After a breakup at the age I am, going out drinking and partying just doesn’t make sense anymore. Nothing will get accomplished if I continue to carry on the “twenty-something immature” path. Many others, my age, will indeed see the best fit for getting over a breakup, will be to go out that night and drink, or sleep around. To me, lately, twenty-five is the new thirty-five. Yes, you read that correctly. The age I possess seems older than what the numbers call it is.

The morning after, the comics seem funnier than ever before. I take pride in this not-harming-of-my-body-or-mind idea that calms me, in this heartbreak time. I have never had more trust in Cathy Guisewite (author of “Cathy”,) for her depiction of the over-stressed holiday into a humorous and true illustration with the last two frames tying the whole strip into a soft “ha,” it’s here.

Holiday humor runs as a trend, when coming to the comics, it seems most artists are on the same page as each comic strip is telling the holiday through their own eyes. Batiuk & Ayers (authors of “Crankshaft,) is a favorite in our home, with a classic memory to one character of once cherished days, yet not understood to the other family members in the strip, why a simple task is taken to such heart each year. I find such comfort in this, at this time of year, and on this day in particular.

I find myself giving a meek chuckle for seasonal humor as well. Author of “BC,” Hart provides me with a winter related smile.

Winter to holiday humor as well as a sweet “oh yeah, ain’t that ever true,” laugh to our current times, I find myself laughing as I would any day, but further more. I find myself taking comfort and trust further than I have before to the artists found in our Marietta Daily Journal, this Sunday morning.

As a former graphic design major and a current fine arts artist, I adore today’s addition of Teri Libenson’s piece of “The Pajama Diaries,” although today, it is written by “Jess”. Ha. This makes my heart broken soul sing.

There are of course many other comic artists that make a laugh grumble within my belly and spew out my lips. I am an artist within and will be until my dying breath, and further, once in the grave. Ha. On any other day, I would have laughed all the same, sort of. Due to the morning after, I am in a much happier delight due to artist listed above, and others not mentioned, but defiantly thought of. Tom Wilson, (author of “Ziggy”,) as well as Don Trachte (author of “Henry”) with some understood in our old-southern home humor. Ha. To the mental-make-you-think drawing this morning of Tom Batiuk’s “Funky Winkerbean,” being a reminder of the one whom contributed to the actual morning after, yesterday. Oh, I find such delight in all of this.

So while you artists may not hear it, at least not from here, thank you. Your every day to you, is a silver lining to me, upon this current morning after day.

Cartoonist and author, Tom Wilson, also known as Ziggy, is generously contributing 100% of his royalties to LIVESTRONG in memory of his wife, Susan.  She passed away of breast cancer on November 18, 2000. 

From today until Susan’s birthday, January, 19, 2010 when you order any books from Health Communications, Inc. (HCI) through this affiliate link, http://zigzagging.hcibooks.com/ a percentage will be donated to LIVESTRONG.

Health Communications Inc. offers a wonderful library of self-help books, inspirational books, Memoirs and so much more.  HCI is the original home of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series and is now continuing their heartfelt generosity to LIVESTRONG.

I am privileged that HCI is also my publisher and able to add my books to the list that will be giving back.

Check out the slideshow  for a few of the titles and explore HCI’s website.  Be sure to enter HCI through http://zigzagging.hcibooks.com/ to order the books.  It is holiday time and books make a perfect gift for everyone!  From children to grandparents, you will find the perfect title to fit your holiday list!

Also on Examiner.

Tis the season as they say.  Already this week I posted about Tom Wilson raising money for LiveStrong (Lance Armstrong’s Foundation to fight cancer).  Well now there is another celebrity raising money. And before Lynn jumps to the conclusion that Drew is from Cincinnati (as she thought the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was), he too is from Cleveland (Parma actually).  Drew I don’t hold that against you.

For my out of country friends who may not know Drew he is a stand up comedian who went on to have a series success with the Drew Carey Show (with a kick ass theme song from The Presidents of the United States), Whose Line is it Anyway, and now is the host of the Price is Right.

You can help Drew raise money for LiveStrong and it won’t cost you a dime.  Anyone with a Twitter account just needs to follow him.   His Twitter name is @DrewfromTV  (click the name and you’ll go right there).  He is trying to raise awareness and up to $1 Million dollars. For every follower he gets by the end of the year he will donate $1 to LiveStrong. Check out his blog post for his hilarious self deprecating guilt.

Right now he is just under 250,000 followers so head over there and force a celebrity to spread his wealth.

Follow me via TWITTER updates. or help share the post by clicking below…

Believe it or not the author of the world famous Ziggy cartoon (Tom Wilson) also lives in Cincinnati.  My we are a talented bunch.  And a generous one. 

I mentioned before that Tom had written a book called Zig Zagging: Loving Madly….Losing Badly…How Ziggy Saved My Life.  I bought the book several months ago and read it in one sitting.  It delves into Tom’s personal battles with survival both after taking over Ziggy from his father when he became ill to dealing with his wife’s battle with cancer and her ultimate death from it. 

Not an emotional person but twice this year something I read or saw has made me cry unexpectedly.  The first was watching UP and the second was reading this book.    It is a great book and what makes it even better is that to celebrate his wife’s life, Tom is giving all the proceeds from his book between November 18, 2009 (the anniversary of her death) until January 19, 2009 (her birthday) to LiveStrong (The Lance Armstrong Foundation).

Go here to read more from Tom himself and click here to order the book.  

I created a fan art toon to promote this great cause.  So if anyone needs a gift for a cartoony loving friend/family member, get this book.

Follow me via TWITTER updates. or help share the post by clicking below…

With the recent news of the controversy of breast cancer early detection, there isn’t a better time for you to learn more about how breast cancer effects so many lives. 

Tom Wilson II, cartoonist of Ziggy, lost his wife, Susan, on November 18th, 2000 to her battle with breast cancer.  Last spring he bravely released his memoir of this painful and spiritual journey through Zig-Zagging: Loving Madly, Loving Badly…How Ziggy Saved My Life (Health Communications, Inc 2009).

Tom Wilson recently announced he is donating 100% of his personal royalties of his book from November 18th (Susan’s death) until January 19th (Susan’s birthday) to LIVESTRONG.

From Tom Wilson:

Dear LIVESTRONG Friends,

My wife, Susan Shephard Wilson, died in my arms on November 18, 2000. She was forty-four years old. From the moment she was diagnosed with Stage 3b invasive breast cancer, Susan, who had always been my strength, began to teach me what it truly means to LIVESTRONG.

“From the first day we discovered this arch villain called cancer had struck at the very heart of our life together, I witnessed the one constant in my life, my beautiful, sweet, gentle “Tweety Bird” become a hawk so fierce that General Patton himself would have saluted her. Susan went into battle with more strength and courage than any fictional superhero could possibly muster…”

Zig-Zagging: Loving Madly, Losing Badly…How Ziggy Saved My Life, came from the journaling I did in an effort to make sense for myself of the seven years my family battled the consuming, insidious disease that is cancer. The decision to publish the raw, emotional, and painful story of our personal war against cancer and my personal struggle against the crippling grief, was in the hope that telling it might bring comfort to someone else struggling along a similar path of cancer diagnosis.

When I recently had the opportunity to meet with the staff at the LIVESTRONG Headquarters in Austin, Texas, I saw an extraordinary chance to allow this terrible tragedy in my family’s life to do something truly positive for fellow survivors and co-survivors.

ZIGGY’s MILLION DOLLAR LIVESTRONG CHALLENGE is OUR opportunity to come together to make a real difference! Through this campaign starting November 18, the anniversary of Susan’s death, to January 19, her birthday, I am donating 100% of my personal royalties to LIVESTRONG, and coupled with the HCI affiliate program, that averages out to roughly $4.50 from every purchase of Zig-Zagging to the LIVESTRONG organization when ordered from this link. My HOPE is that together we will raise a MILLION dollars (or more!)for LIVESTRONG over the next two months!

With love,

Tom Wilson

…and Ziggy

I have read this wonderful book.  If you haven’t, isn’t now the time to do so?  It is not only a gift to yourself, it is a way to give to a wonderful charity.  Holidays are almost here, I am confident there is someone on your gift list that will benefit with a gift from Ziggy.  After all, who doesn’t love Ziggy?

Read an excerpt from Zig-Zagging - click here.

Order Zig-Zagging today! 

Click here to subscribe to my articles and read more.

Also on Examiner.com

Your trusty Author Enablers were at the Miami Book Fair International this past weekend. Sam did a presentation for his book How to Play the Harmonica: and Other Life Lessons, sitting alongside Tom Wilson, the famous “Ziggy” cartoonist, who was there for his book Zigzagging. Kathi was there basically to schmooze and embarrass Luis Urrea any way she could. That’s the wonderful thing about book fairs—you meet interesting people and you get an overall sense of what’s new in the book industry.

One thing that that caught our eye was the growing prominence of self-published authors. Actually, self-published authors have attended book festivals ever since we can remember, but they’ve always seemed like lonely sorts. You’d see them gamely pitching their books from the smaller and less prominent display booths; then leaning glumly, chins in hands, on their display tables as the day wore on. Not in Miami . . . at least not this year! The area designated for self-published authors was bustling; there was an autograph line at nearly every table, and lively high-decibel conversation between these authors and their readers. While this is not the new wave that is revolutionizing publishing, it is certainly a growing segment of the market. As always, we urge you to do your homework before considering this route: a self-published author actually needs to know more about the business than does an author who is published traditionally. But for those with writing talent and marketing savvy, self-publishing isn’t going away any time soon.

In fact, the only lonely booth inhabitant we saw was the guy selling newspaper subscriptions . . . and we don’t like to think about what that means for the fourth estate.

“RaeAnn Berry” is, I believe, what it says on her driver’s license — but for fans of Hot Music, she’s “SFRaeAnn,” and we owe her many thanks for the jazz she posts with unflagging regularity on YouTube.  She takes her camera down to Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park, California, to record a few performance by Clint Baker’s All-Stars, and every week I watch the clips with pleasure.  Two tiny mysteries always are a part of the experience: Clint is truly multi-instrumental and multi-talented, so I always wonder, “What instrument(s) will he be playing this week?”  And most sessions feature the wonderful work of trumpeter Leon Oakley.  But Leon always looks serious, pensive, even when he’s just played a beautiful impromptu creation.  I was beginning to wonder about his worldview, although no unhappy man could play so well.

Thus, it is with elation and relief that I post two clips from the All-Stars’ performances of October 23, 2009.  And, rather like the advertisements for early sound pictures that told us GARBO TALKS! — I report with pleasure that 1) Leon is playing splendidly, beyond splendidly, and 2) he grins now and again through these two performances.  You had me worried, my man!

The first performance is EXACTLY LIKE YOU — which Leon starts off with a melodic improvisation instead of a straight melody line — quite fetching — and things get hotter from then on!

Then, a rarely-played Twenties favorite, paying tribute to that kid from New Orleans, PAPA DIP.  Here, I delight in Clint’s directing of musical traffic during the breaks.  Good job!

The other All-Stars are having a good time, as always: Clint on clarinet; Katie Cavera, banjo and vocal; Robert Young, alto and tenor sax; Jim Klippert, trombone; Bill Reinhart, bass; Tom Wilson, guitar; J. Hansen, drums.  Visit Clint at: http://www.clintbakerjazz.com

Den hier kennen wir alle noch:

Tom Wilson, der als Biff Tannen das Salz in der Suppe des 80er-Jahre-Filmhits “Zurück in die Zukunft” war, ist, was viele nicht wissen, eigentlich ein ultra-komischer Kerl.

Bei den Bloopers zu Wing Commander 3 kann man das ganz gut beobachten und ja: es ist Luke Skywalker (unwichtiger echter Name: Mark Hamill).

Was macht dieser witzige Mensch heute? Schaut es Euch an:

Man darf nicht vergessen, daß das heute allseits bekannte und beliebte “Halloooo?” erst so richtig in die Umgangssprache eingegangen ist, nachdem es in “Zurück in die Zukunft” zur Verwendung gekommen war, und zwar durch? Richtig, Tom Wilson alias Bill Tannen.

