2009 NEA JAZZ MASTERS
nea.gov | June 3, 2008

George Benson, Jimmy Cobb, Lee Konitz, Toots Thielemans, Rudy Van Gelder and Snooky Young are the newest NEA Jazz Masters—the highest honor bestowed on jazz artists by the United States government. Each honoree receives a $25,000 grant and will be honored in a special ceremony at Lincoln Center on October 17.

This is the 27th annual class of Jazz Masters, bringing the total count to 106. Congratulations, all!

NEA Jazz Masters Program »
Press release »

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CHRIS CONNOR INTERVIEW
jazzwax.com | June 2-6, 2008

I honestly haven’t paid much attention to jazz vocalist Chris Connor, who came up through the Claude Thornhill and Stan Kenton big bands before striking out on her own in the 1950s. Coming out of the Peggy Lee school of singing, Connor’s cool sound put her in the company of singers like June Christy and Julie London as she recorded for Bethlehem and Atlantic Records. Marc Myers conducted an extensive interview with Connor for his JazzWax blog, which kindled my interest and made me want to explore her catalog. Maybe it will do the same for you.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

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QUICK HITS

• A nice little profile of the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society (San Francisco Chronicle, May 30)
• WBGO’s Josh Jackson looks at Dave Douglas’ Keystone project (NPR Music, June 4)

Recent reviews from the NY Times:

• Nate Chinen reviews Nicholas Payton at the Jazz Standard (New York Times, June 6)
• Ben Ratliff reviews Ben Wolfe at the Jazz Standard (New York Times, June 5)
• Nate Chinen reviews a Max Roach tribute at Iridium (New York Times, June 7)

Notes on the Return to Forver reunion tour:

• “Jazz great Corea returns to forever” (Marke Andrews, Vancouver Sun, June 5)
• “Returning to Forever was easy for bassist” (Larry Rodgers, Arizona Republic, June 8)

The fine folks at SFJAZZ have released the schedule for the 26th annual San Francisco Jazz Festival, running October 15 - November 9 at the usual concert halls throughout the city. Tickets go on sale to members on June 28, and open up to the general public July 13.

This year’s festival has a “transformation” theme, focusing on artists who have embodied the spirit of “social change and cultural upheaval.” That’s a very San Franciscan sentiment, of course, but it’s also one hell of a good theme for a mainstream jazz festival to take on.

It’s not all fire and revolution, however. SFJAZZ has broken down the festival into four parallel tracks: “Legends and Innovators,” including Shepp, Taylor, Dave Brubeck, Randy Newman, Jimmy Scott and the latest incarnation of Haden’s Liberation Orchestra; a gospel and blues-based “Roots and Grooves” series; “Global Sounds”—ranging from Arturo Sandoval‘s Cuban jazz to Toumani Diabate‘s virtuosic Malian groove; and “The Next Generation,” an eclectic grouping of young (or not-so-young but still underappreciated) artists, including several rising stars from the Bay Area.

SFJAZZ has been undergoing a transformation itself, morphing gradually from an annual festival to a year-round concert presenter. Less than three months separate the final outliers of SFJAZZ’s 2008 Spring Season from the first Festival warm-up events in early October (and if you count the free concert series SFJAZZ presents at Stanford, Levi’s Plaza and Union Square, there’s no break at all). Miles From India—the supergroup combining Miles Davis alumni and top Indian classical artists—returns to SF to get things started at Davies Symphony Hall on October 3, and the mighty a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock visits the same venue on October 4. Staples kicks off the festival proper in what is sure to be a rocking show at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre on October 15, beginning an intense schedule of 30 concerts over three and a half weeks. The whole thing wraps up with ukelele phenom Jake Shimabukuro on November 9, by which time SFJAZZ will probably have announced some holiday concerts.

If that isn’t enough to keep you busy this fall, SFJAZZ is also putting on a 5-week lecture/demonstration course in the History of Jazz Piano, Thursdays beginning September 4 at the Jewish Community Center of SF.

