Getting friends into new music, especially from unfamiliar or otherwise forbidding genres, can be a feat of arm-twisting — of variations on ways to yell, "Listen to this, dummy!" Sami Yenigun, who works on the NPR Arts Desk and pops up frequently on All Songs Considered, is constantly agitating on behalf of electronic and dance music, so he jumps all over questions like, "What song do you love right now?"
Max Gordon once described the Vanguard's patrons as "poets, WPA writers, hustlers, insomniacs, college students from the Bronx and Brooklyn, broads on the make, musicians and moochers, all of them crowding the place every night to let off steam." That's a lot of people.
The clearly marked but winding trail to the men's room was immortalized in the title of Chris Potter's album Follow the Red Line, recorded live at the club and released in 2007. Along the way, it snakes past the Vanguard's famed kitchen, which now doubles as both office and green room.
The Vanguard's skinny red awning offers little in the way of shelter, but that's hardly the point. It lends the basement club curb appeal and leads straight to its bright red doors.
If you wish to enter this sacred jazz site, your rite of passage will be to navigate the perilously steep red stairwell. Suggestion: Use the handrails.
Jazz club owners rarely seem to inspire warm and fuzzy feelings. That's why it's so impressive that the corner of 7th Avenue South and Perry Street, just a few feet from the Village Vanguard's entrance, was named for beloved club founder Max Gordon back in 1996.
Of course, there's also a cover charge if you want to get in, but it's a steal by New York standards ($25 with a $5 drink minimum, $20 for students for the late set on weeknights). Although the club remains old-school — no food, no talking, no frills — it did start accepting credit cards last year.
Protected from the glare of sunlight, the little wedge-shaped room is peaceful in the afternoon. Musicians will sometimes come to practice here, among the spirits of jazz past, before their performances in the evening.
"The U.N.'s deputy envoy for Syria, Jean-Marie Guehenno, [has] told the U.N. Human Rights Council that the violence in Syria has 'reached or even surpassed' levels seen before the April 12 ceasefire agreement and that a six-point peace plan forged by his boss, U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, 'is clearly not being implemented.' "
Deb Waldin testifies about her experience with a debt collector at a Minnesota hospital during a hearing led by Sen. Al Franken in St. Paul, Minn., in late May.
Deb Waldin was in agony when she arrived at the emergency room of Fairview Southdale, a nonprofit hospital in suburban Minneapolis. On a scale of 1 to 10, she says her pain was at 12.
She turned out to have kidney stones. But before she got the diagnosis, while she was still lying on a gurney waiting to see a doctor, she was approached by a debt collector from a company called Accretive Health.
A double-shot of Jim James commences today's MEDICINE BALL CARAVAN (11am-noon Central Standard on 88.7FM or www.krvs.orgwith his guest shot on the latest release by The Flaming Lips along with, of course, My Morning Jacket. Plus the newest by Beach House, Carbon Poppies, Fanfarlo and Fights! A string of tracks from the 1972 Stephen Stills 'Manassas' album in the mix, too.
"Pending home sales bounced back in May, matching the highest level in the past two years, and are well above year-ago levels," the National Association of Realtors reports. The association says that:
