JSngry

Four new, free, lo-fi downloadable cell phone recordings from a Plano living room have been added here https://soundcloud.com/summusic-3 Hey Joe (Where Ya' Goin' With That Book In Your Hand) - An improvisation inspired by some of the characters in Joe Milazzo's recent novel Crepuscule With Nellie. Inspired writing proved to inspire some playing! Joe's book is not in any way an easy read, but damn, it's a good one. Goin' Inta' TOWN In Tha' Morenin' - Originally made famous by Pee Pie Patty and The Pot Pie Plenty on their hit album "Five'll Get Ya' Ten (and Ten'll Get Ya' Twenty)..at least that's what I wrote on the lead sheet. The song was written with - and still has - lyrics, and also has a still-evolving mythology revolving around a supernaturally-inclined deep-(farthest)backwoods people who only take their children into town once in their lifetime, so it's a big deal for everybody. MAOHOUND!!! - Another compositional improvisation on the "CHOWHOUND" theme. Sometimes we play the tune "as is", sometimes we use it as a reference point for group improv. The latter is the case here. I really like improvising on a theme rather than a "song", there's so many ways to look at it that way, intervals, rhythmic motifs, harmonic pivots, all that "technical" stuff that nobody cares about. Dance Hippiechick, DANCE!!! - This one goes waaaay back to Quartet Out, but it was never commercially recorded, and besides, you know how long-lived bands can get, certain tunes become "functional" in terms of purpose, set placement, etc. Back then, it was written and performed as kind of a tongue-in-cheek (in terms of title, anyway) "Jimmy Giuffre Meets Charles Lloyd On Chico Hamilton's Bandstand" kind of "relief from the intensity" thing, and more or less stayed there, although with QO, things always ended up getting frisky in spite of intent. But I wanted to revisit the essential concept with this trio, and see if we couldn't open it up/out a little more, and I think we're doing that. I've given the responsibility for setting the mood and time to Carl with an opening solo that he can do with as he pleases. This time, he stuck his bow in his strings and started making kinda like Ysabel's Belly Dance or something, which was a complete surprise, but also allowed for a really good zone to subsequently develop. Him & Andrew are both a perpetual joy to play with, open minds, infinite patience, and an enthusiasm for playing music as music and not as a gig. That is too freakin' scarce around these parts, believe me. As a side note, for the 3.01 date, we were between snowstorms, and on the 3.31 date, I had the AC on. Life in the Texas weather, gotta love it. Or at least deal with it. Thanks in advance to anybody who takes the time to listen/download/conversate, etc. The recordings are lo-fi indeed, but I think the music is worth at least twice what I'm asking you to pay for it.

Hmmmm....I was able to add it - the CD - to my cart just now...where do you run up against the "Sold Out" notice? fwiw, a buddy of mine got the DL, and it comes with liners/credits/etc. Sparse, but actually more "presence" than in the CD package.

Take a virtual tour of Squidco! https://www.google.com/maps/@34.246781,-77.945755,3a,90y,282h,64.2t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sf1MXlLQajRUAAAQWnaqWLg!2e0!3e2!6m1!1e1?hl=en-US