Wenn ich mit nochmal einen Antagonisten als Vorbild für einen Vornamen nehmen könnte, wäre es Biff. Ab heute bin ich Biff Braybrook.

In the beginning of the year, I posted about Cincinnati editorial and sports cartoon legend Jerry Dowling publishing a book highlighting his Pete Rose cartoons over the years.

Well thanks to info from the Cincinnati Illustrators Blog it looks like Jerry is at it again with his new book, Drawing Super Wars: The Early Years of the Bengals available at Amazon and the publisher Edgecliff Press (Click on the title at Edgecliff and you can see all the pages of the book – but of course you need to buy it).  Local Bengals Fans can meet Jerry tomorrow at the  Books by the Banks event. 

Also there will be another local legend Tom Wilson who does Ziggy and wrote a great book  “Zig-Zagging: Loving Madly, Losing Badly: How Ziggy Saved My Life”

Not going to be there but future Cincinnati cartoon legend David Wilborn also has a book out with collections of his great Urban Jungle web cartoon.  Check him out if you get the chance.

As Halloween approaches, Psych makes its way back to our television sets after a two-week break to deliver an episode that may set you in the mood for the holiday.

In “Let’s Get Hairy,” a man named Stewart Grumbley, played by Joshua Malina, enlists Shawn and Gus’s help to observe him for thrice their usual pay, for he believes himself to be a werewolf. A murder takes place and the mystery begins. Meanwhile, Henry is a contestant in an event to win a new pickup truck.

As is par the course for the series, the mystery element is not that engaging; you can finger the culprit from a mile away. What matters in this show is the humor. It is a comedy, after all. The episode contains the usual comedic elements of episodes past, like Shawn fudging words, he and Lassiter having their traditional altercations, etc. Lassiter once again produces the better humor and he has the best line in the episode: “Yes, I have the right address. It’s the one you divined!”

Tom Wilson (Biff from the Back to the Future trilogy) makes a cameo as Henry’s nemesis, Bruce Zielinski, and he too is competing for the pickup truck. Their scenes together are short but sweet, as their banter proves to be funny.

Overall, “Let’s Get Hairy” is a good episode but it does not surpass perhaps the best episode of the season thus far, “Bollywood Homicide.” Next week will be the final episode before the mid-season break.

(Excerpted and adapted from a work-in-progress, Going Outside: A Memoir of Free Jazz & the ‘60s.)

Cecil Taylor

In the summer of 1962, Cecil lands a three-month, four-night-a-week gig at The Take 3, a coffee house on Bleecker Street. It’s right next door to The Bitter End where Woody Allen had performed just weeks before. (Allen was second on the bill and I’d thrown him a quick couple of lines in the Village Voice column—something about how this new comic exploited his appearance to good advantage.)

For Cecil, 33 now, The Take 3 experience will be important for the opportunity its extraordinary duration affords him to develop new ideas and achieve deeper levels of interaction with the two musicians he brings with him, Jimmy Lyons, alto saxophone, and Sunny Murray, drums. (The trio will be joined on occasion by either Buell Neidlinger or Henry Grimes on bass, but most of the time there’s no bass player.)

For me, 23, and never happier than when I’m in a jazz club and in the company of musicians I admire, it’s a chance to hang in my element on a semi-regular basis. But it’s something else as well. This is 1962. An increasing number of us live with the conviction that a seismic change in human consciousness is both possible and imminent. We also share a belief that the New Jazz, in its break with established forms and procedures, and with its resurrection of ancient black methodologies, is showing the way. “Man,” the bassist Alan Silva (coming off an hour-long, 13-piece collective improvisation one night at another venue) can say to me, “in ten years we won’t even need traffic lights we’re gonna be so spiritually tuned to one another.”

At The Take 3, I’ll feel myself to be at the very center of the universe.

I mention Cecil’s engagement in the column a few days before he opens and maybe six people a night show up in the first week. The following week, impervious to criticism that I’m functioning as Cecil’s unofficial publicist, I write what amounts to a paean to him. I also discuss a simultaneous Monk date at the Five Spot. (Monk, of course, is one of Cecil’s principle influences.) The Voice titles this column “The Monk and the Taylor” and gives it a banner front page headline. The next night I arrive at The Take 3 and see that the proprietors have hung a large sign over the entrance:

“CECIL TAYLOR! ‘STARTS WHERE MONK LEAVES OFF!’—VILLAGE VOICE”

Not exactly the way I had put it, but so what? The column and the sign serve their purpose. From this point on the room is sometimes filled to capacity.

Among the musicians who come on nights that I’m there (and who would have come without the hype) are John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy. When the last set ends they sit at a table with Cecil, Anne (my girlfriend then) and me, and a love fest breaks out. John says to Cecil that he’s “awestruck” by him. Eric calls Cecil “the spaceman—the astronaut!” After Cecil tells Eric that Eric is “about to become great,” I raise my hand and say, “So what about me?” Everybody laughs except Eric. I can see him thinking: Wait a minute. Should I know…? Does Bob play an instrument?

John and Cecil had recorded together in 1958 and a word on the album they made, and their musical relationship in general, is in order here. The album, Hard Driving Jazz, was originally a Cecil date and later reissued under Coltrane’s name as Coltrane Time. It was certainly an interesting album but it turned out to be less than terrific.

John Coltrane

Tom Wilson, an early champion of Cecil’s and the producer of his first record, Jazz Advance, produced this one as well. He also chose the sidemen, all of whom— trumpeter Kenny Dorham, bassist Chuck Israels, drummer Louis Hayes and tenor saxophonist Coltrane, too—were serious beboppers and, with the exception of Coltrane, very much set in their ways.

Tom believed that he was putting something seminal together, something that would foreshadow where, following Cecil’s lead, bebop might go from here. But surrounding Cecil with a group composed largely of intransigent beboppers was counterproductive to say the least. While Coltrane acquitted himself decently, Dorham (a splendid bebop trumpet player) was incensed by Cecil’s “eccentric” comping and he made no effort to conceal his feelings. For their parts, Israels and Hayes could only struggle with the rhythmic challenges Cecil posed.

