9 August 2003: I’m feeling a bit better than I did a few days ago. And the catalyst for the change is the reason I’m writing. Consider this entry, as well, an addendum to the midterm update I posted on 22 July.
     Several weeks ago, I was returning from an errand and listening to Liz Wright, a DJ on the local jazz station WEMU-FM. She was excitedly introducing her next selection. As she hyped it up, she emphasized that this woman had the same name, but with two z’s. So she played the song. I didn’t really pay much attention to it, though I thought it was pleasant enough for a morning drive. But since that day, I’ve continued to hear little things about her and have seen more than a few magazine features. So, on Monday, just as I learned that things had gone south, I went to the record store for preventive aural therapy. One of the things I picked up was Lizz Wright’s Salt, which features a cast of performers and arrangers whose work I admire, especially Brian Blade and Jon Cowherd. And upon hearing it, I was blown away. If you want a good idea of why I love this record, go to your local record store, get Lizz Wright on one of those listening kiosks, and cue the CD to track 10, “Blue Rose.” Her delivery is perfectly varied (reminiscent at times of both Tracey Thorn and Des’ree); the arrangement is subtly beautiful and complementary; the playing is nicely restrained until it needs to be opened up. It’s frankly one of the best songs I’ve heard in a while.
     So, I guess I have another candidate for the year-end list....

5 August 2003: Up and down, up and down: that’s the way things are going. Feast and famine, hello and goodbye.
     Up: I just returned from Satchmo Summerfest in New Orleans yesterday. All in all, it was a pretty amazing weekend. My presentation got quite an enthusiastic reception, and I also made some valuable contacts for future work I want to do in New Orleans and elsewhere.
     Down: I also finished a demo of a song today that I had started a couple of weeks ago. Interestingly enough, in the time I spent writing, recording and tinkering, what was supposed to be a song of welcoming turned instead into a plea for reconciliation. I just never know what’s going to happen. I’ve posted a sample of the rough demo on the Music page under the name “Permanent Summer.” As always, let me know what you think.

22 July 2003: Here it is, the middle of the summer, and my ties to Michigan are effectively cut. In May, I cleaned out the office, gave back the keys and returned every piece of university property I had. At the end of June, my parking permit expired, and my last check arrived. While I do still have an e-mail account, internet access, web space and library privileges, I know I can’t really count on having them for much longer. So that’s why I moved this site to a new home. I hope the changes make it easier to navigate. More content updates are, of course, forthcoming.
      And because it’s roughly the right time of year, here’s the midterm Music update. This has been a year of largely disappointing recordings. Even after several listens, I haven’t been able to find a lot to like on Pete Yorn’s Day I Forgot. As one online reviewer put it, this recording sounds as though it’s filled with re-recorded outtakes from the musicforthemorningafter. Whether that’s true or not, the album does sound as though it was too hastily assembled. Too bad. I still haven’t made up my mind about Ben Harper’s Diamonds on the Inside. There are some great songs on there, but I’m still trying to understand what he wanted to do and how he intended this recording to sit alongside his others.... Although I was initially struck by the Bad Plus’s These Are the Vistas and astonished by the amount of press it got, I don’t find myself wanting to listen to it very much these days. Maybe that’ll change.... There are some other recordings, though, that are sure to make the year-end best-of list: Cat Power’s You Are Free, Blur’s Think Tank, Wayne Shorter’s Alegría, Massive Attack’s 100th Window and Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief. And there are, as well, recordings slated for release later this year that could go either way. Keep your ears open for the latest releases from Joe Henry, the Cardigans (currently available only as an import), Terence Blanchard, Violet Indiana and Fiona Apple, among others. There are also recordings I haven’t purchased yet which might also be contenders, particularly those by the Waterboys, Damien Rice, Annie Lennox and Keller Williams (yes, I know he releases recordings on the same label as the String Cheese Incident).
      This is not really personal news, but it’s on my mind as I muse about what’s happening in the commercial music world. Although the significance of this for the jazz world is unclear, it’s worth announcing (per the current issue of Down Beat), that Wynton Marsalis, without a recording contract since late in 2000, has signed with Blue Note. At least Norah Jones’s success might mean that he, Joe Lovano, Greg Osby and a number of other artists keep their contracts a little longer. Ditto for artists on Verve vis-a-vis Diana Krall. Jazz at the major labels is still in a transitional period—with those labels that are still releasing new recordings trimming their rosters and cutting back on tour support and promotion. There might be people out there sounding a death knell, but they’d do well to observe that things were much more bleak in the 1970s, when the recording industry also experienced a slump. (And for the truly observant, a reading of Billboard and Rolling Stone in 1998 and 1999 makes it clear that before most people knew what mp3’s were, record sales were already starting to decline—probably, as many surmise, because the vinyl-CD replacement cycle had run its course.)

