New music discovery

Just discovered Florence and the Machine, via the good folks at KCRW. She's obviously still in the primordial stage, but we'll definitely be hearing from her again for quite some time. Here she is out-Candi-ing Candi Staton in Brighton:

Catching up

Let's see if we can get this thing moving again.

The other moral majority

Intriguing piece in today's Wall Street Journal about the emergence of the "religious left". Mike Lindsey calls it a "seismic shift". Seems more like a natural progression - and it will be interesting to see the degree to which Dobson's opposition to cutting greenhouse gas emissions will further marginalize his group from mainstream evangelical politics.

Random sighting

Jemaine Clement, at the New York Public Library, yesterday. Perhaps doing some research for his next role?

36 Hours in Philly

Spur of the moment trip to Philadelphia last Thursday, as the Missus and I are wont to do. We decided to take advantage of the “Spontaneous Suite” deal at La Reserve, a converted 19th century mansion in Rittenhouse Square. If you go mid-week, within seven days of reserving, you get the high-end room for the low-end price. Good stuff. We stayed in the Saratoga suite, well appointed with old-style Philadelphia furniture like this writing desk:


…but also with plenty of modern amenities, including a built-in television and cabinet and modern kitchenette.

We spent most of Thursday afternoon at the National Constitution Center, where we took in their exhibit on the life of Napolean. Very well-done, and thankfully (at least when we were there) absent the unruly crowds that can mar a traveling exhibit such as this. The curators did quite a good job in detailing the Bonaparte family’s relationship to the United States (as a boy, Napolean was an ardent student of our revolution, and he later discussed the possibility of self-exile in the States after Waterloo. And who knew who his brother, the King of Spain, was once a Jersey Boy?). The artifacts, including the only surviving decorative wall crest from his 1802 coronation at Notre Dame, and several maps from his military campaigns, truly illuminated the mix of militarist and megalomaniac that was Napolean.

The Constitution Center itself was a new discovery for me, my never having gone there on the countless school field trips taken to Independence Mall over the years. It’s a great looking building, with a hell of a front lawn, as seen here:


We started our tour with a multimedia presentation on the history of the Constitution – going back to the Articles of Confederation and running right through the recent debates about immigration and gay marriage. The presentation was held in a mini-amphitheatre in the center of the Guggenheim-esque exhibit hall, where everything from original copies of the Constitution to Sandra Day O’Connor’s black robe bring the nation’s jurisculture (yes, it’s a word. ‘Cause I say so.) alive. We kind of breezed through, but I definitely want to return and take a slower walk through the exhibits on another day.

We headed back toward Center City with the intention of catching a free performance of the famous Wannamaker organ at Macy’s, but alas, that evening’s show was preempted by a fashion event of some sort. Deciding we’d return in the morning, we headed off to Reading Terminal Market, heaven for any culinary enthusiast. In another economy, we’d have loaded up on the fish, fruit, pasta, and pastries, but alas, we were relegated to window shopping. No matter.

Back at La Reserve, our hostess recommended Di Bruno Brothers on 18th and Chestnut for groceries. The Missus is very finicky when it comes to Italian vittles, but the brothers came through. We picked up some delicious fresh shrimp lightly seasoned in Old Bay, baby arugula, and some salad dressing to add to the pasta and tomato sauce we’d brought in from Jersey. For desert, we got a…I don’t even remember what it was called. Suffice to say it was a big ol’ block of chocolate, the finishing thereof would be left to yours truly.

That evening in the Saratoga, we made great use of the kitchenette and enjoyed a dinner of shrimp and pasta while being serenaded with the sounds of “The New Adventures of Old Christine” on the television in the background.

The next morning, we enjoyed a very satisfying breakfast of our choice (I went with the French Toast. The missus went with the potato pancake), which we enjoyed with another couple from California in town for their son’s graduation from Drexel. We were also joined by a French couple who have been living in Miami for several years. The guy dragged his very accommodating lady up to see Eddie Vedder at the Tower Theatre. In return, she got a few days of sightseeing in the nation’s birthplace. We got into a very interesting discussion about the difference between French and American personalities. The young lady herself, while admitting to missing her friends and family, said the first thing she noticed over here is how much friendlier Americans are. As loathe as I am to believe the stereotypes about foreign peoples, I admit to feeling a twinge of “Yay us” at that remark.

The couple from California raved about the Barnes Foundation mansion in Merion, just outside the city, and the French couple seemed intent on seeing it before they left. We didn’t have time, but it sounds like we’ll have to check it out on our next day trip.