But the album would still have failed to predict bebop’s future even if these men had been more flexible. Although it wasn’t entirely clear at the time, Cecil was in the process of creating a discrete system of his own; if anything, he was shedding bebop. (It would be Coltrane who’d deliver bebop to its outer limits.) Given this circumstance, what a Cecil Taylor record needed was musicians inclined and prepared to take his journey with him. Cecil had been opposed to Dorham’s inclusion on the date—he’d wanted Ted Curson, a younger trumpet player who was very much in sync with him. And he hadn’t been so sure about using Coltrane either. That John would be more capable than the others of taking Cecil on wasn’t enough. (Jimmy Lyons, whom he didn’t encounter until 1960, became Cecil’s most congenial supporting player. Jimmy survived for years on odd jobs in order to be available if Cecil had work, and when Jimmy needed a new saxophone Cecil rewarded his loyalty by buying him one. “It had to be a Selmer, so that’s what he got,” Cecil told me. When Jimmy died in 1986, it was months before Cecil could bring himself to go near a piano again.)

Probably the closest thing to a successful number from the Hard Driving Jazz recording sessions, Mel Tormé’s “Christmas Song”— “For the Noël market,” Cecil said—was left out of the album.

By 1962, of course, Coltrane was all but possessed by the Free Jazz players. He was both their patron (he gave them money and employed many of them in his band) and their student. “He loved us,” Archie Shepp would say. But as far as Cecil’s approach was concerned, there was only so much that John could use. “That’s too complicated,” he remarked about it once, and he derived a lot more from Archie, Eric, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, among others.

But Coltrane was always prepared to honor Cecil. I’m thinking of a night at Birdland a year or so later. John is about to go on as Cecil and a small group of us come in. We walk past the bar where Pee Wee Marquette, the club’s midget and famously nasty emcee, is saying to the bartender—and just loud enough for us to hear—“How much more of this ‘Greenwich Village’ jazz am I supposed to take?” John sees Cecil and says something to McCoy Tyner who’s already playing an intro. Tyner abruptly quits the number he’s started and they open the set instead with “Out of This World.”

Another musician who comes to The Take 3 doesn’t stay very long.

It’s between sets and the band is backstage when I hear something going on at the door. I turn to look and see Coleman Hawkins standing there. Coleman Hawkins! The “Bean” himself!

I can’t make out what Hawkins is saying, but I hear the girl who collects the admission charge say: “Everybody pays a dollar, Sir.”

I see what’s happening and I want to rise from my chair and drop a dollar onto the girl’s table, but I can’t do anything. I’m frozen. Coleman Hawkins!

And it’s over too fast. Hawkins glares at the girl, then turns and splits.

“Maybe ‘Bean’ didn’t have a bean,” Cecil says when I tell him about it.

.

So what about me?

On the same night as Hawkins’s abortive visit, Cecil and I leave The Take 3 together. In the years ahead I’ll grow up a little and how I relate to Cecil, who I met in 1956 and who quickly assumed the role of an older brother, will change.  But as I’ve made evident elsewhere, in this period of my life I’m not someone you’d describe as perfectly centered and no serious time spent in Cecil’s company can pass for me without a certain issue erupting. I refer to my unrealized and maybe never to be realized, creative writing aspirations and to the envy and resentment that will unfailingly be triggered in me at one point or another.  Cecil is a genuine artist. The real thing. I’m chronically “blocked” and without any clear sense of what I want to say or how to proceed. (If a part of me is counting on osmosis with him, it isn’t working.) In Cecil’s words, spoken without malice—to be straightforward about such matters, at whatever the cost, is central to the stance he’s taken in the world—I’m a “person of artistic persuasion.” It’s a phrase that he’s used more than once and it embarrasses and infuriates me. But anything that makes me too conscious of the contrasts between us can set me off. When that happens my pattern is to become aggrieved and petulant and then, in a paroxysm of indignation and vainglorious self-assertion, to withdraw from him, sometimes for months. In this particular instance, however, a separation at least is forestalled by Cecil in a way I could not have anticipated.

With the completion of an evening’s last set, Cecil’s usually eager to check out what’s going on in clubs that are still open. But on this night, a sultry night in late August, he’s not feeling well and he wants to go home. I need to get home as well—to finish an overdue Blue Note liner. “You’re killing me, Robert,” Frank Wolff had said to me earlier on the phone. “Frank,” I told him, “I’m suicidal myself. This is the fourth Jimmy Smith album you’ve assigned me. Didn’t you get that I had nothing to say about him the first time? Why doesn’t Joe Goldberg have to do these?”

I plan to accompany Cecil as far as Second Avenue.

“What’s the matter with you?” I say once we’re outside. “You don’t have the clap again? I warned you not to sit on public piano stools.”

Cecil, who’s looking a little gray, grimaces. “Ulcer attack,” he says. “I have something to take at the apartment.”

The stomach ulcer has been a persistent concern for Cecil (he’s convinced it will soon become something lethal) and waiting for traffic to pass on the corner of LaGuardia Place, I’m about to ask him if he’s seen his doctor recently when this guy I’d noticed standing outside The Take 3 approaches us. “Excuse me, Mr. Taylor,” he says—and to me, “Excuse me, Sir.” He’s black and around my age.

“Mr. Taylor,” he says, “I just wanted to tell you how amazing I think you are and how much I love your music. No one can play the piano like you do.”

Cecil smiles. “Thank you,” he says.

“I wish I could be a musician,” the guy goes on. “I’ve taken lessons, but I’m no good at it. I just don’t have the aptitude for it, I guess.”

Cecil looks at him and says gently, “Then be a good listener.”

Not a bad answer, I think, and I’m instantly rankled by it.

“What empty shit,” I say after the guy—nodding earnestly, then smiling broadly and vigorously shaking my hand as well as Cecil’s—backs off. “‘Be a good listener.’ Was that the best you could do?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Cecil says as we resume walking. I see that his countenance has brightened considerably. Cecil responds well to adulation.

