sgcim

If the right singer is singing the right song with the right backing and the right arrangements, I could care less whether he or she can improvise or not. I suppose that some bass players or drummers are better improvisers than others, but I prefer the ones who can groove in a group setting. Well put. There's endless idiocy by non-musicians in regard to music, but the phrase, "It's the singer, not the song", made me want to kill anyone that used to say that...

Wow! That was great, especially the octave jumping at the end. In a perfect world, every woman would look and sing like EG. Just a few days ago on the way to a gig, either a trumpet plaey or sax player that used to do her and SL's show was telling a story about EG lecturing the band about how to play something, and SL came into the room and told her to shut the fuck up, and get the hell out of there. RIP EG

I went to this "sale" today. I was amazed to find only about 200 LPs (22,000? yeah, right...) there, and they were all old classical LPs that were pretty commonplace albums. I asked some stupid chick, "is this all there is?", and she bubbled over that they were going to add at least fifteen more boxes of LPs by noon tomorrow. Considering that they only had about 10-20 LPs in a box, I just shrugged my shoulders... Just more Manhattan bullshit hype. I should know by now...

That story was recounted in the book about Ornette's appearance at the Five Spot in 1959. I forget the title and author. There were many negative reactions from prominent jazz musicians to Ornette's music recounted in that book. Even in "Notes and Tones" by AT, many musicians that were interviewed still had negative opinions about "Freedom music" in the 1970s.

Curse those album cover threads!

I'll always remember him for beating the shit out of Ornette Coleman in the kitchen at the Five Spot, because he hated OC's music, and then following OC home, and beating the shit out of him again in front of his apartment.

WNET played the documentary "Radio Unnameable" last night, concerning radio station WBAI, and the Bob Fass show. Christern was station manager back when Fass started doing his midnight show in the early 1960s, and commented on WBAI and Fass' career.

The pop stuff of today has gotten so bad today because everything is a drum machine or electronic drums. That's my main problem with it. We just played a big band concert, and as I was walking through the crowd, I heard two guys in their late thirties talking about how the music their kids listen to today is literally making them sick. They went on and on about how they're afraid they're going to do something violent to their kids if they play it in their houses...

I listened to her album in 2010 "Saturn Sings", and I couldn't believe anyone would actually put out a record like that. Maybe someone said something to her, because her recent stuff on youtube is much better.

I still remember sitting in a movie theater when the beautiful theme heard at 3:24 to 4:16 was used in the climax of the movie "Alien". I wonder if that was Jerry Goldsmith's idea, or someone else's? A NY radio DJ played the score from "Alien" on the air, and played Hanson's great theme, and said,"Look at what a genius Jerry was, listen to that melody at the climax!" I called him on the air and said, "Jerry didn't write that beautiful theme- it's from Howard Hanson's Second Symphony. Jerry's a hack- he couldn't write music like that in his best wet dream." That didn't go over too well with the show's host...

That Jake Feinberg does some wild interviews. I haven't heard the Bob Rose interview (I remember he was doing some shows back in the 70s and 80s when I used to do them), but thanks for the link. I just spent an hour and 23 minutes listening to the John Wilmeth interview. He was a fellow NYC music teacher until Bloomberg closed his high school TWICE, and then he decided to retire. Here's a guy who played with Mike Nock, Michael Bloomfield, Al Haig, Billy Harper, Woody Shaw, Jerry Garcia, Bobby Hutcherson, and countless others, and they were making him teach three Art classes. Bloomberg has single-handedly destroyed the NYC school system. It's amazing what happens when you get white people scared enough to re-elect the thirteenth wealthiest man in the world three times.

Yeah, Carlton deserves it for ripping off Johnny Smith's tune "Jaguar" for his tune "Strikes Twice". Even the Ventures paid JS for "Walk, Don't Run".

Takashi Miike "MPD Psycho"- Netflix has all six episodes. Miike da man-san!

Dankworth did some good film scores, also. The Cleo/Dankworth team produced some great music, until they started to do pop/rock BS in the 70s. I still watch "All Night Long" every time it's on TV. Dankworth did all the writing for that film. Cleo does a great job on her Sondheim LP, but I don't know if JD did the charts for it.

I just read another music article by Nate Chinen that really bugged me, and I asked someone who NC was. They replied that he was probably the gardening columnist before he got assigned to cover music. When you become too knowlegeable about your subject to be able to relate to the average reader, they move you to another section. Look at what happened to Frank Rich...

Percy Brice is still playing. A few friends of mine get together with him on Lon Guyland every week. God Bless him!

I missed the Cecil show, but they hit a new low after that when the KCR DJ played Jaki Byard playing "When Sunny Gets Blue" and the DJ said it was Booker Ervin on tenor, Richard Williams on trumpet, and Jaki on piano. Actually, the cut had no piano, and it was Jaki playing alto sax with just a bass player and drummer! Then he played an Eric Dolphy solo alto saxophone cut, and said it was Dolphy on bass clarinet, and Richard Davis on bass, playing the song "Alone Together", which may be on the album, but definitely wasn't the song he played. This is the only radio station in NYC that plays (some) jazz?

There's a lot of wild quotes from that book. I think the most famous was:"The only way a caucasian musician could swing is from the end of a rope!"

It would have been difficult to get anything out of Max towards the end. A friend of mine played a gig with Earl May at the senior home where Max was living, and sadly he said Max was all but gone from some severe brain disease.

Get Roku and screw them all.

KCR played a tribute to him, and I was bowled over by the sound of his voice. He sounded like Sam Cooke singing b3rds and b7ths. They played his early stuff where he sang the shit out of some standards ("Fever" among others).

I've noticed that Phil Schaap and WKCR haven't played any JS. Could the reasons for this be: 1) He wasn't black? 2) He didn't play free jazz? 3) He didn't have any self-destructive "habits" which endeared him to a hipster audience? 4) He wasn't black?

I think you are thinking of Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. Amusingly for British viewers the trumpeter was played by Roy Castle, a light entertainer (and trumpeter) who presented a long-running children's series called Record Breakers. Tubby Hayes also makes an appearance. That's the one. RC was a pisser! I saw another 60s British horror flick the other day called "Corruption", with Peter Cushing wildly overacting the old 'mad surgeon trying to restore his wife's beautiful face by using the skin of other beautiful women' role (in other words, a rip-off of "Eyes Without a Face"). There's some wonderfully demented 'Twilight Zone Jazz' in the scene when Cushing and his wife are chasing the beatnik chick across the beach for what seems like an hour.

I think I've already related the story of seeing Phil Woods play there, and having the honor of him hurling a can of beer at me after we tried to visit him backstage. My HS friend introduced me to PW as "the world's greatest jazz guitarist" (we were still in high school!)and Phil bellowed, "Get the fuck outta here!!", and let the can of Bud fly. The guy who ran it sometimes sells records in various places in NYC, and I bought some great LPs "Eddie Costa Trio Live at Newport,1957", "The New York Jazz Quartet", and "The Sal Salvador Sextet"- all without their covers. He told me that he was making a film on jazz artists like Costa, Clifford Brown, etc... who died young.

While we're talking about composers' kinks and prejudices, I'm reading "Self Portrait of Percy Grainger", a compilation of all his private writings, and this man had enough to fill four books- let alone one. Although he wasn't gay, his appetite for flagellation seemed to be inexhaustible. In the Grainger Museum in Melbourne, there are photos on display of him with hundreds of whip scars on his body, along with his actual collection of whips. He also has a 25 item list of suggestions of things that should be done to make the world safe for Nordics near and far.