After breakfast, we checked out of La Reserve and wandered through Rittenhouse Square, admiring the unique architecture. I snapped this shot of a very gothic-looking house at the corner of Delancey and 18th:


I’ve always loved Philly’s narrow streets and alleyways, including this one at Waverly and 18th:


And of course I had to take the obligatory sax-player-on-the-corner shot:


We got to Rittenhouse Square, where a production company had set up shop while filming what looked to be a story about college kids in love. Or something:


After taking advantage of the improving weather in the park, we continued onto Macy’s, where we did finally enjoy a free performance of the world’s largest pipe organ:


Well, I did. The Missus was more focused on finding herself a new pair of shoes.

Seriously, though, this is one of Philadelphia’s semi-hidden gems. The original Wannamaker’s Department Store, which Macy’s now occupies, was truly a temple for the worship of free enterprise. And right smack dab in the Center Court, surrounded by soaring Corinthian columns, John Wannamaker installed this pipe organ to entertain the masses (or at least give the husbands and boyfriends something to do while the ladies did their thing in Housewares.) It remains one of the truly “only-in-Philadelphia” experiences.






Afterward, we crossed the street to City Hall for another “only-in-Philadelphia” experience (and number 1 on Pop Culture Casualty’s list of 15 things to do in Philly before December 31st). For five dollars, you (along with three other people, at a time), can ride the elevator up to the top of the tower from which William Penn has lorded over his domain since 1901. Best five bucks I've ever spent. Having been to the top of the Sears, the Empire State, the CN, and the Hancock, I can say that Philly's City Hall has them all beat by a mile. Unlike the aforementioned, you can actually see the city from the observation deck. No little mouse taxis or ant busses crawling through the urban maze, nor panoply of air conditioners and water towers shrouded in the summer haze. Nope. This thing has a real live view! Here's a shot I took of Broad Street looking south:


And you get a much closer view of the imposing Mr. Penn as well:


He seems to be saying, "'Sup Phillies fans!"

With only four people allowed up at a time, you'll have to reserve a spot early and then occupy yourself for what may be a couple of hours. The upside, though, is that you pretty much have what feels like the top of the world all to yourself - at least for 15 minutes.

Back down on terra firma, we headed over to JFK Plaza, aka Love Park, where we got in line to take a shot in front of the famous Robert Indiana sculpture. While waiting, I snapped this shot of a very enthusiastic group of modeling students from one of the nearby schools doing their best J. Crew pose:


After we got our own shot taken in front of the sculpture, I decided to take the Missus (again, an expert on culinaria Italia) down to the famous 9th Street Italian Market about which I'd read so much for some lunch. I figured, "If she dug Reading Terminal, she'll love this place!" When will I learn?

Alas, despite the unique layout and great opportunities for people watching, the market left her unimpressed. Perhaps the Di Bruno Brothers, ironically founded on 9th and Christian, set the bar too high with their Rittenhouse locale. Oh well. It was an interesting walk through a real Philly neighborhood at least:


Getting hungrier by the minute, we zoomed back up Broad Street...


...then, in the madness that is the Center City parking spot search, somehow wound up on the Franklin Parkway...


...before finding one of those "you don't have to pay after 6" spots in front of the Troc. Having missed lunch, we were now in search of dinner and ambled through Center City before stumbling upon the ingeniously named Italian Bistro on Broad, near Walnut. It wasn't Lydia's, but for two hungry travelers with Lydia's taste but dressed for Burger King, it was a real find. I went with the lobster ravioli:


...while the Missus went with her favorite - homemade gnocchi:


"Delizioso!" on both fronts, and the bill left us enough to cover the tolls back north. So we bid adieu to the City of Brotherly Love - well-fed, well-traveled, and well-inspired for our next visit.

Twitter's growing pains

Excellent piece here on the Twitter phenomenon. I'm still skeptical. All of the information we had to sift through before just to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now this? I'll probably wait for the next generation.

Same story, different continent

Even if you are abstractly aware of the global ramifications of the economic crisis, Alex Hay's article for Reuters on the shrinking middle class in Spain does a good job of highlighting the degree to which we're all in this together. The anecdotes about soup kitchens and foreclosures, in particular, are depressingly familiar.

The Funky Genius of Vince Guaraldi

Watching ABC’s “It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown” special last night, I was struck once again by how these shows, watched ad infinitum in childhood, can seem so new again years later. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by Snoopy’s independence. Not only was he never on a leash, he seemed to be the only adult on the program – albeit one prone to getting himself tied up in Christmas tree lights, trapped inside malevolent ping-pong tables, and getting his nose stuck in birdhouses. Eventually, I just accepted the fact that he could pilot a Sopwith Camel while neither Charlie nor his friends could cross town without the help of his grandmother and her station wagon.

Last night though, what stood out most for me was Vince Guaraldi's very progressive soundtrack. Everyone is familiar with “Linus and Lucy”, the famous piano driven and jazzy theme to 1965’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” For the Easter special though, released in 1974, Vince goes deep into the funk.

