JSngry

I suspect my feelings about Wynton Marsalis are a matter of record here, but I'll put Hot House Flowers at or near the top of any "jazz with strings" date where the focus is popular song. Credit for that goes entirely to Bob Freedman, those arrangements are da' bomb, as they getting older folks used to say. Freedman writing for Grady Tate

Hoping that it and/or I evolves out of whatever it is that is triggering the Cold War-era figure skating associations. My problem, no doubt, but... I found the tempos on this one to be such that the music had a "pop" quality to it in even its darker moments...perhaps that is correct for those pieces, but I'm looking forward to hearing a different take on later works.

Found cheap thru Amazon Used...the album I have is from 1977 and not(?) a legendary conductor...there's enough variables there to give it a go, thanks.

Same orchestra, different conductor, later works, this matters, I take it? I tend to trust the Supraphon label in general when hunting around, which is how I got the one I got.

A-Ward Custom Installations http://www.awardcustominstallations.com/ Billy Ward Fats Navarro

First exposure is this: and....I dunno. Seems like there's a "there" there, but that's all that's there...pretty easy to follow (and get "satisfied") the first time around...not sure that further investment is warranted? However, the man and his work have advocates here, correct? Maybe some of them can point me towards a different end result, maybe this is not the best record and/or work? Because, yes, I enjoyed this, but otoh, it also quite often sounded like that, with a little paring down, it could be used as Cold War-era figure skating music. But I'm open to suggestion, and more preferably, esthetic elaborations as to why this might in fact not be fleshed out Cold War-era figure skating music, so please state the case(s), please!

BLUE Frog, that's right, my bad. I looked for years for that 45, thinking it was going to be a real "find" musically...turned out not so much, but the hunt was fun, and that 3 LP box looks great (what kind of paper/fabric is used for the cover?) and also provides an interesting context for listening. I think it goes "deeper" than any American compilation of the time because American Columbia was still kinda hesitant of the WayneHerbieRonTony quintet, like IASW & BB were like whew, thank god Miles is selling records again. But this set runs it straight on through. Compare it to the Columbia Greatest Hits album...

Does yours have the additional "The Little Green Frog" 45?

I don't know, but I've gotten skippy factory-manufactured CDs, as well as ones that are nearly 80 minutes in length and stop playing after 75+minutes, and I can go burn a copy on the PC, pop it into the player, and voila, perfect playback start-to-finish. These same "faulty" CDs will often play perfectly in the PC as well. This is neither common nor uncommon in terms of how often it occurs, but I'd say I've done it maybe five times in the last two years. No pattern to any of it either. Just a few days ago I had a CD with a 79:28 playing time, and it went straight through with no problems at all. If I was a guessing man, I'd start with looking at the laser and/or the laser transport as the potential variable,and then look at the discs. Although,there my be a connection to the disc itself if data is for whatever reason burned to a disc in a less that consistent fashion. One laser might be able to read it more "cleanly" than does another, and thereby sustain the play where another one fails. All I know is that it happens, Happens with factory CDs as well as home burns from MP3s. In the latter case, the tendency is to blame the blanks, but...I don't know. No matter what it is, it's obviously a process than cannot be replicated with a 100% success rate.

RIP

That's the one where Cannonball sits in on the last cut, correct? That's a hot jam!

RIP Radio Shack: Or even better, add Ginger, add Mary Ann, short term sacrifice, long term gain.

Ok, technicality - Ray Charles did not write "Ruby". Also not sure if everybody's getting paid who could/should get paid, but if they got the tape from the source itself, I'm sure that somebody in the chain got paid, so conscience will be, if not clear, then at leasttranslucent if/when actually bought. This Forrest Westbrook dude had an album on Revaltion which I was not aware of until now: http://www.discogs.com/Forrest-Westbrook-Jim-West-Paul-Ruhland-Dick-Wilson-This-Is-Their-Time-Oh-Yes/release/5441490 Has anybody heard it? Revelation had its quirks, but putting out bullshit was not one of them. In fact, didn't they put out a later/latter Carmel Jones album themselves? Indeed they did! http://www.discogs.com/Carmell-Jones-Returns/release/5619454 So, all things considered...interesting!

