JSngry

Put her under pressure? Hardly. Just like pointing it out to her while we're driving, a variation of the license plate games that kids play. She's not much for games while riding but hell, let her drive then, I'm ok with that, welcome it, actually. What's "interesting" is how some are designed into the body, some are underneath the body, some cars that look like stodgy family cars have it, some that look like real speed machines don't, etc. Picked the habit up from riding with a buddy of mine who's a real street-racing kind of guy, he'd point out the cars that looked tame but had some stealth punch, and finally got one himself, a Suburu thing that looked like a totally boring suburban dad car but will pin you back when leaving from a red light or going towards an open spot on the freeway.

I think Miles' skin tone looks unnaturally lightened in that 1956 pic. Whether that's a result of real-time flash or after-market processing, who knows, but the effect is to soften his features and make him look younger than he was, almost weirdly so.

Let's have a thread about jazz fans who are retired!

Warner Brothers, 1992 (that's almost a quarter-century ago for those of you with calendars). A nicely varied program with Kenny Kirkland, Charnet Moffett, & Brian Blade as constants, and some relevant guest appearances by Joe Henderson, Don Alias, Donald Brown, & Ricky Wellman. Samples: Myself, I think this is the most fully balanced record that Kenny Garrett has made, even now. He's not a harbinger of tomorrow, never was, but his is a distinctive, soulful voice that can speak in both "hardcore" and "populist" arenas. This record has enough of each to make it an easy listen as well as a stimulating one.

Sure, what the hell, if nobody's listening then everybody's listening, that's hot it works, right?

Thoughts? Impressions? Critical declarations? Recommendations of some hot platters? Starting to stumble across his music in various compilations/collections, and am finding it quietly intriguing, so...anybody got opinions?

Fun and games for a while, then finally acquiescence and another paycheck. Indeed, the voice of a generation!

I was stopped at a light this afternoon and three in a row came through the left turn lane. Three in a row. Different makes, same color. I don't recall ever seeing three in a row of the same color before. I watch stuff when I drive, and that's something I would notice. I'm trying to get my wife to look for cars with dual exhaust. She's resistant. But hell, details!

Goes?

