Music: Donnie and Bowie, a young jazzman's contribution to the pop legend's swan song

- from The Guardian

Nine months have passed since David Bowie’s death, but his last collaborator, Donny McCaslin, still has to pause when he talks about it. “There’s so much emotion,” McCaslin says, the words catching in his throat. “It’s devastating.”

McCaslin speaks about his experience with Bowie sitting in 55 Bar, the micro Greenwich Village jazz club where Bowie first heard the musician perform back in 2014. Shortly after seeing that show, Bowie chose McCaslin’s band to back him on his final album, the acclaimed, jazz-fusion leaning Blackstar.

McCaslin vividly remembers the night Bowie came to the club to check him out. “I was definitely nervous,” the saxophonist said. “I glanced up and saw where he was sitting. I just tried to keep myself grounded and not think about it. But the pressure was on.”
Even so, McCaslin says his band “were going for it. It wasn’t a watered-down version of what we do. Afterwards Bowie said: ‘Wow, that was really loud!’”


Clearly, he liked it that way, because a few days later, Bowie emailed the musician to ask if his band would work with him on what would be his last release, an album that turned out to be one of his most adventurous. The experience of creating music with Bowie proved so deep, and its aftermath so jarring, that McCaslin decided to turn his new album, Beyond Now, out 14 October, into a tribute. It includes several transformative covers of Bowie songs, including Warszawa from Low, and A Small Plot of Land from Outside, along with a song McCaslin wrote inspired by a piece Bowie left off Blackstar. (That track, plus two other cuts that didn’t make that release, will come out on 21 October on the cast album from the musical Bowie wrote in his last year, Lazarus).

Advertisement

McCaslin knew his Bowie salute had to be special. “I wanted the depth of my experience with him, and the impact on my life, to be reflected,” he said. “I was digging deep on every take to get the gravitas I felt it should have.”


For Blackstar, that meant giving McCaslin’s band nearly free rein. “He set the tone from the beginning,” the saxophonist said. “He told us: ‘Whatever you hear, I want you to go with it.’ He said ‘great’ to everything.”
At the same time, McCaslin couldn’t tell anyone outside of his immediate family about the project. Bowie had the band sign non-disclosure agreements, the better to keep the album a secret until he was ready to release it. At the same time, Bowie was aware he had cancer, which was an even more closely guarded secret. McCaslin politely demurs when asked if he knew the star was sick during the recording process. “He was so private,” he said. “I want to honor his wishes that we not talk about it.”

At the time, McCaslin wasn’t even sure the music he cut with Bowie would come out or, if it did, how much of his band’s efforts would make the ultimate cut. It wasn’t until late last fall, when a British journalist asked to interview the musician for a story about a new Bowie album, that he found out about its impending release and heard its final form.

On 8 January, Blackstar finally appeared. Two days later came news of Bowie’s death and, suddenly, everyone wanted to talk to McCaslin. “I wasn’t prepped,” he said. “I didn’t know what to say.”
He gave a few interviews, talking only about the music. Then, journalists started to get nosier about the details of Bowie’s illness and demise, and McCaslin shut down. He also began to fully experience his grief. “We had this amazing connection,” he said, “and then he was gone.”

The Word on Weed #1

No one has ever overdosed or died from smoking too much weed. In the history of mankind.

While prescription painkillers cause thousands of overdose deaths each year, no one has ever died from a marijuana overdose.

But is it even possible to overdose on weed? The answer is no, according to the National Cancer Institute. And here’s why:

“Because cannabinoid receptors, unlike opioid receptors, are not located in the brainstem areas controlling respiration, lethal overdoses from Cannabis and cannabinoids do not occur.”

n other words, marijuana and opioids affect different pathways of the body. Opioid pathways, also known as receptors, are present in areas of the brain that control breathing. As a result, taking too many painkillers can cause a person to stop breathing.

But marijuana acts on a completely different set of pathways. These pathways are called cannabinoid receptors and they do not affect respiration. Thus, marijuana cannot cause someone to stop breathing, no matter how much they ingest.

Another way of measuring a drug’s safety is by its therapeutic index. The therapeutic index is the ratio between a drug’s lethal dose and its therapeutic dose (amount that causes a therapeutic effect).

Studies show that marijuana has a therapeutic index of 40,000:1. This means someone would have to take 40,000 times the normal amount of marijuana in order to die.

Opioid-based painkillers have much lower therapeutic indexes. For example, the therapeutic index of morphine is only 70:1.

