THE JAZZ GODS, MILES DAVIS, JOHN COLTRANE, THELONIOUS MONK, SONNY ROLLINS, GONE, BUT STILL HERE, THEIR SOUND IS STILL HERE

Birdman was sitting in 1962 in the front row at the Village Vanguard, Greenwich Village, NYC.  A black cat slowly moved into the spot light, like a jaguar stalking a deer in British Honduras.  It was Miles Davis, dressed in an immaculate French suit, handsome, his golden horn sparkling in the blue and red light.  He turned around and started blowing Kind of Blue, a chill went through the body of Birdman, he was awed and overcome by the sound, the man, the rhythm, the music.  Later on in the decade of the 60's,  he again saw the legend, Miles Davis at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco.  Davis played from his Sketches of Spain,  and the same feeling took over the soul of Birdman. The audience gasped with disbelief.   It was if a god of music had descended from the Elysium, to blow out the unbelievable sounds into the night of San Francisco,  and the Universe above. 
       "Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes."  Walt Whitman, American Poet
       Miles Davis, sat in with his horn when he was 19, at a club in Kansas City with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.  He said in his book, "Miles" he knew at that moment, he had an epiphany of sound, with two of the greats of early bebop, and had to go to NYC, where he played as a young man on 52nd street, with Bird, and became the musician he was meant by the gods to be.
       Sonny Rollins was at his peak between 1956 and 1966.  He took two years off, playing as he strolled into the night from the Williamsburg Bridge, NYC.  He would trill at length, bark out phrases, slurs and distorted his line, harps on a couple of braying figures, and showed off a gloriously beating tone.  He would occasionally belch his horn, sounding like a lost mule.  He is the only survivor from the gods of jazz, and still plays at 85 years young.  He was recently interviewed on PBS, and asked if the great sounds of the legendary musicians were dead.  He answered, "No, they are still here, their sound is still here."  What a statement on the vision of immortality of the giants.  He said, "When I leave town, my sound will still be here."  He also played with Charlie Bird Parker, Davis and Coltrane in NYC.  Can you imagine the rush to the soul, hearing Rollins' horn from the Bridge, mixed with the night sounds of NYC.  Hopefully that music is still echoing in the Universe somewhere, maybe above Europa.  "All the bells that ever rang, still ringing in the dying rays of light," William Faulkner, novelist. 
       Birdman saw Thelonious Monk in 1962 at the Five Spot, NYC.   His eccentric dancing and walking around like a crazed Beat poet will never be forgotten.  He left a lot of space in his music, yet could be most effective when paired with busy-sounding saxophonists such as John Coltrane.  Opposites attract.  Birdman later on saw Monk play at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco.  These experiences were unique, most people today never saw these cool cats from the heyday of Bebop and Cool Jazz.  It was if Birdman had seen Bach play in person, in a previous life, in the old days of Europe.  After Monk finished at the club he spun around in a rhythmic, weird dance, and exclaimed, "All ways know, always know, always night."
       John Coltrane's briefer stay on the planet earth, showered people and the planet with sheets of sound.  He played with explosive improvisations, expressive energy, and once mesmerized an audience with his saxophone, playing "My Favorite Things" for 45 minutes, non stop, in a club.  Coltrane could blow seven notes squeezed into the space of a beat or two.  He played at the Five Spot Cafe,  East Village NYC, for 7 months with Monk.  Monk didn't mind Coltrane playing so many notes, as long as his improvisations developed out of or illuminated the source material.  He left town to play the big saxophone in the sky, at a young age.   John Coltrane was a beat poet, whose sheets of sound echoed around Greenwich Village for 6 years, playing with Monk and Miles Davis.  He favored cascading waterfalls of notes.  He created a musical revolution.  The major outgrowth of his free jazz tended to represent an outgrowth of the bohemians, and angry young men of the 50's, and the Beat poets and writers. 
       Jazz critic Frank Kofsky took this view further, asserting that the free jazz movement represented nothing less than a vote of "no confidence" in Western Civilization and the American Dream.  Kofsky wrote in John Coltrane for vice president in his ballot of 1964.  Coltrane studied music at a school for years in Philadelphia and also studied philosophy.  He was a quiet, serious musician who lived music 24 hours a day, according to his mother.
       If any single sound signifies jazz it is Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, with a Harmon mute.  Kind of Blue is the most famous and most analyzed jazz album in history.  It is listened to over and over again by students of jazz, and people who do not even listen to much jazz. It sold over 62 million albums and CD's, a record in the history of music.  His "Sketches of Spain" still echoes in the soul of most aficionados of jazz.  As Rollins said recently, his music is still here, even though Miles is gone, his music is here forever. 
       What is the future of jazz?  Nobody knows.  It had a breath of fresh air in the 70's at the Keystone Korner Club in North Beach San Francisco.  Today jazz is played at a few surviving clubs in NYC, Chicago, and New Orleans, and at festivals around the US, most notably the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival held each spring in the Big Easy.  It may take a young musician, sent by the Gods, with extraordinary feeling and talent, to walk the Williamsburg Bridge at night, and blow his horn amidst the sounds of the City. 
       Jazz sounds are still beaming and echoing out into the Universe. 
      

