The Magnificent Goldberg

Edwina Currie John Major Margaret Thatcher

Very nice! MG

What's in the link is the sleeve notes to the CD. Actually, the notes are bilingual and very interesting. MG

He looks like King George VI, particularly in the first pic. MG

I thought of these too , but a check of the discographies disqualifies all three of these . Really? Come on then Chas, cough. I really want more of all of them. Well , Billie Poole apparently recorded a single for an L.A. label called Merrie circa 1957 . Joe Castro recorded a big band w/strings album called Lush Life in the 60's for Clover Records : John Wright recorded in 1994 for Interplay - available on this Norma(Japan) CD : Thanks Chas. That John Wright looks awesome! MG

Ah, I'm using Internet Explorer. And I can spell when I want to and when I can't I have an English dictionary on a bookshelf somewhere. Spell checkers can't spell anyway. And they have a VERY limited vocabulary of swear words. Load of bollocks! MG

(Coming out of the toilet) For the next couple of months, I shall mainly be listening to Hampton disc 2. (For afficionados of "The fast show") MG

If you compare the Rolling Stones' version of "Satisfaction" with Otis Redding's, Otis really has to work at it to make it work, whereas Jagger's version sounds natural. There's clearly a different tradition at work in these two versions. But there's no Rock band more influenced by the Blues, R&B and Soul than the Stones. Indeed, "Satisfaction" was based on Stax patterns - or at least, appeared to be. And yet it doesn't transfer back to Stax without some hard graft. I'm nowhere near competent to say what the differences actually are, but you can certainly feel them. MG

Yes. Back in the day, I used to find Johnny Halliday laughable - even more laughable than rock or pop sung with an English accent, which is funny enough. Course, Punk changed all that. MG

Very interesting. I understod almost all of that Thanks Nate. MG

A great CD. I think you'll like that a lot, Paul. MG Got the last copy in stock at CDU. From what you posted about Baobab recordings, it's questionable whether they'll get more copies. Phew! MG

"New Ancient strings" is wonderful. Have you got the original? It's by Batrou Sekou Kouyate (the main player), Toumani's father and Djeli Moussa's (he's not Baba) father, with N'Fa Diabate? Also a wonderful album, reissued on CD on Buda (with a couple of bonus cuts from another LP). MG

The Paris apartment you mention sounds very nice, but my GOD, this looks pretty dreamy to me. Everywhere in Britain loks pretty good. This is part of Tonyrefail, from another part. MG

MG

A great CD. I think you'll like that a lot, Paul. MG

Ike Berman Bess Berman Apollo

Not sure there are specific benefits in the other approach. Not sure that, in the case of Rock music, that it's a definite approach that anyone's conscious of, in the way Hayes and Porter obviously were. Perhaps it's just a natural limitation that gives rise to a specific result and the people involved like it that way, or don't think that there might be an alterntive. I don't imagine that it's "natural" to speak the words of a song to see whether the accents fall the same way or differently, even for a songwriter. I remember Henry Mancini saying that it was essential to write the music before his collaborators got involved because, if you left it to them to start, they'd produce doggerel. I can well imagine other composers of popular songs using the same method. So, which might regard himself as responsible for "quality control" in this context? I've got the feeling that most people probably couldn't help doing what they did the way they did it, whichever way that was. Looking at the process in this way, and finding (with exceptions, of course) a correspondence between different types of music and methods does indicate something is going on here, but I'm not clear what. I would like to say, since I always found Rock (as opposed to R&R) pretentious, that the songs were constrained to the idea of themselves that those people wanted to put over - but I'm sure that would be the result of my own prejudice. MG

Snot appnin ter me MG

I finished reading Larry Kart’s book, “Jazz in search of itself” yesterday. One thing that especially interested me was his piece on Standards. A very telling point he made was that, if you speak the lines of a standard from the Great American Songbook, the words you accent are the same as those that are accented in the song. He goes on to say that this is not true of Rock music. Well, I couldn’t resist trying it out. No doubt there are exceptions in the Great American Songbook, but I didn’t find any on my quick tour. I don’t know the words of too many Rock songs, so I didn’t try that out, but will take Larry’s word for it. But I also went a bit further than Larry did. And strangely enough, I found that when you try this on a Blues, you get the same result as on a “Standard” – the accents you speak, fall in the same places in the music. Try it with “Got my mojo workin’” or “Hoochie coochie man” – two songs that are sufficiently well known for most people to be able to try them out. But it works with all the blues songs I tried. It works with R&B songs too. I’m pretty clear, after trying a good few, that any Percy Mayfield song will have its spoken accents in the same places as its sung accents. The same is true for songs like “Merry Christmas baby”, “Driftin’ blues” and most other R&B songs. It also works with Soul music. Try Otis Redding’s “I’ve been loving you too long” or “Respect”. The sleeve notes to Mable John’s album “Stay out of the kitchen” document this process at the Stax studios with Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter. It works on Funk songs too – try “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud” or other JB songs. It also works with Gospel songs and Reggae – try it on a few Bob Marley songs. I’d say Larry has taken too small a sample – in fact, a biased sample – and come up with what he thought was a statement of the uniqueness of “Standards” but which seems to me, when looked at in the wider context, to be a statement of the uniqueness of Rock (and in particular, its distance from real life and real people). Any comments? (Particularly from Larry) MG

Rush Racing Cars Alvin Cash & the Crawlers

My wife has gone to pick up the grandsons from school, as usual and is terribly worried about snow. Hevy snow is forecast for today. It's cold, windy and blue skies from end to end MG

Wow! I'd like to hear your definition of "modern" sometime! Glenn Miller on up MG

Wanna bet? I'm glad you picked up on the piano player. I've always thought that was one of his greatest strengths: the ability to be chameleon-like in emulating the Count and the Duke. But then, that may be giving away the answer to another tune (oh, like I haven't already done that repeatedly around here)! Well, Ben honks a little more in this solo than I'm used to in a jazz context - though he does honk a good bit more with R&B singers. Never knowingly heard Budd Johnson solo before. V nice. I ordered one of his OJCs from Concord last night, I was so impressed. Actually, this was all fairly quietly recorded. I had the laptop on full volume, but it was often hard to hear, even sitting right over it. That's probably why I heard the saxes as trombones. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it ) MG

No. Maybe that's why i keep making mistakes... MG

Duke Pearson, eh? I can't hear that one. But it certainly is Blue, and he is the leader here! Can't believe you don't dig the tenor! Ah well, like I said earlier..... I looked through ALL my Blue Mitchell CDs and didn't find this. I should have looked thrugh the fuckin' LPs - oh bleedin' God! MG