The Word on Weed #1

No one has ever overdosed or died from smoking too much weed. In the history of mankind.

While prescription painkillers cause thousands of overdose deaths each year, no one has ever died from a marijuana overdose.

But is it even possible to overdose on weed? The answer is no, according to the National Cancer Institute. And here’s why:

“Because cannabinoid receptors, unlike opioid receptors, are not located in the brainstem areas controlling respiration, lethal overdoses from Cannabis and cannabinoids do not occur.”

n other words, marijuana and opioids affect different pathways of the body. Opioid pathways, also known as receptors, are present in areas of the brain that control breathing. As a result, taking too many painkillers can cause a person to stop breathing.

But marijuana acts on a completely different set of pathways. These pathways are called cannabinoid receptors and they do not affect respiration. Thus, marijuana cannot cause someone to stop breathing, no matter how much they ingest.

Another way of measuring a drug’s safety is by its therapeutic index. The therapeutic index is the ratio between a drug’s lethal dose and its therapeutic dose (amount that causes a therapeutic effect).

Studies show that marijuana has a therapeutic index of 40,000:1. This means someone would have to take 40,000 times the normal amount of marijuana in order to die.

Opioid-based painkillers have much lower therapeutic indexes. For example, the therapeutic index of morphine is only 70:1.

Whoopi Plays God, Obama Plays Matchmaker: Review Double-Bill

Unfortunately, Whoopi Goldberg playing God, the setting of New Orleans (still in recovery mode, but vibrant), and the addition of Gael Garica Bernal do not quite add up to 'A Little Bit of Heaven'.

The Kate Hudson vehicle is a pleasant enough diversion, but neither the comedy nor the romance have sufficient intensity or zing to really pull the viewer in until almost at the end. Kate plays a successful ad exec and commitment-phobe who is suddenly diagnosed with colon cancer (yes, we'll strive to avoid the cliche). The bearer of this bad news is a "terminally" (okay, we're weak) stiff but ambitious oncologist (Bernal) who's torn between his decidedly unprofessional stirrings for his new patient and his desire to progress in a special advance programme run by an even stiffer senior doctor.

In fairness, Bernal's performance becomes more appreciable once he and Hudson's character become "invovled"  as does that of Kathy Bates, who plays the mom with the victim mentality. And of course, we could not help but mention a few of the other support players: Lucy Punch as the pixieish, "down for whatever co-worker, Romany Malco doing both the token Black (sorry, Whoopi) and token gay male friend roles, and Peter Dinklage (no role is too small for him to blow up) as the "blind date/pick-me-up" recommended by said gay male friend (that encounter is a genuine hoot).

That said, its not a crowning achievement for writer/co-producer Gren Wells or director Nicole Kassell and - most disappointingly - this is a contemporary film set in New Orleans, and there are only two minute scenes involving live music/performance.

They may have been trying to escape formula, but sometimes knowing what you'll get beforehand increases the enjoyment.

Not so the case with the "aspiring" political romantic comedy "The Politics of Love". While the multiple conflicts engendered by the impending election of Barack Obama in 2008 seems fertile ground for the genre, The Politics of Love has all the flavour of an English sausage (apologies to our British friends). Jock-turned-actor Brian White (son of former NFL great Jo Jo White) reps for the Republicans, while straight-from-Bollywood hottie Mallika Sherawat is his bit of "Obama Massala".

The problem? Well, let's let's start with the acting gap. White is competent, and has presence, while the undoubtedly gorgeous Sherawat has all the effective range of my high-school spitballs. Watching them together is almost painful. Thankfully leaven comes in several forms: Anil Raman as the Dem's pothead, ne'er do well younger brother, and Loretta Devine (what hasn't she done?) Trinidad-born Gerry Bednob as her parents who, when they're not fighting, and splitting, and making up, run a restaurant.

The rest is an all-too predictable mish-mash (we're aware of our previous rubric) of movie cliches: bikini car wash, would-be Hooters girls, an obsessed TV news reporter smelling a big story, a manufactured scandal(guess which side is behind it) and so on and so forth.

Its already history of course - Barack wins. And love overcomes all hurts, the "bad guy" gets decked and even Indian and Soul Food learn to live together in harmony. All in one neat little 90-minute package. Yeah, riiiight. Republican Vice-Presidential running mate (and now occasional media gadfly) Sarah Palin inspired some far less insipid and testosterone-raising films than this - they just won't be filed under "family entertainment."