http://cabbagerabbit.com Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:02:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Harvey Pekar,  a regular guy with extraordinary talents, dead this morning at 70. Okay, not so regular. His obsessions, his cynicism, his politics, his love of the comic form, will be missed. http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/07/12/harvey-pekar-gone/ Pianist,composer and bandleader Chick Corea is one of the jazz genre's most unique and diversified voices. One of his earliest recordings, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, is a landmark piano trio recording and was followed by a stint with Miles Davis who encouraged him to explore the electric piano ... http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/07/05/interview-with-chick-corea/ In his liner notes to Miles Davis' post-Bitches Brew recording At Fillmore: Live At the Fillmore East, Morgan Ames quotes J.J. Johnson on Miles' new direction. "If you put Miles and his new group in the studio and recorded them on spearate mikes, and then you cut the band track ... http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/06/26/david-murray-on-the-island/ The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" short story issue has generated lots of comment, much of it in the why-wasn't-so-and-so included? category, some of it in the why-wasn't-I included? category, the best of it in the (sorta) latter category and self-deprecating in a satiric way. And, of course, there was ... http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/06/25/stories-of-the-times/ Those of us who are not fathers or husbands understand Father's Day through memories and envy. Neither of  those mental activities are exclusively positive, at least in the case of fathers. Even as fatherhood has evolved, its old stereotypes haunt our relationship to and understanding of the title: fathers are ... http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/06/20/chabon-on-fathers-day/ There's been much blog ado over The New Yorker's "Summer Fiction: 20 Under 40." Check out the gnashing here, here and here (we promise to complain more in a later post). However the writers learned their craft, they learned to write first sentences well. In fact, we found the ... http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/06/19/first-lines-of-the-20-under-40/ Spirituality has long haunted the music of guitarist John McLaughlin.  But its a different kind of spirituality than commonly accepted.  Serenity is replaced by driven purpose sometime almost furious in its speed and direction. The organic is overcome by the electric. The enlightened sense of  "taking it as it comes"  ... http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/06/16/enlightened-electric/ The Gaza Flotilla Raid in May that left nine dead and dozens wounded has already faded into the background of oil-soaked news. While in Seattle earlier this month, the Rabbit witnessed attempts at keeping the issue alive: dueling protests on the University of Washington campus in which both bullhorned sides ... http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/06/15/digging-up-a-deadly-past/ Rereading Douglas Coupland's  Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture reminded this baby boomer how important and, in its way, groundbreaking the book was when published in 1991. Not that it received much attention, despite its title,  at release. No major reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post, ... http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/06/14/a-to-not-quite-z/ Storytelling has mysterious, unmeasurable power and storytellers have expended a lot of that power trying to explain it to us. Let me try. Hearing a story is a way of organizing the brain and stimulating thought. Formulating a story is an exercise in ordering thought, making associations and generally "thinking ... http://cabbagerabbit.com/2010/05/26/storied-generation/