sgcim

You can't.

RIP. They used to play him a lot on WBAI radio. You can tell he was a trained pianist. While he was against all of the things the hippies were against, he didn't approve of their aesthetics.

LOL! No, it's gotta be a Heavy Glass band. They have those in Norway.

Whatever it was, it died with him. I remember reading an interview with Don Friedman, who had worked with Chet in the past, and the interviewer said something about seeing Chet play recently, and Don interrupted him and said, "Wait, you're saying that Chet is still alive?!" The interviewer answered in the affirmative, and Don still didn't believe him. Don then went on to describe how Chet would drive them from gig to gig, going over 100 MPH through residential neighborhoods, day or night. He said the time he spent playing in Chet's quartet was a living hell. That's all I remember, but it must have been something like that that made my friend quit after eight months...

I loved her albums "Live at Carnegie Hall" and Cleo Sings Sondheim" the most out of her many recordings. She went from jazz to acting to singing in musicals to singing opera. With her four octave range, she was capable of singing anything. She was the daughter of a Jamaican man and British woman. For a period of time, she was considered the greatest female singer in the world. RIP, Old Gal...

Rod Stewart was the headliner of the bill, so he came on last, after If. I remember walking out on him as he was holding a bottle of Southern Comfort, singing like a drunk old lady. I don't remember if I ditched my friends, or they came with me, but I had to get outta there. The next day I went to TSS and bought If's first album. They were even more obscure than Sabbath. Many years later (pre-internet ), I only met one other person who was an If fanatic. We were doing a week-long gig with Al Martino in Connecticut, and he was the bass player on the gig, and we drove up together. It turned out that he didn't even know of the existence of the first If album, so I invited him over my place, and sat there in shock, listening to their first album on Capitol. I fulfilled a lifetime dream of mine by writing a transcription of an instrumental tune of theirs for big band (If only had seven guys in the band-two tenors, a vocalist and rhythm. With the advent of the 'internest' I uncovered a deep, dark secret of the first album that I had suspected for many years. They secretly added a trumpet player on a few of the cuts who wasn't listed in the credits of the first album. This is common knowledge today, but there was a time when you could be doing hard time for perpetrating a crime like that, according to the Jazz-Rock laws of the time. Thankfully, the laws have loosened up since then...👿

RIP, Ozzy Back in HS, my band was one of the first to play Sabbath at HS Battle of the Bands and dances, in the US, and people didn't know what we were playing. I heard the title song to their first album on WABC FM, and it scared the hell outta me! The next day I ran down to TSS and bought the album with my allowance. Our lead singer basically turned into Ozzy, and even wrote away to one of those ads in the back of comic books and got an 'official' document sent to him, declaring him to be an "official Minister of his own church- The church of Satan!" I still have a picture of me from back then, when I still looked like something resembling a human being, staring into a candle light ceremony where our lead singer/Minister tried to call on Satan, "a black shape with eyes of fire". He never showed up... Then the fateful day came, Nov. 10, 1970. My sister worked at the Fillmore East, and she called up and said,"That weird band you love, Black Sabbath, is playing at the Fillmore; ya want me to get you and yer creepy friends free tickets to see them?" I said, "Please, please, please!!!!!!!!!!!! So the whole band (except our drummer, who was one of those kids who studied, did his homework, and listened to his parents, and was forbidden to take the LIRR into the evil city of NY) took a field trip, and somehow found our way into the bowels of the East Village, and sat there with orchestra seats, waiting for Ozzy to come on. We were disappointed to see four guys with long hair, who looked nothing like demons from hell, stumble their way through the BS album, with feedback and chops problems. They were followed by the British Jazz-Rock band "If", who could actually play the s--t out of their instruments, and I said goodbye to BS, and hello to the Jazz of Dick Morrissey and Terry Smith- jazz guitarist extraordinaire!. Dick Morrissey's son said the guys in If couldn't believe how bad BS was, and they used to have to put their hands over their ears to tolerate it. I should thank Ozzy actually, after that concert, I was so shocked at the difference between If and BS, I realized jazz was what I was looking for. Oh Larder!

RIP, Chuck. His "Feels So Good"gave us Band Directors something to play that the band and the audience actually liked.

Mike Alterman, a pianist that I worked with for five years in a band, spent eight months on the road with Chet Baker in the early 60s, and was so traumatized by the experience that he never said a word about it in all the time I knew him. I'd meet Mike occasionally after the time we worked together in that band, and he'd talk about the time he spent in the Woody Herman Band (he can be heard on the WH album "East Meets West" playing a long solo on a blues), the time he was fired by our current prez for asking for a raise in his solo piano gig in Trump Towers (Trump heard him playing some show tunes and said to Mike, "I like that!", so he figured it was a good time to ask DT for a raise- wrong), but he went to the grave a few years ago without saying a word about his eight months with Chet on the road, at least to me. RIP, Mike.

