Jesus, These People Can Sing

The “Mecca for Moderns” album, if you’re wondering. Followed by a beautiful cover of “A Nightingale Sang on Berkeley Square”.

Wore it out. Got the CD now. The crowning achievement is, of course, Vocalese, with Jon Hendricks, a tribute and collaboration with their inspirations, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.

@FlyingChainSaw: Heard a track by L, H and R on the local jazz station the other night. They don’t get a lot of airplay.

@Dodgerblue: Oh, I know. If it weren’t for university radio stations, I dunno if they’d get any play at all in our Clear Channel epoch.

What was the song?

Annie Ross’s stuff been re-released on CD, too.

Wait. Are these the “boo-wah boo-wah boo boo kitty, tell me ’bout the boy from New York City” people?

@I’m passing for white: Yes. They started as a retro jazz-pop group in the Seventies (including a summer TV series, where I first saw them), then evolved into a more adventurous repertoire.

/waves at everyone

Wow. What a weekend. Mad Men in 15. Martini or Hennessey (BD gift)?

@redmanlaw: The Pryce is Wrong.

@redmanlaw: I’ve had Pete in my mental dead pool all season, but now? Sheesh.

Hey, everybody! Dish-AMC Pissing Match!

@nojo: @I’m passing for white: Yes. Nifty stuff but not what makes them most memorable.

@nojo: Yeah, the early days stuff is really cheesy. Jay Graydon, Don Ellis sideman, drove them toward their best arrangements on Extensions and Mecca for Moderns that took the Lambert, Hendricks and Ross heritage to its next stage of evolution. They took a step back in the literature with Vocalese but invested the kind of harmonic treatments they’d established on the Graydon productions. Sublime writing and musicianship but I dunno if the album got any kind of rotation at all. Killer Joe arrangement tells the story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPWAFCJZXlA

Are you there god? It’s me, Sally!

@FlyingChainSaw: Back in Eugene, the big MOR AM station loved Manhattan Transfer, so they got a lot of play. Of course, this was before chain ownership and mandated playlists.

@ManchuCandidate: Best museum scene since Manhattan.

@ManchuCandidate: @nojo: And Betty can’t resist being smug about it. Of course.

@nojo: Yeah, and who knows how much more screwed up the music industry has become with Clear Channel everywhere programming. It’s frightening to rent a car these days. All time-warp classic-hits radio on every channel. If it weren’t for university radio stations, you might as well be transmitting Emergency Broadcast System alert tones.

Wow

Cyanosis noted.

“How was work today, Jared?”

“Just hanging out with the guys.”

@ManchuCandidate: I thought it was going to be “he blew his mind out in a car” per the Sgt. Pepper theory. Great black humor on the first try, however.

Answer to tonight’s question: both. /lights cigar outside.

@nojo: Someone left a cake out in the rain.

@redmanlaw:
I thought he was going to go with the “For the Good of the Service” and taste the barrel of a Webley.

@ManchuCandidate: Wait til the partners learn about what Don did. What will happen to Dow and jagU-ar? Who was that blonde chick with Megan in the previews?

@redmanlaw: After all that set-up about Jaguar peddling lemons — what a punch line. If that’s not the episode they submit for the best writing Emmy, I’ll be shocked.

@redmanlaw: I really want to think they had that planned all along, a devious payoff to a running gag.

@mellbell, nojo: Just today, in response to a Mrs RML FB post on the Diamond Dog Jubilee, someone wrote “too bad the English never learned to wire an automobile.”

@mellbell: Yes, Mr. SFL and I were 500 miles apart watching the episode and texting during it and he had some message about piece of shit lemon Jaguars and I reminded him the line was not “he blew his mind out in a JagUar”

But this episode made me evaluate Draper vs. all the other great HBO/Showtime shows’ main characters. He can be a dick like Tony Soprano but at the end of the day, he’s just a decent guy who I can’t hate even when he’s a dick. Plus he’s so damn beautiful.

Just a reminder that we’re now on the cusp of 1968. I see them all signing up for Nixon.