The MazzCast goes live

Back in 1988 and 1989, I recorded a whole bunch of weekly jam sessions in which I was a participant. They were hosted by banjo and song virtuoso Jimmy Mazzy, who is known to trad jazz enthusiasts nationwide as the best in the business at his chosen craft. I'd started sitting in with Jim sporadically in about 1984 or so, when I was still in college (the first time), but by '88-9, was playing every week -- at the time, the venue was Ephraim's restaurant in Sudbury, MA -- and had realized that he had an extraordinary group of musicians assembled. I'm not sure of the merits of my own modest contributions to the group's efforts, but in terms of the overall music that was happening, it seemed like we were catching lightning in a bottle. In a rare bit of foresight, I thought, why not catch some of this stuff on tape, so that instead of just having great memories of these sessions, I'll have the sessions themselves? I brought a tape recorder to Ephraim's every Wednesday night for several months, compiling three shoeboxes' worth of cassettes -- and, listening back to the tapes, there's some pretty good material there. But what to do with it? It was expensive to put out a record, back then, and besides, I doubt it would have sold much -- trad jazz is not exactly synonymous with big sales in the record business. So the tapes sat in my closet for 17 years -- during which time, I moved several times, necessitating some plotting and scheming to make sure the collection survived each move intact. Typically, I'd split them up, putting two boxes on a moving truck while moving the third myself in the car -- so that if the truck crashed, got stolen, or was staffed by chimpanzee movers who destroyed things, I'd have moved at least some of the material separately.

Fast forward to the present day. With my Mac Mini, GarageBand, and an iMic, it's easy to digitize music and turn it into an MP3 file -- and a podcast. What's more, it doesn't cost anything to do, once you've got the Web space. So I give you the Jimmy Mazzy & Friends jazz podcast. As of this moment, I've only got one program on-line -- a 40-minute segment from December 28, 1988. But I'm already working on the next program, which will be made up of the second set from that same session. And there's a whole lot more where that came from.

In future programs, I may mix some other material in with the Mazzy-&-Friends sessions, because I have a lot of recordings of other groups I've played with. But the main idea of the podcast is to get some of these sessions out there, in hopes that they might find an interested audience. Let me know what you think!

Urb's Blog

The wronger he is, the stupider he gets

Awhile back, I opined that George W. Bush was the worst President in my lifetime -- by a nose over Jimmy Carter -- but in light of his exponentially-increasing state of denial over recent events, I'm going to have to strengthen that booby prize a bit and say that, unless I've missed something, Bush is in serious contention for the distinction of being the worst in American history, period.

This observation would almost seem too obvious to bother making -- and it has been made by countless media pundits already. But I can't help shaking my head at the way Bush gets more intransigent, the more disastrous things get in Iraq. And now that the Baker-Hamilton panel, appointed by Congress, is nearing the release date for its recommendations, Bush is throwing away his one chance to save face and salvage his political/historic legacy -- which, ironically, he seems to spend a lot of time worrying about. The panel would seem to be offering him a golden opportunity to fix his broken Iraq policy, meanwhile partially erasing his image as the guy in the old joke, who says, "I did make a mistake once -- I thought I was wrong about something; turned out, I wasn't!"

But no -- listening to Baker-Hamilton would be too smart (although the panel does contain, among others, Reagan-era sleazemonger Ed Meese, so it might be asking a lot to expect stellar results from their deliberations). And this guy is too stupid. Given that his party just got it's collective butt booted out of Congress, I can't imagine him getting too much accomplished in the last two lame-duck years of his term.

Urb's Blog