Rouse/Iscariot - significantly more style than substance in the music itself, although a timpanist beat the holy living shit out of a tympani with a wooden anvil the size of a ship;s anchor, and although the DSO executed flawlessly, and although the composition itself is chock full of meaningful signifiers as to what the music is telling us, I most respectfully call bullshit, because all that ends up being is soundtrack music with a showy pedigree. To perpetuate a cliche, there is not "there" there, no core. I can hear people saying "I guess I just don't like that kind of thing"...well, guess what, I DO like that kind of thing, but I don't like THAT thing. But who gets to go to a gig to hear enough of that thing of a thing to be able to recognize the difference, or even that there IS a difference? A piece that's supposed to be "about" personal betrayal, hell, this is America, we deal with deep personal betray every damn day we wake up, you know, what did Jimmy Ruffin say, "as I walk this LAND of broken dreams". right? It's not a house, it's not a street, it's not a region, hell, it's the whole fucking LAND that is fueled by betrayal, glimmerous spots of right being where you come in to get out of the rain for a little bit, not where you move in and settle down, It's going to take more than slow somber clusters and predictable dynamic arcs and "clever" harmonic juxtapositions to make me feel like why I am I hearing this without a movie being shown, and even then, I don't like movies all that much, especially he ones with acting, and what. this guy is COMPOSER IN RESIDENCE at the NY Phil? Well, I'm sure that's an apolitical process free of agenda. and every time I see/hear Iscariot the "new masterpiece"game is always getting pimped around in some form or fashion, like THIS IS THE TITLE THIS IS THE MUSIC HOW DO YOU NOT FEEL CRUSHED!!!!!!, but me, I remain staunchly unconvinced, not just of programmatic effectiveness, hell, like I said, America RUNS on betrayal, why is there a need for po(o)rtrayal but of the music itself,. Not buying any of that, any of it. Ohlsson playing Beethoven, otoh....interesting. It looked boring, felt a little boring, actually, but this might well have been one of the...clearer elucidations of the piece I've heard, one that got me to thinking how Beethoven wrote this(and much of his earlier work) to play himself, and, frankly, with the hope that his performances would be buzz-worthy enough to sell sheet music Classic Pre-Record Business Record Business!. So I'm listening to Ohlsson running all these scales and arpeggios just as clean fast and carefree and could be done, and I'm thinking to myself, damn, this guy is blase, and then it hit me, no, wait, those would have been Beethoven himself playing this and Beethoven was doing the dazzle to sell the charts, and then *very soon, in fact) the music started doing the off-the-wall-harmonic sleight of ear things that Beethoven was DO adept at, and I almost started LOL-ing about imagining Beethoven himself composing this, saying do we really need more of this predictable fluff, we need to fuck with this a little but fatten it up a little bit, wake everybody up, So all these little things start happening, but remember, composer performs the debut, so it should be a tease, not an assault, we want people to be challenged, like how you want a woman to be at once put off by your impudence, yet intrigued by your confidence, and yeah, you know you got THAT one and... drift back to Ohlsson, and he's playing nothing to counter my image, but interestingly enough, he;s not presenting ANY alternative either. He's just playing with perfect execution and letting the music create its own image, and unlike the Rouse piece which preceded it, Beethoven's music has enough meat, spine, and core that that is all you really have to do - just ensure that you let it speak clearly and unambiguously, sometimes I think you can subtract from it by adding too much "interpretation", that;'s a fine line to walk, and with that thought, it became evident to me that Mr. Ohlsson had chosen that as his line to walk - that his interpretation was simple play the music, all the music, that Beethoven had written, and let you figure out where the places were when Beethoven must have been laughing impishly to himself for being the crowd pleaser, the places where he was laughing a little devilishly for being such a crowd teaser, and the places where he was laughing at the simple fact that he was one baaaaaad motherfucker, period, which is ultimately the only laugh there is when it comes to Beethoven, Mendelsson was "delightful", of course, not dissimilar at all to a B-Grade Red Garland record...you could hear it 100 times and not get tired of it, but you could also hear any other number of things of its ilk, and notice the difference only if you were REALLY paying attention, and, c'mon now, would you be? It was a nice night out. Good weather, good music, "critical thoughts" aside, I'm not so jaded (yet) that I don't enjoy a nice night out with my wife. Besides, seeing that man hit that timpani with that MONSTER beater, I swear to god, WHOA!

I think the avant-garde done been in the city of jazz for a fair bit of a while now.

At the Meyerson this evening: This will be my first time hearing the DSO tackling something composed past 1930 or so, definitely my first time hearing them play something by a still-living composer. My exposure to Rouse's work has to this point not induced too much more of a reaction than a few indifferent shrugs of shoulders, but on the stage is like in the playoffs, anything can happen! Otherwise, just looking for a nice night out, fully expecting to have one.