“I mean that’s not what he wanted to hear,” I say.

“He seemed satisfied to me, Bob,” Cecil says. “But then you may be right. Since when do I give people what they want to hear?”

“He wanted you to tell him the secret,” I say. “When he digests what you said he’s going to sink into a profound depression.”

Cecil gives me a sidelong glance. “Are you talking about him, Bob? You’re not starting some shit here, are you?”

I ignore this. I’m remembering something I’d all but buried, but which is suddenly of great importance to me, and I say: “Come to think of it, since when do you really give much of anything, even when you say you will?”

Cecil stares at me. He obviously has no idea what I’m talking about.

“Cecil,” I say. “What the fuck happened to ‘Bobt’?”

“What the fuck happened to who?” He says.

“To ‘Bobt’, I say. “ Shit, man. Not ‘who’. What! ‘Bobt’!”

“Bob,” he says laughing at me.  “Listen to you. Are you’re having a fit of some sort? Should I take you to an emergency room?”

“You said you were composing a tune for me and that you were calling it ‘Bobt,’” I say. “That was a year ago. I’ve waited long enough, don’t you think? Where is it? I want it.”

“You want it?” Cecil says.  “Have you collapsed into an infantile state, man? Do I need to remind you of the vicissitudes of the creative process?”

“In other words you never wrote it,” I say.

“‘In other words, please be kind’,” Cecil sings. “ ‘In other words…’”

“You were bullshitting me,” I say. “Will you cut the crap and give me a straight…”

“It was absorbed by something else.” Cecil nods to himself after he hears what he said. He bought a moment with the musical interlude and he’s pleased with the answer he’s come up with.

“‘Absorbed by something else’?” I say. “That’s beautiful. Well you know what, Cecil? I’m going to write a poem for you—a poem I’m going to finish—and I’m going to call it…”

“‘The Magnificent One’?” He says. “‘The Immortal…’?”

“I’m going to call it ‘The Insufferable Self-Centered Prick’,” I say.

“Bob,” he says, his hand on his chest, “Are you saying that I’m self-centered? Me? The amazing Cecil?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m saying,” I say. “I don’t need this shit—that’s what I’m saying. The one thing I do get back from knowing and touting the ‘amazing Cecil’ is reflected glory, and it definitely has some practical benefits—I can point to two occasions when it’s actually gotten me laid. [For some reason, Cecil finds this little joke hilarious.] But is it worth the indignities I have to suffer? Will it make me immortal, too? No, you can shove reflected glory, man. I don’t have to settle for it anyway. I’m making some moves. I’m going to be my own Cecil Taylor.”

Cecil feigns a horrified expression “You…you…” he blusters. “You would dare take my name, the name of Cecil?”

I stifle a laugh. “And I’m not exactly beginning at zero either…”

“Listen,” he says, “there’s something I haven’t told…”

“…Maybe it isn’t really ‘writing’,” I continue, “but…”

“…The column?” He says. “You’re talking about the column? I appreciate what you’ve done with it but no, you know it isn’t ‘writing’.”

Ready, in the wake of this remark, to take permanent leave of him, to never even listen to a record of his again, I say: “I just conceded as much. But fuck you, Cecil. No one’s ever told me their three-year-old daughter could do it.”

Cecil stops walking and grabs my shoulder. “Robert,” he says, “I haven’t mentioned this.”

“What?” I snarl, pushing his hand off me.

“Awhile back,” he says, “that poem you wrote…the one you gave me …”

“That poem?” I say. “That poem sucked. It was awful.”

He shakes his head. “Something about that poem…it made me want to write poems myself. I started writing poetry the next day.”

“I didn’t know you were writing poetry,” I say. “How fucking dare you.”

He laughs. “I haven’t been able to stop. Not since I read that poem. No one’s seen any of it yet. I guess I’ll have to show it to you now.”

I take this in. I’m still only a “person of artistic persuasion”—at best I’m destined to be a footnote in his biography. But I’m also something more than Cecil’s flack now. I’ve managed to have an impact in a way that really matters to me. “Bobt”? Who needs “Bobt”? I regard what Cecil’s imparted as a gift beyond measure.

“I’m glad to see that you’re feeling better,” I say a moment later when we arrive at Second Avenue. “So Coleman Hawkins came to check you out. Too bad he didn’t want to pay for the privilege.”

Cecil shrugs. “We could have used his dollar,” he says. Then he says: “I’m thinking about going to Slug’s. Come with me.”

“Sure. Yeah.” I say.

If Frank Wolff dies I’ll find a way to live with the guilt.

.

[Following a trip to Scandinavia in the fall of 1962, Cecil, Sunny and Jimmy played The Take 3 again in 1963. It was during the second engagement that Albert Ayler made an impromptu appearance. Since, at this point in time, I tend to recall both gigs as one, I’m taking the liberty of reporting on the event here.]

On a night I’d have regretted missing, a heavy presence causes me to turn my head in the middle of a set and I see this dude with an odd patch of white on his goatee and wearing a green leather suit. He’s holding a gleaming tenor saxophone. (Sunny will tell me that he polishes it every day.) I know who he is. Sunny and Jimmy had both spoken about Albert Ayler, the “new bitch on tenor” they’d met and played with in Copenhagen on the recent tour. Before they left Denmark, Cecil had invited him to “say hello” when he returned to the States.

But Albert isn’t wasting time with formalities. The cap is already off his mouthpiece and he’s edging his way between the tables toward the bandstand. Sunny says to Cecil, “Albert’s here,” and though Cecil barely raises his head that’s enough for Albert to mount the stage.

I write this half a century after the fact, but the first sounds Albert makes remain as vivid and immediate to me as if I’d heard them only moments ago.

Albert Ayler

It’s his vibrato. The breadth, the amplitude, of his vibrato is astonishing. (It will redefine the scope of the tenor saxophone and Coltrane will admit to having dreams about trying to duplicate it.) If it succeeds in chasing a portion of the room into the street, the rest of us are riveted by it. And we are no less transfixed by what follows. Coming from an obvious rhythm and blues matrix, and reminiscent of the shouters and honkers of the ‘40s and ‘50s, what Albert proceeds to play—with suddenly shifting meters and no regard for tonal centers—isn’t a sequence of notes so much as an amalgam of sounds. Primal sounds. Ecstatic sounds. Achingly mournful sounds. Grotesque and funny sounds.

