Alexander

The reason there is a disagreement is that SOME people around here (and I won't mention any names...<clem!>...<clem!>...sorry, I seem to have something in my throat) frequently imply (and even state outright) that those of us who dare to enjoy a Redman, a Lovano, a Mehldau have something akin to rocks in our heads. I still recall the time that SOMEONE (...<clem!>...<clem!>...dang, there's that cough again) stated directly that those of us who enjoyed Dylan's "Modern Times" had been "duped." I find such suggestions offensive in the extreme (and don't start the whole, "Ah, so you can dish it out, but you can't take it" thing again. I'm a hypocrite. I know. Me and Eliot Spitzer). I like what I like and you like what you like and I honestly don't think that anyone, be it Chuck or Chris or Allen or whoever - no matter what their "cred" is - has a right to tell me or you or anyone that they are WRONG to like what they like. And for the most part, most of the folks around here DON'T tell us that something is wrong with us if we like something they don't. They might mock it, but that doesn't bother me. What bothers me is how SOME people (<clem!>.....<clem!>....damn...can't seem to shake that cough) DO tell others what they should do, think or listen to. Just my $0.02. Take it or leave it.

And it's an opinion shared by many of us. Good post, Jim. Yes, excellent. I totally agree.

Hey...I ain't pointing a finger at anybody. I just happened to think of that poem and decided to post it. ....still think it's a dang funny poem. . I love it! It sounds like the poet has met Clem...

Sounds like Keith Jarrett. . Honestly, Mehldau has a LOT in common with Keith (although he has a much better attitude towards the public). I know it's bothered him being compared to Bill Evans, because he has noted that he was much more influenced by Jarrett than by Evans. To me the most important thing about players like Redman, Garrett, Blade, McBride, Mehldau, Lovano, Yahel, etc. is that they are ALIVE and making music in the present tense. No, they aren't as great as the Great Figures in jazz, but they are "what's happening" in the Jazz Mainstream. The question of whether they deserve it or whether someone else who doesn't get as much recognition should be "what's happening" is moot: This IS "what's happening" and it cannot be ignored. Bitching and moaning that Mehldau is no Monk isn't going to make Monk rise from the grave and start giving concerts again. You can complain that Barak Obama isn't Abraham Lincoln or JFK, but Lincoln and JFK aren't running for president in 2008: Obama is. You either accept it or you don't, but dissing the guy isn't going to make him go away. The same is true of Redman. Oh, and Clem is still a jerk. I wish I could make HIM go away.

Even if you don't find the Stooges particularly funny (I do), you have to admire their skill as slapstick performers. They had amazing timing and physical endurance (during their vaudiville days, they really had to hit each other in order to make the sound audible to the people in the back row. Of course, they knew all kinds of tricks to keep themselves from really getting hurt). Even more demanding was having to coordinate a new set of routines for each short (admittedly, there is a lot of variation on some basic themes. Still, they had some amazing routines, especially the "Top Man" Chinese acrobat bit). I've never seen why a person has to be a "Stooge-man" or a "Marx-man." I enjoy them both. Edit: The acrobat routine was Japanese, not Chinese. It appears in "No Dough Boys" in which the Stooges (in costume and make up as Japanese soldiers for a film they are appearing in) are mistaken for real Japanese soldiers, both by the public at large and by a Nazi spy. The boys try to play along, including performing some "Japanese acrobatics." Although the film indulges in some very dated and very non-PC Japanese stereotypes ("Velly solly"), it's not as brutal or offensive as some other anti-Japanese propaganda of the period (especially "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips"). I still think Moe's line, "Maki, Waki...come backy" is funny.

