Tough News

I am a bit late to be adding my thoughts to this, but I have been doing a fair amount of navel gazing lately and have been preoccupied with some other stuff, more on that later.

By now most will have heard about the terrible news in the  jazz community.  Both Dennis Irwin and Andrew D'Angelo are fighting cancer.  I have loved their music for a long time.  I have seen Dennis many times with Scofield and Lovano and while I have never heard Andrew live, Human Feel was a very important band in my listening during the early 90s.

The real drag of all of this is that neither of these cats have health insurance.  There has been a tremendous outpouring of both opinions and support in the past few days.  Of note:  Nate Chinen's NYT article, Darcy's posts (16-23 Feb), and Andrew's own blog.  I really don't know what I can add beyond what Nate and Darcy and Andrew have written other than in the 21st century, with as many leaps into greatness that this society has made socially, technologically, and medically, it is OBSCENE that a human being has to filter such a complex amalgamation of emotions through the filter of "how am I going to PAY for this?" 

Help Andrew if you can...  I am going to organize a benefit with some of the cats down here.  I'm sure it won't be much, but it will be something...watch this space for details.