LIFE, THE BIG VANISH, THE BIG DISAPPEARANCE, COMETS PASSING

Enrico Fermi, the renowned physicist exclaimed "Where is everybody?" He was referring to the fact that no life has been detected in the Universe after hundreds of years and thousands of people searching.  On this planet many people have an epiphany when they notice that, like comets, events, eras, people, friends, money, movie legends, presidents, athletes on the radar screen, dogs, bank robbers, seasons, gorgeous women, time itself, is in a constant mode of things and people drifting over the horizon, or vanish like a large flash of light, an arcane event.  To many this is disconcerting, they weep over the end of fall or miss an old friend.  To some like George Carlin, the comedian, things passing is great and a giant joke, like when an annoying, crazy uncle leaves.  To others like Joey who cried out in the western movie Shane, across a mountain valley, to Allen Ladd as he rode away for good on his horse, "Shane, come back, come back Shane."  That had to be one of the saddest moments in the boys life, and a very sad and touching scene in western movie history.  The scene gripped the audience to the core of emotion, even when watched to this day, years later; the tears of a young boy in the West and the final farewell of a cowboy he loved.  If you believe like the American Indians, who thought that nature and life was a circle, and all things and people return, there remains hope, and even in passing you go to the Happy Hunting Grounds.  In New Orleans when a jazz musician passes, they shouted at his musical, loud funeral, "He left town."  The past 4 years millions of people who sparkled in their communities like a comet, have left town to greener pastures, on a new, long, dusty trail.  The American Dream itself may have vanished.  It has been a major exodus especially from ski towns that saw the end of their Gold Rush years.  Does John Steinbecks "Grapes of Wrath" come to mind?  "...all the bells that ever rang still ringing in the long dying rays of light."  William Faulkner.  The Khazars, a warrior tribe in the Caucasus, said their prayers by weeping.  Their sadness over a life that vanishes is expressed in prayer.  Then, suddenly they vanished, as a tribe, wiped out by other warrior tribal nations, with almost no archeological sign of their existence, by the Black Sea.  "Ships that pass in the night, and speak to each other in passing, only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; so on the ocean of life we pass and speak, then darkness again and a silence."  Longfellow   "Hast thou never seen the comet's flaming flight?  The illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds on gazing nations from his fiery train of length enormous ; takes his ample round through depths of ether; coasts unnumbered  worlds of more than solar glory; doubles wide, Heavens mighty cape; and then revisits earth from the long  travel of a thousand years."  Edward Young "Night Thoughts"

CITIGROUP-FEDERAL JUDGE JED RAKOFF-SEC ENABLING-REAL PUNISHMENT?-RISK OF ANOTHER FINANCIAL MELTDOWN-FRAUD AGAINST INVESTORS

      The Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress' incompetence has put the nation again at risk of another financial meltdown.  No-admit/no-deny settlements are no real deterrent to future bad behavior.  The banks love this policy since by not admitting fraud, they cannot be sued by thousands of investors, who have lost millions of dollars.  The same old story, when Wachovia and Wells Fargo paid a slap-on the wrist fine for holding cartel money, repeatedly, and the question remains, where is the cash from drug money being laundered today?  The best guess from the US Treasury Department, is that it is going to European banks, who desperately need the money. 
      The new case that may be litigated in July of 2012, developed when Citigroup allegedly defrauded investors when it had not adequately disclosed to investors its role and interest in creating and selling-and betting against-a mortgage-backed investment that was intended to fail.  When the investment tanked, the bank made $160 million, according to the SEC, while investors lost $700 million.
      Judge Rakoff said that his understanding of the matter indicated that a tougher charge of knowing or intentional fraud was indicated.
      SEC chairman Mary Schapiro is pressing for larger penalties, and is asking Congress to pass laws that would allow the SEC to impose fines up to nine times greater than the maximum currently allowed by U.S. law.
      If the proposed new law would have been applied in the Citigroup case, the maximum penalty would jump to $1.44 billion from $160 million.
      Many Republicans and some Democrats are resisting the new proposed law, giving the SEC more powers.  The main question is whether the larger fines would deter illegal behavior.  The admission of wrongdoing would be an investment banks worst nightmare, opening them up to monstrous litigation and law suits from individuals and parties who had lost a large amount of money.  The lobbyists are already driving up to Congress getting ready for this dramatic change in the law.
      A new law that makes fraud on the American people by banks, a major crime, with monstrous penalties, may save the nation from another bank meltdown, and the disastrous Category V Hurricane, that has made the lives of a great number of people on the verge of a collapse, and permanent poverty.  Teddy Roosevelt warned the nation in a 1903 speech, that prosperity in America could only be sustained by the conduct of the larger banks with the following requirements:  a legitimate business practice, fair and honest dealings with the public, no wild speculation, and a disciplined adherence to established conservative rules.  Maybe Federal District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, who has the courage to tackle this deal between the SEC and Citigroup bank, maybe he read the history books that detailed the Roosevelt presidency.
      The policy of small fines for banks, no individual liability of bankers, and extraordinary fraud from 2000 to 2011, would be eliminated by Judge Rakoff's successful ruling and victory in July of 2012.  If he loses, and Congress doesn't have the courage to act on stiffer laws, the recession may never end.