Rimshot

Racks for vinyl racks for cd's drawers for cassettes equals- My organization I try to keep them seperated by genre and keep certain artists together, but it never seems to work. It's fairly tidy, but chaotic. Sometimes I can't find the jewelbox for a cd I was listening to, so I go over to my rack and grab one of my empty blank jewelboxes and write the name on a pece of tape and put the cd away until the jewelbox surfaces (it's usually right in front of me for days). Every couple of months, I go about reuniting cd's with their proper jewelboxes. This used to be more complicated until I decided to burn additional copies of my favorite cd's to put in the tower in my car. That way I don't have empty cd boxes at home and I get to keep the orginals in case my car gets broken into again. (technically, it's quite legal to do that since I am not selling these and I did purchase the originals anyway.I know the record companies would prefer that I buy two or more, but I buy a lot of cd's and I ain't rich) My sheet music is a mess too.

I'm a major fan of Miles and I like all of the afore mentioned like "Kind of Blue" and "Stella by Starlight" but I have to agree with one that was mentioned before and got a nasty smilie as a response. I really love "Filles de Killamanjaro". It is Miles at his barest and simplest. It also is a wonderful one that spotlights the genius of Tony Williams. Not the standard show-off riffs, but the intuitive musicianship. In this case less IS more. I never tire of listening to that one and I get something different from it each time. I bought "Bitches Brew" when it was first released and absolutely loved it. I loved the whole fusion concept and was also a big fan of Weather Report and even the early Mahavishnu Orchestra. Within the last decade, "Bitches Brew" has become less interesting to me and it has become one of my least favorite of Miles' oevre, and I am less interested in fusion, though I still like to listen to Weather Report if only to hear Wayne Shorter stepping "out there". Different strokes I guess. I also love the late recordings of Miles in Germany that were made during his tour there in the late 80's.

Those of you that said: Jimi Hendrix, Led Zep,Cream, Traffic,Jefferson Airplane, etc. have the same record collection as I do. I still listen to those albums. My all-time favorite group that began in the 60's and is still out there swingin' away is Jethro Tull.

Both my ex-wives hate jazz. My last wife wouldn't even come to hear me on a gig. I'm currently single. Does that answer your question? -_-

I'm sorry, but I have to dissagree with you on Nancy Wilson and Oscar Peterson, But Tony Bennett, although a great singer could be thought of as not essential. Oscar Peterson was one of the most influential and awesome pianists of jazz. Kind of the stature of Bird or Trane among them keyboardy types. Although I greatly admire Buddy Rich's technique, I've never really thought of him as a jazz drummer, more of an awesome chart drummer. No Pharoah Sanders? Only one Charlie Parker? Only one Yusef Lateef? None of the real GREAT late Trane, or any of the awesome live Miles? Frank Sinatra? Those wouldn't be the three Herbie Hancock recordings I would pick. I'd like to see Kenny Garrett's "Black Hope" or "Standard of Language" on that list. Alice Coltrane's "Ptah the El Daoud" is worthy. What a great session that must have been. I think there is much too much diversity in the catagory of "jazz" to put together a list that will appeal to everybody. I'm not a big fan of big band or ragtime (I admire it, but I don't listen to it that much). I think that there should be a list broken down into styles more. And no compilations; that's just Reader's Digest fodder.

What a pleasant surprise I had today when I turned on the tube. WNYC PBS was airing a concert of the late pianist Michel Petuccianni. I am familiar with his work, but I never knew that much about him. They aired a trio concert from NY in the late 90's which had a killer 6 string bass player (sorry, forgot the name) and Steve Gadd aptly strokin' the skins. It was really a very good show and I loved it. Knowing PBS, they'll probably repeat it again soon. It was originally aired about 5 years ago, but this is the first I've seen it. Immediately after the concert show they aired an in depth interview/bio which had Charles Lloyd in part. Some of you have probably seen this already, but if you haven't keep your eyes peeled for a re-run. Thank God I had a blank tape in the VCR so I was able to get it.

