ESCAPE FROM TEENAGE WASTELAND

 THE GREEN DAY STORY

Work has begun on Hank's next magnum opus, with the working title Escape From Teenage Wasteland: The Green Day Story. Calls are being exchanged with management, Warner Brothers and many others regarding what we hope will be the definitive book on one of the most important rock groups of the admittedly young millennium.

DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS OF THE RECORD BUSINESS: Why So Much of the Music You Hear Sucks

It's done and if all goes according to Hoyle, Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business: Why So Much Music You Hear Sucks will hit the stores in the very early days of 2007.  Save a couple of bucks from your holiday money to buy a copy!  Hank will, of course, autograph a copy for any dancing partner that sends it to him with a stamped, self addressed return envelope.  That goes for any of his books.

They hype has already started!

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From Monsters and Critics.com

People News
$5.9 million new home for Billy Joel
By Bang
Feb 1, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Billy Joel has splashed out on a $5.9million home in New York.

The sprawling townhouse - in the city\'s West Village area - features a plush full-floor bedroom suite and a pool.

The home, which was sold by sculptor Seward Johnson, is the latest addition to Joel\'s property empire.

The star already owns homes in the Hamptons, TriBeCa, Centre Island and Miami Beach.

Last year, it was revealed the singer once drank furniture polish to try to kill himself.

In \'Billy Joel: The Life & Times of an Angry Young Man\', author Hank Bordowitz quoted the singer as saying: \'I drank furniture polish... It looked tastier than bleach.\'

Before he drank it, Joel reportedly wrote a suicide note that eventually became the lyrics to \'Tomorrow Is Today\'.

Bordowitz detailed how Joel\'s friend, drummer Jon Small, discovered the star - who has had a well documented battle with alcoholism - passed out in his closet and rushed him to hospital.

Joel - who was once married to supermodel Christie Brinkley - was moved to a psychiatric ward and put on suicide watch.

He later begged his manager to get him out, pleading: \'These people are really crazy.\'

Copyright 2006 BANG Media International
© Copyright 2003 - 2005 by monstersandcritics.com.
This notice cannot be removed without permission.
 

Noize of the world: Non-western musicians in their own words - Hank Bordowitz. Soft Skull.
A collection of interviews from Bordowitz' columns in Jazziz magazine. Some interesting ones: Fela Kuti, Winston Rodney (Burning Spear), Duckie Simpson (Black Uhuru), Hankus Netsky (Klesmer Conservatory band), and Frank London (Klezmatics). Some of the other interviews might have been good, but I didn't have time to read them. My problem with this book is not what was included. Its whats excluded and mainly the explanation of why its excluded. There are three entries from "Asia", Osamu Kitajima (a Japanese guitarist living in California), David Lewiston (an American living in Indonesia) and Ravi Shankar and Vijay Anand. According to Hank Bordowitz this is because: "Very little Japanese music, be it pop or traditional finds it way into the rubric of noise of the world". In case you are wondering why this might be Bordowitz uses a quote from Osamu Kitajima to further explain. "A lot of Japanese things are just no good". Now Bordowitz could have explained he didn't interview Japanese (or other Asian musicians) because of language issues, his lack of travel to Japan, lack of knowlege or interest. All of these would have been fine. But instead his book is full of the desire to define what is "world" music and what people should be listening to. Which, in his defense, is sort of what Jazziz magazine is all about. But I call bullshit, and say people should listen to what they want. If you go to the Calgary public library there is a lot of Japanese (and Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian, Pakistani, Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese, etc) folk music, pop music, jazz, and classical. If you go to A&B sound or other not completely shitty record stores you can get Ruins, Boredoms, Merzbow, Meltbanana, and other Japanese noise, experimental, hardcore, punk etc. Keep in mind this book was published in 2004. No excuses for this crap.

OTHER STUFF

Thomas Edison State College

All that remains is for Hank to defend his thesis/capstone project, and he will receive his Master's Degree from Thomas Edison State College of New Jersey.

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Some of you know that Hank went out to Denver to interview for an associate professor's position in the Department of Music and Entertainment Industry Studies.  In fact, we held this issue of DAA until we had news.  And now we have.  We are reminded of the scene from the film The Producers, where Bialystock, Bloom and DeBris are interviewing potential Hitlers.  They come upon one fellow:

DeBris: So tell us about yourself.

Actor: Last year I was up for the male lead in The Robber Bridgegroom.

DeBris: What happened?

Actor: I didn't get it.

That's somewhat how Hank feels -- since early this year, Hank has been involved in the interview process for an Assistant Professorship in the Music Business at UCDHSC, to the point where they flew him out for two days worth of interviews and a lecture.  It was between Hank and another fellow, and the other guy got it.  As Dancing Partner, good pal, and Dean of Science at Staten Island College describes it, "The process is so long and involved, it's kind of like getting left at the alter."

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New online course: Introduction to Jazz

The first term of the online Introduction to Jazz course at Colorado State is done.  We hope to offer it again next spring and may offer a similar course on Rock and Roll in the Fall..

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The Essental Ravi Shankar
Columbia/ Private Music/ Legacy 82876 71610 2
152 minutes

Into his 6th decade as a professional musician, 85 year-old Pandit Ravi Shankar is sometimes described as the father of world music and, "...his genius and his humanity can only be compared to that of Mozart's," according to Yehudi Menuhin. His impact on the music world, with his 90-something recordings and decades of touring, including sold out shows during his current tour, is absolutely immense. If there's someone else currently alive who has been an international influential virtuoso for as long, I cannot think of their name. Miles Davis would have belen close but he passed away 1991. I'm also disappointed to see that on his upcoming tour, he's playing several Canadian cities, but not Winnipeg, where I live! He's selling out 2000 seat concert halls and could easily do the same here.

