over music this week came courtesy of Booker T. & The MG's, The Crimson Jazz Trio, Paul Desmond, Yoko Kanno & The SeatBelts, Walter Wanderley Trio, Django Reinhardt, and Mark Soskin.

As per usual, for a rundown of the Miles to Go playlist each week, keep your browsers here, and for the best jazz et al. around, keep your radios (or your iTunes) tuned to WKCO 91.9 FM!

This Week: Grande Dames of Jazz

This article is cross-posted from the Miles to Go Before I Sleep blog...

Tonight on Miles to Go, faithful intern Sam Mashaw brought us plenty of soulful selections from the greatest jazz singers of all time: Billy Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nina Simone (pictured left, center, and right, respectively).

Livening our program further was our homage to Dizzy Gillespie, who would've celebrated his 82nd birthday yesterday (21 October 2010). Gillespie was known for wailing on his bent trumpet while looking as though he was about to burst (see photo, left), and served as both inspiration and teacher to some of the best-known horn players of all time, from Miles Davis to Chuck Mangione.

Interspersed amongst these magnificent leading ladies were tunes from other great jazz names past and present, as well as a few names you might be surprised to find included in a jazz program (such as Pomplamoose and Andrew Bird). Here's a look at the full array of what we laid down tonight:

1. Baby, Don't You Go Away Mad - Ella Fitzgerald
2. My Baby Just Cares for Me - Nina Simone
3. Misty - Billie Holiday
4. Nature Boy - Pomplamoose
5. Autumn in New York - Dexter Gordon
6. Autumn Serenade - John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman
7. A Night in Tunisia - Dizzy Gillespie
8. Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac - Dizzy Gillespie
9. Sinnerman - Nina Simone
10. Blue Skies - Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
11. What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
12. Birdland [Live from King Street, San Francisco] - Buddy Rich
13. Strange Meadowlark - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
14. Ides of Swing - Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire
15. Baby, It's Cold Outside - Nina Simone & Ray Charles
16. Feelin' Good - Nina Simone
17. Spiral - John Coltrane
18. Georgia on my Mind - The Oscar Peterson Trio
19. God Bless the Child - Billie Holiday
20. Bewitched, Bothered, & Bewildered - Ella Fitzgerald
21. I Cried for You - Billie Holiday
22. When I Fall in Love - Miles Davis

Talk-over music came courtesy of Booker T. & The MG's, The Modern Jazz Quartet, The Oscar Peterson Trio, Air, Louis Armstrong, Sonny Rollins, Young Holt Unlimited, The Walter Wanderly Trio, Medeski Martin & Wood, and The Kenyon College Kokosingers.

As per usual, for a rundown of the Miles to Go playlist each week, keep your browsers here, and for the best jazz et al. around, keep your radios (or your iTunes) tuned to WKCO 91.9 FM!

This Week: Great Jazz? You Betcha'!

This article is cross-posted from the Miles to Go Before I Sleep blog...

This week on Miles to Go Before I Sleep, the theme was...well, there was no theme - just great jazz. I took particular relish in featuring songs from artists new to my library, such as Clifford Brown, Haden & Rubalcaba, Art Blakey, and legendary pianist Horace Silver (pictured right). I was joined in the studio by my two interns - Sam and Daniel - and over the airwaves by the show's largest listenership thus far, and the lot of us bebopped and scatted to swingin' tunes through the night.  I also had the pleasure of debuting several liners produced by yours truly. Our selections this week were:

1. Excerpt: American Haikus - Jack Kerouac
2. Smells Like Teen Spirit - The Bad Plus
3. Yègellé Tezeta - Mulatu Astatke
4. What's New? - Clifford Brown & Max Roach
5. Windows - Chick Corea
6. Moonlight (Claro de Luna) - Charlie Haden & Gonzalo Rubalcaba
7. 'Til the Clouds Roll By - Paul Desmond
8. My Romance - The Ray Brown Trio
9. Come Rain or Shine - Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
10. IX Love - Charles Mingus
11. Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis - Tom Waits
12. Rhapsody in Blue: A Medley - Eugen Cicero
13. In a Sentimental Mood - The Modern Jazz Quartet & Sonny Rollins
14. Stolen Moments - Oliver Nelson
15. The Lover - Medeski, Martin & Wood
16. Without You - Horace Silver
17. St. Thomas - Sonny Rollins
18. The Look of Love - The Ahmad Jamal Trio
19. The St. Vitus Dance - Horace Silver
20. Solar - Miles Davis

Talk-over music came courtesy of Mulatu Astatke, Paul Desmond, Yoko Kanno & The SeatBelts, David Holmes, The Gerry Mulligan Quartet, and Medeski, Martin & Wood.