Albert’s intention, he’ll explain to me, is to reassert black music’s original function, to “conjure up holy spirits.” I can’t vouch for his success in that regard, but I can say that for me what he’s doing is equal in its emotional impact to the first time I heard Cecil.

And Cecil. When Albert begins to play, Cecil laughs and his posture changes noticeably. He’s recalibrating to accommodate Albert. Sunny and Jimmy respond in the same fashion. They embrace Albert and unite with him. Half an hour passes before the number he cut in on is completed.

Of the many gifted musicians who belonged to the New Thing’s second wave, Albert, an astronaut and an archeologist all at once, was the monster. The full range of his unique vision wasn’t revealed the night he sat in with Cecil, of course. But later, in bands of his own and with the pre-Louis Armstrong-through-Ornette Coleman spectrum of material he would utilize, Albert created a fascinating body of innovative work. Many of us took for granted that he’d be the next major force in the music.

In 1964, when I’d be living with “Pretty,” Albert came to the apartment several times to hang out and also to do an interview. The tape of that interview (and a tape of an interview with Betty Carter) was inside the Wollensak case when I was burglarized. I never got the chance to transcribe it.

Albert would die in 1970, apparently by his own hand. A year after that, in the process of moving to the West Village with Carolyn, I discovered a leather tie on the floor of the bedroom closet. It was caked in plaster dust, but I was able to make out the letters “AA” written in ink on the label. My first thought was, how the hell did this get here? Had Albert removed his tie while we talked and forgotten about it? Had “Pretty” found it and, for safekeeping, hung it in the closet where, forgotten by her as well, it had eventually been jostled from its hook? After a moment I realized that the circumstances behind the tie’s appearance in my closet were probably not so innocent—and I could smile about it now. When I met her, “Pretty” had already “balled” every living entry in the Encyclopedia of Jazz and cohabiting with me had in no way discouraged her from moving on to the supplementary volume. Why not Albert?

Speaking of girl singers, I should note that in the course of Cecil’s run a couple of remarkable vocalists, Jeanne Lee and Sheila Jordan, work opposite him from time to time. Another performer who turns up (making his debut, as I remember it) is Tiny Tim. “What the fuck is this?” two people at separate tables exclaim in unison when he launches into “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.”

I should also add that someone who doesn’t show is Ornette. Eventually Ornette and Cecil will be acknowledged as the dual progenitors of the New Music, but they’ve been competing for sole ownership of this distinction from the start and, declarations of mutual respect aside, they aren’t especially supportive of one another. Ornette, who’s the better known of the two, clearly wants to protect his advantage. A few days after the “Monk and Taylor” column I’m walking on 8th Street, head down against a driving rain, when my path is suddenly blocked. I look up and it’s Ornette.

“You must make a lot of money writing for that paper,” he says and brushes past me.

So much for the parties at Ornette’s loft.

(There’d been talk about Ornette and Cecil recording together since the late ‘50s, but nothing ever materialized. Around 2003, preparations for an album by them were actually underway when Ornette decided not to go ahead with the project.)

.

Just days before the gig will come to its conclusion, and determined to savor every last moment, I’m seated at a table right near the stage. The band has been “exchanging energies” for forty minutes. Each time the torrent of sound begins to ebb and you think, that’s it, they’re spent, they can’t possibly have anything left, an apparently tossed-off phrase, a single note, reignites the process and the music builds to even greater levels of intensity than it had reached before. (Buell Neidlinger, who’s here tonight, isn’t going along at this point. He’s stopped playing and he looks to be exhausted—or worse. Eyes closed, his glasses askew, his head is hanging over his bass at an alarmingly strange angle. Has he broken his neck?)

I’m facing straight ahead and totally absorbed in what’s taking place, when Jack Kerouac bounds onto the bandstand in front of me. Appearing to be in a… well…beatified condition, he twice, and very slowly, makes a circle around the entire group. Then he walks between and around each of the individual players. Finally he bends down and slides under the piano where, lying on his back, he folds his arms across his chest. At the end of the piece (some twenty minutes later), he emerges from beneath the piano and extends his hand to Cecil.

“I’m Jack Kerouac,” he says, “and I’m the greatest writer in the world.” A startled Cecil (who at first isn’t sure who this cat is and who’d apparently been unaware of his presence) recovers quickly. Accepting Kerouac’s hand he says: “I’m Cecil Taylor and I’m the greatest pianist in the world.”

Me, I’m thinking, Jesus, this is too much—it’s way past too much. And though it occurs to me to say to them: “I’m Robert Levin and I’m the greatest ‘person of artistic persuasion’ in the world,” that’s just a reflex. I’ve got, right now, no need to say anything—certainly nothing bitter. No. If reflected glory turns out to be the best kind I’ll get I’ll take it. Right now my simple proximity to this is enough to make me feel like I’ll live forever.

And you shall be rewarded. In the for of Tom Wilson a.k.a. Biff from Back to the Future.

Biff

(he’s the one next to me)

I haven’t gone to church in months and the first time I decide to go (well forced to go) I run into this guy. He doesn’t speak spanish very well. ‘Adonde esta Isabelle?’

Sophie

It seems I’ve only had minutes here in the Hammer before it’s time to head out again. I truly lucked out in having a week of glorious summer weather since arriving from Costa Rica. The blue skies and sunshine just won’t quit.  I’ve unpacked and am now repacking to go to the northeastern US for a couple days – heading to a Quaker retreat in Vermont on a lake, so I sure hope this weather will follow me there and make the lake swimmable. Will then visit again with Cocky and Peter on the coast of Maine and stop in to see Carlos Guindon, who is moving forward with the final details of the Spanish translation of Walking with Wolf.

