Big Al

Got my computer back, so here we go!!! Seeing JSngry wail last (Wednesday) night put me in the mood to finally sit my lazy butt down and make the usual uneducated guesses! Track 1: Sounds like Brother Jack, Grant Green, Red Holloway, Joe Dukes; you know, one of the greeeeaziest groups to ever invade Earth! PERFECT way to start a BFT! Track 2: Oh LAWD, this is awful! So many things come to mind; this sounds like one of those white guys dressed up in blackface from the 20’s & 30’s. This must be THE point where Louis turned into a parody of himself. Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!!! Track 3: Sounds like a Mongo Santamaria band! Always good for some wall-to-wall percussion. Is that Pat Patrick on the bari sax? Can’t wait to find out who the tenor player is! Very groovy! Track 4: Hmmmm, electric bass, tenor, trombone. Could it be Sonny Rollins from his Milestone era? I mean, that electric bass is SO Bob Cranshaw! If I get nothing else right on this BFT, I am confident that I have this player nailed! Oh wait, now there’s an alto sax. CRUD! Throws off all of that line of thinking. But I still say that’s Cranshaw on bass! Track 5: Sounds like Teddy Wilson on the piano from the outset. Can’t believe I can’t identify the horn player, and at this point I can’t tell if it’s a muted trumpet or a soprano sax! How sad is that? Nawww, wait: now it sounds like Monk on piano. This one’s got me snookered; I think I’ll just shut up and enjoy it! That seems to be the easier course at this point. Track 6: Well, I almost guessed Roy Eldridge on the last track; glad I waited. That’s gotta be Roy wailin’ on this track. No clue as to the tenor player. Herb Ellis on guitar? Don’t know why this track isn’t doing anything for me. Track 7: Ahhh, I love background vamps like this! Should know this tune, but it’s escaping me right now. I wanna say the sax player is Roland Kirk, the player has that kinda edge on his playing. The arrangement reminds me of Blue Mitchell’s Straight Up and Down; in fact, the song itself sounds like “Togetherness.” (Hope I got those titles right; going from memory here) Track 8: Eh, it’s nice enough, I guess. Not really generating enough interest to make me want to figure out who’s doing what. Plus, I don’t dig vocals much to begin with, so...... Track 9: Loud big bad, even louder drums; I’ll take Buddy Rich Big Bands for $200, Alex! Track 10: No clue. I’d like to guess something from the late 60’s/early 70’s. Maybe the Jones/Lewis Big Band. This sounds brassy enough for them! Track 11: Nice vibey version of “Hi Fly.” I wanna say Johnny Lytle; don’t ask me why! Track 12: This is why I love vinyl, and wish I still had a vinyl player (which would only make we wish I had actual vinyl albums to play!). The piano always sounds so present! Man, I reeeeeally wanna say McCoy Tyner, but I’ve been wrong about stuff like this before. Heck, that even sounds like Trane. This sounds like a lost outtake from the Atlantic vaults. I wish!!! Track 13: What is this? A rare guest spot by Philly Joe Jones visiting Mr. Rogers’ “Land of Make Believe?” Track 14: Big Al Sears??? Track 15: Ahhhhh, a nice laid-back greeeeeazy groove! I’ve got nine minutes to figure this out. First impression is Ike Quebec & Freddie Roach, but let’s see if another horn comes in. I don’t hear any bass (I’m at work, so I can’t really turn it up). Now comes the organ solo; that HAS to be Freddie. No one’s as rinky-dinky (for better and worse) as the Big Roach! So I’m positive on that one, almost as positive on Ike, no clue as to the drummer (could be Osie Johnson for all I know). NO wait: I take it back!!! A little rift in there tells me it’s Stanley Turrentine! GEEZ! How could I not notice that? But I still say it’s Freddie and not Shirley at the organ! Great greeeeaze all around! Track 16: This song is two minutes too long! Ehhhh, wait a second, is this an old jingle or something? Jim’s trying to pull a “Who Sell Out” on us! Only we’ll call this “JSngry REFUSES to Sell Out!” Track 17: ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz. Ehhh...... what’d I miss? Anything? Quite interesting stuff, Jim! I like it that most of this is from vinyl, has such a nice sound to it all! On to the next disc!

DAMMIT!!! I had all my answers typed up at work, and then my hard drive crashed this morning (my luck with computers has really SUCKED lately). When I get 'em back, I'll post 'em unedited; for now, I'm gonna check out y'alls answers!

Oh yeah, forgot to add: we will NOT be playing any Styx whatsoever. So there!

Thank you! THANK YOU!!!! I couldn't agree more!!!!!

You're kidding, right? Don't count on my boys for anything right now. Except blowing ninth-inning leads. They're REEEEEEAL good at that right now!

If you live in the DFW area (or if you can get up/down here for a night), then I heartily invite y'all to come see me play in a recital/concert/gig/four-guys-playing-a-bunch-a-songs-we like! WHEN: Friday, August 5 WHAT TIME: 7:00 pm WHERE'S IT AT: Advent Lutheran Church, 3232 S. Cooper, in Arlington DOES IT COST ANYTHING? No, but there will be a free-will offering, with all of the money going to Mission Arlington (hey, I wanted to have some purpose to this, rather than the four of us playing music and insulting each other) The lineup of songs includes some of the old spirituals, some trips thru the great American songbook (with a lovely detour thru the Benny Golson songbook, which should be part of the Great American Songbook to begin with), a tune by Evanessence (not as bad as it sounds, but our clarient player wants to play it, he wrote the arrangement, so we let him have his fun) and whatever else we can come up with between now and the fifth! The lineup is clarinet-piano-bass (me!!! Electric fretless, I'll warn ya right now)-drums. Please note write here that THIS IS NOT A JAZZ CONCERT. Not that we won't try, but if you come in looking for stretched-out jams and wild trips into the stratosphear, you'll likely leave disappointed. (However, if you happen to hear anything even REMOTELY jazzy in anything we do, tell me about it, won't you?) BUT, if you're looking for a pleasant evening of fun and (hopefully) halfway-decent playing, come on out and say "HI," won't you?

