In the Mix

Can one exist without the other? With the Jewish culture quarterly of the same name you get both for the price of one. ($8.95, at my local Borders.) G & P's new The Sound Issue interviews "Jewtastic" DJ-producer Mark Ronson, and considers Jonathan Richman, MC Serch, Andy Statman and Leonard Bernstein, among others, while containing "not one mention of the word Mattisyahu." (Though, somewhat embarassingly, they mispell the reggae singer's name, right on the magazine cover.)

The cover story is a reprint on a 1972 National Lampoon comic about Bob Dylan called The Ventures of Zimmerman, drawn by DC comics artist Neal Adams. The art looks great, but the story, cowritten by Tony Hendra, the satirist and Spinal Tap co-star who wrote the acclaimed 2004 memoir Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul and then got embroiled in child molestation accusations, is a strange spin on Dylan-as-businessman. It aims to "raise a slew of questions about the perception of Jews inside and outside the music industry." But all it really winds up doing is showing that long before Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, artists have taken experimental approaches to Dylan, only to see his essence get away, yet again.

The piece I really loved in Guilt & Pleasure, though, is by Albert Maysles, the documentary film maker who Jean Luc Godard once called "the best American cameraman," who along with his late brother David, directed Gimme Shelter, The Beatles in America and Salesman, not to mention Grey Gardens, which was turned into a Tony Award winning musical in 2006. Maysles' short essay, Cornet, is about his father's horn, Wynton Marsalis, and death. Read it here.

Pimp C, the producer and rapper born Chad Butler who, along with Bun B., was one half of the influential Houston hip-hop duo UGK, was found dead in his L.A. hotel room Tuesday. Here's his obit and an MTV appreciation. This year, UGK's Underground Kingz album topped the charts, and its joyously complex "International Player's Anthem (I Choose You)," which featured Andre 3000 and Big Boi of Outkast, was unquestionably one of the best singles of 2007. Check out its wedding party video here.

The melancholy Christmas songs are often the most memorable, from "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" on down the line. Nellie McKay - that's mc-KYE, to you - adds to the tradition with "A Christmas Dirge," in which the environmental activist and fabulous satirist seriously bums out over a broken heart and all those soon to be dead trees. "Though my future's decked in misery," she sorrowfully sings, "Please don't chop another Christmas tree." Hear it here.

Gamble and Huff are going into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. The Philly soul songwriters, producers, executives and architects of the Sound of Philadelphia are the first winners of the Ahmet Ertegun award, newly created in the name of the late Atlantic Records exec who was just feted in London by Led Zeppelin. They'll be inducted in a ceremony in March at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

The other inductees into the increasingly non-exclusive club make for a motley crue. Madonna, instrumental rock band The Ventures, blues harpist Little Walter, Leonard Cohen, John Mellencamp, and Brit Invaders the Dave Clark Five, seen on Ed Sullivan below. Which leads, as always, to the trivia question: Who was the singer in the Dave Clark Five?

This clip of Ike and Tina Turner is from The Big T.N.T. Show, a 1966 TV concert produced by Phil Spector, that featured Bo Diddley, Joan Baez, the Byrds and Ray Charles, among others. Tina is pretty amazing on stage, and the band, as was always to be expected with the exacting Ike (who died yesterday), is supertight. It runs to almost 10 minutes, but if you stick to the end, or skip ahead, you'll see David McCallum, the guy who played Illya Kuryakin on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., conducting an orchestra. Why that is, I cannot say.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is going where Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Donald Trump have gone before, dating Italian supermodel turned singer Carla Bruni. Don't laugh about the 'singer' part: Bruni's 2003 Quelqu'un M'a Dit debut, sung almost entirely in French, was surprisingly charming. Her new album, the English speaking No Promises, however, misguidedly sets poems like W.H. Auden's "At Last The Secret Is Out" to music, and is not so fetching. What's next, George Bush making time with Carrie Underwood? Gordon Brown going out with Amy Winehouse?

Josh Groban's Noel is the biggest selling CD of 2007, with 2.8 million copies moved in just 8 weeks. (In equally disturbing news, High School Musical 2 is second with 2.7 million, and Daughtry third with 2.3.) This, it seems, is further evidence of the Oprahization of the cultural landscape, as the Mighty O recently declared the nice and easy Noel to be "the one Christmas CD every family should have." (Having boosted the careers of Groban, Leo Tolstoy and James Frey into the stratosphere, the next test of the Winfrey factor comes on Jan. 3, when her fave Barack Obama competes in the Iowa Caucuses.)

