(Blue) Noted Passing

"I don't care much about music.  What I like is sounds." - Dizzy Gillespie

"Clouds float in the same pattern only once." - Wayne Shorter

"When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them." - Don Cherry

"Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you are doing, even if it takes them fifteen or twenty years." - Thelonious Monk

"Don't play the saxophone.  Let it play you." - Charlie Parker

"I'll play it and tell you what it is later." - Miles Davis

"You can have tone and technique and a lot of other things but without originality, you ain't really nowhere."

Lester Young

*

Without being hip to the fact at the time, each of the cats quoted above, in his own way, blew a eulogy for Ornette Coleman.

Ornette was "out".  He was different.  He 'couldn't play', yet "rewrote the language of jazz" (no small feat in a musical landscape of perpetual innovation (once), and the ethereal dissipation of improvised note bursts nightly, on a 'moment's notice').  Maynard Ferguson thought O.C. had "bad intonation, bad technique".  Miles Davis, judging by the sounds Ornette's axe made, concluded that "talking psychologically", he must be "all screwed up inside."  Another trumpeter (oddly), Roy Eldridge, thought Ornette Coleman was "jiving, baby."  And even kindred free musical spirit, Thelonious Monk, likewise known for "playing wrong right", was heard to exclaim, "Man, that cat is nuts!".

One of the few who seemed to 'get' Ornette was Charlie Mingus, who, another kindred musical spirit, was able to recognize the "organized disorganization" of Coleman's (non)playing ... yet at some point complained, "he can't play it straight."

Now as everyone acknowledges, and some admit (vehemently), there is a lot of jazz garbage out there.  There are the Spoogers, just gacking out notes for no reason ... the Noodlers, annoyingly poking, inserting ... the Vocalists (most of them), entirely disrespecting the "songbooks" they pillage (not to mention audiences' time, patience, money) ... There are literally people "performing" who shouldn't be.

"Hell is full of musical amateurs."  - George Bernard Shaw

I myself am no musician.  I don't capably play any instruments (yet?  One of my biggest regrets in life, so far), and I'm no authority.  But I do know well and appreciate jazz:  its humor, its sense of chaos, its combustible spontaneity ... and above all, its take it or leave it, 'is what it is' ethos, too often exploited because, Hey! It's Jazz!

"Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things & still be Jazz."- Sonny Rollins

... For better or worse.

Unlike many (rabid) fans of the genre, I am not hagiographic.

But I don't get the sense that Ornette Coleman was spooging (or noodling, or ever "jiving").  I think he was onto something bigger than jazz ... Not only taking the invisible music -- silences and "mistakes" -- received and famously transmitted by Monk, to inevitable next levels (albeit on every tune!) ... but also culturally prescient, in foreshadowing our present day aversion to "labels" - to being labelled, (mis)categorized, (mis)identified ... this rejection of easy, or 'normal', classifications, indeed a 'shape of jazz to come';

and in being cool with imperfections -- perhaps, limitations -- yet rightfully expecting to be accepted, at least heard.

*
"It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something."

"I think that every person, whether they play music or don't play music, has a sound - their own sound, that thing that you're talking about." - Ornette Coleman
1930 - 2015

(Some) Musical Influences

"A-B Road"

"Liam"

"Integration Blue(s)"

"Disraeli Geared"

"Sunday Morning"

* * *

"Walk on the Wild Side", ©Jeff Glovsky

Transmission (Eloquence)

David Letterman on Robin Williams

 

Robin Williams: Froze in Time

We tend to remember the where and when ...

When John Lennon died, I myself was in the death throes of childhood ... Lying awake, trying to sleep at my appointed bed time of 10:30pm (just upped from 10, to kick off my new teenage maturity!), I overheard Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football saying, "Remember this is just a ... game, no matter who wins or loses" ... which I thought, at the time, was odd for Howard.

And then:  "John Lennon ... in New York City ... shot twice in the back".

... I was having a bed-in when John Lennon died.

A couple of months later, when Ronald Reagan was shot, I remember being asked by an 8th grade classmate, this albino Finnish kid who used to say I "walked with a stick up my ass", if I'd heard the news.  We'd just come out of a dust-up several days prior, complete with punches thrown and headlocks, so I was surprised when he asked me -- passing each other in front of our school en route to classes in different buildings -- if I'd heard, and my opinion.

As he and his clique sauntered past, not really waiting for a response from me, but pleased with the knowledge that they'd told me the news and not vice versa ... I felt strangely appreciative.  First of all, not to be in a headlock that day.  Mainly, though, because he did ask my opinion ... a thing, at the time, I was unused to giving.  I felt proud, in a way, sort of smug ... vaguely validated.  I walked into class with that stick up my ass ... A national tragedy making me smile.

No inappropriate warm, fuzzy feelings, though, greeted the news about Robin Williams.

When my brother sent me an SMS, I was thinking about Robin.  His name had been "trending" all day online, but I hadn't bothered to click and see why ... Still, it made me conscious of the guy again, and I was thinking about bits from Reality... What a Concept when my brother texted.

"Robin williams dead of suicide. :-/ "

Those terse five words (plus the emoji), transmitted electronically, stopped me cold.  Literally froze me in place, staring down at my phone ... waiting for the timed follow-up:  the ;-) or the :-) or the "JK, bitch!"

None of which followed.  My bro wasn't joking.  Robin Williams killed himself.

Being "hip to", as I was, the comedian Robin -- and far less into Mrs. Doubtfire, or any of the treacly, scripted and comparatively muted screen incarnations (even Mork and the Genie paled, I thought, in comparison to Robin Williams live on stage, when he wasn't trying to pander to ratings or box office) -- "knowing" and preferring that younger version, there was no way suicide would've crossed that mind!

Literally frozen ... still disbelieving ...

Keeping things hidden, at bay, so well then ...

Robin Williams 1951 - 1979 (2014)

Losing me, and himself, as our lives / work wore on.

May Robin Williams Rest in Peace. 

* * *

 Suicide.org

Samaritans.org

Genie is not "free"
  
* * *

"If you're that depressed, reach out to someone." - Robin Williams

(as Lance Clayton, World's Greatest Dad)

vrwDown

I Suck(ed)

Over the past year and a half or so, I have battled to bolster my internet search score and, more importantly, my name and online reputation.

I have succeeded in removing from the internet certain unnecessary, certainly unwarranted "warnings" about me personally ... Offensive digs, insulting lies about "Jeff Glovsky", the person (as opposed to the registered, licensed business which the person happened to own once in Miami, Florida, and which failed).

Yet over the past several weeks, I (the person ... the 'real' Jeff Glovsky) have lost ground to a particularly nasty bear of a website ... a disgusting online purgatory, where the abused stand permanently defamed and damaged, having no control whatsoever over libelous, one-sided or downright false information dumped there by angry, aggrieved-feeling, perceived slight sufferers, who might be having a pissy day.

They might also have valid, justifiable complaints ... but once they take their concerns destructively, personally and permanently public, there is, or should be, no further discussion with them.  There is certainly no need for the extortionate "arbitration" offered so generously by our gracious(ly cackling), purgatorial hosts ...

The seeds of damage incited and encouraged to be planted, have already turned to cement and been fanned!

But despite this ground recently lost in my battle -- instead, keeping in line with the overall, more or less V-shaped march of my campaign at large -- one such terrible online dumping ground, another place for the frustrated to attack and call names under the pretense of providing the world with "reviews", is now offline.

The "Vacation Rentals Watchdog" website (vrwd) and its unattended, unmoderated space to trash and malign individuals and businesses, is down.  Hopefully for good.

Good riddance.

I want to believe I had something to do with this, by contacting the legal team of that website's hosting service, and pointing out that the horrible joke of a site was not providing a "consumer service" to anybody at all, but rather, it was quite literally, an unattended, unmoderated space to trash and malign ... and if the contact information provided at the site, as well as the website's registrant, were BOTH unresponsive, then there must be a Terms of Service violation somewhere, regarding compliance.

Apparently, there was.

V R W D

R.I.P.

Not Very '90s

“If you’re really a mean person you’re going to come back as a fly and eat poop.”
- Kurt Cobain (1967-1994)

I have been asked -- my follower sent me an email -- why I never got around here, or anywhere online, to mentioning Kurt Cobain to mark the 20th "anniversary" of his stupid death.  When jazz guitarist Jim Hall passed, I put up a couple of his tracks on SoundCloud.  I nod in respect to dead writers often ... To "celebrate" the 34th year of a world without love, I posted a piece about Lennon here.

But April 5th came and went with barely a pause ... for remembrance ... stage diving ... a global moment of angst or moshing.  No one seemed to light candles, or say much.  The kids in alterna-clothes, spirited teens once, kept creeping up in age, towards forty ... and Courtney Love keeps being dissed or ignored - in short, regarded like she's batshit and kept in the attic.

While a cursory google, if you will, of the phrase, "Courtney Love found the jet", may induce a giggle or two, the fact that EVERY snarky twenty-something with a phone or keyboard picked up on that "meme" to insult the woman, is wholly sad.

