Jim Alfredson

I miss Memo the most. He's only what, 24? It was crazy to let him go. He can play inside and out.

Yeah, I saw it. Prince is going to be great. Detroit is getting it together. They just need to mesh the new players into the mix. They still have their entire first unit, so they will be alright. B Wallace is getting more and more aggressive on offense and they needed that. Now if R Wallace can just take it to the middle a lot more, they will be fearsome again. Well then again, Billups and Hamilton do that a lot anyway. Shoutin at ya B-) Detroit's problem, in my opinion, is a weak bench. I don't know what they were thinking getting rid of so many of their key bench players like Mike James, Mehmet Okur and Corlis Williamson. Say what you want about Corlis' scoring (or lack thereof), he did the little things that don't show up on the stat sheet. Yes, they still have their great starters, but with the exception of Lindsey Hunter, their bench is pretty bad. Hopefully they'll make some trades and fill some holes. Darko = worse draft choice ever.

Um.... pagan = secular? In what world?

Two wins in a row... a nice comeback win against the Knicks and a defensive exhibition against LeBron and the Cavs! Go Pistons!!!! Anyone see that block on Marbury by Tayshuan? That was sick!

A little update: We were still waiting for the clinic in Ann Arbor to call. My wife had an appointment with our primary care physician today and it turns out the reason the referral hadn't gone through is because they didn't specify which doctor to see. We gave them the names of the two doctors the clinic recommended, but they failed to put that on the referral. Long story short, they faxed over a new referral this morning so hopefully we'll hear something today. My wife went and saw the PCP to see if he thought it would be all right if she went back to work (against my better judgement). She has been feeling better lately, but she had a really weird episode earlier this week. Zora woke up at 3am or so and my wife got up to see what the fuss was about. She called me into the room a few minutes later because she was having massive nausea. She laid down again and the next morning some of the other symptoms that have been relatively dormant came back, such as the metallic taste. She told the doctor about this and he decided to have her wait until January 3rd and come and see him again (January 3rd is when her current stretch of disability runs out.... she's got another four months, but the doc has to make the call). Anyway, that's where we are. Hopefully we can see the folks in Ann Arbor before the end of the year and get a better sense of what's going on.

I think the only humane thing to do is outlaw trombones.

Yes, thanks Peter for your hard work. I really appreciate it. I'm hoping we're at the bottom of a cycle and that things will start to pick up. This summer was actually pretty good, but since August it's been absolutely horrible. It's all about getting people to listen to the disc. Seriously. That's the only reason we got that fantastic gig with the Clearwater Jazz Holiday in 2003... the guy just happened to pick up our package from the pile of 100's of packages and he just happened to open it and think the artwork was cool so he popped it in.... and (he told me this himself, before we even played) he heard 30 seconds of the disc and said to himself, "These guys are perfect." He had no idea we weren't on the national scene, he had no idea we'd never played a gig that big before... he just liked what he heard. Argh!!!

Guess I better make them readily apparent on the front page instead of them hiding here in the forum. And just to clarify, it's www.organissimo.org. Can't tell you how many times I've heard or seen it printed wrong.

Ouch! The weird thing is, the R&B band pulls good crowds and people like us, but we're not getting any gigs anymore. Last week we played a casino (3 hours away, one way) and this weekend we're at another casino (4 hours away, one way). Those are rough gigs... playing with a constant C major triad in the background, smoke everywhere, people walking around like zombies. And considering the drive, paying for food over three days, the bread isn't that good. I remember recently my dad, who made his living as a musician full-time up until about 1981 or so, asked me what I make with the R&B band. I told him my average take home is between $120 and $150 a night. He said, "Shit, I was making that in 1979!"

For example, the trio is working with a booking agent and he's sent over 30 packages out to prospects, many of whom have expressed interest. But nobody will bite. He told me he's never seen anything like it. Club owners just don't want to commit. The R&B band I'm about to quit played a gig the other weeknight for $75 a piece. That's fuckin' horrible. Our average is $150 a piece. This was a full gig, with a full sound system that we had to haul and set-up. Ridiculous. With my wife on disability (she gets about 1/4 of her salary) things are really getting tight. Luckily we have a good paying New Year's gig this year. But after the money is in my hand from that gig, I'm giving them one-month to find another keyboardist.

I originally posted this as a new topic, but remembered this one. This thread hasn't been written to in over a year, but in my neck of the woods, the gig scene has actually gotten WORSE in the last year. Here's the post I wrote tonight in a separate topic: So I'm about to quit the R&B band I've been playing with for almost 7 years. It's been my main bread 'n butter gig and I love all the guys in the band but musically it hasn't been very satisfying for some time. I've wanted to quit many times before but the money has kept me from doing so. Lately, however, this band -- which usually is booked solid every weekend -- has had less and less gigs. I attribute some of it to poor management, but a lot has to do with a dwindling gig scene. Since the gigs are getting slim (like in November we had three gigs... in January we have two) and musically it isn't fulfilling anymore, why do it? Anyway, the real question is how is the gig scene in your neck of the woods these days? It's like pulling teeth, here. The trio has been working less and less since the summer as well. It's gotten really bad.

Ha! I've been avoiding this thread because the whole time I thought it was about "The Prisoner", the 60s TV show! I thought to myself, "Well I've never even heard of, much less seen 27th Man, so I'll just stay out of that discussion." I'm a moron.

My wife would take issue with that.

I know nothing about iTunes. It seems silly that it won't let you control the track spacing.

Jim's wife again... I laughed quite a bit reading this thread. I always think of myself as a stickler for proper usage. I know I can't spell worth a damn and even programmed my computer at work to auto-correct my commonly misspelled words. One way I was taught to remember certain word spellings; Break them up and pronounce them differently in your head before you spell it out. de-finite-ly sep-arate here's another word that drives me crazy...schedule vs schedual That's it for me. Thanks, Jimmy, for letting me use your name again : ) Alison

I don't think the time inbetween tunes is Verve's fault. Most CD burning software allows you to determine how many seconds of silence you want between tracks, including "0".

I bet tickets will be really cheap, too. Like $150 for nosebleed. Awesome. I hope The Who go on tour again and Led Zepplin.

Moving this to the Artist Forum.

Ha! That's quite the conversation! Last night we went out to visit some friends up from Arizona and their 5 1/2 month old. Zora was dressed thusly:

Dang, answer my question!!!! couw = cow, coo, cue?

Thanks for the heads-up. The Johnny Hammond Smith disc listed below looks like a good'un too. Unforuntately my monthly CD fund consists of about $0.00 these days! Dusty Bastards!

Happy Birthday! How do you pronounce your handle, anyway? Coo? Cow?

Jimmy Smith and Kenny Burrell on "The Master", both I and II, quote Christmas tunes. It was recorded on December 24th in Japan, so that's probably why.

I've heard the sound sucks. I guess they compressed/limited the crap out of it in order for it to compete with the "loudness" wars going on in the rock industry nowadays. I'm not a Nirvana fan so I don't know, but that's what I've read on the recording forums I frequent.