JSngry

Listen to Hank Jones' comp on Dexter's Ca' Purange side. Not at all a great Dexter record, but the chords that Hank plays are full of surprises if you're thinking of him as an updated Teddy Wilson.

Robert Urich Blossom Dearie Peter Fonda

Four People I've Never Heard Of Three People To Be Named In The Next Post Two Sleepy People

Joint Chiefs Of Staff Paul Smoker Gene Krupa

Mom's Apple Pie The Meat Puppets Corey Dripps

I'm right there with you, having taken a swan dive from the high platform into "classical" (big umbrella) music just the past couple of years, except that you have the advantage or perspective of a practicing musician, and all that brings to the table. Bold added, because that's true but only up to a point. It works on some aspects of the music, but for things interpretational, there's a real "shock" I still get from live classical. The way I've played music, there has been one set of "right" for things like timbre, attack, blend, and, especially, pitch (not even going to deal with volume here, that's a bigger thing than all of us). The music I've worked the most in/on has always spoke in terms where our goals coalesced into one esthetic about performance practices/goals/ideals, and performers in these musics have an altogether different esthetic about stuff like that. The idea of hearing so many notes played so "perfectly" in tune...if you've spent your time developing a playing voice that embraces "roughness" and pitch that is purposely fractional and frictional, pitches that go between the lines and rhythms that do the same, to hear this music - meaty music indeed -executed live with an entirely different esthetic, is very much a bucket of cold water to the face, albeit an immensely pleasurable one. Overtones working in an entirely different way than in "our" music. With strings, and all the possible outcomes there, wow...it's an inspiration to hear a whole other set up possibilities than the ones in your own imagination coming to life just a few feet away, ya' know? I've known classical player to get that from jazz, no good reason at all for it not to go the other way as well. Meaningful takeaway - one can either fret about different techniques being put to different uses, or one can be invigorated by different techniques being put to the same core use - to communicate an idea in its own language as clearly and effectively as possible. And of course, the better the idea, the better technique/execution it deserves. And this - the most bottom line of bottom lines - hearing great musicians getting involved in playing great music there on the stage/bandstand/wherever, confronting it, and doing their damnedest to make it work as well as it can be made to work (and not willing to settle for where that is), that's about as big a vicarious thrill as life has to offer...and if you allow yourself to get into the music as its happening, it's anything but vicarious. I've yet to come home from one of these concerts not pumped up and unable to get to sleep at my regular hour. Even an excellent but perfunctory DSO set stirs the life in me.

http://factory92.eu/wsf92/unreleased-conny-plank-session-with-duke-ellington/?hc_location=ufi am I believing this? Well, there's Paul, so I guess I am.

Stella - now so easy a nine year old can do it.

