The grass is greener

Just found Dustinland, via a post at India Uncut and within a few posts, I knew this is a comic series I am going to love.

Check this one out about the thoughts from the "other side".

And life does go by faster than you think. Sometimes faster than you can think too. Like this year!

And this one about the American dream life (that fate and I have connived and managed to avoid - Costco, malls, and ferrying kids to soccer practice) or this dream, which I have not managed to avoid.

And this one about how to safely look at ...

And this about empathy...

And the 10 subway commandments (which people in cities like NYC and Boston will identify with)

And the people from work

And a great way to take revenge for the common puppy dog face emotional blackmail routine :)

and so on...

Sarah and the pastor

We all heard a lot about Obama and his pastor. Now read about about Sarah and her pastor at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church....

Sarah Palin receives the prayers of Pastor Ed Kalnins, who sees conflicts over oil as a sign that the end of the world is nigh. She has now moved from his Assembly of God Pentecostal Church after 32 years as a member of its congregation

Note to democrats: ignore the diversion. resist the temptation. forget kooky Palin. Can keep taking her down till the chads hang down.... gotta focus on real issues like the economy and such...

Memorable music expands

One last music post this morning...before I move on to other things for the afternoon.

First up, a great solo by Eric Dolphy:



Hilarious how Dolphy just sits there as the drummer goes through a pretty good solo at the beginning. Then, as if he suddenly woke up, Eric Dolphy gets up and launches into an amazing solo on the clarinet.

Update: I just noticed that in a past post with videos featuring Mingus, I had linked to another video from the same performance as above. Both are excerpted from a performance by the Mingus Sextet in Oslo in 1964. A 1-hour video of that performance can be seen here through Google Video. Also through Google Video, a Eric Dolphy's performance of his composition Strength with Unity, from the Once Festival on 1 March 1964. (Amazing! The internet is a treasure-chest of such wonders!)

Also, to listen to some more great live playing by the Mingus Sextet, get the album featuring their performance at Cornell before going on the European tour. The album was released last summer by Bluenote and has been hailed as a "certifiable gem" and the "jazz find of the year" - almost on par with the great Coltrane-Thelonius Monk At Carnegie Hall recording from 1957 that was found in 2005 and on being released on Bluenote lived up to all the pre-release hype (Newsweek apparently refered to it as the “musical equivalent of the discovery of a new Mount Everest.”)

Also, just read that Dolphy, who decided to stay back in Europe after this tour of Europe with the Mingus Sextet, sadly died in a diabetic comatose in Berlin two months after the Mingus Sextet's tour ended. He was only 36. And apropos of that finding, I'm going to post 2 more videos (in keeping with my habit of posting 3 videos in Music tagged posts) featuring the very talented Eric Dolphy.

First, a performance from 1961 in Berlin playing solo a piece called "God Bless the Child"



and then a delectable little piece with Dolphy playing the flute!



Note: The title is from something Dolphy himself said in a short interview in Amsterdam, after the performonce there with the Mingus Sextet. It appears to be an interview which has been transcribed poorly into English; here's a much better interview, if you are interested.)

Music Supreme

From Miles (with a brief detour to blues), I have moved on this morning to John Coltrane.

This hour, I enjoyed listening to full tracks from his amazing album, A Love Supreme at Last.fm.

But what's the point of listening to music, as I always do, without understanding why it is famous in a technical sense. So, since I have some free time and I do not understand anything about music, I tried to read up about Coltrane and understand more about his prowess as a composer and sax player. However, with no music training or understanding of what these terms mean, I have absolutely no idea what the following sentences, from the wiki link for Coltrane's 'sheets of sounds' style of playing, mean:

Coltrane employed extremely dense improvisational yet patterned lines consisting of high speed arpeggios and scale patterns played in rapid succession: hundreds of notes running from the lowest to highest registers. The lines are often faster than sixteenth notes, consisting of quintuplets, septuplets, etc., and can sound like glissandos. Coltrane used the "sheets of sound" lines to emphasize chords, modes, and such harmony. The music of Miles Davis gave Coltrane the freedom to apply harmonic ideas to stacked chords and substitutions. Further, this open approach allowed Coltrane to arpeggiate three chords simultaneously, a style Monk initially taught Coltrane. The "three-on-one chord approach" gave the music a fluid, sweeping sound that was harmonically vertical. Concepts of vertical (chordal) versus horizontal (melody) are key ideas in the work of George Russell, whom Coltrane had recorded with in September 1958. This approach reflected Coltrane's fascination with third relations. Sometimes he used diminished chords, other times he used augmented chords. At times, Coltrane might use scales or licks in the passing keys instead of arpeggios. Coltrane employed these harmonic ideas during his "sheets of sound" stage in 1958. At other times, he would simply play rapid patterns of diminished-scales.

Another great Coltrane album, which also features his 'sheets of sound' playing along with a new harmonic concept later to be known as 'Coltrane changes', is Giant Steps, which has two of his most famous pieces - Giant Steps & Naima (links to youtube videos of the tracks.) I, especially love, Naima, which apparently was a tribute to his then-wife, Juanita Naima Grubb.

You can also listen, via last.fm, to 3 tracks from another one of his great albums, Blue Train.

Leave you with a video of Coltrane playing his ever-popular, My Favorite Things



[Somehow, maybe due to too much familiarity with the tune, this does not do it for me like Naima or some of the pieces in Love Supreme do.]

Blowing your mind

Ok..since I did not provide youtube videos in my previous Music post, here are a couple unbelievable blues riffs from some living blues greats - Clapton, John Mayall, and B. B. King.

Steppin' Out recorded in 1966 by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton. Like the commentator at the beginning says: "Eric Clapton playing like he's fixing (?) to blow your mind"...



And here's B B King with Gary Moore playing The Thrill is Gone (Oh no, BB...the thrill is all here, percolating into every pore of my body and blowing my mind!)




And here's John Mayall and Eric Clapton jamming together more recently in a live performance.



Some day soon, I have got to go see these blues legends live! BB King's already retired without me ever seeing him live. Will have to make do with just recordings of the King of the Blues now!

Update: Just read this... HALLELUJAH. Get prepared to have your mind really blown, Sanjeev. (I was unsure about my plans for Thanksgiving but everything else is now on hold because on November 28th he plays at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, MA. (That's the one on the scheduled itenarary closet to me, I think)

B. B. King might not be playing 250-plus shows a year anymore, but he seems to tour endlessly. After a summer filled with shows, he is still active, though the annual B. B. King Blues Festival was retired for 2008. King picks up his touring itinerary on September 6 in Laughlin, NV, with dates set through December 1 in Hagerstown, MD. The 31-date tour will take King through Mid-West, Southern, and East Coast states. No West Coast performances have been announced yet.

Update to the Update: I looked up ticket prices. Only tickets available in Beverly, MA are $337.00 each. I could drive 100 miles to the next closest location (Hartford, CT) and there are a few more options - but still very expensive ..

$174.00 each
$268.00 each
$317.00 each
$377.00 each
$387.00 each

I just blogged about King's music blowing my mind but this is mind-blowing indeed! Sigh.... I could get 100s of blues and jazz albums for that kind of money and blow my mind over and over again for hours and days and years to come. Ok... back to making TG plans -- visiting my sister or get-to-gether with friends -- that is the question! ;)

Made in Heaven

I had mentioned Miles Davis's milestone album Kind of Blue in passing in a previous post about his music. The album has been deemed the defining moment of twentieth century music, achieving popularity among musicians, critics, music historians, and the public at large (if 679 user reviews at amazon.com, almost all praising it, were not enough proof - listen to the previous 4 links from a documentary called "Kind of Blue - Made in Heaven" where a number of people from various walks of life heap praise on the album and tell you what it means to them.)

