Johnny E

You can now download the both sides of the Agendacide single in MP3 format for only $5. Here's the link: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/reptet3

Makes sense to me. I've crawled on all fours for sex many times.

Oldest "Human" Skeleton Found--Disproves "Missing Link" Jamie Shreeve Science editor, National Geographic magazine October 1, 2009 Move over, Lucy. And kiss the missing link goodbye. Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago. The centerpiece of a treasure trove of new fossils, the skeleton—assigned to a species called Ardipithecus ramidus—belonged to a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female nicknamed "Ardi." (See pictures of Ardipithecus ramidus.) The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings. Ardi instead shows an unexpected mix of advanced characteristics and of primitive traits seen in much older apes that were unlike chimps or gorillas (interactive: Ardi's key features). As such, the skeleton offers a window on what the last common ancestor of humans and living apes might have been like. Announced at joint press conferences in Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the analysis of the Ardipithecus ramidus bones will be published in a collection of papers tomorrow in a special edition of the journal Science, along with an avalanche of supporting materials published online. "This find is far more important than Lucy," said Alan Walker, a paleontologist from Pennsylvania State University who was not part of the research. "It shows that the last common ancestor with chimps didn't look like a chimp, or a human, or some funny thing in between." (Related: "Oldest Homo Sapiens Fossils Found, Experts Say" [June 11, 2003].) Ardi Surrounded by Family The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers) from where Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974. Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago. Older hominid fossils have been uncovered, including a skull from Chad at least six million years old and some more fragmentary, slightly younger remains from Kenya and nearby in the Middle Awash. While important, however, none of those earlier fossils are nearly as revealing as the newly announced remains, which in addition to Ardi's partial skeleton include bones representing at least 36 other individuals. "All of a sudden you've got fingers and toes and arms and legs and heads and teeth," said Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, who co-directed the work with Berhane Asfaw, a paleoanthropologist and former director of the National Museum of Ethiopia, and Giday WoldeGabriel, a geologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "That allows you to do something you can't do with isolated specimens," White said. "It allows you to do biology." Ardi's Weird Way of Moving The biggest surprise about Ardipithecus's biology is its bizarre means of moving about. All previously known hominids—members of our ancestral lineage—walked upright on two legs, like us. But Ardi's feet, pelvis, legs, and hands suggest she was a biped on the ground but a quadruped when moving about in the trees. Her big toe, for instance, splays out from her foot like an ape's, the better to grasp tree limbs. Unlike a chimpanzee foot, however, Ardipithecus's contains a special small bone inside a tendon, passed down from more primitive ancestors, that keeps the divergent toe more rigid. Combined with modifications to the other toes, the bone would have helped Ardi walk bipedally on the ground, though less efficiently than later hominids like Lucy. The bone was lost in the lineages of chimps and gorillas. According to the researchers, the pelvis shows a similar mosaic of traits. The large flaring bones of the upper pelvis were positioned so that Ardi could walk on two legs without lurching from side to side like a chimp. But the lower pelvis was built like an ape's, to accommodate huge hind limb muscles used in climbing. Even in the trees, Ardi was nothing like a modern ape, the researchers say. Modern chimps and gorillas have evolved limb anatomy specialized to climbing vertically up tree trunks, hanging and swinging from branches, and knuckle-walking on the ground. While these behaviors require very rigid wrist bones, for instance, the wrists and finger joints of Ardipithecus were highly flexible. As a result Ardi would have walked on her palms as she moved about in the trees—more like some primitive fossil apes than like chimps and gorillas. "What Ardi tells us is there was this vast intermediate stage in our evolution that nobody knew about," said Owen Lovejoy, an anatomist at Kent State University in Ohio, who analyzed Ardi's bones below the neck. "It changes everything." Against All Odds, Ardi Emerges The first, fragmentary specimens of Ardipithecus were found at Aramis in 1992 and published in 1994. The skeleton announced today was