I think he's OK, I have no problems with him...maybe that's why I only have one album by him and I really only got it because of the band anyhoo. For many years I was consistantly underwhelmed by Redman. He certainly seemed to be a Very Good Player, as Jim noted, but he certainly wasn't the Second Coming of John Coltrane or anything (which is what the hype seemed to amount to). I have since come to realize two things: 1) He has grown into something better than a Very Good Player. I used to have trouble being engaged by his playing, and I don't have that problem anymore. I also realized that any problem that I had with Redman's music was MY problem and not HIS. The guy does what he's payed to do: He shows up and plays his ass off. 2) The bad guy here isn't Redman (or Wynton, or any other overhyped player), it's the hype machine that NEEDS a new messiah to promote every few years. You can't blame the guy for having some over-enthusasitic PR men. And finally.... 3) Clem is a major dick. Okay, I didn't have to realize that....

My last name means "star" in German. Hey, if the shoe fits... That Freddie Hubbard outburst is like the mirror universe version of Michael Richards' rant.

The only CD I've ever had trouble ripping from (aside from the few copy protected CDs I own) is an "in-store-play" disc that I got while working as the Assistant Manager of the B&N music department. It was badly scuffed. Everything else plays fine, and rips fine.

I've been on a buying break since the end of February. This is the first successful buying break I've ever taken, actually. I've been seriously buying music since 1992 or '93, and I've bought at least one CD a week (if not more) in the fifteen years or so that have elapsed (barring serious povery, but even then I always managed to find the money to buy *something*. At the very least I would do some trading). I've tried to break the cycle many times over the years, and I've always broken down before a week or two elapsed. This time, I picked a date (April 8th, the release date of the new Gnarls Barkley album) and actually wrote up a pledge, which I signed with my wife as a witness. Breaking a promise to myself is easy, but breaking a promise to my wife is something else entirely. I wish I'd thought of this years ago! So, because I haven't bought a new CD in almost a month, I've been enjoying the opportunity to really delve into my 3,000+ CD collection. There's been no system. I just grab CDs as the spirit moves me. It's a great time to go back and relisten to box sets. I've been working my way through the three Elvis boxes (The King of Rock n' Roll, From Nashville to Memphis, and Walk A Mile in My Shoes, as well as the soundtrack and gospel two disc sets). I just finished listening to the fourth disc from the '60s set. I haven't been listening to them one after the other...I've been spacing it out between other discs (I started listening to the first disc of the 50s set back in January). I've also been working my way though all of the Steely Dan albums (just finished listening to "Aja." "Goucho" is on deck) and the Trojan Rocksteady box (finishing up disc three right now). In between those projects I've been listening to Chet Baker, a lot of 1920s and '30s country and blues collections, and Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick." It really has been a wonderful few weeks...

There's a wonderful chapter in Moby Dick (my all time favorite book, btw...I'm rereading it right now, in fact) where one of the mates (Stubb) has the Pequod's old black cook prepare him a steak cut right out of a freshly killed whale. It always sounded pretty appetizing to me when I read it...

Actress from 'Gilligan's Island' serving probation under plea DRIGGS, Idaho (AP) -- Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island," is serving six months' unsupervised probation after allegedly being caught with marijuana in her car. She was sentenced February 29 to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving. Under a plea agreement, three misdemeanor counts -- driving under the influence, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance -- were dropped. On October 18, Teton County sheriff's Deputy Joseph Gutierrez arrested Wells as she was driving home from a surprise birthday party that was held for her. According to the sheriff's office report, Gutierrez pulled Wells over after noticing her swerve and repeatedly speed up and slow down. When Gutierrez asked about a marijuana smell, Wells said she'd just given a ride to three hitchhikers and had dropped them off when they began smoking something. Gutierrez found half-smoked joints and two small cases used to store marijuana. The 69-year-old Wells, founder of the Idaho Film and Television Institute and organizer of the region's annual family movie festival called the Spud Fest, then failed a sobriety test. Wells' lawyer, Ron Swafford, said that a friend of Wells testified he'd left a small amount of marijuana in the vehicle after using it that day, and that Wells was unaware of it. Swafford also said several witnesses were prepared to testify that Wells had very little to drink at the party and was not intoxicated when she left. He said she was swerving on the road because she was trying to find the heater controls in her new car. The story on CNN.com Man, if I'd spent all those years on the island with Gilligan, I'd light up too!

