Jazzbearny's Journal (how original)...

Speechless

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:48:41 GMT

Man meets Bee: Field trip to Louis Armstrong House, May 17, 2009

I haven't been keeping up with LJ like I should, so I only recently caught up with the news of Dan (aka danbearnyc)'s passing.

Actually, naylandblake's post on Facebook broke the news to me, which reminds me how Dan's retort to me whenever I asked if he'd ever join the masses over there was "Facebook? What's Facebook?"

I'll never forget meeting Dan at mondragon and faghatesgods's house and immediately bonding with him over cultural arcana. Most recently, Dan shamed me for not getting a reference to Jeannette MacDonald he made after I cited a film short starring Baby Rose Marie ("Jeannette MacDonald starred in [the musical] 'Rose Marie,' yes?"). I could only hang my head in shame.

Other people have already written here about Dan's generosity; for instance, he clearly felt there wasn't any point to knowing about a great movie or book or record if you didn't share it with others. Sharing Dan's enthusiasms was one of the best things about being his friend, and I'm very grateful to have had the chance to do that if only for a few years.

For those on FaceBook...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:43:47 GMT

Chase is giving away $5 Millon Dollars to charities and is asking FaceBook members to tell them who to give it to.

The promotion has only 3 days left, and The Center has garnered very few votes so far!

I assume the low number is due to the fact that you have to know the legal name of the charity in order to vote for it (Lesbian And Gay Community Services Center, Inc.).

The Center has done so much for the community; in these last few days of this promotion, it would be great to bump up their numbers. Spread the word!

The direct link for FaceBook members to vote for The Center is: http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/816424

The bloom on Peter's orchid

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:22:08 GMT

Peter says that it will only last about three days or so. Life is fragile!

I couldn't resist adding this one....

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:39:54 GMT

NYPL's Thanksgiving images

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:36:01 GMT

In celebration of the season, the New York public library has posted a number of interesting vintage Thanksgiving images from its collections on its Facebook page.

An old late-night TV favorite that's never shown on TV these days...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:04:55 GMT

Ever wondered what "Othello" would be like if the story took place in the early 1960s and all the main characters were jazz musicians? With Patrick McGoohan portraying a drum-playing Iago?

People with all-region DVD players can find out (sadly, the only copies of this movie available on DVD are Region 2). Charles Mingus gets a nice cameo in the film, but he doesn't make it into the trailer.

That Henry Ford was a card!

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:55:14 GMT

I found the articles reproduced below on the Internet Archive website.

[THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, issue of 6 August 1921]

Jewish Jazz Becomes Our National Music

About a year ago the following article appeared in the New York Times, a newspaper that has never been accused of anti-Semitism, and whose proprietor is one of the best-known Jews in the United States:

"Irving Berlin, Leo Feist and other officers of seven music publishing corporations in this city were charged with violating the Sherman anti-trust law in an equity suit begun yesterday in Federal District Court by the United States Government. The defendants, it was alleged, controlled 80 percent of the available copyrighted songs used by manufacturers of phonographs, player piano rolls and other musical reproducing instruments, and fixed prices at which the records or rolls were to be sold to the public . . . .

"The corporations involved in the action were the Consolidated Music Corporation, 144 West Thirty-seventh street; Irving Berlin, Inc., 1567 Broadway; Leo Feist, Inc., 231 West Fortieth street; T. B. Harms, Francis, Day and Hunter, Inc., 62 West Forty-fifth street; Shapiro, Bernstein & Company, 218 West Forty-seventh street; Watterson, Berlin & Snyder, Inc., 1571 Broadway, and M. Witmark & Sons, Inc., 144 West Thirty-seventh street.

"The agreement which the government seeks to dissolve is alleged to provide that the defendant would make contracts only through the Consolidated Music Corporation which they had organized . . . ."

Many people have wondered whence come the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade decent parlors and set the young people of this generation imitating the drivel of morons. A clue to the answer is in the above clipping. Popular Music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, the slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.

------------------------------------------------------------

Who woulda thought it?

Monkey talk, jungle squeals, grunts and squeaks and gasps suggestive of cave love are camouflaged by a few feverish notes and admitted to homes where the thing itself, unaided by the piano, would be stamped out in horror. Girls and boys a little while ago were inquiring who paid Mrs. Rip Van Winkle's rent while Mr. Rip Van Winkle was away. In decent parlors the fluttering music sheets disclosed expressions taken directly from the cesspools of modern capitals, to be made the daily slang, the thoughtlessly hummed remarks of high school boys and girls.

The United States Government alleged, in the above complaint, that 80 percent of these popular songs was under the control of the seven Jewish houses named above; and the other 20 percent controlled by other Jewish music houses not included in that special group.

It is rather surprising, is it not, that whichever way you turn to trace the harmful streams of influence that flow through society, you come upon a group of Jews? In baseball corruption -- a group of Jews. In exploitative finance -- a group of Jews. In theatrical degeneracy -- a group of Jews. In liquor propaganda -- a group of Jews. In control of national war policies -- a group of Jews. Absolutely dominating the wireless communications of the world -- a group of Jews. In the menace of the Movies -- a group of Jews. In control of the Press through business and financial pressure -- a group of Jews. War profiteers, 80 per cent of them -- Jews. Organizers of active opposition of Christian laws and customs -- Jews. And now, in this miasma of so-called popular music, which combines weak-mindedness with every suggestion of lewdness -- again Jews.

The Jewish influence on American music is, without doubt, regarded as serious by those who know anything about it. Not only is there a growing protest against the Judaization of our few great orchestras, but there is a strong reaction from the racial collusion which fills the concert stage and popular platform with Jewish artists to the exclusion of all others.

The American people have been urged and chided and shamed into the beginning of a rather generous popular support of music in this country, and the first thing they see for their money is that Jewish artists supplant the non-Jewish artists, and use the prestige of their membership in symphony orchestras to work various small business schemes of their own. If they were superior artists, nothing against it could be said, but they are not superior artists; they are only better known and racially favored in Jewish musical circles.

That, however, is a big subject. It will receive attention in its turn. Just now it is the "popular song" that is being considered. However, as something that true lovers and knowers of music may meditate upon in view of future studies of Jewish influence in music, this observation is offered (the italics are ours):

"Meanwhile the Oriental, especially the Jewish, infection in our music, seemingly less widespread than the German was or the French is, may prove even more virulent. Those not temperamentally immune to it catch it less severely, like Mr. Leo Ornstein; and if they ever throw it off, as he has given some signs of doing, seem to be left devoid of energy and, as it were, permanently anemic.