As per usual, for a rundown of the Miles to Go playlist each week, keep your browsers here, and for the best jazz et al. around, keep your radios (or your iTunes) tuned to WKCO 91.9 FM!

This Week: Davis Comes Alive!

This article is cross-posted from the Miles to Go Before I Sleep blog...

This week on Miles to Go Before I Sleep, I explored the world of live recordings from some of the best ever to play at some of the world's most famous jazz venues, such as The Blue Note, Carnegie Hall, and The Village Vanguard (pictured left). And in the spirit of improvising on the fly, Miles to Go was flooded with requests - both online and over the phone - and a flurry of visitors. Lessons learned this evening include: 1. There is always time for listener-requested music; 2. There is no such thing as a short live jazz recording - take, for example, Coltrane's My Favorite Things, which I cut off a third of the way through its 20-minute runtime; and 3. Three Musketeers nougat sandwiched between a pair of Animal Crackers makes a decent snack.  (Seriously, I wasn't kidding when I said the show operated on the fly this evening!). That said, we still managed to saturate the airwaves with some pretty catchy tunes:

1. Filthy MacNasty [Live at The Village Gate] - Horace Silver
2. Split Kick [Live at Birdland] - The Art Blakey Quintet
3. Machine [Live from King Street, San Francisco] - Buddy Rich
4. In the Hall of the Mountain King [Live from Folly Theatre] - The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra
5. Tank! [Live] - Yoko Kanno & The SeatBelts
6. My Funny Valentine [Live] - The Miles Davis Quintet
7. Gloria's Step [Take 2, Live from The Village Vanguard] - Bill Evans
8. When I Fall in Love [Live at The Blue Note] - Keith Jarrett
9. Autumn Leaves [Live at The Alhambra] - The Ahmad Jamal Trio
10. Black Dog/Helter Skelter [Live from The Blue Note] - Paris Troika
11. A Night in Tunisia [Live] - The Modern Jazz Quartet
12. Cast Your Fate to the Wind [Live] - The Vince Guaraldi Trio
13. Take Five [Live at Carnegie Hall] - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
14. The Girl from Addis Ababa [Live] - Mulatu Astatke & The Ethiopian Quintet
15. Big P [Live at The Lighthouse] - Cannonball Adderly
16. I've Grown Accustomed to YourFace [Live from Birdland] - Sonny Rollins
17. Slow Boat to China [Live from The Savoy] - Charlie Parker
18. My Favorite Things [Live at The Village Vanguard] - John Coltrane
19. So What [Take 1, Live] - Miles Davis & John Coltrane

Talk-over music came courtesy of Mulatu Astatke, Paul Desmond, David Holmes, The Crimson Jazz Trio, The Swingle Sisters, Yoko Kanno and the SeatBelts, and Medeski, Martin & Wood.

As per usual, for a rundown of the Miles to Go playlist each week, keep your browsers here, and for the best jazz et al. around, keep your radios (or your iTunes) tuned to WKCO 91.9 FM!

This Week: They Were Collaborators

This article is cross-posted from the Miles to Go Before I Sleep blog...


This week's theme on Miles to Go Before I Sleep: "They Were Collaborators," so I made sure to lay down the tracks featuring partnerships from some of the best jazz cats and blues-hounds, known and unknown, around (such as two of the greatest, Davis and Coltrane, pictured, in the studio, on the right). And, as if that weren't enough, Miles to Go enjoyed a visit from the beautiful and talented Lili Martinez. Thanks again to all of those who listened in, and for your comments and requests. Here's the rundown for all of you who may have missed it, or want a reminder of I what I played tonight:

1. San Francisco Scene (The Beat Generation) - Jack Keroauc & Tom Waits
2. Pent-Up House  - Clifford Brown & Sonny Rollins
3. Big Nick - Duke Ellington & John Coltrane
4. Afternoon in Paris - Sonny Rollins & Dave Brubeck
5. St. James' Infirmary - Eric Clapton & Dr. John
6. Help the Poor - Doc Dalton & The Healing
7. Worried Life Blues - Eric Clapton & BB King
8. Summertime - Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
9. Misty - Stan Getz & Dave Brubeck
10. Moten Swing - The Oscar Peterson Trio
11. So What [Live] - Miles Davis & John Coltrane
12. Mood Indigo - Duke Ellington & Coleman Hawkins
13. In a Sentimental Mood - John Coltrane, Miles Davis, & Duke Ellington
14. Corcavado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars) - Stan Getz & João Gilberto
15. See You Space Cowboy... - Mai Yamane w/ Yoko Kanno & The SeatBelts
16. Off Minor - Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane
17. On the Sunny Side of the Street - Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, & Sonny Rollins
18. In Case the World Changes Its Mind - Medeski, Martin & Wood feat. John Scofield
19. Three O'Clock Blues - Eric Clapton & BB King
20. 'Round Midnight - Miles Davis & Sonny Rollins