This two-CD set is actually more thoughtfully compiled than I imagined. Among my favorite recordings of his would be the 1990 album "Passages" - a true desert island recording - with Phillip Glass (1937). I assumed that album was too esoteric to be represented here, but it is, by two selections on disc 2. Disc 1, entitled "Out Of The East", features mostly ragas, spanning the decade from 1957 - 1967, from notable albums such as The Sounds of India (1954), The Genius of Ravi Shankar (1957) and India's Master Musician (1963.) Into The West is the title of disc 2 and its 13 tracks, not surprisingly, feature Shankar performing with the likes of violinist Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999), George Harrison (1943-2001), guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and minimalist composer Phillip Glass.

I happen to like the traditional ragas but also the newer, easier-to-digest material, such as the George Harrison collaboration "Village Dance" from 1987's Tana Mana.

Disc 1:
1. Introduction to Indian Music
2. Dádrá
3. Kafi-Holi (Spring Festival of Colors)
4. Raga Des
5. Raga Palas Kafi [Excerpt]
6. Sitar Todi
7. Dhun: Fast Teental [Excerpt]

Disc: 2
1. Swara-Kakali
2. Discovery of India
3. Vandanaa Trayee
4. Village Dance
5. Raga Miniature
6. Sandhya Raga
7. Memory of Uday
8. Shanti Mantra
9. Ragas in Minor Scale
10. Chappaqua
11. Friar Park
12. Vaishnava Janato/Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram
13. Offering

At the beginning of disc 1, Ravi Shankar narrates a 5-minute introduction to Indian classical music and at the end suggests best how Western listeners can enjoy it.

What I like about the music on disc 2 is, I will shamelessly admit, the ease of remembering the music and being able to identify it during subsequent listens. Some of the tracks have taken on a soundtrack feel to them, which will not please those who prefer traditional ragas.

By and large, you don't listen to Indian classical music hoping to get the same experience as you would from most other forms of music, including European classical music. You let yourself get lost in the experience, the journey, and forget about repetition and familiarity. You can listen to a 15-minute raga and hear something new each time. The music is too rich to be absorbed in one listening and there's no way you can pick up your instrument of choice and repeat the entire raga that you have just listened to. For those with a fertile mind, the melodies are truly heaven sent.

I'm always skeptical when record companies package compilations since they are rarely completely satisfying with their obvious omissions and inclusions of new but usually weak material. Columbia has tackled Ravi Shankar with a liberal representation of his works, but it won't necessarily please everyone. For those with broad tastes who are not Shankar experts, it's a great collection to have. Included in the liner notes is a brief but enjoyable article by Hank Bordowitz.

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THE GUEST LIST… Hank Bordowitz writes: Sing Me Back Home New Orleans Social Club (Burgundy/Sony BMG); Groove Approved, Rhythm & Groove Club (Asend Music)--Six months after Katrina's ill wind, folk coming back from Mardi Gras in New Orleans say the place is still in shambles, with debris in the side streets of the French Quarter and entire sections of town still looking like the wrath of God and the government.  So with thousands of Louisianans still refugees in their own country and the beautiful Crescent City still a shadow of its ribald self, maybe one small good thing has can come out of it all.  See, New Orleans thrives on contradiction - like partying among the ruins up to just midnight on Ash Wednesday and then falling right into Lent. So, while the city continues to crawl from the wreckage, people started paying attention to the quintessential treasure of New Orleans Funk featured on these two albums. Take the chorus of Richard Tee's unspeakably soulful "First Taste of Hurt" on the political-by-context Sing Me Back Home--"I think we're ready/I know we're ready/To go back home--"  or Marcia Ball and Irma Thomas's heavenly blues on "Look Up,"  tangled up in joyful depression, couched in the sweetest funk.  Or Henry Butler putting not even implicit blues into the West Side Story chestnut "Somewhere" and Dr. John's reading of "Walking To New Orleans" ('cause it's the only way to get there?).  For those who need something more obvious, there's the two generations of Neville double feature kicking off the album, the elder insisting "This is My Country," the younger countering he ain't no "Fortunate Son."  Only marginally less an all-star affair, the Rhythm and Groove Club (hey guys, why not "Krewe"?) plays their theme straighter, mostly a salute to the living legend at the controls and on the keyboards of the project, Allan Toussaint, such a great songwriter sometimes he needs to remind us of his brilliance on the piano, as he does on Mose Allison's "Day's Like This." With a band featuring Toussaint, Tinsley Ellis and Nick Payton, it doesn't matter that Jeff Cook is a middling singer.  A frog would sound good with this band playing tunes like Toussaint's Albert King arrangement of "Born Under A Bad Sign" and Toussaint's own "Don't Set Me Back."  And come to think of it, maybe it has that sense of irony after all. [Hank Bordowitz is the author of the forthcoming Dirty Little Secrets of the Record Business: Why So Much Music You Hear Sucks.]
 

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Hank taught Writing About Music again this term.  To see some of the class's work, you can go here to check out Ramapo R0x0rz.  This summer, he is teaching Music In Our Time, and is slated to teach Marketing and Management in the Music Business and Online Music Online this coming fall.