Alexander

Listen to "I Have A Dream" again, Clem. King was doing it for AMERICA. For HUMANITY. He was thinking far beyond black and white. So go fuck yourself AND the horse you rode in on too.

Gosh, he's right. I mean, I was nine fucking years old when I first heard Grandmaster Flash. Surely, I should have been out there digging the antecidents of early hip hop. How blind I was! I guess I just bow to Clem's superior wisdom...

*Dripping with sarcasim* Yeah, never saw that one before... Except in the booklet to Star Time. Yeah, that's REAL hard to find.

that's why you are a DOPE, AL & we... we are titans. Thurgood Marshall is an important jurist but that's pretty fucking esoteric-- if you can't feel that right off ain't no amount of book learnin' gonna fix what you lack, which is PLENTY... more than you will ever, & EVER, evvvvvvvvvvvver know. do i need to post pictures from Harlem today to Son you? ain't worth the effort but if I can I will, just to share the love with the folks who get it. lemme guess something also, Al-- 1) yr not black 2) you do not now nor have you ever lived in the South or among those with strong Southern roots? Not to put to fine a point on it, but that has fuck-all to do with anything. I may be white, but I happened to grow up in the inner-city (Buffalo, NY) and attended predominantly black school from first grade until my family moved to the burbs when I was in 9th grade. I went to a school where African-American kids set the pace, and I kept right up, thank you very much. All of my friends were black. I spent my lunches playing the dozens with my peers (we called it "busting"). I was listening to the Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash when their records first started gaining national attention. Am I black? No. But it's not like I never actually saw a black person until I was an adult, either. Don't make assumptions, Clem...

The reason I find this premise so distasteful is the assumption of the author and, obviously, others by their lists, to associate fame and celebrity with importance. Maybe some people ought to find out about the contributions of people like Benjamin Banaker, Garrett Morgan, Louis Lattimer, Hannibal, Elijah McCoy, Madam Walker, Nefertiti and other great queens and kings of Egypt, Timbuktu and other African nations, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Marcus Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, Madam Walker, Marshall "Major" Taylor and too many more to list. All "the top 5 black people" aren't/were not entertainers, athletes and/or Americans. Just because you don't know their names doesn't mean that they have not profoundly impacted the world. Absolutely. And this is why Clem doesn't have a fucking clue. Importance doesn't come from "empowerment." James Brown made black people feel good about themselves. That's fantastic, no sarcasim intended. But James Brown had less than no influence over the way black people were treated on a day to day level. For that, you have to turn to a Martin Luther King, Jr. who put his neck on the line over and over again to procure that liberty for ALL of us. You have to turn to a Thurgood Marshall who sat on the highest court in the land and made the decisions that helped open the door for a generation of American blacks. Civil Rights may have been, on some level, about the right for blacks to feel like human beings, but feeling good and being able to vote aren't on the same freaking level. Was JB a great man? No question. Does he deserve our great love and respect? Of course. Did he single handedly change the world? No, he did not. No more than Ronald Reagan tore down the Berlin Wall by saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." There's a big difference between the talk and the walk. JB talked the talk all his life. But even he would admit that he left it to others to walk the walk (unless you can point to JB's arrests during sit-ins).

My $.02, for what it's worth: No question that JB was one of the greatest American musical figures, black or white. His influence is felt far and wide. There might have been Funk, Disco, and Hip Hop without JB, but they would have been the poorer for it. As I said, JB is up there with Duke and Pops when it comes to major American musicians. One of the top five black Americans? Ummmmmmmmm...no. Any list of top five black Americans has to start with MLK (not only the most important African American of the 20th century, King was the most important AMERICAN of the 20th cent, full stop). From there, we must include authors and thinkers and then political figures. Pop cultural figures, for all their influence on what we hear and see, come waaaaaay down on the list. I would say that Martin Luther King or Thurgood Marshall is worth ten Ellington's and a HUNDRED James Browns. And anyone who puts fictional characters (Shaft? Superfly??) on such a list isn't worth talking to.