"The insidiousness of the Jewish menace to our artistic integrity is due partly to the speciousness, the superficial charm and persuasiveness of Hebrew art, its brilliance, its violently juxtaposed extremes of passion, its poignant eroticism and pessimism, and partly to the fact that the strain in us that might make head against it, the deepest, most fundamental strain perhaps in our mixed nature, is diluted and confused by a hundred other tendencies.

"The Anglo-Saxon group of qualities, the Anglo Saxon point of view, even though they are so thoroughly disguised, in a people descended from every race, that we easily forget them, and it is not safe to predicate them of any individual American, are nevertheless the vital nucleus of the American temper. And the Jewish domination of our music, even more than the Teutonic and the Gallic, threatens to submerge and stultify them at every point."

"Let me make a nation's songs and I care not who makes the laws," said one; in this country the Jews have had a very large hand in making both.
It is the purpose of this and the succeeding article to put Americans in full possession of the truth concerning the moron music that they habitually hum and sing and shout day by day, and if possible to help them to see the invisible Jewish baton which is waved above them for financial and propaganda purposes.

Just as the American stage and the American motion picture have fallen under the influence and control of the Jews and their art-destroying commercialism, so the business of handling "popular songs" has become a Yiddish industry.

Its leaders are for the most part Russian-born Jews, some of whom have personal pasts which are just as unsavory as THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT has shown the pasts of certain Jewish theatrical and movie leaders to be.

The country does not sing what it likes, but what the vaudeville "song pluggers" popularize by repeated renditions on the stage, until the flabby mind of the "ten-twent'-thirt'" audiences begin to repeat it on the streets. These "song pluggers" are the paid agents of the Yiddish song agencies. Money, and not merit, dominates the spread of the moron music which is styled "Jewish Jazz." Of the business details, however, more later.

Tin Pan Alley, so-called because it constitutes a group of "song shops," is populated by the "Abies" and "Izzies" and "Moes" who make up the composing staffs of the various institutions.

In this business of making the people's songs, the Jews have shown, as usual, no originality but very much adaptability -- which is a charitable term used to cover plagiarism, which in turn politely covers the crime of mental pocket-picking. The Jews do not create; they take what others have done, give it a clever twist, and exploit it. They have bought up all the old hymn books, opera scores and collections of folk songs, and if you stop to analyze some of the biggest "hits" of the Yiddish song manufacturers, you will find they are woven on the motif and the melody of clean songs of the last generation; the music jazzed a little, the sentiment sensualized very much, and set upon their smutty road, across the country.

Because of absolute Jewish control of the song market, both in publishing and in theatrical performance, it is next to impossible for anything but a Jewish song to be published in the United States or, if published, to get a hearing. The proof of this is in the fact that the Yiddish trust owns the business and the so-called "song hits" all bear Jewish names.

A typical incident occurred in New York recently. A non-Jewish song composer had produced work of such commanding merit that musical sentiment demanded its public rendition. Jewish manager after Jewish manager was approached, but the combination was unbreakable. Finally, one New Yorker talked out and said something about "Jewish combine," which had its effect. A Jewish manager protested that he would be glad to give the work to the public. Rehearsals were held and the night of presentation arrived. The first number was a solo and a Jew appeared to sing it. He could not pronounce English words. He sang through his nose. He was most Yiddish in appearance, the long nose, with narrow, sloping forehead, curly hair. The second number was a duet, and behold two Jews appeared whose pronunciations differed between themselves. The performance was a most hilarious tragedy. The purpose was to kill a non-Jewish product by a poor Jewish rendition. But -- the Jewish manager overdid it. It needed just that to bring non-Jewish musical consciousness to the surface and to explode the advertised and money-bought notion that the Jew has predominant artistic genius. Say that he predominates in music -- yes; he has paid for and organized that predominance; do not, however, say anything about his predominance in musical genius or art.

Non-Jewish music has been stigmatized as "high brow." It is purveyable only in expensively good society. The people, the masses, are fed from day to day on the moron suggestiveness that flows in a hurtful flood out of Tin Pan Alley.

Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the region in Twenty-eighth street, between Broadway and Sixth avenue, where the first Yiddish song manufacturers began business. Flocks of young girls who thought they could sing, and others who thought they could write song poems, came to the neighborhood allured by dishonest advertisements that promised more than the budding Yiddish exploiters were able to fulfill. Needless to say, scandal became rampant, as it always does where so-called "Gentile" girls are reduced to the necessity of seeking favors from the eastern type of Jew. It was the constant shouting of voices, the hilarity of "parties," the banging of pianos and the blatting of trombones that gave the district the name of Tin Pan Alley.

The first attempt to popularize and commercialize the so-called "popular" type of music was made by Julius Witmark, who had been a ballad singer on the minstrel stage. He ceased performing to become a publisher, and was soon followed by East Side Jews, many of whom have become wealthy through their success in pandering to a public taste which they first debased.

Irving Berlin, whose real name is Ignatz or Isadore Baline, is one of the most successful of these Jewish song controllers. He was born in Russia and early became a singer and entertainer. With the rise of "rag-time," which was the predecessor of "jazz," he found a new field for his nimble talents and his first big success was "Alexander's Rag-Time Band" -- a popular piece which by comparison with what has followed it, is a blushing, modest thing.

It was worth noting, in view of the organized eagerness of the Jew to make an alliance with the Negro, that it was Jewish "jazz" that rode in upon the wave of Negro "rag-time" popularity, and eventually displaced the "rag-time."

Berlin has steadily gone the road from mere interestingness to unashamed erotic suggestion. He is the "headliner" in homes as well as in the not-too-particular music halls, but his stuff without its music sometimes savors of vile suggestion.

The motif of this business can be clearly seen in the "Berlin Big Hits." There are the so-called "vamp" songs, such as "Harem Life," and "You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea."

Among the "successes" is the song entitled, "I Like It." It is a "vamp" song which has been sung everywhere, even by myriads of children who could not appreciate the full suggestion of the words, but were hypnotized by the atmosphere which the words created when sung; and by older folks who would not under any circumstances speak the words of the song, but who are victims of the modern delusion that a little flashy music covers a multitude of sins. "I Like It" deals with a girl, "Mary Green, seventeen," whose mother reproves her for flirting with the boys. (In the writing of this paragraph it was debated whether THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT should print what Mary replies to her mother. It was argued that printing the words might give a salutary shock to skeptical readers. It was also argued that the pages of this paper never yet had been defiled by obscenity. Mary's words, sung broadcast through the country, are therefore not given here.)

Readers should reserve comment until they search the piles of moron music rubbish in their own parlors. Readers have listened to much worse stuff than Mary's words, but covered by Yiddish "jazz." It takes cold type to show what a song really is. A good test for a song is to try to read it aloud. Few normal people can.