30 May 2003: At some point this summer, I’ll be moving this page to a new server. Why? Because of the things that have happened since the last update.
      All of the major news is good. After getting a preliminary and positive decision from the School of Music back in February, I received official notification two weeks ago that I had been promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure) at the University of Michigan. Thanks to all of you who were asked to write (and did) on my behalf. Alas, by the time official word reached me, I had already accepted one of the two job offers I had. The cryptic silences in the late February update involved my being shortlisted for positions at two universities, both of which, in the end, made offers. Thus, in the fall, I’ll be moving a little further west and south to join the music department of the University of Chicago (as Associate Professor of Music with tenure). It’s all quite heady, but I think it’s a great choice for me and a positive step. Ah, city life!

21 February 2003: It’s been a long time since I updated this page. Most of the useful news to report shows up on the Music page, which is once again functional. Many things have happened since the beginning of December that are worth reporting, but those updates will have to wait for a few weeks. I’m still waiting for things to settle before I can say anything, cryptic or not, about what’s happening.
      In the meantime, go to the Music page for my list of favorite releases from 2002. As I mentioned before, I decided that limiting the list to ten was simply too arbitrary. So last year’s list is a more respectable 15. And there are, of course, things I didn’t get to (like Bright Eyes and Jason Moran’s latest) that might one day be favorites. So much music, so little time....

2 December 2002: I’ve just returned to Michigan from a brief time in Tennessee where my maternal grandfather, the one who encouraged my interest in jazz, passed away on 20 November. He was, by all accounts, an extremely opinionated and sometimes difficult man. But those who knew him, particularly those students in band programs in Milan, Tennessee, schools over the last few decades, remember him as a dedicated and giving teacher. Many of them were present for his funeral, and three of the most dedicated travelled a great distance to play during the service. I also got the opportunity to meet the former student who spearheaded the effort in the fall of 2001 to have the city of Milan name a street in my grandfather’s honor. Fittingly, Robert Hodge Drive is adjacent to the band room at the Milan Middle School:

      In unrelated news, stay tuned for the 2002 best-of list in the next few weeks. For perhaps obvious reasons, I’m going to drop the limitation of ten items and include everything I loved this year (including reissues), hopefully with some capsule reviews.

15 November 2002: The long-promised migration of materials to the Music page has, of course, not yet taken place. A preliminary step, however, has been completed: the relocation of mp3 links to the Music page. In addition, I’ve decided not to waste my limited UM storage space for mp3 files. So, at least temporarily, they’ll be hosted elsewhere. If anyone runs into difficulty downloading the files, please let me know, and I’ll return to the old setup.
      The Ann Arbor Noise Collective is growing and planning activities for 2003. The details are yet to be finalized, but plan on a major introduction of the collective’s members and music sometime in the spring. In the meantime, links to rough mixes of some member projects are available in the Good Noises thread.
      Lastly, the work of the summer is paying off, and the tenure dossier is in (with no preliminary decision forthcoming before late January). After a few projects get completed on the work front, I may, come December, actually be able to devote a bit of concentrated time to fixing all the problems with various tunes and engaging in the difficult process of deciding what stays and what goes.... Right now, though, there are lots of scraps of songs—chord progressions, basslines, partial lyrics, drumbeats, etc.—that need to be fleshed out or abandoned. It might take longer than I expect.

