JSngry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Rich http://www.drumlessons.com/drummers/buddy-rich/ So, what does all this have to do with "jazz"? Probably nothing. But remember, we are now in the age of Fathead Is Not A Jazz Musician, so, you know, fuck jazz, let's deal with people instead. That should be less trouble than it appears to actually be, go figure, I wonder.

I'm pretty much out of the movie loop these days, Larry, but I have no reason to think other than what you say. Another thing is bugging me here, the whole "stage band" thing. Stage bands are what kids play in to keep from haivng to use the word "jazz". Big Bands, at least as originally lived were orchestras, not schoolboy indulgements. Now that true big band playing has more or less become an indulgement for writers and/or players with nonthinking better to do, I don't know that anybody who never saw the old bands in their natural social environments gets that. It's not the same thing, and Buddy Rich, no, not speaking encoded African radar messages, but still playing for a motherfucking living and loving it becuase it was in his blood so so SO much truer to "jazz" than any motherfucking stage and/jazz education silliness. That 60s Rich Band, that band was all about being badass. Don't tell me that any great musician isn't motivated be the desire to be badass. They might not use the language, but if they don't have it in their core to fucking step up and STAY standing no matter what, then...sorry, this is not the world for you. Try again somewhere else, some other time. SURVIVAL MUSIC, dig? Not rule the world, jsut survive, stay alive, pride in being here and not taking any of that for granted. Listen to this and tell me that this is music about executing some schoolboy shit to please an award contest leader or some shit. No - this is music that is not going to back down for anything or anybody. If you try to minimalize it by calling it "stage band", you are being fooled into thinking that you can will shit away by words, shit that got here with stronger than words and cannot be killed by words either. Now ok, I can hear everything that is not happening here, but oh well, you want people to be what they're not or to be something they have no fucking way in hell of EVER being, ok, play that game. But a game is all it is, like "stage band" - a misunderstanding used to create a false reality in which people are recorded as losers in a game they weren't even playing. An oh by the way, the "vocabulary" I heard when I was still paying attention to these conversations was that Buddy Rich was "The World's Greatest Drummer", period, not "The World's Greatest Jazz Drummer". Is that a thing now, that Buddy was the world's greatest JAZZ drummer, or what? Or are we getting worked up over something that doesn't really exist except as a lunatic fringe? This is all silly, and this movie, what is it about, a child-abusing band director and a neurotic kid who wants to be Buddy Rich and they play a Hank Levy chart? Whose side am I supposed to be on in that one? And would I enjoy myself more by just skipping the whole thing and listening to some Jaki Byard? Side note - Hank Levy was to odd-meters what carpet is to grass.

I'm pretty sure that however good the Miles movie is it will be the final straw that brings about the jazz-internet-osphere apocalypse. I understand, I think, that that movie is going to be set in the early 70s, Miles in full-blown bug-eye sunglasses coke splendor and there's going to be a series of flashbacks that make up the "autobiography". If they do it right, it could be all kinds of weird/great, but if not, I'm still hoping for a good Don Cheadle movie. I like Don Cheadle on principle. His innate fuquitousness pleases me.

People living in harmony is not going to sound like people living in unison.

There will be blood, have a mop handy!

If one thinks that Buddy Rich is the greatest jazz drummer, then one's perception might well be determined by a LOT of things (possibly including being wound too tight for your own damn good ), but at by least having a need to have a "the greatest" of anything in the first place...and that's more of a "male" thing than it is a race thing, especially at root. And don't talk about Sonny Payne apart from the whiteflashydrummers. That's nuts. Perhaps you're not aware that there was (and still remains, probably, what's left of them) a school of Basie fans who CURSED THE LIVING FUCK out of Sonny Payne, especially right when he took over from Gus Johnson. I get pissed as hell when "racism" is used as a simplistic out for a very real, complicated state of affairs. If anybody actually does think that Buddy Rich is the Greatest Jazz Drummer but their next favorites are Elvin Jones, Tony Williams & Jack Dejohnette (and I've know some drummers who felt like this), is the Racism in the "greatest" or in the "jazz" part? Or is it in the balancing of those things in the decison-making process. Is racism a matter of liking a particular brand of expression, or is it a matter of dismissing everything but that thing you like? Greatest, bullshit. Let's talk about FAVORITES and then see what rolls out. And even then, shit is nowhere near THAT simple. So many types of racism, over, implied, and subliminal, consious and unconsious. But simplistic, lazy, knee-jerk proclamations do nothing but encourage simplistic, lazy, knee-jerk solutions. It's stirring a pot of soup, seeing a piece of potato that's too big, and thinking that the way to get that potato piece out is to stir the pot that much faster. Good luck on that. I mean, seriously, this shit is wrong in all kinds of ways,...the only way to atone is to do a smart piece on Bruno Carr.