The Dohnányi piece was a very welcome and enjoyable surprise. The program notes led off making a big deal about how it was a tonal piece in a time where atonality was becoming all the rage, comparing it to Gershwin's Preludes as an example of a young man of that time looking over his shoulder, and I'm thinking, oh shit, not that, but no, fears unfounded. Tonal, yes, but stretchily so (very) and an earthy rhythmic muscularity, that, as a deeper reading of those same program notes pointed out, got pretty damn involved. Also heard a lot of thematic coherence/overlap/references/whatever between the three movements. A very rewarding listen, at least as truly rewarding as a real-time first hearing of something like this can be..."pleasing" might be a more accurate word, in the non-glib sense. The Shostakovich...not so much. I heard the notes, they all fit together, but I just didn't feel any "there" there, as they say. Moms/Clem made the comment here a while back to the effect that so much of Shostakovich's music is startling in that once you got over how good it sounds, there's really not that much to it, and at the time I though that was a bit snide/too easy, but I'll call bullshit on Our Man In Provocation when I think there's a call to be made, and the more I listen to Shostakovich, the less near the phone is, if you know what I mean. Exceptions, of course, but not here. And then, for the opener, there was Beethoven. Trite times call for trite people, so let me be one and summarize my feelings about Beethoven in as tritely and accurately was as I can muster - THAT guy! I mean geez, some music is great, very little music is Great, and even less is Great Music, but Beethoven? Hell yeah, Beethoven - THAT guy! When you know what's coming and it still surprises you intellectually and emotionally...yeah. I really don't know enough to make any meaningful "world-specific" comments about Modigliani themselves, but some personal impressions, nevertheless. First, perhaps most obviously, is that geez these guys are young (or young looking). Fashionable stubble on boyish faces in hipster allblack with plentiful hair up on top, and, I'm willing to wager, some quartet face-chorography being thrown out there, but they could have worked that angle a lot more than they did. Musically, they seemed to have a darker timbral quality than some of the other quartets I've heard, but that might just be an impression, not a reality. What I do know is that their blend was mesmerizing, just enough lead line to provide direction, but the inner parts very, very much given a full hearing just underneath the top. There were some pretty interesting intonational choices made in some exposed parts as well as at key ensemble points as well. I remembered the first really serious classical player I hung out with once I had gotten out of school (aka an ADULT player) telling me, "Classical players play out of tune ALL the time. But it's not always when you think they are!" She's dead now, bless her, but those words have lived on...like Ornette famously said, sharp in tune/flat in tune, etc...it works everywhere where things need to be real, I think. Also, what I always "knew" but had genuinely underlooked was the almost infinite variety of coloristic shadings that are available to string players through bowing techniques. It makes this tenor player jealous, actually. This season of attending chamber music concerts, hearing all that up close and personal, has really head-snapped me more than a few times, and tonight was certainly no exception. There were points in the 3rd movement of the Dohnányi where the violist, and then the 2nd violin took on a eerily uncanny flute sound, I mean played on a record as in-and-out background music, you may very well think it WAS a flute. Brenda said she heard an oboe once or twice in the same movement, and I didn't hear that, but my wife has significantly better ears than she gives herself credit for, and sometimes I'm so busy trying to hear everything all at once that I end up hearing nothing due to overload, so very well could have been that. Anyway, good stuff. Last thing, about the youthfulness of this quartet - the DCMS season opened with the Takács Quartet, and that was a...weighty experience. Veteran players who have lived through enough music long enough to have made their decisions, true interpretations. Modigliani did not even attempt to deliver that type of performance, they would have had to have gone Show Biz to even attempt the illusion, I think. What they did do, and which was every bit as effective, and to my mind, meaningful, was to take a sober approach to the music, to let it speak for itself, and to be open to whatever revelations that might come at any given time. There felt like there was still a high ceiling for them as far as discovery, and I mean that in the exciting way, not the dismissive way. At least that's how it felt, that this was in no way going to be their final take on these pieces. They were relaxed, expert, confident, but in no way locked up. The encore was a quartet arrangement of the Polka from Shostakovich's the Age Of Gold. It was effective, and it was concise. Again, just impressions, in no way a critique. I don't know anywhere near enough about this world to even begin to "critique" anything. But at some level, performance practices and cultural background aside, music is music, and it is from that perspective that I speak, hopefully not in total ignorance. I will say this with absolute confidence though - live music and recorded music are two wholly different experiences, not just sonically, but environmentally, the whole "in the moment" thing is REAL, and finally figuring out that this applies to classical music, especially chamber music, as well as to jazz (or what used to be jazz used to be) is a figuring out it has taken me waaaaay to long to get to.

As much as we'd both surely like this to be... http://beachpackagingdesign.com/boxvox/donald-deskeys-odorono-jar And still to this day: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Odorono-Powder-Fresh-Antitranspirante-Y-Desodorante-2.5-fl-oz/10850105 What a beautifully named product. The emphasis on calamity is so good. For that reason alone, you might enjoy The Who Sell Out, if you've not already done so. Not too often that I steadfastly recommend a 60s rock album for a nostalgia-free (as can be) a sustained/perfect balance between attitude and music and lyrics and performance, but this one, yeah, I do. All the other Who records in the world, YMMV, understood, mine definitely do (especially on the ones I haven't been motivated to listen to), but this one, yeah. But that's just me.