21 September 2002: The Ann Arbor Noise Collective site is under construction. While many of the components of the site are still being debated, one thing that is already available is “The Conversation.” Cheekily, one might describe it as what happens when a bunch of musicians and gearheads get together to talk about what they love about music and recording. As it’s configured right now, only those people who are actually members of the collective can post items to the discussion. Still, what’s there is worth checking out. Use this link to read how we think and to imagine how the results might sound someday....

16 September 2002: As you might have noticed, I’ve redesigned this site with the aim of making it easier to load and use, especially for people connecting to the Internet via modem (as I do from home). Thanks to the friends who looked at and commented on the new interface over the last week or so. As some of them have suggeested, the interface is more streamlined, looks better, and works better than the last version.
      Perhaps the biggest addition is the inclusion of a separate page for music. Over the next several weeks, I’ll be moving most of the music-related content from other pages to that page. Stay tuned for the various goodies that I’ll post there, particularly material related to the Ann Arbor Noise Collective.

18 July 2002: It’s been a long time since the last update, and there’s a lot to report. I’ve been working like a fiend trying to finish the book and dispatch a number of other projects to their intended destinations. Some of the work has paid off. My essay on rock and meaning (with a focus on the Cocteau Twins) has just been published in Current Musicology (the offprints came a few days ago). A shorter essay on jazz as musical and cultural practice will be in The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, due out in December. The jazz/poetry essay that has been percolating since 1995 was just submitted and hopefully will make the cut for the second volume of The Jazz Cadence of American Culture. I’m currently revising the jazz-related articles for the next edition of the Harvard Dictionary of Music. And did I mention that I’m up for tenure this year?
      In other news, sometime in the next week, a select group of 16 people (friends from different life stages) will be receiving a package in the mail that contains six demos from Honey-Flavored Soap. Although it’s not quite the equivalent of tooting my horn, I have to say I really like the way the CD sounds. That’s as it should be. How terrible would it be if I didn’t want to hear my own music? For those who weren’t included in the mailing (and really, it takes some time to burn, individually label and package CDs), there are some sound files that you can download to hear what the others did: just click on the Music button above.
      Though 2001 seemed to be a somewhat lackluster year where new recordings were concerned, I can’t say the same about 2002. We’ve just passed the halfway mark, and already I have a good ten candidates for this year’s top-ten list. That’s pretty amazing when you consider that the new recordings by Beth Orton, Coldplay (but that one could bite), and many others are still to come. Until then, though, the latest stuff from Los Lobos, Elvis Costello, Wayne Shorter, Tanya Donelly, Gomez, Doves, Mark Eitzel, Morsel, and Tom Waits is keeping me company at night.

29 December 2001: Once again, it’s time to unveil the top-ten list for the six or seven of you who read this page. This year’s list was particularly difficult to make because, at first, there were only three records that affected me enough to merit inclusion. To make matters worse, several really good albums from other years occupied me more than this year’s releases: Gozo Poderoso by Aterciopelados, The Moon & Antarctica by Modest Mouse, and The Hour of Bewilderbeast by Badly Drawn Boy are all from 2000, while Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock and Mark Hollis’s self-titled recording come from 1991 and 1998, respectively. So many of the new records sounded amazing at first and then lost their appeal with repeated listenings (Chris Whitley’s Rocket House is a good example). I did receive a number of great tips on things to listen to, especially from Miranda Presley. It’ll take me a while to get through the whole set of suggestions, but one of them (which I just heard three days ago) made the list. I still don’t know how I missed Sparklehorse; I even saw pictures of PJ Harvey performing with them in an issue of Rolling Stone over the summer....
      But enough rambling. The releases that almost made the list were, in no special order: Suzanne Vega’s Songs in Red and Gray, Jim White’s No Such Place, Ryan Adams’ Gold, Jason Moran’s Black Stars, Depeche Mode’s Exciter, Caetano Veloso’s Noites do Norte, Tortoise’s Standards, His Name Is Alive’s Someday My Blues Will Cover the Earth, Prince’s Rainbow Children, and self-titled releases by Cousteau, Gorillaz, and Stephen Malkmus. The number of also-rans (twelve) is enough to clarify how difficult (and in some ways ridiculous) this whole process is.
      Here, finally, is the list arranged alphabetically by artist/group:

