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“Von” Freeman

“Von” obituary Louis Armstrong used to come by from the time I was about 3 years old, and he’d always say to me, ‘Hi Pops,’ recalled Freeman, pointing to the era when Satchmo was enjoying his first blush of success as a Chicago bandleader and emerging recording artist. “Earl Hines came over, and Fats Waller…

Branford Marsalis Interview

As usual from any Marsalis, an articulate, provocative and amusing view. It’s essentially inauthentic when I listen to it. It doesn’t sound like jazz, and I can find few situations with the exception of popular music where the music is so far removed from its roots that it’s so unrecognizable from the original form. So…

Black Dog: Now and Zen

One has to hand it to Robert Plant for eventually finding his way through the dreadful ’80s and now re-establishing himself as an elder statesman without ever becoming a caricature of his former self, not trying to be perpetually hip (a la Bowie) and now no longer feeling he has to escape the burden of…

Oakeshott on Law

STEVEN GERENCSER trailer from A Companion to Michael Oakeshott To write about law in relationship to Michael Oakeshott’s ideas generally, or his thoughts on politics in particular, presents a complicated task, not because law is an obscure concept in Oakeshott, and not because it is a topic about which he has written little. In fact,…

Evelyn Waugh Revisited

Having just viewed Brideshead Revisited again after 30 some years here is the infamous and deliciously obstreperous John Freeman-Waugh interview. Brideshead RevisitedCatholic ChurchEvelyn WaughHandful of Dustjohn freemanWaugh

Jazz in Japan

The Japanese people want to thank the United States, New Orleans and Satchmo for giving the world such wonderful music called jazz. A lovely example of the power of this music to spread the joy, the conduit the very special Yoshio Toyama. In Treme (1:5) you may recall a Japanese jazz fan does a good turn…

Vettriano

Hated by the art establishment and other literati snobs, no doubt many of them would see virtue in Andrew Lloyd Vombo. JV’s film noir perspective is a lost idealized world of menace and sleaze with elegance, strong sexy women, sinister men, sexual “deviance”, drinking, smoking, politically “incorrect behavior” . . . some mid-Atlantic world, the LA…

Brain plasticity and the internet – a debate

Neil Levy takes on Susan Greenfield. I started by mentioning Plato’s worry that literacy would weaken memory. As a matter of fact, Plato may not have been entirely wrong: there is evidence that people in preliterate cultures have better memories. It does not follow, however, that the invention of writing had costs as well as…

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

86-year-old returns to New Orleans, fulfilling wish of a lifetime Her eyes still light up when she talks about New Orleans. When asked the top three reasons she loves New Orleans, she quickly answers with, “the food, the music, but especially the people,” referring to her close friends and the 400,000 friendly locals who make…