A place in Tulsa called The Blue Onion., As I remember it, they booked one jazz band a month. The Sam Rivers/Dave Holland/Barry Altschul Trio opened the place (nobody I knew heard about it until after it happened), then Woody played there, then the "alternative" Denton Big Band that I was in called The Kosmic Jazz Orchestra played there, and then the place went broke. Or maybe the place went broke while we were playing there. The leader called everybody on Monday telling them not to cash the checks, that they were gonna bounce. But I had cashed mine at Kroger firstt hing Sunday AM after we got back. Apparently, I was the only one who had done so because I was the only one (other than the leader himself) who was flatass broke. I offered to give the guy his bread back, but he said, no, keep it, but also keep it to yourself, because if the other guys find out, they'll all want cash, and he himself did not have that kind of money. Awkward moment for everybody, indeed, but the guy did right by me when he would have been completely justified in going the other way with it. Cat's name was Paul Holderbaum, real old-school "arranger/copyist" cat in terms of skill set and craft application (and work ethic), but very forward looking in terms of what to do with it He built the band around like-minded soloists and rhythm sections. and got 1:00-ish type players for lead and section roles so the charts would speak correctly, that's the type of voicings he was writing, and that's the kind of players he needed for that.. I recall one weeknight evening, we were sitting around getting high and playing poker with Nefertiti playing (god, to have that kind of free time again...), and he said during "Pinocchio" I think it was, "this is gonna be like bebop pretty soon. Instead of everybody playing Bird licks, everybody's gonna play Wayne licks. I'm gonna have the big band for that". Dude put all his time and money into getting demo tapes of his charts made and having them available in printed rather than manuscript for, everything getting ready. This was, like 77-78, nobody had yet heard of Wynton and The Young Lions and all that. Not at all "alternative" like the original AACM Big band was, obviously but..time/place, all that, maybe you had to be there. It was interesting. I do know that a lot of the 1:00 players got a strong draft from "the department" for playing in the band, but this was the same time that Bob Belden was really stepping up his game, and Bob was in the band, so, there was a grimmacing acceptance accorded the goings on. I see Paul's still making a living in the music industry http://www.playbillvault.com/Person/Detail/1380/Paul-Holderbaumso if anybody here knows the guy, tell him I say hi and send full props his way.

Not glowing in the dark yet, but also not spoiled yet either. I wanting to throw it out before it grows legs or something. Seriously. Then again, always being in the back of the icebox might have something to do with it?

Schwarz was one of those guys known to be pretty much by name only from back in the day...all the trumpet majors knew the name and dropped it (appropriately, as it turns out). I see that his accomplishments began early (I think he was under 25 in 1972) and have both continued and broadened. Definitely somebody I plan on looking into further, especially as a trumpet player. Nonesuch was such a fun label back then. The stuff I'm just now getting around to is as much fun as the stuff I did get around to, sometimes more so!

Well, if you like that quote, you may well like this record at least as much!

Damn, he lived right here in Plano...all we hear about is Deion Sanders...RIP.

