Rooster_Ties

So, did you have to do a screen-capture -- and then edit the image down with some editor??? Or was there some other trick????

Do tell when you figure it out. I tried the same thing, with the same results. Sneaky bastards, indeed!!!

Big Al -- I could have nearly written that very same story as yours. I too was very slow to develop ears for Hill's work. Really!!! (I know, you all are saying "Rooster_Ties?? - slow to like Andrew Hill???????????") Like most people, the first Hill I ever heard was "Point of Departure" - and to this very day, it still seems as much like an Eric Dolphy date, as it does a Hill date. (Well, as recently as a year ago I was still saying that – but I’m starting to rethink that now.) I always liked "Pod" in a sort of 'intellectual' way, meaning that I liked it because on the surface it sounded so much like so many other things I liked (at least in a general way) -- like Ornette, Miles after 1965 (including lots of bootlegs), Sun Ra, etc... But really, deep down, I never really liked "PoD" on any kind of deeper level, meaning on more of an emotional level. Listening to "PoD" always was more work than pure driving enjoyment, unlike late 60's Miles -- which was both work and put driving enjoyment for me. But on a whim (and because of all the great sidemen!!) I got the Hill Mosaic set way back when (before it went out of print), really before I knew very much about Hill. And my reaction to it was nearly the same as to "Pod". Sure, I liked it, but it didn't speak to me very deeply. Not because I didn't think the music was deep (I always knew it was deep) -- but simply because the music just hadn't 'clicked' with me yet. Well, I listened to the Hill Mosaic for years -- really, for like 4 years (off and on) -- and only then did I start to connect with it. But in some ways, my epiphany with Hill's music has really been relatively recent – say, only in the last year. And frankly, one of the reasons I got more deeply into Hill's music, was because of Greg Osby and (especially) because of Jason Moran. Moran's own discs, and especially his sideman work with Osby, gave me new ears for the Hill Mosaic, and soon I found myself buying more Hill discs from the 70's and beyond. I really credit Jason Moran (as much as anything else) with helping open my ears up to Hill's concepts. I think Moran is a lot like Hill (at times), only with better chops. Not that Moran is a better musician than Hill, but it's hard to deny that Moran has better technical chops than Hill -- and hearing Hill's concepts (or at least something quite similar, in Moran), but in the somewhat 'cleaner' context of Moran's (for lack of a better term) "cleaner playing" -- really helped me dig Hill more deeply. That's my story... And Big Al, by all means, do check out the new one – "Passing Ships" – which I think is the best Hill date of any he recorded between 1967 and 1970.

Who wouldn't!!!

Well, maybe I should say that I'd be glad to see "Pulp Fiction" again, but I've yet to go to any effort to actually see it again. Whereas I've seen Jackie Brown about 3 times now, maybe closer to 4 times (you know, when you catch something partway through on cable). I missed Reservoir Dogs way back when (in the theatres), and I don't really rent stuff all that often (nor do I watch movies on TV all that much). Should I go back and see Reservoir Dogs sometime??? I like Harvey Keitel quite a bit - so I should probably check it out sometime. Yes?? No?? My wife and I got to the movies quite a bit (more often 'art house' films and such), but if we miss it in the theater - we rarely go back and catch it on video.

Right or wrong, this is what will be remembered in Chicago...

The "skeet-shooting" scene in the 2nd video is hilarious!! (Don't want to give away the gag - just check it out for yourself. It's subtle, but funny as hell. )

Give Jackie a chance sometime, if you can catch it on cable, or rent it. It really is a very good film, on a whole number of levels. I liked "Pulp Fiction", but I've never had any great urge to see it again. But I loved "Jackie Brown", and could watch it probably once every year for several years. Very likable characters - but complex characters too, that aren't always likable - and a story that really works.

crap

Ditto. Me too. Me three!!!

They're from the U.K. - sound samples HERE, but much scarier yet are their videos (see link down below). I saw the video for "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" on VH1 today, and I thought I was having a freakin' flashback or something. Suddenly I was back in junior high and high school, when bands like Warrant, Whitesnake, Dio, Poison, Mötley Crüe, and Winger ... and the like ... were all the rage. (And did I ever quickly learn to dislike most of that music back then.) So then, lord help us if the next 'big thing' in pop music is a return to the hard-rock (and 'big hair') sounds of the late 70's and early 80's. (But I guess, as they say, everything old is (eventually) new again.) AMG bio and review of their 2003 album: Permission to Land Edit: And here's the band's website: http://www.thedarknessrock.com/ Be afraid, be very afraid... And best/worst of all, here's three of their videos too!! (You gotta scroll up and down by hovering over the scroll-bar arrows - weird! ) Link: http://www.thedarknessrock.com/video/ NEVER in my life did I ever expect to see a revival of this kind of music. a sure sign of the apocalypse in 2003??

The TOCJ sounded damn near perfect, as I recall. (I had this session on the "Procrastinator" TOCJ up until about 2 months ago, when I traded it for about $40 or $50 worth of other CD's, from a guy on AAJ.) What the hell???

OK, back on topic. Does anybody else think that the tune "Cascade" (2nd to last track on "Passing Ships") seems familiar to them?? Is it similar to another Hill tune?? - or maybe similar to something else???