Check out the tune he drops in this clip at 1:50. It’s as if he had been hanging out with Buddy Miles at Woodstock’s bachelor pad and just started riffing. The guitar is straight up Abraxas-era Santana. Later, at 4:47, he goes into a laid-back but soulful lounge riff (during which we see the infamous visual elevator joke at 6:46), reminiscent of "Cast Your Fate To The Wind" but updated for the post-Shaft era. You just don't think about these things when you're lying on your stomach in your parents' living room and looking up at an RCA big enough to double as a butler's table.

Of course, Vince Guraldi was already an accomplished composer before he hooked up with the Peanuts franchise, and his non-cartoon related output is well worth checking out. Sadly, he died all too young of a heart attack in February of 1976. Thank goodness a new generation will always be able to discover his brilliance every April, November and December.

I’ll be hoisting a dyed egg in his honor this Sunday.

Happy Birthday Lady Day

What a way to start the morning. Today is April 7th, the 94th birthday of one America’s greatest performing talents. There are a thousand other words and phrases to describe her, but that one seems appropriately encompassing for Billie Holiday. I didn’t even realize the significance of the day until one of my friends sent a link to a video of Lady Day performing “Fine and Mellow” on a CBS television special back in 1957. To this day, it’ll take the rug out from underneath you.

“The Sound of Jazz” was an historic television event. Never before had so many giants of the genre come together on the small screen, and never again would they. The evening’s two biggest stars, Holiday and saxophonist Lester Young, would be dead within two years. This makes the video of “Fine and Mellow” both sublime and bittersweet.

Holiday and Young were longtime friends who had collaborated for years, producing such legendary sides as “All Of Me”, “The Man I Love”, and “He’s Funny That Way”. It was Young who bestowed upon Holiday the nickname “Lady Day”, and Holiday in turn nicknamed Young “Prez”, as in President. Yet they had not spoken for quite some time prior to the December 8 taping of the show. Even during the rehearsal, they avoided one another. Once the music started, though, whatever physical and emotional distance separated them evaporated, and suddenly it was Lady Day and the Prez, together again, in synch one more time. Here’s how music critic Scott Waldman describes it:

Prez, who had wrecked his body with alcohol, was in such ill health he couldn't stand for the duration of the six-minute song. Holiday launched into the song and each sax man took a turn. Gerry Mulligan was first and played a solo in double-time. Webster was next, blowing a beautiful, breathy chorus. And then it was time for Prez. When it was Young's turn he wearily stood up, and locked eyes with Holiday as she sang a song with lines like "Love is like a faucet / It turns off and on". As Lady Day sang, Prez hit every note exactly in time with her and they took off like two eagles riding an air current as they rose higher and higher, way out of that studio and those television sets, circling around each other, Prez blowing the notes that sustained her as if he was the body to her soul, and then they came together in mid-air, as mating eagles will, and plummeted hundreds of feet earthward together, before breaking off and flying their separate ways. People in the control booth had tears in their eyes. It was the swan song of a bittersweet affection. After the show, the two had some brief backstage conversation and then they bid goodbye. They each had less than two years to live. Prez would die alone in a New York hotel, his body finally calling it quits. Not long after that, Holiday would be arrested on her deathbed for heroin possession.

One of the things I love most about this video is the body language. The postwar hipster headshake of Gerry Mulligan, almost purposefully out of tempo with Coleman Hawkins’ bluesy wails at 2:02; the “let-me-show-you-how-it’s-done” grin on Prez as he leaps in at 2:42; the utter ecstasy of rediscovery on Billie’s face at 2:56, the sincere appreciation for the younger generation evident in her approving nod toward Mulligan at 4:50, and the visible “oh my!” during Roy Eldridge’s solo at 7:20; Jazz performance has always been about the subtle visual cues, the tortoise to rock’s bombastic hare. With the aid of several television cameras at different angles, it becomes as much fun to watch the players as it is to listen to them.

Above all, though, this was Billie’s moment, her swan song after a rocky but prodigious career. More than most who claim it, she truly lived the blues. When she sings that final line about love being like a faucet – “Sometimes when you think it’s on baby, it has turned off and gone” - it breaks your heart and makes you go “mmm, hmmm” at the same time. Like I said, she takes the rug out from underneath you.

Happy Birthday Billie.

Hunger Was Good Discipline

So said Ernest Hemingway in the eighth chapter of his autobiographical A Moveable Feast. The book, published posthumously in 1964, chronicles his early years in Paris as a member of the Lost Generation. He writes of trying to support himself and his wife while pursuing an unstable career that relies on the mercurial interests of faceless editors (some things never change).

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at the tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg Gardens where you saw and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l’Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard.

So the name of this blog stems from that theory, which I intend to test. God knows I’m hungry. I don’t intend to do any original reporting here in the garden. Rather, I intend to write “nothing that anyone in America would buy”, so as to temporarily stave off the hunger while practicing the craft that originally seduced me. The bakeries will come soon enough.