THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
“Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”― Erica Jong
The brisket is ready for Passover. I decided to get ahead of chaos that usually occurs pre-Seder by getting the brisket done and over with. It is going to be good, possibly great, but as my mother says—using a brilliant yiddish word—making it is a potschke (putshki?)—something that needs to be fussed over; something that takes up a lot of kitchen toil time. And it is so so messy.
I wish all of you who celebrate the holiday a happy Passover. May we all be more free (and that goes out to everyone!)…and may the plagues that are in front of us fade away in the rear view mirror, the obvious ones and the ones that hide in the shadows.
***Right before publishing this I found out from Barry Simons that Brian Rohan has passed away, the larger-than-life and fearless attorney for the Grateful Dead, The Beats, so many other artists of the day…and a friend. I will dig in more to his legend next week, and I am going to miss him.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: A FILM RESCORED
Keeping on the Passover theme for a second, one of the many great projects coming out of Reboot this past year was this one: a new score for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 film, The Ten Commandments. The re-score is actually for the Prologue of the film—the epic story of the Exodus done in the expected DeMille grandeur (the second half is a “modern” mellowdrama and is not essential viewing).
To create the score, we were lucky enough to bring together three amazing musicians to compose and perform it: Steve Berlin (from Los Lobos), Steven Drozd (from the Flaming Lips) and Scott Amendola (who I worked with when he was in TJ Kirk). It was during the beginning of Covid, and they had never worked together before and did the whole thing from three different states. We had the visual of their performances inserted into the film by a young upstart editing mastermind Blake Drummond. The result is a modern experience from an old film that breathes new life into the celluloid. Reboot debuted a working version of it last May during the Dawn festival, and the finished version goes live today. Just go to the above link and dig in (and if you are interested in hearing from the artists talking about the creation of the score with me: March 30th at a Zoom room near you)
You can buy Robert Frost's ancestral home in Eliot, Maine, at online auction
Frost’s “ancestral home” looks very much like how you would expect it to look: traditional New England stately, simple, stoic….overlooking what seems to be evergreen trees and meadows…with beautiful wallpaper and large stone fireplaces inside. Where else would one of the great poets of the time have deep roots in? If you want to see the rest of the interior or the exterior, you should go here.
William G. Thomas earns Lynton Prize for ‘A Question of Freedom’
William G. Thomas III has earned the Mark Lynton History Prize for his new book, “A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War,” published by Yale University Press in November 2020.
WEEKEND LISTEN: Love Cry by Albert Ayler
When I think of Freedom….musical freedom of expression…what I always go to is the free jazz movement jumpstarted by Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane…Albert Ayler…anon. This idea of taking a musical melody and jumping into the unknown…going wayyyyy out….with the whole band improvising individual trips…sometimes coming together, sometimes playing off each other. A joyous noise. It was not a new concept: the early days of New Orleans Jazz featured band-wide improvisation. But the free jazzers took it a step further. Sometimes difficult…but with possibilities of reaching ecstatic heights…celebrating freedom all the way along. Love Cry was a more “commercial” record for Ayler (some new listeners might wonder what the hell I mean by that), featuring the recently gone Milford Graves on drums (David Friedman: this is one of my favorite Graves recordings), with Ayler sounding truly alive and free.
Flower Gathering
By Robert Frost
I left you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go.
Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?
Are you dumb because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?
All for me? And not a question
For the faded flowers gay
That could take me from beside you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, and be the measure
Of their worth for you to treasure,
The measure of the little while
That I’ve been long away.
