JSngry

Gilmore with Elmo Hope is interesting, as is Gilmore with Dizzy Reece, although he's one of those guys who I don't think you can tell how he really was outside of the one place, because he hardly ever was, nor do I see what difference it makes, really. He did what he did where he did it, simple as that. Paul Gonsalves was not quite like that, but almost was. I think if you here the entire scope of his work with Ra, you get a pretty accurate picture of everything he could do, which was a helluva lot, and done pretty damn well. He had his home, never dismiss the importance of having a home, not everybody does, especially jazz musicians of that time and place. Gigs are not generally good places to look for a home, but bands are, or were. All I know is that if John Gilmore is playing, I'm listening.

Can't say that I've ever had the Gram Parsons bug myself, or, really, the Nesmith bug, so you may be right. Or not. If it helps, I think the Byrds were a better album band then The Monkees, but The Monkees were an infinitely better singles band. Cant we have a binomial and throw Rick Nelson into this?

Whoa...didn't see this one coming! 1969!

Oh wow, I just noticed that Reggie Lucas' Survival Themes is in there...that's a really interesting piece of the 70s Miles puzzle that is pretty much overlooked both now and then, at least in my experience.

Regarding the Oliver Nelson side, I've long had an affection for it (it was released here on Inner City back in the day, as many of these things were). For no specific reason, really, other than maybe that Bobby Bryant is heard to lengthy benefit, and Oliver's charts are seriously biting in a way that much of his later L.A. work wasn't, as is the whole gig,really. Everybody came to play, and they were given good things to play, so...win-win. Perhaps best/most effectively heard with an awareness of the times and the career arc in full mind? Probably not "essential" if you're not an at least really interested-in-the-whole-story Nelson-ite, but I am, so there you go.

Yes, up until now I have never been able to resolve my disdain for the whole "environment" of fashion and my ongoing delight with the results that emanate from that environment. Thank you, Stan Getz, both musically and visually for splitting that difference in way that I can perfectly understand, although to be honest, Jack's tie would have done it by itself. No matter, that, dear friends, was a GIG, just like playing for strippers, or at least a lot more like than not like. I see that Beverly Getz was the poster of that video. Thank you m'aam, sincerely.

Your piano is really in tune. Who did that?

I remember a lot of angsty-ness aout Michael Henderson at the time, along the lines of Miles his devolved from Paul Chamber to to Michael Henderson, yuck. Michael Henderson couldn't walk a line to save his life, which I always thought was missing the point that it was as likely equally true that Michael Henderson having to walk a line to save his life was as it was unlikely to be true for him as it had been undeniably true for Paul Chambers. Life is lived in real time, so whatever is needed to save it will be a real time response.

Wonderful word, never heard it before. May I ask what was the occasion for you to have learned it?

Also, we can all have a problem with density, when there's so much happening (vertically and/or horizontally) that the mind just shuts down, get overwhelmed, and goes to the bar for an evening. But - this is reality, and we've come to realize it as such. Time is a dimension, not a wristwatch or a tower. "Here" is no longer jsut what we can see in front of our face or know is happening in our town. At any given moment, thre's some kind of a way to be most any place on Earth, and many places in space - and never mind those places that we know HAVE to be out there even if we have no idea where or how. So density is reality. One can perhaps argue persuasively for the benefit of selective culling of the total reality, but one can not argue against to objective truth that it's a pretty thickass bitch of an existence by any known standard today. Such was not always the case, but today it is. So, music that goes there may or may not be "wrong" for many reasons, but the objective truth of its premise is not one of them.

