MomsMobley

Beyond. Fucking. Insipid. And please. Please. PLEASE. Everyone-- Read any/everything by John Hope Franklin before taking these "freedom" "jazz" knuckleheads say. Also, on "Democracy," Henry Adams ain't too shabby. Ossie Davis reading Frederick Douglass is nice but everyone needs much MORE than that too.

Sondheim is fucking brilliant; he may or may not be using inappropriate criteria in his jabs but I doubt it. And of course he reveres Hammerstein! What do ya'll want, if he's going to comment, oh x, y, z are all great great great? In parts, sure, but en toto? Fuck that. And even if he mistates (I dunno if he does or not), how is another artist going to evolve without critical engagement? Sondheim had avantage of being artist where others often ** had to be ** hacks but still. Does he talk about Yip Harburg? Not that responders here have made the comparison but hard to believe there are Jason Moran fans (say) around who could disrespect Sondheim? Not that he's infallible either but if you listen to Roscoe Mitchell ** or ** Andy Razaf you should damn well be down with Sondheim.

Don't miss the various JSP Rembetika boxes, such as-- http://www.amazon.com/Rembetika-2-More-Secret-History/dp/B000YRZ1WG I used to be very into-- than very against, in the Bear Family/Yazoo rip-off phase-- JSP but some of the more 'curated' sets are top notch; the Hoagy Carmichael esp. I think the Mills Bros are goddamn great too tho' I think those date to the old R.T. Davies-era JSP. Not on sale but astounding-- (from Lauren Brody's website if you have a cpl extra dollars to buy direct). http://songofthecrookeddance.com/products/products.htm#OTN

That is a very good deal for people who don't have much already tho' it leaves the choral & concertante works hanging. Sony is pretty good about mastering their classical so hopefully they'll use best available transfers. One of the minor secrets of vintage classical is that Masterworks series has a # of titles actually RE-MIXED and mastered for first time on cd at budget price: Robert Craft Schoenberg transcriptions; Ormandy Mahler 10; some Szell Mozart; even a Perahia Bartok recital that's actually quite excellent. SIDENOTE: The rank idiocy of major labels even when do they do excellent things a strong core would like to buy and promote out of love of music? The forthcoming complete Heifetz Original Jacket set, which I can find ZERO info on except at HMV.Co.Jp There was similar lag time on the Horowitz-- even question whether it would be avail domestic-- but how hard can this be? They obviously don't give a shit at some level, as there are numerous listings on Amazon which don't list a sets contents-- which is Sony/BMG's fault, not Amazon, they obviously want more info for buyers, not less.

Same here. However, anyone who doesn't already know at least half of this-- Oistrakh EMI should hop on; it's greater than all Miles Davis reissues, ever, inc. "Plugged Nickel" (which was nice but this is eternal). Bernstein Sony Mahler & complete Horowitz are also marked down significantly; I highly recommend the latter for those who can afford it; otherwise start with the Scarlatti and go from there.

Now ** this ** is what Moms has been waiting for, soaked with anticipation-- Amazon + Video Granted, AOTY award will depend on how much dig Tim Berne (I like him more than ever as a player; he was always an interesting composer) but Formanek <---> Taborn <---> Cleaver are unimpeachable; would mind a trio record breaking out of this either. Compositions here are all Formanek btw. not that Allen Lowe ain't already set with keyboard players but if I had a foundation I'd grant him dough to hook up with Taborn too.

Bill Dixon "Odyssey"

I'm surprised there's so much anti-Jamal feeling here. Visceral distate like Allen's is more understandable than the critiques I've seen so far... Especially when so many people have and will again jerked off twinkletoes like Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan, or can abide Oscar Peterson in any way but getting to Lester or Ben. Or fucking Jarrett and all his standards crap-- worst records DeJohnette ever made and who sucked out Peacock's brain? At least Eicher puts the money back into the label to real hot shit like Roscoe and Frank Martin (New Series). Jamal consistently challenges both the fingersnappers and the phony 'progressives'-- but then I'll defend nearly all John Lewis too; he probably shouldn't been so nice to Gary Giddins but it mighta seemed politic at the time. Jamal Means Unconquered!

Addition noted with gratitude. Jamil Nasser was a giant, ask and I don't know that you shall receive BUT... Somewhere there is a long interview with Jamil talking about his friend and collaborator Oscar Dennard that everyone should hear-- dialogue and music-- seven or eight times at least. Dig The Memphis Mafia

FACT: Red Garland is thee single greatest straight-ahead(-ish) non-hyper-virtuosic pianist in jazz history. Drastically underrated artist, despite the exposure with Miles and "pleasant" popular reputation. FACT: Jaki Byard is thee single greatest trans-historical hyper-virtuosic pianist in jazz history who, post-Monk and Jamal, reinvented group architecture +++. The "shame"-- or public disappointment, at least-- of his career is the relative scarcity of orchestral realizations of these concepts.

