No More Papyrus Font, PLEASE

This week, some improvised signage went up at the yoga studio where I practice. As you might guess, since it's a yoga studio, it MUST be in papyrus font.

Why oh why? Anything healthy, organic, non-GMO, vegan, progressive, socially conscious, etc. needs to be represented in papyrus font. Now it just makes anything look like it was made by stupid hippies. And why do most things marketed to vegans assume that we're all birkenstock loving white people with dreadlocks? Maybe I just feel that way because they ALL USE PAPYRUS.

For more info:
Wikipedia
http://deckchairs.net/2006/04/papyrus.html
http://tenning.com/top_ten_misuses_of_the_most_misused_font_papyrus
http://www.iheartpapyrus.com/

Jazz Cat

An adorable piano playing cat. What could be better? Too bad her human counterparts aren't better at improvising with her... Nora doesn't care about our silly tonality or functional harmony. She's way past that stuff, man. Dig?

The Vegetable Orchestra

I just got back from an arts coference. The closing night included a performance art piece that used lots of animal entrails in an effort to be revolting and shocking. Yawn. Here's something much more veg friendly.

Jon Stewart on Bill Moyers Journal

The dream team... Stewart and Moyers - oh what they could accomplish together. So, yesterday I posted a few clips of David Byrne. Today, two other "heroes" of mine...

Part One


Part Two


Part Three


Part Four

David Byrne - Nothing But Flowers

You've probably heard recent press about Alan Weisman's book "The World Without Us." Mr. D.B. actually wrote it many years earlier - as a five minute pop song. A perfect little gem of a five minute pop song.

Well, ok, it's not really about a world without humans, but a possibly post-apocalyptic future where humans live in harmony with the earth and are nostalgic for the old days. Even better.

David Byrne - Knee Plays - In The Future

Byrne's "Music from the Knee Plays" is finally being re-released this month. (but I've been able to enjoy it all along because I'm soooo cool and have it on vinyl)

don cherry/james blood ulmer/rashied ali - live 1978

James Blood Ulmer (with Allion Krauss) - blues

Ornette Coleman Quartet :: Roma 1974 #1

ornette coleman live 1979

Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall (part 1)

Sonny Rollins and Don Cherry

with Henry Grimes (bass) and Billy Higgins (drums).

The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein

Another Battles Video

Yep I still love the math rock.

Hancock and Zawinul duo

Miles Davis and Friends - In A Silent Way

from a show in 1991... I prefer the orig. recording but this is nice, too.

Today we say goodbye to Joe Zawinul - who, among other things, wrote this amazing (timeless, revolutionary, brilliant) piece of music.

Haas v Blake USOpen 2007

How I spent my holiday weekend: on the couch watching tennis. Monday was a sad sad day and here's why.

Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?

click through for full text of an article published in Ladies Home Journal, August 1921.
Written by Anne Shaw Faulkner, head of the Music Department of the General Federation of Women's Clubs.

some highlights:

Still another proof that jazz is recognized as producing an evil effect is the fact that in almost every big industry where music has been instituted it has been found necessary to discontinue jazz because of its demoralizing effect upon the workers. This was noticed in an unsteadiness and lack of evenness in the workmanship of the product after a period when the workmen had indulged in jazz music...

The human organism responds to musical vibrations. This fact is universally recognized. What instincts then are aroused by jazz? Certainly not deeds of valor or martial courage, for all marches and patriotic hymns are of regular rhythm and simple harmony; decidedly not contentment or serenity, for the songs of home and the love of native land are all of the simplest melody and harmony with noticeably regular rhythm. Jazz disorganizes all regular laws and order; it stimulates to extreme deeds, to a breaking away from all rules and conventions; it is harmful and dangerous, and its influence is wholly bad.

A number of scientific men who have been working on experiments in musico-therapy with the insane, declare that while regular rhythms and simple tones produce a quieting effect on the brain of even a violent patient, the effect of jazz on the normal brain produces an atrophied condition on the brain cells of conception, until very frequently those under the demoralizing influence of the persistent use of syncopation, combined with inharmonic partial tones, are actually incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, right and wrong.

West Side Story - America

the more things change...

Learning to play music is a bitch

and even worse when documentation survives...

On the WFMU blog, here's a post of school bands and choirs wrecking all kinds of pop music. Don't miss a junior high chorale tackling Lionel Richie's "You Are" (a song that I've been grappling with myself for many years), and a junior high band mangling "Beat It." Like being a teenager isn't hard enough... at least there's no video to embarrass these kids for their whole lives.