THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."-Ray Bradbury
WEEKEND LISTEN: Oh, the days of roaming around Jazz Fest. Ernie K-Doe over here, Dr. John over there…all roads leading to the gospel tent. Especially before it got too crowded (but any fest is a good fest) Jazz Fest was the alternative vacation if you did not feel like wading through the streets of a packed Madi Gras…and the line-ups always showcased the greatest in New Orleans (and more) music…there was never a bad year.
And then Dr. Ike, king of the Mystic Nights of the Mau-Mau, started the Ponderosa Stomp in between fest weekends, featuring a line-up of legends taking the stage for the greatest curated set of days you could ask for. He put Elvis’ band back together, he created the scene for Otha Turner and the New Orleans Indians to jam together, he got Dave Bartholomew back onstage with an orchestra of players going over all of his big hits. He curated a group of one hit wonders from the 50s and 60s and backed them up with Lil Buck and his incredible band.
And this….this…THIS would be Jazz Fest Weekend. And yet, it has been Covid-postponed til October and there is no Ponderosa Stomp in sight. Yesterday, my friend Ian Del Baso…who I met through my kid’s school and who I initially bonded with upon the realization that we were at the first Stomp together…yesterday Ian sent me a party over text. It looks like radio station WWOZ in New Orleans is throwing down an incredible line-up of recordings from 50 years of the fest….broadcasting all this weekend and all next. You can get the schedule and figure out how to listen here. Today’s schedule includes Willie Nelson from 1999, Little Freddie King from 2012, with headliner The Dave Bartholomew band with Fats Domino also from 1999. And every day, smack dab in the middle, they have a second line band delivering the spirit of NoLa.
Time to put down the zoom and pick up a radio….suck the head off a crawfish…grab an umbrella, a sage stick, and some hard stuff and dance around the house. Virtual Jazz Fest is here for us all…a Covid Silver Lining…and it is gonna be good!
10 words William Shakespeare invented that we still use today
Happy Birthday to William Shakespeare. At least this is the date we THINK he was born on…what the hell do we know anyway? Maybe it doesn’t really matter. But damn….damn he was every bit as amazing as we think he was.
Sir Patrick Stewart completes the set of Shakespeare’s sonnets in style, with tuxedo and martini
Another Covid silver lining: the great Patrick Stewart reading every Shakespeare sonnet…he did them daily…with a true love and enthusiasm for them. I have never heard them read better and with so much love.
Ray Bradbury and the Last Global Pandemic
Have I ever told you the story of how I had a surprise lunch with Ray Bradbury and Eric Burdon and yes, we did talk about the death of Jimi Hendrix? Anyway, sometimes the flu of 1918 seems almost like a science fiction from our vantage point. Stories like this one really connect it to what we have been experiencing now. I never realized how it defined his life and how the tragedies the flu brought to his family were woven into his pros….
Al Young, California poet laureate, novelist, singer and lecturer, dies at 81
In the early 1960s, Al Young was a late-night DJ at KJAZ in Alameda, spinning John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk and expounding between records with a cadence that sounded too suave and soulful for a gangly 21-year-old. Eventually, Young’s on-air persona evolved into a poetry style that riffed on song titles and lyrics, a style he called “musical memoir...”
For the love of Shakespeare:
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again, it had a dying fall.
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour. Enough, no more,
’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there,
Of what validity and pitch so e’er,
But falls into abatement and low price
Even in a minute! So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
-Twelfth Night
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-Macbeth
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything
-As You Like It