Keep an eye & ear out for Lou Harrison Symphony #4 featuring Al Jarreau-- http://www.amazon.com/Portrait-Harrison/dp/B0000042HA

medgar-- I believe Moms was saying that RJ is ** only ** an excellent guitarist & singer, i.e. musical performer. That's no small accomplishment but the "King" jive, let alone the asinine myth making and lyrical exegeses, is historically untenable. A similar example can be made of fucking Gram Parsons, a tolerable folkie in his narrow sweet spot, way over his head to insufferable elsewhere, esp. as country western had more great jazz-influenced singers than did jazz itself. Meanwhile, how much of Gram's schtick was swiped wholesale from Bobby Bare and how many 'rock' or 'folk rock' knuckleheads even think to mention it? Barry Gibb >>>>>>>>>>> Gram Parsons all day every day too, btw (if you wanna folk). As for Ahmad, he and Vernell Fournier together ASTOUND, and I say that knowing some people I otherwise loathe agree. JSngry btw is 100% correct. Inventive & reinventive group architecture >>>>>>> mere grooving, just so ya'll know Moms is consistent. Some might call it proto-harmolodics; some might call Dakota the Dancing Bear for a second opinion. White Ties Do Make It

Is this for real?! First, any one in the music biz, such as it remains, who says "360 degrees"-- a term usually intended to exploit rappers desperate for advances and misperceived corporate cred-- ought to be spun the fuck around infinity x 360 until their so goddamn dizzy they can't remember how idiotic they sounded before passing out. Manteca! And this "fire music" shit again? Manteca! (And what does Mike Love have to say about it?) The ** LAST ** thing the world needs, by the way, is more new records and the only New Era worth a damn is my Michigan State Fitted MomsMobley has received no compensation of any kind to make this endorsement. At least Bernard Stollman's '70s phase had "Black Beings" and, elsewhere, presumably, warm hippie woman legs wrapped around his once idealistic head. Manteca!

Guess again, crazy legs. Have you read Frederick Douglass' 4th of July speech? A. Lincoln's letter to John Conkling? Louis M. Gottschalk's memoir? I'm just goosing the tiresome Mary Lou Williams scholars who wanna take her god bothering, sincere as it mighta been, out of the context from which it was born, whether by inspiration or reaction against. "Race" has nothing do with it, sex less, although I'll put Gottschalk, Joplin, Fritz Delius, James P. Johnson and William Grant Still (for starters) against any five of your break beat friends. (If this was Iowa we could go girls six-on-six.) Again, I don't want to throw a scholar and a gentleman like Allen Lowe on to the fire but his work and others like it makes a WHOLE LOT of people uncomfortable because all their loud and precious opinions-- once in a while salable ones even, cf. "King of the Detla Blues Singers"-- are demonstrably proven to be so much loud-mouthed horsehit. Any individual can and will make their own aesthetic decisions +/- this that but go on denying Pha Terrell and you deny more of yourself-- or your potential self-- than you seem willing to admit. Now if you wanna make something "sexual" about that, I won't tell a soul I love you; the records go round and round. Oh, so it comes down to projecting one's self into A Dead Negro Fantasy Involving Sex. Again. Or some other Dead "Other" Fantasy Involving Sex. Again. Nothing that can't and doesn't happen anytime there's a scene of anybodies doing anythings. I imagine there's been quite a bit of that in Daptone Land. So far, nothing but eternal = = = = = = = = = = = =

Actually, I meant >>>>>>as QUANTITATIVE statement tho' I dame sure mean it qualitatively as well. But let's take Sharon Jones, a second-rate soul/funk has-been who stayed spry long enough to get her picture taken with snappy dressing white boys. Or let's be generous and say she got better-- it happens, sometimes. But no matter: enjoy it or don't. I don't. Now take Pha Terrell. What do we know of him, by comparison? A fucking halfwit like Will Friedwald can openly mock him (in "Jazz Singing," the other half of which is pretty good). Dozens of other people cringe if they recognize his name yet if you wanna talk "soul"-- and you, Brother Sngry rarely shy from such discussion-- Pha was, if not THEE man, one of 'em. "Le jazz smooth" as Hugues Pannassie called it didn't start with Nat King Cole ** or ** Henry Burr. You might be alive tonight but you live, intellectually and aesthetically, in ALL TIMES. That is why Sal Nistico qualitatively >>>>>>>>>>> all Branford combined, ever, and that's why Pha Terrell matters more than EVERY Miles Davis re-re-re-re-re-issue from now until the heat death of the omniverse. If you can, for even an hour, try to imagine what Pha Terrell's life was like (it was very interesting), or the joy his listeners felt, or how big his eyes bugged out the first time he saw Mary Lou Williams' lusciously secular organ grinder-- The rules are we live in an age where history is grander and more accessible than ever before; that has its perils-- lack of concentration being one-- but the old bullshit "verities" are just that, and pleasures of convenience (Sharon Jones) really ain't that pleasurable by comparison with MANY possible others. Moms