Thanks for the wishes, guys!

I completely forgot the Van! Yes, I thought it was a great album. Definitely belongs in the top twenty of the year's best...

This is certainly up there with the passing of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles. Very few individuals have had the influence on American music that these men had, and JB was one of the members of that club. His music was powerful. It reached it's listeners on a primal level. His scream reached straight to the soul of man. It was the very definition of soul. Now that scream has been silenced. How can we fill the void it leaves? Ironically, my good friend Henry (he posts here as HWright) gave me an import copy of "Sex Machine Today: Disco Soul" for a gift the other day. I haven't spun it yet (I was saving it), but I'll have to spin it today in JB's honor.

When those who haven't seen "It's A Wonderful Life" finally see it, you may be pleasantly surprised. It's a very dark film, in many ways. You don't see many Christmas movies these days that dwell on suicide. My favorite bit is when Mary loses her bathrobe! "This is a very interesting situation!"

Merry Krismas to all my fellow music addicts!

Funniest thing I've seen on SNL in YEARS. And yeah, the song was pretty fucking jammin'! My favorite bit: "At your parents house, a dick in a box..."

I have not heard Ghostface's albums. I have heard that they are good, but I really have yet to explore the whole Wu Tang Clan thing. I have a few things by RZA, but that's about it. Any recommendations for one who is about to "Enter the Wu Tang?"

Picky, picky...

Jazz is only one of the many, many different kinds of music I enjoy. I got a lot of wonderful albums this year, and I'd like to highlight my top ten: 10. GirlTalk - Night Ripper - Definitely the Mash-up of the year. A highly, highly professional job that constantly keeps the listener guessing. Great use of material all around. GirlTalk has a real future. 9. The Roots - Game Theory - Not just an outstanding hip-hop group, but an amazing group all around. "Game Theory" might be ranked higher, but it isn't quite as good as "The Tipping Point" or (especially) the magnificent "Phrenology" which is one of my all time favorite albums. Still, any Roots is good Roots! 8. Neil Young - Living With War - It was thrown together and it sounds like it, but nobody can channel righteous anger like Neil Young. He's just saying what we're all thinking... 7. Paul Simon - Surprise - Simon returns to the game with an extremely strong set of songs that echoes his best work (especially the underrated "Hearts and Bones"). 6. Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways - Yeah, he's dead. He still kicks ass. Anybody wanna say otherwise? 5. Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions - A raucous session that recalls the spirit, not of Seeger's prim recordings, but of the "Anthology of American Folk Music." Bruce starts the album with a roar on "Old Dan Tucker" and doesn't stop until the end. The "deluxe" edition gets a boost because it contains Bruce's updating of Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live." If any song deserves a remix from Kanye West... 4 Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint - The River In Reverse - Costello has always been one of my favorites, and he doesn't disappoint with this outstanding collaboration with New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint. Not only did this record satisfy on it's own terms, but it sent me running out to explore Toussaint's own recordings and productions. Like Springsteen, Young, and Simon's albums, "The River In Reverse" has more than a touch of topical relevence. You can say one thing for the Bush Administration: It's inspired some great protest music! 3. Bob Dylan - Modern Times - I don't care what Clem says, this is a great fucking album. I loved it when it came out, and it continues to wear well. 2006 may well go down in history as the Year of Bob. His radio show is insanely great too. 2. The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers - To make up for the lack of a White Stripes release this year, Jack White participated in a brilliant side-project. "Steady As She Goes" is one of the best songs of 2006. Great album from start to finish (but I still want a new White Stripes album, dammit). 1. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere - It was a close race between this album and the Raconteurs, but I have to say that Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo produced the single best disc of the year. DM proves that he's the best DJ/producer in the business and Cee-Lo is a one-man Showtime at the Apollo. Kick-ass all the way... Honorable Mention: Beck - The Information; OutKast - Idlewild, The Harry Smith Project - The Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited; The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium; Prince - 3121; The Who - Endless Wire; Jay-Z - Kingdom Come; Elton John - The Captain and the Kid; Donald Fagen - Morph the Cat; Tom Petty - Highway Companion; Thom Yorke - The Eraser; The Decembrists - The Crane Wife; Easy Star All-Stars - Radiodread; Kris Kristofferson - This Old Road; Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine (late 2005, so I count it as one of this past year's new albums), Jerry Lee Lewis - Last Man Standing; Nellie McKay - Pretty Little Head; Tom Waits - Orphans; The Beatles - Love. Reissue/Anthology of the year: "The Stuff That Dreams are Made Of" (Yazoo) I'm sure there are more wonderful albums released this year that I forgot to mention, but these were my favorites. How about you guys? What non-jazz albums did you like best from 2006? Edit: To add the Fagen, Petty and Yorke albums, which had slipped my mind... Also the Decembrists, The Easy Star All-Stars, Kris Kristofferson, Fiona Apple, Jerry Lee Lewis, Tom Waits, the Beatles and Nellie McKay. So much music, so little time!