discovered that same year and excavated with the bones of the other individuals over the next three field seasons. But it took 15 years before the research team could fully analyze and publish the skeleton, because the fossils were in such bad shape. After Ardi died, her remains apparently were trampled down into mud by hippos and other passing herbivores. Millions of years later, erosion brought the badly crushed and distorted bones back to the surface. They were so fragile they would turn to dust at a touch. To save the precious fragments, White and colleagues removed the fossils along with their surrounding rock. Then, in a lab in Addis, the researchers carefully tweaked out the bones from the rocky matrix using a needle under a microscope, proceeding "millimeter by submillimeter," as the team puts it in Science. This process alone took several years. Pieces of the crushed skull were then CT-scanned and digitally fit back together by Gen Suwa, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tokyo. In the end, the research team recovered more than 125 pieces of the skeleton, including much of the feet and virtually all of the hands—an extreme rarity among hominid fossils of any age, let alone one so very ancient. "Finding this skeleton was more than luck," said White. "It was against all odds." Ardi's World The team also found some 6,000 animal fossils and other specimens that offer a picture of the world Ardi inhabited: a moist woodland very different from the region's current, parched landscape. In addition to antelope and monkey species associated with forests, the deposits contained forest-dwelling birds and seeds from fig and palm trees. Wear patterns and isotopes in the hominid teeth suggest a diet that included fruits, nuts, and other forest foods. If White and his team are right that Ardi walked upright as well as climbed trees, the environmental evidence would seem to strike the death knell for the "savanna hypothesis"—a long-standing notion that our ancestors first stood up in response to their move onto an open grassland environment. Sex for Food Some researchers, however, are unconvinced that Ardipithecus was quite so versatile. "This is a fascinating skeleton, but based on what they present, the evidence for bipedality is limited at best," said William Jungers, an anatomist at Stony Brook University in New York State. "Divergent big toes are associated with grasping, and this has one of the most divergent big toes you can imagine," Jungers said. "Why would an animal fully adapted to support its weight on its forelimbs in the trees elect to walk bipedally on the ground?" One provocative answer to that question—originally proposed by Lovejoy in the early 1980s and refined now in light of the Ardipithecus discoveries—attributes the origin of bipedality to another trademark of humankind: monogamous sex. Virtually all apes and monkeys, especially males, have long upper canine teeth—formidable weapons in fights for mating opportunities. But Ardipithecus appears to have already embarked on a uniquely human evolutionary path, with canines reduced in size and dramatically "feminized" to a stubby, diamond shape, according to the researchers. Males and female specimens are also close to each other in body size. Lovejoy sees these changes as part of an epochal shift in social behavior: Instead of fighting for access to females, a male Ardipithecus would supply a "targeted female" and her offspring with gathered foods and gain her sexual loyalty in return. To keep up his end of the deal, a male needed to have his hands free to carry home the food. Bipedalism may have been a poor way for Ardipithecus to get around, but through its contribution to the "sex for food" contract, it would have been an excellent way to bear more offspring. And in evolution, of course, more offspring is the name of the game (more: "Did Early Humans Start Walking for Sex?"). Two hundred thousand years after Ardipithecus, another species called Australopithecus anamensis appeared in the region. By most accounts, that species soon evolved into Australopithecus afarensis, with a slightly larger brain and a full commitment to a bipedal way of life. Then came early Homo, with its even bigger brain and budding tool use. Did primitive Ardipithecus undergo some accelerated change in the 200,000 years between it and Australopithecus—and emerge as the ancestor of all later hominids? Or was Ardipithecus a relict species, carrying its quaint mosaic of primitive and advanced traits with it into extinction? Study co-leader White sees nothing about the skeleton "that would exclude it from ancestral status." But he said more fossils would be needed to fully resolve the issue. Stony Brook's Jungers added, "These finds are incredibly important, and given the state of preservation of the bones, what they did was nothing short of heroic. But this is just the beginning of the story."

