From the New York­er:

Leg­end has it that after one group of play­ers had crept their way as qui­et­ly as pos­si­ble through a score of his Feld­man barked, “It’s too fuckin’ loud, and it’s too fuckin’ fast.”

Feld­man’s Rothko Chapel con­dens­es so much feel­ing into so lit­tle space that, giv­en the empha­sis he placed on time and patience and the volu­mi­nous emo­tion­al depth of his work, it’s strange that such a mov­ing trib­ute would be so brief and so accessible.

[See also: Mor­ton Feld­man says]

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!