Get the full schedule at sfjazz.org »

Svensson and his band became stars at home, crossing over to a pop audience and drawing tremendous attention along with armfuls of awards since first hitting the scene in 1991. But despite that runaway success, the group never gained much traction in the United States. They were, however, often held up by critics as exemplars of a jazz aesthetic that has evolved largely outside the blues ‘n’ bebop tradition, and in 2006 e.s.t. became the first European jazz band to be featured on the cover of Down Beat magazine.

Here’s a YouTube clip of e.s.t. in action from 2003, which gives a pretty good impression of the group’s calmly innovative approach and subtle rock influences.

Obituary from The Local (Swedish news site, June 16) »
Esbjörn Svensson website »

“Hulk. Smash!” Yes. Hulk. Smash. Yes. Smash. Big Hulk smash. Smash cars. Buildings. Army tanks. Hulk not just smash. Hulk also go rarrr! Then smash again. Smash important, obviously. Smash Hulk’s USP. What Hulk smash most? Hulk smash all hope of interesting time in cinema. Hulk take all effort of cinema, effort getting babysitter, effort finding parking, and Hulk put great green fist right through it. Hulk crush all hopes of entertainment. Hulk in boring film. Film co-written by star. Edward Norton. Norton in it. Norton write it. Norton not need gamma-radiation poisoning to get big head. Thing is: Hulk head weirdly small. Compared with rest of big green body. [...]

Oh well. Looks like Iron Man is still in theatres. Maybe I’ll go see that again…

Read the article »

Here’s another batch of articles and blog posts worthy of your attention…

RETURN OF THE JAZZ SHOWCASE

There’s lots of coverage out there regarding the re-opening of Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase in Chicago, which has moved to Dearborn Station after the previous Grand Avenue location was killed by a massive rent hike in 2006. Never having been to Chicago myself, I have no idea where those places are. But even I know how essential the Showcase has been to Chicago’s vibrant jazz scene (it’s existed in one form or another, one place or another, for about 60 years), so I’m happy to hear they’re up and running again.

• “Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase Lives Again” by Michael Jackson (Chicago Sun-Times, June 13)
• “Jazz Showcase Opens Tonight” by Micah Maidenberg (Chicago Journal, June 12)
• “New Jazz Showcase Set to Open” by Howard Reich (Chicago Tribune, June 8)

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VISION FESTIVAL XIII

Also getting a lot of ink right now is the Vision Festival, New York’s annual celebration of avant-garde jazz and other creative music.

• Review: Kidd Jordan by Nate Chinen (New York Times, June 13)
• Howard Mandel enthuses over Vision and other festivals (Jazz Beyond Jazz blog, June 13)
• Festival profile by Nate Chinen (New York Times, June 6)

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QUICK HITS

The other day I linked to a profile of bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding. Here’s another one, by Paul de Barros, whose feelings echo my own (Seattle Times, June 13). Seriously, check her out.

Jazz Festivals a Go-Go:

• “Playboy Jazz Fest has its 30th edition” (Associated Press, June 13)
• Ben Ratliff looks at the evolving JVC Jazz Festival New York (New York Times, June 13)
• James Hale asks, “What Makes a Festival Festive?” (Jazz Chronicles blog, June 12)

It’s Friday the 13th of course, so as I was driving down to the station this morning I decided to drop the usual format and rename the show “Bad Luck and Trouble.” There was a lot of frantic digging through the library, and in the end the show wound up being about 90% blues. If I’d had more time to think about it, I would have put together a superstition set, mixed in more genres, maybe thrown in some voodoo or witchcraft songs. But I had a blast, and that’s what matters.

