JSngry

Is that a Troll Face Mister Met, or are we just experiencing one of those wondrous moments in time when worlds collide and nobody gets hurt?

Treading carefully here, because...well, just because...but it seems that the more and more exposure to one subset of jazz, not as "just music" but as "holistic culture", he gets, the more dismissive he becomes of other jazz musics not because they're in any way lesser, but because they're not examples of the little bit that he's had the opportunity to peep into. So many of those people on those Beehive records had/still have had some very strong lives within different areas of the overall "jazz life". If the dude wants to be smart instead of smart-aleck, he should do a little digging before talking about hotel lounges and Clifford Jordan dissing his local band and ignunt shit like that. You don't have to do your homework to enjoy or not enjoy the music, but you do if you want to write about it as a player and not come off as a limited-knowledge bloviator, Anytime I hear somebody who's a generation or more younger than me talk about people who are a generation or more older than me as "the cats", I listen very carefully to what comes next. Always. Right now, it sounds like he's doing the math by using the factors he already knows to get the answers he thinks he ought to get. At the very least, anybody who's based in NYC and desires to be serious about "the life" and pisses all over a chance to open a door on Charles Davis has fucked up, simple as that.

I like 'em short, I like 'em tall, I don't want one, you know I want 'em all.

And either be stupid, or be wrong. One or the other, not both, especially not both at the time, because then you come off as just young, ignorant, arrogant, and worst of all, provincial.

Burt Simpson Burt Lanahan Burt Nodella

Don't get me started on a guy who's been slobberavating (and justly so) about the lessons he's learned(?) from Tootie Heath mistaking Charles Davis for Ricky Ford. That's RookieBall Matinee right there, so many different ways of wrong that once you DO do the math you gotta figure that there's no right in there in the first place, none at all. And ok, this: I don't know what that means.

Cubs looking snakebit, that last called strike to end the game, I'm thinking a bat should have been swung, just because. Oh well, still Go Cubs, but Go Mets is not painful at all (once i forget 1969, not Cubs Fail but Orioles Crushed), except those solid colored blue jerseys...YIKES! And Royals, hell yeah Royals, that. (listened again to Royals radio on MLB AtBat and lol-ed at mentions of Tippin's Pies...they opened a location here a while back, and DAMN it was good, but the notion of a pie joint on Central Expressway in Plano, Texas did not capture the imagination of the Metroplexian Pie-Eating Public at a level that matched the DAMN goodness of the product. Alas.)

Also: Ya' think? Ya' think it'll do any good? Ok then, keep buying those records, blues comes from records, Fathead made lots of them, you should be ok with that! And ok, I'll go there - what is this "not ready for prime time" bullshit. I mean, I'm not that much into Mance with that trio myself, but jesus christ, who the fuck is this "Ethan Iverson" to be talking about "prime time", like he could have hung with Jaws and Griff and all them back in THAT day, EVERY night, I swear to god, some motherfuckers show up at Pearl Harbor on December 8 and think that god's called them to be a captain.. Seriously? And talk about standing right dead on the corner of having your head up your ass AND not doing your homework: Where in god's (yours, mine, or anybody's) name is Rick Ford on that record? Never mind that it's a great record, Charles Davis, never mind doing the math, LEARN HOW TO FUCKING READ. Apologies in advance for the profanities/et/blahblahblahblahblah but this is pretty much all bullshit, all of it, not just this review, just, the whole thing. It might have everything to do with jazz today, but it has absofuckinglutely nothing to do with jazz as I've known it. Full speed ahead, Captain Clown. Do The Google:

Walter Johnson Night Train Lane Choo Choo Coleman

Yeah, Cueto looked like he had pulled it together in his previous start. This one, not so much. Ouch. I do like how the Royals still put up some runs in this game, you gotta think that with good pitching, they can win two more.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I like Ronnie Laws just fine.

Listening to the Royals/Jays game on KC radio via MLB AtBat...is this Denny Matthews I'm hearing? Like him! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denny_Matthews

It's not an aversion, it's just that, like one of my buddies says, you can almost literally tell what note and what chord is coming next. Not that there's not a lot of music like that, classical or otherwise, it's just that...if the light goes off, it'll go off, and if it doesn't...there's a world of stuff to get to, literally a world of it. Past, present, and future. I know it's there, it knows I'm here. If we're meant to engage, we will. If not, Mozart will certainly survive without my enthusiasm. But your concern for finding a cure is very touching...maybe there's a telethon in the works...Mozart Shunning = The New MS, Give Until It Hurts, Do It For Larry's Kids!

