The latest:

>> Funny -- I always thought James' best friends at Vegas Deluxe were the interns. Remember Sharay Larsen's sister, the one who wore evening gowns to work? Or how about that one broad in the hip boots? Oh, the long hours spent in the Room ... the girls sitting rapt, listening to James expound on Steve Jobs' finer points ...

Goddamn that Carter's rapier wit. ;-)

At any rate, I'm working at home today, sidelined by some rotten kind of virus (note to potential America West travellers: bring a sandwich) and listening to the Dave Brubeck CD Bryan made for me when he was drunk and philisophical. He burned it from an LP I've been quite unable to find on CD, "Brubeck plays Bernstein plays Brubeck", released in 1961. I haven't even been able to find a second vinyl copy, for crying out loud. Can't even get a safety copy.

And what's worth saving? Side B is mostly Brubeck quartet interpretations of Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story" songs. Proficient, but hardly noteworthy. Side A, however, is Howard Brubeck's "Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra," played by the quartet against the lush backing of Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.

The "Dialogues" -- a four-parter -- are thoroughly Manhattan, very "Breakfast at Tiffany's." You can practically see the way-pre2k skyscrapers, big-assed American cars and frantic, fedora-wearing human traffic. Frankly, I'm amazed we haven't seen a reissue of the "Dialogues", or that Portishead or whoever haven't sampled it. This is what modern cities should sound like. Way before Missile Command -- almost before missiles, even.
posted by Geoff Carter at 10:27 AM