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HOUR #1 (0600 - 0700)
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Thelonious Monk & Sonny Rollins - “Friday The 13th” - Thelonious Monk/Sonny Rollins (Prestige)

Ray Charles - “If It Wasn’t for Bad Luck” - Genius & Soul, Vol. 4 (Rhino)

Albert King - “Bad Luck” - Funky London (Stax)

Monti Amundson - “I See Trouble” - I See Trouble (Beatville)

R.L. Burnside - “Bad Luck and Trouble” - Mississippi Hill Country Blues (Fat Possum)

Sunnyland Slim - “Unlucky One” - Sunnyland Train (Evidence)

Carey & Lurrie Bell - “Trouble in My Way” - Second Nature (Alligator)

Clarence “Tom” Ashley - “Short Life of Trouble” - Greenback Dollar (County Records)

Byron Berline & John Hickman - “Double Trouble” - Double Trouble (Sugar Hill)

Border Radio - “Unlucky Love” - Americana Brand (Border Radio)

R. Crumb & The Cheap Suit Serenaders - “Mysterious Mose” - Chasin’ Rainbows (Shanachie/Yazoo)

Ando Drom - “I Got Into Trouble” - Gypsy Life on the Road (North Pacific)

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HOUR #2 (0700 - 0800)
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Taj Mahal - “Having a Real Bad Day” - Señor Blues (Private Music)

Bobby “Blue” Bland - “I Woke Up Screaming” - The Anthology (MCA)

Otis Rush - “Mean Old World” - All Your Love I Miss Loving (Delmark)

A.C. Reed - “Hard Times” - I’m in the Wrong Bussiness (Alligator)

Floyd Dixon & Mari Jones - “Unlucky Girl” - Floyd Dixon: Complete Aladdin Recordings (Capitol)

James Cotton - “Call It Stormy Monday” - Mighty Long Time (Antone’s)

Big Maybelle - “Oh Lord, What Are You Doing to Me” - Maybelle Sings the Blues (Charly)

Thomas Mapfumo - “Disaster” - Chimurenga Explosion (Anonym)

Aphrodesia - “Trouble” - Frontlines (Cyberset)

Tommy Flanagan - “Friday the 13th” - Something Borrowed, Something Blue (Galaxy)

Lester Bowie - “Doom?” - The Great Pretender (ECM)

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HOUR #3 (0800 - 0900)
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Calvin Owens - “Best Worst Day” - I Ain’t Gonna Be Yo’ Dog No Mo’ (Sawdust Alley)

Big Joe & the Dynaflows - “Bad Luck Blues” I’m Still Swingin’
(Severn)

Carter Brothers - “Sucker of Circumstances” - Essential Carter Brothers (Fuel 2000)

Albert King - “Born Under a Bad Sign” - Born Under a Bad Sign (Stax)

Stevie Ray Vaughan - “Texas Flood” - Martin Scorsese Presents... (Columbia)

Lurrie Bell - “Earthquake And Hurricane” - Let’s Talk About Love (Aria B.G.)

Magic Slim - “Black Tornado” - The Essential... (Blind Pig)

Dr. John - “Right Place Wrong Time” - Anthology (Rhino)

Phillip Walker - “Bad Luck” Working Girl Blues (Black Top)

Willie Mabon - “Why Did It Happen to Me” - Cold Chilly Woman (Black & Blue)

Big Maceo - “Tuff Luck Blues” - The Best of Big Maceo (Arhoolie)

Melvin Taylor - “Another Bad Day” - Bang that Bell (Evidence)

Buddy Guy - “Trouble Don’t Last” - Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues (Silvertone)

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No show next week, as KZSU will be in the middle of a 24-hour electronica marathon. But I’ll be back on the air June 27th, hopefully with an interview around the Stanford Jazz Festival.