Between preparing to head out, juggling my book event schedule (have just added a talk on November 19 for the Kingston Field Naturalists), and meeting up with friends who I haven’t seen for a few months, this week has flown by as quickly as the planes that keep appearing above my house as part of the Hamilton Air Show. As is usual when I’m here in the Hammer, I’ve managed to catch a lot of live music this past week.

There is a new music venue  that opened up while I was in Costa Rica, just a two minute bike ride from my house. I can see myself becoming a regular here when in the city. What used to be the old Copperhead Bar on James Street North (or the Copper John or Copper Corner or something like that – a place I’ve passed for years but never really taken notice of) has been given a new life as “This Ain’t Hollywood” – more affectionately known as The Saint. Hammerheads Lou Molinaro, Glen the Hamilton Kid and Gary Daly have taken over this ancient beer hall (slinging beer since 1893), done a few smart renovations and added a big sound system. The new stage is filling with rock, punk and alternative acts passing through the area as well as regular open mic nights where local musicians and their friends and fans gather.

 Local singer-songwriter-music producer, JP Reimens, has organized a songwriters’ soiree at The Westtown over on Locke Street for a few years, but last week moved his Tuesday night gathering to The Saint. I’ve managed to catch the shows. It is a real nice room to see musicians play with good sightlines and there is a full clear sound. There is so much great talent around and you never know who will show up to perform or just drop by to see what’s going on: from the sultry sirens Ginger St. James, Lori Yates and Buckshot Bebee to guitar wizards Brian Griffith and Dan Walsh to the city’s songwriters with attitude Tim Gibbons, Linda Duemo and Dave Rave.

Last weekend was “the biggest Ribfest in the country” on the Burlington waterfront. With my friends Jeff (no last names please – the CIA is watching) and Heather, we went over to hang out on the beach in the late afternoon and have a barbeque, waiting for the sun to go down before heading up to the biggest pig-out in the land.

It’s a very different beach than the Caribbean shore in Cahuita I just spent the last two weeks on – chilly Lake Ontario sipping at its sand, just as often lashing it with serious waves. But the lake was calm and the full moon was rising and the city startled to sparkle as a gorgeous night came on.  

We rode our bikes up the waterfront path to the big rib-affair to see Tom Wilson, another of my favorite musical beasts of Hamilton, along with some great musicians, including Jesse O’Brien, keyboardist extraordinaire.

Tom’s son Thompson and friends have a band – Harlan Pepper – as well as a big self-promoting father who gets gigs and press, so these four young guys are getting some exposure  (opening for Tom’s show as they did on this night.) Some talent, some good songs, but still young and could do with some attitude. But the papa-musician, Tom, rocks as always and is guaranteed to be playing with hot talent no matter who he is at the moment – Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Junkhouse, Lee Harvey Osmond, or he himself with an assembled band.

That big full moon continued hanging over us the next night when I went to Sonny Del Rio’s birthday party. Sonny’s the father of the sax here in the Hammer – been playing forever and at 66 is playing more than ever and loving it.

There was a backyard full of musicians and they stepped up to the mic, including Gord Lewis of Teenage Head who played a few with Sonny and friends. It was a real nice evening spent with my good friends Mike and Freda as well as Dean and Gary Duncan and his brother Randy, folks I love but I don’t get enough chances to see.

It is so great to come back to this happening little city where good friends reside and I never need be bored – not a word in my vocabulary anyway.  Yet it is all on a scale that makes you look at the central core of Hamilton as truly down-town, as in the backbeat of a town, not the staccato of a big city.

Now I’m hanging my sign on the door of this blog: 

GONE ON ROADTRIP…THE DOOR’S OPEN…MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME…BACK SOON

Reasonable Regulation: That’s Allstate’s Stand

            Many companies involved in financial services cower when an official of any stature mentions the threat of national regulation, but Allstate has decided to embrace it. Since late April, Allstate has been pushing an advertising campaign that is rooted in support for creating a national regulation agency for all players in the financial industry, including insurance companies. Each ad in the four-part series, which runs in major magazines such as The Atlantic, touts the common theme of calling on “Congress to act boldly and quickly in drafting strong, comprehensive and clear federal regulation.”[1]

             Under the current system, insurance companies are regulated on a state-by-state basis, something that Allstate CEO Tom Wilson thinks needs be changed. In a national press release, Wilson argued:

 The American consumer is burdened with a patchwork of insurance regulatory systems that are cumbersome and ineffective in managing risks in an era of rapid change and innovation. American families need better protection from systemic risks and access to products and services that will help better manage their financial futures.[2]

            Allstate’s push for a national regulation system is bold. The campaign appears to be having an impact as the Obama administration has started tackling a number of vital decisions that could ultimately lead to national regulation for all financial services. President Obama himself may not have been directly affected by Allstate’s campaign, but according to PRnewswire.com at least one Congressperson has received more than $20,000 in campaign contributions from Allstate over the past four years. Clearly Allstate has identified the potential benefits that would come bundled with national regulation.

            One group that stands to be trapped and bound by the regulatory net of a national system is the stock brokers on Wall Street. The Obama administration has proposed a plan that would hold brokers to the stricter fiduciary standards of registered investment advisors. Under this plan, brokers would be required by law to act in their clients’ best interests, not their own. Also, with each piece of investment advice, brokers would be obligated to disclose what they stand to gain personally. A plan to implement a complete regulation overhaul is sure to be cumbersome and will take time to be implemented effectively. The Obama administration would be wise to have patience with this reform and comb through all of the complexities before attempting to have anything signed into law.

 At the end of the day, the federal regulatory overhaul will aim to force those in the financial system to be more transparent, something the Allstate campaign clearly addresses: “Only when there is transparency around valuing the risk in the financial system—including the role of insurance to help mitigate that risk—will we regain confidence in the economy.”[3]           

To view all of the Allstate advertisements in their entirety, visit allstate.com/fedreg.

Commercial Real Estate’s Role in the Next Bailout

            Banks have had little to celebrate over the past 20 plus months. Still dizzy from the debacle caused by residential real estate, banks nationwide fear the devastation that could soon be unleashed by the rising number of foreclosures in commercial real estate.