As much as we'd both surely like this to be... http://beachpackagingdesign.com/boxvox/donald-deskeys-odorono-jar And still to this day: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Odorono-Powder-Fresh-Antitranspirante-Y-Desodorante-2.5-fl-oz/10850105

As will I, as I'm not yet familiar with his work. Becoming less enamored with Shostakovitch as time goes by, but not yet disillusioned. And Beethoven...the only time I've not had ears for Beethoven was that time from before I heard him for the first time, and that's been a bit of a while now. Should be a nice evening out, looking forward to it. Also looking forward to this on Friday evening: http://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/engage/event?id=149&nomo=1 Music from Yellow Barn: Works for String Quartet and Percussion by Bach, Beethoven, Berio, Rzewski, Tan Dun, and Wood Percussionist Ian Rosenbaum and the Parker String Quartet And then this on May 20: Music on the Brink of War Music From Yellow Barn: Pierrot Lunaire with Soprano Lucy Shelton and Songs of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht with Actors Walter Van Dyk and Liza Sadovy At a mere $20 a ticket, Soundings is by far the best non-local-artist classical concert value in town. That both players and concepts continue to be as top-shelf as they are makes it an almost criminal bargain...so...jail me!

Well, shit. RIP, and thanks for leaving things better (if not always "nicer") than you found them.

Hey, different strokes, saul goode, etc. What I personally like about HBO Go is getting in there and just randomly browsing for, and then finding some archival shit that I had either forgotten about or never even knew about in the first place. Especially the comedy stuff. There was a half-hour Dave Chapelle thing from before he hit it big that I was totally unaware of, and which I found a very interesting view. As per your preferences, no, not gonna be for everybody, the HBO Go thing. But people who might like it should be aware that if you have a Roku and a HBO subscription, it's yours for the taking, no additional charges involved. Just add it to your channels and get busy!

The CD player question was "answered" (more accurately, "addressed", since the question as asked was meaningless, as would be any specific answer to it), as asked, and fully. Your assumption that presupposes a translation of a particular nature by two parties also of a particular nature, neither of which was either referred to in the asking or relevant to the answer of the question as asked. And yes, if I'm dumb enough to pay $50 to some crackhead for a broken ass Discman from 1998 that's got, like one spin left in it, and if I then go pay $500 for a fresh out the box "known quantity" CD player from a reputable dealer, that's pretty likely to be more or less 10X better a deal in ALL kinds of ways. But...that was not what you asked. If the same crackhead comes up to me and offers me the straight out the box $500 player for $50 and what I got at home is a $500 POS that I got snookered into buying, then hell yeah, the $50 player, please. and, please, let's not pretend that people don't buy hot audio equipment from crackheads. A fine point hinging on tangential details outside, perhaps, of your normative expectations (or mine), of course, and of course the question was asked with an expectation of a mutually similar experiential frame of reference, but...did somebody say "science"? Yes, I believe somebody did. So, yes, the CD player question has been addressed. Q.E.D. What has not been addressed are my questions about the potential long term effect of various real psycho-accoustic experiences. A request for information based on real science based on real phenomena. So we know one way or the other? Is anybody asking/considering? What, exactly? What has been offered in its stead is more anger directed at audiophillia. Emotion based in real marketing based on...who knows what. But definitely not using one answer to build another question, instead using one answer to build a wall of Certainty. Meaning, I will assume, that you have no answers to what I am asking, and, most assuredly, I have no interest in the broken record as a response to everything approach. But apparently, looking for real answers to real phenomena lasting past an immediate window of exposure = "faith", and looking to justify rage on the basis of a wide collection of wide but shallow collection of data (and apparently dismissing/ignoring anything that suggests a more nuanced reality) = "science". And, apparently, a question addressed is a question avoided. Huh. How 'bout that. So, no conversation here, the floor is yours, as is the ceiling, both of which I'm sure have been clearly marked for your listening and ranting pleasure.

HBO Go has both parts, any time you want it. If you have a Roku 2 and a HBO subscription, you can get it at no charge. They have a pretty deep library of HBO content too, archival as well as recent.

Ah, taste the noise! I believe there was a thread here not too long ago that showed results that a certain, small-ish percentage of participants in one of those lab coat things COULD consistently differentiate between higher res samples and lower res. So what are they, freaks of nature? If so kill them freaks, they fuck up our truth. And we do know that the overtone series DOES go beyond the range of audibility, just as sound frequencies can dip into the sub audible range. If you can't hear it, does that meant it's still not real? No it does not mean that. It's very real. It exists. It's just not easily/noticeably "heard", and past certain points either way, it's definitely not "heard". But is it still there. Of course it is. Science shows it to be. Not "faith", science. So tell me this - there are vibrations happening, and bodies in the way of them. Do those bodies just kill those vibrations, go away sound waves, drop dead? Is that the way science works? If these super-/sub-audible frequencies don't get blocked by our Brick-Eared bodies, what happens to them? And can- CAN - that have some extra-audiblity effect on our perception of what we "hear". Now, this, I do not know. Do you? This would be science after all. I also wonder - wonder, not claim - if a parallel situation exists with the spectrum of light waves, more vibrations for the body to process, Are we not already using different light spectrums for certain "behavioral control" ends? Not necessarily anything insidious, just a recognition that the brain/body processes different spectrums differently. If you got the science for any of this, I'd seriously like to see/explore it. But if not, then you're not really addressing the issue to its fullest, I'd say, in which case...noise. Low ceiling noise. I'll address the CD player question right now: I don't know. What did I pay $50 for and what did I pay $500 for? You can pay anything for anything if you know where to look, if you know what I mean. So the question as posited has no meaning. "Sounds" good, though!

