Kalo

Not pointed at anyone. Just tired of these crappy CGI-driven pseudo-movies.

Get anything you can lay your hands on. The man could SANG! The production might suck, but he never did.

Who DIDN'T dissappoint in the '80s? I've always WANTED to like Bley. Which record do folks recommend as a gateway to her music?

I hate to pee on anyone's parade, but I never "got" what was so great about the Grateful Dead. For a band with TWO drummers they seem to be, shall we say, a bit lacking in groove. A friend of mine, accurately in my opinion, once described their music as "flaccid rock." Plus, they can't none of them sing, and Jerry Garcia's guitar playing seems like just a bunch of scales to me. So, for those of us not on drugs, how do you justify this band?

I hate being a didactic jerk, but it's Copland (no "e"). Never cared much for his stuff, BTW, though a live performance of his music that I heard last year made me reconsider. I'm not aware of any worthwhile bios.

Who fucking cares. I saw the preview and it looked like a piece of shite. Who could have predicted 20 years ago that the best TV would be more adult and eclipse all but the best films AND that the music in commercials would be hipper than what gets played on radio? At least the world still holds surprises...

← I've not heard this particular recording, but the way you describe it, it sounds like the Django with Ellington stuff I have heard.

Now THERE'S a store I'd shop at. I'm not even that big a fan of Jaap Blonk (though I love his name), but any store that would play his stuff (can't even quite call it music, more like "sound poetry") is extremely cool in my book. YEAH!

Yeah! Let's show them what assholes they are by putting more money in their pockets! Seriously, I'm game. I dig Brookmeyer and I'd buy this to prove that "the suits" are wrong about jazz. After all the money they've made on their jazz catalog over the years. it's scary that they STILL think this way. What other recordings from the 1920s still contribute to the corporate coffers the way Armstrong's do? It's guaranteed that the big sellers of those days are dead in the water today. But record companies think horizontally, and jazz sells vertically.

Not today, but a couple of days ago I hit a local used place I hadn't been to in a while and bought the following CDs: George Braith - The Complete Blue Note Sessions (Blue Note Connoisseur Series) Bo Diddley - His Best/The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection (MCA/Chess) Gary McFarland - Does the Sun Really Shine on the Moon? (DCC Jazz) Marian McPartland/Steely Dan - Piano Jazz (The Jazz Alliance) Arthur Russell - Another Thought (Point Music) Alfred Schnittke - Musica Non Grata (Melodiya/BMG Classics) Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh - Intuition (Spanish Blue Note with Crazy blue cover art - even though the damn recordings were originally on Capitol and Imperial)

Count me as a Kinks fan. Something Else is my favorite. I especially like the Dave Davies tunes on that one. It's been written that "Waterloo Sunset" is the most beautiful song in the English language. I might not go that far, but it is pretty damn great. What an explosion of talent there was in UK pop in the 1960s! Beatles/Kinks/Stones/Who/Zombies... And that's just scratching the surface.

This is the only one I have, but it's very good. I'll need to digest it more before buying anything else, however.

Joy. We had joy, we had fun... Or so I've heard... ← You are correct, sir.

I'd have to say I'm a fan of PKD, lest anyone think otherwise. He's an example of the type of writer who has great strengths that transcend his mediocre prose. Theodore Dreiser is perhaps the foremost example in American literature of this type. His prose was godawful, but his novels are compelling.

If you have some intererest in excellent acoustic guitar playing and/or Brazilian music, this will not disappoint you. He sings a few titles, but it is so charming. Plenty of highly developped technique - he was trained by an Uruguayan classical teacher - but the chops never get in the way of the expression. Simply delightful. Short pieces, a lot of diversity, surprisng turns, great variety of moods - charming! My interest was piqued by the downbeat review, and the music by far surpassed my expectations. Please post after you got it - I'm sure you will! ← Thanks! It's going on the want-list. I'll let you know what I think when I get it.

Not much to add to these recommendations, except to urge you to get them. The Monk CDs are fine, with everyone in excellent form, except Cherry, who seemed to be having a bad day.

Are the "l" and "n" in her name silent?

Just moved a few months back myself. My sympathies are with you.

Just bought The Complete Blue Note Sessions today. Listened to it and liked it; and look forward to more listening...

Can't add much to those. Global Warming is a personal favorite.

"Pedophilic pomposity"! "Seasons in the Sun" was written by the dreaded (at least in my household) Jacques Brel, the Belgian song poet. The definitively crappy 1970s version of the song was by a Canadian mediocrity known as Terry Jacks. I am second to none in my admiration for both Belgium (the best beer and comic books in the world, plus Rene Magritte) and Canada (all those great comedians, cartoonists, and Robertson Davies). But it kind of makes sense that a major candidate for worst hit song of all time would be the bastard offspring of these two nations. The lyrics were translated into English by none other than Rod McKuen, author of Feel the Warm, as well as a recording artist in his own right. Read it and weep: http://www.superseventies.com/1974_3singles.html The Poppy Family!!!!!!

Stanislaw Lem is your man. (BTW, he championed PKD as a partial exception to the general trashiness of the field). I don't think anyone has mentioned Olaf Stapledon. A giant who was so fecund with ideas that they're STILL stealing from him. Arthur C. Clarke certainly acknowledged his great influence. When I read Don Delillo's White Noise, it struck me as a science fiction novel; almost as though he had achieved what PKD had tried to (Dick's ear for prose was, unfortunately, leaden in the extreme). Pynchon could be seen as SF, too. And Franzen's The Corrections has some SF elements, if we define SF as being fundamentally about the interface of technology and humanity. Delillo and Franzen are both particularly "Dickian" in their attention to the technology of pharmaceuticals, though Delillo's concerns are wider (his attention to the effects of various information technologies as well as the "airborne toxic event" that features prominently in White Noise). Anyway, I still feel that Lem is the best writer generally considered to be of the realm of Science Fiction.

You've piqued my interest. Anyone care to characterize this music? Of course, I could just look up reviews on the web, but I value the opinions of Organnissimites at least as much as I value those of the "official" reviewers. Actually, I value them more.

A terrible day. My heart goes out to all of London. I hope that this madness will end. I fear it won't.

...and the cheerful, young ones like everything? Actually, as a middle-aged person my taste is far broader than it ever was... Kenton excepted!