            The banks which provided the money to build endless numbers of commercial buildings originally did so because they, like so many others, believed occupancy and rent rates would always consistently rise. But, many owners of commercial buildings are now fueling another wave of foreclosures because they are not able to generate enough cash from tenants to cover their principal and interest payments. Because the loans have also been bundled and sold on Wall Street as commercial-backed mortgage securities (CMBS), the foreclosed buildings spark a ripple effect. Anticipating the severe consequences this could have on our economy, the Federal Reserve is struggling to contain the situation and prevent the need for a second wave of bank bailouts.

            According to Deutsche Bank, about $153 billion in loans that make up CMBS will come due by the end of 2012. The vast majority of these will not be eligible for refinancing through their lenders because the values of the properties have dropped so dramatically.[4] The losses will potentially cripple not only the owners of the commercial properties, but also anyone holding CMBS. Furthermore, because CMBS typically help drive pension and hedge funds, the pain will be widely spread.

            The only positive side of this mess will be the number of affordable investment opportunities for those looking to get into commercial real estate. Commercial real estate does perform in the long haul. But, because of the onslaught of new commercial buildings that sprouted in recent years, we are now experiencing an uncomfortable rebalancing of the industry. Loans that were made on loose credit and then bundled by Wall Street into dicey investment vehicles are all being exposed. However, the underlying properties are not rotten; they still make for sound investments.

            Like the residential market, the commercial real-estate industry was saturated with quick deals that turned sour because they were not thought through. Now, because the consequences stretched so far, the commercial real-estate industry has to be turned upside down and untangled. Although the untangling process will be turbulent, it will also be exposing an array of investment possibilities. Commercial real estate provides the venues for consumer spending. As the economy slowly recovers, so too will the demand for prime commercial real estate—something that will be readily available and reasonably priced in the immediate future.  

Keep Health Care in Our “Best Interest”

            I have been reluctant to bring the argument of national health-care reform to the Powell Perspective because it does not necessarily pertain to real estate, finance or investing. But, national health-care reform has the potential to have drastic impact on our economy, and for this reason I believe it deserves attention here.

            I have been convinced to raise this issue after overhearing a 20-something at the gas pump discuss the issue with someone of similar age. “Man, the whole thing is no big deal, I mean how often do we really go to the doctor anyway?” he said. As I drove off, I realized that the young man, healthy and probably feeling somewhat resilient, was simply not interested in the topic. He wanted to be able to disregard the topic so he could have more attention to focus on the issues that had a more immediate impact on him.

            This week will bring an important turn in the debate over national health-care reform. The Obama administration has committed itself to rethinking the plan before the President is scheduled to address Congress on September 9^th. President Obama is now going to be leading the arguments that he has been able to mostly sidestep thus far. What has me concerned is that the administration will recognize what I did while pumping my gas: The youth do not care. If the Obama administration addresses this and rebrands the issue to somehow get the youth behind it, then the approval rating for health-care reform could skyrocket. The same demographic that helped the President win the office, could now help direct a national issue that they may not be truly interested in for another 20 years. On the other hand, maybe it is time to address the demographic who will still be paying for this change long after we are gone. After all, the people that currently have a vested interest are at a standstill after becoming equally heated on both sides of the issue.

            Since its appearance in the Obama administration’s limelight, health-care reform has done nothing but become more complex. The plan is unclear. No one knows what it will look like, we only know what the media reports: We’re currently 37^th in the world in health-care quality. Death panels will dictate how long we live. The President will personally pull the plug on our grandma. If there are details to this administration’s plan, then they have all been shadowed by heated talk show hosts’ attempts to get the public screaming about something no one knows about.

            On September 9^th President Obama is going to be forced to add some structure to his administration’s plan. Thus far, no one has been able to dissect and discredit the plan because it has only taken shape through various town hall meetings and informal gatherings. In his first address to Congress since February, President Obama will be talking exclusively about health care. This national issue is going to take rigid leadership from the President. If he wants to make any progress he is going to have to involve the nation by getting the young to care and the old to stop shouting at one another and listen.

[2] See http://allstate.com/content/refresh-attachments/Advoc_FedCharter.pdf

[3] See http://www.allstate.com/content/refresh-attachments/FedREg_Pool.pdf

[4] See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125167422962070925.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us

Originally published in the Red Deer Advocate July 3 2009

Lee Harvey Osmond

A Quiet Evil

Latent Recordings

Turn Tom Wilson (Junkhouse, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings) loose, and odd things are bound to occur.

His latest collective, featuring Michael and Margo Timmins (Cowboy Junkies), Josh Finlayson and Andy Maize (The Skydiggers), and Brent Titcomb (Brent Titcomb), mines deep, virgin musical ground; livelier and less nuanced perhaps than Iron & Wine’s Around the Well, it is every bit as engaging as Sam Beam’s rarities smorg.

Wilson has deemed the music ‘acid-folk’, but outside that meaningless moniker, the music is fairly indefinable. It isn’t what I would immediately label as roots music, but is has all the elements- original music, ties to country, rock, and folk, and textured vocals that shy away from pop gloss. The album seems dark, yet is soothing and enlightening. A Quiet Evil is half a world away from Dog Years, Wilson’s previous project, but is a raucous neighbor to his project with Bob Lanois.

It is an outstanding collection of variant music, by which I mean there are all types of sounds within the ten tracks, but they tie together into a cohesive statement. The presence of Aaron Goldstein’s pedal steel brings in shades of country, but the overall sound has as much in common with X and Los Straitjackets as it does Fred Eaglesmith.

Wilson sings in his voice- the guy couldn’t do anything else- and the results are as satisfying as ever. This time out he adds a bit of Larry Jon Wilson-like, half-spoken singing in several places, and that breaks things up nicely.

Margo Timmins brings calm refinement to the proceedings, and her featured numbers, including (You Drove Me Crazy) Now I’m Going to Stay That Way, are among the album’s many highlights. Parkland, a stream of consciousness ramble that describes the actions of a kid, and may be tied to the Kennedys…heck, I’m not sure what he’s doing; still, it would do Tom Russell proud.

A glorious album, I’m sure Lee Harvey Osmond will draw well at the Calgary Folk Music Festival later this month.