From the arti­cle:

But, music lover that I am, I under­stood imme­di­ate­ly that in evok­ing a choco­late city, the may­or was cit­ing George Clin­ton, the should-be Amer­i­can poet lau­re­ate. Like­wise, much of Nag­in’s audi­ence that day would have under­stood his appo­site ref­er­ence to the pro­to-rap title cut of Par­lia­men­t’s 1975 album Choco­late City. George Clin­ton did­n’t orig­i­nate the phrase “choco­late city”–it was a nick­name for Wash­ing­ton, DC–but he made it nation­al cur­ren­cy, expand­ing the term to include all black-major­i­ty cities in the years after white flight.

As I draw near­er to draft­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion pro­pos­al, it’s pieces like this that flesh out the epi­gram­mat­ic aspects of Big Ideas with cul­tur­al touch­stones that put in per­spec­tive the times as they’re lived, rather than just remembered.

[Lis­ten: Ned Sub­lette on Behind the News, with Doug Hen­wood]

Don’t freak out. These guys will do it for you.

Brötzmann vis­its Philadel­phia with Han Ben­nink Octo­ber 8th. [Relat­ed: Ars Nova Work­shop]

Oren Ambarchi a/k/a the invis­i­ble hand of Black1 [John Wiese being the oth­er invis­i­ble hand].

[See also: Mo’ Beta]

Ornette! James Blood Ulmer! So sick.

The rep­e­ti­tions on Danc­ing in Your Head con­jure night­mare log­ic! And make me miss Roy­al Trux!

It’s 1980. Shoot the piano player.

More on Tay­lor’s Unit Struc­tures, the new Rudy Van Gelder edi­tion of Con­quis­ta­dor!, and Stu­dent Stud­ies to come.

[Freak­out bop pianist apoc­rypha in brief: Alone in a hotel room, some­where in New York, jour­nal­ist inter­view­ing Thelo­nius Monk asks “Why don’t you play more like Bud?” Monk spazzes on piano in the room, room hush­es and Monk turns to jour­nal­ist and says “Now don’t tell any­body what you just saw me do.”]