Dave James

The Rhett Shull band. This guy has been doing guitar based videos on YouTube for a few years and has been a session guitarist for some time, but he's now put together his own band. They recently released their first Covid-19 restricted "concert" video and it's pretty good. The first couple of songs are a bit pedestrian but when they get into their interpretation of "What's Goin' On", things really pick up. Here's a link to the video.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0753HDMX4/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Mike+Reed+Flesh+%26+Bone&qid=1594338522&sr=8-1&dchild=1

Gone at 83. One of the great Southern rockers. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/entertainment/charlie-daniels-death-trnd/index.html

Just when you're convinced we've bottomed out, you see this. CNN and other reputable news outlets are reporting that college students in Alabama are holding COVID parties. Money is put into a pot and the first person who contracts the virus gets the payout. Jesus take the wheel...these people couldn't be trusted with a glue stick.

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Classic scene from The Dick Van Dyke Show featuring Reiner as Alan Brady:

From their third album , "Tropical Gangsters."

Little known factoid. To promote the film, RKO Studios actually built 73 so-called "Dream Houses" across the country. Some of them were sold by raffle. One is located in Cedar Hills, Oregon which is about ten miles from where I live. I've driven by it many times.

Part of the charm of the song is its openness to interpretation.

Regardless of the version, "Something Cool" is one of the great "come hither" songs. Easily my favorite June tune.

The last thing you want to do if a package is late or lost is call the USPS 1-800 number. It's all automated and smart phone interactive. It's also useless. The words "USPS" and "helpful" are mutually exclusive.

Monro was very much under appreciated. As others more knowledgeable than I have suggested, his failure to gain the sort of traction he probably deserved was attributable to the fact that Sinatra had already been done.

Manne's 5 CD set from The Blackhawk has always been, at least for me, the very essence of live, small group jazz. If the story is to be believed, it was Manne himself who recognized that something special was afoot and arranged for a mobile recording unit to capture the band's live performances over several consecutive nights. The results speak for themselves.

I've always liked this one. It's not jazz but it's close enough:

Back with a bang. I've been a fan of Dion going all the way back to The Belmonts. I've been listening his new release for a couple of weeks. Nice tunes with some high end accompaniment.

Wish I could help you out with that one. To be honest, I was so focused on getting through the day, it never even occurred to me to consider spacing. Also, we were working mostly on sidehills so the spacing might have been dictated by the terrain.

Yes...Maintenance of Way. Even though we were temporary workers we had to join that union. Thanks for sending along the video. I had not seen it before. The nicest train was ever on? The Canadian Pacific. We took it from Vancouver to Montreal one summer. Talk about silver service. Traveling through the Canadian Rockies was eye popping. Along the way, we traversed a tunnel that was seven miles long. Great memories.

I guess I got a little closer to the business end of trains than most, having worked for the Union Pacific during the summers I was in college. Two years on gangs replacing track in Portland and two in Eastern Oregon putting up telegraph poles (trust me, you haven't lived until you've climbed a 50-footer in the rain or dug out post holes in 110 degree heat). To say the regulars who work for the UP were an interesting bunch would be putting it mildly. A real cross section. A bit stand offish at first but once you'd earned their trust, a great bunch of guys. You really learned the value of a hard day's work. And the pay...OMG. The first two summers we earned $1.65 an hour and the last two, $1.89.

When my twin brother and I were kids, our Mom travelled to Chicago four straight Summers in pursuit of her masters degree from Northwestern University. Our Dad's father was in charge of the legal department for the Burlington Railroad, so he would arrange for us to travel from Portland to Chicago by train. We always had a room on one of the Pullman sleeper cars. This was in the late 50's when train travel was still pretty high end. When you're an eight or nine year old kid, it was like the world's largest playpen. Great memories. It fostered a life long fascination with and interest in trains. I still get sucked into watching railroad related videos on YouTube on a regular basis. What a way to go.

I'm not sure to what extent Barney Wilen himself was involved in auto racing, but one of his albums, "Auto Jazz: Tragic Destiny of Lorenzo Bandini", was directly related to the sport. Here's how Da Bastids described the record: "One of the wildest albums ever recorded by French tenorist Barney Wilen -- a mix of avant jazz and sound effects, set to wax in tribute to Lorenzo Bandini -- a famous Italian racer who died tragically during the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix! Wilen was an automobile enthusiast in the late 60s, and happened to be recording the race on a Nagra for himself -- but, after witnessing the death of Bandini, Wilen decided to incorporate his tape of the race into an extended performance dedicated to the late driver. The sound is quite unusual -- much farther out than any of Barney's other albums -- and the tapes of the race are joined with free-flowing tenor, and piano -- plus bits of organ and prepared piano as well -- all played by by Francois Tusques along with Wilen, with support from Beb Guerin on bass and Eddy Gaumont on drums. The real star, though, is Bandini's Ferrari, which races in and out of the jazz playing, coming to a mournful end with the termination of the piece. The album's a totally unique recording -- and stands as one of the most unusual moments in the history of Wilen's career, and the legendary MPS label."

Like you, I am a child of the 60's. Living in Portland, Oregon, the anti-war movement was active, but nowhere near as organized as it was in other areas the country. I went to college at Lewis & Clark, a small school in SW Portland, The first anti-war demonstration on campus involved all of five people, two of which were professors and one who was my roommate. By the time of the Cambodian incursion and its offshoot, Kent State,, a matter of a couple of years, the entire campus was knee deep in the movement. The mini-police riot in downtown Portland, the Vortex Music Festival, a state sponsored rock show bought and paid for by the state oe draw people away from the American Legion's national convention in Portland, circulating petitions, burning draft cards, various and sundry marches. Round up the usual suspects. I watched every second of Burns' documentary. A validation in every sense the term, that we were right and they were wrong. When many first really realized that a government by and for the people was as easily as capable of lying, if not more so, as it was of telling the truth...and on the grandest of scales. As we used to yell with our fists raised in the air, "Truth to power." It's just unfortunate that Burns' documentary first aired more than 50 years after the fact.

Who among us can forget The Hipster Singers?

Spotted on a link from the latest Mosaic Jazz Gazette: https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/rats-prefer-jazz-beethoven-cocaine-study/