I knew Michael "Babatunde" Olatunj very well and along with many other percussionists throughout the world had the pleasure of playing music with he and his group in performances. We lost Baba last April to kidney failure, he was only 74. This was his first recording and it was done while he was still a student at NYU and he was playing congas in a jazz combo in the Village and he was approached by an agent to produce an album of West African Percussion and songs. Although he was a very talented musician, he was not regarded as a musician in his native Nigeria, he was here studying political science and econmics in the hopes of becomng a political figure and helping the standard of living in his homeland. Most of the songs on "Drums of Passion" were presented as traditional West African songs, but they are all mostly compositions of Baba's. This IS the one recording that introduced America to the poly rhythms of West African music and it was a major hit. Baba performed with and influenced generations of American jazz and rock musicians, notably Coltrane, Dizzy, Santana and The Grateful Dead. He wrote the musical score for "Raisin in the Sun",as well as Spike Lee's "She's Gotta Have It". Santana's hit song from the 60's "Chingo Ba" was also written by Baba. I own my first copy of Drums of Passion that was on vinyl, a copy on cassette and of course the cd. It's well worth having. The night before Baba passed, I and a group of other musician friends were performing a benefit concert for him to raise money to get him a dialysis machine. We did pretty well and when the news came to us that he passed away at his room in the Eiselin Institute in CA we were of course devastated, but the money we raised went to a good cause. It helped to fund one of Baba's last wishes; that he could be buried in his beloved home, Nigeria. He was a genuinely dear man.

Revised Quote: "Are Alfred and Francis turning(spinnng) in their graves?" ... That's actually a rather pleasant thought for two people that spent their lives in the recording industry. "Still spinnin' after all these years"

I sympathise. I have had severe carpal tunnel syndrome for years.They wanted to operate but I have refused because I know that you lose strength and dexterity. Fortunately, if I just bite the bullet and work out for about ten minutes the pain passes and I can perform. I"m a drummer and can't afford to lose strength and dexterity. About a year and a half ago I suffered a major heart attack (had surgery) and a minor stroke (had therapy). I lost a lot of ability with my left hand and had to play with only matched grip for a while. It's taken me all of this time to regain the full use of my left hand and now, thank God, I feel as though I'm back (all of my subtle grace notes and left hand roll is there 100% again). Why do we do it? .....What the hell else would you want to do? B)

I find this whole thing somewhat humorous. If poor Norah Jones was signed with Columbia or Atlantic, I think a lot of traditional jazz fans would listen to her music, raise an eyebrow and think that it was pleasant enough music and she has a pleasant soulful voice that might be well suited to a more "hardcore" jazz genre. But the fact that she happens to be recording under a jazz icon label, she is ridiculed. Norah Jones music is what it is.If you don't like it, don't buy it. Blue Note is making a ton of money from her right now and I find her work far less objectionable than the plethora of crap that is on other labels. Chill out a bit. Blue Note is still a jazz label, but it's also a business. At least they aren't signing Brittany Spears or Snoop Dog. They are reissuing some classic jazz recordings and they are stil signing new jazz artists. I kind of enjoy a lot of what Norah Jones is doing. There's another great vocalist songwriter out there that is best known as a "Hip Hop" artist, but who can on occassion turn in a performance that will bring to mind classic Nancy Wilson and that is Jill Scott. .......I know....I probably just lost you there.

I can't think of any instrument that I would like to have excluded from jazz, because jazz is such an inclusive genre and there are times that almost anything will work. That being said, I don't happen to like when Latin percussion tnstruments are used in jazz pieces that aren't going for the Latin flavor. Specifically things like timbales and guiro. They work great in latin-jazz, but they have such a distinct character that they impose a style to anything that they are played in. They only sound good to my ears when they are being played with the kind of rhythm patterns specific to their genre. Sometimes I've heard them used as accents for effects in other types of jazz and I find it distracting.

The tenor sax player in the group I play with uses an Electro-Voice RE-20 (it's actually a superb dynamic broadcaster's mic with a whole lot of other good uses).It sounds great with his horn playing. I know a few alto and soprano sax players that use the little Audio-Technica clip-on condenser mic.(sorry I don't remember the model #) We used the Sennheisser 421 in a recording session recently with another tenor sax player and it worked well. That's all I got.