Talk-over music came courtesy of Medeski, Martin & Wood, Mulatu Astatke, The Swingle Sisters, and Yoko Kanno & The SeatBelts.

For a rundown of the Miles to Go playlist each week, keep your browsers here, and for the best jazz et al. around, keep your radios (or your iTunes) tuned to WKCO 91.9 FM!

This Week: What we're all about...

This article is cross-posted from the Miles to Go Before I Sleep blog...

Welcome, all you gone cats and hep kittens, to the companion blog for Miles to Go Before I Sleep on WKCO! If you tuned in for our premiere episode this evening, thanks for listening and calling/writing in with many great requests! If not, I suppose I can forgive you, but you don't know what you're missing. That said, here's a look at what I spun tonight:

1. Midnight Lullaby - Tom Waits
2. Chubb Sub - Medeski, Martin & Wood
3. Take Five [Live from Carnegie Hall] - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
4. Emily - Bill Evans
5. Use Me - Bill Withers
6. Summertime - Miles Davis
7. Bye Bye Blackbird - Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins
8. Everybody Wants to Rule the World - The Bad Plus
9. Changes - Seu Jorge
10. Light My Fire [Live from the Blue Note] - Paris Troika
11. II BS - Charles Mingus
12. Baby Grand - Billy Joel feat. Ray Charles
13. Cantina Band - John Williams
14. Summertime/Burma Shave [Live from Austin City Limits] - Tom Waits
15. Yègellé Tezeta - Mulatu Astatke
16. KC Blues - Charlie Parker
17. Farewell Blues - The New York Musicians
18. Breakin' the Chains of Love - Fitz & The Tantrums
19. Saturday Night Church - Tuatura
20. Hell - Squirrel Nut Zippers
21. Nutville - Buddy Rich
22. Blue in Green - Miles Davis

Talk-over music came tonight from Air; Booker T. and the MG's; Medeski, Martin & Wood; Mulatu Astatke; and Yoko Kanno & The Seat Belts. 

For a rundown of the Miles to Go playlist each week, keep your browsers here, and for the best jazz et al. around, keep your radios (or your iTunes) tuned to WKCO 91.9 FM!

An Equation: Bass + Pianoforte + Spaghetti Western = Speechless

I know that it has been months since I've written on this blog, and for that I apologize. I promise I'll get back to it soon, as there is much updating to do. But, as part of my penance, I offer this most excellent video from Diego Stocco, modern composer and musician, and the creator of the Bassoforte. What is the Bassoforte, you ask?

"Few days ago I started thinking about how I could re-purpose the keyboard of the dismantled piano I keep in the garden, so I thought to build a new instrument by combining it with some other parts I had laying around. I ended up with this mechanical hybrid thing I thought to call "Bassoforte" (bass + pianoforte).

The neck is from a broken electric bass, as a bridge I used a cabinet handle, the pickups are from a guitar, and the part at the top where the strings are attached is a chimney cap, which works as resonator as well as percussive sound.

The track I created is a tribute to my Dad who is a big fan of Western comic books and "spaghetti western" films, and because of him I am too."

Inventiveness, a phat beat, and a Father's Day tribute? I dig.


Diego Stocco - Bassoforte from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Another Lazy Sunday: Round Three (The Andy Kaufman Edition)

My first exposure to Andy Kaufman came in late-night TV Land re-runs of Taxi, a show which featured Kaufman as Latka Gravas, a mechanic for the Sunshine Cab Company.  I was maybe eight years old when I first saw Taxi, and I'm sure I didn't get it half of the time. But, even then I knew there was something pretty funny about it.

Now, I haven't seen Taxi in years. I'm sure there are still re-runs floating around somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to start looking for them. However, I do have YouTube, and for some reason Andy Kaufman came to mind the other day. So I started browsing around for some videos of his stand-up routine. So, I present to you a few videos of Andy Kaufman, some as his "Foreign Man" character (the proto-Latka) one video of Kaufman as alter-ego Tony Clifton (the footage - from The Dinah Shore Show - is a bit rough), as well as a bit of Kaufman himself with Merv Griffin and Steve Martin, respectively. Tenk you vedy much!