Alexander, you seem to be forgetting all the MGM cartoons, Tom and Jerry, Droopy, et al....Surely you wouldn't dream of calling those crappy animation! Also, I am sure his family would be glad to know that while you wished him harm, in was only in a general way! I don't associate Hannah with MGM the way I do with, say, Tex Avery. His MGM cartoons were brilliant. Otherwise, I never much cared for Tom and Jerry...

Yeesh. I always thought the Hannah-Barbara cartoons are the worst thing to happen to animation. Formuliac crap sold to kids who "don't know any better." It lowered the bar in children's entertainment to the point where Saturday morning cartoons were peopled with characters who did little more than stand around and blink. I remember those awful racing shows where all of the Hannah-Barbara characters (including the ones who supposedly existed in the past, the future, or what-have-you) participated in a road race. Snidely Whiplash and his sidekick (that dog that did an irritating laugh) would try to sabotage the other cars. Usually Yogi Bear or Jabberjaw or some other character would win in the end. Ugh. The only thing worse than Hannah-Barbara was Filmation. Now, the cartoons that my daughter watches (ironically quite of few of which are produced by the Hannah-Barbara company) are wonderful. FAR better than the stuff I watched growing up. I love "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy," "SpongeBob Squarepants," "Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends," and "Fairly Odd Parents." These shows are well-written, funny, and well-animated. Everything those GODAWFUL Hannah-Barbara cartoons of the 70s and early 80s were not! 'Course, I'm sorry to hear that the guy is dead. Just because he made lousy cartoons doesn't mean that I wished him any specific harm. So, RIP Joe. I hope it was worth the ride.

If you had asked, in 1936 or 46 or 56, where jazz was going, it would have been similarly difficult to give an answer. Sure it all seems very clearly defined and linear NOW, but at the time it was something that was HAPPENING. That's what is happening today...

thus sprach the liliputian! anyone honestly believing this is DISQUALIFIED from voicing any opinion that even rises to the level of bullshit. he doesn't even have giant technique, tho' he's "fine" (doesn't mean i like him). if Branford is a "giant," what the hell is Ben Webster, or Ike Quebec, or Big Toe Turner, or Bo Diddley, or Wilson Pickett, or George Clinton, or Marley Marl, or RZA? Um...also giants? I love all of the people you just mentioned. Have lots of stuff by them. What recent Branford do YOU own, Clem? Upon what do you base your judgement? Or are you just talking out of your ass (again)? Thought so. The world only has enough room for people YOU like, Clem? First of all, I like Brinsley Schwartz, if only because Nick Lowe was with them. Secondly, I disagree whole-heartedly with your assessment of the current state of jazz as being "weak." I think history will regard the early years of the 21st century as one of the most fertile eras in jazz since the 50s. And not just because of Branford (and his last several albums have been OUTSTANDING). Have you been paying ANY attention to Greg Osby, Jason Moran, Dave Douglas, Uri Caine, Joe Lovano, etc.? All have been making one important album after another. I could go on and on about the exciting developments in jazz today. But, of course, my opinion doesn't count, because I disagree with YOU, Clem. How silly of me. I just go listen to anything YOU tell me to.