Saul Goode. Like many, there's the legacy of culture-shaming in the classical world, and I'm sensitive to it, because I've ran into a few people who chuckle about a firmly entrenched "jazz guy" like me "going classical on us now, eh?" as a local peer put it, like it's a total starting over in every aspect of music, and I'm like, no not really, expansion, yes, broadening, yes, but all of a sudden I have no idea about music? You flatter yorselves, classical snobs, music ends up being music, period. The particulars do variare, hell, that' why it's been fun getting into this. But past that, music is music, playing is playing, and emotion is emotion. Anyway, thank you for having the sensitivity of your clarification. Appreciate it!

That would be Don Heckman, then, correct? Wonder what group that was with Larry Coryell? I don't think it's The Free Sprits.

Mine too. But if the trip you are on is 'Beethoven's 5th' then there's a route the bus has to take, give or take a few minor diversions based on what version of the score is being used, what instrumentation etc...but the journey is more or less set. Yes, I'm sure we've all been there - that performance or that recording didn't connect but I'm sure there's more to the music. I hate to think how many copies of the Sibelius symphonies I have. My first love back in the early 70s in cheapo Anthony Collins mono re-issues. When I could afford to buy more records I started to replace them with more recent recordings. But, something was missing...my idea of Sibelius had been set by Collins and everything else seemed faintly wrong. Nothing more so than the Third where everyone played the middle movement too slow. Except... I now know that it was Collins playing the middle movement too fast! And when I bought a CD of the Collins recordings they didn't sound at all like I remembered them...in fact I get the impression his interpretations were highly idiosyncratic. Classical music is often presented as this ocean of music in which there are shinning nuggets performed by great maestros whose genius just leaps out at you over the also rans. And having been told we're going to hear genius, we hear genius and the myth rolls on. As always, I think context is all. Maybe the ASMF were too polished when you heard them....or, maybe the context you were listening from just did not connect with what they were doing. I have never got Verdi. It just sounds like everything I find off-putting in opera. Does that mean there is something wrong with Verdi? Or something wrong with me? Given the huge pleasure Verdi has given over the years to millions it can't be the former yet my dislike is quite genuine. So I'd put it down to a failure of two different worlds to connect (so far...I have track record of Damascan conversions!). I'm never going to try and convince the world that Verdi is rubbish. Ah, but what if you're on the bus for Beethoven's 5th, and all they really give you is the experience of a bus ride to Beethoven's 5th? They don't actually get there, they just show you what it would be like if they DID take you there! The context for the ASMF gig was a familiar one, really, the Dallas Chamber Music Society has all of its shows in the same venue. They just did not resonate with me except in a negative way. I can't really call them "too polished", because...what does that mean, really? That you played too well? I don't know that there is such a thing in and of itself. Not really a question of "perfection" either, because A) there is no such thing in music, and B) there IS such a thing in music, but it's what happens, not what exists. I keep going back to justification...I don't think that "I'm a great player and this is great music" justifies anything, really. no, that's just a set of static preexisting conditions that exist before anything happens, nothing there that guarantees any sort of an outcome, really. Your outcome needs to be that you did play great music, and that you played it like a great play", and what "like" a great player menas...that's where it gets tricky, that's where the buying and selling of image and conferred importance/greatness/whatever start happening. All I can say about that is that all I ask is that you as a performer engage me in what you are doing at that moment. Give me a reason to leave out of there feeling taht when you played Sonata For Whatever, that we were both IN Sonata For Whatever, not that you were playing it and I was in a seat watching you play it, you know, I really can do that at home. ASMF, really, all both my wife and myself felt (and it is so rare, I mean, SO reare, that we have the identical reaction, exactly, to anything) is that they could have been playing ANYTHING, Fugue For Greasy Bowels, whatever, and it would have just passed through the air all ladi-dadi, yes, perfectly played, always, but if Fugue For Greasy Bowels and Sonata For Whatever register the exact impression, then...what's the point of playing ANY of it, really, except to be there taking up the space so the money can change hands, all the money at stake, and all the hands there to change it. So, ok, it's obvious that, other than my money, I am not a good audience for ASMF. Looks like what they do is not what I want to hear. Did not know that going in, know it now. But I will be a good audience for the pieces they played (except Mozart, all rational thinking aside, the only bucket list of mine that includes "finally falling in love with Mozart" is in the bucket that's had the bottom fall out of it, which is not to say that, someday, who knows?, just...you know...I mean, I just bought the Brubeck Columbia Studio box set, and not even three months ago, I'd have drank poison at the notion), so...better to have heard and not enjoyed than never to have heard at all, perhaps. It's one thing to express dislike, informed or otherwise. It's quite another thing to dislike results without respect for the basic ability. Nobody or no thing is above honest criticism or gut-level dislike. But part of that honesty is respecting the ability to make the damn thing happen in the first place!