NIGHTHAWKS (AND OTHERS) AT THE DINER
tersmeditasyon.com | via DO

We all know the scene: it’s midnight and the city streets are empty. But light beams from a lonely diner, as a white-coated soda jerk pours coffee for his three insomniac customers. One one side of the angled counter are the lean, hawklike man and his girlfriend, two weary people who have seen the world and learned to live with it. And on the other side of the counter, his back to us, sits the solitary man in the suit. It’s one of those indelible images we all recognize even if the title ("Nighthawks") or the artist (Edward Hopper, 1882-1967) are obscure to us.

And where there’s an icon, there are imitations. In the case of “Nighthawks” there are dozens of them, some wry send-ups, others cheap knockoffs. The Ters Meditasyon blog has assembled a whole bunch, all of which are guaranteed to make you laugh, do a double-take, or just scratch your head.

View the collection »

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LOUIS ARMSTRONG’S COLLAGE ART
theparisreview.org | via DO

I’d heard stories of Louis Armstrong’s vast collection of reel-to-reel audio tapes, which he would use to create durable copies of his favorite music for travel and archiving purposes. What I didn’t know was that Stachmo would turn the tape boxes into canvases for collage art. The Paris Review has a sampling in their Spring 2008 issue, and a book about Louis’s visual art is in the works. Check it out…

View the article »

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QUICK HITS

• Design by Humans offers outstanding t-shirts
• Linzie Hunter has some awesome sketchbooks
• Illustrator Glen Mullaly has a monster latin-jazz combo (and more!)

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THE LIBRARY IN THE NEW AGE
nybooks.com—May 27, 2008

Writing in the New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton looks at the Internet and what it means to the future of information: what is to become of the research library when the World Wide Web so famously makes information instantly accessible—and more prone than ever to becoming misinformation? Drawing on examples ranging from his own experience as a cub reporter in the 1950s to the works of Shakespeare and Voltaire, Darnton makes a persuasive argument that information is neither spiraling into instability nor becoming less reliable—because it was never stable or reliable to begin with. Rather, the printed word has always and inevitably been subject to the vicissitudes of interpretation, error, or overt manipulation. Continuing to buck the treds of popular opinion, Darnton then goes on to outine the eight reasons he believes Google and its ilk are making the research library more important than ever.

Read the article »

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WHO KILLED JAZZ AND WHEN?
jazzwax.com—May 30, 2008

Why, in the middle of the 20th century, did jazz suddenly cease to be mainstream music in the United States? Was it the rise of rock & roll, the shift of jazz from entertainment to art music, or something else entirely? Marc Myers pondered these questions on his JazzWax blog a couple of weeks ago, moving the focus from Elvis and the Beatles to an earlier stage, when jump blues and R&B began tearing up the scene in the late 1940s, and arguing that jazz musicians themselves bore much of the responsibility for the fall. As you might expect, the comments on this one are as good as the article.

Today, Myers follows up that post with a broader view, reassessing some of his earlier comments in the context of technological, demographic and cultural shifts. Again, be sure to read the comments.

Read Part 1
Read Part 2

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BRUBECK AND THE BLACK HAWK
artsjournal.com/rifftides—May 29, 2008

I often regret that I came on the scene too late to experience some of the legendary jazz haunts, like San Francisco’s famed Black Hawk nightclub. Drummer Shelly Manne recorded a series of outstanding sets at the Black Hawk in the late 1950s, and the club was the setting for classic albums by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Mongo Santamaria soon afterwards.

You can catch a glimpse of the club in this cool YouTube clip of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, filmed for a failed television pilot in 1958 and hosted by Mort Sahl. Introducing the clip on his Rifftides blog, journalist Doug Ramsey waxes nostalgic about the room and provides some nice context.

Read the article »
Watch the video »

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QUICK HITS

• Ben Ratliff reviews Aaron Parks at Smalls (New York Times, May 30)
• A labor of love: producing a Jack Sheldon documentary (Los Angeles Times, May 30)
• Robert Ryan tours Paris for jazz lovers (The Sunday Times, June 1)

Guess what? I hated it.

