Classic Jazz Recording

Sometime ago, a friend Googled me and said, “In the results, I got all these old Jazz recordings. Is this you?” Actually it is me. Eons ago, when I first moved up to San Francisco from LA, my ex-husband and I owned a small record label called Blue Jazz Records. We recorded pianist George Michalski, the Waterfront Blues Band, Johnny Nitro and the Doorslammers and a few other people. The company itself wasn’t successful, in fact it cost us a lot of money, but other things came of it. I became president of the NARAS chapter, found a steady job at Winterland Productions through Bill Graham, and best of all, I met husband Marc. The other thing that came out of this was work on a huge batch of Jazz reissue CD’s in the mid -1990’s, and these are the recordings that search engines still find.

Orrin Keepnews, the jazz producer who owned Riverside and Milestone Records (Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans, etc…) was a long time board member and national trustee of the SF NARAS chapter. Last I heard, he’s still around and working at 86! Anyway, back in the mid-90’s the major record companies were buying up classic jazz labels and remastering all the music that could be rescued for re-release on CD. For jazz fans, this was a matter of some urgency. Manufacturers of recording tape had tried different formulas and materials at different times in the past, and many of the 2 and 4 track master recordings from the 1930’s and 40’s (even the 1960's) were literally falling apart. Record masters prior to that were recorded on reverse metal plates (remember, we are talking about technology used to press vinyl 78, 45 & 33 RPM recordings). The problem with the metal plates was that they warped, but still the deteriorating tape was a bigger priority.

Orrin was doing a bi-coastal thing. He was not only a respected producer knowledgeable about the artists and the circumstances of all the recordings, but he was also well known as a writer on jazz history. Because of this, he was hired by BMG to work on reissues of the Verve and Bluebird catalogs in New York, and he was also hired by MCA to work on reissues of the Decca, Commodore and Chess catalogs in LA. As he found himself alternating between the two from week to week (at 72!), he hired me as an assistant producer for the LA project, and we did about 20 reissue CD’s together (listed at the bottom).

We did all the digital sessions at MCA’s mastering studios in Burbank. A couple experiences are really burned in my mind. The first was when we played the original 1938 master for Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit (youtube video). This is probably hard to imagine now that we are accustomed to hearing extremely compressed digital music through tiny (tinny) ear buds, but to hear the lush analog 2 track master recording of this beautiful and haunting song through state-of-the-art recording studio speakers was a transcendent experience. You could close your eyes and imagine her singing into the microphone right in front of you. Unfortunately, the tape was in bad shape. We knew we would only have one chance to capture it digitally and the tape fell apart in strips as it played through the machine. The original was lost forever (but we got the digital capture!). I consider the opportunity to hear it that way one of the more fortunate things in my life.

The second thing was a visit to collector and jazz producer Steve Lasker. This was another unreal aural experience. Mr. Lasker lived in a… I’ll be kind and call it disheveled...house, right on Venice Beach with two huge shaggy St. Bernard dogs and hundreds of pre-tape metal masters. So, we’d sit in this funky living room with the wads of dog hair blowing around on the floor, surrounding a playback system he’d rigged up with an old Pioneer turntable. He would take a roll of quarters, and judiciously place them around to balance out the warping, and do other mad scientist type adjustments. To hear this music from the 1910's & 20’s come to life again was really something. And then the dogs would start to howl along, and we’d all laugh (and sneeze).

Here’s a partial list of recordings, many of these were boxed sets of 2 to 4 CDs:
The History of Chess Jazz - The Commodore Story - Billie Holiday: the Complete Commodore Recordings - Ella (Fitzgerald) : the Legendary Decca Recordings (this was a 4 CD set that had Grammy nominations for Best Historical Recording and Best Liner Notes in 1996) - Lester Young: The Kansas City Sessions - Jelly Roll Morton Last Sessions: The Complete General Recordings - Louis Armstrong: Satchmo at Symphony Hall - Pete Fountain: Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? - James Moody: Return from Overbrook - Art Farmer: Out of the Past - Ella and Friends - The Nat King Cole Trio Hit That Jive Jack: The Earliest Recordings and Hamp: The Legendary Decca Recordings of Lionel Hampton.

Sanlun Yishu & Tiffany

Photographer Tom Griscom will have work in a fascinating project, Sanlun Yishu, a “mobile gallery” in Beijing starting in March. Sanlun Yishu is meant to be an interactive project; the collaborators will trade small reproductions of the work (postcards?) for whatever the participants offer. They will also catalog the reponses and send them back to the artists. This sounds like a great way to stimulate a dialog about art between cultures with people that don’t often have access to galleries and museums.

Hannah Sigur has recently confirmed a speaking engagement for FAMSF on March 28th as part of a series of lectures related to the upcoming show at the Legion of Honor, Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique February 7, 2009 — May 31, 2009. FAMSF's web site describes the show as "the first comparative study of the work of the three greatest jewelry and decorative arts designers at the turn of the 20th century: Peter Carl Fabergé, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and René Lalique. Their rivalry found its stage at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris—the only exposition where all three showed simultaneously and where the work of each was prominently displayed. Some of their most elaborate designs for the Paris World's Fair are reunited for the first time in a gallery recreating the ambiance of this opulent international exposition. Looking critically at the development, design, and marketing of each firm, this exhibition explores how these designers responded to the demand for luxury goods in the years leading up to World War 1."

