As BBC Radio 4 puts it on their website: "Comedy series in which Josie Long attempts to better herself through learning from reference books, with help from Irish comedienne Maeve Higgins."
Unfortunately, you have only one day left to hear the first of the four episodes, which were stripped last week. But they are eminently worth making time for (and the following three episodes will each be taken down one day after the previous).
As the first one's longer blurb goes: Award winning comedian, Josie Long (BBC New Comedy Awards, if.comedy Best Newcomer 2006) presents her first radio series, in which she aims to explore all of the planet's wonders (in detail) over four 14 minute episodes.
This comedy series is all about Long's desire to better herself through learning and her enjoyment of discovering things in reference books.
Josie is joined by Irish comedian, Maeve Higgins, and by a variety of comedic guests -Robin Ince, Chris Neill, Daniel Harkin, Henning Wehn and Isy Suttie, plus the occasional actual expert.
Each episode is anchored by Josie and Maeve in the studio, with Josie presenting her essay on the week's given subject and Maeve helping with questions, illustrations and interruptions. The guests help to play extra characters or to provide specialist advice.
This week, Josie uses the book "Astronomy for Dummies" to try and unravel the greater mysteries of the cosmos.
I liked it a lot. The Sound of Young America's Jesse Thorn makes a guest appearance.
The best television music program, at least on late-night television that I'm aware of, probably will remain the 1988-1990 Sunday Night, later known (to allow syndication customers more freedom of scheduling for this series, which was shown on NBC "owned and operated" stations and syndicated to individual stations in other cities/markets) as Night Music. The Wikipedia page for this series is pretty damned good, and cites the cast of the best episode of this often-brilliant series as including the Sun Ra Arkestra, Al Green, the Pixies, Arthur Baker, Sister Carol and Syd Straw, doing their things individually and then in various combinations. Sadly, the Arkestra, the Pixies, et al. backing up Al Green doing "Let's Stay Together" doesn't seem to be online, and no one has released a legit home video of the series, which was hosted in its first season by saxophonist David Sanborn and ex-Squeeze pianist Jools Holland, and in its second by Sanborn alone; Holland has since returned to the UK and conducts a similar, but not quite as engaging, series called Later, which currently can be seen in the States on the Ovation cable channel. However, from the same episode, here's some of the Sun Ra Arkestra's set, including Al Green on cowbell in the closing credits (and since this video has since been set to "private"/restricted access, here's another example from the episode below it):
From that episode, the Pixies' "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Tame":
Meanwhile, earlier in that season was the episode with Philip Glass, Loudon Wainwright III, Pere Ubu and Deborah Harry...Harry's "Calmarie":
...and, in duller audio and blearier video, alas, her "I Want That Man":
...and Pere Ubu's closer, "Waiting for Mary," with Harry and Night Music Band members backing them:
Meanwhile, the Acrobat Music Group collection of airchecks from CBS Radio concerts by the Dave Brubeck/Paul Desmond quartets of 1956 and 1957 demonstrate very well how Not to introduce a band, as the CBS staff announcer is a klutz, at best...the 1956 quartet featuring the fine Joe Dodge on drums performing in two sets from the Basin Street East in New York City (the latter's recording is notably crisper than the earlier's), and, from Chicago's Blue Note nightclub (and with a notable but not intolerable drop in audio quality), the 1957 version featuring the transcendant Joe Morello on percussion, with both groups rounded out by Norman Bates (possibly the inspiration for Robert Bloch to name his most famous character, perhaps even from hearing one of these airchecks...and, no doubt, the source of endless ribbing for Bates very shortly thereafter..."No cutting contests with you, Norman..."), as Gene Wright, the bassist for the quartet's most popular and innovative years, would join in 1958 (though, as the booklet for this disc notes, Morello and Wright were on hand for a 1956 radio broadcast with Leonard Bernstein, so clearly the most memorable quartet was foreshadowed). The big treat here is a fine improvisation, "A Minor Thing," which as far as the packagers know was never again recorded by any version of the quartet. But despite some noisy audience members on a couple of tracks around the edges, the playing is uniformly impressive here, and it's a very pleasant set of recordings to have, whether a confirmed fan such as myself, or someone wanting a sense of what this group was about, as it moved from success to (occasionally controversial) megastardom in jazz. Track List: Theme (The Duke) and Intro #1 Stardust Gone With The Wind Stompin’ for Mili Out of Nowhere A Minor Thing In Your Own Sweet Way The Trolley Song Intro and Theme #2 Love Walked In Here Lies Love All the Things You Are Theme and Intro #3 I’m in Dancing Mood The Song is You
For more of this month's "Forgotten" music, please see Scott Parker's blog...only it seems Scott has taken a vacation from hosting the links, so here're the other FM links I'm aware of:
Dr. Billy Taylor, a good (sometimes great) player and composer, and inarguably one of the great popularizers of jazz music (an ambassador to the larger world in much of his work as an educator and dj and television bandleader/music director) died yesterday, as Jeff Meyerson, via Rick Robinson and Bill Crider, informed many of us this evening.