Okay, that’s too strong. I was entertained. I learned a few things. I saw a lot of film that was new to me. I’m sure it looks great in HD. But I was also deeply disappointed.

How can you tell the story of Project Mercury in 56 minutes (minus commercials)? Heck, The Right Stuff needed three hours. Or more to the point, how can you tell the story of the Mercury 7 without letting us see who they were? “John Glenn was the level-headed one” is not sufficient. Almost nothing was said about why these seven men were chosen from the pool of candidates, what training they went through, or how being America’s first astronauts and instant celebrities affected their psyches and their lives.

How can you tell the story of Mercury (or, for that matter, of NASA) without even explaining the space race, for crying out loud? Yuri Gagarin gets about 10 seconds, but without the context of the Cold War and the devastating psychological blow of Sputnik (which gets no mention at all), the mad rush to reach the Moon seems meaningless. JFK’s pledge to reach the Moon by the end of the sixties is mentioned, and we get a few “boy were we surprised” reactions, but again there is no context given. Why such a short window? What was the effect on NASA? On public opinion? What happened when Kennedy died (again, no mention of that event)?

Instead, we jump from mission to mission, with the bulk of the time devoted to whatever near-disaster was averted on each. That’s understandable; it is television, after all. But without context, how are people in the audience—especially young viewers—supposed to care?

The filmmakers conducted a lot of interviews, from Gene Kranz to Glenn to the big catch, Neil Armstrong. But rather than letting these people tell the story, they have hacked the interviews to ribbons, sound bites of a single sentence each, and intercut them with quick edits of original footage, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, all linked together by tense narration and action-movie music. It’s non-stop, it’s exhausting, and it doesn’t do justice to the incredible achievement of the Mercury Program.

Project Gemini, the subject of the second hour, seemed to fare better. In particular, the segment on Gemini IV and NASA’s first spacewalk showed some real depth, as did the dual Gemini VI/VII rendezvous mission. But still there was crucial context missing. What happened in the period between Mercury and Gemini? Nothing, apparently. Was NASA on schedule? Was there opposition? How much did it cost? Why were the Gemini missions conducted with two astronauts, and why were such experiments as EVA, rendezvous, and docking considered so important? In short, WHAT WAS THE PLAN FOR REACHING THE MOON? The documentary leaves all these questions unanswered, leaving little but a Cliffs Notes reading of the flights themselves.

Towards the end of the second hour, I began to suspect that this series might really be about Apollo. Perhaps these first two hours were just preliminaries to the main event, something to be dealt with quickly, and now we’ll get to the real meat of the series. I’m going to cling to that, and hope the remaining episodes are more satisfying. If not, I guess it’ll be time to dig out my DVD copy of From the Earth to the Moon.

That’s the position I find myself in right now. After a couple of weeks of dealing with looming (or missed) deadlines, sick family members and other distractions, I opened up Google Reader today to find I had nearly 100 articles flagged for perusal (and potential blog posting), with hundreds of others just sitting around, completely unviewed. Yeesh!

So here are some of the things I would have told you about last week if I’d had it together…

HOMECOMING ON MUDDY GROUND
truthdig.com—May 27, 2008

Larry Blumenfeld, who has been an astute observer and critic of the situation in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, uses the celebrated return of the Neville Brothers to this year’s Jazz & Heritage Festival as a jumping-off point for a searing commentary. Blumenfeld looks at the impact of rebuilding efforts on public housing, the city’s changing political and cultural climate, and what “coming home” really means when three years later, the wounds have not healed.

Read the article...

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ESPERANZA SPALDING
csmonitor.com—May 30, 2008

I’ve been a huge fan of the young bassist/singer Esperanza Spalding ever since JazzTimes passed me a copy of her album Junjo for review back in 2006 (ironically, they never ran the review). If you aren’t hip to Spalding yet, this profile by Stephen Humphries of the Christian Science Monitor should bring you around. Spalding’s early career path has been nothing short of astounding, bringing high-profile gigs, a record contract, and even a faculty position at the Berklee College of Music, all in her early twenties. Her latest album, Esperanza has just hit the street, and she’s playing at Yoshi’s Oakland on June 12.