     Lastly, there are still lots of recordings I didn’t get to hear in their entirety that might have altered what you see above.They include Bob Dylan’s Love and Theft, Los Super Seven’s Canto, Angie Stone’s Mahogany Soul, Mary J. Blige’s No More Drama, Roland Orzabal’s Tomcats Screaming Outside, Marc Ribot’s Saints, Sam Newsome’s Global Unity, Avishai Cohen’s Unity, and Henry Threadgill’s two(!) recordings: Everybody’s Mouth’s a Book and Up Popped the Two Lips. The Strokes and the White Stripes were avoided on purpose.

27 December 2001: This is has been a long and difficult year, filled with a variety of complications that had professional and personal ripples. It wasn’t so much that the complications were hellish or debilitating, they just required a large investment of time and effort that, in some cases, might have been more fruitfully directed elsewhere. (How’s that for vagueness to protect the innocent and the guilty?) The upshot is that the manuscript for the book is not completed, but really is almost done; that a couple of articles were accepted for publication; that I’ve made good progress on putting together three more that might be out of my door by early April; and that, if everything else pans out, I’ll finish recording Honey-Flavored Soap in the summer of 2002.

4 January 2001: A memorial service for Mark Tucker will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, 2 February in St. Peter’s Church, 619 Lexington Avenue (at 54th) in New York City. It is open to all. The most convenient entrance to the church, if memory serves, is on 54th Street rather than on Lexington. Among other things, the church hosts the monthly meetings and other special events of the New York chapter of the Duke Ellington Society.

21 December 2000: I am sad to report the passing of Mark Tucker on 6 December at his home in Williamsburg, Virginia. As a number of postings to the jazz research e-mail list attest, he is among the most respected scholars and writers on jazz to have appeared in the last 20 years. He was one of my mentors during my years as a graduate student at Columbia University and continued to be a good friend and advocate in the time since I finished there. Currently, there are plans underway for a memorial service to be held in New York City early in 2001. More information will be posted here when it is available. For more information about Tucker’s work and life, read the obituary in the New York Times written by Ben Ratliff (NOTE: viewing the Times obituary may require [free] registration with the New York Times Online). Contributions to a memorial fund can be sent to:

Mark Tucker Memorial Fund
Center for Black Music Research
Columbia College
600 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605-1996.

18 December 2000: It’s that time of year, when, like it or not, some rock critics and fans engage in that exercise of making their top-ten lists for the year coming to a close. Making these lists is always a difficult exercise because there are always really great things that have to get left out. Among the things that almost made the list were David Sylvian’s career retrospective Everything and Nothing, Belle & Sebastian’s Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk like a Peasant, Joe Jackson’s Night and Day, Vol. II and Common’s Like Water for Chocolate (in some ways, Voodoo, Part II). Other items, that I heard for the first time this year, include the first two albums by Eric Mathews on Sub Pop—It’s Heavy in Here and The Lateness of the Hour—Everything but the Girl’s Temperamental, Angie Stone’s Black Diamond and Willie Nelson’s Red-Headed Stranger. But here’s the list, based partially on how much time I spent listening to these records and how often I recommended them to friends:

Happy holidays.

10 November 2000: I’m on leave from the University of Michigan this academic year, spending much of my time in New York City. I’m trying to finish Blowin’ the Blues Away as well as a couple of scholarly articles.
      On my frequent trips back to Ann Arbor, I’m gradually finishing the tracks for Honey Flavored Soap, my first CD.  The title is a bit of trivia having to do with my favorite bar in Ann Arbor.  There are a few tracks that are almost completely done—“Doubt,” “Pretty Chords” and “That Place”—and others that are in various states of completion—“We Could,” “Haunted,” and “Somewhere Slow” among them.  In the end, there’ll probably be about ten tracks.  When it all comes together, I’ll post a few sound samples here, make about a hundred copies and distribute them to friends.