This is likely to sound flip and/or snide, but I promise you it's not meant that way - I listen to it like I do anything else, with the realization that it all starts with silence, and then somebody decides to change the silence into sound, just as a painter starts with a blank canvas and then get going making decisions. I can't stress that enough - all this noise, joyful or otherwise, is made because somebody decides to break the silence. I don't think enough people on the noise-making or the noise hearing side of things take that into account, especially today, where we're collectively deciding that silence is perhaps an unnatural condition that NEEDS to be altered, regardless of the decision-making skills/motivations involved. That is just gonna be what it's gonna be, it's evolution in action. But that itself is a decision,. No getting away from the decision. So start there. After that, its a question of noticing what's being used to replace the silence. And not just what, but when, and how. Rhythms, colors, sometimes "melody" but not necessarily in the "traditiaonal sense. But if you have an event of any duration that has a shape and a color, I say you can start thinking of that as a melody just as readily as not. And really, that's what you're going to have to do with music that is not based in strict diatonic/diatonic-derived harmonic theories, because looking for something that's not really going to be there and then getting frustrated because you can't find it, that's one of those self-fulfilling prophecy things, right? And truthfully, the notion of "harmony" is really defined after-the-fact, and although it it has been defined in such a way as to be universally true in terms of math, it is a Universal Truth only in terms of preferred practice. V-I is never NOT gonna be "true", but there are plenty other things that will work just as well, and therefore be as true, for any number of people. Consensus may look like math, but it is only as a factor, not as the Final Answer. It goes on the left side of the "=", not the right (or vice-versa, if that's how it rolls for you). Colors, rhythms, spaces, shapes, these are things to be found in any people, and therefore in any music. For musics with any kind of "non-traditional" harmonic base, that's where to start looking. Once you find that, you have the beginning of some bearings, and then it's easier to relax and hear what all else is going on (and there always is), Ok, I'm a musician with some training, but really, what I'm talking about has nothing to do with theory or training. It's simply about perception and what to look for when what you're used to looking for isn't there (or isn't obviously there). You mention Elliot Carter...I can find the hook in a lot of his stuff just by feeling the accents. A good performance of Carter will always have a strong rhythmic impulse, I think. Once you get a feel of where the accents are, then you can start looking at what leads up to them and comes out of them, and then at which line is doing what, etc. Not at all an "easy" task necessarily, but it is happening, it's not imaginary. The first String Quartet grabbed me because the mercurial phrasing reminded me of the more insane early fusion music, where cats were just playing SO fast and yet so, for lack of a better term, "blithely". So I had an immediate reference point. LOTS of them actually, because there's lot of it happening at once. Anybody who really hears the music they listen to will have a feel for its elements, and the nuances of same. I can guarantee you that pretty much all music will have many of the same elements - in concept. Maybe not in manifestation, definitely not in manifestation, but in concept. So if you want to learn a "foreign language", start with the notion that it IS a language, and like all languages, the intent is communication, which is achieved through statements of place, purpose, action/reaction, etc., and then look for how that language goes about doing that. There will be grammar, inflection, punctuation (and the aural has punctuation just as surely as does the written). I mean, don't expect Vietnamese to sound like English, but DO expect it have its own integrity as a language, and DO expect it do be adequate to express the needs of its practitioners. Similarly, Penderecki, or Elliott Carter, or John Cage, or Morton Feldman will not bear an immediate resemblance to Bach or Haydn or Wagner or whoever. But past that, they are still dealing with same the basic elements of language. So if you really want to start hearing their musics, start by finding what you already know to be true - again, color, rhythm, space, shape, things that are common to all music, and then considering how it is being used to different, specific ends. But here's the catch (there's always a catch) - once you hear it and figure it out, you still might not like it. Nothing says you have to. But for me personally, I always feel better about not liking something that I've taken the time out to be able to hear on a somewhat objective level instead of reflexively denying the validity of something that just seems...unreal/unecessary/untrue/etc..

Oh. Ok. Thanks.

I saw Sinatra once as well, January 1982, at Caesars. No strings, just a big band. And very minimal recent-ish pop fare, almost entirely standards. Swing and ballads. And a spot with the rhythm section, where he did "I Get A Kick Out Of You" in a pocket that was so locked in you could play basketball on it with one of Bill Belicheck's deflated footballs. Even then, his voice was in decline, but that night, he had a good night, found his spot inside the songs and inside the charts, and damn...I went in just to "see Sinatra", right, a chance to experience whatever part of American iconography he still occupied. But I left out of there with goosebumps, For real goosebumps. I finally got it. Total command that evening, total command. I'm an AARP member, and an informal Dylan fan. I sincerely hope I'm one of the random 50,000!

Any word on who's on that Eddie Gomez gig? I could easily hit that one or miss it with equal ease depending on the answer, if there is one.

I never met Ernie Banks, but my dad had a chance to play a round of golf with him once, and my dad, who would call an asshole an asshole in a quick minute, left the encounter with the strong conviction that Ernie Banks was one the of most genuinely nice men who ever walked the face of the earth. Enough other people have expressed the same sentiment over the years that I have no choice but to believe it to indeed be the truth. RIP, and, yeah, let's play two. Anytime.

Am I wrong in remembering that it was the crossover-hit-success of Shelley Manne's album of tunes from My Fair Lady that started the whole trend of "Jazz Versions Of Songs From..." concept albums?

Deflated balls, ED commercials, Jerry Jones, do I sense a theme here?

They are, basically. Rodents.

Or that Porgy and Bess is an opera?

Meet the Mutant Squirrels of City Hall Park http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2015/01/meet_the_mutant_squirrels_of_city_hall_park.php?utm_source=Newsletters&utm_medium=email

There for a quick minute you could make the case for Hair. If you want hit songs period, you definitely can. But I know you're not.

Come to think of it (and just to name names), if you go back through early 70s Randy Brecker, I think you can find some wah-wah. I know you can find electronics. Definitely in the Brecker Brothers, but before that. Ok, I see Randy Brecker has already been mentioned. Never mind.

What room did you hear Shearing, and was the whole quintet playing unmiked in there?

Fausto Papetti Alto Reed Vi Redd

Alois Alzheimer Lou Gehrig Blue Lou