kenny weir

Chris, I've actually been hanging out here - even if not posting all that often - all along. I'm a bit of a slut that way.

Well, this is primarily a JAZZ forum. Those of us who can't play instruments have to do it some way (and so do some of us who can). MG I agree. The AAJ mentality seems to deter out and out goofiness and thread hijacking in general.

I, too, wish AAJ well. Until yesterday I had knowledge of the current brouhaha. My mild beef lies with a topsy turvy set of priorities, a sort of political correctness gone a little batty. Whereby some posters, and one in particular (mentioned already on this thread), seem to get away with some amazingly awful, hateful shit. Take them to task, though, and you're liable to be asked to desist from making things "too personal". A byproduct of the overall approach - and perhaps part of the "business" approach - seems to see trolls, or at least troll-like behaviour, a sort of protected species. More broadly, this kind of vibe doesn't allow for the kind of spontaneous thinking that could see a thread largely about another forum soar/plunge/morph into one about haircuts and so on. Kenny - a No.1 man for the past 10 years.

This is the first Oz Open during which I've had pay tv, so for the first week I had the luxury of three live feeds - the free-to-air host Channel 7 and two Foxtel channels. I've seen some great stuff and some fine upsets. Sharapova gives me the shits, but man she wiped the floor with Henin. I expect Federer will win the men's singles, but I feel he's peaked and there's a bunch of yoiung hot shots who will likely take him down in the next year or so. Melbourne has been unusually mild and cool for the Open so far, compared to previous years.

No, no - I didn't take umbrage; was just making a comment, tha's all. I agree with you that this sort of thing should be up front. But in my case, having never listened that closely in the first place, it was never going to make any difference.

It's only in my latter day zeal for the GD that I've actually grown to love this era, even though I'd been familar with the Live/Dead material for many decades. So I got the box and love it to bits. I didn't know about this digital meddling. I know now. And don't care!

Yeah, I hang out at the Dead site a bit, but it can get a little monotonous. There's many people there who are into the GD AND other sounds. But there's also a heap who are pretty much into the Dead and the Dead ONLY. I can't really understand a mindset that can revel in multiple versions of the GD doing Turn On Your Lovelight or It Hurts Me Too, yet have no interest in checking out Bobby Bland or Elmore James. My own tastes have moved on in many ways, but as Quincy says "Prefer jazz background in posters" when it comes to GD, country music, sports, politics, cooking etc etc

Making contact with a half dozen or so Melbourne Dead Heads has been pretty cool. In a broader sense, switching my focus to older rock, country, blues and jazz - anything from 10 to more than 100 years old - has been a tremendous kick involving lotsa Bear Family boxes, Dick's Picks and so on. And, just lately, a high-volume, high-octane return to the monster slabs of Aussie '80s guitar grunge that was my life when I first moved to this country. Yet I still hang out on jazz boards? Go figga!

Hey hey June 8 '77 - that's "MY show" - the onliest time I saw the GD live!

First try - Level 10, 362,314 points, IQ 111 Twas fun!

Still waiting for my new Road Series relase - hopefully with bonus disc. In the meantime, I am unable to get DP29 out of my player. That's the one of six discs for $33, based on two 1977 shows. It's fantastic!

Another, a real killer, too: Bill Holman - Brilliant Corners: The Music of Thelonious Monk

Gad - there's been hundreds and thousands. Payton, Christian McBride and Mark Whitfield did a Herbie one (Fingerpainting). Jim Snidero did a Joe Henderson one (The Music Of Joe Henderson). And Joe Henderson did a Jobim one (Double Rainbow). Kylie Minogue did one for Charley Patton (Screamin' And Hollerin' The Pap) Just offa the top of my head.

From my lifelong newspapering gig, I look at it from the perspective of the typefaces - alternating white and brown/orange. Although one is serif and one sans serif.

I've ordered the first one. I have no '79 stuff, plus this concept may find me sticking my ears into hitherto unheard territory for me. In fact, I have no post-Keith stuff at all. And I have no probs with cherry picking a series of shows, as I'm not hung up on the "complete show" ethos.

Dunno about that. I don't know how much, er, substance there to it all, but quite suddenly and in recent times tennis is smelling pretty grubby, what with stubborn reports of betting and corruption, and the forlorn figure of Nikolay Davydenko. Guilty or not his life must be hell at the moment.

