7/4

Happy Birthday!

$255,100.00? I can do a lot of other things with $255,100.00!

It doesn't even have a truss rod!

Holy crap. Dat's a lotta money!

From the NY Daily News: Jazz great Miles Davis' posthumous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should be a moment to celebrate the musical genius. But the upcoming ceremony has only reopened an ugly rift in his family. His estranged son Gregory Davis is complaining that the Hall won't give him free tickets to the March 13 event. The two comps provided have gone to the Davis estate, run by Gregory's sister Cheryl, about whom he has nothing pleasant to say. For example: "My sister, we don't even believe she was a Davis. We don't even think there will be any Davises accepting that award." Youch! He also says of his father's legend: "That biography is full of stories that are not true. My father did a lot of exaggeration. Sometimes we wouldn't even let him in. I got a book coming out in three months. This is one, by one who lived with him, so to speak, in the trenches." A New York probate filing says only that Davis' estate was worth in excess of $1 million when he died in 1991. His will left 20% to Cheryl, 40% to his son Erin, 10% to a nephew and 15% each to his brother and sister. It left nothing to his other two sons, Gregory and Miles 3rd.

Miles Davis: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, But His Son Can't Afford a Ticket to the Party. article here.

I'll miss those eyes. February 25, 2006 Don Knotts, TV's Lovable Nerd, Dies at 81 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 5:47 p.m. ET LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on ''The Andy Griffith Show,'' has died. He was 81. Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs ''The Andy Griffith Show,'' and another Knotts hit, ''Three's Company.'' Unspecified health problems had forced him to cancel an appearance in his native Morgantown in August 2005. The West Virginia-born actor's half-century career included seven TV series and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV immortality and five Emmies. The show ran from 1960-68, and was in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each season, including a No. 1 ranking its final year. It is one of only three series in TV history to bow out at the top: The others are ''I Love Lucy'' and ''Seinfeld.'' The 249 episodes have appeared frequently in reruns and have spawned a large, active network of fan clubs. As the bug-eyed deputy to Griffith, Knotts carried in his shirt pocket the one bullet he was allowed after shooting himself in the foot. The constant fumbling, a recurring sight gag, was typical of his self-deprecating humor. Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, once said he was most proud of the Fife character and doesn't mind being remembered that way. His favorite episodes, he said, were ''The Pickle Story,'' where Aunt Bea makes pickles no one can eat, and ''Barney and the Choir,'' where no one can stop him from singing. ''I can't sing. It makes me sad that I can't sing or dance well enough to be in a musical, but I'm just not talented in that way,'' he lamented. ''It's one of my weaknesses.'' Knotts appeared on six other television shows. In 1979, Knotts replaced Norman Fell on ''Three's Company,'' playing the would-be swinger landlord to John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt. Early in his TV career, he was one of the original cast members of ''The Steve Allen Show,'' the comedy-variety show that ran from 1956-61. He was one of a group of memorable comics backing Allen that included Louis Nye, Tom Poston and Bill ''Jose Jimenez'' Dana. Knotts' G-rated films were family fun, not box-office blockbusters. In most, he ends up the hero and gets the girl -- a girl who can see through his nervousness to the heart of gold. In the part-animated 1964 film ''The Incredible Mr. Limpet,'' Knotts played a meek clerk who turns into a fish after he is rejected by the Navy. When it was announced in 1998 that Jim Carrey would star in a ''Limpet'' remake, Knotts responded: ''I'm just flattered that someone of Carrey's caliber is remaking something I did. Now, if someone else did Barney Fife, THAT would be different.'' In the 1967 film ''The Reluctant Astronaut,'' co-starring Leslie Nielsen, Knotts' father enrolls his wimpy son -- operator of a Kiddieland rocket ride -- in NASA's space program. Knotts poses as a famous astronaut to the joy of his parents and hometown but is eventually exposed for what he really is, a janitor so terrified of heights he refuses to ride an airplane. In the 1969 film ''The Love God?,'' he was a geeky bird-watcher who is duped into becoming publisher of a naughty men's magazine and then becomes a national sex symbol. Eventually, he comes to his senses, leaves the big city and marries the sweet girl next door. He was among an army of comedians from Buster Keaton to Jonathan Winters to liven up the 1963 megacomedy ''It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.'' Other films include ''The Ghost and Mr. Chicken'' (1966); ''The Shakiest Gun in the West,'' (1968); and a few Disney films such as ''The Apple Dumpling Gang,'' (1974); ''Gus,'' (1976); and ''Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo,'' (1977). In 1998, he had a key role in the back-to-the-past movie ''Pleasantville,'' playing a folksy television repairman whose supercharged remote control sends a teen boy and his sister into a TV sitcom past. Knotts began his show biz career even before he graduated from high school, performing as a ventriloquist at local clubs and churches. He majored in speech at West Virginia University, then took off for the big city. ''I went to New York cold. On a $100 bill. Bummed a ride,'' he recalled in a visit to his hometown of Morgantown, where city officials renamed a street for him in 1998. Within six months, Knotts had taken a job on a radio Western called ''Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders,'' playing a wisecracking, know-it-all handyman. He stayed with it for five years, then came his series TV debut on ''The Steve Allen Show.'' He married Kay Metz in 1948, the year he graduated from college. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1969. Knotts later married, then divorced Lara Lee Szuchna. In recent years, he said he had no plans to retire, traveling with theater productions and appearing in print and TV ads for Kodiak pressure treated wood. The world laughed at Knotts, but it also laughed with him. He treasured his comedic roles and could point to only one role that wasn't funny, a brief stint on the daytime drama ''Search for Tomorrow.'' ''That's the only serious thing I've done. I don't miss that,'' Knotts said.

