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From 'TBH Politoons'
Great Site!
Thanks, again, Tim!
Baron Dave Romm's Review
Spoken Word I
By Baron Dave Romm
Oral tradition preceeds written tradition by thousands of years. Poetry was originally designed to be chanted rather than read. The art of speaking and the art of telling a story were one and the same. Only later did they split off, with Aristotle describing what made good fiction in The Poetics and what made good speaking in Rhetoric. This tradition developed into many branches. Plays, storytelling, music, speeches. At it's best, oral tradition produces marvelous speeches, great storytelling, stand-up comedy, brilliant music. At it's most cynical it produces hate radio, televangelists, corporate lawyers, commercials. I cannot cover the entire field or even a significant fraction of it, but I'll try to pick a few CDs split into manageable topics.
Poetry was originally designed to be sung. Poems rhymed to make them easier to remember. Sometimes they were sung unaccompanied: A Cappella means in the manner of chapel. Singing brings you closer to God, and so the Christian Church tried to ban outside music, some intervals (!) and even instruments in the Middle Ages. It helped even more if the chanting had a tune; simple yet pleasant and uplifting. Even today, a cappella religious chanting holds a fascination for Western culture even if we don't understand what the words are saying. The success of Chant by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silow (and others, later, including the parody Chantmania reviewed earlier), demonstrates the power of the chanting itself. Devout and sincere, the chanting monks get their message across without relying on the language.
Ken Nordine has been producing Word Jazz since the 1950s. I have The Best of Word Jazz, Vol 1 CD, which I play on the air as often as I can, but you can hear the first dozen or so of his radio shows on his site. Nordine is a storyteller, heir to religious prophets, using the technology of today. Where Beat Poets are to be heard live, Ken Nordine is to be heard in recording. The jazz music backgrounds are part of the experience. (Okay, maybe it would be good live too...). On the Word Jazz CD, he tells surrealistic, powerful stories with a strong forceful expressive voice and cool jazz music bed. He explores modern existential themes. Confessions of 349-18-5171 is all about identity. Faces of the Jazzamatazz are different images of the Jazz Age. Time, paranoia, marketing, and thinking in the bath are explored. Perhaps an aquired taste, but one worth acquiring. Ken Nordine doesn't stray too far from several mainstream traditions, but his instantly recognizeable voice, cool music and Beat prose poetry combine for a unique and unmistakeable form. Let the storytelling wash over you. (His website is kinda cool, in the "cool jazz" sense, too.)
More recently, Malarkey's Chameleon is sort an attempt at the Tommy of spoken word CDs: Several related spoken word pieces that tell fragments of a larger story, with music backgrounds. A lot of it works, though it doesn't get to the ecstatic purity of Chant or the sharp images drawn by Word Jazz. The eclectic music is pretty good, and the story is science fiction. My favorite cut is Jigsaw Man, funk about organ transplants. Chameleon tells a dark story about a guy who can change identities and while this keeps the authories at bay, it means he has no place in the world. The extistential anomie explored in a few Ken Nordine cuts reaches worldbeat proportions here. The music is more important as music than as background to storytelling, but that too adds to the imagery.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. He reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E here.
Reader Contribution
Incredibly Cool Link
from Warren G.
Summary: On August 1st, the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) near Earth suddenly turned south--a condition that renders Earth's magnetosphere vulnerable to solar wind gusts. A G2-class geomagnetic storm began soon after. Sky watchers in Canada and parts of the United States saw colorful auroras on August 2nd, and the storm continued at lower levels on August 3rd as well.
August 1-2, 2002, Aurora Gallery
Thanks, Warren!
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Was the day to refurbish the lizard condos. The water & foliage are changed daily, but, the each terrarium gets emptied to the glass & scrubbed. In keeping with the theme, the fish had their bowls cleaned, too.
Incinerated burgers on the grill. Sometimes the kid rules...LOL
There's a 'corpse flower' (Amorphophallus titanum) about to bloom at the Huntington Library this week. The kid is more stoked about it than I would have thought, so it looks like we'll have a small roadtrip!
Tonight, Monday, CBS has the usual reruns of 'King Of Queens', 'Yes, Dear', 'Raymond', and 'Becker'. They are followed by '48 Hours'.
On a rerun Dave, the scheduled guests are Ellen DeGeneres and Al Franken.
Scheduled on a fresh Craiggers the guests are Tim Matheson and Paulina Rubio.
NBC opens with a rerun 'Fear Factor', then a fresh 'Dog Eat Dog' (featuring Playboy Playmates), then a rerun 'Crossing Jordan'.
Scheduled on a fresh Jay are Vin Diesel, comic Pete Correale and Tweet.
