In keeping with current political events, the New Music Bazaar is gratified to present the first in a series of topical debates in which Kalvos and Damian will radiophonically duke it out over issues of importance to you, our listening audient. The ground rules are very simple, and will be devised as the debate progresses. Due to constraints imposed upon us by Robert’s Rule of Order #17b, I will serve as both moderator and contestant #2. Kalvos, if you will take your microphonical position; I already have mine; the audience, we presume, eagerly awaits -- here now is bone of detention #1: Alfred Binet once called Charles Ives ... well, I guess he just called him, just picked up the telegraph one day and tapped out a brief note inviting him to lunch at the Sorbonne, which was a famous and popular Paris café long before hungry scholars started hanging out in its rotunda begging for scraps of Brie and Camembert. There is an analogy to be drawn here, but since it is not part of the debate, it must be left for another time. You're welcome. Anyway, Mr. Ives did not at first respond, since he was away from the telegraph at that moment, and left word to please leave a short message at the sound of the dit-dah and he'd get back to him. Binet, too, had wandered away from his telegraph and was likewise unable to respond to Ives' machine’s message. In fact, he had already gone to lunch, not at the Sorbonne, but at its upscale competitor, the Louvre -- or in French, le Louvre -- which was running a special on ham salad. He sat at a table with Jim Chadwick, a celebrated restaurant owner who had invented the neutron, the smallest imaginable serving size which was very big in the burgeoning hospitality industry. Historians do not report what was discussed at table that day, but this does not imply that they haven't written dozens of books about the event anyway. Meanwhile ... where was I? Oh. Ives, Chadwick and Binet -- as curious a threesome as might be imagined without the aid of chloroform, do you agree, Kalvos? Yes or no? ________ Neither do I. There you have it, the first Kalvos and Damian debate of this, the 74th episode of the New Music Bazaar, this portion of which, et cetera.

Still to come, the long-awaited return of "The Best of the Bazaar," in which we extract listenable snippets from a selection of past shows, mix 'em up, mix 'em down, then play 'em back to you in a delightfully reconstituted format which is as unlike anything else you've heard today as is, say, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is to le flambeau oriange.

Strange bedfellows, they, as are the voice, warp and woof of debate maven #1, Kalvos.