"O-Hi-O," as sung by Yiddish comedians, has a stench of its own. It may be commented on more extensively later as an example of the Yiddish practice of having three grades of the same song, to suit different degrees of degenerate appetites.

Such songs are not the worst, by any means. Jewish purveyors to degenerate appetites have a peculiarly devilish system of presenting the same song in two or three grades. There will be the song as it is sold at the music store to addle-pated young men and women who fill their leisure with hearing or humming this syncopated senility -- young men and women who pitiably imagine they are keeping up with the times. The songs thus sold and sung are rotten enough. But there is the same song, Class 2. The theme and the melody are the same, but it goes "a little further." There is a line or two in each stanza which dips below even the low standard which Jewish "jazz" has permitted in some of our parlors. And there is Class 3 -- same theme, same melody -- but "going the limit."

Young men about town usually know Class 2 and Class 3. The instance has been known that young women have become acquainted with these lower grades also. Forgetfulness by young men while singing at the piano evenings has given hints of the filthier version. And even where version 1 has been strictly adhered to, the mutual knowledge, politely concealed, has created an atmosphere far from wholesome.

The diabolical cunning with which an unclean atmosphere is created and sustained through all classes of society and by the same influence, will not be overlooked by any observer. There is something Satanic about it, something calculated with demonic shrewdness. And the stream flows on and on, growing worse and worse, to the degradation of the non-Jewish public and the increase of Jewish fortunes.

If THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT were to print on this page the bare words of the popular songs that are to be found in the parlors of the most respectable section of every city, the reader's sense of decency would cry out against it. The same words, when drawn out by numerous hyphens and covered up with nervous music, insinuate their way into the hummed tones of age and into the lilts of innocent childhood. Between the movies and the popular songs the Jewish groups dictate the intellectual life of the masses.

Among the latest Jewish "song hits" may be included these titles: "I'll Say She Does"; "You Cannot Shake That Shimmy Here"; "Sugar Baby"; "In Room 202"; "Can You Tame Wild Wimmen?" and an almost endless list of the same nature, some of which titles are too suggestive for print. Yet they have free course everywhere -- as everything Jewish does, in this country.

Ministers, educators, reformers, parents, citizens who are amazed at the growth of looseness among the people, rail at the evil results. They see the evil product and they attack the product. They rail at the young people who go in for all this eroticism and suggestiveness.

But all this has a source! Why not attack the source? When a population is bathed in sights, sounds and ideas of a certain character, drenched in them and drowned in them, by systematic, deliberate, organized intent, the point of attack should be the cause, not the effect. Yet, that is precisely where the point of attack has not been made, presumably because of lack of knowledge.

It is of little use blaming the people. The people are what they are made. Give the liquor business full sway and you have a population that drinks and carouses. After preaching abstinence to the victims for a century, the country turned its attention to the victimizers, and the abuse was greatly curtailed. The traffic is still illicitly carried on, but even so, the best way to abolish the illicit traffic is to identify the groups that carry it on.

The entire population of the United States could be turned into narcotic addicts if the same freedom was given the illicit narcotic ring as is now given the Yiddish popular song manufacturers. But in such a condition it would be stupid to attack the addicts; common sense would urge the exposure of the panderers.

A dreadful narcotizing of moral modesty and the application of powerful aphrodisiacs have been involved in the present craze for popular songs -- a stimulated craze. The victims are everywhere. But ministers, educators, reformers, parents, and public-spirited citizens are beginning to see the futility of scolding the young people thus diseased. Common sense dictates a cleaning out of the source of the disease. The source is in the Yiddish group of song manufacturers who control the whole output and who are responsible for the whole matter from poetry to profits.

Next to the moral indictment against the so-called "popular" song is the indictment that it is not popular. Everybody hears it, perhaps the majority sing it; it makes its way from coast to coast; it is flung into the people's minds at every movie and from every stage; it is advertised in flaring posters; phonograph records shriek it forth day and night, dance orchestras seem enamored with it, player pianos roll it out by the yard. And by sheer dint of repetition and suggestion the song catches on -- as a burr thistle catches on; until it is displaced by another. There is no spontaneous popularity.

It is a mere mechanical drumming on the minds of the public. There is often not a single atom of sentiment or spiritual appeal in the whole loudly trumpeted "success"; men and women, boys and girls have simply taken to humming words and tunes which they cannot escape, night or day.

The deadly anxiety of "keeping up with the times" drives the army of piano-owners to the music stores to see what is "going" now, and of course it is the Yiddish moron music that is going, and so another home and eventually another neighborhood is inoculated.

But there is no popularity. Take any moron music addict you know and ask him what was the "popular" song three weeks ago, and he will not be able to tell. These songs are so lacking in all that the term "popular" means as regards their acceptableness, that they die overnight, unregretted. Directly the Yiddish manufacturers have another "hit" to make (it is always the public that is "hit") a new song is crammed down the public gullet, and because it is the "latest," and because the Yiddish advertisements say that it is a "hit," and because the hired "pluggers" say that everybody is singing it, that song too becomes "popular" for its brief period, and so on through the year. It is the old game of "changing the styles" to speed up business and make the people buy. Nothing lasts in the Yiddish game -- styles of clothing, movies nor songs; it is always something new, to stimulate the flow of money from the popular pocket into the moron music makers' coffers.

There hasn't been a real "popular" song of Yiddish origin since the Jewish whistlers and back-alley songsters of New York's East Side undertook to handle musical America -- not one, unless we except in genuine gratitude George Cohan's "Over There," a song which came out of a period of strain and went straight to the people's heart.

Two facts about the "popular song" are known to all: first, that for the most part it is indecent and the most active agent of moral miasma in the country, or if not the most active, then neck and neck with the "movies"; second, that the "popular song" industry is an exclusively Jewish industry. But the inside story of the operation of this control of the people's music presents other facts which the people ought to know, and these additional facts will appear in another article.

[THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, issue of 13 August 1921]

How the Jewish Song Trust Makes You Sing

Jews did not create the popular song; they debased it. The time of the entry of Jews into control of the popular song is the exact time when the morality of popular songs began to decline. It is not a pleasant statement to make, but it is a fact. It would seem to be a fact of which American Jews ought to take solemn cognizance, not to anathematize those who do service by exposing the fact, but to curb that group of Jews who, in this instance, as do other groups of Jews in other instances, bring a stain upon the Jewish name.

The "popular" song, before it became a Jewish industry, was really popular. The people sang it and had no reason to conceal it. The popular song of today is often so questionable a composition that performers with a vestige of delicacy must appraise their audience before they sing. There are songs and choruses that can be purchased in any reputable music store and found in many reputable parlors which cannot be printed in this column of THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT. If they were printed here, "Gentile fronts" would be the first to complain that this paper was using obscenity to give interest to these articles. Yet, if these songs were printed, this paper would be doing nothing more than following its policy of going to Jewish sources for its material.

