Kareem's Weekend Boost
5 Things to Watch, Read, or Listen to This Weekend (Oct. 29-31)
While your sitting at home waiting for the next trick-or-treater to ring your bell, here are some suggestions to get you through the weekend. Thoughts?
LISTEN (music)
The Count Basie Orchestra: Live at Birdland
For those who miss The Count since his death in 1984, this album is the perfect antidote. Recorded over four nights in 2020 at Count Basie’s favorite venue, his 18-piece namesake orchestra does him proud. With two discs and 33 songs, you can make a day of listening to new arrangements of Basie classics like “One O’Clock Jump” and “April in Paris.” There’s something about this brass-heavy big band sound that transports you to a jubilant place and time.
Get album here.
For contrast, here’s Count Basie at Birdland in 1953.
This is a reader-supported newsletter. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. The best way to join the community and support my work is by taking out a paid subscription.
WATCH (TV)
Colin in Black and White (Netflix)
This thoroughly unique half-hour show based on the childhood of former NFL quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick is as groundbreaking as Colin himself. Although it shares a voice-over narration like others in the childhood-nostalgia genre (Young Rock, The Wonder Years, Everyone Hates Chris, Malcolm in the Middle), it is definitely not a sit-com. Instead, Kaepernick himself appears on screen as a zeitgeist guide (the Ghost of Childhood Past) to examine not just the details of his life but the systemic racism that forged who he became. Most of the time the show is uncomfortably accurate in its social commentaries about Black hair, street fashion, etc. and the continual backlash by Ken-and-Barbie culture against it. Sometimes the writers push their agenda a little too far. The analogy of comparing NFL players to slaves because they are treated like slabs of beef doesn’t hold up because physical fitness is a requirement to do the job successfully and, more important, the players choose to rent their bodies in exchange for fame and fortune. And yet, there’s so much insight and revelation about “growing up Colin” that the show is very worthwhile. There’s more contemporary African American cultural history to be learned in one episode that in most high school textbooks. Especially touching is the struggle of his adoptive white parents (Mary-Louise Parker and Nick Offerman) to deal with the needs of their Black teenage son.