Brain Cancer, Wine Writing, Thor Iverson

I don't even know what the fuck these two guys are talking about but it seems like even more fun than Munson and Jackson going at it! Count me in!

And fuck talking about wine! It barely has any alcohol in it anyway, what's the point?
 
Joe, thank you for the parody post and the renewed campaign of hate. I also noticed a cooling unit thread from Tom Troaiano over on the WLDG the other day. They say you can never go home again but if Chris Coad would drop a boatload of cheap crap on us right now I would swear it was 1998.

Glad to see the Internets are alive and well.

And happy Christmas everybody!

Best,
Kay
 
originally posted by Thor:
more fun than Munson and Jackson
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I'm thinking more Stanley Crouch and...whoever's in the room with Stanley Crouch.
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So I'm stuck in NYC one Monday night a few years ago and I went to see some relatively unknown pianist play at the Village Vanguard. There are like six of us there for the show and I'm sitting back by the bar drinking something from Priorat (they actually have a pretty good wine list for a jazz club) when about halfway through the second set, this portly guy kind of rolls down the stairs and into the club and barks at the bartender "gimme white wine!" and then proceeds to lumber over to a seat to the side of the stage off to the side of the drummer. He commenced glowering at the band while meanwhile, the bartender* puts a glass of Muscadet on the top of the bar and it sits there until the band concluded its set.

After they'd finished, the soprano sax player ( Steve Wilson heads back to the bar and we begin talking about how difficult it is for anyone playing soprano saxophone to NOT sound like either Kenny G or John Coltrane, regardless of the style of jazz you're playing. We get to talking about how certain musicians really kind of take over the public's impression of what a given instrument is supposed to sound like and the various creative ways to work around it. By this time the Muscadet guy has finished talking to the drummer and has come back to the bar to claim his glass of wine and he jumped into the conversation I was having with Wilson and we went around and around about that, about jazz education in schools, and about the whole sorry mess that jazz finds itself in. I wasn't pushy (the club was hardly my turf) but I'd been around long enough to hold up my end of the argument, which wound up digressing into a discourse on the state of blues in the US and the sad fact that there wasn't much jazz around these days that reflected any sort of regionality. I related that concern to the discussion of terroir in wine in general and Muscadet in particular and both of them got it, even if Steve preferred red wine to white. It was one of the few really interesting conversations I've had in the past decade; maybe it's the lack of civil discourse in California or the general lack of substance in Southern California, but it was fun to be challenged intellectually in a way that also made me think about music rather than just passively listen to it.

About 2:30 AM the bartender deemed it time to toss us outta there and upon saying goodbye, I thanked Wilson for his performance and introduced myself to the Muscadet guy, and was kind of surprised when he said "I'm Stanley Crouch". Not at all the arrogant "suck-the-air-outta-the-room" sort of person I'd heard that he was, but just someone else at a bar late at night solving the ills of the (music) world.

BTW, happy Christmas to you too Kay. I'm digging the 1999 Karthauserhof Kabinett tonight. I'm not sure if that's the Riesling you were imploring others to enjoy, but if it was, you made a great call.

-Eden (someday I'd like to hear a record with Steve Wilson on sax, Anthony Wilson playing guitar, Matt Wilson on drums, and Cassandra Wilson singing. Maybe I could change my name to Wilson Wilson and play double bass and we could drink wine from Wilson Daniels while recording)

*The bartender's name wasn't really 'Meanwhile' but it was John or Ted or something like that. Steve? He probably wasn't related to Gladly, the cross-eyed bear, at least not for the purposes of this recitation.
 
originally posted by Eden Mylunsch:
[So I'm stuck in NYC one Monday night a few years ago and I went to see some relatively unknown pianist play at the Village Vanguard. There are like six of us there for the show and I'm sitting back by the bar drinking something from Priorat (they actually have a pretty good wine list for a jazz club) when about halfway through the second set, this portly guy kind of rolls down the stairs and into the club and barks at the bartender "gimme white wine!" and then proceeds to lumber over to a seat to the side of the stage off to the side of the drummer. He commenced glowering at the band while meanwhile, the bartender* puts a glass of Muscadet on the top of the bar and it sits there until the band concluded its set.

About 2:30 AM the bartender deemed it time to toss us outta there and upon saying goodbye, I thanked Wilson for his performance and introduced myself to the Muscadet guy, and was kind of surprised when he said "I'm Stanley Crouch". Not at all the arrogant "suck-the-air-outta-the-room" sort of person I'd heard that he was, but just someone else at a bar late at night solving the ills of the (music) world.
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i was really hoping the portly muscadet guy was going to turn out to be fat boy.
 
originally posted by Scott Kraft:
originally posted by Bill Lundstrom:


i was really hoping the portly muscadet guy was going to turn out to be fat boy.
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i thought stanley crouch was fatboy.
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You know, it can be hard to keep those two separate in your mind.

Here's how I do it:

1) Stanley is more tactful (sorry, I laughed typing that);
2) Stanley is not a Gooner;
3) doubtful that Stanley has a fatcave filled with fatBurgundy to pour down the fatsink when the mood strikes.

Great story, Eden.
 
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