Judge James Reese fights for literacy ... all-star Night Before Christmas, an Off-Ramp holiday tradition ... A Christmas Story: Dylan Brody and Dylan Thomas ... EatLA eats a lot of sandwiches ...
Ted Soqui captures Time's 'Protester' image for 'Person of the Year'
The image used to represent protesters for Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” is of a local woman, Sarah Mason of Highland. It was captured by freelance photographer Ted Soqui and then posterized by Shepard Fairey for the magazine cover.
"I can't tell you how I took it but I can tell you how I felt," Soqui said. "It's one of those images that as soon as I clicked it, I knew it was special."
The photo was taken November 17, 2011, in front of Bank of America. Soqui was linking arms with other OccupyLA protesters, preparing themselves for arrest. Soqui says he saw Mason's eyes and how the sun was hitting them, so he grabbed a longer lens and captured her photo. There's only one shot where she looked at the camera, and that's the one that made the cover.
He says Time probably used a posterized version (fully licensed, this time, by Shepard Fairey) to make it fit with the idea of honoring all protesters, not an individual. And of all the millions of photos taken of protests, that they picked his? "Wow."
"The Artist" actor Penelope Ann Miller talks with Off-Ramp
The black-and-white silent film "The Artist" earned a leading six nominations Thursday for the 69th annual Golden Globe Awards, including a nod for best musical/comedy motion picture. Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with actor Penelope Ann Miller, who plays Doris in "The Artist."
Rabe and Miller spoke at Taschen's party for the release of a new book of Marilyn Monroe's final photo shoot, featuring the photos of Bert Stern.
Judge James Reese - 92-year old advocate for troubled kids
On Off-Ramp, we like to talk with witnesses to history, people who bring history alive, instead of leaving it on the dry pages of a book. Retired Judge James Reese is one of these voices of history. He was raised in the segregated south, served in the Army during WW2, became one of the relatively few black lawyers in LA in 1946, and was Ray Charles' legal counsel for two years before becoming LA's first black Superior Court commissioner. Later, he became a Superior Court judge. At 92, he's still hearing arbitration cases and has a new calling: a USC mentoring program for at-risk kids who can't read and write. Off-Ramp host John Rabe spoke with Judge Reese at his law office.
Rachel Bloom joins Mantle, Carolla, Poggioli and more in our All Star Night Before Christmas
Rachel Bloom of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" was in the The Frame studio today, and after she was done, I asked if she'd lend her voice to our annual audio holiday card to listeners, the All Star Night Before Christmas.
"I'd love to!" she said. "Our family reads this every year at Christmas!"
And thirty seconds later, she'd nailed:
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
And now Rachel joins the ranks of celebs and KPCC hosts who hammed it up for us, including A Martinez, Alex Cohen, Larry Mantle, John Horn, Adam Carolla, Salman Rushdie, Kathleen Turner, NPR's Sylvia Poggioli, Ted ("Isaac" on the Love Boat) Lange, and John ("Q" on Star Trek) de Lancie. Patt Morrison specifically asked to read the reindeer names, so she say Donder, not Donner. (I'm sure she's right.)
The late great Steve Julian corralled many of the voices a few years ago in his local theater work, so of course I couldn't take his velvety voice out of there. And neither could I switch out Huell Howser, who closes out the poem in signature Huell fashion.
But there's no need. After all, it's at Christmas that we remember old and new friends, those with us in the flesh, and those with us in our hearts.
Dylan Thomas and Dylan Brody, or "A Child's Secular Christmas in America"
A Christmas story from Dylan Brody, the playwright, humorist, author, and regular contributor to The Huffington Post. (The story was recorded at Friday Entertainment and The Improvisation in Hollywood, and appears on Brody's CD "True Enough.")
Bert Stern and Marilyn Monroe's last session - new from Taschen
6/27/2013 UPDATE: Bert Stern died yesterday at his Manhattan home. He was 83. Here's our 2011 conversation.
Marilyn Monroe didn't become an icon on her own. She had co-conspirators -- the photographers whose cameras loved her. Taschen has just published a huge new book of Monroe's last portrait sitting, taken for Vogue magazine by Bert Stern just six weeks before she died. Stern and Monroe worked together for three days at the Hotel Bel Air, which is where Tachen unveiled the new book. Bert Stern was the guest of honor and he talked with Off-Ramp host John Rabe.
