Confirmation: Weekly News & Notes

*Basie band veteran Frank Foster died yesterday. The composer of "Shiny Stockings" was 82. Here's NPR's report. Nate Chinen provided the obituary for The New York Times. Doug Ramsey offers additional insights.

*Rumor has it that a prominent Kansas City jazz club is cutting musicians' pay by 35%.

*KCJazzLark serves as the invaluable institutional memory of Kansas City's jazz scene in a well-researched post about Boone Theater.

*KCUR updates an excellent profile of Leon Brady and KC Youth Jazz.

*Fanfare magazine published an extended interview with Michael Pagan.

*Joe Klopus and Tim Finn write eloquently about the relationship between jazz and popular music here and here.

*Phonologotronic toasts his colleagues at The Black House Improvisors' Collective.

*An underground noise show headlined by This Is My Condition is reviewed by The Pitch.

*Tweet o' the Week: djjazziedeb: If one jazz club cuts pay 35%, who's to say that they won't all follow suit. I think no one should work for this! No one!

*The rigorous debate in the comment section of last Friday's post continues.

*A few thoughtful readers have pointed out that Plastic Sax's RSS feed is broken. (I'm not sure how to fix it.)

(Original image by Plastic Sax.)

This Is My Condition

"This is my condition."

The statement, delivered after two minutes of scraping metal, raging percussion and excruciating feedback, is both funny and disturbing.

Demented one-man-band Craig Comstock, a.k.a. This Is My Condition, makes quite a racket. I witnessed him clear out the Jackpot Saloon in Lawrence during my first encounter with him a couple years ago. The rockers there to see The Hold Steady couldn't handle his fierce raging. It was quite an accomplishment. Only the bravest among Plastic Sax readers should dare watch this video of a typical TIMC performance.

Comstock calls his music "hardcore classical," and he'd probably disavow any connection to jazz. But it's jazz to me. I'll allow his deconstruction of Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz" to serve as Exhibit A in my case (MP3 hosted at TINC's site). It embodies a couple of jazz's best attributes- unpredictability and ingenuity.

This is my condition, too.

(Original photo taken by Plastic Sax on 8/03/07 at the Westport Beach Club.)