Neat piece from the Baltimore Sun. It made me ruminate about the fraught relationship I had with my own dad, for all my adult life up until his death about 8 years ago. Maybe if somehow he'd been able to be Deadified things might have been different. Then again, long after I'd set off to see the world and for as long he was able to ride his BMW, the cranky old coot had multiple copies of "Dark Side Of The Moon" scattered around the South Island of New Zealand - so he could hear it wherever he boogied. I asked my mom once: "Does dad know what's the inspiration and purpose for this sort of music?" She looked shocked then replied: "Don't EVER tell him!" Alive with The Dead After a car accident takes the life of a devoted Deadhead, a father discovers the healing power of his son's music By Jonathan Pitts | Sun reporter October 21, 2007 Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right. -- from "Scarlet Begonias" (Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead) In the lengthening shadows of a summer afternoon, thickets of music fans -- on blankets, in lawn chairs, chucking Frisbees -- have turned a West Virginia hillside into a patchwork of tie-dye. Huge amplifiers on a stage pulse with the warbling of electric guitars. The American Roots Music Festival is about to begin. Halfway up the hill, where you've spread a tapestry on the ground, a stranger sidles up, a barrel of a man with bowed legs, a full white beard and an expression that says, "Hey, brother, want to chat?" His T-shirt reflects some rock history. "SOME THINGS YOU CAN REPLACE AND OTHERS YOU CAN'T," it reads. Below the words is a grinning Jerry Garcia, the founder and benign maestro of the legendary Grateful Dead, who died in 1995. "I miss Jerry," he ventures. "Don't you?" Maybe it's the welcoming manner, the rueful eyes behind the Harry Caray-sized glasses, or the short pants and dark socks he's wearing, a look so far short of cool it suggests a man who might need a friend. Maybe it's that he's likely the oldest guy here. But in a place where strangers really are known to reach out to each other as if they were lifetime friends, something about Ed Branthaver, 69, seems different. Now that he has your eye, he does a pivot to flash the back of the tee. There, too, it reads, "SOME THINGS YOU CAN REPLACE AND OTHERS YOU CAN'T." Below the words is the picture of a much younger man, a fellow with shoulder-length hair who might look right at home on this hillside today. "Know who that is?" Branthaver asks. And suddenly, he's changed. As he turns around, his face is as crimson as the flowers in "Scarlet Begonias," and his eyes are full of tears. "That's my son," he says, and he reaches out to touch your arm. Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own. -- "Eyes of the World" (Hunter-Garcia) Long before there was a Grateful Dead, Ed Branthaver was born in Waynesboro, a Pennsylvania town just across the state line from Hagerstown. There was nothing counter-cultural about him. He belonged, by birth, to the Church of the Brethren, a distant cousin to the Quakers and Mennonites. He sang in a choir and attended services, though theological questions rarely crossed his mind. A wild night in his teen years would be a couple of hours at The Dipper, a local drive-in, where if someone put a nickel in the jukebox, you'd hear the Drifters or the Four Freshmen. "Songs with a beginning, middle and end," he says. He missed the swinging 1960s -- spent them cramming in the library at West Virginia University, prepping for a life as a social worker in the ÀôÀ field of geriatrics. He met tall, taciturn Joan Galbraith, a member of his church, on a blind date, marrying her in 1965. Five years later, they had Daniel, their only child. Dan, too, seemed anything but a radical. In Williamsport, their adopted hometown, he walked to elementary, middle and high schools, all within three blocks. He loved to raft and hike in the mountains. He grew tall and rangy and impressed others with his kind heart and gentle, welcoming eyes. He rebelled a bit, as teen sons will, but couldn't make it stick: Dan vowed never to become a social worker like Dad. But he magnetized friends, especially those who craved the company of a stable personality. At 18, Dan's talent for projecting calm in a crisis -- for listening -- won him a job as a counseling aide at Turning Point, a residential center for chronic psychiatric patients in Hagerstown. Clients stayed in touch after they left the place, and many became his friends. "Dan took in strays," says Joan. Sometimes Ed and Joan wondered, if only for a moment, whether he was becoming a stray, too. He grew his hair to his shoulders, flashed the peace sign in greeting and used vacation time to disappear for days on end. When he was around the house, he took to putting strange music on the turntable -- loopy, improvisational stuff by the Grateful Dead, the Haight-Ashbury vagabonds who were still finding new audiences after 30 years. The songs could wander for half an hour. "Aimless stuff," Joan says. Once in a while, Dan hit his parents up for a twenty. They rarely begrudged him that. But one night in 2000, Ed demanded some accounting. "Well, I've been taking in a few Grateful Dead concerts," Dan said. "What're you wasting money on that for?" "Dad," Dan replied, placing his hands on his father's shoulders, "have you ever listened to them?" Ed had to admit, he hadn't. Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there. -- "Box of Rain" (Hunter-Lesh) To Dan Branthaver and many of his friends, Dead music and fandom was about erasing boundaries, showing kindness and living a life of trust. To them, it was easy as a Jerry solo: Ed had to come to a show. On Sept. 14, 2000, Shawn Mazur, John Ditmayer and the father and son drove to Bristow, Va., to see the Other Ones -- a post-Jerry Garcia incarnation of the Dead -- play the Nissan Pavilion. Ed didn't always "get" the music that night. When guitarist Bob Weir, drummer Mickey Hart and the others lit into jams, it seemed to go on for hours. It amazed him you could even go to a concert and just roam. "Our seats weren't assigned," he says. "I spent the night wandering, meeting people and dancing like a fool. I've got two left feet and no rhythm, but it didn't matter. Strangers went out of their way to welcome me. It was unreal." He was glad he went with his son. He would never get another chance. On the night of March 30, 2001, six months after the show, Dan was out with Shawn for a beer and, as often happened, he decided late in the evening that his best friend wasn't up to taking the wheel. He drove Shawn home, slept a few hours on his buddy's couch and rose at 6 to return to his own place in Waynesboro, Pa. It's a sharp curve, 90 degrees, on Cavetown Pike between Hagerstown and Leitersburg. The only witness said Dan wasn't speeding. Police say no intoxicants were involved. It's likely he dozed. His brown Camry sliced through a guardrail, went airborne, rattled down a hillside and came to rest wrapped around a rock. They had to saw him from the wreck. He spent the next 30 days in a coma, the result of diffuse axonal injury -- widespread brain damage -- in intensive care at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Friends, coming to the city in shifts, jammed his room during visiting hours. Joan decked the walls with letters, photos and balloons. Ed borrowed tapes, snuck in a Sony boom box and made sure there was plenty of Grateful Dead in the air. Nurses called it the most joyous room on the ward. Dan may never have known that. He died on May 1, three weeks before he would have turned 31. One way or another this darkness got to give. -- "New Speedway Boogie" (Hunter-Garcia) For a whole month, day after day, you fan the embers of hope. You visit when they let you, search your son's eyes for a spark, rub his shoulders, speak as if he could hear. Then one morning, a surgeon comes in, tears in his eyes, and tells you the operation they had to perform went wrong. You're asked into an adjacent room to identify the body of your only son, and you step into a different life. And on a sunny afternoon, when all nature seems to be in bloom, you and your spouse drive the 80 long miles back to Williamsport and never say a word. People brought flowers and food, of course. That's about all Ed can remember from those first few days. That and the folks who stopped by to say, "You're in our prayers." That triggered something. He'd been questioning his church's tenets for a while; now they riled him. "How could a God I prayed to let this happen?" he says. "What's the use of prayers?" Daniel's friends kept coming by. "Tell me about my son," Ed told them. Shawn did -- described the road trips they took, showed him pictures of Memphis, Tenn., and Northern California, described the many friends they'd made. Johnny Ditmayer did -- related how easy it was to tell Dan everything, how Dan had convinced him to stop running from a problem with alcohol. "Around Dan, you grew up," Johnny says. And the memorial service? Ed couldn't believe who all came -- hiking pals, fellow Deadheads, stricken co-workers, children of friends. They heard a sermon, some classical guitar and, of course, a sampling of Dead. The words to "Ripple" were like a hand on the shoulder: "Reach out your hand if your cup be empty," Garcia's voice warbled. "If your cup is full, may it be again/Let it be known: there is a fountain/That was not made by the hands of men." When they sorted through Dan's house, Ed and Joan found treasures they'd never known about: "earth drums" he played, poems he wrote, notebooks full of drawings. There was a book full of ticket stubs -- 142, to be exact, to concerts all over North America, not just the Dead but the Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan, Rusted Root. In 30 short years, the Dan they didn't know had lived fully. The more Ed knew, the more he wanted to learn. If you get confused listen to the music play. -- "Franklin's Tower" (Hunter-Garcia-Kreutzmann) Just off the