Joe G

I wonder if I should see a doctor about this growth...

Zora, we already adore ya!

That's happy news, my Brother! I hope to swing by today for a peek at the little one.

Randissimo has played there; he could tell you about it.

Nice shots guys! Thanks for the compliment Jim. I was in the Bay area a year ago, and saw lots of wonders of nature. Although we had to drive a bit. We took a hike up from a small seaside community, the name of which slips my mind right now. The trail started right in the town, then up into the open area above. You had the ocean on one side and the hills on the other. Then it went into a redwood forest and followed a cascading stream on up into the hills. Man, it was gorgeous that day. Sunlight streaming in through the trees, in the 60's. And this was January. When I got back to Michigan is was literally like 1 degree above zero. Talk about a rude awakening!

Speaking of guitar players, has anyone heard from jmjk lately? His last post was in December.

Isn't that a Bob Segar song? Beautiful cokehead, where you gonna fall?

Thanks Randy. What? You don't want to tell us about the time you and I had to cross that shallow stream with our bikes by walking on the fallen logs?

This sounds like a really cool album. Italian musicians backing him up, or what?

For your viewing pleasure: How in the name of all that is good...

Ditto. Wait a minute... Dr J, keep those avatars coming! They make me grin everytime.

I graduated the same year, but I was a metalhead, so most of this stuff was on my hate list. But I always did like that Henley tune, and still sing along whenever I hear it. Also: I need you tonight, INXS Time after Time, Cindy Lauper has gotten a lot of mileage Sweet Dreams, Eurythmics

Perhaps it's our dealings with record producers that make us musicians so cranky...

Jazzmoose, this is what you can expect in return:

A friend of mine saw Ron w/Jim Hall here in Lansing in the 80's, and got backstage. He overheard someone say to Ron, "Ron, you've played with so many greats--Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, Stanley Turrentine, etc... Ron stopped the guy and said, "They played with ME!" My friend didn't bother to approach him after that.

Rooster: yes, that's the stuff I was thinking of as well. Free For All and Wesbed: I agree, and in fact was coming here to post pretty much the same thought. I remember Jim and I seeing Joey DeFrancesco a couple of years ago. Joey's a true "chops-zilla" if there ever was one, and his usual guitarist, Paul Bollenback, comes pretty close to matching him in that department. But that night he had a relative unknown with him by the name of Craig Ebner. The thing that was nice is that we never got the sense that Craig was intimidated by Joey's soloing but instead was comfortable just doing his thing, which was really tasty lines followed by one chorus of chord soloing. It was a great contrast, and always came as a bit of a relief. So that taught me a good lesson right there, but one that I sometimes forget. Hell, sometimes Jim Alfredson and Johnny Gist lay down some shit that I don't want to follow!

...or Wynton Kelly after one of Coltrane's!

Live is almost always going to be better.

Slow at the moment. Anyone having glitches with the PM system?

He brought his son in on bass. :rsly:

What if your Momma don't dance and your Daddy don't rock n roll?

Never read any Rousseau, but I grew up watching Cousteau! Thanks for the compliments. I'm glad you all enjoyed it. When four hours went by with like 30 views and 1 reply, I thought perhaps I had cemented my reputation as an airy-fairy flake!

I went for a walk in the woods out back Monday evening to check out the progress of the mayapples and the trilliums. It is so amazing how quickly all the new growth progresses this time of year, isn't it? Just last Friday, there were only a few scattered trilliums in bloom, and not much else. Today I could hardly step off the trail for fear of crushing a multitude of wildflowers. The ground was literally carpeted with green growth and little white, purple, and pink flowers. This created quite a constrast with the still mostly barren trees standing against the blue sky. At the start of my walk, I was not really paying full attention to my surroundings, being absorbed with a musical thought instead. (I was figuring out how the melody to a particular tune that might end up on the tribute disc would work if it were played in 7/8 rather than 4/4--works like crazy, actually.) I had already walked quite a ways down the trail, when a collection of sounds caught my attention. There was the wind in the bare branches above, along with a lot of birdsong. There were some voices of people on the other side of the pond, and farther out, the steady, mostly diffuse sounds of city traffic. There was also a curious popping sound, that at first I took to be the creaking of a tree in the wind. But then I saw the true source of this sound, which was a pileated woodpecker working on a dead tree trunk. I don't know if any of you are familiar with this particular species of woodpecker, but they are very interesting, regal, and (in my area at least) rare birds. Plus, imagine--a woodpecker the size of a crow! I had suspected there might be some in the area, but this is the first time in many years that I've seen one. And here were two of them. One flew off immediately as I approached, but the one that I saw first just kept working that tree, in plain view probably 30 feet away. It was so cool. They have such a strange way of moving, and they look even more beautiful in flight. I really hope that this is a nesting pair, and that they can raise a brood there in that woods. That would be a treat. Farther along the path, I came to one of my favorite spots, which is a bridge over the creek. This bridge has rails that are about 5 feet tall, and about a shoe's width on top. I use this to work on my balance by walking along the top of the rail forward and back. (And no, I've never fallen in the creek!) There happened to be a couple of young kids there catching crawfish. When they saw me walking the ledge, one of them held out his hand and said, "Hey! Want to see a crawfish?" I had to smile at that; it reminded me of doing the same thing (and in that same creek, about 20 miles upstream) when I was their age. I said, "Sure, did you catch a good one?" "Yeah, look at him!..." The smaller of the two boys looked up at me curiously and asked why I was walking on the rail. I told him I was working on my balance. He asked if it was hard and I said, no, not really, because I've been practicing. He then said, "I want to try!" I told him not to hold me liable for any injuries. He started to climb up, and I got down to spot him, but then he chickened out. "No, I don't want to--I'm scared." That's okay, I said. Then he asked me how long I've been practicing, and I answered that I've been doing balance, yoga, and tai ji (actually qigong, but I figured he wouldn't know what that was) for over 10 years. "Is that cool, doing yoga?" "You bet!" B) Leaving my young friends behind, I continued walking and taking note of the new flowers, the changing light play on the tree trunks, the sounds in the air, and the swiftly moving clouds. I finally came to the trail that led out and back home, but turned away; I just had to stay out there a little while longer. Coming back around to the dead tree where I had first seen the pileated woodpecker (this time from the other direction) I was suprised and delighted to see him right there once again! And the second one was right in the line of sight about 70 feet behind. I watched them fly from tree to tree for a while, then, satisfied that I had gotten what I came for, I walked home to make some dinner. And what was it that I came there for? A simple, gentle reminder, that it's good to be alive. -- Joe --

Happy Birthday Mark. Hope to meet you at next years Indy Jazz Fest!

That is a great album. I used to have it, but I don't know what happened to it.