Joe G

MF UNCANNY!

Lucky him!!

My personal favorite for the last couple of years is Luciana Souza, and I will recommend Duos II to anyone who will listen.

I know - she stole yours.

I've seen that album cover somewhere.... oh yeah - in-flight music on a plane ride last year. It wasn't to my liking then, but I agree that six degrees is an interesting label.

Although, it might've been a house organ. The heyday, don't ya know.

A happy birthday to the guy whose screen name often makes me think of the last scene in this movie: "It's .:. impossible! It's .:. impossible! It's .:. impossible!..."

Ah, so September is the release date. Cool.

Thanks, everybody!! Spent the day with my parents. Dad and I kayaked for 12 miles down the Manistee River. I wish I could post an mp3 of what Jim left on my voicemail.

I think that one difference with this situation is that the effects will be immediately and profoundly felt across the board, so people are going to want action, like now. I also think that there is a lower tolerance of corporate bullshit these days (excluding the MSM), so in some cases the path of least resistance may be to just 'fess up and make things right, like with the pet food issues.

Looks good, Jim.

John Riley deserves a mention, too, for both the gracefulness of his playing, and the fact that he didn't read a note for the entire show! Great charts, great ensemble playing and soloing, and lots of humor, too. Very satisfying all around. Thanks again for inviting us out, Michael, and we looking forward to seeing you again sometime.

Hell - just trying to get a gig there is hard enough!

That's a good album. The way he plays on Take the Coltrane is pretty incredible. I think at that time John was playing that Johnny Smith jazz box with some chorus and whatever amp was around. I could be wrong on that, though.

Just trying to find some general information about konakkol. Here's just a bit I found: http://www.innerviews.org/inner/shakti.html For McLaughlin, the idea of balancing the mathematical equations of Indian rhythmic development and the less-studied, more chaos-laden leanings of jazz was natural. "There is really a great deal of common ground," he said. "The mathematics of rhythm are universal. They don't belong to any particular culture. It's true that the sensuality of rhythm is coupled with the mathematical mind in India. It's not for nothing that India has produced some of the greatest atomic engineers, mathematicians and astronomers—particularly in the 20th century. They even have an observatory that goes back many hundreds of years in which the orbits of planets were calculated. So, you can say it's been developed to a more sophisticated level there than in jazz music. But whether it's from Africa, China, Brazil or Bombay, rhythm is rhythm. If you try to improvise in jazz without some degree of rhythmical mathematical proficiency, you'll be lost by the drummer and flounder." In Indian classical music, that rhythmical, mathematical proficiency is often taught via solkattu, which refers to the study and expression of spoken rhythms. In performance, the use of these mnemonic syllables is referred to as konakkol. A rough analogy can be made between these techniques and the Western idea of solfege—the application of syllables such as "do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do" to a musical scale. Solkattu and konakkol are both accompanied by hand patterns that signify the tala which delineates the metric flow of the syllables. McLaughlin has devoted considerable time and energy to comprehending, applying and teaching these techniques. "Essentially, konakkol is a marvelous system of Indian rhythm that is done without an instrument," explained McLaughlin. "You use your voice and your hands so you don't have to learn a percussion instrument in order to fully understand the simplicity and sophistication of Indian rhythmical traditions. It's a system I highly recommend to all my students, although I don't claim in any way to be a master of konnakol. But as I said, rhythm is really universal and if you can understand konnakol—the most superior system of learning rhythm in the world—you can understand any rhythm from any country on the planet. For example, if I have to communicate something to one of the percussion players in Remember Shakti, I can sing it to them in a rhythmical sense and vice-versa. It could be 'Ta-ka ta-ka ta ta-ka tin day ta.' You then immediately see the mathematics of it. And if you can sing a rhythm, it means you understand what it is and then it's a question of applying it to your instrument."

I guess so (about the Abstract label)... what I'm guessing/hoping this is, is an instructional dvd teaching the rudiments of konakkal which, as I'm sure you know, is the Indian classical method for learning rhythm. There are some pics from the session on John's website. Yeah, the midi guitar doesn't sound too hot.

And it doesn't bother me a bit that I'm the only one!

Not that we don't already know the answer to that.

Rock on, Larry! Got an email from her today that said she's working on getting a date booked in Detroit.

He looks like a cross between Rick Springfield and the Fonz.

I'm getting way past tired of the whole celebrity gaffe/offended segment/public apology news cycle.

From Abstract Logix: Coming in 2007 : John McLaughlin Konakkol DVD /with Selvaganesh, Vikku Vinayakram (Ablx Release) Couldn't find any other info, but I'm interested.

I'm still trying to figure out what L Wayne thought was so funny.

Randy and I saw Ravi here in East Lansing a year ago. That was a great performance, too. Was Anoushka with him?

Dig that! Fareed playing an Ibanez. Thanks for posting, Mark.