Read the article...

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JAZZ SURVIVORS
nytimes.com—May 25, 2008

Who says jazz players die young? The New York Times‘ Philip Lutz looks at a few of the many graybeards who, working largely in obscurity, play small venues in and around New York City well into their eighth or ninth decades, never quite finding fame but keeping the spirit of the bebop era alive.

Read the article...

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JAZZ BECOMES NEW MELTING POT
mercurynews.com—May 25, 2008

In this preview piece for the San Jose Mercury News, Richard Scheinin links several performances from the SFJAZZ Spring Season into a brief survey of the globalization of jazz:

“...the global dimension is also important because it allows jazz to keep moving in fresh directions. Increasingly learned in conservatories, the music, some would argue, has been losing touch with its African-American heritage, so tightly entwined with blues and gospel.... While those roots remain essential to the music, the infusion of new players from around the world is stirring the pot, adding new folkloric and rhythmic ingredients.”

Read the article...

HOUR 1 (0600 - 0700)

Nik Bartsch’s Ronin - “Modul 41_17” - Holon (ECM)

Richard Underhill - “Morse Code” - Moment In Time (Stubby)

Tigran Hamasyan Trio - “Part 1: Homesick” - New Era (Blujazz)

John Zorn & Bar Kokhba - “Gediel” - Lucifer: Book Of Angels, Vol. 10 (Tzadik)

Tango Negro Trio - “No Te Mueras Nunca” - La Vuelta Del Malon (Felmay)

Aquiles Baez - “Buscando Caiman En Boca ‘e Cano” - La Patilla (Cacao Musica)

Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet - “A Fuller Wine” Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet (Nettwerk)

Tony Trischka - “Salt River” - Territory (Smithsonian/Folkways)

Garrison Fewell & Eric Hofbauer - “A Cajun Raven” - The Lady Of Khartoum (Creative Nation)

HOUR 2 (0700 - 0800)

Tin Cup Serenade - “Aunt Hagar’s Blues” - Tin Cup Serenade (self released)

Felicia Carter - “Louise” - Feather / Step Lightly (Alberta)

Forgotten Souls Brass Band - “Lil’ Liza Jane” - Gone But Not Forgotten (New Orleans Music Online)

John Ellis & Double-Wide - “All Up In The Aisles” - Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow (Hyena)

Virginia Mayhew Septet - “Just A Blues” - A Simple Thank You (Renma)

Avery Sharpe - “Big Mac (Bro. Tyner)” - Legends & Mentors (JKNM)

Hans Glawischnig - “Line Drive” - Panorama (Sunnyside)

Eric Mcpherson - “Misako” - Continuum (Smalls)

Kurt Elling - “My Love, Effendi” - This Time It’s Love (Blue Note)

HOUR 3 (0800 - 0900)

Fredrik Ljungkvist & Yun Kan 5 - “Badaling” - Badaling (Caprice)

Lionel Loueke - “Seven Teens” - Karibu (Blue Note)

Esperanza Spalding - “Cuerpo Y Alma (Body & Soul)” - Esperanza (Heads Up)

Charles Lloyd Quartet - “Sweet Georgia Bright” - Rabo De Nube (ECM)

Gachupin - “Las Armas Secretas” - Gachupin (self released)

Chicha Libre - “Popcorn Andino” - Sonido Amazonico (Barbes)

Thelonious Moog - “Misterioso” - Yes We Didn’t (Grownup)

Southern Culture on the Skids - “8 Piece Box” - Dirt Track Date (Geffen)

Tune in to the next show, Friday, June 13 (eek!) from 6-9am Pacific time. KZSU is at 90.1 FM if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, or you can listen online at kzsulive.stanford.edu. We’re also in the “Radio” tab of iTunes (look under College Radio)!