I think the Xmas CD I'd give to every family, whether it's happy or unhappy in its own way, would be A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector, the 1963 masterpiece that included Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," even if its auteur is an accused murderer.

But while the sales success of Groban - he's the one wearing leather trousers, above - is rather awe inspiring, around here we prefer a different brand of Christmas awesomeness, that's a little more, as Tina Turner used to say "nice and rough." Those qualities are on display in this song by the Brtitish metal trio Reuben, who, by the way, have spawned a tribute band called Corned Beef. The subtitles are most helpful.

Joel Dorn, the legendary record producer who worked with everyone from Charles Mingus to Bettle Midler, was one of those guys with his finger in a million pies. Dorn, who died on Monday, grew up in Yeadon before starting his career as a 19 year old jazz DJ on WHAT-FM in 1961, and "his heart always was in Philly," his Hyena Records cohort Kevin Calabro told me the other day.

Last year, I talked to Hal Willner, the great producer who grew up in northeast Philadelphia and Bala Cynwyd who couldn't say enough about Dorn, who he understudied with the 1970s. There's some of that in Dorn's obituary here.

Dorn produced the John Coltrane box set re-issue The Heavyweight Champion, that's the definitive statement on Trane's Atlantic record years. There's an excellent podcast recorded this March, from the Traneumentary series, that contains Dorn's most intelligent musings about the jazz giant.

George Manney wrote to remind me that Dorn produced four LPs by late Philadelphia jazz bagpipes player Rufus Harley, the subject of Manney's movie Pipes of Peace.

A bunch of people wrote who recalled Dorn's alter ego, Rondo H. Slade, The Masked Announcer, who did TV commercials on Philadelphia UHF TV stations in the 1970s. Dorn, who Willner called "the funniest man I ever met," had this to say about that in an interview with All About Jazz. Read the entry "Chalupa."

Adam Dorn, Joel's son, records as Mocean Worker, mixing in classic jazz samples with a live band and electronic programming that swings. His recollections of his Dad are on his own site.

And lastly, I got an e mail this morning from a guy named Tyrone Nunnely, who remembered Dorn well from his days at WHAT. Here's what he wrote:

"I am a 70-year old former Philadelphian and jazz lover in those days and Joel Dorn was a master DJ, I do remember. My job transferred me in 1975 out of town and I lost touch with a lot of the happenings back home. Nevertheless, I distinctly remember Joel and his special feeling for the great Little Jimmy Scott. I can remember Joel’s voice at this minute, he had a unique voice and to be truthful he was one of the hippest white guys on the radio! In those days WHAT was our station and to be on it as a DJ you had to be as we used to say “down.” The name Joel Dorn…the personality…he will be missed, I’m sure....What a guy and so appropriate for him to go on and work with the late Nesuhi Ertegun, Joel was worthy. I can see him now in heaven with a mike and Kirk, Trane, Miles, the Bird, Diz…"

There will be a memorial service in the new year, but no details have been announced yet.

This post is not about Philadelphia sports teams. It's about the Plastiscines, the French rock and roll band that's on my list of 10 things I didn't get around to in 2007. That's here. Watch the femmes show the garcons how it's done below.

I caught The Roots at the House of Blues in Atlantic City on NYE Eve last night. Nothing special, just your standard two hour plus mix of hard hitting James Brown derived funk, Black Thought's breathless rapid fire rhyming, and the 15 minute or so mind blowing cover of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War," featuring the Go Get A Late Pass trio of Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson (seen above as Kris Kringle in an image from Okayplayer.com) with Capt. Kirk Douglas and sousaphonist Tuba Gooding Jr.

This was the first Philadelphia area show for the hard touring hometown heroes since Leonard Hubbard Jr. left the band at the end of August, and was replaced by Trolleyvox bassist Owen Biddle. Biddle more than held his own, and was aided in his duties by the gurgling horn of Gooding Jr. (real name: Damon Bryson), whose role in the always evolving hip-hop ensemble has been growing, along with that of guitarist Douglas. (Other new Roots wrinkles: a taste of Gary Glitter' "Rock and Roll (Part 2)," sequeing into the slinky groove of Cody Chesnutt's "The Seed.") The band's eighth studio album, Rising Down, is due in late April.