Americans of adult age will remember the stages through which the popular song has passed during the past three or four decades. War songs persisted after the Civil War and were gradually intermingled with songs of a later time, picturesque, romantic, clean.

These latter were not the product of song factories, but the creation of individuals whose gifts were given natural expression. These individuals did not work for publishers but for the satisfaction of their work. There were no great fortunes made out of songs, but there were many satisfactions in having pleased the public taste.

The public taste, like every other taste, craves what is given it most to feed upon. Public taste is public habit. The public is blind to the source of that upon which it lives, and it adjusts itself to the supply. Public taste is raised or lowered as the quality of its pabulum improves or degenerates. In a quarter of a century, given all the avenues of publicity like theater, movie, popular, song, saloon and newspaper -- in the meantime having thrown the mantle of contempt over all counteractive moral agencies -- you can turn out nearly the kind of public you want. It takes just about a quarter of a century to do a good job.

In other days the people sang as they do now, but not in such doped fashion nor with such bewildering continuity. They sang songs nonsensical, sentimental and heroic, but the "shady" songs were outlawed. If sung at all, the "shady" songs were kept far from the society of decent people. Like the styles of the demimonde that formerly were seen only in the abandoned sections of cities, the songs of smut had their geographical confinement, but like the fashions of the demimonde they broke out of their confines to spread among polite society.

The old songs come readily back to memory. Though years have intervened since they were the fashion, yet their quality was such that they do not die. The popular song of last month -- who knows its name? But there are songs of long ago whose titles are familiar even to those who have not sung them.

Recall their names -- "Listen to the Mocking Bird" -- what song today has been boosted to general acceptance on such a simple theme? The only "birds" the people are encouraged to sing about today are "flappers" and "chickens."
And there were "Ben Bolt"; "Nellie Grey"; "Juanita"; "The Old Folks at Home"; "The Hazel Dell"; "When You and I Were Young, Maggie"; "Silver Threads Among the Gold." What margin did these songs leave for the suggestive, for the unwholesomly emotional?

In those days the people sang; they sang together; they sang wherever they met; it was the days of that now extinct institution known as "the singing school." People could sing together. The songs were common property, known to everybody, proper to everybody.

Is there such singing today? Hardly. At a recent meeting of young men in a church the chorus, "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here" was called for, and the chairman in agreeing called out "Mustn't say the naughty word!" With that warning the chorus was given. In calling for public singing there is an immediate uneasiness about possible indecency. There was not this uneasiness before the days of Jewish jazz.

In course of time the fashion of public song underwent a change. An entirely new crop of titles appeared, dealing with an entirely different series of subjects than the songs they displaced.

It was the period of "Annie Rooney"; "Down Went McGinty to the Bottom of the Sea"; "She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage"; "After the Ball is Over" -- all of them clean, lighter than the preceding fashion in songs, but just as clean, and also giving a true touch to life.

Sentiment was not lacking, but it was the unobjectionable sentiment of "My Wild Irish Rose" or "In the Baggage Coach Ahead."

The non-Jewish period was marked by songs like these: "On the Banks of the Wabash," by Paul Dresser; "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree"; "When the Sunset Turns the Ocean's Blue to Gold"; "Down by the Old Mill Stream"; "My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon," by Jim Thornton; "The Sidewalks of New York," by Charles Lawlor.

There was also the "western" and "Indian" strain of songs, represented by "Cheyenne, Cheyenne, Hop on My Pony"; "Arawanna"; "Trail of the Lonesome Pine."

Then came the African period, being the entrance of the jungle motif, the so-called "Congo" stuff into popular pieces. "High Up in the Coconut Tree," "Under the Bamboo Tree," and other compositions which swiftly degenerated into a rather more bestial type than the beasts themselves arrive at.

Running alongside all this was the "ragtime" style of music, which was a legitimate development of Negro mistrelsy. Lyrics practically disappeared before the numerous "cake walk" songs that deluged the public ear.

"There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" -- the marching song of the Spanish-American War, belongs to that period. The "black and tan" resorts of the South began to reign over the nation's music both North and South. Seductive syncopation captured the public ear. The term, "ma baby," brought in on the flood of Negro melody has remained in uncultivated musical speech ever since. Minstrelsy took on new life. "Piano acts" made their appearance. "Jazz bands" were the rage.

By insensible gradations, now easily traceable through the litter of songs with which recent decades are strewn, we have been able to see the gradual decline in the popular song supply. Sentiment has been turned into sensuous suggestion. Romance has been turned into eroticism. The popular lilt slid into ragtime, and ragtime has been superseded by jazz. Song topics became lower and lower until at last they were dredges of the slimy bottom of the underworld.

The first self-styled "King of Jazz" was a Jew named "Frisco." The general directors of the whole downward trend have been Jews. It needed just their touch of cleverness to camouflage the moral filth and raise it half a degree above the natural stage where it begets nothing but disgust. They cannot gild the lily, but they can veil the skunk-cabbage, and that is exactly what has been done. The modern popular song is a whited sepulcher, sparkling without, but within full of the dead bones of all the old disgusting indecencies. Plain print returns them to their rightful status of disgust.

We are now in the period of "The Vamp" -- that great modern goddess upon whom tens of thousands of silly girls are modeling themselves -- "The Vamp." The original "vamp" is to be found in a forbidden French novel upon which Morris Gest founded his grossly immoral spectacle called "Aphrodite." In the Jewish popular song and the Jewish motion picture film a unity has at last been reached in "The Vamp." The vamp heroine and the harem scene -- a fitting climax!

There is work here for the Anti-Defamation League. That league knows how to put the screws on anyone who disparages the Jews. From important New York publishers, down to inconsequential country newspapers, the Anti-Defamation League makes its power felt. There is work for it in the movies and the popular song industry. Why does not the league put the screws on those Jews who have degenerated the movies and debauched the popular song movement and thus brought shame upon the racial name? Why not? Is it possible that only the non-Jews are to be controlled, and Jews let to run loose? Is it possible that "Gentiles" can be curbed as by bridle and bit and that Jews cannot?

It is repeated: there is work for the Anti-Defamation League among the Jews.
More than that: there are Jews who have begged the Anti-Defamation League to purge the name of Jewry of the shame the liquor Jews, the movie Jews, the popular song Jews, the theatrical Jews, and the others are bringing on that name, and the Anti-Defamation League has not done so. It dare not.

American Jewry is desperately afraid of opening a single seam in its armor by means of a single investigation or reform. They are afraid of how far the fire of self-correction may spread.

It was the intention of THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT to give in this article a sample of the manner in which Jewish jazz is written in three classes -- No. 1 for general consumption; No. 2 for stage consumption; No. 3 for the lowest resorts. On searching through the songs for the least offensive example it is found that even the least offensive cannot be printed here. The fact is greatly regretted, for certainly some method must be found by which the public can be put into possession of full information as to what is transpiring in this hideous traffic.

The Jewish art of "camouflage" (the reader may not be aware that wartime camouflage was a Jewish invention) has always been operative. "Cover names" "cover nationalities" (these are Jewish terms) have long been known. It is quite common for Jews of the higher type to band themselves together into societies for political and racial purposes, the purposes being camouflaged by a name, such as Geological Society, or Scientific Society, or something of the sort. And thus in the vilest versification, which only a few years ago would have been refused the mails, they have flung broadcast among the youth of the world dangerous ideas under the camouflage of catchy tunes.

The tunes themselves carry a tale with them. There have been cases in the courts dealing with the "adaptation," or stealing, of tunes for "popular song" purposes. If you observe carefully you will catch reminiscent strains in many of the popular songs which you sing. If you sing, "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," and then sing, "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," you will notice a basic resemblance; but that does not prove that "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" is itself original, its melody was originally taken from an Opus of Chopin. This is a practice which has been greatly extended of recent years.

The reason for the spread of this particular kind of dishonesty is to be found in the Jewish policy of "speeding up business." Ordinarily one play a week, and one or two new songs a season, was the limit of indulgence. But with the coming of the movies the "one play a week" plan has been smashed to smithereens. To get the people to pay their money every day, the programs are changed every day; and to get new plays every day, something must be cheapened. So with songs. The output is rushed to increase the income of money, and quality is sacrificed all round. There are not enough good songs in the world to supply a new one very week; not enough good plays in the world to supply a new movie every day; and so, what the songs and plays lack in worth, they make up in nastiness. In brief, nastiness is the constant quality on which producers depend to "put across" mediocre songs and otherwise pointless plays. Nastiness is the condiment that goes with cheapness in songs and movies.

Plagiarism is the result of mediocre artists being spurred on by non-artistic promoters to produce something that can be dressed up with sufficient attractiveness to draw the public's money. But even plagiarism requires a little brains mixed with it, and when the rush of demand overwhelms the available brains, the lack is covered up by an elaborate covering of sensualism.

Men who are on the inside of the popular song business, and certain court records, all testify to the exact truth of these statements.

"But how do the Jews do it?" is a question often asked. The answer is not public demand, nor artistic merit, nor musical ingenuity, nor poetic worth -- no; the answer is simple salesmanship. The public doesn't choose, the public simply takes what is persistently thrust upon it. It is a system impossible to any other race but the Jews, for there is no other race that centers its whole interest on the sale. There is no other race that makes so startling a choice in favor of "getting" money to the exclusion of "making" money. Who for a moment would think seriously of using the terms "production" and "service" with reference to popular songs or motion pictures? Motion pictures in their higher reaches might have some claim to those terms -- not the typical Jewish pictures, however; but the modern crop of popular songs, never! The terms "production" and "service" do not belong in the popular song industry at all, but the term "salesmanship" does, as the reader will presently see. It is well to remember that where there is only "salesmanship" without the other two qualities, the public is always the sufferer.

"Popularity," when interpreted by the Jews who manufacture jazz for the United States, means "familiarity," that's all. The theory is that a song need not possess merit as regards words or music to be successful. It can be "popularized" artificially by constant repetition, until it becomes familiarized to the public ear, and thus familiarized it becomes "successful."

The principle is expressed in the words of the song, "Everybody's Doin' It." You go to the theater and hear a song. Next day at lunch a café singer is singing the same song. Blaring phonographs used for advertising purposes blat out the same song at you as you pass on the street. You walk past an afternoon band concert in the park -- the band is playing the same song. If you are a normal person you have a feeling that perhaps something has been going on in the world while you were engaged with your own affairs. The song -- you say to yourself frankly -- is silly and the music trivial; but you keep your opinion a secret, because, after all, "everybody's singin' it." Not long after you find yourself humming it. You go home, and your daughter is "practicing up" on the piece. It yells its way through your home and through your neighborhood and through your city and through your state until in sheer disgust, and in one day, the people pitch it bodily out-of-doors. But, behold, another song is waiting to take its place -- a song fresh from Yiddish Tin Pan Alley. And the agony is repeated. This occurs from 30 to 50 times a year.

That is the principle -- repeat it until it becomes familiar; that gives it the veneer of popularity.

Now, there is a method by which all this is done. Nothing "happens." It is like the "mob risings" which have been practiced in some of our cities -- there is always a well-organized center that knows the technology of riot and knows exactly what it is doing. There is a way of making "revolution" as common and as familiar a thought as the movies and popular songs have made "vamps" and "harems" and "hooch" and "Hula Hula." The principle is the same -- constant repetition for the purpose of familiarization.

More than one tune has been deliberately rejected by the public, has not been "liked," but the song-tinkers did not allow that little fact to intimidate them; they simply hammered it into the ears and memories of the public, knowing that "familiarization" was obtainable some time.

"Whispering," for example, did not catch on for a long time. Long ago it used to be known as "Johnnie's Melody" because John Schoenberger wrote it -- but finally it was driven home to its present popularity. There is this to say about it: it is far more deserving of its popularity than is 98 percent of the so-called "popular" music.

Having a principle, then, that any song can be popularized by constant repetition, the Yiddish music purveyors go about their business very systematically.

The song is procured -- by what means, it is not always possible to say. Perhaps one of the "staff" originates a catchy tune, or a girl who plays the church organ in a distant village sends in a pretty little melody. The girl's melody is, of course, sent back as unsuitable, but if it really had a heart of melody in it, a copy is kept and "adapted." In such ways are "ideas" procured.

Then there are plenty of Jewish musical comedies and vaudeville teams. A study of the vaudeville and musical comedy business will show it to be as distinctively Yiddish as are the movies and the popular song industry. So, the Jewish song publisher makes an arrangement with the Jewish manager of the musical comedy show. This arrangement provides that one or more of the song publisher's songs should be sung several times at every performance, in response to the applause and encores of a professional song boosters' claque which is always on hand for such purposes. This claque is paid for just as any other service might be paid for.

The night comes. The song is sung. Persistent applause. Sung again. More applause. Apparently the song is a "hit." As the audience files out the lobby is echoing with the cries of Yiddish song vendors proclaiming the song of the evening to be "the big hit of the season," hundreds of copies being sold in the meanwhile.

That is the usual Broadway introduction.

