Interesting story about a substitute teacher whose computer at school got infected with spyware causing pornographic popup ads to appear. The State of Connecticut unbelievably charged her with 4 felony counts of showing school children pornography (worth up to 40 years behind bars) and didn't so much as even conduct an expert forensic examination of the hard drive. Volunteer computer experts from around the country stepped in to examine the hard drive and found that indeed there was spyware and that the school system didn't maintain the computer properly. This still wasn't enough for the State's Attorney on the case, Michael Regan, or the Norwich, CT police dept. or the school IT people to admit they were in error and after 4 years, the accused agreed to a plea bargain because her health is declining fighting the case - $100 fine, pleading guilty to disorderly conduct and losing her CT teacher's certificate.

http://blogs.courant.com/rick_green/2008/11/
connecticut-drops-felony-charg.html

and

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/
breaking-julie-amero-horror-is-over.html

Auto CEOs & Private Jets

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/19/autos.ceo.jets/index.html

The CEOs claim that they need to fly private because of "security." Right. Maybe they thought Congress would give them the $25B in cash and they didn't want to bother trying to explain it to the TSA at Reagan National. Or maybe they just don't like sitting next to "Joe Six-Pack" on Southwest? N5116, a chartered Gulfstream G-IV landed a while ago in Detroit - was it the CEO of GM, Ford or Chrysler?

Molly Ringwald - Jazz Living Legend?

I don't make a habit of reading tmz.com but this came up in a Google blog search (the first listing for jazz today!?) and caught my eye:
http://www.tmz.com/2008/11/19/molly-ringwald-jazz-legend/

OK, I'm sure Molly Ringwald is probably a fine singer, as good or or maybe even better than any other former 80's teenage star who tries their hand at singing jazz, but let me think - Ella Fitzgerald, legend (check), Billie Holiday, legend (check), Molly Ringwald, ???????? If she's serious about playing jazz she should tell her promoter to drop the legend stuff and let her music speak for itself.

Review: Ornette Coleman @ UNC Chapel Hill 11/13/08

Ornette Coleman and his band played at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last week. Here's my take on the performance:

Likes:

• Ornette Coleman; I don't understand his dialect of improvising that well, but it seems he is fully committed to it. Whether on ballads or up-tempo tunes he plays from his heart - a big plus for me. He also has a plaintive tone on the alto which fits his compositions well.
  
• His electric bassist and to some degree, his acoustic bassist also, listen well to Coleman and complement him. Again, the dialect that they're playing is a barrier for me, but I can tell they are interacting.
• Well-rehearsed arrangements. This was the last concert in a tour so that helps in this regard.
  

Dislikes:

• I didn't understand how the drummer (his son, Denardo) was relating to the group. Most of the night he seemed to be playing grooves based on a metric division of what the rest of the group was playing. Doing this for part of songs (a la Miles' 2nd quintet) or maybe even a whole song might be OK but during every song in a 2 hour concert was distracting at best.
• Doctoring up Bach's 1st Cello Suite. First off, Bach's Cello Suites are written as solo pieces, with the cello accompanying itself, so expanding it to a group format needs to be carefully thought out and have a clear purpose. Second, I know bass players sometimes play the suites, but as any bass/player will tell you, bowing will show off any problems with intonation and there were plenty during that evening. Then there was the funk backbeat from the drums to drive the final nail in the coffin.
  
• While we're on the bass, too much thumb position bowing. The bass player favored the upper register most of the evening which, for me, becomes texturally annoying after an hour or so. If the bowing is part of the group sound, why not try a cello?

Question: What's the deal with Ornette playing the trumpet? He just picked it up for 8 measures here and there and played some random tones (I don't know what it's called musically - just moving your fingers a lot on the valves)? Is it a texture thing? A tribute to Don Cherry?

Louder Oceans

The oceans are getting louder thanks to global warming:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97058246

Another CNN article on jazz!

CNN has another article on jazz today, this time about Washington DC saxophonist and educator Davey Yarborough. Keep the articles coming CNN!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/11/06/
heroes.marsalis.yarborough/index.html

Jazz club list on CNN today

CNN has an article today on some lesser-known jazz clubs around the world:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/
getaways/11/05/jazz.cities/index.html