JSngry

It's early in the morning the usual thanks and discalaimers heve not yet begum to rise, I'd like some eggs here in a little while, so le's pla. TRACK ONE - That's a pretty song that sounds like it could have been used under the closing credits of a Ken Burns film. Easy to rise to! TRACK TWO - That's Modal, Centric, and Thumpy, a popular trio of the middle 1970s based out of Nubianton, Nebraska. They made a lot of records that sounded like this, which is to say that they all sounded good. Here, they are joined by frequent collaborators Wlater Reedy andKenny Conguerrro. Their appearance always elevated the overal prentation of the group, and this no exception. TRACK THREE - A very nice, mildly re-imaginged version of Manteca. The guitarist was familiar, and at first for some unexplained reason I kept thinking Larry Carlton. But once Ronnie Cuber hopped in, sleuthing was easy! http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=1278644 TRACK FOUR - Yeah, I remember when this record came out. The record was mastered really hot, and this seems to have been fixed here. Also, the cover seemed and still seems, uh...unfortunate. But other than that, yeah, this is a record worth playing many times, as is true of almost all of Blythe's Columbias. TRACK FIVE - Clark Terry? No, not. Steeplechase is the tune, one of the nicer variants of Rhythm changes. The harmony of the head is always ignored for the blowing, though, so what's the point of having a head like that, really? I dunno about this one, tempo gets a little slippery in spots, and really, it's just cats playing rhythm changes really fast. I do like the guitarist more than the others, he/she freshens things up here and there. Otherwise, it could be any group of really good bop-based players anywhere, any time. Bu that drummer has Bobby Durham-itis in spots, not that it's not warranted here. TRACK SIX - Oh lord, I've heard this one...might even have it. Tenor player sounds like he wasn't born there but moved in before puberty, close enough. I like it. TRACK SEVEN - Well, you can't miss Jaws, so it didn't take too long to find Al Smith. Sorta hear some Sam Cooke influence here, Soul Stirrers Sam Cooke. That was a pretty pervasive thing in it's time/place. I think I missed this when it was out, might circle back and see if it's still out there. Jaws! TRACK EIGHT - George Adams with Johnny Copeland. What else is there to say! That record made a bit of noise when it was released. Rounder did a good job at getting their product in the eyes and ears of the right people, and this one, with George, Arthur Blythe, & Byard Lancaster, got reviewed in the jazz press as well as the blues press. TRACK NINE - Henry Threadgill is one of the great musical presences about of our time. When was that? Always! Good lord, you talk about a band making a debut with a ginormous WHOA!!!!! type record, this one was that. PLAYING!!!!! TRACK TEN - Hubert Laws? No...James Newton? Ray Anderson? The composition s a little pastiche-y for me, but if played live, the sections could have been stretched out, Mingus-like and might have taken shape better on that scale. But everybody plays well here. TRACK ELEVEN - Gotta think that's Ra. Yep, there's Gilmore. TRACK TWELVE - YouTube-in Motherless Child Organ Solo returned some very interesting results, and eventually the correct one, Fats Waller V-Disc. I did not know, this is great! TRACK THIRTEEN - That's hilarious! "Weird change there..", "Mixed up in your changes there kid", jokes about the bridge AND the lyrics, love it! Little Jimmy turner, yeah, there you go. EX-cellent! Well, the sun is up, the day is done, I took the Test and it was fun, thank you!

Here's where I lost my Dexter virginity, Side 1,Cut 1. Sptember of 1974, in the dorm room of a cat from Seattle named Karl Lampman. Maybe it's a case of never fully getting over your first love, but it's still a favorite. The very first thing I noticed - and really got shook up by - was here was a guy who played "modern" and did not once play a double-time passage. That just fucked me up, totally, I mean, how many choruses does he play here, memorable melodic phrases out the ass and not one sixteenth note passage. That is just awesome!

No argument - fact!

They still insist on calling the original Cruisin' With Reuben and The Jets Greasy Love Songs, eh? Can't admit to a fuckup, sad. I'm ok with keeping the "re-do", it's not without its perverse charm, but give THAT one a different name, ok?

