Critic's Corner
Aghori Mhori Mei — Smashing Pumpkins
There seems to be a crazy divide occurring within The Smashing Pumpkins fan base. The band is probably one of the most important alt-rock bands of all time. Their 1993 masterpiece Siamese Dream is probably one of the best albums of all time, and has majorly helped to shape music of all genres since. What was so special about that album is that it was completely new and different and weird. Almost as much of a novelty for its time as The Beatles.
The new idea on that album, as my father notably pointed out to me when I heard it for the first time on a long car drive, is the opposing yin-yang forces of James Iha’s heavy, sludge-metal guitar and Billy Corgan’s weirdly high-pitched alien voice. It feels authentically grungy, and uniquely them. It doesn’t sound like Nirvana or Alice In Chains or any other ’90s grunge …
Crime Blotter
The US Department of Justice has charged Lisa Findley of Kimberling City, Missouri with faking documents, forging signatures, and impersonating officers of a fictitious loan company in a scheme to auction off Graceland. Prosecutors said Findley claimed that Lisa Marie Presley had signed over the estate prior to her death as collateral for a loan she hadn’t repaid.
According to prosecutors, Findley posed as three different people associated with a fake private lender called Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC. She told the Presley estate that Lisa Marie Presley had borrowed $3.8 million in 2018 from the fake lender and had pledged Graceland as collateral.
To support her claim, Findley fabricated loan documents, forged signatures for both Elvis Presley’s daughter and a notary public in Florida, and filed a fake deed of trust with the Shelby County Register’s Office and a false creditor …
Keith Jarrett Drags Our Asses to Church
The art of playing the wrong instrument
Somewhere out there in the night is an animal with electric eyes waiting to devour you
Jazz piano isn’t for everyone
As the story goes, Miles Davis once stopped a mid-twenties Keith Jarrett in a jazz club to tell him he was playing the wrong instrument. Jarrett responded by saying he was relieved someone else understood that. The two men went on to play together in stints, with both Davis’s touring band and his early ’70s sextet.
Jarrett played piano when the two met, and he still plays piano now. Davis paired him on the keys with Chick Corea, giving his live tour at the time the kind of bebop backcourt that puts jerseys in rafters. So, as is often the case when it comes to genius, the comment about the instrument wasn’t a comment about the instrument. It was dharma. A legendary moment of game recognizing game.
Jarrett’s career wouldn’t calm down for five decades, and neither would the Lao Tzu-esque anecdotes. One of his personal mantras became, “Don't follow in the footsteps of the wise, seek what they have …
