VaTech, Jazz, Prasant Radhakrishnan and Karlheinz Stockhausen

I tell you, I'm really getting sick of hearing about VA Tech. Our flag at work is at half mast. Why? Because the president pretends to care (he probably really does care) about the victims.
CNN wrote yesterday that all 32 victims' lives were "extraordinary". It seems to me that the most extraordinary was the shooter. He was a mass-murderer. That's pretty odd.
The seeming obsession of the American media (yes, the rest of the world cared deeply only until about Wednesday) with this case seems right out of the NRA's playbook. The laws are the way they want them. So, every attempt to discuss the cause of this action as it relates to gun-control is referred to as someone "polticizing" the situation "too soon". This effectively blocks any resultant changes to the law. Yes, lets arm the students. Fools.

On a very different note, I've been listening to a lot of jazz from all eras, but mostly from the 50s and 60s. I haven't quite been able to stomach fusion yet, but I am trying. And bebop and before just seem rather tame and boring. I've gotten into later John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman. Basically, the free-jazz and "spiritual" jazz that likely sounds like noise to most people. The most amazing change in jazz seemed to come in 1959, with four major albums: "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis, "Time Out" by Dave Brubeck, "Mingus Ah Um" by Charles Mingus and "The Shape of Jazz to Come" by Ornette Coleman. That seems to be when I get on. I think I get off when jazz starts sounding like prog rock, and I am certainly not getting back on with Wynton Marsalis, who seems to think that good jazz ended at 1960. Boo.

So, in my quest for jazz in San Francisco, I was reading about Yoshi's SF, a new San Francisco version of the famous Oakland jazz club that I went to one time in my senior year. It was being discussed in a general article of San Francisco jazz clubs. This led me to the Red Poppy Art House in the Mission (or at least their internet site), where the featured group is called VidyA, a carnatic (a style of Indian classical music) jazz group. Their leader is saxophonist Prasant Radhakrishnan. I did a double-take. He sat next to me in band class at Sunrise Middle School! We used to walk home together and talk about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Crazy. So, I downloaded some clips and listened to them and they are very good, not boring unemotional crap either. I emailed him and we are gonna meet up sometime soon!

My quest for good music has consistently brought me to a modern German classical composer named Karlheinz Stockhausen, from Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhein-Westphalia). Anybody know about him? I've never actually heard him, but I really feel I should. I'll leave you with a list of the artists that claim him as an influence, so that you can see why I'm interested. Although their styles may seem disparate, they are some of my favorites. Usually very quirky, but very interesting and often droning.
Miles Davis,
Charles Mingus,
Herbie Hancock,
Yusef Lateef (someone I'm interested in, but have never heard),
Frank Zappa,
The Beatles (he's also one of the many heads on Sgt. Pepper's),
Jefferson Airplane,
Grateful Dead,
Pink Floyd,
Can (a 60's-70's German "krautrock" group with connections to Kraftwerk that sounds more like a droning Led Zeppelin or Black Mountain, a Canadian group that I saw open for Coldplay)
Kraftwerk,
Bjork,
Sonic Youth,
Igor Stravinsky,
Jerzy Kosinski (a Polish author that Agnieszka says makes her wanna throw up, he's so good),
Thomas Pynchon (also never read, but I know his style well)

Does that list seem interesting to any of you?

Current music - Can - Halleluhwah