From perusing their website & other catalog, and from my discussions with them regarding my order, it seems to me to be a basic musician-operated label. If their business model skews towards downloads over hard copies, well. maybe they're out in front in that regard, maybe not. Time will tell. Wal-Mart treats their customers well too, btw.

That's David Williams.

CD still listed as available here: http://systemdialingrecords.com/market/albums/new-vocabulary/ I like people who handle their business rather than the other way around. LP is not listed, btw, so DMG's claim of being "unable to convince" them to send them more rings hollow, smells like bullshit, and remind me again, this is the place that openly sells self-produced CDRs of OOP items, correct? OTOH - a VERY indie label controlling costs/staying alive, hi-quality DLs available until the cows DON'T come home, hard copies increasingly becoming niche-market, you had your chance to get an LP, looks like you still do a CD, DMG, poor pitiful DMG, I think not, I'm calling bullshit, don't bother reversing the charges, this one's on me. If there's one thing you can ALWAYS count on, it's that sales loves to sell shit they don't yet have and then bullyscareshame production into delivering it - and THEN blame production when they have to back down even a little. If I had a dollar for every time I've seen that happen, I could retire, at least for a week or so.

I have a theory that salespeople love to sell things they can't yet deliver and then bullyscareshame production into delivering...no, that's not a theory, that's real life experience.

Not exactly well-versed in her output, but the one thing I remember as being almost obnoxiously like this is a disc of her playing some Shostakovich thing for piano and brass quintet(?) and I recall getting really pissed off, not just because the music itself was so slight, but because she was going out of her way to con me into thinking otherwise, and, please, don't do that. OTOH, she's ahd a long career, and the earlier things of hers that I've heard have really worked in that "heroic" way that was "how you did it" then, and hey, can't fault a winner for winning when they play the game the way it's expected to be played, ya' know? I could handle a little more vulnerability/introspection/whatever myself, but I was not now nor ever will be the audience that "matters" for this stuff. But that Shostakovich thing, gotDAMN did I want to smack me some innocent bystanders the longer I listened to that thing.

It was for me as well until I adjusted my Adobe Flash settings.

The Yusef/Ricky Ford album is not for people who demand obvious resolutions.

I like the logo. I like to fish, too, but do not have time for it, and haven't for a few decades now. But, yeah, Hooks, I get it now!

He's a little un-zone-y for my tastes. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's not.

Hooks? What's the genesis of that name?

YAL...Mosaic...anybody?

Looks to be about a 6 hour drive. http://www.travelmath.com/drive-distance/from/Opelousas,+LA/to/Austin,+TX

Now Orleans-ish to Austin via Houston is not a killer drive, at least not if you got Road Dog chops, which of course not everybody does, just some freaks do. But if you're one of those freaks,, hey.

Different world... But nevertheless, never underestimate the value that one teacher can bring to an individual, a community, a world. If that list were even 1/10th of what it is (and I suspect it is even longer when dug deeper), that would be impressive as hell. As it is...damn.

Just found this one, a posthumously released live release apparently, although not Dewey and Marshall together.. Hello!

What's these Michel Benita thing? They're gonna be a tough to find, right? Anybody heard David Shea's Shock Corridor? That's another one I've missed. Michael Bocian, Reverence? Motian's Trioism, think I missed that one too, not sure how. Is Dewey on all of it? Not understanding how the hell I missed the Matt Wison record. 1996? I should have been all over that one then. Hmmm.

Heard Matt Wilson's 1996 as wave follows wave on Pandora the other day, said damn, that sounds like Dewey, found out that it was, and ordered ASAP. Sweet album. I was kinda pissed because I'd like to think that I'd been pretty diligent about all the Dewey sideman dates, especially the later ones where he'd turn up on some out of the way labels and places relative to what/where what you'd think would be his "usual". So please - anything that you think meets those criteria, please mention here. Hoping to not find anything else I had missed, unless of course, I really have missed it.