Rooster_Ties

I knew he played piano, but had no idea he could sing too…

Probably going to get my 2nd booster on Thursday this week. Leaning towards Pfizer, after my initial vaccine was the one-and-done Johnson & Jonson, and then my 1st booster was Moderna — then I’ll have had one of each kind.

N-gauge is the shit. My dad had a couple HO layouts when I was growing up (and long after), but I always thought the N-gauge set I occasionally saw elsewhere were just marvelous. There’s one even smaller gauge than N — maybe Z? — but it always seemed a little too small. N was just about perfect, to my way of thinking.

I’ve never filed classical under anything other than composer — realizing I do have plenty of discs with multiple composers. That said, my wife has a big interest in Scandinavian composers (Norwegian and Swedish especially) — and for all those multi-composer discs of ‘Scandihoovian’ stuff, all that goes in a separate section all by itself, along with some Scandinavian folk music stuff too. That all works for me — but then I rarely ever think of my classical discs in terms of who the conductor or soloist is. My brain only has room for composers in it, at least in terms of my ‘memory’. I do remember a few here and there, but usually only ensemble names — and even more rarely, conductors. (And practically never soloists.)

…or David Murray. I remember walking into Euclid records in St. Louis back in the 90’s, and seeing a Murray CD displayed prominently at the front counter with a little sign that said “this week’s new David Murray CD”.

I’m constantly keeping my eyes out for interesting mostly-piano-centric jazz that my wife will like — and there are easily 15 obscure, unknown jazz artists’ discs I’ve also picked up from Dusty Groove that I’ve bought entirely because I try and find online samples of anything I think will really pique her interest. She likes some Bad Plus, and a little GoGo Penguin. And I’ve found some other more modern piano jazz with more ‘indie-rock’-style production values. I’ll have to look, and find (and post) some samples to better explain.

I’ll have to ask my wife if she thinks most of my jazz is ‘evil’ — but I suspect I already know the answer (hint: it’s “yes”). But I do have a specific section that’s “jazz my wife likes” — about 50 discs that are mostly piano stuff (trios mostly), sans horns — but especially sans saxophone, which my wife truly regards as evil (I know that, for sure!). But, bless her, she digs Mal Waldron (Free at Last, especially), and the Legendary Hasaan Ibn Ali trio album — and plenty of Stanley Cowell (she even ‘knows’ a few of his tunes enough to recognize him), and John Hicks too — and she’s been to see Brad Mehldau 3 or maybe 4 times, iirc, including one of his free-form solo concerts (and once without me, before I’d gotten moved to Washington, while I was still trying to sell our house). Oh, and she really likes the solo piano disc of Lennie Tristano’s from the Tristano/Konitz/Marsh Mosaic, and its twin from the new Tristano Mosaic of Lennie’s personal recordings I say she thinks saxophone is evil, but she’s fine with Dave Brubeck (we both love Jazz Impressions of Eurasia), and tolerates Lee Konitz pretty well.

Thank you!! I knew that was what I’d heard and read — and it’s really disappointing to see how badly Sweden dropped the ball on this. Almost unconscionable, really — is more like it (though no less than what half of this country and how our then leadership handled it).

I’ll have to post the whole list sometime (I’ll make it a separate thread). I’m out of town visiting my Dad this week, and I’ve got a couple hundred discs I need to refile (been like that for months), before I really know what all’s in that section. But I’ll start a thread about it in the next week or two — and see what people think. Come to think of it, it’s probably more like 60 discs — but still, lotta stuff too obscure to remember much of by title or even artist, even though I own it. (Plus I do have a few other better-known things in there, just because they sorta fit nicely stylistically.) Maybe I’ll post a new title every day, with some YouTube clips, if I can find ‘em. Not all of it’s world class stuff, mind you — just stuff I liked well-enough to keep and not trade away (or donate).

I got tired of not being able to find any of 100 discs of obscure 70’s stuff, by leaders I can never remember the names of. Practically all of it is arguably ‘weird’ — blind purchases I’ve made from Dusty Groove (usually not totally blind, as one can often find at least a couple tracks on YouTube at least). So I pulled all that stuff out and made it its own section, so I can just browse through that kind of stuff when I’m in the mood. I also put Sun Ra’s brief ‘disco’ phase (Lanquidity, and such) in that section too. But 85% of the section is no-names, that I can usually only remember specifically by what the cover looks like.

Visiting my Dad this week (right now) outside of St. Louis, and yesterday I got him his 2nd booster shot (his 4th shot overall) — all 4 Pfizer. My wife and I have not yet gotten our 2nd booster shots — but we intend to in the next few weeks. I got the one-shot J&J initially last March, and then a Moderna booster in November — and I’m thinking of getting Pfizer for my 2nd booster (so I’ll have literally had one of each).