I think people are actually born with the gift. I just came back from a session this afternoon where we were rehearsing a few pieces thet we'll be recording in a couple of weeks. The bass player is a young woman that I know mostly as a percussionist and we've played together a lot in a West African style group. I knew that she was a bass player and on the strength of my other interactions with her, I asked her to sit in on this session. She was almost apologetic about her limited experience playing bass and she really shouldn't be apologetic. Quite the reverse.. One time through she played the music straight, second time, she improvised a bit and third time she made it her's. Solid! Sax player on alto was "killer" but I expected that, he's been around quite a while, and has "serious" chops. The thing that drives me out of my mind, is singers that have no conception of time. They can't come in on the right beat and without a word of warning will suddenly decide to sustain a note for an insane amount of time and expect to just come back on their idea of where they want 1 to be. Or else they decide to suddenly start to modulate into another key that just doesn't work and then blame the rest of the musicians for screwing up. I'm a drummer. Drummers are all music gods. We never screw up.

i listen to a lot of different types of music, from early through baroque, classical, romantic, neo-classical, etc. I listen to rock, a whole lot of what's called jazz,blues, etc. My other passion besides jazz is West African percussion based music. If you want to hear some "kick ass" traditional Guinean drumming, pick up any cd by Mamady Keita and Sewa Kan. Any cd by Famoudou Konate, or Les Percussions de Guinee' or Le Ballet Africaines. It's where it ALL came from.

So why should anyone else be interested in Hopper's attempt to paint a white house without using white paint? While Hopper's explanation might be totally lacking in academic BS, it's also totally lacking in any reason to be interested in his work. So you are implying that because of one single person's misinterpretation (apparently not very well informed) in the introduction to Hopper's speech at a civic center somewhere in a small American suburban community, you are saying that all his work is nothing more than doing excercises in color to paint pictures of white houses without using any white paint. Him clarifying that this was just an exercise is a reason not to be interested in his work? If his fame was based on misinterpretations, why did he even bother to clarify that the painting was nothing more than an exercise? Cynisism? Based on one misinterpretation you are excluding any of Hopper's accomplishments. Incredible. Actually,Most entirely missed the point of my Hopper reference. I was not saying anything about Hopper. He's a fine well respected and deservedly so artist. The point is that a work of art can be appreciated on so many different levels, and on levels that may not have been consciously intended by the artist. That doesn't mean that they're not there, it just means that it wasn't primary to them at the point of conception. This in no way detracts from the artists work. It points out the foolishness of those that would ave ALL artsts qualify and document every aspect of their work, to explain and justif all facets like some sort of mathematical equation. The creative spirit just DOESN'T work that way! Although I am a working musician and have been for many years, I am always a backman playing behind others...and I love it. I have written some charts and done some arranging, but I will always just be the guy that they call in to provide the percussion (though creative and I do have my chops) on pieces. I am however highly qualifed to talk on the merits of visual art as my day job is as a visual artist and for the past 20 years as a profesor of art history and studio art at a NY community college. I deal with colleagues all of the time that expound in great length on all of the philosophies of art, while most practicing artsts mostly talk to each other about good buys on paint and rents on loft space. Most musicians talk about gear and gigs. Same thing. Does that mean that musicians don't have phlosophical thoughts? Of course not. They already said it in the music. Why do they have to spell it out for you? If you are liking it "even for all the WRONG REASONS " you're still liking it, and who's to say you're wrong? There are times when someone compliments me on a set and starts telling me what they thought I was doing and I'll say "thank you". All I might remember is that I was fantasizing about nailing the babe with the great set of cans sitting at the front table.

