JSngry

Well, that' how suckered get suckered, that's all I can say, look at the seemingly immediate opportunity and not consider the overall situation(s), somebody picks yur pocket, oops, too bad, then. I'm licking my chops a lot less if that look i shown to me by a known trickster trying to snatch the Super Bowl out of my hands than I am its shown to me by some known Sloppy Guy. With Sloppy Guy, yeah, I get a little licky. With Known Trickster, I keep my eyes on the prce, and safe the licks for after the gun goes off. You gotta know your opponent. One Size Fits All strategies only work except for when they don't.

Also consider that there was a "scene" on the East Coast identical to that of the "West Coast Jazz" - players who worked the studio, played jazz as/when available, writers who wrote beyond the conventional conveniences, etcetc, yet is this what is known as "East Coast Jazz"? Well of course not, becuase that was not the only thing going on on the east coast. and yet "East Coast Jazz" = "hard bop" which was one of many things going on the east coast at the time. These guys had a marketing code word, usually something like "workshop"...East Coast "Workshop" often the spiritual cousin to "West Coast Jazz". And the whole "Black Califronia Jazz" thing, yeah, ok, but what, that's as easily segregationist in perceptual outcome as it is a useful focus. Compare that to "West Coast Jazz", if stereotypically and very broadly accurately considered to be a "white" thing, then what does this mean, white folks got the whole West Coast to themselves, black folks, go you your designated area? Keep Off The Beach? This usage of marketing terms as historical/potential historical taxonomy just seems doomed to increase tunnel vision as it goes along. It's just silly, and I am not a fan. What I am a fan of is looking at what everybody was doing in a place at a time, the natural differences and similarities then become revealed as normal human behavior at work, and the ambiguities present themselves as inevitable, and everything keeps moving. And then you get to where Shelley Manne playing with Andre Previn and Sonny Rollins and Richie Kamuca & John Gross all makes sense as life being lived according to life, not as marketing slogan, because things are really thisthenthat, things are always this. Hermosa Beach, Watts Tower, know them both, since both should be known - to all! So comforatablebecauseitreferenceswhatIknow label users, yeah, it's working for you now, no problem as far as that goes. But in your wills, I'm hoping you'll not leave this one defined as is.

Perfectly stated. Belichek pulls this shit because people fall for it. Like every sucker ever suckered, it works because people forget who they're dealing with and go for the okie-doke. Sometimes that's cool, but jeez, you're one block away from the bank and all of a sudden you see some leg and smell some tail, if you don't reflexively think hmmm....maybe not what appears to be, need to get that money in the bank, check it out on the way back, then bbfffffttttt player done got played. Simple as that. Grownass man on the way to the bank needs to not so easily be fooled, ESPECIALLY by a known trickster standing in the alley right next to the door. So are you saying that if you were a coach, you would fall for everything that was presented to you, no matter the situation, no matter your opponent's known wiliness, no matter where in the game it was and what impact on the outcome you were looking at it your gambit failed? How many reaming gotchas would it take for you to stop doing that? For Pete Carroll, the answer is obviously this - one more that it would have yesterday at this time.

Oh, you get tempted by Bill Belichek with the game on the line and as close to guaranteed to you as it's gonna be. Sorry, you got suckered. You went for the pussy and got the blackjack upside your head. Oh, who could blame me, that pussy was right there looking SO good, Well, yeah, but it's Bill Belichek waving that pussy in your face. Sorry, the only legit excuse you got is that you were thinking with your dick, and that's no excuse at all for any grownass man, not really. Grownass man supposed to know better than that.

I dig all the real-time imprinting, but you can see that everything is moving from "what we did" to "what happened", and the Gioa approach is to me the one good way to keep the baby and the bathwater both fresh happy, and clean. You get to thinking about the math of naming a specific style by a specific set of people, and, ok, while you're in it, you get it. But we all gonna die, right? And then people look at words and start wondering what does this mean, and they look at "West Coast", and then they look at a map, and then they either take that map at face value or else they decide to start red-lining and shit. This shit is happening everywhere, blues, jazz, pretty much, it's the thing to do these days, take a thing, define it codify it, and make that The Way It Was, and the longer time goes on, it becomes more about ownership of history than it does recoding it and keeping it open at all hours. I do think it's important to document marketing as a part of history, just not as the history by itself. "West Coast Jazz" as shorthand for living real-time survivor-memory, mutually acknowledged, it works. As a term for people 200 years from now, what do we want that conversation to look like - Bud Shank AND Eric Dolphy, or Bud Shank yes, Eric Dolphy, some weird guy who just came out of nowhere? So hell yeah, Eric Dolphy - multi-instrumentalist, interested in "classical" forms and techniques in terms of both study and execution, musical attitude shaped in part by climatological/natural factor of place and time, not at all adverse to bringing "outside" influences to his concept, pretty much a definitive example of the "West Coast Jazz" mentality. And a native Californian! So, what's the problem there?