There are entire deep catalogs of artists that I barely have any of. Not because I specifically “dislike” the artist in question — but simply because the depth of my interest in them is simply much thinner (or in some cases - much, much thinner). Thus I have about 5x as many discs by (and with) Terumasa Hino — as I do Monk (who I have very little of). And I have about 3x as many discs by (and with) Joe Henderson — as I do Coltrane. But there’s only really two artists I’m almost a completists about collecting — Andrew Hill, and Woody Shaw. I also have TONS of Miles from his main run with Columbia, from ‘56-75 (all the metal spine boxes, and more). But I don’t have much (if any) of his Prestige output, and only a smattering of his post-1980 output — both of which I used to have tons of too, but I traded off years ago.

Can’t tell you how many discs I have filed under the name of the person (sideman) on the the date that’s the entire reason I bought it. No, not every date Joe Henderson is on as a sideman is filed under “Henderson”. But you can be darned sure all the sideman work he did in the 70’s and later — all that’s filed with the rest of Joe’s leader-dates (cuz that’s 90% of why I bought that stuff). My basic rule is I file stuff where I think I’ll find it later. AND, when I’m looking for some more obscure stuff with someone on it, then it’s nice to be able to peruse all those obscure dates with Joe (cuz I’ll never remember half of them by their own leader).

I used to feel sort of the same way. Or at least when it came to paring down my collection about 12 years ago (from 8,500 CD’s down to about 4,500 — when I moved from KC to DC). If I had two CD’s by the same artist, I had the damnedest time getting rid of one of them. It was relatively easier to go from 5 titles by the same leader down to just two. But if I had only two to start with, I felt obligated to keep both. Then I said, this is silly!! — and I did manage to cull things down from 2 to just 1 in about a dozen instances. But it was like an artificial roadblock I just couldn’t get past, until I just decided I simply wouldn’t be bound by that arbitrary rule. And yeah, usually if I own one volume of something, I either feel obligated to get the other one — or else get rid of the first one — there’s no logical way to just be ‘halfway’ about only owning one and not the other (since presumably the missing volume is just as good as the one I already have).

In Kansas City, my very best friend’s (essentially common-law) wife — and also her mother (essentially his common-law mother-in-law) — they both died of Covid back around Thanksgiving of 2020 — just a month or two before vaccines were available (though only the elderly qualified at the very first). The two of them (meaning my friend and his partner) had been dating for years, and then living together (for even more years)… …for around 20 years total, iirc.

I agree. The only minor hope I have about it is that Charles himself seemed aware of what it was, and that it was legitimately in the pipeline, when I asked him about it between sets the one and only time I’ve gotten to hear him (up in Baltimore, just a couple weeks before the nationwide Covid shutdown). He confirmed what year and venue it was from, and I posted about it somewhere around here in another thread. But other than that, I’m not getting my hopes up terribly high at this point (though they were higher a couple years ago, certainly). PS: Here’s what I said about it a couple years ago…

Always good advice…

That site looks somewhat suspicious to me (to put it charitably), and I would be careful of its framing of supposed news stories. Most likely a coincidence, which is being exploited for a false narrative, imho.

This remembrance from Terry Gross… (You have to hear it, don’t just try and read it — trust me.) https://www.npr.org/2022/04/14/1092823237/remembering-comic-gilbert-gottfried

Can’t wait!!!!!

Wow, I had no idea. That’s great to hear!

Yup. it’s been pushed back so many times, I think the occasional “new dates” on the Dusty Groove website are simply them NOT deleting it from their schedule — but I don’t think anything actually ‘new’ is driving the new dates Dusty has listed.

Didn’t Gil Evans (in particular) have the same sort of problem? — only his neary(?) annual(?) tours of Europe and (then later?) Japan every really turned out audiences — and that he could never really tour in the US and make it work financially. How did Gerald Wilson fare thru the 70’s and 80’s? I know he didn’t record at all in the 70’s, but did put out four albums in the 80’s. Did Wilson ever tour a band overseas (like Gil)? Carla surely did better overseas, but did she tour much (overseas) thru the 70’s? I think(?) she did in the 80’s, iirc, at least some. Is there a good book on Carla, btw? Can’t say I’ve ever seen one, but I’d love to know if there is. What other nationally-prominent non-Ghost (big, or biggish) bands in the US were there thru the 70’s and 80’s? Thad and Mel, certainly. But that’s about it, right? (I realize the economics of it all were miserably against such endeavors even being even remotely sustainable, let alone successful.) Was Carla fielding like an 8-piece or maybe 10-piece group (at most) at this point? Maybe even 6 or 7 — I forget the number of players on which albums thru this time-period for her, I’m afraid (haven’t heard many of them in years).

More info on Tony Williams’ punk band (which was from 1978)… http://www.rushcreekeditions.com/steinberg/steinberg-content13.html Ben Sidran also posted about it on Facebook, but I can’t read it — maybe somebody can post a copy of the text over here for me. This might be the link… https://m.facebook.com/login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2Fbensidranpage%2Fposts%2Fin-1978-i-produced-a-record-for-tony-williams-called-barbarians-of-love-cbs-neve%2F10155419324185201%2F&refsrc=deprecated&_rdr

I thought that was a different and unreleased project, that did cut some demos that circulate (or at least one of them). There’s a thread about it somewhere around here. Tony sang on it too, iirc.