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jazzypaul

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Posts posted by jazzypaul

  1. So, it's been a while since I've posted here with any regularity, so I kinda feel like a douche even posting this, but there does seem to be a lot of interest in the Chicago jazz scene around these parts, so, I'm giving it a go.

    Anyway, my group, the paul abella trio has just recorded it's latest CD. It's a mish mash of a disc that has a little bit of everything, from an attempt to recreate George Benson's 70's sound to odd-metered jazz-influenced pop tunes. In between are some interpretations of some of our favorite tunes from Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, The Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan. So, because this stuff is not cheap, we're going the crowd funding route. If nothing else, click on the link to watch the fairly funny video... http://www.indiegogo.com/paulabellatrio

    If you're wondering what we sound like, here are a few links...

    Stairway To Heaven

    A snippet of us jamming on Jaco Pastorius' Come On Come Over

    Thanks for letting me waste a few minutes of your day...

  2. She's a great player, and it's a genuinely solid disc.

    Note: I don't think she was ever in Von's band. However, the thing that didn't get mentioned in all of those quotes is that she's been a bit of a mover and shaker, starting up her own avant jazz series at Jerry's in Wicker Park. It's definitely a disc worth a listen, and she'll be one to watch in the next decade, I think.

  3. ok, not a NO brass band, but a band that definitely came from that tradition and is building upon it: Youngblood Brass Band out of (wait for it) Madison, WI.

    I love, Love, LOVE these guys. Came across one of their discs for dirt cheap when I lived dangerously close to Dusty Groove, saw them play around the corner at the Empty Bottle and at a few street festivals in Chicago, and they just threw it down HARD. Their snare drummer was also a pretty damn good rapper, to boot. And at the end of the night, they gave shout outs to every single New Orleans brass band you could think of. They know their roots and they're doing something with them.

    Youngblood Brass Band

  4. Wasn't the festival cut from four days down to three in 2009?

    well, yes. And no. And yes.

    A few years back, maybe a decade or so, it used to be four days.

    Then the Thursday was cut from Grant Park.

    Then they brought back the Thursday as a paid event.

    Then they got rid of the paid event.

    I'm biting my lip here, but I think that there are a lot of wise things that could be done that aren't being done, and the end result is that the Jazz Festival will either turn into a one day affair or will be completely ravaged by sponsors.

  5. Is Bob Ferraris still on bass? He was my teacher for a few years, what a monster! Please tell him Geoff says hi and that I want my "Jazzology" book back. :rofl:

    EDIT: Sorry, I just checked your myspace page and saw that Bob is indeed still in the band. He sold me a copy of your "Mainstreamism" CD a few years back. I love the "Mama's Little Baby Loves Shortnin' Bread" thing on Caravan.

    :w it's a small world after all...

    yeah, Bob's a bad bad man on the bass, and I think that if he ever moved out of Joliet and towards Chicago/Cook County, he'd be busy 11 days a week.

    I will most certainly tell him that you said hello, and I will also let him know that he's racking up fines with the Geoff library.

    And thanks for the kind words! If at all possible, you should come out and see us some time!

    ....Damage Inc. should be easy to re-arrange without losing the overall vibe, just be sure to leave in the "GO!" before the solo starts.

    Some things are just deemed to be for all times, sir.

    My favorite slight tweak on something thus far...The "Master, Master" section of Master of Puppets, we're doing as all percussion, no harmony or melody. Should be fun!

  6. I know that BBS's by their very nature are about as old school as it gets when it comes to teh interwebz, but c'mon people, do at least one of the following (and I am only irritated because, as blind-blake said, an Afro-Klezmer Orchestra that is truly both sounds like something I need to hear like yesterday):

    (I don't mean to self promote, I'm just showing how it's done. Mr. Crom, please use this as a template)

    1) "hey guys, check out my myspace page!"

    2) "hey guys, check out my CD on rhapsody!"

    3) or, if you're really slick, put your video, audio and mailing list together and try this one: "hey guys, check out my reverb nation page!"

    Any way you do it, I'm not getting down to Atlanta any time soon, but I'll buy a CD of some bad ass Africa meets Klezmer music any day! So, let me hear it, mang!

  7. please, please, pretty please with sugar on top please...we're less than 25 downloads away from hitting the 2500 mark. And we do get paid for this too (the perks of having Microsoft run a promotion that you're a part of?)! So, please, if you've not heard our charming music yet, please take 30 seconds out of your day to get some free music on your hard drive by going here and downloading our version of Lucky Southern. Free to you. I still get paid. I like it. You should too.

    http://www.myspace.com/windows?homepage=thepaulabellatrio

    Thanks!

  8. Wait--are you doing a whole thing as a samba, or just the verse? That actually sounds like it would fit pretty nicely--I'd think that Damage, Inc. might work similarly (I can actually hear a bossa nova clave under some of the first few riffs, matching the rhythm pretty well).