Yeah, Preclusion's a dandy record, and came out of left field, walked into the store one afternoon, though it was some new Herbie/Joe joint, which in 1974 was a real WTF?- ish consideration, but what's this, hey, she's cute too, I'll take a copy right now, please! Before The Dawn, the follow-up, was a good record too, but more "contemporary"/fusion-y in approach. Not silly music, just different in orientation. After that though, she began to explore other facets of her talents in other musical arenas. Obviously. But to this day, when I see her name in the credit on any "jazz-related" project, I'm not instantly put off, because the woman still has skills, fine skills. I wish hse'd do a Joe Sample and make a straight-ahead trio record for East-Wind and get it released in America on Inner City.

Harry Babasin seemed to call it Jazz In Hollywood. That seems a whole more accurate locationally. a lot less presumptive in terms of who was and wasn't in the claimed region, and still gets you to the same type of music.

Hell, I've been watching since 1965, and I've learned that when zagging is pretty much as close to a thing there as there is, and it's a championship game, not going for the zag and going for some zig is an indication of cleverness for cleverness sake, that ultimately you'd rather be clever than win. It's"thrilling" when it works, but when it doesn't work, hey lost Super Bowl, how clever does that feel now, Mr. OOOH, they'll never see THIS one coming! Fucking eyes spinning in opposite directions at the same time hubris is what that is.

Phase it out, sure, make it better so the discussion can get better and fresher and braoder - all of which would be accurate and beneficial. A waltz is a dance, is it not? You will dance the Viennese Waltz in the manner of the Viennese. By the same law, you will West Coast the Jazz in the manner of the West Coast, so to make that work in currently slanted reality, SOME peoples gonna have to be lest than 100% West Coast, and or less than 100% Jazz and....HEY they still got the interment camps around? I think Ted Gioa did a marvelous and useful thing be looking at characteristics that ALL West Coast Jazzes had in common. These tendencies were more attitudinal that cultural, and could be found in places that the easy wheezies of "West Coast Jazz" would be horrified to fiend them. I like how he made a case for Eric Dolphy being a more or less consummate West Coast jazzman, that he could have never emerged ouf ot an eastern jazz world the type of player and thinker was he did. So here's another WCJ recommendation - Eric Dolphy, seriously! And Eric Dolphy w/Mingus, Impeccably Credentialed West Coast Jazz, no matter where it was played, New York State Of Mind my ass! That book opened my eyes to a lot of things, and my ears began to hear honesty if places I once heard contrivance. It threw a much broader net and in the process, the weak got weak and the strong got stronger, and the perhaps misunderstood became perhaps better understood. West Coast Jazz, Live by the name, die by the name, or better still, be saved by the name meaning exactly what it says. And Mulligan was pretty much moving on to the CJB.

The lines that inevitably form when people who think they are doing something that other people want. Stay in that line long enough and surely you will be called. Kinda like the day laborers who line up waiting for the truck to com every day. Plano has been nice enough to build them a covered facility with sanitation facilities and picnic tables so they can eat breakfast and not miss a gig, Or if things are slow, lunch? I can tell you though, people who drive by looking for "a couple of people to help me with this sprinkler system" REALLY mean "a couple of Mexicans to help me with this sprinkler system", so inevitably the transaction is driven by being Mexican first, then, if it ever gets past that, people who can help with that sprinkler system second. Those kinds of lines, where people seeking services and people providing them look to meet and deal, I did that once, and I had the same reaction to and/about Brian Wilson songs.

Ok, we'll just continue to use an inaccurate terminology that has no real meaning (well) past the real-time consensuality of mutally shared real-timers. What could possibly go wrong with that? And last time I looked, Both New Orleans and the West Coast were still real places. Dixie(land) was not, although Disneyland is. New Orleans gets it right, they call it New Orleans MUSIC.

