danasgoodstuff

Yes, in a sense they are, but do you really expect any such institution to say 'no, we're sorry, but we've covered all the really heavy guys and we're full now"?

Don't know the Mocking Shadows. The only band from Calgary I've heard is the 49th Parallel whose most excellent 45 "Labourer" I have around here someplace. I could ask my brother in Saskatoon if he's heard the MSs... By the way Cooltrane, if you haven't figured it out yet it's "Maceo Parker" and ther is something inherently funny 'bout the idea of a Canadian funk band, although no more so than say AWB who were Scots (but they were in on the joke, hence their name). Maybe they should cover Hank M's "Funk In Deep Freeze".

couw Thanks, I'll give it a try but some are already made so the're going out the way they are, unless they can be 'fixed' somehow? Dana, luddite extermist

Hi everyone: Haven't had time to respond individually to all the PMs but the BFT signup is open through this weekend, at least. I will try to get things mailed next week so we can get started with the fun soon after. Thank you all for your interest. This BFT is a sort of thankyou/tribute/apology (for all my crankiness) to the Organissimo BB community. All the selections are connected, in one way or another, to threads here and all of them connect one to the next. FINALLY, DON'T PLAY IT ON YOUR COMPUTER WITH REAL PLAYER UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW THE ANSWERS! (there must be a way to disable that but don't ask me...) Dana

I thought the Alvin Lee quote was "looking like he was being jerked off with steel wool". If he was having "his genitals extracted with a chain saw" I suspect his face might go rather blank...unless, of course, he was into that sort of thing. Horn players have a hard time doing this sort of thing, except He Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned...

OK, BFT #22 went out to the European sigups Tooter, Brownie and Mikeweil yesterday. They have kindly agreed to distribute to others in their respective areas. I think if I can get the rest out next week that should put everyone on an equal footing, n'est pa? So who else wants one?

Mike, Thank you, please PM me your adress. Dana

OK let's link this as the signup since I've done a test copy and it's fine. The vol. does go up and down a bit, my software allows me to corect for that but I'm not sure how or how well it works. Any thoughts, anyone? Also, any volunteers for 'treeing' it overseas?

A great musician and an allround smart, interesting and original guy. Opinionated, sure, but one of the few who could really back it up. it's stunning that someone that good could put his horn down and not pick it back up for 60 years...

My prob with N&T was that Taylor asked so many blantantly leading Q's in an effort to get his subjects to say anti-rock things, making me wonder how "uninhibited" the rest of it was...

Al, Done, thanks. Just got my BFT #21 today, thanks again. Dana

I've finally decided what exactly I want to put on it. Hope to actually make 'em tonight, start the mailing list next week, if there are no SNAFU's. Does that sound about right or do we need more time to finish with 20 & 21?

I thought Maceo's Roots Revisited (w/Fred) was quite wonderful, in a just greazy enuff but not too much way. Subsequent efforts, less so but still quite enjoyable.

"How very sad." My thoughts, exactly.

I 'member liking them, but can't say I've listened in quite some time...my favorit ECM with DeJ & Abercrombie is the one they did live with Lester Bowie which made me imagine Lee M. jamming with Jerry G., if Garcia were a more interesting player.

Hey! This is my week, so UP...

And, oh by the way, Queen are in the hall...