Lou Grassi Ruby Begonia Jimmy Garrison

Listened to this 1972 Nonesuch lp yesterday from the "New" angle and found it "interesting". Listened to it today from the "Trumpet" angle and got kinda "HOLY SHIT" about it. This passage from the liners is interesting, I think, from all kinds of angles (bold added): Other than a 1955 piece by Peter Maxwell Davies that is about "normal" notes and conventions of line, everything else on here is, in one form another, based on timbre first, everything else second. One piece is solo, the other for trumpet & tape. What makes it such a fascinating listen is that Schwarz's virtuosity in the "classical" sense is not sacrificed even a whit. If anything, it comes to the fore more playing this kind of "new music" than it does in "traditional" "classical". Of course, in jazz, we've had Lester Bowie, Bill Dixon, Olu Dara, a.o. working the trumpet like this, and their antecedents go back to the probable beginning of the music (and probably even before that, before there were trumpets, if you cut to the chase about it), and their goal was most likely not to use timbre as a "compositional statement", more like a personal statement, which is a whole 'nother thing. At least it is until one begins thinking of "art", after which "personal" begins expanding into "personal reality as found in a broader context", and even sometimes becomes "objective statement apart from personal realities", which to me gets on a slippery slope towards a nihilism of vanity (the really philosophy savvy will no doubt know the right name for that, whatever it is), a sort of I don't exist, therefore I am ALL that exists affirmation of vacuity that is really, I think, more trouble - and less use - than it's worth. To anybody. Anyway...the playing on this album is not any of that. This guy is feeling this music, I think. There's nothing glib or effect-ish going on (compare the ongoing musicality of these performances to, say, Wynton's playing on something like The Magic Hour, where the effects don't sound like they're about the music, the sound like they're about the effects of the music...and I think that Schwarz & Marsalis both had a teacher in common,, so...GIGO proven again? And I don't mean to pick on Wynton, but dammit, he does it SO frequently, and he's such a damn fine superior trumpet player and such a damn poor musician...sigh...). Schwarz' attention to the finer points of phrasing, of line, of time, in even the most abstract statements of "sound" are about as zoned-in as you could want. Above all else, this is really, really good trumpet playing. I think it leaves the music itself with more meat on its bones than it probably went on the stand with, if you know what I mean. And that gives it something in common with so much jazz - you leave it better than you found it. So, if you like to listen to sound as sound (and so many people do, that seems to have been an overall esthetic trend in cultures both "serious" and "popular" for a good long while now (and in some cultures, seemingly eternally). here is a record to check out.

No San Antonio this weekend for me either. Multiple cars troubles and other unpleasantries have derailed those plans. Kinda feel like I'm getting screwed, too, like this was something I needed to be at, PLANNED on being at, for, like, months, each day seems totally fine, but life got in the way again and I don't know how to be the kind of asshole that tells life to go fuck itself, that I'm going there anyway, with or without a car, and wife can stay home and take care of the car repairs (and our daughter's repairs out in Anaheim too), fuck it I'm going to see Randy Weston...a long time ago I could be that kind of an asshole, see you when I see you, and out he door. Cost a lady her job one time going to Oklahoma to see Woody Shaw instead of doing night porter gig at Denton Burger King, surprise inspection the next day, oops, manager (and obtw, single mom manger at that) gets reamed out in person AND fired later in the day.

This one, I presume? http://www.gmrecordings.com/gm2078.htm

Mahler 3 at the DSO tonight. About halfway through the first movement it dawned on me that I had yet to hear an uninterrupted (by something) full performance of this piece, so I told my bowels and my bladder to STFU until told otherwise. Fortunately, they heard. What a splendid experience! Heard them do Mahler 9 last year, and, even with the pretty strong differences of the "mood" of each, they were both performed with a, to me, superb sense of continuity and ensemble balance (the more "classical" music I hear, the more variations in that become noticeable, one of the treats of checking out different versions of the same piece). Nothing made "obvious", yet everything flowed, you knew where you were in even the most unpredictable moments, and when you went someplace else, you knew how you had gotten there, even in the "surprising" moments. Like, sense had already made before it was actually heard. Not that I have any real back-reference for this type of thing, I really don't, so maybe it was all "wrong", but I do know flow when I hear it, I think, and I do know when something happens to disrupt it. Plenty of the former, none of the later, and jesus those last three movements....such sweet deliberateness. The whole thing lasted about 1:45, which I take it is a tad longer than the average, but...slow tempos are my favorite if they got that flow to 'em, it ain't worth the show if it ain't got that flow! Kudos (of the fwiw variety) for Jaap van Zweden, and kudos to the band for having the occasional fleeting intonation moments and cracked notes yet not leaving the zone because of them, if anything, getting deeper into it, not gonna let this one get away. Live music, nothing like it!