The Baltimore Sun reports that local smooth-jazz radio station WSMJ suddenly dropped the format last week in favor of the more demographically friendly “rock alternative” and a morning shock jock. In recent months, smooth jazz stations have folded in New York, Washington DC, Houston and Denver. They’re dropping like flies.

I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, smooth jazz is… um… hm. “Abomination” is too strong a word. Let me consult my thesaurus… “atrocity"… “disgrace"… “horror"… “obscenity"… “outrage"… “evil"… “crime"… “monstrosity"… “anathema"… “bane"… Ooh! Good!

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, smooth jazz is the bane of many “real” jazz fans and practitioners, a form of pop music with a dollop of jazz flavoring that—thanks to clever marketing—millions of undereducated people have come to mistake with the music we love. Jazz is to smooth as black coffee is to a sugar-free decaf low-fat latte with a caramel shot. Sorry, but that ain’t coffee. Meanwhile, the players of smooth jazz sell millions of CDs and grow rich, while the best players in straightahead jazz (never mind the avant-garde) sell maybe a few thousand, and often remain obscure even to dedicated listeners. So I’m not going to shed many tears for these big-wattage, smooth-spewing radio stations, while real jazz radio languishes with inadequate funding and 500-watt transmitters at the far left of the FM dial.

But on the other hand, what about the fans? Why shouldn’t people go ahead and drink that sugar-free decaf low-fat latte if that’s what they like? And why shouldn’t they be able to listen to Michael Bublé and Kenny G if those are the sounds they dig? There’s no denying this stuff is popular. One could also argue that there’s a small but significant halo effect, where someone listening to smooth radio might hear a stray Miles Davis or Chick Corea track and be moved to explore.

It’s also hard to say whether the loss of smooth jazz is an opportunity for regular jazz radio or a harbinger of doom. After all, if smooth jazz can’t make it in these big markets without getting squirreled away onto some HD-Radio rider channel (as in Baltimore), what chance do Coltrane, Joe Lovano and Nick Payton have? My guess is that it won’t affect real jazz radio stations much one way or the other. The format names may be similar, but the audiences and expectations are completely different.

Which brings me back to the whole notion of “live and let live”. I may not care when a smooth jazz station dies, but I saw the frustration my wife went through when the only country station in San Francisco changed formats, becoming indistinguishable from half a dozen other rock outlets. It was just stupid. Why abandon a loyal audience and exclusive ownership of a whole genre to duke it out with all those other stations, which already had their own audiences? I imagine smooth fans are asking themselves the same thing now.

In the end, San Francisco got another country station. I’m sure smooth jazz will come back too (assuming terrestrial radio doesn’t curl up and die anytime soon), maybe on smaller stations, probably with a slightly different mix of artists, and perhaps—one can only hope—with a new name.

A Day in Brands
In an interesting twist on consumerist culture, Dear Jane Sample maps out a “typical Friday” entirely through the logos of products Jane interacts with (well, almost entirely). It’s clever, fascinating, and highly revealing. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Friday evening quite like that, but hey, more power to Jane. [found via Brand New]

R.I.P., Everything
Richard Watson, author of Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years, created this extinction timeline for the years 1950-2050 [PDF]. Some entries are serious (Great Barrier Reef, extinct in 2030), others more tongue-in-cheek (Rocky films, 2032). It’s disappointing to think that we might have to deal with Paris Hilton for another 15 years before she finally falls into well-deserved obscurity, but at least we’re pretty much done with “mending things” ... oh, wait, that’s not a positive, is it? [found via DO]

Hosuton, I Think We Have a Cliché
My wife and I have a running dialogue going about trends in book cover design, which will have to be the subject of another post. But that conversation made this collection of book and movie between-the-leg shots even funnier. It is, as one of the pulp covers says, “Sweet Agony”. [found via DO]