The tour poster...

I'm down.

As the Republicans say, "I got mine, you get yours...not my problem."

Yes, definately...right after she 'pegged' him.

Can you give me more info on this Chuck? When was it recorded? Why hasn't it been issued?

Oh man, Betty sure looked good on that 'fainting couch'.

Mailed all the records off this morning... Thanks guys! If anyone else is interested, let me know.

Really? My sister lives in Glendale and that's where we'll be staying while in SoCal. Yes, please come to the Molly Malone's show on Saturday. We're trying to hype that show out. The show at JAX is kinda a last minute throw-in gig I added on a Monday night because we have a workshop to do at CalArts earlier in the day. Either way, let's have a drink together.

A couple of my favorites:

Yes, it is.

Why I outta... Thanks guys. Still waiting on the shipping supplies to arrive (any day now), soon as they do, I'll be sending out the discs. Monday or Tuesday I would imagine.

Oh yes, They are $10 and come with a code that you can use to go online and download the MP3's. To order, paypal $10 (plus $3 s/h) to: jjewing@hotmail.com or Mail check/MO to: REPTET c/o John Ewing 10101 32nd Ave SW Seattle, WA 98146 Thanks ya'll! :blush2:

So what have I been doing with my life all these years? Guess it's time to sell the kit and move to Florida.