Also, with the exception of the DSO, pretty much evry "classical" concert we go to is a performer we're seeing for the first time, and even when the repertoire is familiar (which is only sometimes), it's usually my (and pretty much always her) first time to hear it live. So, we go in there, hoping to enjoy it, wanting to enjoy it. This one was no different, in fact, expectations were that we were going to be knocked out by it. Reputation, high. Hype, high. Crowd excitement, high. It just didn't happen. I have no stakes in the "class" business or bonafide-proving business. I got nothing to prove to nobody about that. I'm just a guy who's begun enjoying hearing "classical" music more than I have in the past, and who has good opportunities to catch some of it played live. And although relatively small sample size, this is the first, and so far only, time that my wife and I have both left as bored, as irritatingly and angrily bored, as this. I thought I'd ask around here to see if it was just us (and even if it was, that would just have to be ok, because, you know, no rewind buttons for real time), and it turns out,no, maybe not just us. So, ok. But all this other baggage, class warfare, snootytooty elitism, jaded bonafiders, whatever, wherever that lives, it ain't here. All we want is to leave the gig feeling like it was better to have been there than to have spent the night at home. That's it, really, that's all the is to it, we are so damn easy about this.

Well, let's see... Fact = neither my wife or myself liked the gig. No disagreement allowed there, what, you're going to try to tell us that we did? I don't think so. No, we both left out of there pretty pissed off, actually, and although you might expect that out of me, you'd never expect it out of her, she's one of these people who doesn't analyze music at all, she just knows when it sounds good and/or feels good to her. This was not a complicated program, and she did NOT feel it at all, and if you want to try to convince her that she did, go ahead, and may god have mercy on your soul. Why we didn't like it has already been explained. That's an opinion, and, ok, others sometimes/often will like what we don't. I'd hardly expect it to be otherwise. Hell, we don't always like the same thing ourselves, last year, "Perrot Lunaire " had me pumped, it had her ready to leave, like 5 minutes into it. Don't ask me what she felt by the time it was over... So, opinions, hell yeah. Mine is that if it doesn't connect, it doesn't matter how perfectly is played. And for those for whom this type of playing connects, enjoy the hell out if, pelase do, and I'll let you know next time the band comes to down, I will get you some tickets, you can have ours for that matter! Bev, your bus analogy only holds up so far as the bus has windows from out of which you see the areas through which you're navigating in a vivid and lifelike manner. Out of the windows of this bus, all we could see was a picture of the bus going through wherever it was going through. It went through a lot of places, but they all looked the same, you'd not really know what they were. All you could really see was the damn bus rolling right along. Smooth ride, sure, but the hell if I know where it was going. My map said it was going one place, my ears just said "bus". My preference is for the bus to drop you off to explore things yourself. I don't give a damn about the bus itself, I care about what's there after the bus gets there. Anyway, I've gotten in four copies of the Schubert based on recs here (there will be five when the Kremer arrives), because I know there has to be more music there than what they played. Or if you prefer, there has to be more music there that I'll respond to when played differently than they played it. So, thanks to all for their recs, and I have to assume that they were made in part because there's other bands that play the piece differently than these guys did. (and yeah, I'm gonna say "band(s)" going forth, screw it. a band is a band is a band is a noun is a band, and "band" is a word which I can easily type w/o error.)

Mort Sahl Saul of Tarsus Taurean Blacque

Curley Russell Marshall Dillon James Badge Dale

Connie Booth Emerson Boozer George Boole

Shane Cooper, Founder of DeFeete International http://www.defeet.com/ Sam Finger founder of... Robbie Rist

But how realistic is it for a piano to come out of your speakers that makes it sounds like you're beneath (or even inside) it? When does that ever happen in real life?

First thing I think of on that video and the robots is the Godley & Creme directed video of Rockit...would the Bonzos - who by all accounts had an almost Zaapa-esque theatricality to their live preentation have been impactful to them pre-10 CC? Not musical, but...a seed planted, maybe?

Just found this about what is presumably that clip: http://gingergeezer.net/Articles/articlebiggrunt.html Did not know about that book, thanks for pointing it out!