Who Could Ask for Anything More?

With all the depressing news out there -- from the Bush Administration being shown to be an abject failure, to American servicemen being needlessly slaughtered in Iraq, to Ann Coulter still being, it's really nice to be able to report some good news for a change.

Minton's Playhouse is back.

What's Minton's, you ask?

Minton's Playhouse in Harlem was the unofficial testing ground for the music that came to be known as bebop. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk. Charlie Christian -- they all jammed at Minton's in its heyday in the 1940s.

"It would be hard to name someone who didn't go to Minton's," says Phil Schaap, jazz historian and DJ at radio station WKCR in an article that ran in Wednesday's New York Post.

So many of the venues of the great age of jazz in New York City are gone (the Village Vanguard being a notable exception), that the reopening of Minton's Playhouse as a living performance space where today's musicians can play in the shadow of their great forebears -- a Yankee Stadium of jazz, you might say -- is a cause for celebration. Earl Spain, the Harlem club owner who, according to the Post article, put up $300,000 of his own money to renovate the space, deserves the thanks of all music-loving New Yorkers for bringing this classic space back to life.

Minton's Playhouse is at 206-210 West 118th Street, on the first floor of the Cecil Hotel. It opens today. Monday night is the first jam session. Be there or be square.

Tom Moran

Note: If you've never heard Phil Schaap on WKCR, you're definitely missing an experience. Phil's knowledge of jazz makes the word "encyclopedic" seem utterly inadequate, and his "birthday broadcasts" of jazz legends like Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong and Lester Young are more informative (and more fun) than a college course on the History of Jazz -- unless that course is being given by Phil himself. If you ever get the chance, check him out at 89.9 FM in New York, or listen online at: www.wkcr.org.