I have often heard Hannah discuss the important role the world fairs played in helping to expose people in the West to Asian artistic concepts and how this was an inspiration to artists/craftsmen like Tiffany. Hannah will also be signing her book The Influence of Japanese Art on Design .

Bravo to Tom and Hannah!

Marc & Kim speak about comics

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all enjoyed the season!

Husband Marc is on his way down to the AALS (Association of American Law Schools) conference in San Diego this week, to speak to the art law section on a panel concerning comics and the law. Marc is talking about some of his recent research on CBLDF (the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund). CBLDF is a non-profit that represents comics authors, artists, store owners and small publishers in a variety of cases related to censorship or unfair business practices.

Marc's talk will include the Georgia vs Lee case in which Lee, a comics shop owner in Georgia, was threatened with 21 years in prison for unknowingly giving a 9-year-old a comics complilation on free comics day that happened to include a couple pages from Nick Bozzeti 's graphic novel "The Salon," (a must see for arty types) a murder mystery set in 1907 Paris, which featured a few frames of Pablo Picasso painting (and answering the door) in the nude. After many convoluted twists and turns, the case was finally dismissed 10 years and $100,000. in legal fees later.

Marc will also talk about the Mavrides vs California Board of Equalization case. At one point, the California Board of Equalization decided that when comic artists finish their assigned pages and send them in to the publisher, the individual pages should be treated as works of art being sold, and should be taxed accordingly. Mavrides, a comic artist (a contributor to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) became the test case on this. CBLDF defended him, and the court agreed that submitting comics pages to the publisher was more like submiting a finished manuscript, and the state lost.

Marc also has a 90 minute slot speaking at WonderCon in San Francisco (end of February) on CBLDF, the Superman copyright case and other cases related to pop art/comic artist's copyrights. I will also be returning early from CAA to speak on a WonderCon panel about comic art in museums (this was the focus of my master's thesis). Peter Coogan of the Institute for Comic Studies tells me that the panel will include one other scholar writing in this area, and two artists whose work have been included in museum exhibitions. I'll post more specifics as they become available.

POST-POSTCARD 12

The 12th Annual Small Format Art Sale:

LAB Members Preview Reception: Friday, December 5, 2008: 5-6pm Opening Reception: Friday, December 5, 2008: 6-9pm. Sale continues: Saturday, December 6 & Sunday, December 7: noon - 6 pm. Free admission

A great opportunity to find orginial art to give as Christmas gifts! I'm delivering some postcard size watercolor paintings and a few inkject prints of some of my larger pieces to The Lab today. All artwork in the show priced at $30.00 or less. I visualize many, many little boxes of postcard size artwork. I haven't seen the exact setup yet, but the title of my "box" will be Myths & Leaves.

Ray Stevens at Comic Outpost this Sunday

Ray Stevenson star of Punisher: War Zone (December 5 release) & HBO’s Rome (he's Titus Pullo) will be in at Comic Outpost this Sunday, November 23rd from 2 – 3pm. Comic Outpost is at 2381 Ocean Avenue (near Junipro Serra). San Francisco, Ca. 94127, 415-239-2669 http://www.comicoutpost.net/ myspace.com/comicoutpost . Not that I'm a huge Punisher fan (although some of you may be), but Rome is a great series.

Ms Marvel #32: Torture Porn in Comics

My husband and I have been serious comics collectors for years. We collect a wide range of titles, from mainstream superhero books to foreign titles and more “arty” fare. Like many collectors, we have our local comics store (Comics Outpost on Ocean Avenue, a great store and community) set certain titles aside for us every month. I’ve enjoyed the Marvel House of M – Civil War – Secret Invasion trajectory, so I’ve been following many of the titles that have supporting roles in these company-wide crossover stories, like Ms. Marvel.



Ms. Marvel has historically been an uneven title. Unable to solidify her character, writers have often used her adventures (or misadventures) to serve as convenient plot twists in support of more popular characters. The Ms. Marvel/Carol Danvers character seemed to find more definition a couple years ago after the events of House of M and the launch of the New Avengers, and aside from the occasional inane plot line has been fairly readable. Last week I sat down with our latest stack of Marvel comics, and discovered that I had somehow wound up with the Ms. Marvel torture porn issue.

It’s no secret that extreme things happen to characters in comics, both male and female. I can deal with a couple tough pages in the context of the story. In the case of dark, tormented characters like Moon Knight, Batman, the Darkness and Wolverine, overcoming extremes of violence and degradation is part of the character’s development. After collecting Wolverine for several years, I finally dropped it after one particularly heinous story (#56) - Wolverine, a practically indestructible character that can regenerate, was trapped in a pit and shot at with machine guns around the clock; he gets out by playing on the psyche of one of the gunners, then slaughters everyone. On top of being disgusted by this story, I realized that the writers had no where left to go with this long-running and over-exposed character, and it was unlikely anything really interesting would ever happen again.