The next step is to capture the "provinces" -- the musical comedies and vaudeville acts playing within 100 miles of the metropolitan centers. Actors called "song pluggers" are engaged. The arrangement with them is that they will sing a particular song exclusively -- give no other song a chance. The public pays to hear the actor sing; the manager pays to have him sing; the song publisher pays him to sing a certain song.

From theater to theater, from company to company, from artist to artist, the publishers' agents wend their way, making what terms they can to single artists, vaudeville teams or comedy companies for boosting a new song by giving it prominent place in the program.

There are also the "stag entertainers," the young men who go about to "parties" of one kind another, offering amusement to the guests. This is a class of entertainers known only to the rich, but numerous enough. For instance, when the Prince of Wales toured America he was accompanied by a young man nicknamed "Rosie," of whose racial origin there need be no doubt. "Rosie" played the piano and by songs and antics beguiled the tedium of the royal journey. Well, young men of "Rosie's" sort are quite useful in advertising to select circles the latest product of the Yiddish song factories and they are, of course, regularly utilized for that purpose.

Orchestras, especially those of restaurants and dance halls, are worked in the same way.

Get as many people singing and playing introductory renditions as you can: that is the method of gaining an artificial popularity by constant repetition.

The chances are that the song you are humming today is being hummed by you simply because you have perforce heard it so often that it beats unconsciously within your brain.

These methods are subject to variation, of course. There was a great deal of "cutting" until the right Hebrew group survived, and then there was a great deal of "trust" method adopted. The Music Publishers' Association was organized by "Sime" Silberman and Maurice Goodman, and now all the Jewish song manufacturers are included in it. The organization has not changed any of the methods before used but has curtailed the expense. Moreover, it has served to relieve the public to this extent, that, instead of clinging to the one song paid for until the public positively gags on it, the vaudeville or movie performers now sing impartially the various songs of the various publishers forming the trust. More variety has been introduced, that is all. The same old commercialization continues.

As readers of the studies of Jewish theatrical control, which appeared in this paper, will readily understand, the Jewish control of the popular song field means that all non-Jews are barred out. It would be next to impossible for the song of a non-Jew, however meritorious, to reach the public by the usual channels. The musical magazines, the musical critics, the musical managers, the music publishers, the music-hall owners, the majority of the performers are not only all Jews, but are Jews consciously banded together to keep out all others.

The dishonest methods practiced by the Yiddish controllers of this field have been such as to move the Billboard, the leading vaudeville publication, to refuse to print advertisements calling for song poems. Perhaps the reader has seen such advertisements, suggesting that someone has a tune or a song-poem that will probably make a fortune if only sent to an address on Broadway or in the region of Tin Pan Alley. The Billboard says:

"No More Song Poem Ads Accepted

"After investigating the business methods practiced by some Song Poem advertisers, the Billboard believes it to be to the best interest of its readers to eliminate the heading, 'Music and Words' under which Song Poem advertisements appeared, and hereafter, or until existing conditions are changed, the Billboard will not accept any more Song Poem advertising from any concern or person . . . ."

Everywhere the "popular song" has been attacked by keen observers of social tendencies -- but the attack has not been made intelligently. No public menace like this can be abolished without showing the public the source of it. Newspapers are now beginning to attack "jazz," "the vicious movies," "the disgraceful dance." Others attack the young folk who sing jazz, the people who patronize the objectionable movies, the throngs who indulge in indecent dancing. But all the time a small group of men are deliberately and systematically forcing jazz and movies and dances upon the country, spending hundreds of thousands in the effort and reaping millions in profits.

If these men were non-Jews, a multitude of fingers would be pointed toward them in identification and denunciation.

Because these men are Jews, they are allowed to go free. You will stop these abuses when you point out the Jewish group behind them!

People sometimes say, "Well, if you went after any other nationality, you could find just as much fault as with the Jews." Is there any other nationality on which you can fasten the responsibility for vile movies? Is there any other on which you can fasten the responsibility for the illicit liquor traffic? Has any other nationality control of the theater? In the beginning action against the popular song trust, could the United States find anyone to indict besides Jewish song publishers, and could the United States Government lay less than 80 per cent of song control to one New York group alone?

If these things were not strictly Jewish in their origin, method and purpose, how could such statements be made?

Jews say, "Clean up among the Gentiles first, and then turn attention to us." Will the Jews charge Gentile control of movies, popular songs, horse racing, baseball gambling, theaters, the illicit liquor traffic -- will the Jews charge Gentile predominance in any line recognized by moralists today as dangerously menacing the public welfare?

The question is too big to be explained by prejudice. The facts are too challenging to be thrust aside as universal. It is a Jewish question, made such by a series of Jewish facts.

Not content with hedging life about on every side, from the gold that is used in business to the grain that is used in bread, Jewish influence enters your parlor and determines what you shall sing at your piano or hear upon your music reproducing machine. If you could put a tag marked "Jewish" on every part of your life that is Jew-controlled, you would be astonished at the showing.

Three Frames

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:33:28 GMT

From the Three Frames website!

Thanks to William, who thanked Dan for forwarding the link to him on Facebook. Which Dan that was, I can't say...

Wildfires near Athens

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:24:20 GMT

May they get them under control soon!

50 Bands meme

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 05:00:27 GMT

I'll keep my list limited to concert hall events going as far back as I can recall; there are too many club dates for me to even try to list...Starred titles were George Wein-produced events.