A side: Agendacide (6:36) B side: Snow Leopard x3 (5:21) featuring Wayne Horvitz on Hammond organ All compositions written by Samantha Boshnack. Recorded by Doug Haire at Jack Straw Productions, Seattle. Recording and production made possible in part by the Jack Straw Artists Support Program. Overdubs, mixing and mastering by Mell Detmer at Alpha Studios and Sinister Kitchen, Seattle. Front cover artwork by Jim Flora.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE End date 11/19/09 Press Contact: Beth Fleenor* The Frank Agency 206.491.0516 beth@thefrankagency.org *CDs, photos, and more information available upon request REPTET WEST COAST RECORD RELEASE TOUR October/November 2009 “This Seattle sextet does it all: it grooves, it rocks, it squawks - occasionally, it even talks. Mostly, it sounds like a New Orleans jazz band on crystal meth.” - Jazziz Magazine “The manically fun Reptet make new music by merrily hopping around the history of jazz.” – The Stranger October 29 Cottage Grove, OR - The Axe & Fiddle October 30 Chico, CA - The Coda Cafe October 31 South Lake Tahoe, CA The Divided Sky November 1 Placerville, CA - The Cozmic Cafe November 2 San Francisco, CA - The Make Out Room November 3 Sacramento, CA - The Shady Lady November 5 Oakland, CA - Café Van Kleef November 6 Reno, NV - The Zephyr Lounge November 7 Los Angeles, CA - Molly Mallone’s November 8 Santa Barbara, CA - Live Culture November 9 Glendale, CA - JAX November 13 Olympia, WA - The Eastside Club November 19 Seattle, WA - The Tractor Tavern For more information please visit www.reptet.com or www.sonicbids.com/reptet The Band Fresh off the road from a triumphant summer tour of Canada, Seattle’s Reptet (Monktail Records) will be touring the West Coast of the United States in October and November to promote their new, 7” vinyl release entitled, Agendacide. This will be their fifth West Coast tour in the past three years and their first new recording since 2008. While making return visits to Lake Tahoe, Reno, San Francisco, Olympia, & Los Angeles, they will also be making debut performances in Cottage Grove, Chico, Placerville, Sacramento, Oakland, Santa Barbara, and Glendale. Winners of two 2007 Earshot Golden Ear Awards, this genre-bending band is comprised of six multi-instrumentalists who have an expansive approach to music, performing original compositions that incorporate jazz, rock, ska, punk, modern classical, avant garde, eastern European folk and more. Their critically acclaimed 2006 CD release, "Do This!," won numerous accolades, appeared on the year-end top-10 lists of many jazz critics and was chosen the top Record of the Year by Jazziz Magazine's Alex Gelfand. Their 2008 CD, “Chicken or Beef?” was chosen finalist for Jazz Record of the Year by the 8th Annual Independent Music Awards and has been lauded by luminary Simpsons creator, Matt Groening. Their latest recording is being released as a digital download as well as on 7” red vinyl, accompanied by stunning cover art by the late great illustrator, Jim Flora. It also features a guest appearance by the world renowned keyboardist Wayne Horvitz on Hammond C3 organ. Reptet’s live performances have been described as, “arresting, compelling and just plain cranked-up!” with stage shows evolving into transformative performance art pieces using costumes, story telling, dance routines and absurdist humor. Reptet has proven itself to be a unique and utterly enthralling multi-leveled experience, leaving an indelible mark on the memories of their audiences. This internationally touring ensemble will be recording their next full length CD in the winter of 09’ and launching a East Coast/European tour in the spring of 2010. _________________________________________________ The Artists Samantha Boshnack (Trumpets) grew up in upstate New York. She received her Bachelor of Arts in music from Bard College where she studied jazz trumpet and composition with Erica Lindsay and Thurman Barker. She has also studied with Jerry Sabatini and Baikida Carroll. She currently makes her living playing and touring with numerous ensembles as well as teaching. Current projects include Reptet, Picoso, Orkestar Zirkonium, Publish the Quest, the Monktail Creative Music Concern, WACO (featuring Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb), Sasson, Figeater, The New Seattle Brass Ensemble, and Threat of Beauty. Boshnack has received commissioning support from 4Culture, Seattle Mayors Office of Arts and Culture, ASCAPlus, and Jack Straw Productions. Chris Credit (Saxophones, Clarinet, Flute) moved from Anchorage Alaska to Seattle to attend Cornish College of the Arts where he received a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Performance in 1998. There he studied with Julian Priester, Hadley Caliman, Chuck Deardorf, Jim Knapp, and Jovino Santos Neto among others. A stint of traveling and performing music aboard cruise ships kept Credit busy for awhile until he returned to Seattle to focus on composing, performing new music and teaching. In addition to Reptet, he is also a member of Motel 5, Pocket Hercules, the Cocktet, and founder of c2 music. Izaak Mills (Saxophones, Flute, Bass Clarinet) grew up in Olympia, WA. In 1998 he made the long trek to Seattle to attend Cornish College where he studied for two years with Hadley Caliman, Jim Knapp, Julian Priester, Denney Goodhew, Jovino Santos Neto, Paul Taub and Dave Peck. He is a regular member of Picoso, the Boogie Brown Band and a founding member of Floss and Bacteria. His favorite food is the carrot. Nelson Bell (Trombone and Tuba) graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in music history and music theory. Although the bass trombone is his main axe, he is also proficient on the tenor trombone, euphonium, tuba, piano, and percussion instruments. He takes great pride in being the finest egg shaker-er in the Northwest region. Nelson has performed with the Jazz Police, Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, Banda Vagos, the Jim Knapp Orchestra, Emerald City Jazz, and the North West Prevailing Winds to name a few. He has also done much studio work, with credits ranging from elevator music to movie soundtracks. Check out Nelson on the Grammy nominated album "Convergence Zone" featuring compositions and arrangements by Phil Kelly. John Ewing (Drums, Percussion) is a native of Philadelphia, PA. He studied jazz and classical percussion at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in New Jersey and has studied with Robert Brosh and John Bishop. His current work includes jazz based improvisation and free sound explorations as well as film scores and studio work. He has had the honor of performing with legendary jazz trombonist Julian Priester and saxophonist Bert Wilson. John is also a jazz writer (Earshot Jazz and Signal to Noise among others) and a member of the Jazz Journalist Association. Besides being Reptet's founding member and co-leader, he is an integral member of Monktail Creative Music Concern. Tim Carey (Bass) grew up playing electric bass in beautiful Seabeck, WA. Tim attended Olympic College where he was able to tour the world playing with some of Kitsap County's most notable jazz musicians, including Gary Williams, Ray Ohls, Andy Omdhal, and Nancy King. Tim earned a Bachelor’s of Music from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle Washington in May 2006. While at Cornish Tim quickly became one of Seattle’s first call electric bassists as well as an accomplished acoustic bassist and guitarist. Tim is currently teaching bass, guitar, banjo, ukulele, and piano full time as well as performing in and around the Seattle area on a regular basis. Projects include: the Mack Grout Quartet, Owour Arunga and the Young Lions, Banda Aricrin, Jovino Santos-Neto Trio, Reptet, the Jeff Busch Quintet, Pat Wright and the Total Experience Gospel Choir. ###

Where's Chewy? You want to go to this show, I know it.

