JSngry

Ah, but they do sound like transistor radios! But they don't sound like a transistor radio replicating an AM (or FM, if your daddy was rich and your momma was high) carrier wave. Back in the day, a few of us young geek kings tried hooking up old record players to old transistor radio speakers, just to play with the wires. In those days, it could be done, basic shit really was basic, ya' know? Between Radio Shack and Heathkits, if a boy (or girl) wanted to play, that boy (or girl) could walk right in and sit right down, daddy let the solder roll on. And sometimes, if you got a little chesty, that boy (or girl) would dig around scrapheaps (personal, private, and/or public) just to see what was out there. So now, that sound, minus the superfluous interferences, best of both worlds for those who will enjoy it. Endless horrors for those who won't. And a massive whogivesashit for those who have no idea what Heathkit means.

What's that about losing his cabaret card? Never heard that until now.

Ah, phone speakers don't have static!

If you're going to have a set-closer to talk over, pick something that fits with your natural speech patterns and rhythms. That set closer that Cannonball used over the years, he could say as little or as much as he wanted to because he wasn't at odds with the tempo or the pocket. In a perfect world, speech and music flow together and become continuations of each other. I can't live in that world, I stutter, but those who can definitely should, because swing, that's why!

Definitely a set you can listen to straight through with no letdown, no need to take a break, ever. Not everything like this is like that.

Please have phone with flipout stand up at any angle suppourt stand, please?

Put the phone on vibrate and let the Seducey SexJazz play on it!

I think you gotta look at this stuff as potential leverage towards something that actually pays. Now, whether or not there really are such things is another matter... If you think about it, though, how much music - from all time - exists that if nobody knew it existed, they'd have to discover it just out of the sheer physics of inevitability?

I know a lady named Mai Ding, seriously.

I think he decided well in that regard.

I think youtube has some really arcane, piss-poor micro-royaly plan in place, but...maybe not? Maybe it's just one of those "fund" things where micropennies get paid to a generic publisher fund who then "distributes" them. Either way, if the objection is at not getting paid for being played, then the options are two-fold - either get the paying or stop the playing. Either way involves attorneys and YouTube, pretty sure about that much. Now, why is it like this? Because everybody looks for the lowest price, always, for every damn thing. And free is about as lowest as it gets.

If it's not a "sound" that brings back good memories, then hey, can't bring back what was never there, right? But I do have a lot of great memories involving that "sound", thought they were all in the past, but now, not!

Yeah, 1970, "consultants" were already entering the mix and playlists were becoming standardized across the nation. Before that, though, the, uh...."influence" of promo men could and did result in regional, and even local hits. those were the fun days, especially after dark when the DJs could pull out the stuff they probably weren't being told to play. We had overnight one guy at a very low-wattage station in Longview, KFRO, would would play flipsides and sub-Hot 100 records at least once an hour. That was great. But see, this is the greatness of the phone - you can get that AM sound and feeling with YOUR music now! You can be on that family trip to Lincoln, ME and be hearing Pepper Adams instead of Alive 'N Kickin' (and really, is that not the worst Tommy James imitation ever?).

Then is it ethical for you to play other people's songs on your gigs there? Just saying, yes, it is complicated, and riddled with unsolvable contradictions. So I just say, everybody do your best, give more than you take, and definitely leave it better than how you found it.

Do you ever listen though your phone speaker though? Not on your phone with earbuds, that's going to sound like MP3s on a phone with earbuds. I'm talking old-school treat your phone like a transistor radio and hold it up to your ear or strap it to a belt loop and crank it up or something like that. Take it to the beach and prop it up on a ice chest so it doesn't fall in the sand, and then crank it up. That's the sound I'm talking about! YouTube is great for this. They got old R&B and such 45s that were made to be played either on a jukebox or on a transistor radio. And big band stuff too, those old 78s sound edgy coming out of a phone speaker or a transistor radio! For years, I avoided listening to music on my phone unless left with no other immediate choice. But then one day, it dawned on me - this is not a piss-poor audio playback system, this is a freaking 21st Century transistor radio. I'm not doing studious listening here, I'm listening to the goddam RADIO, it's a lifestyle accessory, where once there was Beach Boys, there is now Bela Bartok, if I went to the beach, I could have both and although the musics would be distinguishably different, how they sounded coming out of the speaker would more or less be identical. I'm not saying abandon real audio systems, no, not that. I'm just saying, take your Bartok to the beach, figuratively if not literally, let that transistor radio vibe happen where you never had it happen before, see what that does to your outlook on life. Then again, the kids are looking at me and looking at that picture of Kevin's transistor radio and wondering what the fuck is THAT all about, right? Dig this cat, he's checking out Interstellar Space and Too Much Sugar For A Dime:

I think a venue can just pay a blanket fee for a license to play any damn thing. But maybe not. I don't really play those type places anymore. either way, though, if somebody has a complaint against YouTube and wants to have a performance pulled, that mechanism exists and is enforced. Of course, that's a process, and it puts the onus of highest-level proactivity on the complainant, and allows youtube to be lowest-level reactive in their enforcement.

When you play a gig, does somebody keep a tab of what tunes are played and then send money to the publishers? Or does the venue do that?

AM after dark meant all these far off stations coming in and out, sometimes for long periods of good signal. I was down in central east Texas getting stations from Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, Des Moines, Mexico, Nashville, hey, when stations had their own local playlists, that was fun. But daytime local transistor radio AM meant all your favorites (including baseball games) played loudly and crisply through a small cheaper than cheap speaker that shot fuzzy lasers right into your ears. Geez,,,,Beatlemania in 1964, KEEL AM 730 out of Shreveport, when we were living in Shreveport, snap, crackle and u r damn straight POP. Remember, those AM stations played 45s, not LPs, and the record labels mastered those 45s to be HOT. Actually, my phone speaker probably sounds a little better than the transistor radio did in terms of bass response, and there's no static or crackle from atmospheric interference. But it's still tinny enough and barky enough to get me to the same experiential zone, and that zone holds many strong, powerfully stron, reflexive associations of ginormous musical impacts coming out of little bitty boxes. This has nothing to do with "sound quality" as a metric or, really, as an abstract. It's more a mind game thing, a touching of familiar memoryneves by musics that have never touched those particular nerves before. I can hear a Braxton cut "sounding" like the next thing I'll hear is Gene Elston coming on saying "The Astros Batter Up Show is ON THE AIR!!!" and...wow...perhaps I am getting senile and just folding all my memories into one big brain omlette, who knows, but it's a groovy feeling. Plus, hey, with MLB AtBat, streaming a radio feed of a ballgame through a phone speaker...talk about same thing only different! You can still go to bed with the ballgame on low volume right next to your ear. Suddenly I have knees again, and I can look forward to waking up the next day and running all damn day long, over to the empty lot, me, Matt, Bill, and whoever else comes along, just pitching, hitting, throwing, and running...my god the running. I'll never be able to run like that again. Never. Kids, run. run everywhere, run all the time. Get it while you can, because...it's freedom.

For the purpose of this discussion, Bill Barron is the Tina Brooks of the 21st Century.

I really dig listening to music, especially YouTube videos, on my phone speaker. Especially late at night, holding it up to my ear. It's like hearing everything on an old AM transistor radio. Only, I never heard this music on an old AM transistor radio. But that was so much fun, hearing what I did hear, and this is fun too, now, it's like all the music I love is AM Top 40 Smash Hit, a splendidly delirious delusion to have.

And his scenes in 'Round Midnight are to be treasured.

Because it's there.

I dig the minor, insignificant work, just because as hard as it is to be great, it's possibly even harder to never coast or phone it in or do anything but show up and be happy on the job when the job does not involve the pursuit of greatness. That's when big ears and big heart will combine, not combat, and then make the difference. God bless a player, whoever, wherever, whatever.

I first he ard him on Gerald Wilson's Everywhere, found that in a cutout bin when I was 15 or 16, didn't know shit about shit, but really dug his relaxed groovy feel. Made a note to lookfor the name, and once decent record stores cane avaiable, carpe-diemed regularly. Never got tired of him, just a soulful player, no matter the idiom, never was there a whiff of insincerity, just beautiful all the time., RIP. Irreplaceable indeed.

Damn.