Not the best sound quality, but an example of one of the sessions he hosted as the musical director of the 1970s DAVID FROST SHOW:
A fine perfomance of one of his own best compositions, "C A G":
And an old favorite embed of mine...a complete episode of Taylor's 1950s tv series, The Subject is Jazz:
I saw him in concert only once, but would have difficulty toting up all the hours I've heard him on radio or enjoyed the music he helped present on television.
Dolls are Murder, "from the Mystery Writers of America," edited by Harold Q. Masur. Lion Books, 1957, "by arrangement with Revere Publishing Corp." 126 pp. 25c mm pb. Cover by Mort Kuntsler.
7 · Human Interest Stuff · Brett Halliday · ss Adventure Sep ’38; EQMM Sep ’46 20 · The Homesick Buick · John D. MacDonald · ss EQMM Sep ’50 34 · I’ll Be Waiting · Raymond Chandler · ss The Saturday Evening Post Oct 14 ’39 51 · Mind Over Matter · Ellery Queen· ss Blue Book October 1939 73 · The Doctor Makes It Murder [Dr. Paul Standish] · George Harmon Coxe · ss Cosmopolitan Sep ’42 (reprinted in The Saint Detective Magazine as "The Doctor Calls It Murder," Oct '57) 92 · The Dog Died First · Bruno Fischer · nv Mystery Book Magazine Fll ’49 115· Affaire Ziliouk [Monsieur Froget] · Georges Simenon; trans. by Anthony Boucher · ss Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1944; translated from Les 13 Coupables (1932). 122· Cop’s Gift · Rex Stout · ss What’s New Dec ’53 [as “Tough Cop’s Gift”]; EQMM Jan ’56 [as "Santa Claus Beat"]
So here's a slim, inexpensive (even for the time) paperback with at best a misleading title (but, thoughtfully, the MWA was kind enough to leave all the women writers out of this antho), inasmuch as some of these stories, such as "Brett Halliday"'s deft excursion into "B. Traven" territory, have no women to speak of in them (oh, wait...a minor character at the beginning is killed by the father of a young woman the mc insulted...dat's a deadly dame, doncha know). Likewise, the woman character in the JDMc story is notable mostly for being the only female character, and far less deadly than several of the males; she in fact commits no murder. But it's a solid little book, filled with stories that have become at least borderline chestnuts in the succeeding years, such as the Bruno Fischer story I first read in the Hitchcock Presents: volume I FFB'd the other week, a series, I'll note (somewhat redundantly) that Masur would eventually edit after founding editor Robert Arthur died. And the book rounds out with its shortest story, published under three different titles (I'm guessing that the title here, "Cop's Gift," might've been "Rex Stout"'s preferred one), a neat if not exactly challenging little mystery set on Christmas Eve, with the typical Stout wit and eye for small details (and not a Wolfe/Goodwin story). Much as this book itself was part of a seasonal gift from Kate Laity.
Patti Abbott is taking this week and next week off, so I might be gathering up the links I'm aware of in the next post (and next week).