This is kind of creepy. A serial killer is at large in England who is killing prostitutes. This isn't so unusual. Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper) did something similar during the 1970s. What is kind of creepy is that there are a couple of coincidental paralells with the case of Jack the Ripper, who murdered five prostitutes during the autumn of 1888. The Ripper's first victim was Mary "Polly" Nichols. So far two of this killer's victims have had similar names (Annette Nicholls and Tania Nichol). In addition, the Chief Superintendent investigating the case is named Stewart Gull. One of the most famous Ripper suspects is Sir William Withey Gull (as seen in Alan Moore's graphic novel "From Hell" and the subsequent film version). I'm not claiming that there is any significance to these parallels. I'm just echoing Moore's observation (in the end notes to "From Hell") that there is a curious recurrence of names in serial murder (One of the Ripper's victims, for example, was found near Brady Street, while another was found near the Hindley Sacking Company. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley would become infamous in the 1960s as the Moors Murderers). It's kinda weird... ********************************* IPSWICH, England (Reuters) -- Members of a 500-strong task force hunting a suspected serial killer canvassed motorists and pedestrians passing through a red-light district to try to trace the final steps of five murdered prostitutes in an eastern England town, police said Sunday. More than 400 people in Ipswich were stopped and questioned, Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull said. In particular, they were asked if they had seen one woman, 24-year-old Paula Clennell, whose naked body was discovered at the side of a busy road last Tuesday. A frightened Clennell was still working the streets -- to satisfy her drug cravings, she told a television crew five days before she disappeared -- after the bodies of three other sex workers were discovered. She was last seen in the early hours of December 10. On December 12, her body was discovered, and police have said she died as a result of "compression to the neck." Gull said that 340 specialist investigators from forces across Britain had joined 160 officers on the task force. By Sunday morning, police had received more than 10,000 calls from the public. Interpol has offered assistance, and Gull said it would be considered and accepted "if necessary." On Saturday, police released closed-circuit television footage of Anneli Alderton, another 24-year-old prostitute whose body was discovered December 10, hours before Clennell disappeared. Police said she had been strangled. (Watch the CCTV footage of Alderton ) Alderton -- who was three months pregnant at the time of her murder -- was last seen December 3, the evening the footage was captured aboard a train south of the city. Calls prompted by the release of the images allowed detectives to determine that Alderton had ended up in Ipswich, but "we still need to know where she was after December 3," Gull told reporters. And he said that the team probing the killings were still unable to determine the final movements of another woman, 29-year-old Annette Nicholls. She was last seen alive on December 5 in Ipswich's red-light district. Detectives have only been able how to determine how two of the five women were killed. Post-mortem examinations on the other three women -- Nicholls, 25-year-old Gemma Adams, found December 2, and 19-year-old Tania Nichol, discovered December 8 -- were inconclusive. "We haven't got a murder scene at this stage, and once we establish that we'll start to complete the picture. I'm still waiting on a cause of death for three of these young women, and once we've got those results it may indicate if we're looking for a weapon," Gull told reporters. "We're keeping an open mind as to whether any form of weapon was involved." Gull also said that a man who had tried to abduct a woman in Ipswich about a month ago has not been spoken to by detectives investigating this case. "Nobody has been eliminated at this stage. We know who that individual is. He has been released on bail," Gull said. "We will take further action if we think it is appropriate."

By contrast, Monk (who also swung) is the musical equivilent of a man walking a high-wire. He makes it look like he doesn't know where his foot is going to land, but it always lands exactly where it needs to be.