Violinist remembers posing for huge freeway mural, and Kent Twitchell recalls painting it
If you drive the Harbor Freeway, you've seen Julie Gigante, the LA Chamber Orchestra violinist. You can't miss her. She's eight stories high. She's one of the most prominent LACO members depicted in Kent Twitchell's mural, "Harbor Freeway Overture," which was begun twenty years ago. Gigante is still with LACO, and until just the other day when she talked with Off-Ramp host John Rabe, hadn't stood at the foot on the mural. Rabe also talked with Twitchell, who is still proud of his monument to the musical artists.
Stan Kenton Centennial - an appreciation from Steven Harris
December 15th marks the centennial of one of the seminal figures of jazz, Stan Kenton, who died in 1979. Kenton, who was born in Wichita and raised in Bell, was a ceaseless innovator who was once acclaimed "Modern America's Man of Music." Jazz historian Steven Harris, who hosted a Kenton tribute show on KPCC in the 1980s and is the author of "The Kenton Kronicles," looks back at this legendary figure whose theme song said it all: “Artistry in Rhythm”
Stan Kenton was a potentate of progressive jazz. Matinee-handsome with matchless charisma, he didn't need a baton. Just his presence ignited brass fanfares not even Toscanini could rival. Kenton was a pianist, composer and arranger, but the orchestra was his true instrument.
Kenton sparked controversy from the start. One of his first experiments in sound was a pre-curser to the jazz-inspired beat movement. Before such crazy-cool literati as Kerouac and Ginsberg were permeating 1950s culture, Kenton offered a surreal poem called "This Is My Theme," set to reeds, bongos, and blaring brass. By the time of its 1948 release, Kenton was hailed as the country's top musical box-office attraction. He packed dance halls, ballrooms, and clubs with fans who wanted to sample his latest menu of symphonic concertizing, whether they could comprehend it or not.
It was hard to be neutral about Stan Kenton. You were either fanatical about his music or detested it. Take his 40-piece Innovations in Modern Music concert crew --- an unheard of traveling cast fusing the mediums of jazz and classical. The critics who got caught up in the dissonance had a field day blasting his bombastic attempts But you just have to listen to his stripped down but amped up version of "Stompin' at the Savoy" to get his swinging side.
The L.A. Music Center was only a month old when Kenton debuted another grandiose venture: a 26-piece orchestra he dubbed the "Neophonic" --- a word that Stan himself coined, meaning "new sound." Then there were the delightful novelties that kept the royalties coming in, like his collaboration with Capitol Records' reigning star, Nat Cole on "Orange Colored Sky."
For 37 years, the Kenton band was a school of talent. Among its hundreds of key players were Art Pepper, Shelly Manne and trumpet titan Maynard Ferguson. There were singers like the ever-hip June Christy, Anita O’Day and the future Mrs. Kenton, Ann Richards. Then came the beautiful brass oddity that Kenton co-designed: It was called the mellophonium --- a haunting cross between a trumpet and trombone that could send thrills and chills through an audience.
Kenton claimed another first with his entry of Afro-Cuban rhythms in orchestrated big band jazz. The climax was the monumental 1956 album "Cuban Fire."
But Stan Kenton’s greatest legacy was music education. In 1959, under Stan's auspices, the first National Stage Band Camp was formed. Kenton set a precedent in providing in-depth instruction to music students. He took it further under his own corporate name by establishing the Kenton Clinics with a faculty of up to 30 instructors, guest clinicians and lecturers. By the time of his death, Kenton had led around a thousand clinics on campuses across the nation and ignited many of the country's 20,000 stage bands into existence.
Stan Kenton made his bandleading debut at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa Beach in 1941. 70 years later, his legacy is still being felt and celebrated. So here's to you, Stanley Newcomb Kenton: Happy 100th and long reign your Artistry in Rhythm.
Slake: John Albert's "Running with the Devil"
LISTENER WARNING: This interview -- Off-Ramp host John Rabe's conversation with writer John Albert about his piece in Issue 2 of Slake magazine -- includes frank and non-judgemental descriptions of drug use, teenage sex, unsupervised partying, and the groundbreaking nature of early Van Halen.
Eat LA: happy hours, sad customers and 30 sandwiches
A steady diet of sandwiches, LA’s best happy hours, and the greatest Sunset Strip burger joint you’ll never eat at.
This time, Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson talks with Eat LA’s Elina Shatkin, who’s just completing her ambitious 30 sandwiches in 30 days project. John Rabe, Colleen Bates and Kevin Ferguson grab a drink and talk about some of LA's best happy hours. And finally, Colleen Bates talks with Rob Vautherine, a regular at the soon-to-be-shuttered Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset.