JSngry

Think this might have been the same show I saw aired on local PBS ca. 1975...any way to confirm any American distribution of this footage?

Speaking of distinctions between good/great/mediocre/etc...the people who amaze me are the hardcore Doo-Wop collectors, the really hardcore ones who know every record and can expound about the distinctiveness of each with apparent knowledge and passion. Me? I can hear one or three different Doo-Wop songs (the difference being in the bridges) and variations in tempo...a few really distinctive lead singers. But other than that, when you get into an endless loop of I-vi-ii-V 12/8 ballads by groups that even the members themselves never heard of, hell, it all sounds alike to me. No bad, necessarily, just alike. But you got people who KNOW the difference, hear them plain as day. I respect the hell out of that, even if I won't even pretend to understand it. Point just being, go for it, and follow it where it goes, not where people tell you to go (or not go). You'll always hear more by listening than by avoiding listening, that's just basic math. The rest is on you.

But seriously, my thing is that I've become increasingly wary of telling people flat out "don't bother with this", because people need to find out for themselves what they like or don't, and although I'm not above calling something crap, that doesn't mean I won't like it if in the right mood. And it definitely DOES mean that I took the time and had the life experience to heard it and decide about it myself. My opinions and tastes, I want them to borne of as much direct, personal experience, thought, and evaluation as possible, and I'd like to facilitate the same in others. The seems only fair. Imagine all the things they tell you in WyntonWorld, hey, don't waste your time with THIS...minds being molded, not developed. Acceptance of dogma trumping accepting personal challenge. BOO!!! So, ok, I will tell you that Album X is vapid crap, but I would strongly encourage you to listen for yourself, decide for yourself, and with an open mind, not going into it expecting it to be vapid crap, reach that conclusion inside yourself entirely for yourself. I might be trying to save you some money, but I'm not trying to form your opinion before you have one. Now, after you have one, hey, that's why we have discussion, right?

Gonna miss Buckee Beaver (aka Robbie Ross), but he may or may not be broke. Hope not. Boston, you're getting a fun, class act with an equally fun, class wife.Enjoy!

Man does not live by fruit alone, look everywhere for everything, get a well-stocked pantry from around the world of variability, then you can have all the delicacies at your disposal as well as all the things to fix for the unwelcome guests, to say nothing of that junk-binging fits we all get every once so often.

If you're looking at things from sociological/musical point of view, ok. From a strictly musical point of view, there was too much good music from that era to bother with BNs's 70's output. At least imo. I know you look at things differently, Jim. So we can agree to disagree. Yes, there was a lot of good music in the 70s, no argument there. But some of it was on Blue Note, not a lot, but some. So why would you look for good music in general and not bother with a place where some of it is, especially if you have some guidance into what to avoid? Selectivity is definitely needed, but wholesale dismissal...baby with bathwater, even if baby is bathing in an ocean. Save The Children, Save The Babies! OTOH, hell, part of the education of any music lover is getting burned by buying some steaming pile of crap thinking it's going to be halfway decent. That's a life lesson for us all.

And you know how a positive times a negative will result in a negative but a negative times a negative, that magnetpolicity of theoretical-real numberlife? Well, how many ever negatives there are in this times-equation, it must be an even number, because, how/why/HUH, there's no other real explanation. And ok, one more and I'm out, but does Phil Wilson's break sound like about the only other person would would do that would be Lockjaw?

The Woody Herman Select, the mid-60s Phillips stuff. My first (and for a long time, only) exposure to this material was 1964 and I still think that's one of the best "traditional" big band records of the decade. The rest of the material in this set is fine or better, but, really, that 1964 album is one of those "moment in time" things, fresh band, fresh book, everything coming together right before your ears. No matter what, though, the Nat Pierce/Chuck Andrus/Jake Hanna rhythm section was as identifiale as any, ever, Phil Wilson & Sal Nistico immediately identifiable soloists who always came to play, and Bill Chase...I know, but..you know? "Hip", sure, and/but whatever. NOT the point, no matter what anybody thinks, one way or the other. The best Woody Herman bands had personalities, big, brash, rude, y'all do that, we'll do this, let's GO. This band had as much personality as any of them, and if they were in the shadow of the First & Second herds chronologically, hey, time is time, can't do anything about that. I mean, if you're gonna be "that kind" of band, dammit, be THIS that kind of band! Hard to hit a moving target, ya' know?

Don't remember seeing this CD, but here it is: http://www.amazon.com/Early-Circle-Chick-Corea/dp/B000008ANC

I never knew the man, and only know a few people who did, so any faults I might find are from the outside. Hell, most of my thoughts about anything are from the outside. "Who cares what you think?", well, exactly. I will find fault with the Blackhawk records, though, no matter what anybody says. That shit is lazy. Top-shelf lazy, but still lazy. There's a real fault with Miles, imo. The motherfucker got lazy with that band, and then he got lazy with disciplining his drug habit in the 70s. I can't judge, but I can find those faults, for sure.

He beat women, dissed Hank Mobley in a most un-gracious manner, and let his coke habit kill his music there for a while. Other than that, whatever faults I'm sure he had, I'm like, does he still owe me money? Does he want to sleep in my house? Does he sign my check? The answer to all of the above being, "no, he's dead", I'm willing to be objective about all that real-time stuff. Dude was vain, mean, nasty, and had a damn good sense of how to play the money/power game. C'est la motherfucker, right?

Let's cut the notion of being interested in 70s BN some slack. Not only were there some - a few - genuinely GOOD albums on the label during that time (even if no GREAT ones), but there for a few years, they were having monstercrossover hits at a time when a lot of other labels were either actually having them or trying to have them. they were, as the parlance goes, "part of the conversation". Now, what conversation taht was, exactly, well, several, actually, as witnessed by the rabid megalove of the Mizell stuff by a lot of beatheads being countered by the equally rabid disdain of same by "jazz fans". The mere existence of that divide might very well be THE conversation, actually. We got a guy(?) here who's 22 and is displaying an open mind about some things that are generally (and imo, inaccurately) dismissed out of hand as a whole. I think it's a good thing to be interested in "the whole picture" rather than just looking through somebody else's photo album and figuring this must be all there was. Submitted for consideration, not as "jazz", but just a damn good record, period. If you don't like it, you don't like it, but it's not because they made some half-assed rootypoot fake music record. They made plenty for sure, but this is not one of them.

I think it speaks to how superficial the whole notion of "free improvisation" was to him at that time. He had a simple, reducioed al absurdiumned perception of it and made a simple, and quotable, observation, well yeah, cats just getting up and blowing whatever comes into their head, Lennie & Lee already done that, next. No doubt, he pivoted once he got his head around the reality, rather than the perception. And I give him both credit and slack for being open to doing/able to actually do that.

Permanently losing the respect of those whom I respect.

Miles' comment = reductio ad absudum of the notion of spontaneous collective improvisation. It was a good sound bite. And like all good sound bites, true as far as it went, and also like all good sound bites, not particularly far is how far it went.

Exactly. "sounding great" and "audiophile-level sounds" are two different mindsets, or at least not necessarily the same mindset. 78s got them bigassgrooves. They can hold a LOT of information and some of them do put out a helluva lot of presence. It was an original direct-to-disc format, remember. I'm not a 78 guy myself, not even close, but I've got a few, and don't at all dismiss the format out of hand. Hearing Bird's entrance on "Sepia Bounce" on 78 nearly made me shit my pants in a way that no other format has. It called me Walter Cronkite and told me YOU ARE THERE. Not overlooking the obvious in terms of specs and such, especially when we get into digitally recorded music, just saying that I've heard several people say that their 78s do indeed sound "great", and I have no reason to doubt them when they do. High speed, bigass groove to hold information, hey for whatever the machinery of the time could capture, no reason why it shouldn't sound great.

Really?

