Category: Music that doesn’t suck
The Free New Mexican Air Force?
From the Albuquerque Journal:
“Do you have any targets up here?” the pilot of American Airlines Flight 2292 asks Federal Aviation Administration traffic controllers. “We just had something go right over the top of us. I hate to say this, but it looked like a long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing moving really fast right over the top of us.”
Was it Mescalito riding his white horse? Or The Free New Mexican Air Force?
¿Quien sabe, ese? Rolllllllllllllllllllllllll another one … just like the other one. …
Piles of blues against the door
There’s a strong whiff of the dumbass coming out of Texas lately. The directions are printed right there on the soles of the damn’ boots, yet nobody in authority can pour the piss out of them.
Maybe it’s frozen.
But not everyone in the Lone Star State is all hat and no cattle. For instance, there’s Steve Earle, and there’s also Steve Earle talking about the literary qualities of Willie Nelson, which is even better.
And finally, there’s Texas Monthly, with “13 Curses to Mutter Against Ted Cruz While You Boil Snow to Drink.”
Can’t buy me brains
On this day in 1964 The Beatles came to America.
Two days later they appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and I was watching, like 74 million of my fellow Americans.
My parents were appalled. My sister was entranced. And me? I remember thinking something along the lines of: “Hmph. These guys will never be as big as Elvis. And look at those silly haircuts.”
R.I.P., Claude Bolling
Damn, I don’t know how I managed to overlook Claude Bolling’s departure. He and Jean-Pierre Rampal helped spark my interest in jazz way back when.
I got in by way of what they called “fusion” — outfits like The Crusaders, Weather Report, Pat Metheny Group, Return to Forever; individuals like Stanley Turrentine and Grover Washington Jr.; and so on.
Some classical and jazz purists turned up their snoots at this sort of thing, but I loved it. Being a flutist of sorts myself I instantly found a connection with the Bolling-Rampal collaboration, right down to the whimsical cartoon album covers.
Bolling himself seemed to have a playful nature, and he resisted attempt to categorize what he was doing musically.
Mr. Bolling’s compositions were sometimes described as “combining” jazz and classical music, but he had a different view.
“I don’t like the word ‘combination,’” he said in 1982 in an interview for The Syracuse New Times, a weekly paper. “This is simply a dialogue between two kinds of music. I have made nothing new. This has been going on for a long time.”
His music will do likewise, no matter what the snobs say.
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