This comes a a total shock.I didn't think he was that old. RIP, Hal

Here's a suite of the score Schifrin wrote for the Exorcist, that was turned down by Friedkin. Lalo called it a setup by Friedkin, because the studio told Friedkin that the score and the scenes in the trailer were too much for audiences. It was scaring the hell out of them, and they told Friedkin to tell Schifrin to tone the score down a lot. But Friedkin, being the weirdo that he was, refused to tell Schifrin that the score was too bombastic, and at the final studio recording, he led Schifrin into a trap where the executives heard the same music from the trailer. Friedkin walked out of the recording studio after a few music sequences, and told Schifrin to meet him privately in the head of the Warner Bros. Music Dept. Schifrin was hearing plenty of horror stories about what was going on- Friedkin's temper tantrums, dismissing friendly advice, firing his collaborators, etc... "He started to scream, foam was coming out of his mouth. "Where are the two orchestras of strings? This is not what we talked about! This music is not going to be in my film!!" he told Schifrin. Lalo could see that WF was out of control, and there was no reasoning with him, so he remained quiet to avoid a physical confrontation. Larry Marks, who was the head of the Music Dept., told LS that WF had already had a group in mind, Tubular Bells- and the help of a composer, Jack Nitzsche. William Blatty cake to LS' defense and made public declarations to the press, and the fired ex-film editor confirmed Blatty's comments about the setup. All Friedkin could respond with was that LS had written a score with "Mexican Maracas"! From LS' Autobiography.

Well, they had people like George Barrow, Charlie Fowlkes in the band, and I forget the rhythm section, but the conductor/pianist knew what he wanted, and told them how to play her show.

RIP, Connie. She brought her own guitarist when she toured, so I was out of work when she was appearing at the theater in NY, where I was in the house band, for the first few nights that she sang there. Then, when she was attacked at the Holiday Inn, right near the theater, they replaced her with Melba Moore, who didn't carry her own guitarist with her. I was really young when I had that gig,still in my teens, so when they asked me if I could play R&B, I said "sure", not even knowing what the hell that meant. I was completely about jazz when I had that gig, and didn't give a crap about any 'commercial' music. The guys in the house band kind of gave me a hard time, because I was getting paid a full week's salary for only working half the week (about seven bills, which was pretty good money back in the 70s), and they were getting the same amount for working a full week of shows.

I missed this announcement, but I found out about it from a trumpet player I played with last night. Sad news, but at least he got to play great jazz with the WDR Band, and enjoyed a nice retirement. I played a bunch of gigs with him back in the late 80s. RIP.

One staunch defender of the first band made a comment on a You Tube KC video, that Fripp should get a medal for milking "Court" for over 50 years!

You gotta be kidding! 2.

Not a date movie, according to Pauline Kael: "The film is too cadenced and exotic and too deliriously complicated to succeed with most audiences (and when it opened, there were accounts of people in theaters who threw things at the screen). But it's winged camp--a horror fairy tale gone wild, another in the long history of moviemakers' king-size follies. "

I listened to it again, and the 1969 performance was so spontaneous and daring, it was the equivalent of Mingus' Jazz Workshop band with Eric Dolphy! They took so many chances, that it could have fallen apart at any second. Ian literally turned into Dolphy, playing wild outrageous lines that captured the "talking" technique" that Dolphy used. He even started telling jokes like Eric did with his horn. Giles was right there with him, along with Fripp, and even Lake got into it. The subsequent groups might have had more technique, but as far as spontaneous playing and having onstage conversations with their instruments, they rarely came near the first KC.

It was the biggest bomb of all time. No one understood what was going on, even the actors! I still keep watching it, hoping that it will make sense to me someday. Friedkin has made it clear that he had nothing to do with it. BTW, Friedkin hated Lalo's score for the original Exorcist so much, he took the tape of Lalo's music, and kicked it so hard that it rolled out of the studio, and out the door, on to the sidewalk!

Ian called Fripp a week before he died, and apologized for quitting the band in 1969.

I'll bring masks, too. They might remember you. I've been watching "Animal Kingdom on NF. It makes you an expert on 'jobs'...

The 21st Century Schizoid Band Live in Japan concert had some nice re-workings of stuff from McDonald and Giles, along with some stuff from "Road Eyes" and Giles' great (and only) album as a leader.

That vocal part sounds like it would've been good for Exorcist 2: Heretic.

Me? Lose a Yahtzee game? Surely you jest. I was declared a Yahtzee Master by my mommy and my friends. Now I don't even remember how to play it, but it would just take one game to restore me to my former glory. It would just take one Amtrack ride (unless he's defunded that, too) and then after the tournament, we could break in to your Alma Mater and uh, borrow those Puerling scores, so I don't have to transcribe anymore. Are you packing? We could get Chuck or TTK as our getaway driver.

R.I.P I liked when he had the quartet with Leo Wright, and the work he did on piano with Diz. He had Jimmy Raney on `the Samba Para Dos album that Mike posted, and the Brilliance album, too. I just fought through the protesters and the cops again at Columbia to pick up his autobiography, "Mission Impossible: "My Life In Music". Haven't started it yet, but Raney isn't in the index. Should be fun to read his version of "The Exorcist" mess. I've already read Friedkin's side of the story.