Missed this the first time around, thanks for upping!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/arts/music/horace-parlan-jazz-pianist-dies-at-86.html?_r=0 Horace Lumont Parlan

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/sports/baseball/ned-garver-dead-st-louis-browns-pitcher.html?_r=0 “The crowd didn’t dare boo us,” Garver once said of his nearly five seasons with the lowly Browns before sparse crowds at Sportsman’s Park, which they shared with the popular Cardinals. “The players had them outnumbered.” Garver posted a 20-12 record in 1951 with a last-place team that finished at 52-102. He also batted .305 and hit a home run to break a tie game with the Chicago White Sox on the season’s final day, when he recorded his 20th victory. He was runner-up for the A.L.’s Most Valuable Player Award. He lost to Yogi Berra, whose pennant-winning Yankees finished 46 games in front of those Browns. “Next to me, Ned knew more about baseball than just about any pitcher in the American League,” Satchel Paige, a Browns teammate of Garver’s, recalled in his 1962 memoir, “Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever,” written with David Lipman. “Even with that slow stuff of his, he did right well all along, just using his head.”

Ian and the shoe ftw, please.

Toody, not Tootie. Nor Percy. But Jimmy.

Greatest guitar solo on a Woody Herman record ever, Phil Upchurch. Hell, one of the greatest Woody Herman cuts ever, The Band That STILL Played The Blues!

Just listened again. What I like and dislike is the intensity and the "professionalism" of the rhythm sections, but on those jams, hardly anybody leaves space except Ian Underwood (gutiars and violins don't have to breathe, even if they should...), and Ian, you can set your watch by where he starts and stops and repeats. That, and there's a lot of "modality" in the soloing, but very little chromaticism...between that an nobody breathing, my enjoyment of the record has become targeted rather than specific. Then again, I'm very much an "original Mothers" guy when it comes to Zappa, period. I think he was probably always a bit "nasty" in his disposition, but at some point it jsut got obsessive, oppressive, or something.Not all at once, just gradually. But definitely. Put another way, when I meet people who say that they're really into Zappa and don't know any of the Verve stuff (or even worse, consider it not "fully formed" or some such), I try to get away as gracefully and as quickly as possible. Space, plenty of space. Space and breath.

I'm tripping on how Sonny Thompson & Dave Brubeck are intersecting/overlapping for no readily apparent "logical" reason. However, cf Willie The Lion about Brubeck in a DB BFT, he was hearing it too, that "ting".

There really is a lot of corniness in Zappa's music, not all of it intentional. Or so it seems to me. Listening to the early-ish Mothers live stugg where he's required to carry the vocals is...uncomfortable. The hiring of Flo & Eddie makes sense n that light (and others), those guys could actually sing. Frank was not a singer, not like that. But hey, for every piece of cheese like "Peaches", there's something stuff like this, so again, good with bad, it is what it is.

Not stiff, just very symmetrical. I mean, you can definitely dance to it, but you gotta be ready to dance without a lot of time/space curvature. That's still beating the hell out of not dancing at all, though, No matter, imagine this as a part of Toga Brava Suite, or African-Eurasian Eclipse. I can hear it there, mostly. Not the middle section, but the bookends.

Coincidentally, I listened to Hot Rats over the weekend, first time in a long time...and never before have I been so bugged by the symmetry of the whole thing, everything is square on the beat, all the soloists begin and end their lines dead on the beat, and really, nobody leaves any space for anything. That's true of so much of Zappa's music. Very hip metrically so often, so very square in terms of time/pocket, Oh well, it is what it is. Good with the bad. And also - "Peaches en Regalia" is just a really stupid, corny song. It sounds like a Steely Dan parody, only of course it would be the other way around. But god, that's a rancid piece of cheese. It makes me cringe now more than ever, and I really don't understand why "people like it" as much as they do. I think Claire Fischer had more wile than to let any of that happen. Now, that's the things about the record I don't like. I still like what I've always liked about it - the energy, the presence of "jazz musicians" making a "jam" rock record, Ian Underwood, Beefheart, both violinists, and "Little Umbrellas", most of which would not have been out of place in the Last Days Ellington Band, those voicings.

I feel bad that I was not more enthusiastic about Cleanhead. I love the guy, but haqve never her him play less "ognaically" than when he got into that Phil woods thing. Oh well, he owes nobody any explanations,or justifications, Cleanhead doesn't. Same thing about Julian Dash and Jimmy Shirley. The Norris Turney cut, wow, I want that album. Bob Ashton I know, but only as a session player, and mostly on Oliver Nelson dates. So, uh...wow. I really want to hear this record. Taft Jordan! Phil Upchurch should know better, imo. And Sonny Thompson, no shit! GREAT cut. The reveal holds more surprises than the music, and I don't mean that as a dis!