http://www.archeophone.com/product_info.php?products_id=104 Moms knows best. And yeah, it was real tough to choose between this and, say, "Bitches Fucking Brew" in mono etc ad nauseum. Biggest collective goddamn LIE-- either by commission or ignorance-- in American musical history is about "jazz" and "blues" primacy etc. Allen "78 & 1/2 Won't Do" Lowe has been among the few to INSIST on contemporaneity and continuum but how many others have faked it, over and over and over again? Granted, access was long lost or-- often-- denied to recordings of 1890s-1910s but even the slightest thought should have revealed the duplicities. Nonsense blather about Robert Johnson as anything special ** except ** a superb musician/performer being best known example but there are many many others-- Most interesting, perhaps, are the Wilbur Sweatman acolytes (I am one) versus the ODJB buffs (I'm one too), both of whom are largely ignored or discredited by, say, the Giddinsite dipshits-at-large. Pha Terrell greater than Sharon Jones funkytown criers can ever imagine also but that's discussion for another time. p/s: Marc Blitzstein + Paul Robeson >>>>>> pretty much everything http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBqPFb9YorI

A few points: * "fire music"? I don't care if Shepp had the title, sounds like white boy romantic bullshit, a FALSE distinction, oooh, they so "free" and so fucking "spiritual" being a record collector ass crack excuse for actually knowing VERY little about American history, recorded and otherwise. Read Frederick Douglass' 4th of July speech and come back to me about... "fire music," hardee har har. (Euripides "The Trojan Women" and Wagner "Gotterdamerung" might also suffice.) * what "free" clowns disrespect Charlie Haden? * at his worst, he got old and dull and if I wasn't typing this from a truck stop in Emporia, Kansas I'd love to build a pyre of nothing but goddamn Jarrett/Haden duo cds and if anyone wants to throw Charlie's later Verve sides on the fire, I wouldn't stop 'em. * Hampton Hawes + Charlie Haden >>>>> all "fire music" pn + bs combined, real + imagined. * Verdict: Charlie is more than alright but so is Buell Niedlinger; I wonder what "fire music" knuckleheads have to say about him? ep1: I'm bemused but always impressed with your taxonomic rigor on these things thus surprised you'd bandy about romantic, obfuscating, limited and limiting claptrap like "fire music" around. You want "fire music"? HERE is some goddamn FIRE MUSIC-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLJOWQMWSFE

CHARLES BROWN was a giant for whom I have nearly boundless admiration-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQddiBz0Px8 Chuck Brown is a well-meaning journeyman, fine, with mediocre bands; dig it or shrug. Just noticed this Bobby Bland (>>>> any possible Chuck Brown, even heard between the meatiest of Petersburg, VA thighs) is from Chicago Soundstage-- My link Any chance Chuck or Larry were there?

guess again, crazy legs-- i'm the one playing bayan (russian accordion) just offstage-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9EqQ7LOAq0 otherwise, the party blues cliches Chuck Brown plays over and over and over again were weary before he was born but if the beefy thighs within a 100 mile radius of WDC get to quaking anyway, fine... Gatemouth Brown was fine too, Johnny Guitar Watson finer... and Prince on the worst night of his life never had a band as pedestrian as the majority of Chuck's 'functional' grooving. American culture is supposed to feel 'guilty' about that or-- hardee har har-- pretend its a race/class/regional conspiracy? Fuck that. Let's sabre dance! My link Shrug away, it might even become your dance, if it hasn't already.

Dude-- did ** I ** write this? The answer is NO. And the music's "potential" has been actualized; there are reasons to celebrate it if its your bag, and reasons to shrug if it ain't. There are, also, those of who are tired from working all goddamn day and night-- you might be among them, I know-- and would rather read a book or eff some single mom (they try harder) from the customer service department than "dance". Ain't wrong if you wanna shake it and it ain't wrong if you don't. Look, Moms, I'm dancing in my head!