    The only reason I might NOT do the whole thing as a samba might be to (slightly) nod to the original and lay down some cajon hip-hop on the implied half time section coming out of the choruses on battery.

    insofar as Damage, Inc goes, the samba thing could work too. I wanted to see if I could mix it up a lil more though. Dunno yet. We've got a month and change to get it together.

    The club in question has one of those record on the fly CD recorders, so I think I'll be able to get all of the end results on disc. That'll be fun.

  9. frankly, my eyes started to glaze over about 2 pages into this. Articles like that are absolute bullshit. what constitutes going and seeing jazz? I guarantee you that joe jazz reporter didn't go into the eclectic clubs that play a little bit of everything or the rock clubs that are willing to give a jazz band with an attitude and a draw a chance. So, already, the numbers are skewed. They don't take into account the fact that there are bands out there that realize that playing to a bunch of grumpy guys in sportcoats and turtlenecks trying to impress tha ladiez is a dead end street. And guess what? I've seen a lot of those bands sell out clubs on a fairly regular basis.

    Jazz, as an art form dedicated to keeping Blue Note's re-issue program in business for another 100 years, is dying a quick death, and I have no interest in going to the funeral. However, as an improvisational artform that lives, breathes and learns from the culture(s) around it, I don't see it going anywhere. As long as there's an audience that wants to hear music with a little more depth, there will be musicians eager to provide it.

  10. Shit, "Battery."

    If there's no melody--like there is no real, active vocal melody in this context--I would just find one. My first step would be to shrink down the wall-of-sound guitar and bass parts into more manageable, less dense melodic lines--just forget the vocals. I agree that this would fit an afro-cuban vibe well to the extent that this sort of metal is not only rhythmically intricate, but also modular in design. This is related, I think, to what J said, but once you abstract the melody from the guitar and bass parts, it should be easy to play with it.

    Actually, the guitarist in the trio is a wonderful singer, and since we both grew up on hardcore 80's metal, he's chomping at the bit to get at them. I think I figured out Battery yesterday while I was doing my usual exercises on the cajon, as this works really well as a samba (think Stone Flower, rhythmically speaking). The Thing That Should Not Be, I think is gonna get the lounge singer treatment, because that tune's a big ass velveeta and nut ball if I've ever seen one. Right now, we're only down to Leper Messiah and Damage, Inc. for new treatments.

  11. bump.

    FREE MUSIC! WHO DOESN'T LIKE FREE MUSIC?!?!?

    We're in the final days of a really neat campaign...long story short, Reverb Nation and Microsoft (huh? wha?) got together and chose 1001 bands on RN to be part of this promotion. We got to be part of it. They're even paying the bands that got over a certain amount of downloads (we've crossed that hurdle).

    I was kinda thinking that we'd hit 300 or maybe 500 downloads in the course of 90 days. After all, we're just three jerks playing a semi-obscure Keith Jarrett composition.

    Well, we're now damn close to 2500. As a matter of personal pride, I'd like to wrap up this promotion (it ends in 6 days) over that 2500 mark.

    So, if you want a free download of our version of Lucky Southern, please, click here.

  12. No ideas, but I saw the thread title and thought it was about looking at Facebook on a Palm, which would be substantially less interesting a topic...

    No suggestions, (don't know the tunes, never really got the Metallica bug (but my son sure did, so I know the basic vibe, but that's about it) but one of my "stock" approaches to challenges like this is to deconstruct the melody & then set about putting it back together with different phrase displacements, etc. If it's no longer immediately recognizable, so much the better - sometimes. Then, once you have a melody that is divorced from the original context, you can treat it as something "original" and go from there. Then, if you want to make it more recognizable, you can tweak it back as much or as little as you want/need to. Depends on where you want to go, who you want to go there with, and why you're going there in the first place.

    That's one way to do it, just one. Take it for what it's worth, and hopefully you'll find your own way, all the way. Good luck!

    Thanks for the tips! I (and I guess it's because I'm a drummer/percussionist) tend to do what you're talking about from a rhythmic standpoint, but I'm usually all for leaving the melody intact. But, when you're talking stuff like Metallica, where the melody is certainly almost never the main selling point of the tune, you might as well tweak the hell out of that too, right? So, again, thanks!

  13. Okay, so November 13th, we're splitting a date with a gypsy jazz band that are dear friends of ours, and they mentioned that they were going to do a theme of some sort for the show (all 80's tunes, all TV themes or something). I mentioned that they should do an entire album and that we'd do one too for our set. It was agreed upon. So, my trio started putting our heads together and we decided that it'd be a hell of a lot of fun to arrange Metallica's Master of Puppets in its entirety for our lineup of guitar/vocals, upright bass and hand percussion.

    Now I'm listening to it. Probably the first time I've listened to it from start to finish since I was 21. Now, it's not as if anything on here is so incredibly difficult sounding, but the hard part seems to be figuring out ways to play all of this stuff so that it doesn't simply come off as so ridiculously small as to be laughable.

    Master of Puppets and Disposable Heroes both seem as if they're natural candidates to be fairly "stock" afro-cuban arrangements. Orion we can do straight out of the box. My two biggest worries are Battery and Damage, Inc.