We have a rare twinight/home/away doubleheader this weekend. First, the afternoon game - Dover Quartet in Ft. Worth. The buzzed me so much when the played Dallas in 2015 that when I saw this advertised, it was a no-brainer! http://www.chambermusicfw.org/dramatic-license BARBER, String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11 SMETANA, String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, JB1:105 SHOSTAKOVICH, String Quartet No. 2 The home for the evening game: https://www.mydso.com/buy/tickets/rachmaninoff-and-rachmaninoff HANS GRAF conducts GARRICK OHLSSON piano RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 4 RACHMANINOFF Symphony No. 1 Honestly, I don't know that I need that much Rachmaninoff in one day, especially after and afternoon of Dover, but hey, we already have the tickets, and travel is fun.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/arts/television/ward-chamberlin-jr-architect-of-nations-public-broadcasting-dies-at-95.html?_r=0 Ward Bryan Chamberlin III was born on Aug. 4, 1921, in Manhattan to Ward Bryan Chamberlin Jr., a corporate lawyer, and the former Elizabeth Nichols. He was raised in New York City and in Wilson Point, Conn. He called himself Ward Jr. after his father died. Mr. Chamberlin attended St. Bernard’s School in Manhattan and Greenwich Country Day School in Connecticut and graduated from Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Ineligible for military service because he had lost his sight in his right eye to childhood meningitis, he left Princeton in 1942 to enlist as a volunteer ambulance driver with the American Field Service. He was assigned to North Africa, where he was supposed to be consigned to desk duty because of a mild bout of polio. But he expunged those orders and was deployed to the front lines in central Italy instead, retrieving the dead and wounded at Monte Cassino, where the Allies suffered more than 50,000 casualties. “That was the key to who he was,” Mr. Burns said. “After that, there was nothing that could rock his boat.”

Ok, have fun with this one: Are statheads “pro ownership?” http://www.mlbdailydish.com/2017/2/24/14727112/are-statheads-pro-ownership

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/arts/television/joseph-a-wapner-judge-on-the-peoples-court-dies-at-97.html Born on Nov. 15, 1919, in Los Angeles, Joseph Albert Wapner graduated in 1937 from Hollywood High School, where he briefly dated the future film actress Lana Turner, and in 1941 from the University of Southern California, where he received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. During World War II, he served with the Army in the Pacific and was wounded by sniper fire on Cebu Island in the Philippines, leaving him with shrapnel in his left foot. He won the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for his bravery and was honorably discharged in 1945. After earning his law degree from the University of Southern California in 1948, Judge Wapner worked in private practice as a lawyer for nearly a decade, until Gov. Edmund G. Brown of California appointed him to a judgeship in Los Angeles municipal court in 1959. Two years later, Judge Wapner was elected presiding judge of the city’s vast Superior Court system, in which he supervised some 200 fellow judges. “I was the only Jew who’d ever been elected,” he said in a 1982 interview, “and I don’t know when there’ll be another.”

Covered one of those months, or one of the next ones.

Third row center, actually, but I like them a lot. You don't get the "hall blend" but you do get the immediate sounds off the instruments, and you also get how they come back. More than once, I've noticed that conductors and soloists alike wait for the sound to come back to them before a pause is considered complete. And for guest soloists, they're great. Pianists especially, because where we are, you here as much of the underside of the piano as you to the topside, and no two pianists sound alike with that level of detail available. It's also great for watching pedal techniques. There are different experiences to be had in different parts of the hall (and the "nosebleed seats" are actually magical at times, the way the blend can come together in an ethereal swirl), but for what we can afford, and for the way I like to watch and listen, yeah, I'm quite happy.

Yeah, that's what they do to John Williams movies and Final Fantasy soundtracks. On Pops concerts, though. I'd love them to do Ligeti on a Pops concert! World gone right, that would be. But pricey? Not at all - the season-subscriber price comes out to under $15/ticket and comes with free parking which IS $15.00 (and that's a perk that's going away after this season...ouch). So if I had gone by myself, I would have actually made money on the ticket, not that it would be money I could actually spend, but you know, the kind of making money that slows down the rate at which you eventually go broke while you're doing stuff.