The Penultimate Word

Make of this what you will.

Dale Winling of the Urban Oasis blog has an interesting post on the decline of film. He talks about pictures his grandparents took and kept in a scrapbook, the pleasure he took in looking at them, and his fear that the ephemeral nature of digital photos will mean the permanent loss of them.

I think he largely has that right. My parents put every picture they took in photo albums whether they were any good or not. But frequently, the “bad” ones are the most revealing because someone was being spontaneous and not posing. And my siblings and I can see what our family and friends were like many years ago.

Right now, I have 2,392 images in my iPhoto library, and probably around 1,000 more on CDs and on my other computer that haven’t made it into iPhoto. There a lot of good photos there, but I have printed maybe a handful. What will happen to the others? Disappear, most likely.

My friend Bob, a terrific photographer who went all digital a few years ago, has the good sense to print his best and put them in albums or frame them. It’s good he does this - his photos will be viewed enjoyed for many many years.

Bob, by the way, took the photo of the inside of a Steinway that occassionally appears at the top of this website.

One of my favorite jazz solo pianists is Dave McKenna. I think he is one of the finest pianists of his generation who never received the recognition he deserved. This is a 1984 performance from the Northsea Jazz Festival.

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in a 1961 performance of Dat Dere

Lee Morgan - trumpet
Wayne Shorter - sax
Bobby Timmons - piano (and composer of Dat Dere)
Jymie Merrit - bass
Art Blakey - drums

“We tend to assume that the sort of opera most likely to attract new audiences is the sort written by Verdi or Puccini, in which characters behave in a relatively natural manner (e.g., singing continuously in long arcs of melody, often while dying).” Evan Eisenberg, writing about Danielle de Niese.

The John Coltrane Quartet in 1963 on a TV program called Jazz Casual

John Coltrane - sax
McCoy Tyner - piano
Jimmy Garrison - bass
Elvin Jones - drums

This is pretty cute:

Lyrics.

(Thanks to my friend Cheryl for the cartoon.)

Brubeck again, this time his Unsquare Dance, so called because it is in 7/8 7/4. This take is a sort of boogie-woogie version by British pianist and composer Paddy Milner and appears to have been taped in his living room. Brubeck himself apparently endorses it, and it well worth a listen. The bit at the end of the video about Gallery Studios can be safely skipped.