Yes. That and the overnight sensations...

This message is for everyone, but especially the Seattle based board members... I am excited to let you know that on September 11th Reptet will be performing with Pojama People Plays Zappa (featuring Ike Willis). Mr. Willis was one of the longest playing members of Frank Zappa's bands and the Pojama People play only Frank Zappa's music. Ike was an essential component of many of Frank's most creative and powerful bands, playing guitar and singing lead vocals on such albums as Joe's Garage, Tinseltown Rebellion, You Are What You Is and Thing Fish. The three times I saw Frank Zappa, Ike Willis was the front man. How could I ever forget him singing, Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up & Why Does It Hurt When I Pee? He may just do them again on the 11th? The show is sure to be a barn burner and I hope you can make it, but here's the thing... The Mix has the opening band pre-sell tickets. The show is $15 at the door, but only $10 if you purchase a ticket in advance from a Reptet band member. Furthermore, if you buy your tickets through me, then the vast majority of that cash goes straight to Reptet. Drop us a line and I'll place a ticket of your sweaty little palm. I have a limited supply of tickets so get in touch asap. Friday, September 11th Pojama People Plays Zappa (with Ike Willis) / Reptet at THE MIX 6006 12th Ave S. (in Georgetown) Seattle, WA. 98108 Tickets $10 adv - $15 door 8:00PM - $21+ Thanks, -john Ps. If you show up at the door the day of, please tell the door guy you are there to see Reptet. This will allow some of that money to be funneled our way.

Hi all -- A campaign has been launched on Twitter to prove there IS a large, vigorous audience for live jazz. It's not a promotional effort for upcoming events, but rather a shout-out about jazz people have just heard, WHO and WHERE with the hashtag #jazzlives (all within Twitter's 140 character limit). This is somewhat in response to the NEA's 2008 data about diminishing and aging audiences at live jazz events (and all other arts events), which I believe undercounted a significant segment of the populace, probably including those who use social networking media to stay in touch and energize each other around their entertainment preferences. It's also an experiment about the use of Twitter for jazz, whether such a campaign can go viral, maybe move to other social networking platforms, and whatever else may result. So: If you Tweet (and Twitter accounts are free), please send a message that jazz lives! Tell the world WHO you heard, WHERE, and include #jazzlives in the message. We ought to be able to work up a new metric (though it won't be a certifiable statistic) demonstrating the energy and breadth of jazz listeners, especially in the US over the weeks starting with the Charlie Parker Jazz Fest in NYC this weekend, including Labor Day weekend's jazz fests at Tanglewood, in Detroit, Chicago, LA (both the Angel City and Sweet & Hot Music Fest), Philly (Tony Williams Scholarship fest), Jazz Aspen Snowmass, Vail Jazz Party, Bumbershoot in Seattle, Getdown fest and campout, leading to the Monterey and Beantown (Boston) fests. It's not ONLY about audiences at fests, though -- Tweet about jazz heard in stand-alone concerts, in clubs, in the streets and subways, anywhere jazz lives. Jazz heard in live-broadcast on the radio or online counts! The hashtag, by the way, is essential -- it's what enables us to see all the campaign's Tweets together, to count them up.A widget has been created to show the Tweets scrolling as they come out in real time -- you can see this widget on my website www.HowardMandel.com , and I hope soon at Jazzhouse.org -- you can also embed this widget on your own website -- get the code from Darcy James Argue's Secret Society vkif, http://secretsociety.typepad.com/ If you aren't on Twitter, you can advance this effort by mentioning it in blog postings, on broadcasts, to friends, through email. I wonder if there are as many listeners who will tweet they've heard live jazz in the next few weeks as there were people at Woodstock. Write to tweetjazzlives@gmail.com for further info -- best, Howard

Lucky bastard.

Man, this is a hard one. A friend of mine, guitarist Andy Coe had the pleasure of playing with Rashied on many occaitions and we came close to booking him to play Sounds Outside (the free jazz/experimental music festival I help curate here in Seattle) last year. I saw him perform a number of times and he was stull smoking right up until the very end. We'll miss you Rashied. Carpe diem everyone.

Do those guys all teach there?!?