Man, imagine how AWESOME it would have been if Philip K. Dick had started his own cult! That's one cult I would join!

"He said Weatherly's sister-in-law had sent him the music to an old Irish song called "The Derry Air," and the new version became a hit when opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink recorded it in 1915." I think we should simply put "The Derry Air" behind us.

Bird, I think... Yes, Bird dug Stravinski.

Yeah, I remember that one too. That was another memorable one, as Costello was in full early-anger form and freaked everybody out by changing songs midstream, starting "Less than Zero" getting a few bars into it, stopping abruptly, and then kicking hard in "Radio Radio". No idea if it was planned or not, the given explanation post-show being that Costello thought that the originally planned song was too British-specific so he called an audible, an yeah, ok, but planned or spontaneous it made for a riveting TV moment, and if you're old enough to remember that little window where all things "punk" (and how ironic in hindsight now to think of Costello as such) carried with them a genuine anarchy, hey, it was a moment. As I heard it, Costello was told NOT to play "Radio, Radio" because NBC had a lot of radio holdings, and felt that the song conflicted with those interests. Costello was banned from the show until 1989, when he performed "Veronica." Costello was inspired by Jimi Hendrix stopping in the middle of "Hey Joe" on the "Lulu" show and tearing into another song.

A lot fewer surprises as the years rolled on. Not to say that a lot of great artists didn't play on the show, but it was obviously linked to chart position/who was pimping a hit single after a certain point (during the mid 80s it seems to me). I can't believe that I missed some of those when I was in college (I wasn't watching the show anymore by that point). Parliament/Funkadelic!

There's a similar joke about a cat who develops a mental block about the bridge to "Over The Rainbow", continuously blanks on it on gigs, gets distraught, runs out of the club, throws himself in front of a speeding car, and in his final seconds of life hears the ambulance's "DEE dah DEE dah DEE dah...". Quite funny actually, if told right, but almost impossible to replicate in print. My grandfather (a jazz violinst) used to tell that joke about a saxophone player who is practicing in his tenth floor New York apartment. When he can't remember the bridge to "Over the Rainbow", he throws his sax out the window while it's still around his neck, so he goes with it. As he lies there on the sidewalk, he hears the ambulance's "Dah dee dah dee dah dee dah dee..." and murmers "That's it!"

I'm almost done listening to the last set. Amazing stuff. If you don't have this yet, you should definitely go for it! Great music, great booklets and immensely entertaining as well as educational.

T'was ever thus...

I have it and I LOVE it, but in addition to being a Desmond fan, I am also a Simon and Garfunkle fan...

This reminds me of something that happened when I worked at B&N. I often played my favorite jazz cds over the in-store play (even though it was technically forbidden). One morning, I was playing a Stan Getz album (possibly one of this collaborations with Bill Evans) and this old Jewish man came back to the music department. He asked, "What is this?" and I told him. He said, "Getz? Really? Usually he's got too much schmaltz for me!" I have a TON of Getz. He's far and away one of my all-time favs on tenor (even Trane said of Getz that "we'd all sound like that if we could"). It's very, very hard for me to choose my favorites. I have so many, and from so many different periods of his career. "The Steamer" and "West Coast Jazz" two big favorites. The ones I hear the MOST would be "Jazz Samba" and "Getz/Gilberto" because my in-laws own them and they play them EVERY week when we eat over there on Sundays.

If it's an alto and I think it's a soprano, it's often Paul Desmond...

No problem at all with Mr. Vidal's remark. "Crypto-Nazi" is, if anything, a nice word for Buckley. It's Buckley's network airing of his homophobia and threats of violence that make this so disgusting.

I guess there were a lot of bad WFB immitations during his lifetime, no reason for that to stop now that he's dead. I would go so far as to say that he earned every one of those bad imitations...