Thanks to anybody who listened, and more thanks to everybody who listened and responded. Most thanks to those who listened, responded, and had actual, specific thoughts, pro or con. Here are the answers, as well as the not-quite-fully-formed "narrative" behind the overall presentation. TRACK ONE - "Signing Off" by Johnny Otis feat. Dorothy Morrison, from Back To Jazz (Jazz World) God does this sound like the end of...something. Had enough, tired of it, signing off. For the purpose of this story, let's say it's the end of a normal day for somebody who is out in a world they really don't like but have to live in. 5:00, quitting time, y'all can have it. Snooorrrrrrre...taking a nap... TRACK TWO - "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting (Part One), by The String Bass Of Charles Mingus with Accompaniment (Atlantic 45) And yeah, it's Wednesday night now, time for our tired-of-it person to go to church, the one place where they can feel free to be their natural self as they feel it. I love how the alto lick from the first tune is so laconically played there and then is heard here with that fire burning. The mask is off, free at last! However, it's a hard life, one does get tired, and one can certainly be excused for falling asleep in church, even at the Wednesday night prayer meeting. And when you sleep, you dream... TRACK THREE - "Ikef" from Of Visions and Truth: A Song Cycle by Olly Wilson, from Recorded Music of the African Diaspora. Kirk Wilson conducting New Black Music Repertory Ensemble, Donnie Ray Albert, Tenor. Text by Henry Dumas (Albany) BOIIIIINNNGGGGG!?!?!?!??!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!! It's been decades since a piece of music has so discombobulated me as immediately and for as long as this one and another piece of the song cycle "If We Must Die" did. But the more it fell into place, the more it became apparent that this was very, very much African-American music to the core. The vocabulary, the accents, and especially the underlying pulse of the whole thing, "white" music does not come out this way, it just doesn't. Now, what happens in terms of fragmentation, orchestration, tonality, all the "obvious" elements of casual music listening, well, it breaks everything up more than a little bit. And the vocals are definitely more rooted in the tradition of the Spiritual than they are Gospel. But nevertheless, once you isolate the elements, their sources are obvious, and when you start reconstructing them as a listener, it all comes back together as yet another form of Great Black Music. It could be compared to "It Was A Very Good Year", except it only goes up to 18, getting high, and ending in images of spinning, exploding visions of 3, after which, it ends. and what does that say as a possible commentary on Young Black Lives, then and now? And yeah, it also sounds like a dream where you see everything you know broken up all to hell, everything floating and flying around, where is the reality here? But as with most dreams, the longer you dream it, the more it comes into focus... TRACK FOUR - "Call Me Super Bad (Cornelius Rework)" from James Brown Utlimate Remixes (Universal Japan) Talk about deconstructing something and then putting it back together in a way that is at once totally familiar and totally new...what this shares with the previous cut is how all these things, seemingly unrelated (but not) keep in focus by pivoting/rotating around a central pulse and keep looping back on one another. I've heard James Brown sampled and/ore remixed to death, and this is one of the very few that don't just re-contextualize the original, they re-imagine it completely. There's a couple of things on that same album that do the same thing, but this is the most radical. It's paced to produce a maximum slow burn, and that is what it does before ending as it (almost) began, an unexpectedly quiet, isolated Rhodes note. The dream has gained focus and gathered confidence, it is gaining its own steam and is ready to roll, onward! TRACK FIVE - "Soanta V" by John Cage, from Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano, Maro Ajemian, piano (CRI American Masters reissue of the original 1951 Dial Records issue) Visionary in both concept and performance, played faster here than most later performances. Slowing it down really brings out the funk in it and makes it sound like some kind of lost ancestor to Sextant-era Herbie Hancock. Here it is more like a march to victory or something, a dream line dance heading to dream glory, a place where all is melody, all is pulse, all is true. And as with any good dream, it does, it goes there... TRACK SIX - "Allegro comodo" , Movement One of Piano Trio, Op. 5 by Mel Powell. From Contemporary Piano Trios, performed by The Francesco Trio (Music & Arts) Mel Powell had one helluva musical journey. He got deeply into serial music, then electronic music, and none of it is trifling or cheap. It's not all "perfect", but never is any of it cheap or common. His career change was obviously one of a deep-rooted sincerity, and he did right by himself. This is an early (1957) work of his, and boy, is it delightful. Pretty much ALL melody, themes endlessly and masterfully spun around inside and outside up and around themselves, if you get lost, wait a second or two, it comes back around quick enough. and the more you listen, the less likely you are to get lost. Truly glorious. And The Francesco Trio plays with SOOOOO much pocket,, yes, pocket! But this is a dream, remember, and in a dream, glory soon turns to...something else... TRACK SEVEN - "Lonesome Road" from The Winds Of Destiny (American Songbook IV), Songs of Strife, Love, Mystery, and Exulation A Cylce Of American Civil War Songs, Folk Songs, and Spirituals. From Complete Crumb Edition Vol. 13. Barbara Ann Martin, Soprano, James Freeman, Conductor (Bridge) ...ghosts, abandonment, a deep sadness, melancholia, looking down a very lonesome road indeed... ...and be careful heading down that lonesome road, because, you never know who will pop up and start trying to getcha... TRACK EIGHT -- "Learning Through Adversity and Defeat" by Napoleon Hill (Napoleon Hill Productions 45) Yeah...so just who IS this guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill His son Blair was born without a trace of ears, yet he consulted with Presidents Of the United States. What kind of a combination wise-man-demon was he? And good LORD does he bring a lot of noise with his noise, what's that all about, is that a warning or an incentive to listen that much closer to him as he gives us the Secrets To Success? And all that extraneous nosie...isn't that the same nosie we were hearing in church, and even during the day? Is this guy as real as that? Or is none of that real after all,? Is this dream real? Or not? Or is it really that complicated? Maybe he's just a... TRACK NINE - "Jackass" from Animal, Vegetable Mineral by Stephen Mackey. From Concertos For Saxophone Quartet, PRISM Quartet, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor (innova). Heeeeee-HAW. heeee-HAW. and so forth. I love this piece, the way it always comes back to the goddam donkey hee-HAW, always, sometimes more than one at once, but always that hee-HAW, sometimes he dares to fly, but much sooner than later, always heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-HAW. So yeah, that weird salesman guy was a jackass. But this is still a dream, and dreams are always about our self, so...who are we.... TRACK TEN - "There Never Was A Revolution", "Choose", and the beginning of "Tastes The Same" from Tania by Anthony Davis (Koch) An opera about the Patty Hearst kidnapping, with a libretto and (as detailed in the liners), a multi-media staging. It's gonna take years before anybody sorts this all out, if they ever do, but this extract here shows the music to be as seamless as it the verbal and (assumed) visual to be unusual, and with "known jazz names" like J.D. Parran & Gerry Hemmingway (and all-around badass Bert(ram) Turetzky) in the band, the stop-start, odd-metered music flows freely, and the Mingus/Ellington -ish orchestrations give the vocals a solid foundation on which to soar. The end of "Choose" with the voices going all at once brings to mind the final bit of "Mercy Mercy Me" as well as things like Andrew Hill's Lift Every Voice, Black Voices, obviously "classically trained" but not equally obviously "Black" - and also equally obviously not "White". The timbre, the vibrato. Avery Brooks, Thomas Young in the mix as well as Cythia Aaronson-Davis. Charles Stepney is not far removed from this either, listen deeper to some of those Rotary Connection things. Lines are getting blurred out the ass here, and perhaps that's what happens when lines begin to dissolve. Perhaps the lines are the dream. Either way, the lines are there until they're not. And then where are you? The lines are definitely dissolving in the dream, it goes from questioning if there ever was a revolution, and if so, geez, sorry about that, didn't mean to make a scene, to a rather forceful call to "Come back to the rage" and taking inventory of "this is all I am", choose dammit, CHOOSE! It's getting kinda, uh, fire-y up in this dream...not sure if this is where I wanted to end up, jeez, all I wanted to do was go to church and take a nap...not.....ALL THIS! WHERE AM I? Time to wake up! TRACK ELEVEN - "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting (Part Two), by The String Bass Of Charles Mingus with Accompaniment (Atlantic 45) Oh, ok, never mind, it was all a dream...all the different ways a life and its musics could easily go, fuck that, that's too complicated, scary, even off-putting. Let's just stay home, let's just RE-joy-ce, let's all get saved (but never spent) - hallelujah. Amen. C'mon church, let's go... ...let's go bowling. Right? TRACK TWELVE - "strIKE!" aka ""Let The Word Go Forth" by Hank Levine from Sing Along With JFK (Reprise) So, all this noise, is it scratches on the vinyl, is it just the sounds of crashing bowling pins, just what is it we're using to block out the endless droning of a once-meaningful language turned trite, trivial, and predictable? And why is it that no matter how loud the bowling alley gets (and at one point it gets VIOLENTLY loud), the mundanity of the droning keeps on, you can't kill it, you can't stop it, you can't get it out of there, it just keeps on going. And maybe it keeps on going only because we keep listening to it, even though all the noise is suggesting that perhaps...that's enough of that for now. After all, life is just a bowl. Flush it every once in a while. Hey you - OUTTA THE WAY. Yeah, me. Signing off? Signed out.