If it's Monday, Conan is a rerun, with scheduled guests John Leguizamo, Christina Applegate, and Regena Thomashauer.
Scheduled on a fresh Carson Daly are Mike Myers and Dirty Vegas.
ABC has 'NFL Preseason Football', where the Houston Texans vs. NY Giants in Canton, Ohio. It's also the debut of Madden & Michaels (no Miller). On the west coast, it's followed by the James Bond movies 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' with George Lazenby.
The WB has reruns of '7th Heaven' and 'Smallville'.
Faux has a rerun of 'Boston Public', and then 2 fresh episodes of 'Titus'.
UPN has reruns of 'The Parkers',
AMC has The Candidate (1972), a sometimes over-looked movie with
Robert Redford &
Peter Boyle.
And, quoting Peter Boyle as
Frank Barone, ''Holy Crap!'' TCM is cutting loose with some fabulous movies all this week. Tonight,
they open with Gone with the Wind (1939), then
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) (the
Clark Gable - Charles Laughton version). Next up is
Going My Way (1944), then
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and wraps the night with one of my favorites,
Stage Door (1937), where Katharine Hepburn declares 'the calla lilies are in bloom, again'.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Teen Choice Awards
Jack & Kelly Osbourne
Jack, left, and Kelly Osbourne, who co-star with their rock musician father, Ozzy Osbourne, in the MTV reality series "The Osbournes,'' and actor Tom Green, right, present
on stage at the Teen Choice Awards in Los Angeles, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2002.
Photo by Lucy Nicholson
Cool Link
'Chatter's Cookbook'
'Chatter's Cookbook'
Rings in 90th Year
Julia Child
America's culinary grand dame Julia Child on Saturday celebrated her upcoming 90th birthday with spectacular meals, great wine and lots of butter.
"I plan to go on for some time," said Child, who was shamelessly pro-fat before being pro-fat was cool.
Child turns 90 on Aug. 15, but will celebrate for an entire month, while raising money for her favorite culinary causes.
In a fitting tribute, the planners of Saturday's festivities at Copia threw a butter tasting into the mix.
Child is a trustee of Copia and has given the center some of her copper cookware, along with the much-coveted right to call its restaurant Julia's Kitchen.
It was not, however, her first job choice. Fresh out of college in the World War II era, she signed up with the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA.
For more details, Julia Child
Tours Fresco Exhibit
Pickles
First lady Laura Bush toured an exhibit of centuries-old frescoes from the Vatican Museums on Saturday and encouraged others to see the rare art.
"It's just really going to be a once-in-a lifetime experience for a lot of people to come to see these frescoes," she said at the exhibit at Texas Tech University.
The 31 frescoes had never left Europe or been viewed together before the showing at the university this summer. They will remain in Lubbock until Sept. 15, then will be
returned to the Vatican and won't be displayed again until 2025.
Painted some 900 years ago by unknown artists under the tutelage of Italian artist Pietro Cavallini, the Vatican frescoes once adorned the walls of St. Agnese
and St. Nicola, two early Roman churches.
They were covered by plaster in the 1700s and rediscovered and removed during renovations in the 1800s then stored in the Vatican.
Pickles
www.vaticanexhibit.org
Musei Vaticani - The Vatican Museum
Illuminated Manuscripts at the Vatican Museum
The Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Big Dog Watch Continues
Bill Clinton
Former President Bill Clinton arrives at the Fenwick home in Toronto, Ontario in this Monday July 29, 2002. Clinton lavished praise on work his friend and interior decorator Kaki
Hockersmith did on her new home in Little Rock.
Photo by Randy Quan
Man With An Opinion
Payola
If you think payola went out of radio with early 1960s deejay Alan Freed, you're a Grade-A sucker, says one of the industry's top lawyers. Talking to Court TV's "Hollywood at
Large," George Engle - who's repped Don Henley, Courtney Love and Meat Loaf - said recently, "Every high executive in record companies is running a criminal enterprise because
payola, which is a federal crime, has never left the business. From my standpoint, they still need a payoff to get radio play."
Payola
In Australia
Monty Python
Monty Python's Flying Circus in Australia
Tay Estuary
Oliver Cromwell's Fleet?
Treasure hunter Gary Allsopp looked like a man who had just won the National Lottery.
The leader of the expedition trying to find the lost treasure of Oliver Cromwell's fleet - wrecked in the Tay Estuary - revealed yesterday that his team had struck gold, as well as
silver, in their search for a horde of plunder which could be worth £2.5 billion at today's prices.