D.C. cracks me up-- you all spend half your lives in hideous traffic making nice to venal apparatchiks and are therefore rather tense, I understand, but FACTS ARE FACTS: virtually ** nobody ** gives a shit and the failure of go-go has NOTHING do with 'danger' or any "racial" or racialized perception besides its own general lack of interesting content-- people can, and do, dance to lots of other stuff; i appreciate the proponents of dance but they DO protest too much-- they should include dance as part of theater if they're going that way, though the french often took things too far in 18th-19th c. opera. so why are you guys not crying about zydeco's lack of a national audience, or bluegrass, or old-timey, or cowboy songs? what about minstrel music and vaudeville, both of which are greater traditions than all of go-go ever combined? oh wait, save minstrel shows, they all DO have national audiences, albeit (often very) small ones, with less than a few handfuls of its practitoners able to make a full-time living (which is why bluegrass trends to mainstream contemporary country: it's a matter of survival). "go go" shuck was jive from the start, a useless "distinction" of a certain strain of late '60s, early '70s funk/blues the promotion of which, in willful ignorance at least a dozen other past and present black Chesapeake cultural traditions (from Frederick Douglass forward), couldn't have ended well-- and it didn't. do you believe otherwise? if it's a sustainable regional or local culture, GREAT, but there's no reason anybody else should care, let alone feel guilty for ignoring it or moving on to lots of other things. Side Q: why do many black folks like "smooth jazz"? because it's not "dangerous"? Moms Stag Director VFW Post 3285 Frederick, Maryland p/s-- I know Petersburg very well, Hoppy. Funny to see Civil War tourists looking for the Crater and wondering how they wandered into the land Reconstruction and its AWFUL (really) counerrevolution forgot. Petersburg, Va.

Chuck Brown is cool, Go-Go is crap... Or, let me clarify, the whole 'go-go' schtick was jive from the start, a useless 'distinction' for mess of musics that were failing nearly everywhere save oldies shows and the chitlin' circuit. The perception that shit is boring (sometimes it is) or 'corny' is by far most important; hardly anyone anywhere thinks of 'go-go' enough for any other perceptions to register. Also, a little guy named Prince had A LOT to do people not giving a shit. The Walk And oh yeah, Michael too. Just ask Carlos Ward (pre-Cecil)-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eqRHdaARCw&feature=related Also, who says a blues band can't play country? today i started licking you again

Tony's good stuff is pretty good; his bad stuff, however, is fucking horrible. And we can argue well, it's not his fault but... I dare everyone here watch "Lepke" (maybe thee worst mafia exploitation movie ever) and tell me Tony redeems it in the least. I don't blame him as much for "City Across The River" (from Irving Shulman's "Amboy Dukes") being total crap because he was young but it is a terrible movie. Some Like It Hot almost makes up for it but still... still. Ace In The Hole & Kiss Me, Stupid are better.

LK, bravo-- that is the correct answer! Best Burl villian this side of "Wind Across The Everglades" and one of the best lesser-known Robert Ryan roles; De Toth too is nearly always interesting, at least. I vacillate on "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," which is only other real contender re: snow, but I once thought it superb (and it may still be tho' "Reds" is probably better, DESPITE fucking Nicholson). I think I knew that about Agee but forgot it; his film work en toto is, I think, a distraction from his real literary merit. Critic JR or someone else? The best "snow Western" IMO is Andre De Toth's "Day of the Outlaw," with Robert Ryan and Burl Ives: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/harsh-master/Content?oid=894500 P.S. FWIW, the real authors of "The Night of the Hunter" are Davis Grubb (who wrote the novel) and director Charles Laughton. James Agee's script (I say this based on information from the best film critic I know) was virtually non-existent; Agee was too far gone on drink to produce much of anything. What was printed as Agee's script was what Laughton came up with, adhering closely to Grubb's novel.

Correct. And the fact that approximately ZERO (+/- 1) hip-hop producers ** ever ** have developed beyond their initial inspirations tells us something; an exception to that is RZA. Your supposed greatest MC Rakim hasn't done shit worthwhile since what... 1992? Word for word Sean Price is the only dude who holds a mic that come close to that elusive blend of Richard Pryor and Donald Goines Dilla was dead at what, 33? Booker at 23 and the latter did way way way more/further was my only point. Dilla v. Dolphy? Please!! There might be a handful of MCs in the entire game who have any literary significance. And again, comparison of hip-hop dudes to Wadada, Hannibal etc is laughable. There are def. elements of hip-hop which survive, should be incorporated elsewhere but for the most part it's on a par with the jump blues or somesuch, except not much hip-hop can match Wynona Carr's ding dong-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLt7FCRxyY8 (listen thru the awful video.) Someone like DJ Spinna is a real musician but he is so because he works far beyond 'hip-hop' too.