AllenLowe

can you get me that guy's phone number?

I think Kenny G should play Armstrong - or Gary Coleman -

I'm a big Johnny Green fan and I had an interesting correspondence with him in the 1980s when I wrote to him about some sheet music - I happened to mention that I had based a tune on "Out of Nowhere" and he went off on a tirade (polite but firm) that the tune was still his, and mentioned suing Coleman Hawkins for doing a version of Body and Soul (Rainbow Mist) - and forcing Hawkins to pay him publishing -

well, when I was captured by the Viet Cong back in my 'Nam days, they locked me in an underground bunker and played Tori Amos tapes 24 hours a day - you BET I told them secrets, I MADE UP secrets, gave away the nuclear launch codes, turned in members of my own unit, had my Ma arrested and tortured for treason, let them kill puppies and kittens, ANYTHING to get them to turn off that damned Tori Amos album - remember the Tet Offensive? They couldn't a done it without my Tori Amos-induced information -

I once had a client who sent me 20 Tori Amos CDs to re-master; he wanted me to make him a special group of compilation discs out of them - I had to be sedated for months afterward - Tori Amos has got to be the worst, most cloying, self-pitying, narcissistic performer I have EVER encountered (except for Lou Donaldson in the recording called Hot Dog) -

one of my favorite stories - I was at University of Michigan when the Tigers won some big game - can't remember what it was, maybe a World Series? It was the early 1970s - there was a shot in the Tigers clubhouse, everyody was happy, some drunk. It was "live" post-game. They stick a microphone in Brinkman's face; he says: "I'm so fuckin' happy for all the fuckin' guys." Pandemonium and the camera cuts away; next day big headline in one of the Detroit papers announces: "Brinkman apologizes to Tigers fans." one just did not do that 35 years ago -

do not trust ANYTHING in Rusell - the handful of musicians I knew who were in that book - Haig, Tommy Potter, Curley Russell, Howard McGhee - found it laughable in terms of accuracy -

I predict that the case will be reversed, just reading about the quality of the witnesses and the State's case - I believe OJ is guilty of all these crimes, but there's a lot of sloppy stuff with evdence, not to mention an all-white jury -

I'm not Nessa (though I am currently playing him in a series on Fox) but yes, I do believe Mingus played the whole concert and overdubbed afterwards because he thought his bass was badly recorded - and one can still find versions of Massey Hall with the original bass line which, ironically or not, sounds MUCH better than the overdubbed version -

well, I like her prose - but as a singer songwriter I just find here to have a sort of reverse-feminist macho with literary and intellectual pretensions - I just don't find her songwriting compelling; the Christ line is, to me, representative. Don't know if you've read the book New York Rocker by Gary Valentine, but it neatly sums up the whole pretentiousness of that scene with Burroughs et al (and Burroughs Senior, except for Junky, is a lesser writer, IMHO, than Burroughs Junior, but that's another thread) ; Smith, like Richard Hell, to my way of thinking, was smart and sharp but was like a lot of smart, sharp people I've met who just didn't know enough to carry off the kind of poetry or to which they aspired - I feel the same about Tom Verlaine in many respects. And I like a lot of Hell's work - but ultimately they are classic examples of their reach exceeding their grasp - too many intellectual shortcuts (if I can I will cut/paste a section from the liner notes of my cd which is relevant to this in some respects) - they knew enough to know what they should have known, from a literary standpoint, but that's really it. and I am in an admitted minority in thinking this, I should add -

"you are moose hunting with Sarah Palin and you fall out of a plane."

I've tried to like her; I met Lenny Kaye a few years ago, good guy - but I just find her to be a poseur - "Christ died for somebody's sins but they weren't mine -" cripes, the religious/hyprocrisy thing was tired when I was a teenager -

potentially great pianist, brilliant harmonic sense; lacks taste -

the Genius of Louis Armstrong, Vol 1 1923-1933, Columbia LP CG30416 - amazing sound - in the next few weeks I'm going to be doing some LP transfers to show some of the stuff that may have been lost in the Universal fire, as well as some of the best of LP sound on records that appear to have been made from original masters - keep posted, and I'll send anyone who's interested a CDR copy -

interesting; guess I'll stick with the lps; I love the early Memphis blues stuff and I idolize Pat Hare -

to me, hi fi is 15khz and above - stereo OR mono -

thanks, it's ok, I have the LPs so that will suffice - just wanted to have a more compact set of it - forget about Roots and Rhythm, unfortunately - I was wholesaling them CDs about 7 or 8 years ago, and they burned me to the tune of $1500 -

actually to me the real warmup to the KOB sessions was the Something Else date with Cannonball -

yeah, saw that - Ouch -

looking for the CD sets - so far the prices I've seen are insane -

Paris Blues -

The Prize -

The Silver Chalice -

anybody have one they wanna sell? email me at alowe5@maine.rr.com

the blues thing is interesting and I have my own complicated feelings about it - one thing I will say is that frequently the things that are ascribed to the blues influence represent much more complicated African American sources and cross influences- strangely enough (or maybe not so strangely) I've more and more become personally bored with music that doesn't in some way reflect those sources - but that's only me; I do have a sense (and this is something I am trying to develop in my own music) that as jazz people we have not even begun to tap into those sources; it's a question, first, of finding them, and than of not sounding like we are slumming when we approach them technically; not to say, of course that people like Hemphill and the AACM (among others) have not minded this; I just feel there is often something lacking in frame of reference. One reason for this (and this is a whole other topic) is a general disbelief by white liberals that rural white Americans who are products of the Jim Crow system (aka hillbillies) can produce real art - which leads to another kind of cultural deprivation, because I think you can't borrow from one source without reaching into the other -