Mr Allsopp claimed the search team had identified 11 targets - four of which had given positive readings for precious metals - in the treacherous waters of the estuary, where 60
ships from Cromwell's navy foundered in a storm in September 1651.
On board the stricken fleet was much of Scotland's wealth - a fortune in silver and gold plate, bullion and jewels - plundered during the sacking of Dundee by General George Monk's New Model Army.
Although the potential wreck sites have been identified using the latest developments in state-of-the-art subsea search technology, the only artefact the team has so far managed to
recover - what is believed to be a 17th century cannonball - was discovered after one of the team stubbed his toe on the submerged object while wading waist deep in water on a partially flooded sandbank.
Oliver Cromwell's Fleet?
Bouncer Turned Star
Vin Diesel
Here's the story on actor Vin Diesel, the onetime New York bouncer turned Hollywood action star:
Apparently, his real name is Mark Vincent. He's 35, grew up in the West Village and is half African-American, half Italian.
He's said to have three siblings, including a fraternal twin, Paul Vincent, who works as a film editor. They were raised by their mother, an astrologer and psychologist, and their stepfather, a drama teacher.
A career in acting happened by accident for the delinquent Diesel, some reports say. At age 7, he and his friends broke into the Theater for the New City on First Avenue with the intention of vandalizing it.
They supposedly got caught by a female theater employeer, who, instead of turning them in, offered them $20 a week to study there.
All true?
"The irony is how much of that is inaccurate," said Diesel on a recent afternoon at a Beverly Hills hotel. He wore a V-neck T-shirt large enough for his tree-trunk biceps, a skull ring and a silver bracelet with an elephant design.
For more, Vin Diesel
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
First Gig Since Jerry's Death
'The Other Ones'
Two days after what would have been Jerry Garcia's 60th birthday, about 35,000 Dead Heads converged Saturday for the first major concert by the remaining members
of the Grateful Dead since their legendary leader's death seven years ago.
Playing as The Other Ones, four members of the band that became an icon of 1960s California kicked off their set with "He's Gone" -- acknowledging the gap left by Garcia, who died of a heart attack in 1995.
The Other Ones feature former Dead bandmates Phil Lesh on bass, Bob Weir on guitar and Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart on drums. They are joined by Rob Barraco, Jeff Chimenti and Jimmy Herring.
The four former Dead players now have their own bands, all of which played Saturday: Phil Lesh and Friends, Bob Weir and RatDog, Bill Kreutzmann and TriChromes, and Mickey Hart and Bebe Orisha.
Local authorities, fearing 200,000 Dead Heads would show up and overwhelm the communities at the concert site, at first barred the band from appearing.
Walworth County gave permission only after the promoter, Clear Channel Entertainment, along with Grateful Dead Productions, issued warnings that anyone showing up without a ticket could be arrested.
The Other Ones will begin a 15-show tour in November, also promoted by Clear Channel.
For more details, 'The Other Ones'
Useful Link
Today Date and Time
Today Date and Time
The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens
'Corpse Flower'
In San Marino, a wealthy town of trim lawns and rose-filled gardens, the world's largest and stinkiest plant is ready to bloom.
The Amorphophallus titanum, known to Indonesians as the "corpse flower," exudes an odor that some have compared to garbage or rotting flesh.
The exotic, 4-tall plant is expected to bloom by Tuesday at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.
Its unusual scent attracts pollinating, carrion-eating beetles in its native Sumatra.
The plant has been seen in bloom only about 15 times since its first U.S. display in New York in 1937. About 76,000 people flocked to the
Huntington when the flower bloomed there in 1999.
'Corpse Flower'
The Huntington Library
Returning to TV
Davey & Goliath
Davey and Goliath, the stop-action animated stars of Sunday morning TV in the 1960s who recently reappeared in a soda commercial, are getting their TV show again.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will produce 26 new episodes of the Davey and Goliath show.
The denomination's predecessor, the United Lutheran Church in America, produced 65 episodes of the Davey and Goliath show and six specials from 1960 to 1971. In the show featured, Davey, a young boy,
and his dog Goliath, whom only Davey can hear, face life together.
The shows were made by Art and Ruth Clokey, who also created Gumby.
The church is also licensing videos of old shows and other memorabilia, including t-shirts and bobblehead figures.
The new shows are expected to go on the air next year.
Davey & Goliath
BartCop TV!
Tour Draws Crowds
Marilyn Monroe
On the 40th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death Saturday, hundreds of fans paid homage and soaked up a bit of the screen siren's legend.
Leslie Kasperowicz, who runs the online Immortal Marilyn Fan Club, led a tour of "Marilyn Homes and Haunts." More than 30 reverent fans visited 22 sites from Hollywood to Beverly Hills.