No offense intended here, but this is starting to sound like "so much academic BS". I hear these kind of rambligs all of the time when discussing things in the arts. Usually by historians, philosophers and critics; and seldom by artists unless they've had a few hits. I am reminded of a story about famous 20th century realist painter, Edward Hopper. He was invited to speak at a civic center somewhere in a small American suburban community and the person introducing him was going on and on about how this one painting of his:"The House by the Railroad Tracks" was an expression of the lonely feeling of rural Americans, the battle between the oncoming industrialization of America and the relics of the past standing nobly but threatened, etc.,etc. When Hopper began speaking he said: "Really all I was trying to do was an excersize in color to paint a picture of a white house without using any white paint." Do artists over-analyze their works and conscoiusly and deliberately set out to create their works using standardized formats and detailed blueprints? Some do some don't. Are they trying to make music that is pretty to your ears? Some do. Are they challenging you by asking, what if? Good ones do. Is Coltrane trying to make music that is pleasant to your ears? Sometimes. Is the judgement of what is GOOD in music only those things that are pleasant to your ears? God I hope not. I don't want to live on candy all of the time. Is it fair to citicize someone else for liking something simply because you don't find it pleasing? No. In fact it's rude and arrogant. Is it possible for young people who are not musically educated to immediately appreciate the more adventurous music of John Coltrane? Absolutely! At this point in time it is so interwoven into our collective consciousness from being exposed to it the last 40 or more years, that it is comfortable. It is inevitable that the most daring and adventurous art will eventually become part of our collective sense of aesthetics. The abstract expressionist painters of the post WWII period were deliberately trying to shock the world with an anti-art statement meant to prod them away from the comfort of the WPA period muralists. Now we are seeing abstract expressionist paintings decorating perfume bottles and repeats of them on wall paper. All that being said, I like Coltrane's music because he takes me places.I never feel like he just phoned it in the way I get from a lot of others. I like a lot of other things too. I like Coltrane. Call me what you will.

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I'm real new to this board, but this sounds like a good idea to me. My musical tastes are very diverse. I listen to it all and on occassion, I have to play lots of styles. i have a lot of dfferent styles in my collection:From early music through Baroque and Classical, folk music, early blues, swing, bebop, hard bop, fusion,Show Music, rock and roll,R&B, heavy rock (even some heavy metal on occassion), celtic, Midde-Eastern, West African, South African, some Latin, Asian Indian,and march music. I'm not too big on Country and Rap/Hip hop, but I will listen. Bring it on.

This is such an "OLD" argument! It has been the basis for a lot of the conflicts between musicians of different styles and diciplines as well as listeners. There are those that wish to work with only heaviy notated and written charts and those that want entirely "freeform". Coltrane doesn't easily fit into either of these catagories because there exists elements of both in his work. The same can be said of Miles as well as the generations of musicans thet followed. I would be curious if this critic had the same things to say about a "song-stylist" vocalist. Tranes playing evokes images of the human voice. Sometimes he is just singing the notes straight and other times he is emphasizing certain diction and at other times he may laugh or weep. Yet the strength of his music is not solely in the emotional expressions. He thinks very abstractly on his feet. Like Miles, he pushes the boundaries of where the different plastic elements of the music can go without losing sight of the core. Tehnically this is a form of improvisation, but like most jazz greats from that era onward, it is more than simple improvisation. It bends, it dissects, reassembles into different structure, someties returning but never letting the listener completely lose sight of what it came from. An analytical cubist painter does much the same thing with a visual form, yet the result often looks too crude. With Coltrane, there is almost always a very smooth grace to even the most invasive procedure (sorry about the flowery rhetoric in the last sentence, it's the only way I can think to describe it.) I have been a student of West African music and the dense polyrhythms that exist in that music. I hear some of the same things happening in Coltranes music. Bop jazz by it's nature is polyphonic.But Trane's music very often includes polyrhythms on the top line (something that was always just the rhythm section's job in the past). Sometimes he'll double phrase within a passage, sometimes he'll wait for two passes of the other lines before completing a phrase and occassionally just when you think he's out there getting lost, you hear that he's creating a phrase that will take several measures to cycle. Hardly primitive! Yet at no time is there any snobby elitist attitude in his music (maybe among some of his fans). Aesthetics are not things carved into old pillars, they are ever evolving. John Coltrane died 37 years ago (about a mile from where I am right now AAMOF) . His music is now studied and taught in schools all over the world. It has become an aesthetic that has influenced a couple of generations of younger musicians. The argument in McD's article is the kind of things that were written over 40 years ago by conservatory musicians and critics. They don't apply to us in 2004.