Albert Ayler-Holy Ghost Faces-Five Guys Walk Into a Bar

OK, so here it is Boxing Day and, as promised, here's my blow by blow on the AOTW: "Brothers 4": Sometimes Don P. is too much the Bebop organist for my tastes, but here he's just a crisp, clean, lean, mean swinging machine. I really don't hear much vari-ance from Stitt's usual tenor tone here. I do hear him reaching all the way back before he heard Bird to his roots in swing era sax and meeting Grant Green there doing his Charlie C. thing. Them they take it forward together. "Creepin' Home": Kinda calypso, like "Matilda" in 2(?) Nice "Country Gardens" quotation by Don. Love to see girls in fringey dresses and go-go boots dancing to this! Good, clean fun nonetheless. "Alexander's Ragtime Band": Surely no one's idea of 'hip' in '69? Except that transforming unlikely material is always hip and they make this work without (too) much irony, hip but fun. Who was it who said that the overlooked element in 'hard bop' was swing? Coulda been talking 'bout Stitt's bit here. "Walk On By": Grant Green, of course, did this in '66 with Stanely T. on the latter's unjustly maligned Rough & Tumble, but this has it's own groove. If Hank M. had done this tune it woulda been like this, a continuation of his play with tension and release like on "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "Going Out of My Head". "Donny Brook": Not surprisingly, grant's on original here is the one 'standard issue boogaloo'. But even here the sound is more in keeping with his earlier grooves like Got a Good Thing Going than with then contemporarious ones like Love Bug, Carryin' On, etc. One factor is Billy james nicely loose drumming, compared to the prototypical 'arae groove' thing of Egrigious Muhammud. Grant gets his groove on in typical fashion by starting with a repeated figure. I know this sort of thing bugs some people. but not me, 'cause getting his groove on is what let Grant get to his other stuff. He had to get in the groove first, then... More than any late period Grant I've heard, i.e. most of it, this is the one that bridges the gap back to where he left off, IMHO. "Mud Turtle": Now this is some seriously down shit. Peoples, peoples, peoples, if you can't get next to s-l-o-w blues like this "You Don't Know What Funk Is". Green was one of the few jazz guitarists who could get right down to it with the likes of the Three Kings or, dare we say it, Pee Wee Crayton. Sonny knew the blues as well as Bird or anyone. And Don and Billy play with the kind of dynamics that make the rankest cliches sparkle like they was brand new. "St. Thomas": Some more calypso, by way of Sonny Rollins. Wanna bet Grant picked this?; he was a huge Rollins' fan, see Going West or his versions of "oleo" and "Doxy". "Good Bait": Totally hip classic bop, but also sing-songy good fun. Hear the way Stitt plays with the phrasing on the head before giving a lesson on form and style. GG and DP show that the point of knowing all that good shit is to go on and have fun with it. Couple of goofy quotes/allusions from Don I'll leave to you to catch. "Starry Night": Old radio show theme, a soap opera maybe? This performance is certainly overwrought enough. OK, what kind of drugs were they on? It's Don P. all the way to weirdsville. Maybe it was their idea of psychodelic... "Tune Up": This is Stitt's one original contribution to the date, if you believe that he wrote it and not Miles. Also his one appearance on (unaltered) alto. Not surprisingly, it originally appeared apart from the rest of its session mates. It may seem perverse to focus (fixate?) on Grant when it's Don's album and he and Sonny and Billy James played together all the time. But it was Grant's presence that made me pull the trigger on this one despite having been not that impressed by the DP/SS Acid Jazz CD w/Idris M. (rote bebop over rote funk) and an LP I heard years ago in a class where the instructor tried to sell it by pointing out that Sonny was just applying his standard licks to whatever material was at hand. Now that I have and dig this one I will have to go back and reconsider the other DP/SS collaborations in a new light. I hope that our resident B-3 players will shed some light on just how DP wrestles those sounds from the mighty hammond. In closing, I feel this is groovey social music played by exceptional but still functionally 'working musicians'; not elevated above its context, but making that context a work of art in itself (?). The only recent albums that have this good clean fun/workaday genius vibe to the same degree for me are some of Barbara Dennerlein's, Maceo Parker's Roots Revisited (with Don Pullen on organ) and Sco's Hand Jive with that other transgressor of the varitone, Eddie Harris. All a good decade or more ago. ENJOY!

Plastic redds ARE consistent, but in Lester's day that meant consistently bad. Now some of them are much better, and I can certainly understand a touting musician not wanting to be stuck without a playable reed after all the music stores close in Podunksville...but I have to suspect that Lester's motivation was economic: Why spend perfectly good drinking money on new reeds when plastic is forever? Actually, all I was really trying to say is that Lester was (probably?) one of those charmed persons who sound good on any and all equiopment...and I, sadly, am not.

In Portland that would be KMHD, all local volunteers except for the graveyard and highly variable but mostly good and real jazz. www.kmhd.org

As the proud owner of a 'pre-Chu' (early '20s) Conn C-melody I would have to agree that the key work is kinda clunky, but that otherwise it's a lovely horn (looks good too, silver with gold wash inside the bell). I also have a slightly later King C-melody with more modern keywork, but I play the Conn far more often. Now if I can just find a modern mouthpiece that plays in tune, the vintage one I play now is decidedly stuffy. (I have a metal tenor Berg Larsen for trade if anyone has a Selmer short shank tenor D....) I also don't understand why everyone didn't use the Conn micro-tuner once the patent ran out. Lester reputedly played plastic reeds in his later years, so I don't think he was exactly an equipment geek...

Sappy Saternalia to all the good people here!

Al, Honestly thought I'd done this long ago, many appologies. Just PM'd you my address. Let me know if it doesn't go through. Looking forward to hearing your work, Dana

Dudes, you almost ruined this for me and I used to really dig it... B-)