points of departure

I'm working on a couple of larger things, one for today/tomorrow, more hopefully for next week. In the meantime:

First, I apologize for my rather convoluted Metheny/Meldhau review. I was in too much of a hurry when I put it up, and it showed. I've given it a pretty thorough edit, and it should be more readable now. I'd also love to hear from anyone who made one of the tour hits.

Destination Out has a great tribute to Andrew Hll up, featuring the illustrious Vijay Iyer. It's sad how some of the best blogging about jazz recently has been obituaries.

Soundslope has been sending out great posts recently- yesterday's musings on listening in the car is one I'm still wrapping my head around. I find myself listening to more NPR and (gasp) sports talk in the car these days, because only half my speakers work. One of these days, I'll get a real car stereo... (donations to this cause are most welcome)

Great review/commentary on Wynton's Plantation record in the Village Voice (via D-Out). (I don't say great and Voice that much in the same sentence these days. Sigh) Make sure to scroll down to the comments- there's some provocative, well written stuff down there. A favorite, from poster "thesobsister", about his denunciations of hip-hop (italics mine):

Marsalis may think rap/hip-hop is benighted musically and lyrically. But he refuses to answer the most relevant question: "why do these genres speak to such a large percentage of the population in question?" Not to mention "will hearing Marsalis 'elevate' the form convince its audience that this is how the music should be played?" Whatever the answer(s) to the former may be, the answer to the latter can only be an unqualified "no".

Finally, much has been said about great journalist David Halberstam's death. ESPN and Salon have both collected material he gave them, and all are worth reading. (The sports after 9/11 piece is fantastic) "Education of a Coach" has been on my list of books to read for a year now, and his book on the 90s was just added. We need more like him now.