JSngry

Porter Kilbert Wilbert Harrison Kansas City Stsr

That was one of the saddest things I've ever seen. Big fan of the Rangers org here, overall, but that one....not good. They got greedy and tried to get too much too soon.

Neftali Feliz says hi.

The right way to do this is to buy it and then play it on the day of the show, as close to the actual performance time as possible, and then do nothing in between but study, get high, and listen to other 1966 records, nothing else. Maybe watch some Get Smart reruns. Anything else and it gets all historical-y.

Felix Pappalardi Mississippi Queen Steamboat Willie

If/When it goes to CD, I might be interested. Might be fun hearing the group working an audience. Where that exists, it has worked quite well..

To be clear, when I make my music, or when I find something I really feel good about, I do want it to be heard, I do want it to get a fair (enough) shot at being heard. I just don't want to go begging to people who would no more like it than I would like a ukulele band playing Wings songs. Nor do I want to give them the "oh, just try it, you'll LIKE it!" bullshit. No, they most likely won't. Just let me know where the people who probably will like it are, let me deal with them, that's hard enough. And if it's an unavoidably mixed audience, here it is, you'll like it if you will, and you'll not if you won't, simple as that. We're not talking about a monorail here.

The big thing that Rite reveals after the initial "surprise" wears off is how melodic it is, and simply so at that, a handful of basic melodic themes that keep coming back without all THAT much linear variation. Rhythmically and harmonically, yeah, it goes there, but it can be kind of LOL funny hearing the "oh, THAT one again" with the melodies as they keep reoccuring. Hell, it's dance music, right? Repetion is a strength! Also, two things I wonder about - one of the themes is pretty much a cop of what I know as "Song Of The Volga Boatman", which I always assumed was some kind of folk song. What is the actual derivation of that? And then...there's one theme of which the first three notes never fail to put me in mind of the first three notes of "I'll Remember April"...but also French Impressionism in general...still, Spring, April...probably not a connection except to the French thing, but still, LOL if you don't mind LOLing with Stravinsky, and I don't. Brahms...my completely uninformed impression is that he would've been happy being Mozart II, but that damn Beethover dude got in the way. The guy tries SO hard to keep it between the lines but just can't help himself. Every time I hear him, it's like that, about to yawn and then OOPS! Again LOL. I love it when I can laugh to music, not the laugh of derision or mockery or jokery, just...you know...happy to be hearing that. People being great, yes, but still just being people. Fun.

I'm with you on Gangsta. Although I can appreciate the "personas" and the narratives as a part of all the different entertainment/cultural traditions of badassery, at some point it seemed to me to devolve into a fatalistic/nihilistic/whatever negation of the game rather than a sly reflection on it. Take Hustlers Convention from 1973, full frontal gangsterism, bloody, profane, brutal, and entertaining as hell. Why? Because there's always hope, people be doing all this extreme extreme stuff with hope at the root. It's a dark hope to be sure, but... Then again, Gangsta started getting the play about the time we had our first kid and I started to get more concerned about "desensitization" and stuff like that. Plus, we moved to the burbs, not out of flight or fear or anything, far from it, but just because that's where the new houses we could afford were. Got tired of apartment living, especially with a kid, so we moved into a house, established equity blahblahblah. Totally non-Gangsta. So I was not the market, obviously. Old Fartdonm ensued, and continues to ensue. However, I do believe, based on both principle and experience, that it takes brains and awareness to see "the life" as the trap that it is, and to play only as much as you can afford to lose. Losing freedom is bad enough, losing your life is, like, more than just a bad decision, you know. Unless it's not, in which case...damn, how did you get THERE! Thuggery and such...seems like it used to exist as part of a push-pull dynamic where hope might be dim, but still visible. Seems that at some point, hope just got fucked away. The hows/whys of that are outside the scope of a music thread, and I'm fully aware that a lot of Gangsta is/was mean in a cartoon-ish type way, so ok, let it be that, but...it failed to appeal to me. I'm of the opinion that the reason the coyote falling off the cliff was so damn funny because we never saw him actually hit the ground. Here is where the coyote falls, but lives, and every damn road runner for miles around pays the price. This I like.

Been getting that a lot the last few years. So far, no disasters, but is that a fate one prefers to tempt? Probably not, right?

I don't want to win anybody over or ease anybody into anything. People either get it or they don't. All I hope for is a fair visibility for all of what is being done, after which, hey, see you there if you're there, see you someplace else if you're not. I go to a lot of places, so the odds are good that there will be an opportunity for intersection somewhere. But if not, oh well, life is short, and I'm frequently flatulent. Count your blessings!

I would so buy it.

Bob Evans Bob Brookmeyer Ivory Joe Hunter

The subject line Debate 9/27 was a mirror of a just-locked thread Debate 9/26 which was overtly/totally political in intent. The timing and placement of your new thread in a non-music subforum suggested the possibility that it was an "answer" thread, especially since the content did nothing to indicate that it was to be a specifically musical discussion (the content was not "do you prefer...." but was just Experimental Hip Hop, or Gansta Rap? Knowing this community to be a bunch of intelligent wiseasses, the potential for equating candidates to genres was real enough. And it would probably have been funny. But it would also have been political, which the owner of the board has explicitly forbidden. Since I don't have all day to sit around and wait to see what the intent was or what the results would be, I locked the thread, as I had done with the overtly political one. Premature? Perhaps. But please feel free to start such a discussion in a music subforum. Even use that same subject line if you like, if you think that will attract the discussion you desire. I'm locking this thread now. the OP's question has been asked and answered. Further pursuance of an actual musical discussion is encouraged, as always.