Ford is calling it "Magnetic Grey", so....beware of people with steel plates in their head suddenly crashing into your hood, I guess. It's coming after them, see?

These are like a charcoal grey. Honda's calling it "Modern Steel Metallic", Toyota's calling it "Predawn Gray Mica"...whatever it is, it's not unattractive, but it seems to be extremely popular all of a sudden. Or maybe it was unpopular last year and everybody's getting great prices on back inventory. Whatever it is, it's like an invasion on these streets out here.I counted 6 at one stop light the other day, all the same color. That's just odd.

They're all very shiny right now, looks like some kind of nuclear clear coat all over 'em. They're pretty now, actually, but once that clear coat starts to go... I really can't recall the last time I saw one color of new car pop up all over the place all at once like I have these. It's making me paranoid, like Sinatra must've felt about The Beatles in 1964, only, this is, like cars.

Is it like this where you are? All of a sudden, just within the last few weeks, three's all these shiny new grey cars rolling around. It's like this is the only color they're selling new cars in now and everybody wants one. What's up with this, is this some stealth invasion force of Shiny Gray Car People Coming To Take Our Black Helicopter Guns???? I mean, seriously, around here, it has been sudden and it has been intense. How are things in your town?

Bill Bailey Baby Dodds Ben Tucker

Sure! Besides Lift Every Voice And Sing, there's the two Denon Tokyo live dates, one Baystate side, one on Japanese Victor, and one on Fluid. and of course,

Full reveal coming this weekend, let's get the unclaimed Bonus Points out of the way now. Star Trek Connection - That's Avery Brooks singing on "Come Back To The Rage", from Anthony Davis' Tania. Capt. Benjamin Cisco as Cinque. From Bird To Carol Burnett In 4 Easy Steps - Bird to: 1) Ross Russell/Dial Records -> 2) John Cage -> 3) I've Got A Secret/Gary Moore -> 4) Carol Burnett. Voila! Same Lick, Same Instrument - Altoist on "Signing Off" quotes one full lick - covering two bars, actually - from John Handy's solo on "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting". It's not accidental, it's what happens when you learn a solo as a youngster and never really let it go. Everybody does it, too. Some more often than others, but everybody does it.

The Max albums...strong, but that band never made a full-on power record like the band with Billy Harper did. But still, strong band, fine records, and if you're short in the late Max department, this won't hurt even a little. Totally worth it for Odean Pope. Also, there's enough in the Waldron set to make it interesting if you don't already have the individual albums.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Somebody in some liner note somewhere made the wry observation that Percy Heath was Ron Carter before Ron Carter was. HA! Truthfully, the early 70s MJQ records on Atlantic can make for some interesting listening in terms of both Heath & Kay. Can't say that I would recommend buying them if you're not really "there" with the band already, but an hour or two of casual browsing might be more fun than you might think. Nothing is as...radical as that one Apple record, but the things hit on there by no means vanish. Sorry for the digression, but I do think that the real evolutionary interest of the MJQ came after their image had become essentially fixed. They kept the quiet surface, but the tempos and pockets got pretty damn funky. Yeah, funky! Not, like, Funk, just a really deep pocket. Same band, same basic concepts, really, just more dug in, whole body brain music, if tthat makes any sense. Anyway, back to the lists!

Yeah, Connie Kay and Percy Heath gave John Lewis a lot of options, a really big palate. Sometimes he opened then up more than other times, Kay in particular. This guy played on R&B records and handled crotales with equal ease and aplomb. He was a true percussionist, not just a great time keeping drummer. But sometimes Lewis...you know...very controlled environment. It was what it was, right?