Billie Holiday makes for fine procrastination...

You know, there's something sublime in the experience that comes from seeing great, old television broadcasts. And with the advent of video technology on internet websites such as YouTube, these sublime instances seem to be happening with more regularity. You can watch anything... old sports highlights, musical performances, presidential addresses, conspiracy videos... not that I need to tell you, as I'm sure if you're enlightened to blogging, you probably have been on YouTube as well. 

This can only be a good thing, if you ask me. Hopefully the powers-that-be at the television networks that hold the rights to many of these video clips realize what a great service YouTube is doing for the preservation of visual culture and history.

What's got me on about this idea is a video I watched earlier this afternoon. It's a 1957 clip from a popular CBS series that existed at the time called 'The Sound of Jazz.' The video features Billie Holiday and a handful of the greatest instrumentalists of the 1940s and 50s (Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Gerry Mulligan, etc.) performing a slow blues that Holiday made famous: 'Fine and Mellow.' 

While all of the soloists turn in a fine performance -- as does Holiday, with her smoky voice and incredible phrasing exhibited in fine form throughout -- it is Lester Young's solo (at the 2:39 mark) that I keep returning to. For those of you familiar with the Ken Burns: Jazz series, you'll probably recognize this video from the 'Bebop' chapter. For those who have not, Young and Holiday -- Prez and Lady Day -- were known to have had a very close relationship that had come under some serious strain. For whatever reason, so the story goes, they had seen and spoken very little in the years leading up to this 1957 broadcast. This performance was their first time seeing each other in many years.

It is not surprising to see the deep, decidedly physical reaction that Billie has during Lester Young's solo. I'm fairly sure that my mouth was left hanging after hearing Prez's solo on this video for the first time. After a fine solo by tenorman Ben Webster, Prez, looking very frail throughout (note he is sitting down until his solo), proceeds to blow one of the bluesiest, most awe-inspiring twelve bars I think I've ever heard. The reaction on Billie's face says it all.

I try to stay away from making the inevitable comment "I was born in the wrong era" while experiencing most media from past decades, however there are certain times when this feeling overwhelms me. Though I have experienced the feeling, as I'm sure we all have, more than a few times for more than a few different decades, I try and convince myself that "Hey, the 21st century ain't that bad..."

And it's not. We've got a lot going for us. We have our faults too, but hey, so did the 1950s. 

However I can't help but wonder what we'd be like if we still had broadcasts like this -- even just once a week -- on mainstream networks today. Of course, jazz was popular music back then. Whoops, there's that unsettling feeling again... "Hey, the 21st century's not that bad," remember? Much like hip-hop today, I suppose, these performances were probably the equivalent to music videos that we see (used to see?) on MTV and MuchMusic. 

That's a wild thought. 

Lester Young to 50 Cent in 51 years, with Elvis, The Beatles, BeeGees, Nirvana and a host of others strewn in there somewhere... 

The popular music industry is quite the juggernaut...

Bus Station Philosophizin'

There's something fascinating about the entire experience of taking the Greyhound from anywhere to anywhere... I can't really explain what that experience is with any true accuracy to those who have never done it, but for those who have, you know what I mean.

The bus station is one of those interesting and crazy places where people and pigeons from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds gather to go to other places for cheap, but it's also so much more than that... taking a bus somewhere gives you a lot of time, at least it does for me, to get into one of those reflective and crazy states of mind where you're ready and willing to talk about anything and everything with someone you just met. And not in a weird way! Bus trips are a breeding ground for those kinds of conversations that make you go "Hmm..."

You know those conversations.

They're the deep, crazy, all-encompassing, heavier-than-you-expected-from-a-total-stranger-or-acquaintance type discussions that not only make you go "Hmm..." but that also give you hope for all of those beautiful things that you can often forget about in day-to-day monotony: rationality (or irrationality, both are fun!), individual thought, difference of opinion, and the beauty and power of discussion and, ultimately, of words.

Those sorts of conversations are crucial! They expand your mind, and you can get to know someone intimately in an hour and a half, and then they can be gone forever. What a perspective you can gain from both the conversation and the realization of that experience...

Really they're not limited to Greyhound stations and seats, however it seems in my recent experiences that there's something about the eerie mood-lighting of a bus that makes the mind start firing on all philosophical cylinders.

I guess that's it then... we just need more Greyhound stations... or mood-lighting... or whatever it takes to get more people talking in ways that are meaningful and that recognize the inherent power of conversation... but maybe that happens already, and I just don't realize it because I'm too deep in my own Greyhound station and haven't had the opportunity to visit as many other stations as I'd like...