    I'm sure this'll sink to the bottom of the Organissimo pond like a duck wearing cement shoes, but hey, if you've got any ideas, I'm all ears. Or eyes. Whatever the case may be.

  14. I like the Broom record. Here was my review for Chicago Jazz Magazine...

    Over the past couple of decades, Bobby Broom has proven himself to be an amazing musician and fascinating guitarist on weekly gigs, both solo, and with the awesome Deep Blue Organ Trio. Throw in playing time with amazing musicians including Sonny Rollins, and you’ve got a guy who’s played with the best and learned from the best. It’s no wonder that his discography has found him moving all over the place, from an attempt to recreate the Benson Cookbook band, to an album made up entirely of 60’s and 70’s pop tunes that cast a few of those chestnuts in whole new lights. His previous two solo efforts, both also on Origin records, found him playing with the same trio that plays here, and the cohesiveness that is on display here is the byproduct of a band that has been gigging and recording steadily for a handful of years now. Of course, it doesn’t hurt your cause if you decide to base an entire CD on some of the most beloved work that has ever been produced in the jazz idiom. And Bobby Broom Plays for Monk does not disappoint. This is exactly the disc that anyone in the know would expect it to be: excellent playing, effective arrangements and great soloing on some of the best tunes ever written.

    As soon as I’d heard that this was Broom’s next project, I got excited. After all, I’ve heard Bobby tear up everything from The Little Rascals Theme to The 12th of Never. Monk tunes should be a free for all for this trio! And I was not let down in the least. The most interesting part of …Plays for Monk is the sheer number of ballads here. Ask Me Now, Ruby My Dear, Reflections and Smoke Gets In Your Eyes are all fantastic tunes, but I didn’t necessarily expect to see them all pop up on one record.

    Even more interesting is that Bobby Broom is brave enough to start off a record with a ballad. Ask Me Now is one of Monk’s most endearing down-tempo tunes, and Broom takes it a hair or two quicker than its usual pace. The first thing you notice here with Broom, Carroll and Watkins is how the groove is treated with absolute reverence. There are no flourishes, no hits, pops, cracks or brilliant and wily substitutions to be found. It’s all about establishing the groove. But, then, in yet another brave move, not only does the album start with a ballad, but then the first solo taken on the disc isn’t by Broom, but rather by bassist Dennis Carroll. Once Broom does start to solo, though, the results are splendid, taking his time to push things along. The pacing of Ask Me Now on this disc could not be more perfect.

    Monk’s classic Evidence is up next. While Broom’s playing here is fantastic, it’s Carroll’s groove that really sets this version apart from the hundreds of other recorded versions I’ve heard. Kicking off with an insistent bass line that won’t quit, it fits amazingly well against one of Monk’s most strangely interesting melodies. By the time that Carroll and Watkins start swinging in earnest on the third chorus, an awful lot of tension is built up, and the release is just great. Watkins’ solo here is understated, but it gets the point across and quick: Kobie Watkins is a force to be reckoned with behind the drum kit, and he doesn’t need very long to remind you of that.

    In Walked Bud and Bemsha Swing both get funk treatments to a degree. Bemsha Swing starts off as a quasi-second line thing, then it gets downright funky for half a chorus before Watkins and Carroll dig in and start swinging. If you’ve heard the Medeski, Martin and Wood version of it, you’ll understand where Broom and Company are coming from. In Walked Bud was the real surprise here, though. This is a funky, grooving and well thought out arrangement of the tune. What’s more surprising is how natural In Walked Bud feels over this arrangement.

    The big charmer on Bobby Broom Plays for Monk is the inclusion of Work. One of the rarer entries in the Monk catalog, it’s a great song that bares so many Monkisms that it’s a shame that more musicians aren’t hip to it. Luckily, Broom is, and he milks the song for all its worth with an economic solo that is evokes Monk with every rest, every oddly placed note and every not entirely normal run he plays. It’s a highlight of the disc, not only because Work was never over played, but also because Broom and company just play the snot out of the tune.

    Of course, Monk did more than his fair share of other folks’ music too, as witnessed by his love of solo treatments of some of the standards. Broom wisely tosses a couple of those Monk favorites into the mix as well. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is lush and beautiful, and a nod to Monk’s solo albums that were stocked with great renditions of old classics. Lulu’s Back in Town works better, at least for me, because it’s more in keeping with the overall vibe of the record. It’s loping treatment is charming and immensely enjoyable.

    I am always excited whenever I see that Bobby Broom (or a group that he’s a part of) is about to put out something new, because I know I’m going to be in for a major treat. And once again, I’m proven right by Bobby Broom Plays for Monk. It’s the perfect blend of tunes we know, surprising arrangements and great playing. I highly recommend checking this one out, and sooner than later. Pretty soon, you’ll be as excited about Bobby Broom’s upcoming CD’s as I am.

    And as for other folks take on Monk's music, I can't believe no one mentioned this one yet...

    510Daw-38gL._SS400_.jpg

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