JSngry

Hell, Albert was a golfer. He knew how to read the green.

That's all well and good, but it's got nothing to do with music itself. Nobody should like what they don't like, but dammit, an attempt at justifying a dislike by stating assumptions that just are not true, that will get called. It's like that hardbob guy on the old board krypton kept yammering about late Trane had no structure, Cecil's music had no structure on and on, and it was all bullshit, because ALL of that music had structure. If you don't like it, just say so. If you can't hear it, just say so. If you don't want to hear it because you don't like it, just say so. Stick to what you know, don't confuse how you hear it with what is actually happening. A subjective reaction is not an objective analysis, and just because something does make sense logivcally doesn't mean you have to like it esthetically. But by god, math is math.

Well....that band very rarely played free on standards (once Chick replaced Herbie, things opened up even further, lines got really blurred). What they did was a lot of harmonic and rhythmic extrapolations from the "home base", but when they played "tunes", the form was always there, somewhere, some how. You can do the math (to use that phrase) and link it all back up. They started before Wayne was in the band, check out what they do on "Stella" from the MFV album. Once the tempo doubles up, there's a different set of changes going on. Different, but related, you can - literally - do the math as to where those new chords came from, build it back down to the original changes. Harmony can withstand all the pummeling you give it, even "free" playing will have a logic, because even if all 12 tones have equal gravity, they still go somewhere, there are still relationships, shapes are still formed, there is no such thing as random harmony, there's just random minds. Look out for them. But geesh, the WayneHerbieRonTony Show was anything but random. Spontaneous as hell, yes, that's the thrill, but they always knew where they were, and that's the more of the thrill. Past playing tunes, you can play free and still play "the tune". It happens in "classical" music all the time, it's called "variation", and there's no reason on earth whatsoever for any musician not to do that. There's every reason to know what you're doing, though, but that should hold true for life in general. Yeah, I know, shouldn't have to be a mathematician to keep up with all that, keep mine simple, or, I don't care how legit the math is, I don't like how it sounds. Well, ok, fair enough. But dislike spoken in terms that are just not accurate, personal taste in the guise of scientific fact, that furthers no cause or discussion. As for Ayler, hearing him play April once is enough for me. But hearing him play, say, "Ghosts", that's something I'll never here enough.

Also a helluva tenor player..

We're getting new flooring sometimes in the near future. I have a cloud of dread enveloping me about the logistics that are going to start happening.

My collection needs shrinking, actually....

Correct, of course, that was Bill Evans in 1959, and yes, "Continuity" is another one for the ages.

I thought I had heard something along those lines but wasn't sure. So sorry to hear that. A the end of the day, he might be my favorite Sonny Rollins drummer, period. And I don't say that lightly.

Does the DL come with a digital booklet or something else besides just the music files? oh, btw, whatever happened to David Lee?

That band is one of the most extreme, if not the most extreme example, of being one thing live and another thing on record. I get what he means about not knowing what the hell he was doing, but that doesn't mean anywhere near the same thing in player-speak as it does in civilian-speak. It means that they didn't know what they were going to do until they did it, it doesn't mean that they were flailing about with no idea of where the time or the tune was, I've yet to hear an example of the latter happening live, ever, not even remotely. That band, in real time, was some of the most exhilarating improvised music of it's time, because they showed that you could take song forms. stretch them past the breaking point, and yet keep the form going underneath, it's pretty high math, and you have to go to the Tristano/Konitz/Marsh Half Note sessions (1959?) to hear anything even remotely that free being done with standard forms. It's not the sound of the world going to hell, it's the sound of time and harmony getting sliced more and more finely and then, just when it seems like they've been destroyed, oops, there they are again. If Cecil & Ayler & Ornette were busy creating new physics, these guys were going about the business of getting the old physics to realize that it was going to have to either adapt or die. It didn't happen linearly, it happened simultaneously, so the next time somebody needs to convince you to believe in linear time as something other than a construct of scheduling convenience, hey, you should know better than that by now. Which is why all the retro-Second Quintet musics, including Herbie's, are really kind of sucky. they're no longer writing the book, they're reading from the book that already got wrote. Miles asking if they didn't get it right the first time, that is exactly the question to answer, and so far, nobody's had the guts to play that type of music and address that question head-on. They're cowards.

David Lee? And my choices are LP or download?

Nicholas McGegan CONDUCTS Beatrice Rana PIANO HAYDN Symphony No. 83, "The Hen" PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No. 3 BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 2

Herbie Physics, take Speak No Evil vs JuJu. those are the two best-beloved Wayne BNs by the generally consesualized. MyCoy on JuJu, Herbie On Speak, McCoy is great because that's a "hard" record and McCoy does that as well as anybody, it's a great Wayne record, just like Speak, which Herbie is a full frontal delight with his comps and solos that are every bit as in the "groove" as were McCoy, but whereas McCoy got on that groove and rode it like a horse, Herbie surfs it, he's delightful the way he's up and down loud and soft making fully orchestral answers to the spaces that arise, the guy's just genius all over that record, and not once does he lose the groove or depend on it to pull him along, no he is sooooo damn deep in the pocket that he can snap it off the cloud he flutters in on, don't let that cloud make you think it's not got peppy max snap in it, that cloud is ALL snap.. I don't know that you'll find as improvisationally kinetic accompanist in this particular zone of jazz as Herbie Hancock.

He didn't take physics with him. Maybe it was his infirmity that prevented that. Because they're still here, drove my car this evening, just to be sure, and yep, still there. Now, you want a groove, find some urban traffic where the physics are working to the collectively designed effect. Of course, living in Houston, you're not gonna get that, and living in Dallas, neither am I. But there have been times...and any day, you can watch a ballgame where the pitching and the defense hit that groove and you can tell, yes, these physics are u=being unhindered now, Or you can just watch random shit blow through the air and dig those physics too. So when you get a group of grown-ass adults together on the same page musically, there be physics there too, best believe there will be. Are.

Bill Toomey Brave Cowboy Bill Joe Bill Adcock

No, see, that's where you're wrong. It's both. Nobody says you have to like physics, Newtonian or Quantum, but they exist whether or not you or I like them.

After they do the Bill Barron set, Mosaic should do a Select of the Willis Jackson Muse sides.

I hated that when it was released, seemed like total fluff, but that was then....how does it sound to you today?

I spotted it but didn't know what it was, have never seen a real one.

If you're wondering where that little bit of moisture came from, all those 70s albums and the Plugged Nickle box just did a collective spit take. Speaking of Plugged Nickle and such, the only way those guys could do all that insane sub/cross metric shit and have it stay tight (like that) is by having a firmer than firm sense of real time and real groove. That's not opinion, that's basic physics. Another question - if you have a groove, why do you have to push it? Ride it, yes, dig in to it, sure, but push it? Why? What would you be trying to do to it, knock it down? That's not a very nice thing to do to a groove!

glad to know about this, very much want to see

I get the feeling that there are those who would probably like to file Herbie in the "Overrated" bin, but other than his early sponsorship of Wynton Marsalis, he has nothing to be outright ashamed of, and has more than most to be quite proud of, particularly/especially , especially as accompanist, but also as soloist, composer, and bandleader. Overexposed, probably, but overrated, nah, that's bullshit. Not that it's been said yet, but I notice every time Herbie Hancock comes up there's a chorus of reticent sneers hanging around. It's funny. Not as easy as that, is it.