Ghost Riders In The Sky Space Ghost Billy Casper

Knucklebean is a pretty straight-ahead affair w/Freddie Hubbard * George Cables on board and in good form. Head On is not like it, not too much at all. Cirrus is another good Hutch album from the 70s. Woody Shaw & Harold Land on that one. Recording's a little weird for my taste, though, weird balances and reverbs and shit. Maybe it's been done better on CD, I don't know. I only have the LP. I can only speak to the Eddie Henderson things as somebody who heard them in real time (and after having been fully immersed in the earlier Capricorn sides). At the time they seemed kind of a "pull back", but as time has leveled all that out, they are pretty good on their own terms. Better by far than most of the Blue Note Hits A New Note fare of the time, no doubt about that. If you can find a cheap, I mean cheap, copy of Bobbi Humphrey's Flute In, consider it, because Lee Morgan & Billy Harper put in a few brief moments. But really, don't pay too much for it, if you know what I mean. I found a somewhat plowed LP for $1.50 and I had to think about whether I overpaid before finally deciding no, but just barely. In fact, don't pay for it at all if you can help it. You can get far better late Lee (and early-ish Billy) on a couple of Charles Earland Prestige records. Those are worth paying for.

Gary Peters Clarke Peters Dorothea Dix

Fear itself?

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cheese-lovers-5-cheese-mac-and-cheese-recipe.html Cheese Lovers 5 Cheese Mac and Cheese Ingredients Kosher salt 1 (16-ounce) package macaroni (cellentani or other curly noodle) 1/4 pound bacon, diced 1 medium onion, diced 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more to butter baking dish 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 2 1/2 cups whole milk 2 cups heavy cream 1 sprig fresh thyme 1 bay leaf 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups grated fontina 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese 3/4 cup grated Gruyere 3/4 cup grated white Cheddar (Australian) Directions Preheat oven to 450 degrees F and butter a 9 by 13-inch glass baking dish. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add salt. Cook macaroni according to package directions. Drain. In a large Dutch oven or other heavy pot, saute the bacon until crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and reserve. Saute the onion in the bacon drippings until soft. Add the 5 tablespoons butter to the onion mixture and melt the butter stirring with a wooden spoon. Using a whisk, add the flour, and stir constantly until well mixed with the fat making a roux. Whisk in the mustard. Gradually add the milk and cream whisking constantly. Add the thyme, bay leaf, and salt. Let come to a simmer and stir frequently for 15 minutes. Strain the hot milk mixture into a metal bowl and discard the solids. Working quickly, mix in 1 cup fontina, blue cheese, 1/2 cup Gruyere, 1/2 cup white Cheddar, 1/2 cup Parmesan, the reserved bacon, and parsley. Continue to stir until all cheese is melted. Add the cooked noodles to the cheese mixture to coat. Add the noodle mixture to the prepared baking dish. Mix the remaining cheese and bread crumbs together and sprinkle on top of the noodles. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes or until bubbling and golden brown. Remove from oven when done and rest for 5 minutes. Recipe courtesy Rick Massa If there's better, please post. But this is damn good no matter what.

A hesitant recommendation for this one, because it's interesting, but not great, and very damn overlooked: Mickey Tucker, Roland Hanna, Richard Davis and Eddie Gladden. How can that fail, you ask. Well it doesn't. But how does that not totally kick ass you then ask. Well, you and me both. Of course, there's Bobby Hutcherson's Knucklebean (at the very least) and Elvin's 70s sides. And if you don't mind a little funk in your junk, Grant Green, up to and including Visions, although mileages vary greatly on that. If you like the Brazilian, go for the Moacir Santos items. Some better than others, even on the same album, but still, worthy, all. Myself, I like the Marlena Shaw & Chico Hamilton albums, as well as the first Ronnie Laws and Noel Pointer sides. But I'll be damned if I'll recommend them to you without knowing you first. Also, still making up my mind about the Carmen McRae things.

New drumsticks from Popeye's!