This month, I have Kind of Blue and also Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain (another collaboration with Gil Evans) playing over and over again. Made in Heaven indeed!

Unlike my previous posts, I have decided to not link youtube videos to tracks from either album here. Go get it from the library or buy it and listen to it over and over again. Like one reviewer wrote:

Listening to this album will immerse you at once in a world that is dark, brooding, sophisticated, very cool, sexy, and langorous. Bottom line is: if you don't have this record in your collection, you don't have a collection.

Or like another reviewer (same as earlier one? Many of the sentences are the same in the two reviews. Either same one or a plagiarizer is at work at one of the two sites!) wrote:

Immerse yourself in Kind Of Blue, and you enter a dark and mysterious, almost sexy world with a zen like calm. This album isn’t just an album, it’s an experience.

Ok... I'll be kind. You can listen to full tracks of all but the 2nd track through Last.fm or all of them through Rhapsody, which allows you 25 free full tracks each month.

15 by '20

It's not quite Gore's dream (his ambitious and likely unrealistic goal calls for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2020) but it's a start and a welcome change from the shouts* of Drill here, Drill there, Drill now echoing around in the media lately!

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a wide-ranging energy bill that will require most utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar power.

President George W. Bush has vowed to veto the bill because it does nothing to encourage increased domestic production of oil and gas.

...

The utilities provision, the so-called renewable electricity standard amendment, was among the most contested measures in the energy bill. Sponsored by Representative Tom Udall, a Democrat from New Mexico, and several others, it will force utilities to make a significant share of their electricity from solar, wind, geothermal, water and other nonfossil fuel sources, although they can meet part of the requirement through conservation measures. The standard applies only to investor-owned utilities and exempts rural electric cooperatives, municipal utilities, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the state of Hawaii from the mandate.

The 786-page House energy bill does not include an increase in fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks that supporters called the single most effective way of cutting oil consumption and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Sponsors vowed to bring it up again when Congress reconvenes in September. The Senate passed energy legislation in June with numerous differences from the House package. The Senate version requires that cars and light trucks sold in the United States achieve a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, or 6.7 liters per 100 kilometers, or 15 kilometers per liter. Democrats said if the bill that emerged from conference contained both the renewable electricity standard and the mandate for higher corporate average fuel economy, it would be the most significant energy legislation ever enacted.

Also this welcome change from the norm (which explains why Bush is going to veto it!):

The bill will repeal a tax break for oil companies from 2004, and another tax break relating to income from foreign oil production. Critics of the two tax breaks called them loopholes that the industry had taken advantage of.

However, I fear this might be a fleeting moment of exuberance for alternative energy enthusiasts. Firstly, right now there are differences in this bill from the one the Senate passed in June.

A bill that has been agreed to in identical form by both bodies becomes the law of the land only after:

1. Presidential approval; or
2. failure by the President to return it with objections to the House in which it originated within 10 days (Sundays excepted) while Congress is in session; or
3. the overriding of a presidential veto by a two- thirds vote in each House.
[Source]

Also, President Bush has said he will veto the H.R. Bill with the renewable energy mandates! So, the final law may not have some of these renewable energy mandates! Oh well... for now, lets keep our chin up and hope for the best!

P.S. Drilling down on McCain, Obama energy plans

P.S. S. Elsewhere, a BBC poll that suggests that people across 19 countries fear energy policies are threatening the environment and global stability.

* I've already blogged about it but yesterday's NYT Editorial adds more commentary on why the Republican choice for VP spells more bad news for alternative energy proponents.

Mr. McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate raises even more worrisome questions. Her strategy is drill here, drill there, drill now.

She would open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in a heartbeat — something Mr. McCain continues to oppose. She has sued the Bush administration for declaring the polar bear a threatened species, fearing it would interfere with oil exploration in Alaskan waters. She has questioned whether humans are responsible for climate change. Governor Palin’s views are alarmingly out of touch with reality. No less alarming was Mr. McCain’s decision to welcome them into his campaign.