How am I going to take a leak with that goin' on?

Where's the puch line?

Now we'ze talking!

Exactly. Harp player breaks it up by bowing the 'bone.

He'd set up something that would play it's self.

She's part of the diet. Whatever that is that she's licking isn't.

February 23, 2006 Jazz Wizard George Duke Recalls Early Days By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 12:04 a.m. ET LOS ANGELES (AP) -- He doesn't talk all that much about it, but jazz keyboard wizard George Duke attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music -- on a trombone scholarship. The reason was simple, Duke recalled: He didn't think he was good enough to get one of the school's piano scholarships. ''They had too many classical piano players. I didn't have their chops. I couldn't keep up with them,'' Duke said of the applicants the year he applied. ''But they also had a brass scholarship for trombone and they didn't have any trombone players. So I knew I could get that one!'' A Wednesday news conference announcing that Duke and fellow jazz great Stanley Clarke will be among the headliners at the 28th annual Playboy Jazz Festival in June got the modest keyboardist to reminiscing afterward about his early days. This year marks the first time he and bassist Clarke have toured extensively together since 1990. ''Stanley and I decided at the end of last year to do a couple of dates, and we had so much fun we said let's make a commitment,'' Duke recalled as he stood in the back yard of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's Holmby Hills home. ''We were going to do an album,'' he added. ''But our agents put out some leads and the next thing we knew we were doing a world tour.'' That means they'll be doing the album next year, he said. When it comes time to record it, don't expect Duke to pick up a trombone. He did years ago at the late Frank Zappa's insistence, he says, but seldom has since. ''It's a great instrument,'' Duke said. ''It's just not my instrument.''

Missed that one...it sure would throw off the florensic folks (at least until that show aired).

...and a baby's arm holding an apple.

Check that shit out! The unexpected reference or review is always a blast.

You're making this complicated, but...

Great book on the Zen of music. I have to dig my copy up, it's been years since I've looked at it. My advice: do something else. It clears the head.

I think so. There's a bunch of musicans I know in that area who create amazing music that has nothing to do with pop culture/comercial music.

have a good one!

That's a pretty cool utility. Here's what I get: Download Speed: 3241 kbps (405.1 KB/sec transfer rate) Upload Speed: 352 kbps (44 KB/sec transfer rate) Comcast are a bunch of knucleheads.

.and many more!

A happy click through to da Jazzmatazz man!