square in central Hagerstown, tie-dyed tapestries festoon a storefront window. Album covers are on display -- the old-fashioned, LP kind, from Workingman's Dead, Skull and Roses, Live Dead. And in the courtyard before the old Maryland Theater, a stocky man in a jester costume greets the people arriving for that night's rock-and-roll show. "Peace and love," says Ed Branthaver through a rubber skeleton mask, the bells on his hat jangling. "Peace and love!" A few veer around him. Most beam as he hands them a flower and head inside. The show is "The 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love"--an allusion to 1967, when "flower power" ruled San Francisco and spread a message of peace -- and on the bill are today's incarnations of acts that Dan knew well: Big Brother and the Holding Company (minus Janis Joplin), the Jefferson Starship (minus Grace Slick), and Tom Constanten, briefly a member of the Grateful Dead. The Dead and its offspring "jam bands" -- Phish, Bob Weir's Ratdog, Donna Jean and the Tricksters -- have been around so long, it's not uncommon to see grade-school kids dancing alongside gray-haired senior citizens. For five years now, Ed has made himself a fixture on the scene. Now he wants to share it with everybody. It started six months after the accident. Two friends of Danny's called Ed and asked him to a show by Phil and Friends -- the new band of ex-Dead bassist Phil Lesh. Then it was Ratdog, which brought its jam rock to Frederick. He hit summer fests in Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia. He even took Joan to San Francisco, where they experienced the Deadhead's holy grail, a New Year's show. Ed wangled his way backstage and shook hands with Mickey Hart. He was usually accompanied by someone half his age or less who could talk about Dan. He'd dance like a dervish, learn more and more tunes, and wander through the crowds, hugging strangers and telling the story of his son. "I never meet a person who isn't interested," he says. "They all seem to love Dan." Was he working off steam? Acting out grief? Holding Daniel by his tie-dyed T-shirt, refusing to let him go? He couldn't say; he still can't. It made him feel better, he was having more fun than he'd ever had, and he couldn't stop. Wildflower seed on the sand and stone; May the four winds blow you safely home. -- "Franklin's Tower" (Hunter-Garcia-Kreutzmann) Mourning is a mystery. Ed's retired now, but he did a lot of grief counseling over the years. None of the formulas he'd taught worked for him. Everyone grieves differently, and should. Joan does hers in private, content to drive her husband to shows, drop him off and go home to garden. Ed, who grew up shy, practically a geek, finds release in extroversion. The few old friends who know of Ed's new passion don't bring it up. "Maybe they think I'm nuts," he says. "I don't give a damn. I've found myself. I've got more friends than ever. A lot are Dan's, and that's fine by me." He can't recall an awkward moment with any of them. If mourning is a letting-go, the Branthavers are in process. There's the scholarship fund they've founded in Dan's name, the friends they've made through shows, the party they have each year on his birthday. Joan still has to talk Ed out of getting a life-size photo of Dan for the house. But one of Ed's goals is to scrapbook his son's life; he still can't bring himself to gather the pictures. Jerry photos, Dead stickers and poems from clients line one wall. Dan's ashes lie in a box in the living room, between a pair of baby shoes and a bottle of Grateful Dead wine. "One day, we'll spread them on the Appalachian Trail, where Dan loved to hike," Joan says. "At least we think so. Just not yet. Maybe when it's time, we'll know." Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul. -- "Brokedown Palace" (Hunter-Garcia) On that West Virginia hillside, the sun sinks and multicolored stage lights come up. The star of the American Roots Music Festival, Donna Godchaux, who once sang in the Grateful Dead, sways with the music of her new group, the Tricksters. She croons a few old Dead tunes and some bluesy new ones. As fireflies light the summer sky, it feels like the Dead, but different. Ed has only heard her on concert tapes -- Dan's tapes, in fact -- and he says with a smile. "This is super," he says. "Donna sounds great, doesn't she?" This show is hard by the Potomac River, just across from Williamsport -- Ed's backyard -- and he showed up early. He found that if he sold CDs for two hours, they'd let him attend for nothing. Between songs, a fellow in his 20s, in dreadlocks, comes over. He has seen the T-shirt slogan -- "SOME THINGS YOU CAN REPLACE AND OTHERS YOU CAN'T," a paraphrase of a Jerry lyric -- and points to the picture of Daniel. "Who's that?" he asks. Ed turns to tell his story again. By the time he's done, they're embracing, the grieving dad and the wide-eyed hippie, and tears are in their eyes. jonathan.pitts@baltsun.com Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun

Sure, all kudos to the Boks, but remember this: There were no tries - NO TRIES - scored in the final. A few more heavyweights have, er, weighed in with opinions that league is currently a better game than union. Another suggested rule change: Removing the advantage granted full-backs when kicking for touch behind their 20m line - if it goes out on the full, back you go. These and other modified rules were trialled in the recent and new ARC, but will take a while to filter up to international level. But from what I can tell, there seems to be some sort of consensus that somthing needs to be done.

Yuck! A dreary end to a dull tournament! Even given my NZ rugby union upbringing, I have to think these days that rugby league is providing a more dynamic, exciting and frequently beautiful spectacle these days - in Australia at least. Unfortunately, league is piss weak on an international basis. Rugby union has a bunch of problems to deal with. I definitely support the points downgrading for drop goals and maybe even penalties. And the sooner Argentina and an Island Combined combo are admitted to the major comps - Six Nations, Supers 14s etc - the better. Really - I watched a whole bunch of games during the Cup - and all but a couple were pretty wretched, even if often tense.

Wow ! Well I can hardly barrack for the All Blacks, can I?

Who'd thunk it - Argentina snags third place! Truth to tell, the World Cup has become a blip on the radar here - what with this being in the first formal week of a federal election campaign, a well-known Aussie rule player's continuing drug-fuelled fall from grace and the Wallabies and Kiwis gone. What the hell - I'll get up at 4.55am anyhows. I guess I'll be cheering for the Poms - if they get up it'll be the greater upset.

Well theere you go - andother non-'Merican who rates PPL No.1 and No.2 at the very highest pinnacle! As I say above, I don't think the band - or, more specifically, those two albums - even enter 'Merican thought processes in coversations such as this. I've been led to believe that Amie became a tiresome, cliched staple of FM/college radio for several decades and thus an utter irritant for a whole generation or two. Think Fleetwood Mac's Rumours or Bob Seger's Old Time Rock 'N' Roll. That kind of tedious over-exposure can remove anybody's ability to hear what actually's being played and sung. I waited for year for that (obvious) twofer and, like you, pounced. Two albums of perfection - perfection that only seems to be enhanced by the stark contrasts betwen them. I quite liked Two Lane Highway, but it wasn't at the same level. I'm tempted by their (reformed) latest, with Fuller back on board - the Amazon clips sounds fine. But I suspect other stuff will always have priority.

Totally disagree, while that third album has a few good tunes, I think that Rick Roberts's voice, while maybe technically better than Gram's, is just too generic and a whole lot less compelling. Give me Gram's imperfect voice any day. I also think the album is just a bit too polished and prefer the overall sound on Gilded Palace - which is the best, in my opinion. Finally, I like from the third album the White Line Fever and To Romona covers, but songs like Four Days of Rain, All Alone, Hand to Mouth - I find these borderline easy listening Doobie Brothers material - unlistenable to me. Just my two cents. Fair enough. But it's those songs - Four Days of Rain, All Alone, Hand to Mouth (with Earl Ball's piano), et al - that make the album so appealing for me. I'm no real big fan of the Roberts pipes, but I think it's that generic aspect that makes for a more unified, organic sound for me. The earlier albums and Sweetheart may be more brilliant, but to my ears they're a matter of "rockers playing country". That third album is "country rock", and thus a more satisfying and rewarding outing for my listening purposes and pleaure. But then again, I'm a fella who believes the first two Pure Prairie League album ace EVERYONE for being the best two country rock albums. EVER. They were rightfully reunited on a single CD that was released a while ago. Brilliant. I suspect 'Mericans have baggage with the PPL, coz Amie just goes round and round and round. If I, too, was over exposed to that song, then I, too, might roll my eyes at mention of the band. As it is, their music continjues to come to me through a sense of wonder of a NZ schoolboy! It was all donwhill from there, but those two albums? Mighty.

Oh man - thank you thank you thank you. That made my day. She can sing a bit, too I went to youitube to see if it was there and found this 1998 clip of Brewer & Shipley giving their side of the story:

Thanks for your opinion!