Joe Henderson plays like a man possessed on this session. As does DeJohnette! And Hubbard! And.....

Man, I can't take it anymore: Rangers almost blow a seven-run lead yesterday, the third time in the last five games that they almost blew a big ninth-inning lead. Would you believe the hotels around here are booked solid for the Yankees series here this week? Unbelieveable! Who'd wanna travel that far to watch two mediocre teams with mammoth payrolls duke it out? FWIW, I hope my guys jump all over Brown for ten runs in the first inning!

You KNOW it!!!

Link for those curious?

I have really been digging WISH YOU WERE HERE lately. I was in a Half-Price Books the other day and found a book on Pink Floyd, skimming through the pictures and stuff, and read about WYWH. All the members commented on what a “sad” album this is, and though I’d never really thought of it as such, it is definitely their most melancholy album. So I was at Fry’s last night (in the continuing quest for the right power-supply/motherboard combination; these folks know me on a first-name basis now) and right by the computer stuff, they had a computer playing highlights from Live 8. It just happened that the Floyd portion of the show was playing, so I watched it a while. When they played “Wish You Were Here,” it struck me as sadly/bitterly ironic that here are Gilmour and Waters harmonizing on a song originally intended for a former band member (Syd), but could just as easily be about the two of them. Especially when they came to these lines: We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year Running over the same old ground; what have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here. I don’t know about y’all, but it sure seemed like Waters voice was cracking through a lot of that. Melancholy, indeed.

Virgin's having a sale? SWEET!!!

Happy Birthday, Big John! Always Got a Good Thing Goin’, baby!!!

Hear Hear!! Same Hear!!!

Ahhhh.... didn't know that. That's cool!

I thought the discussion threads had already been started.

That happens. Look forward to more of that shit. ← What happens? The memory loss? I don’t remember having any recent memory losses!

Yeah, the Rogers Respect-o-meter took a nosedive this weekend, AFAIC! And I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Francisco Cordero needs the ol’ HEAVE-HO!!! He escaped by the skin of his teeth yesterday, coming in with a two-run lead and leaving the tying run on third. I know it’s his job to keep ‘em from scoring, and I s’pose that, technically, he did just that. But hell, can he not get through an outing without giving up any runs? Good thing it was a two-run lead and nothing more, otherwise who knows how many innings it would’ve gone? Plus, if I was on the Rangers, I’d be calling for Cordero’s head on a platter for all the times the Rangers have gone into the ninth with a lead, only to see that lead evaporate because our so-called “closer” doesn’t know how to CLOSE IT!!! Hell, Saturday night was ulcer-inducing as it was (who’s bright idea was it to bring on Cordero with the bases loaded, anyway? That was a disaster waiting to happen, and it damn-near did!) It’s getting to the point now that the only lead that is safe with the Rangers is a ten-run lead; and as Saturday night proved, even THAT might not be enough!!! I swear, we have THE worst closer in baseball. Dan, y’wanna get rid of Foulke? Send him on down! I’d gladly give you Cordero for Foulke any day of the week!

At the Johnny Carino's in Mansfield, a couple of years back, they played Kenny Burrell's "Phinupi" (the Blue Lights version), and I was tapping along to Blakey's beat the whole time. This summer, my wife and I went there again, and I'm having trouble remembering what they played, but I remember thinking "Cool! They're playing something good again!"

Man, I've had nothing but good experiences with Dell. The one I have at work is five years old, running Windows 2000, and has been a dream to work with. Unlike this here eMachines, which has been a royal pain in the kiester! Good luck!

Popping sounds are usually electrical surges. Your guess that the power supply failed is a good one. However, if your machine has any built-in surge circuitry, and it's likely, there has probably been a fuse or trip that has to be reset. There could also be more damage to you machine than just the power supply. Don't drop too much money on this machine. It could turn out that the whole thing is fried. I wouldn't even buy a new motherboard. If all else fails, pull the hardrive out of this puppy and toss it in a dumpster. You can get refurbished Celeron Dells for less than $300 that will likely beat it out for speed. Just go to http://outlet.us.dell.com/Dispatcher?targe...414104&tgtSeg=I and check out the prices. Beats the heck out of de-bugging power problems. Later, Kevin ← You can't imagine how much time you just saved me. I was contemplating doing that, but not knowing as much as I'd like to about computers, I hadn't thought about doing that. Now that you've mentioned it (and I take your computer advice seriously, I'm not being my usual smartass here), I think I'm gonna go that route. Thanks, Kev!

IIRC, they're basically refurbished machines that look brand new. I know..... shoulda got a Dell.....

Interesting you say that; I used the old power cable. But like I said, the new power supply started right up, even with the old cable. So...... I may, in fact, need a new motherboard. To be continued....

Don't I know it.....