"Star-Spangled Women for McGovern" Benefit Concert: Chita Rivera and Judy Collins performed, among others, but the only three minutes preserved in my memory is Tina Turner singing and shimmying "Proud Mary" (Madison Square Garden)
Dave Brubeck/Two Generations of Brubeck (Philharmonic Hall)
Thelonious Monk (Carnegie Hall)
Frank Zappa (Felt Forum)
Billy Cobham (The Rainbow Theater, London. The opening act was Average White Band, but we gabbed in the lobby instead of watching them.)
*Miles Davis (the 1st time in 1975 at Philharmonic Hall)
Return to Forever (Carnegie Hall)
Count Basie Jazzmobile Concert at Grant's Tomb
*McCoy Tyner/Keith Jarrett/Herbie Hancock solo piano (Carnegie Hall)
*Tribute to Roy Eldridge with surprise guests Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie (Town Hall)
*Tribute to John Coltrane (posthumous, of course!) with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Andrew White (Town Hall)
*Gil Evans Retrospective with Budd Johnson, Lew Soloff, Jon Faddis, Gil Evans Orch. (Town Hall)
*Herbie Hancock Retrospective (1st "V.S.O.P." Concert) (New York City Center)
*An evening of solo performances by Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, Joe Venuti (!), Gary Burton/Steve Swallow and others (Carnegie Hall)
*Ted Curson/George Coleman/Anthony Braxton triple bill (Carnegie Hall)
Shakti/Weather Report double bill (Beacon Theater)
David Bedford's "The Odyssey" (Royal Albert Hall, London)
Sun Ra (I saw him first at The Squat Theater, but The Public Theater is a more "theater-y space)
Cecil Taylor (Delacorte Theater in Central Park)
*Ornette Coleman Retrospective (Avery Fisher Hall: 1977)
Ornette Coleman & Prime Time (The Public Theater)
Art Ensemble of Chicago/World Saxophone Quartet double bill (Symphony Space)
Lester Bowie's Sho 'Nuff Orchestra (Symphony Space)
"Interpretations of Monk" with Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Steve Lacy, Charlie Rouse, etc. (Wollman Auditorium, Columbia University)
Jay McShann and Claude "Fiddler" Williams (Public Theater)
WKCR Benefit Concert Philip Glass/Steve Reich/David Van Tiegham & many more (Same weekend as Three Mile Island: Carnegie Hall)
Steve Lacy Sextet (Public Theater, 1983)
Min Tanaka/Milford Graves/Derek Bailey (Lila Acheson Wallace Auditorium, 1982 - I still have the program for this one)
Dizzy Gillespie (The first time as a headliner was at Avery Fisher Hall in 1981)
Benny Carter Orchestra/Ella Fitzgerald (Radio City Music Hall)
"Swing Reunion" (Red Norvo, Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, etc.: Town Hall)
Carmen McRae backed by Paul Jeffrey Orch. with guest Dizzy Gillespie (Symphony Space: Not a "concert," per se. A recording session to fill missing gaps in a videotaped concert performance that I didn't see.)
Ellis Larkins (Carnegie Recital Hall)
Stan Getz (Carnegie Hall)
Joao Gilberto (Carnegie Hall - much more recently, and now I'll get closer to the present just so I can finish this!)
Betty Carter and Strings (Alice Tully Hall: JALC)
Jackie McLean Retrospective (Alice Tully Hall: JALC)
*Tito Puente/Celia Cruz + Mongo Santamaria (Carnegie Hall)
B.B. King (Beacon Theater)
Charles Mingus "Epitaph" Premiere, Gunther Schuller, conductor (Alice Tully Hall)
Sonny Rollins with Guest Wynton Marsalis (Town Hall)
Alice & Ravi Coltrane + Ravi & Anoushka Shankar (Town Hall, I think. Not the first time I saw Ravi Shankar - that was at Carnegie Hall - but this was the only time I saw Alice Coltrane)
Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra (St. John the Divine)
Charles Lloyd (Merkin Concert Hall)
Tomasz Stanko (Merkin Concert Hall)
*Shirley Horn (Carnegie Hall)
Gerry Mulligan/Zubin Metha (Avery Fisher Hall)
Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra plays Thelonious Monk, with guests Steve Lacy and Danilo Perez (Carnegie Hall)
Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra plays Ellington (Alice Tully Hall + many other concerts afterwards)
Phil Woods Quartet / Jon Hendricks Group: "Tribute to Charlie Parker" (Palais des Festivals in Cannes, 1990)
Modern Jazz Quartet & Orchestra (Carnegie Hall)
Joe Henderson Big Band (Alice Tully Hall)

Edit: The Squat Theater was not where I saw Sun Ra for the first time. He played there starting in '79, and I'd seen him play two years before at the Storyville jazz club. I don't think that was the where I saw him for the first time, though, so when and where that was is a mystery for now....

Saturday at Celebrate Brooklyn

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:28:30 GMT

What a movie still!

I probably won't be able to go myself, but I saw the listing for this, and thought that LJ-ers would like to know about it.

Saturday, June 20, 7:30 P.M.
La Nave de los Monstruos, with live score by Ethel and Gutbucket

The vintage Mexican science fiction classic La Nave De Los Monstruos (The Monsters’ Ship, 1959) with live music, no less! For more info, go here.

Annie Ross gets the NEA Jazz Masters Award

Fri, 22 May 2009 03:20:35 GMT

Annie Ross performs "Twisted" (No, Joni Mitchell didn't write that!).

Count Basie is at the piano; Tony Bennett is in the audience. It's quite a party!

Words of wisdom...

Thu, 21 May 2009 03:46:55 GMT

Benny Goodman Centennial

Tue, 19 May 2009 17:02:10 GMT

Non-stop Benny Goodman music can be heard on WKCR from now through June 1st!

Listen now!!

Trip to the Louis Armstrong House

Sun, 17 May 2009 05:48:43 GMT

A happy bunch having just visited the Louis Armstrong House in Queens: ttbdan, Rob, Marco, David, Amy and Peter

Today, a group of mostly non-LJers made a trek out to Corona to visit the Louis Armstrong house museum. Sad to say, picture-taking in the house isn't allowed, so here's a pic of all of us on the way to the lovely brunch at Sripraphai that followed.

The young docent we had at the museum really knew his stuff, and clearly loved working at the house. I've posted before about how its interior design is over the top; ttbdan's ecstatic response to the Armstrongs' dressing room, with its silver wallpaper lining the wall, ceiling and dresser drawers, was almost frightening in its intensity, but we all joined in his glee.

ttbdan demonstrates that he's a do-bee, not a don't-bee.

There were no local Manhattan-bound local 7 trains running today, so we had to stroll a bit through Corona in order to get to the elevated train platform in the first picture. Despite predictions of rain, the weather was very cooperative, though, and our jolly crew became even jollier along the way.

Once ensconced at our table in Sripraphai's outdoor garden area, there was a surfeit of witty banter and laughter accompanying the delish chow, although Marco had to send back his Drunken Noodles: he had requested a mild version, but his plate had been entirely covered with chilies. Otherwise, plates were cleaned with abandon.

Overall, a swell Saturday indeed.

Buddy, Can You Spare 20 Million Bucks?

Mon, 04 May 2009 20:10:15 GMT

Oh my. It seems that the Metropolitan Opera was having problems paying their installments on a long-term loan, so the company put up their Chagall paintings as collateral.

That would be quite a job for the repo man, no?

CD covers just can't compare to LP covers

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:57:45 GMT

Thousands more can be seen here.

Annette Hanshaw meets the Ramayana

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:55:58 GMT

An excerpt from a feature by Nina Paley that remains unreleased because the compositions she used on the soundtrack are still under copyright.

The full movie can be seen here.

Channel 13 is showing the film on Saturday, March 7th at 10:45 PM.

Next on my reading list...

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:58:15 GMT

I saw this in a bookstore on Saturday and did a double-take.

This should be interesting!!

Can't wait to have my prix-fixe dinner.....