I'm tempted to quote Fats Walller and say, "If you don't know what it is, for heaven's sake don't mess with it!" But I won't, because I don't want to be one of *those* jazz fans who look down their noses at people who dare to ask such questions. "Swing" is hard to define, but in simplest terms it is this: "In music, a swung note or shuffle note is the rhythmic device in which the duration of the initial note in a pair is augmented and that of the second is diminished. A swing or shuffle rhythm is the rhythm produced by playing repeated pairs of notes in this way. Lilting can refer to swinging, but might also indicate syncopation or other subtle ways of interpreting and shaping musical time. In some jazz music, especially of the big band era, there is a convention that pairs of written eighth notes are not played equally--as the notation would otherwise be understood--but with the first longer than the second. The first note of each of these pairs is often understood to be twice as long as the second, implying a quarter note-eighth note triplet feel, but in practice the difference is rarely that pronounced. This is an assumed convention of notation in many styles of jazz, but usually does not apply to jazz before the early 1930s, latin jazz, bebop, or to the work of composers writing in the 1950s or later, unless "swing" is specified in the score." (Wikipedia entry on swing) Swing indicated a big musical leap from the syncopated rhythm of jazz in the 1920s. It changed the whole feeling of jazz. It made for a more laid-back sound. In comparison, '20s jazz sounds frantic.

I'm a recovering Wynton-hater. When I first started listening to jazz, I wasn't interested in Wynton (ironically) because I was only interested in the music of the past. The "real authentic jazz" that I imagined no longer existed. I say that this is ironic because this is, in fact, Wynton's position on jazz history. As I became more boad-minded, I turned around and hated Wynton for being a mouldy-fig. Then one day it hit me: I hated Wynton *without ever really listening to him.* I thought that this was odd, so I started asking around about "good" Wynton albums. A friend of mine directed me to "Black Codes" and "J Mood." I listened to them, and I found that I liked them! I tried out other Wynton albums and found that - while some were better than others - on the whole, I liked them too. So now I consider Wynton to be a fairly talented trumpet player (from a much more talented family) who was elevated far above his stature because he happened to be in the right place at the right time. He's not a giant (Branford is a giant), but he's not the hack that I once thought he was. He can be outstanding, but he's most often at his best in a side-man role. Two albums where he blows the roof off the sucker are "Citizen Tain" by drummer Jeff Watts and "Lush Life" by Joe Henderson. I've played both albums for people who claim not to like Wynton, and they are always very favorably impressed. They'll usually say something like, "I didn't know he could play like that." Another thing I've found is that Branford (and Jason, who is extremely talented) is the unfair recipiant of some people's spillover hate towards Wynton. I even know people who can't tell them apart, and frequently say "Branford" when the MEAN "Wynton." I've really enjoyed his last couple albums where he plays in a smaller group than he has in the recent past. When he plays in a Septet (or larger) setting, I find that his Ellingtonian pretentions get the better of him and he tries to be clever in his arrangements. In a quartet setting (as on "Magic Time") he just blows, and I mean that in a good way. I also like the VV set. It's one of the best recordings he's ever released. Actually, I usually like his live recordings a bit better than his studio recordings. Maybe he needs that fire that the audience lights under his ass. I also like him when he plays with his family. The whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts there. In closing, let me just say that Wynton certainly does not warrant being the center of such contraversy. If you don't like his music, don't listen. If you don't like what he says, don't pay any attention to it (I don't). And NEVER read Grouch's liner notes. I never do, and I'm perfectly content!

Certainly one of the towering figures of American popular music. How different things would have been had the Ertegun brothers chosen different paths in life! We owe them a great debt...

I've seen photographs of Jerry Lee Lewis (in the 50s) performing with a little record stand in front of him. I so presume that yes, some musicians did sell their records at gigs. I'm pretty sure Solomon Burke did, too. He sold everything else at his gigs!