Who, me???

Who, me???

On further thought, I suspect that even if Hill had gone the "Strata East" route, he would have encountered the same jazz climate (or lack thereof) by the mid-to-late 70's, and then by the early 80's - he probably would have turned back to music more similar to his earlier vision. (After all, that's what lots of other jazzmusicians did in the 70's, and then in the 80's.) In other words, my "what it" scenerio really only applies to the possible different musical output that Hill might have created, following his departure from Blue Note (in 1970), for only about 5-8 years at most. Discuss...

Just tryin' to not get in the middle of the continuity of other posts within the thread. (Like yours and Jim’s exchange, and your pitch about having getting Hill to do an interview.) That, and it’s always fun to creep you guys out!!

Great topic for a thread!! I'd be especially interested in any that include horns, especially trumpet - which doesn't seem to appear nearly as much on organ dates as sax.

The 'looseness' of this session works for me. Maybe it's that I'm listening to it on a crappy boombox (multiple times, while I'm outside building a retaining wall in our front yard), but there's already a sort of looseness to Hill's playing anyway, that seems consistent with the level of tightness of the band. I mean, it's not that I'd like the disc any less if it were tighter, but rather that I'm not at all disappointed that the group was a tiny bit under-rehearsed. In fact, it's hard to know if the solos would have necessarily had that same spontaneity to them, if the cats were more familiar with the charts. (Or hell, they could have been more inspired with more rehearsal time – what the hell do I know?) In any case, the disc really works for me. I'm pretty darn sure that it's my favorite Hill date of anything he recorded between 1967 and 1970 -- and my prior answer to that question would have been "Lift Every Voice" (though I was slow to love that album). It seems to me like everything Hill recorded between 67 and 70 has this sort of unfulfilled potential to it. Sort of like Hill could have really gone places in the 70's (or at least in the early 70's), if only he had had the right players, and the right label (did someone say Strata East??) to back him. ( Yeah, yeah – I know – Strata East didn't "back" nobody really --- they just provided a vehicle for people to release stuff they had recorded themselves. Still, there's enough consistency to those Tolliver and Cowell sides, and Clifford Jordan's "Glass Bead Games" Strata East dates (as examples) --- that I love to believe the myth that Strata East was a label with a vision. ) I think Hill could have fit with that mythical Strata East vision really god damn well. To me, most of Hill's 67-70 BN output speaks to a path not taken later – a path that could have been both accessible, and progressive – at the same time. One foot in the "groove", and one in the "brain" - so to speak. So, like Sangry, I long to hear all those other unreleased Hill dates from 67-70, and I can only hope - someday - to maybe hear a couple more of them. AND, all this reminds me of Miles' development line (and maybe Ornette's too), with a couple key differences. If Miles and Ornette each developed on a mostly linear path (with our benefit of hindsight, looking back on their careers), then Hill's path was/is more meandering, and one that maybe looped back on it self a time or two. (And/or maybe it just had more zigs and zags to it.) But it does make one wonder what Hill's music would be like today if he had been more successful in the late 60's (artistically speaking, not commercially – though that might have helped some too, to a point), and what Andrew might be doing today, if he had continue to develop in that slightly more "groove" oriented version of his vision. Fascinating to think about, if you're into playing the "what if... ... ...??" game, like I am.

The Duran Duran Tribute Album: Better than you'd think, and my wife loves this CD (or at least most of it), as she's a big Duran Duran fan from back in the day. Alternative bands cover Duran Duran.

"We Built This City" - Starship (circa 1985) HELL NO!!

Hey - quit quoting me on what I've said, before I've said it!!!

Great post, Jim. I was really looking forward to your thoughts on this date, and they were well worth waiting for. (And you too, Free For All - just as much so.) Hey, I don't know if it's just me (and I've done this before, sometimes, with other 'new' old releases like this -- or at least if they're new to me, even if not to the rest of the world)... ...but there's something about the tune "Cascade" (the 2nd to last tune on the disc), that I swear sounds so damn familiar, that I keep thinking I've heard this tune somewhere else before - and (I think) in a "big band"-ish context too. Maybe I'm imagining things (wouldn't be the first time), but when I hear this tune now - I swear it sounds so freakin' familiar, and yet I can't place where else I think I know it from. (I don't remember having that reaction to the tune the very first time I heard the disc --- so it could be that I'm just getting so much into this album, that the tunes are now starting to seep deeper and deeper into my subconscious. So much so - that my brain and ears are starting to think that they've known them all along. You ever have that happen before??? ) PS: Now that I think about it some more, maybe it's similar to one of the last two tunes from Eric Dolphy's "The Illinois Concert" -- which are with larger ensembles. Either "Red Planet" or "G.W.". I'll have to dig out my "Illinois Concert" CD, and see if that's what my brain is remembering.

Half of "The In Between" is a really fine, mostly 'inside' sort of hard-bop date. The other half is outragiously 'inside' and 'outside' (at the same time!!), with even a bit of "Sun Ra"-ish-ness feel to it (especially on the tune "The Muse" - if I'm remember this album right). Funny how this album has a sort of schizophrenic feel to it --- with literally half the tunes being totally at home on any early 60's hard-bop date, and the other half being half from some other planet -- and I mean that in the best way possible. B)