Oh, ok then. I can see where a movie review that plants the seed in the "general world" that people who admire Buddy Rich are racists (I know that's not EXACTLY what you said, but you know how those General Worlders are...) moves all kinds of things forward. Thanks for that, dude!

Thanks for that background. Was there anything or anybody in particular that inspired that surge or was it just one of those things that gains steam on its own?

I've become suspicious of this whole "real thing" line..I mean, I get it, but the festering implication is that other things aren't "real", and that's as true maybe less often that it is?

Fantasy had Lenny Bruce, I'm told that he was jazz. Speaking of still-living players, Ahmad Jamal, a true chameleon of towering, now you see it, now you don't.

Wait wait wait, what is this now? A movie I have no interest in or intention of seeing is supposed to supplant whatever thoughts/feelings/conflicts/admirations/disdainments/whatevers I've been having about Buddy Rich pretty much my entire musical life? I gotta say, fuck that! I'm sick of all this whiny shit. Buddy Rich was a baaaad motherfucker. Buddy Rich is also probably not on my list of favorite jazz drummers, or even drummers period. But he was a baaaaaaaaad motherfucker, totally, and that's what you gotta deal with, not all this "jazz drummer" bullshit, because that will get you nowhere except back where you started. And oh, btw/fwiw, Basie made it a point to request Shaughnessy for those mid-60s Chico O'Farrill-arranged MOR dates (or so it's been said through the years). And apparently Basie would make it a point to let Buddy play a set whenever paths crossed, and loved it.So if the point is that "stage band drumming" and "jazz drumming" are different things, well, DUH. Past that...what, exactly? That people can't enjoy each other? Just...grow up, Iverson. Grow up.

Im a fan of timely and proper, at least when it comes to shipping!

So he IS alive?

Windows 10 (yeah, they're skipping 9 altogether) is supposedly going to take the pain of 8 and make it all go away. But WTF? is this about Office being subscription only? Like, I see this shit for sale a full price and all that's in there is a freakin' KEY and it's only good for one year? I still have installation discs for Office 2007, both of suits my needs perfectly. Remind me to never let them go. People used to tell me that I was a sucker for paying for software...maybe I am now.

Dusty Groove already "sold out", but amazon us has a release date of 3/6 (iirc) and is still taking preorders.

Assembling & burning CDs are a pain in the butt, especially when they're of the "blind date" variety (and especially if you don't have your entire collection digitized). I'd rather just make burns of Soultrane, Crescent, & Interstellar Space, send along a link to a good discography, and then tell them to move forward and/or backward from any one of those three until they've had enough. There, you've done your part with minimal effort yet maximum service. From there, it's up to them. If they get it, they'll have a lot of somewheres to go, and if they don't, hey, what are you out? Three blanks and about 30 minutes?

Thanks for the tip. Ordered from ranblake.com. Anybody done that before, seems like they have plenty to offer, hoping the shipping is tight.

What is the W.H.O.'s recommendation for sexual activity? Less music = less babies? I don't think that's a well-advised strategy.

FWIW, I might have mentioned that my first exposure to the whole GTM thing was a while back, travelling back on 1-20, cold, misty weather, traffic stopped and backed up for miles due to some kind of an accident. I had it on while waiting for things to get moving, left lane, stuck, and out of the bad-weather distance came some road crew people, vests, boots, hard hats, the whole deal, and they were just...moving, but not much else, just a slow, dulled walk to god knows where. I noticed that their walk was somehow eerily in sync with the music. Bad weather, stuck in one place, ghostly moving people walking past, I got Ghost Trance Music right then and there in a way I might never have elsewise elsewhere. Or may I didn't really get it, maybe I just formed an association that made sense to me. Either way, I've dug it ever since.

Are there a lot of people in the world named "Silke" and is it pronounced "Silky"?

I get the impression that to know him might have not necessarily been to love him, but I didn't know him, and however he did the truly legacific things he did, they got done, and I'm thankful (or more) for a damn fair big number of them, so RIP.

I don't know if this one's still alive either.

We're as generally mediocre a species as we've always been. Technology just allows us to realize it more efficiently than ever before. I did bong hits, my kids are doing cell phones. Nobody's doing anything they don't already want to do. And when it comes time to really DO something, thank god for today. Now, you take the kids who are doing bong hits AND cell phones, them I might worry about, at least long term. That's tempting implosion just a teensy bit too much. But really, you never know. You just never know.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Fitzgerald I'd also add that there was an MPS record in there as well, and that Atlantic came after Reprise, not before.