Jim Alfredson

I'm going to move this thread if you don't mind.

Right on, brother Joe! It's all about feel. You can play a flurry of notes, the baddest licks known to man at lightening speeds, but it won't mean anything. That's one thing Ron Blake said to me that I thought was very kind. We were discussing doing an organ trio with me, Blake on sax and Greg Hutchinson (holy shit!) and he said, "It might be hard to get my record label people to warm up to the idea because no one's heard of you. They might want to get someone with a bigger name. But I like your feel." He didn't say he liked my ideas, or my harmonic concept or whatever. He just said he liked my feel. That's a HUGE compliment to me.

My first instinct when I read this was to get defensive and say, "What's wrong with organ?!? Why are you posting on a board run by an organ trio is you don't like organ, man?!?!? WHAT THE HELL, DUDE!?!?" But then I started thinking: Moran is a brilliant pianist. But he is a pianist. I've heard pianists try to play organ before. It usually ain't pretty. So I understand that part of the comment. However, electric piano is another story. Pianists can transfer their skills to that instrument quite easily. What gives? -_-

I guess, like everyone else, he has a pre-conceived notion of what organ-trio music is and more specifically what organ-trio guitarists sound like (ie, Grant Green) and he doesn't care for that. I think his point is valid. I think he could've stated the same thing much more tactfully by omitting the word "over-rated". Read the sentence without that word and it makes just as much sense, but doesn't berate Grant.

FOOLZ! At least they got my discs. Maybe it'll show up tomorrow.

Wow. You guys don't miss a beat! I was made aware of this article tonight by the guitarist in my R&B band (Joe's first jazz mentor, actually). He said, "Man, did you read that article about you guys where the writer dissed Grant Green?!?" I said, "What?!? No... what did he say?" So he showed me the paper. Lawrence mentioned the same thing in passing when he interviewed me on the phone last week. Something about Grant Green being discussed endlessly but he didn't really care for Grant's playing and thought he was over-rated. I just kept my mouth shut. I feel like I should've said, "Man, I dig Grant. You don't dig Grant?" But hey, opinions are opinions. I called Joe after our gig and read him that paragraph and he said, "Jesus! Thank God I didn't write that about myself!!!" Joe was kind of embarassed about it. It's like my guitarist in the R&B band said: Grant may not have had the harmonic concept that Joe does... but Grant was all about FEEL. And that's what connects the two, Grant and Joe, in my mind. Great feel.

FM, no harm done. You brought up a valid point. We're just farting around.

I think the minimum for the ablution of sin, according to the gospel, is 10 discs. Sorry.

That's pretty spooky, Soul Stream. <shudder> I used to have re-occuring dreams when I was a kid, but I don't anymore. I remember three of them pretty well. 1) The classic falling down the stairs dream. I would dream that I was at the top of the staircase. The house I grew up in was a small farm house. By small I mean two bedroom. There were nine of us altogether in that house (7 kids, 2 parents). My brother and I shared a "room" at the top of the staircase. It was basically the landing of the staircase. You had to walk thru our "room" to get to my sister's room (3 older sisters shared the same room) and the only bathroom in the house. Anyway, I would dream that I would be at the top of the staircase and I would fall down and when I woke up I'd be on the ground (I slept on the top bunk at the time). My dad got sick of hearing my tumble out of bed and was worried I would break something (I broke my collar bone four times, but not by falling out of bed). So one night he told me that if I tried hard enough, I could control my dreams and not fall down the staircase. So sure enough I went to bed and had the dream and I remembered what he said and I started to fall and then realized I didn't have to fall down the stairs and instead willed myself to fly. I flew right down the stairs, into the living room where my older sisters and my parents were watching TV, and right out the door! It seemed real, too. Which leads to my next dream. 2) After I learned to control my dreams (with varying degrees of success) I stopped having the falling dream and starting flying around. Sometimes I couldn't control the dreams, but sometimes I could and I remember I used to have a dream where I was out in the middle of our yard (we had about 10 acres) to the west side of the house. I was just standing there and I realized I was dreaming. It was a beautiful summer night, just at twilight. I though to myself, "Man, I'm dreaming... I wonder if I can make myself fly..." So I concentrated and I just lifted straight up into the air. I could see the top of the trees, the roof of the house, the roof of the barn, everything. And it seemed SO real. I flew around a bit and came back down and I used to have that dream all the time. I would just fly around our yard and I could see everything. I never left the yard, though... 3) We had a huge pile of rocks in our backyard. When my father moved into the house, the yard had been used as a trash dump by all the locals. There was everything imaginable in the yard. Appliances, cars, trash, and lots of rocks from the farmer who tilled the fields. He would dump them every year into the yard because the house was deserted. So my dad collected them all and made a huge pile. One of the rocks was enormous and was near the pile. No one could move it for obvious reasons. I used to dream that I managed to shove it aside and underneath was a tunnel. I'd go down the tunnel and eventually come out into a doll house, but of course I was the same size as the dolls that occupied it. After going thru door after door I realized in the dream that is was the dollhouse at my grandma's house that she kept in the corner bedroom (for real). Once I realized this I would look out the window and see my family at my grandma's house having a party (usually Christmas... I usually had the dream in the winter). I would think, "Crap, they're going to open presents without me!" so I would race through the dollhouse trying to find a way out and eventually get back to the tunnel and up into the real world again. And I'd wake up. I had that dream at least a 1,000 times when I was kid. Weird.