Well now! As should well be done. Texas Rangers, yet Houston Astros? Houston Texans, yet Dallas Cowboys? West Coast Jazz yet Gerald Wilson? It made sense as a real time marketing angle, but seriously, today, how is it anything more than a lazy conversational shorthand, this "West Coast Jazz". Is the West Coast Jazz thing? At least make it one word Westcoastjazz, like Warne did with Supersax, Charlieparkermusic. Hello, nifty summation! Otherwise, what is this Christoper Columbus Discovering America thing, how is that still a thing anyway? See the USA in a Chevrolet, discover that America, folks, it's not real until you do! We got all these black folks playing Jazz on the West Coast, that yes, "sounds like" hardbopjazzmusic and yet, there are differences, regional accents (no "East Coast" altoist had the slippery phrasing of all the so many altoists who got hit by Sonny Criss, hello, yet this/their music should not be called West Coast Jazz as relaistically as Bud Shank or Chico Hamilton? Call 1-800-Bullshit, operators are standing by. Pacific Jazz ends up finding any number of West Coast (Soul) Jazz talent in the late-50/Early 60s, and that is not some West Coast Jazz? Call now and we'll throw in Dr. Scott's latest testament California Done Fell Into the Ocean When You Weren't Looking, Eh? Coast Now In Different Place Than Before, Look Away, Look Away! And wait, what's this? A whole 'nother West Coast Jazz starts happening in and around the Don Ellis Orb, pretty well yet apparently inconspicuously documented on impulse! (and even getting onto a Shelley Manne record...and a Phil Woods one as well, what the hell are you talking about, Jim, is this real? Damn straight it's real!) how is this not as much "West Coast Jazz Part 2, starring Don Ellis as Stan Kenton With the Extra Wingspan Moved to The Expanded Forehead"? That number again, 1-800-Bullshit. And then we got all the Horace Tapscott/John Carter things smack dab on the West Coat, smack dab Jazz, and yet again, CALL NOW! We should use the term advisedly when we use it at all, and we should be working towards the day when it either strikes a wider net than it now does or else we come up with a more meaningful term because time is marching on, and these kids today and their babies of tomorrow and beyond, do you really want them thinking that West Coast Jazz is really the ONLY West Coast Jazz? If so, plant that flag and claim that land. Otherwise, tomorrow is the question, asked and answered, roll tape, and somebody call Phil Moore & Lloyd Reese, they'll want to be discovered, Mr. Columbus, give 'em a call when you get there. Ok, fit suitably hissied. Onward!

Nobody "deserves" to get paid. But when a sign is set up, criteria met, line formed, and people in it don't get paid, the sign is just wrong. But as long as they're paying some people, somebody must be buying into that wrong sign, so Mr. Gorbachev, take down that sign.

Even with the 1:00, maybe. But that jazz choir or wahtever it is...don't see any happy endings to that story once it begins being told.

And that makes sense too. I say this very advisedly, because I love the man, I love the music, and I for sure love the album, but that Julius Hemphill big band album...if jut a few strategically placed section players would have been inserted, the writing itself might have benefited. What that might have cost the feel of the music, I dunno. Something, I'm sure. Part of me says that if I got ears, I can hear the writing no matter what, and as a rule, I can. Another part of me says that parts are meant to be heard as much as they are felt, and that the clearer the parts are executed individually, the better you can feel them based on what is really there instead of waht you think you want to be there. And another part of me says just fuck it, go for what you get, start there and keep getting and going. Thing is, all these parts are often going on at the same time. And if/when it's Ellington, none of those parts have time to be bothered by any of that. But as far as the Braxton record goes, hey, you made the album you made and used the people that you used, if they did what you hired them to do, the complaint that they didn't/couldn't do past that, well, live and learn. That record is glorious as is. Whatever else it could have been, hey, time machine, go for a time machine.

All that's left is for Seattle to fire whoever it was called that pass play. Never mind temporary lapse of judgement or whatever, that's some death wish shit for real.

Larry, I like a lot of that music still, and some of it even more now than then. Definitely more of it now than then. Just saying, though, I'm, say, Carl Perkins, I'm waiting to get paid, and some cat with my name is famous for "Blue Suede Shoes", bad enough, but I see the line for "West Coast Jazz", and I'm thinking, hey, I'm West Coast, I'm Jazz, there will be something for me in this line, and then I get to the window and the teller breaks for lunch with a sign that says, "Sorry, Sounds Too East Coast-ish For West Coast Jazz, Try The East Coast Jazz Line For Your Fame And/Or Fortune", and you know, that's gotta not be a good thing. Especially when you start looking for that line and see a whole row of windows that say "Fix Now! No Waiting". Line gets too long, they open up another right away, like the grocery store of your dreams. Oh, ok, Coast Barrier erased here, Free at Last! And then it's like, oh, ok, you play jazz and you are west coast BUT you do not play West Coast Jazz, and gee, I wanna get high right now just thinking about how silly that all is. Still is, more now than then, really. That's all I'm saying, nothing to do with the music, nothing to do with race, everything to do with the business, which I know gladly uses every advantage it can, including music and race and drugs and god knows what else, but if I don't need the labels any more to find, identify, and enjoy the music, I'm kinda like, fuck all that, you know? As a conversation starter, ok, still inevitable, I'm sure, but the point to be made is that what is there to be heard is best defined by the hearing, so let's get real and look at what's really past the window, not just what's seen through it.