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:31:54 GMT

Saint Valentine Reliquary at Old Saint Ferdinand's Shrine, in Florissant, Missouri

Happy Valentine's Day from The Onion!

100 Foreign Films meme

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:55:59 GMT

Thankfully I've seen most of the checked films on the big screen!

( ) adventures of felix / drôle de félix
(x) age of gold / age d’or
(x) all about my mother / todo sobre mi madre
(x) amelie / fabuleux destin d'amélie poulain
(x) andalusian dog / chien d’andalou
( ) antonia’s line / antonia
(x) ¡átame! / tie me up, tie me down (on VHS)
(x) au revoir les enfants
( ) auberge espagnole

( ) babette’s feast / babettes gæstebud
(x) bad education / mala educación

( ) barbarian invasions / invasions barbares
( ) barren lives / vidas secas
( ) battle of algiers / battaglia di algeri (50% of it on TV)
(x) battleship potemkin
(x) belle de jour
( ) belle époque
(x) bicycle thief / ladri di biciclette
(x) black orpheus / orfeu negro
(x) blowup
(x) blue / trois couleurs: bleu
(x) boat / boot ("Das Boot"?)
(x) bread and chocolate / pane e cioccolata
( ) bread and tulips / pane e tulipani
(x) breathless / a bout de souffle
(x) bubble / habuah
( ) bye bye brasil

( ) cage aux folles
(x) celebration / festen
(x) children of paradise / les enfants du paradis
(x) cinema paradiso
(x) class / entre les murs (saw this with anarchy_lime last Thursday!
( ) crouching tiger, hidden dragon / wo hu cang long
( ) conformist / il conformista

( ) decline of the american empire / déclin de l'empire américain
(x) diabolique
(x) discreet charm of the bourgeoisie / le charme discret de la bourgeoisie
( ) diva
( ) dona flor and her two husbands / dona flor e seus dois maridos (Maybe)

( ) eight women (8 women) / 8 femmes

( ) fanny and alexander / fanny och alexander
( ) femme nikita
(x) fourth man / vierde man

(x) garden of the finzi-continis / garden of the finzi-continis
(x) good bye lenin!
( ) hail, mary / je vous salue, marie (tried watching this on VHS but fell asleep)

( ) indochine
( ) irreversible

( ) jean de florette
( ) jesus of montreal / jésus de montréal
( ) ju dou
(x) jules and jim / jules et jim

( ) labyrinth of passion / laberinto de pasiones
(x) last metro / dernier metro
(x) law of desire / ley del deseo
( ) leon / la león
( ) life is beautiful / vita è bella

(x) m
( ) madame rosa
( ) manon of the spring / manon des sources
( ) matador (almodovar)
( ) mediterraneo
( ) mephisto
(x) metropolis
( ) moscow does not believe in tears / moskva slezam ne verit
(x) murmur of the heart / le souffle au coeur (saw on cable)
(x) my life in pink / ma vie en rose

( ) night of the shooting stars / la notte di san lorenzo
(x) nine queens / nueve reinas
( ) nineteen hundred (1900) / novecento

( ) official story / historia official

(x) pan's labyrinth / el laberinto del fauno
(x) pixote

( ) rayon vert / green ray
( ) reader / lectrice
(x) red / trois couleurs: rouge
( ) romance
( ) run, lola, run / lola rennt

( ) salo
( ) seventh seal / sjunde inseglet
(x) shoah
(x) shoot the piano player / tirez sur le pianiste
( ) state of siege / état de siège
(x) steam / hamam
(x) strawberry and chocolate / fresa y chocolate

(x) tampopo
(x) taxi zum klo
(x) that obscure object of desire / cet obscur objet du désir
( ) tous les matins du monde

(x) umbrellas of cherbourg / les parapluies de cherbourg
( ) under the sun of satan / sous le soleil de satan

(x) vie en rose / môme

(x) walk on water
( ) what have i done to deserve this / ¿qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!!
( ) when father was away on business / otac na sluzbenom putu
( ) wings of desire / der himmel uber berlin
(x) women on the verge of a nervous breakdown / mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios

( ) y tu mamá también
(x) yossi & jagger

(x) z

Another web archive to get lost in...

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:55:11 GMT

LIFE Magazine's amazing photo archive has been digitized, and it's all available on Google!

Marcel Duchamp Descending a Staircase

The Chet Baker Quartet

Both multiple exposures were made by the same photographer, Eliot Elisofon

NY in Legos

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:09:34 GMT

This photo feature on the NY Times website made me smile this morning.

How did I miss this?

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:04:13 GMT

The Post Office issued a set of "Black Cinema" stamps last July, but I only found that out yesterday, when I received a Christmas card in the mail and had the pleasant shock of seeing Louis Jordan's picture on the stamp. It shows a reproduction of a poster for an obscure film named for his hit record Caldonia.

A quick trip to the USPS website, revealed that this was one just one stamp in a set of five. One of the films pictured The Sport of the Gods, is news to me but three of them are old favorites:

Black and Tan begins with some horrifyingly stereotyped humor, and Duke Ellington simply can't act. Yet this short film's nightclub sequences provide a rare opportunity to get an idea of what it was like to see his great orchestra at the Cotton Club.

Duke Ellington & his cotton club orchestra
Uploaded by bhgbjazz

If Black and Tan takes us to Harlem, Princesse Tam Tam transports us to Paris when Josephine Baker was the toast of the town.

Finally, King Vidor's Hallelujah is in many ways a remarkable film, if only because Hollywood hired Irving Berlin to write the song featured in the revival meeting scene of this all-black drama. Nina Mae McKinney's performance as a femme fatale is very memorable, though, as are Vidor's often ingenious visuals.

Blue Blowers Blues - Curtis Mosby's Blue Blowers
Uploaded by lordlister

The US Mint puts Duke Ellington on a coin

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 04:49:36 GMT

The US government makes a good decision, and I am in shock.
The US Mint will be releasing a Duke Ellington quarter as part of its 50 States series (which is now including US Territories and such).

Choosing Duke Ellington, rather than some old marble building, to represent Washington DC's contribution to American history is one of the most enlightened decisions I've heard of in a long time!

UPDATE: The residents of DC made the actual vote for the final choice of the coin design, with the other two options being dedications to Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Banneker.

According to the Coin News website, the participation in the vote was tiny: 6,089 District residents cast online, mail or telephone votes.

The choice of inscription, "Justice For All," is fitting for the Ellington coin (check out his My People disc), but, as the site notes, "In a letter to (US Mint) Director Moy, (DC) Mayor Fenty could not help but bring up the Mint’s rejection of D.C.’s first inscription choice, "Taxation Without Representation."

So the government fucked up as usual after all!