So my wife and I are closing on our first home this Thursday. It's a beautiful home built in 1909 in one of Lansing's historical districts. The sellers have owned it for 30+ years and have not re-decorated since they first bought the home with the exception of some really butt-ugly linolium they crappily installed in the downstairs kitchen and bathroom. We want to tile the kitchen floor, the bathroom floor, the kitchen counter top, and about 3 feet up the bathroom wall since we will be installing a clawfoot tub (a home that old has to have a clawfoot tub!) My question is has anyone in Organissimo-Forum-Land done tiling before? Any suggestions? I've bought a book and I'm studying it. We also found some tile that we really like but it seems a little pricey. I've searched the web, but I can't seem to find any good deals. Are there any places we should look? The tile we like is an Italian import called Casa Dolce Casa (home sweet home!) and they use really beauitful earth-tone colors and each tile is different from the next. The shading is really subtle and beautiful and the line we like has that wire-cut edge (ie, not a perfect edge in any sense of the word) which adds a nice rustic-ness to the tile. Just looking for some hints or suggestions. Thanks!

No, and I've been so busy I haven't been calling them. Supposedly they pay at the end of every month, so we'll see if we get a check in the next few days. If not, I'm going to leave a nice message on their answering machine saying basically, "Pay up or my lawyers will be contacting you." And I ain't fucking around either. I know four different lawyers who are personal friends that would go to bat for me.

By the way, if anyone does order the disc (hint hint) the webpage currently says "Out Of Stock". CDBaby sold the last copy today and I sent them more copies yesterday, so all should be right with the world by tomorrow afternoon.

I don't think any brother had anything to do with Vanilla Ice, except maybe to beat his dumb ass.

BTW, jacman, for giving me nightmares for the next month due to that picture of Kid Nipply, I hereby ban you from this board FOREVER.

Another horrible hair-do that should've died a long time ago but for some reason still exists... ducktails. I was at a party of a friend awhile back and one of his nephews, who was about 6 or 7 years old, sported this poofy, spikey hair on top and a super-long ducktail in the back. I immediately called my wife and said, "Honey, when we have children, under no circumstances will they be allowed to have ducktails, ok?" She whole-heartedly agreed. I'm all for letting my children express themselves, but I draw the line at letting them look like they live in a trailer-home... even if, God forbid, we for some reason have to live in a trailer home.

The show is fun and addictive. I watched an episode with my wife and laughed pretty hard. Very entertaining. BUT... the show is based on extreme stereotypes. I just wonder if a show like this would exist called "Black Eye For The White Guy" whereupon five black dudes take a straight-laced suburban guy and hip-hop-hiphy (that last part rhymes with "eye"... how would you spell that?) him. You know... get him some street creds... represent. You kno' what I'm sayin?

That's it!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm done! Go find yourselves another organist!!!! Hehe, just kidding. Point duly noted, Randy. Flam Man was just raising shit anyway... motherfucker.... Conn, the gig is the Lansing Jazz Fest. There will be other performers there including my good friend Duncan McMillan on organ backing up the great Detroit singer Odessa Harris right after Organissimo. We play Saturday, August 2nd from 5:30pm to 6:30pm. The event is free and is located at the corner of Turner St and Grand River Ave in Lansing's "Old Town". I believe they have directions and such on their website which is www.jazzlansing.com. Basically, you take 23N from Toledo, thru Ann Arbor to I-96W all the way to Lansing. Then hop on 127N (exit 107 I believe). 127N will branch off. Keep to the left and it'll turn into I-496W, which is what you want. Take the Cedar St/Larch St. exit and at the end of the exit ramp take a right so that you're heading north. You'll be on Larch St. Keep heading north... you'll pass through about four or five lights or so. One of them will be the corner of Larch and Grand River Ave. Take a left and you'll run right into the festival. The headline for Saturday night is Rumba Club which is a big-band style latin group (I think they have 11+ members) from Chicago. They are supposed to be a good band. Like I said, my buddy Duncan will be kickin' the B3 behind Odessa Harris right after our set on the south stage. We'll be on the north stage. It should be fun! Hope to see you there.

Why the hell were his gonads soaked in spirits in the first place?!? What does that have to do with taking a mole off your ass?

I have Satan on LP. Haven't listened to it yet. How is it? I have both of the records, "Soul in the Night" and "My Main Man". I don't think I've listened to Soul yet... How to know you have too much music.....

Ah Phil Jackson... can't actually coach anyone worth shit so in order to win another championship, what does he do? Just keep on pilin' on the old used-to-be-big-guns. Yippee.

Ah yes, but remember Randissimo-san, I am the one who keeps track of how long we've been playing. Perhaps I wanted you to continue you solo so as to fill out some set time. Or maybe what you were doing was so hip I didn't want it to stop!

I'm diggin' it! I think we've sold few copies so far to Deutschland.

Yes thank you Conn. I'm sure it will turn up within the next day or so. They are very good at keeping up with such things. BTW, that review in Cadence has already led to a couple of sales!!!

Jesus Christ, if I see that picture one more time I'm going to shoot my computer and never get on the internet again.

Yes he is. It's going to be something else to do this tour with him. Dream come true.