In today's blog post: Who is Ira Glass? And where is that missing child?!

Well, it's very, very long overdue, but I'm proud to say that two of the mysteries presented on this blog have been resolved! (This post is one part fulfilled expectations, one part crack investigative journalism. Yes, I will gladly accept my Pulitzer nomination...)

I've received word back from two of my "outstanding" e-mails: that requesting an interview with This American Life's Ira Glass, and that inquiring about the missing child (video) on Today's Big Thing. Rather than summarize, I'll transcribe the e-mails here:

From Emily Condon (Office Manager, This American Life)
Hi Daniel,

Thanks for your very nice email. It’s always touching to hear from people who’ve been so influenced by This American Life (and I’m happy to know that the educators of America are doing their part to get the show out there!)

Here’s the thing about interviews: Ira gets so many requests like this that if we fulfilled all of them, or really almost any of them, we’d never get a radio show produced. And it doesn’t seem fair or really even possible to arbitrarily pick and choose. So we’re forced to say no to them unless they’re directly tied to something very particular that we’re doing or occasionally if it’s for a pledge drive for a station TAL airs on or something. So I’m afraid that this isn’t possible given his current schedule. However – I will keep your email and if something changes or his schedule frees up I will let you know.

I do have one suggestion that I think you might find helpful: Ira published a kind of radio manifesto on transom.org a while back that functions as pretty much exactly what you’re asking for - advice and thoughts about navigating the world of radio and so forth. If you go to www.transom.org and type his name into the search engine, it will come up. I think you might find it really helpful.

Hope that helps, and thanks for listening!

All best,
Emily

Not the answer I was hoping for, but the answer I was expecting. I was impressed, though, with just how polite she was about the whole thing. And though it has taken me quite some time to follow up about this e-mail on this blog, she actually got back to me very quickly. Most impressive.

From Kevin (On behalf of Today's Big Thing)

Hi Daniel,

The creators of the video decided they weren't comfortable with how popular the video was becoming and asked us to remove it. Sorry.

Kevin

Short and sweet. And I guess that makes sense. It's one thing to take down a sensitive video because of complaints about its controversial content - which I was sure was going to be the culprit, in this case. However, I can certainly understand not wanting a video of your seven-or-eight-year-old nephew/cousin becoming the latest Internet meme. I respect that.

[insert false statement here, only to be refuted in the post's first line, since it's April Fool's day]

Just kidding! I would never [false statement]. I can't believe you fell for that! (Hardy-har-har.)

It has been far too long since I've written, and I do intend to properly update this blog sometime in the near future - that's what the weekend is for, right? But because it is April Fool's Day, I thought I'd share a few great April 1st pranks from around the Cloud. (Hey, maybe we'll look at this as an "Another Lazy...Thursday Evening" post? Does that make up for my absence?) Since I am, by all accounts, addicted to Google - how true it is - I will start there:

Google, Kansas? Topeka Search?: Perhaps you haven't heard that Topeka, Kansas has decided to change its name to Google, Kansas for a month in hopes that Google will choose them to be a part of their new high-speed internet network. But today, it seems that Google was so flattered they decided to return the favor (see picture above). According to the Official Google Blog:

We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka’s municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains.

Of course, this is not the first time Google has played a prank like this - and, as evinced by the few entries to follow, it won't be the last - which has included Google Gulp (Google's new energy drink), Google Romance (search for true love), or CADIE (The Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity), a computer program capable of learning and interacting intelligently with other beings. This year's list continues:

Google Translate for Animals: Perhaps you've used Google Translate before when you've been in a linguistic pinch - I know it helped me when my uncle switched his Chrome's default language to Italian - but Google has gone and taken it a step further. You can now use your Android-enabled phone to record and analyze what animals are saying to you - we've needed a technology like this for years!

Watch YouTube videos in TextP: And if you ventured onto YouTube today, you would've had the opportunity to view videos in a "TextP" format (similar to the one shown here). What's fascinating is that, apparently, showing videos in this format saves them $1.00 a second in bandwidth cost per viewer. Nuts, right?

And now, for a non-Google contributor...

ThinkGeek's Dharma Initiative Alarm Clock: I've recently become obsessed with Lost, so when I saw this YouTube video from ThinkGeek for a Dharma Initiative Alarm Clock, I nearly lost it (no pun intended). Seriously, though, punching in a code in place of a snooze button? Brilliant.