That's the soul difference between us and them ... the gaping divide between our Generation X -- Kurt's, Courtney's, mine -- and our Gen Y, Z and Millennial offspring ... younger siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, eventually grandkids:

Any self-effacement or actual humor is vanished.  Our kids today -- unoriginal, uninspired (except to "share") and largely untalented -- get off on maligning and effacing others ... with no hint of playfulness -- no irony -- and whether or not it's truly deserved, or they have any clue who they're talking about when they're cutting, and pasting ... and narcissistically, or derisively, "sharing".

Apparently, Courtney Love was on the Tomnod website, participating in the online challenge they've got there.  She (now infamously) tweeted,

"Prayers go out to the families #MH370 and it’s like a mile away Pulau Perak, where they 'last' tracked it 5°39'08.5“N 98°50'38.0”E but what do I know?"

According to their website, "(t)he Tomnod mission is to utilize the power of crowdsourcing to identify objects and places in satellite images."  The Search for MH370 would seem to be the perfect measure of that platform, which has previously mapped search campaigns for Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and the ruinous Oklahoma tornado of May 2013.

As far as I can tell ('but what do I know?'), Courtney Love was participating.

How is that batshit (or "deranged", as it's actually been nastily written in some places)?  And why are there literally pages on Google, serving up dozens of this obnoxiously mocking "story" about her participating?

I can't help thinking Kurt Cobain would have loathed what the internet has become for most people:  less an information superhighway, and much more a clogged high school corridor of cliques, desperation for acceptance, intolerance, peer pressure and bullying ... from which even the strongest among us prefer to escape.

The damaged and fragile do not stand a chance.

RIP (GenX) KC

"Fade to Memory (Old School)", ©Jeff Glovsky

A Death of Self

... would've loathed what the internet has become

Olympic Darkness

"Nur Kinder und einfache Leute tragen lebhafte Farben." - Goethe

Only children and simpletons wear bright colors ...

February is the new April ... and in the black first days of this winterest month, I have been virtually stunned into silence.

First, there was a transit nightmare, as getting to and from the "Big Game" did not go (at all) as planned for tens of thousands of frustrated football fans, and millions of inconvenienced "New Yorkers".

Across the river that same Super Sunday -- actually in New York -- Philip Seymour Hoffman died, ingloriously, with a needle hanging out of his arm.  Hollywood couldn't have scripted a more evocative image of a heroin overdose.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman was an addict ... He died a junkie's death.

Also that same day, flying in the face of his own misguided logic that in some small way, an exit by overdose might be a good thing -- its transmitted "message" perhaps being taken to heart, as opposed to being ignored or simply not received at all by other nodding junkies suddenly waking up, saying, "You know what?  Philip Seymour Hoffman died.  Let me quit." --

Sadly, it's unlikely that this became the case anywhere.  Philip Seymour Hoffman just died.  Ingloriously.

But I was going to say, also on the same day that he died, that un-Super Sunday, there were considerably more drug overdoses than PSH once babbled to Aaron Sorkin lives would be "saved" in the event that one of those two suffered a fatal overdose ...

No, Phil:  your stupid and preventable death did not lead to "10 people who were about to" die, not dying.  You took a drug you knew could kill you, and it did.

That's what happened.  That's the message you left behind.  A message of despair, not hope.  In no way was it a "positive" thing.

It's going to take many decades -- and vast adjustments in profit motive, economies of scale and, most dauntingly, demand fueling supply -- for any acceptance of responsibility, let alone global behavioral shifts or awakenings of consciousness concerning illicit drug use, to occur.  If I were an addict, your sad death wouldn't do it for me, Big Guy (Sorry to be telling you this too late).

Thank God for the comic relief of Russia!  Between the knee-knocking toilets (and "no fishing"!! signs), the piss-colored tap water, the stray dogs, the unfinished hotel rooms, the nonetheless pride at a 'job well done' in Sochi, and the costumed police choir busting into "Get Lucky" ... I giggle aloud at my bushy-browed brethren, and my S-K-Y swells and bursts with delight ...

And then I read about Woody Allen.

Woody has long been a hero of mine ... His obnoxious Upper East Side phase notwithstanding, I think, and have always believed, the guy's comic gold.  When I was younger and trying to win friends, impress girls or dismiss various teachers, I'd absorb the absurdities of Without Feathers, for example, or Getting Even ...and too often spit them back out whole, unexpurgated.  Completely ripped off, at times word for word ...

I was really a loser!  But I thought Woody Allen was a genius ... and though I no longer plagiarize him, I still think he is.

All of which leads up to the new best thing I've ever read by Woody Allen, his matter-of-fact, supposedly (hopefully!) final response to the resurfaced claims by his daughter that she was sexually abused by him twenty years ago.  These disturbing and serious allegations were investigated at the time and found unsubstantiated.  No criminal charges were ever filed, and the matter became closed ... until somehow, it wasn't anymore.

Now it should be.  Together, with the wastedly talented Philip Seymour Hoffman, may things rest in peace.

Dead Letter Days (JL, JFK)

Recently the world (or the U.S., anyway) "celebrated" the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

"I am a jelly donut!" I toasted at one point during the November 22nd weekend ... not only refusing to "celebrate" death -- as we all tend to do, versus wallowing in it -- but also trying to be vaguely amusing while alluding to the wince-making "jelly doughnut misconception" which prevails, half a century later, in pieces of Germany.

Back in New York, there is today the annual celebration of a local, as much as a global, icon.  December 8th, 2013 "celebrates" the 33rd anniversary of the death of John Lennon.

While I missed having a memorable "Where were you when....?" JFK moment, I was alive, and do know where I was and what I was doing, when 'I heard the news that day (oh boy)' regarding JL.

I was watching a little football on Monday night ... which in 1980, was a treat.  Game days then were reserved for the weekend.  Football on Monday (plus at night!) meant I was going to be staying up 'late' -- usually well beyond my (unenforced) pre-teen "bedtime" of 10:30 -- and laughing with my parents at Howard Cosell.  This particular Monday night was no different.

Until, watching the Dolphins take on (and ultimately take) the Patriots, the blustering buffoon that comprised the persona -- the "Howard Cosell" (in quotes) brand, if you will -- became suddenly real.  Twice announcing that Lennon had been shot and killed, referring to it on-air as the "unspeakable tragedy" that it was ... and perhaps most sincere and heartfelt of all, reminding millions of us tuning in that night that in the Big Picture, what we were watching, what he was announcing, was "just a football game" ... Howard Cosell put the Big Picture back in perspective.

To be honest, my actual memory of Cosell's announcement is fuzzy.  I think I was in the bathroom ... or in the refrigerator ... or maybe I'd gone to bed already.  But the 'John Lennon dead' part ... 'John Lennon shot and killed' ... is the part that registered.  I remember then actually asking my parents, "Was John Lennon in the Beatles?" ... sort of confirming things for myself ... processing the weird and terrible news, delivered out of context that Monday night on a football broadcast, by a cartoonish sports icon who was clearly moved, clearly stunned ... a bereft and grieving fan himself.

There followed fifteen years or so of John Lennon being not only my 'favorite Beatle', but also sad, often inappropriate efforts on my part to infuse his spirit and a few of his reportedly defining qualities -- the cynicism, the sense of humor, a dry, often devastating wit and sharp tongue -- into my own thing ... whatever that was or I believed it to be.  I didn't outgrow my "John Lennon Phase" until I met and bedded Yoko Ono in the '90s.

Just kidding.

I still haven't outgrown John Lennon ... and of course, me and Yoko ... Well, that should go without saying (though just in case, I was JOKING:  I have never "bedded" Yoko Ono!!).

ANYWAY, Sachs Media Group recently offered what it thought would be a few music icons had they lived to see, and be seen, today:  Kurt Cobain, for example (of course he'd still be wearing flannel ... with his hair unwashed since '91!), and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson (who of course, would be wearing a Hawaiian beach shirt ... Really?).

While some of the 'aged rock star' images are laughable (especially Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas ... What the FUCK??? :), the projection of John Lennon, had he lived to become 73 years old, I think could not be more perfect:

It's exactly how I would 'imagine' the guy now.  Good work on that one, SMG!

And RIP JL / JFK.

Thanks Giving, Awareness

My dad's good friend passed away this week.  After hearing about / witnessing nearly forty years of camaraderie, Schadenfreude, rivalry, jibing, belittlements, favors performed (sometimes grudgingly, other times without even asking) ... weekly breakfast and lunch rituals (my mom's frustrations at the "bromance") ... general support, bonhomie and the occasional assist with each others' families ... and at the end of the day, companionship and a comfort factor ...

My dad's friend of nearly forty years is no more.

Gordon died of a brain tumor, which overtly manifested its ugly head for the first time on November 1st, just over three weeks ago.  Apparently, he'd complained of headaches every now and then, more and more frequently ... but these were generally (too easily, conveniently) dismissed as what happens to you when you become old(er).  My own squinty vision, my dad's pained feet, my mom's knobbly knees and Gordon's headaches, all written off to inevitability.

Until this past November 1st, when my dad's friend collapsed - an aneurysm being to blame on the surface, while lurking and festering, metastasizing, below was the inoperable brain cancer which ravaged and killed him.

In just over three weeks!  You have to discover it ... Invite cure and treatment.  When "it" finds you, showing up at your doorstep, the game's usually over.

I thought of Gordon the other day, before I learned of his death (though I knew he was unwell).  Just randomly began thinking about how fast things happen ... about my own memories and knowing of him, mainly through his son, who's my age and with whom I went to school (Geoff, if I remember, was left-handed ... just like the spelling of his first name!) ... How at least he'd been released to home care and family for what would be his final days, and of course, the impact on his family.

How my dad, in his own words, doesn't "do sad" but would need to attend his best friend's funeral, before the weight of reality, new sense of mortality and feelings of loneliness set in like a northern Wisconsin winter ...

And if I were googly-eyed, I might try to suggest that it was that very moment, when I randomly and powerfully began thinking of Gordon, that his soul left his body ... and another little piece of my own life left me. 

 “Give (Thanks)”, ©Jeff Glovsky

 * * *

GLIOGENE International Brain Tumor Study

Vicious Bandwagon

"It always bothers me to see people writing ‘RIP’ when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop-out. To me, ‘RIP’ is the microwave dinner of posthumous honors."

 

Photo(s) by Jglo

We lost a biggie last week, with the passing of quintessential New Yorker, not quite glam rocker, punk rock godfather and irascible, not lovable poet "curmudgeon", Lou Reed.

Musically, Lou and most of his incarnations were secondary to my listening interests:  influential, sure.  Groundbreaking, no doubt.  Could he play guitar?  Listen to his attack, with Mick Ronson, on "Vicious" - but to my ear, something was always missing.  He couldn't sing to save his life, first off!  That droning, aggressive monotone in which he spoke his songs was clearly effective in serving the material -- imagine "Sweet Jane" or "Walk on The Wild Side" delivered any other way -- but in the end, it was alienating.

And that's exactly what the man, and the material, wanted:  you didn't connect with, or "get", Lou Reed ... You didn't "relate" to Metal Machine Music ... and even if you did, or claimed to, you weren't wanted.

As a listener, Lou Reed could take me or leave me.  And I was generally indifferent to Lou Reed.

Though musically (creatively, artistically), I may have found his 'don't give a fuck' shtick vaguely compelling in an arm's length, respectful way ... personally, in terms of the guy's overall comportment - Lou Reed, by most accounts, was a twat.  And I'm sorry (no I'm not), but he doesn't deserve the canonization he's been receiving from members of the press and others who suffered his "curmudgeonly" abuse, and it's somehow excused now -- no longer painful or professionally embarrassing -- because he's dead.

Typically hypocritical, and desperate to be loved-sounding.  "I was there ... a part of things.  I get Lou Reed!  And now he's no more, but his music lives on and I feel that too:  Look, I'm downloading "Perfect Day".  Isn't that neat?".

It's like the selfish parent refusing to let go, and dressing the baby in punk and rock t-shirts; or the onrush of simpletons suddenly buying Steinbeck ... misled by the vaguely slinky title into thinking there's something Fifty Shades-kinky about East of Eden (before diffidently stalling on page fifteen, when it's realized there's no page of biblical passion!).

It's like a CE (Christmas / Easter) Christian ... High Holiday Jew, or an idiot who lines up to wait to eat out:  just a bandwagon jumper ("I don't even like hamburgers!"); or a 'friend', 'fan' or 'follower' without knowing why.

But you know people get all emotional / and sometimes man, they just don't act rational / You know, they think they're just on TV - Street Hassle (1978)

Simply put, enough with the Lou Reed eulogies.

Apparently, Lou Reed could be an asshole.  I never met the man, but I did deliver musical gear to his wife once (at the time, I think, his girlfriend) ... and she was an asshole!

No, that's not true.  At all.  Let me state unequivocally, that I'm joking:  Laurie Anderson, in the seven-second glimpse that I caught of her while I was humping an amplifier into place, was certainly civil ... and likely, she knew and loved the "real" Lou Reed, not the "Lou Reed" of (velvet) underground music ... the (john) caged "artist", the New York doll from "out on the Island" ... the asshole that comprised "Lou Reed" - which the real Lou Reed would deign to show us ... real people rarely the way they're perceived ...

There he goes now ... May that spirit of punk be left in peace, to rock on undiluted.

"Walk on The Wild Side", ©Jeff Glovsky