Monroe died Aug. 5, 1962, at 36 due to an overdose of sleeping pills.
Marilyn Monroe
Going Retro
Pinballs
That moment of pinball Zen arrives for Michael Moon when he becomes one with the plastic flippers and the steel ball ricochets around the table for minutes on
end. The "Attack from Mars" machine he is playing comes alive with gaudy effects -- zapping, tabulating and erupting with robot-like digital exclamations such as "Jackpot!"
"When people see you're still playing and it's getting more noisy, sometimes crowds gather around," said Moon, 32, of Alexandria. "It's a great feeling to have
people clapping for you when you're done."
For pinball, though, the applause has died off.
Blame the stunted attention spans of children. Blame the Internet. Blame Bill Gates and his little X-Box. Whatever the reason, pinball is vanishing from America's cultural
landscape, and a handful of pinball fanatics think that's a shame.
Once the star of the arcade, pinball is fading. The new generation of gamers, by natural selection, has banished pinball as too old, too difficult and too boring.
The number of pinball machines nationwide dropped from 1 million in 1989 to 360,000 in 1999 and revenue slid from $2.4 billion to $1.08 billion in the same period, according to the trade publication Vending Times.
For a whole lot more, Pinballs
For more pinball info, Gottlieb Pinball Evolution from 1947 to 1967
New Record Set
Berkeley Breast-Feeders
Hundreds of mothers gave it their breast effort Saturday as they set an unofficial world record for simultaneous suckling.
With "one, two, three - latch!" the auditorium at the Berkeley Community Theater fell suddenly silent as mothers and babies swung into action.
The number to beat was 767 set by mothers in South Australia on Thursday. Organizers said they had at least 1,128 nursing mothers and expected that total
to rise as they verified cases where twins hadn't been given their double credit. Numbers were to be submitted to Guinness World Records.
As the event ended, organizers promised the cheering women that next year they'd try again - in the much bigger Oakland Coliseum.
Berkeley Breast-Feeders
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Circus of Horrors
An unidentified member of the Circus of Horrors tries out his act during a parade at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2002.
Photo by David Cheskin
Thinks He's Disadvantaged
Sen. Orrin Hatch
It isn't easy being a songwriter, particularly if you are a U.S. senator. a conservative and a Mormon, says someone who is all these things.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, contends that recording artists generally are not interested in his songs because liberals dominate the music industry.
In an interview last week, Hatch quoted U2 star Bono as telling him after reading some of his lyrics, "These are beautiful, but the brothers will never sing them because of who you are."
Despite Hatch's conclusion that in many pop-music circles "it's a disadvantage to be a senator, a conservative Republican and a Mormon," he has had a modicum of success lately.
Of the nearly 100 songs he has written lyrics for over the past seven years, one, a lullaby called Little Angel of Mine, appears on the just-released soundtrack of the movie Stuart Little
2. Another song appeared in the movie Rat Race, and yet another on the soundtrack of a recent inspirational film titled Joshua. That song, Everyday Heroes, was inspired by a speech on
volunteerism by President Bush and was also recorded by country music stars Brooks & Dunn on a commemorative album of the 2002 Olympic Games in Hatch's hometown, Salt Lake City.
If you have the stomach for the rest - Sen. Orrin Hatch
Bayreuth Festival
Wagner
The annual Bayreuth Festival, a monthlong summer music festival dedicated solely to the works of German composer Richard Wagner, is an easy target for critics who attack it as elitist and artistically conservative.
But for those lucky enough to get in, it is almost impossible not to fall under Bayreuth's spell. Thousands are drawn back year after year to this otherwise sleepy provincial town in the hope of securing
one of the most exclusive tickets in the opera world today.
The waiting list for tickets to Bayreuth currently runs to between eight and 10 years. This year alone, people from all over the world applied for a staggering 480,000 tickets, while only around 59,000
were actually on sale.
Bayreuth has become a venue for the rich and famous, lured more by the lights of the television cameras and the world's press than any love of music.
Ever since Bayreuth's Festspielhaus opened its doors in 1876, only 10 different works by the composer have ever been performed there.
Wagner
Morley, Alberta
World Indigenous Peoples Conference
Alan White uses a step ladder to put the finishing touches on one of ten tepees he and other workers have set up in preparation for the World Indigenous Peoples Conference west of
Morley, Alberta, August 3, 2002. There are 76 tepees that will accomodate up to 3,000 people from 24 countries for the six day conference starting August 4 and is being hosted by
the Nakoda Nation. Morley is 75kms west of Calgary.
Photo by Patrick Price
'The Osbournes'
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 3
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 2
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 1