There is a wonderful search engine that I use for any questions relating to cinema. It is the Internet Movie Data Base: www.imdb.com When you get onto the site, you need only type in the name of the movie and the entire credits of a film will be promptly displayed. You can also do it with actors, directors, tech crew, etc. and their entire oevre of work will be displayed including a biography and links. Unfortunately, the only music credit that comes up for this movie is Eric Demarsan who has already been mentioned.

Nobody real famous. My mom was a singer (classically trained soprano) but she did a lot of gigs where she sang show tunes. There was always a jazz combo on the bill and as a kid I would hang around the jazz musicians. BeBop was the standard fare, and I liked it. I gave up the piano and trumpet and concentrated on the drums, I saw a lot of small local club acts, and a few of the big band acts like Gene Krupa, but but my first live hard bop show was the Miles Davis Quintet ca.1965. It seemed bizarre to me then and I couldn't deal with the broken lines and how open it was and it wasn't until a couple of years later that I really fell in love with it. That whole sense of suggested lines and implied closure, I suddenly got it.

I take a bath or a shower to get the smell of the bar/club off of me. I make something to eat and watch some tv and crash.

Thanks PhllyQ, I do tune in once in a while when I'm travelling towards the city. Unfortunately their signal is very weak and I can't get it on Long Island. I still long for the days of WRVR. A full time commercial jazz radio station. I don't want to take away from the great work that the University stations are doing because thank God they're there. I just can't understand how a city as massive as New York, with the history that it has with jazz, and all of the jazz listeners here, can't support a powerful full time commercial jazz station. CD 101.9 fm definitely fills a void for some people, but it is a very slanted view of a small part of jazz. I'm not going to trash it, it's just not the kind of music I personally want to listen to most of the time. Unfortunately because it is so prevailant, it is what most New Yorkers think of when I mention jazz to them. I read on another thread here that WKCR is working with a stronger signal now. I still can't get it that well out here in "the sticks". Oh well, WBGO (83.3fm) comes in loud and clear---go figger.

The industry has changed a lot. The A&R people and the execs that make the decisions have decided to lump other forms of music that don't fit ito the "rock","pop","punk", "rap/hip hop", "country" and "classical" into the jazz catagory. They have lumped "folk" and "world" music into the newer catagory-"roots". The catagory of "R&B" is gradually being dissolved into the "jazz" catagory. I also have no problems with Nora Jones music, in fact Ilike it. But I certainly wouldn't catagorize it into jazz. It's much more like old Joni Mitchell style, singer/songwriter music. Pleasant enough to listen to over dinner with friends that have varying tastes. Blues was almost lumped into the "jazz" catagory, but the frenzy over Martin Scorsezze's(sp?) big program gave "blues" a shot in the arm. I hear about this all of the time from my co-band mates that actually waste their time going to all of the conventions like TAXI. Then there are the people that I refer to as the "Jazz Amish" that don't want to hear anything that doesn't sound exactly like what was being recorded before the late 1960's. Jazz is a viable and ever growing artform. It should never forget where it came from, but it should never stay in one place either. That doesn't mean that the answer is to let it die and go into forms like the R&B of Al Green, or the folky sound of Nora Jones. But there should be room for it all. I live in a suburb of NY. New York has traditionally been a jazz center. We don't have one jazz station in NY (I don't count cd101.9 which plays mostly that easy listening Kenny G type of stuff). The only place to hear good jazz on the radio is from WBGO out of Newark, NJ. Thank God for that anyway. There are still a few good jazz clubs, but they're booking more and more of the "easy listening yuppie jazz". I'll take Nora Jones over that any day.

I'm sure most of you are aware of this, but if you don't get the notices, Jeff Tain Watts Quintet is playing the Blue Not in NY Feb.2-8. His guest(and good friend), Kenny Garrett is sitting in on the sets. Other players will include Eric Revis on Bass (who's been playing with Branford Marsalis recently also). I think it's mostly a pick-up crew, but these guys have magic together. They always put on a memorable show. Sort of traditioal hard bop with enough innovation to keep it fresh. Table tickets are not that expensive, only $25, but they're going fast. I already have mine for the friday evening show. I thought I'd share. I'm a big fan of Tain's drumming and I consider Kenny to be a phenom.