It's been proven that "it" exists. What's also been proven is that not "everybody" can hear it, especially on the first time/a one-time hearing. What's not been proven, and may not ever be (because who's got time for it?) is that long term listening to music, especially of repeated performances, can - not necessarily must, but can - result in a more refined processing of all the stimuli present. Not just what's "on the paper" but also what's, literally, in the air. And - can/does this refined perception then be carried over to new exposures? If it can (and surely it can, see again how artists refine their tone (or, visually, palate), then any serious discussion of "audio" begins there, not with some stat sheet rattled about like industrial paragons of enforced mediocrity use to keep expectations down because the money's in providing expectations already met, not fostering potentials that may or may not be realistic. Although if in the audio game, that would seem to be the game, so this would seem to be the anti-audio game, but its not, it's the anti develop your ear game. You can only go so far and then stop it, you're deluding yourself, nothing there, COME DOWN FROM THERE. All of which has nothing do to with music. It's like when somebody tells me they love watching baseball on hi-def and yeah, sure, who doesn't, and then they start referring to runs as "points and fly outs as "hits" and you realize they're not really enjoying baseball on hi-def, they're just enjoying a higher quality of pretty colors and shapes moving around in the shape of a baseball game. Big difference. So, either you're looking to poke/prod Lon about his contentions (how is that not trolling, btw?) or else you're just making noise about statistics. Either way, how are you going to hear through somebody else's ears, and why does it bother you what they think they're hearing inside them, and, really, are you David Horowitz or somebody that gets upset where people spend their money? Did a hi-fi dealer run steal your girl when you were 22 or something like that and now you're sworn to revenge? Now, if somebody tells me that they can't hear the form in a late Coltrane piece, well, we can talk about that, because I can show you where it is, that's objective. Here's the notes, here's the shapes, here's how they end up fitting together. Form. Whether you "hear" it or not, hey, not my worry, and whether you FEEL it or not, none of my business. Just don't be making all that "just a bunch of noise" noise, because unless you're deaf, EVERYTHING has the potential to be just a bunch of noise if you don't have the ability to process it. And that ability obviously can be developed. But if a dude tells me that he likes one system over another because it's more "musical", hell, I know what that means in general, because I have my own sense of "musical" about things in general, and it's not static, it keeps developing, and one day's random notes may well be next month's sublime construction, and then back again and still back again yet again. But am I going to demand statistical "proof" as to what that "means"? Hell no, because in the first place, I don't care, I got my own music to listen to in my own way, in the second place, hey, follow your bliss, it ain't really none of my business, and in the third place, ok, we ARE playing with perceptions here, and there's a lot of factors besides simple statistics and blind tests. And in the fourth - and most important - place - IT'S NOT AN OBJECTIVE CLAIM BEING MADE. It's a purely subjective, personal observation being shared. The only really objective concern about recorded music should be is it all there as best/completely as possible, and that's a game for all those type of lab coat guys who used to write columns in Stereo Review and all that, TASTE the oscilloscope!. Otherwise, it's yours to do with what you want, and if you're one of the relative few who really can get to hear all that's there, then beautiful, that's something to be thankful for. and if you're not, your ear can still grow. And if you're one of those whose ear can't/won't grow, hell, I don't know....throw statistics around, maybe. And what nobody is talking about yet is that sound is vibration, and the human body (including the brain) receives & processes vibrations in a lot of different ways. The human body (also including the brain) also has a remarkable ability to evolve along "use it or lose it" lines as well, and although not an immediate concern, "dumbing down" source sounds is not an evolutionary game I'd undertake just to score some points in a pissing contest. We're already doing that with food, and...hmmmm.