Ms. Marvel is not generally portrayed as a brooding anti-hero and in this case, her captivity is related to a shady government conspiracy. The context of her story may be different, but the same bankruptcy of original thought haunts Ms. Marvel #32. At the end of #30, Carol confronts a man from her past about a secret weapons program called Ascension (in #32, we see he was the one who tortured her). Issue #31 is a detour to visit her estranged family, including her emotionally distant father, now dying of cancer. At the beginning of #32, a flashback story written by Brian Reed, Carol ( before she acquires super powers) is a hot shot Air Force test pilot. She meets billionaire weapons manufacturer Tony Stark (aka Iron Man, her future colleague/boss) on the airstrip as she is about to take a test flight in a plane that Stark designed. The plane is shot down over a fictional middle eastern country occupied by the Taliban. She crashes and is held and tortured by the men that find her. When she finally makes her harrowing escape, she discovers that the men that tortured her are somehow connected to the CIA and a program called Ascension. With her broken arm and leg shrouded in a burka-like outfit, she fades into a crowd in the last panel. As of this writing, #33 isn’t out yet, but it seems a logical progression that Stark will reappear to be involved in her recovery, and that this is likely to be a bonding experience that helps establish strong feelings of mutual loyalty and respect between them.

You might be asking, what is unique about this story? If you follow comics, you probably recognize this as the type of plot line feminist comics writer Gail Simone pointed out in her well-known 1999 work Women in Refrigerators, in which female characters undergo extremes of emotional or physical trauma often to further the development of a better known male character. Ms. Marvel #32 should “rise” to #1 on this top ten list of worst offenders. Visually, it’s a startling piece of work. Carol (the busty, blond, tough talking pilot) has a broken leg from the plane crash, is stripped to her underwear, electrocuted, her nails pulled out, has a finger cut off with garden shears, and finally her arm is crushed by a blow with a sledgehammer. Out of 23 pages of story, 11 pages depict misery and torture. Every assault and reaction is skillfully and sensuously portrayed in great detail by penciler Paulo Siqueira and inker Amilton Santos, much like Brian Bolland’s famously cinematic depiction of the shooting of Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke.

In the context of this story arc, the authors may feel that showing the details of the torture and how Carol fought back helps to establish credibility for this long misused character. I’m sure it’s the fantasy of abused people everywhere to magically obtain superpowers and then beat the crap out of their abuser (I know it would be mine). Perhaps one could stretch this thinly veiled S&M fantasy into a critical comment on the medieval policies of the Bush Administration, with a female American military officer on the receiving end of the kind of treatment the US dished out at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. When confronted with this bleak imagery in the actual book, it’s hard to visualize a plot line that justifies this kind of blatant pandering. Unfortunately, torture as entertainment has become such a common theme in contemporary media that nobody really questions it anymore. I imagine this Ms. Marvel story is intended to visually appeal to the fans of films like Saw and Hostel, or the cynical “torture someone, it’s sweeps week” attitude of a TV series like 24 or La Femme Nikita. Although there seem to be endless rationalizations and analyses of why people enjoy watching graphic depictions of torture, and I have to admit that on an emotional level the fascination with torture porn is still a total mystery to me. Any thoughts?


Addendum 9/09. Well, it turns out that this story didn’t go quite in the direction I thought it would, and good for the writers, although this was still a disgusting issue, and I haven’t followed Ms. Marvel regularly since. Deepening the mystery (as far as I'm concerned anyway) Entertainment Weekly (7/31/09 issue) ran an article by Christine Spines entitled Horror Films and the Women That Love Them. The article claims that a huge percentage of the audience for slasher horror films is female. This is probably no surprise to those of you who watch movies like this and notice the make-up of the audience in attendance, but I was really surprised. I admit that I am still puzzled and intrigued by this cultural phenomenon.

SPE & FAMSF Exhibition News

Two friends have exhibitions that recently opened in San Francisco! Tom Griscom has three photos featured in the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) West Region’s Inspiration show at the Academy of Art University's Sutter Street Gallery in downtown San Francisco. The three photos picked for this show are from Tom’s labor landmarks series, based on maps and locations found the Labor Landmarks of San Francisco book by the Labor Archives and Research Center at SFSU. Tom’s work should be on display through the conference dates in mid-November.


Mark Johnson’s labor of love, Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970 is finally open at the de Young though January 18, 2009. According to the Fine Arts Museum’s web site, “Asian American Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970 presents the work of artists of Asian ancestry who lived and worked in the United States. This exhibition represents the first comprehensive survey of these artists, and seeks to advance awareness of this under-represented group in American art history. Their art reflects the currents of identity and style that shift between aesthetics of diverse international geographies. This exhibition is rich in variety and demonstrates the wealth of Asian American art using masterpieces spanning seventy years. Nearly 100 works by 60 artists, many of whom had their work exhibited at the de Young or Legion of Honor in earlier decades, are included.” Our friend Renee, who organizes the weekly Friday night extravaganzas, has all sorts of great music, food and other activities planned in support of the show, check the museum's events calendar to see the latest. All Friday night events are free. Best of luck to Tom and MJ on their shows, I hope to see them soon!