She's who wrote "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine", eh? That's one of those songs that it seems fits well with damn near any "style" of American music, maybe past that, can't comment there. There's a built-in swing to it, even people who don't know wast swing is can jsut play it as written and it'll sound like they have at least half a clue. Just a wonderful thing, taht song is. RIP & thanks for giving me the optimism.

FEB 8 - A Soldier's Tale Heard-Craig Center for The Arts, McKinney Tx. Odysseus Chamber Orchestra Choreography by Amiti Perry Narration by somebody who has not yet been announced. http://www.odysseuschamberorchestra.org/tickets.html Hey, I'm game.

Looking at West Coast Jazz in terms of geography alone makes little sense. Certain aspects of the laid-back California life style and climate -- that makes a little more sense. The prevalence of studio work and the nice fit of that work with the skills of disbanded former Kentonians, Hermanites, and other young veterans of the rapidly ebbing/vanishing big-band era -- now we're getting somewhere. The tendency of some of the musicians just mentioned (e.g. Lennie Niehaus, Jack Montrose, Duane Tatro, Marty Paich, Jimmy Giuffre, Shorty Rogers, et al.) to embark upon advanced (or if you prefer "advanced") musical/compositional studies at local colleges, with private teachers (including some of the L.A. area's notable European emigre composers), and at places like Westlake -- that was important, not only for the writers and players directly involved but also because they then created/shaped settings that shaped the work of other players who worked within them. Also, backtracking a bit, the norms of studio work -- where neatness probably counts for a good deal more than it does on the average bandstand -- couldn't help but foster similar habits elsewhere. Further, there was the social atmosphere of studio work, with its office work-like bureaucratic tensions and regularities/regimentation, its sometime need to kiss the contractor's ass, the enforced passivity of sitting by the phone waiting for the next studio call (Bill Perkins in a Cadence interview speaks eloquently of how emotionally debilitating that could be), the good living studio work could provide, coupled with the awareness that a black mark or two could torpedo your comfortable lifestyle (I believe some such pattern contributed to Frank Rosolino's downward spiral), and you've got a recipe for a certain ... "tightness" might be the word. And yet, black people! Watts! LAPD!!! All on the West Coast, damn near everywhere too (except in the commerical studios of the time). And always, heroin, for anybody and everybody who wanted it. There should have been, and still should be, a better name for it than "West Coast"...even "cool" is problematic. Becuase if "this" is indeed "that", the this other thing is NOT that...and yet it is, it's just not getting pimped. Sorry, no money for you! YOU, otoh, time to get paid, is this enough? Here's a little extra, just in case. Then again, the truth will set you free, and the truth is that at some point, let the suckers consumers have their labels of convenience, let them be conned, and exploited, every bit as much as the victims (although probably not with the same frontline economic impact), the people who aren't there when people come looking for "West Coast" or any such other thing. And let the victims plot their revenge, for fashionability does nothing if not present those with a plan the ability to realize it.

Depends on who contracted the date. On the matter of skills, though, not surprising. That's some hardass music and it wasn't a working band. Financial realities would dictate that you have a few flyshit readers in there to keep the time needed thing between the lines. Look who else is in there - the Bridgewater brothers, Bruce Johnstone, and Jon Faddis. They weren't their to contribute their "unique personal stylings", ya' know? They were there to read the parts and keep the session moving. Time is money, as they say, and at least as much in the studio as anywhere. EVERYBODY gets OT if OT happens, unless its a scab date.

Bobby McFerrin @ UNT on Feb 5 : http://news.unt.edu/news-releases/grammy-winner-bobby-mcferrin-joins-unt-college-music-annual-glenn-e-gomez-endowment-co Don't think that this is the setting in which I'd like to experience McFerrin, but I would like to hear him in in performance at some point. He does get too damn cutesy for anybody's good, but the man has serious skill and an active, fertile mind. Filter needed, no doubt, but shit don't always work that way, hello Don Ellis, so you go where it is and bring your own filter.

Although, as the great Ted Gioa book about the subject demonstrated, the use of "West Coast Jazz" as a stylistic term runs head-on against some immovable objects when looked at in terms of geography. Or, I might add, in terms of individuals. The other side of this Hamilton LP is live, and although the colors and general flavor is not that different....yeah, it is.

Chico Hamilton on PJ.

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