Music of Beethoven, Shostakovich & Dohnányi with the Modigliani Quartet Monday, April 20 at 8pm Caruth Auditorium, SMU 6101 Bishop Boulevard, Dallas 75275 Beethoven String Quartet Op. 18, No. 4 in C minor . Shostakovich String Quartet No. 1 Dohnányi String Quartet in A minor

No, HBO Go. It's on my Roku and can be had on your mobile device if you want to be one of these new fangled cord-cutters. http://www.hbogo.com/ I looked last night, and both parts are on there. Watched the first part ;last night. Nice show.

Sure. Now, a question. You have a $50 CD player, and a $500 CD player. Which one sounds better? Price tags have a rather insidious way of "informing" our perception. If I had as much money sunk into my systems as Lon does into his, yeah, I'd be convinced they wash my balls while I sleep at night. And I already have MORE than enough wrapped up in my own systems. But the truth is far more mundane. The terms "mp3" and "hi-resolution audio" also create their own perceptions. The power of suggestion is at its strongest in the audio world. OK, maybe it's a half step behind religion. If that. Best part of it being that there is no need to volley hypotheticals because there are scientific tools that can proven/disprove every last bit of it. Oh, ok, now you're talking about business, not actual sound. And really, you're not "proving" anything other that what happens when one person listens to one set of tests one time. Again, business, nothing to do with developing one's ear to pay more attention, just as one has to do if one is to refine one's tone as musician, you ALWAYS are looking for the refinements (which are ALL about overtones) that most people can't hear at a casual listen but sure as hell ARE there, and if you can do it as a player, you can do it as a listener. Now if some people get delusional or projective about it, that's their business, and if you want to rant about the business end of it, that's your business, but as far as what you're saying having anything to do with the real, true, finer points of sound itself in both performance and reproduction, well, it comes off to be as a bit vulgarian at best, and fascist at worst. Rabid hobbyist trolling is not serious listening, and serious listening to "audio" is not deeper musical comprehension.

Ok, duh, that was easy to forget, but so hard to remember: http://www.plosin.com/MilesAhead/Sessions.aspx?s=560910 So, who might have made up the CBS orchestra heard on the actual broadcast? Oh, ok, that's easy to never know and oh so easier to find out: http://jazzontherecord.blogspot.com/2011/08/leonard-bernsteins-jazz-band.html TRUMPETS: Lou Oles, Bernie Glow, Al de Risi, Louis Mucci. TROMBONES: Urbie Green, poss. Frank Siracco, ? . SAXES: Danny Bank (bass), Boomie Richman (tenor), Romeo Penque (tenor and clarinet), Sam Marowitz (alto), Al Gallodoro (alto and clarinet). VIBES: Phil Kraus. PIANO: Bernie Leighton. BASS: Jack Lesberg. DRUMS: Sol Gubin. VOCALS: ? , ? . Al Gallodoro, known by name only (an then only slightly) kinda snapped my head with his clarinet playing on one of the "Sweet Sue"s, pretty boppy in phrasing if not in notes...the world used to be full of these type guys, right? Play any damn thing because if you didn't, you didn't work, or at least not like this. Personnel still not fully identified at this link, and guesses?

Discovered the other day that some (all?) of Bernstein's Omnibus shows were up on Shout TV, which I get on my Roku. So I'm thinking, hey, didn't Miles do "Sweet Sue" on that one, wasn't that the genesis of that? So, ok, there's a LOT of different playings around with of "Sweet Sue" on that show, but it's all (I would suppose) members of the CBS house orchestra (and who might they have been, anyway? some faces "look familiar"). No Miles. But, and here's where things get fuzzier, didn't Columbia release a LP called Jazz Omnibus in conjunction with this show, and isn't that where the Miles "Sweet Sue" showed up on record? Oh, I guess they did, but no, it wasn't http://www.discogs.com/Various-Jazz-Omnibus/release/1380519 I'm sure I've got this little factual minutiae stashed away in some liner notes or something somewhere, but it's easier - and more fun - to ask here. So, how did Miles come to do "Sweet Sue" of all things, was it planned for the Bernstein show or what? That's not really the best of tunes, I think, although it might well be one of the more functional.

At first look, sexy, but then...what time IS it, anyway?

Where do you go in DFW to get Record Store Day releases?