Consortium of Seven: Year 4

      Note:  You can find Part 1 of this blog series  right here  and Part 2 can be found  over here . MAD magazine used to call its staff "the usual gang of idiots," and Hogwarts students had to cope with both Rita Skeeter and the Inquisitorial Squad. Not sure which of these comparisons is most applicable to the creators of the Confidential book series and the similarly titled magazine Jack Lait (in conjunction with Lee Mortimer) really went all out for scandal-mongering in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The American public was very receptive. Of course this was the era of film noir. People who once felt patriotic now felt cynical. People who once felt effective now felt helpless. People who once felt big now felt small. The Confidential book series perfectly fit this view of life as a dangerous, grimy alley with no outlet.  We all know Jack Lait didn't create this atmosphere; he just took advantage of it. Investigating mostly invent...

I do love a good song parody. Today we've got "Nashville Katz," which Dr. Demento used to play now and then. Here's the original: And a nice cover by the Del McCoury Band. See in in a couple weeks! Next week we'll have a book review by Eleanore Vance.

It may or may not have become evident during the three years I’ve throwing stuff at the wall here at the Consortium, but I do love me some saxophone. And every once in a while, I dig into one of the most interesting – to me, anyway – documents I’ve found in the years that I’ve been online.  About ten years ago, as I wandered through music blogs and forums, I chanced across a Word file:  The History of Top 40 Saxophone Solos, 1955-2005 (updated as a pdf in 2011). Now 196 pages long, the file lists every American and British Top 40 hit during those years that had a saxophone solo or significant background saxophone part and then lists the individual player or players who crafted those solos or those parts.  Plenty of spots in the list of soloists are blank – the writers say research continues – but many of them are filled. And many of those that are filled, gratifyingly, are from the earlier years, when individual credits on records were few.  The familiar names...

Key West field trip…