JSngry

This one. http://heightfiveseven.com/

What I've come to terms with is that group playing is at its best when everybody is playing it like they feel it, which is not always going to be how I feel it. Now, can I come to appreciate it and not feel it? Yes, sometimes, and sometimes that appreciation can turn into respect, which can then turn into a kind of objective admiration, maybe even a platonic love, but you know, if something hits you in the guts straight off, well, hey, that's where the personal "it" is, ok, and I make no apologies or look for any justification to note when something is - or isn't - there. Cases in point - all those conventional local/rehearsal type bands on Seabreeze, oooh, I rabidly avoid those as much a possible, because what their "it" is and what my "it" is...irreconcilable differences, your honor. But this Holman thing, yeah, uber-clean, and recorded with surgical precision, but....he's being totally true to himself, ya' know, and he had a band playing his music the way he wanted it played. The content is not cheap or trifling, even if the soloists have that "West Coast Studio" vibe to their playing (and so do the ensembles), but hell, that's who those people are, that's how their lives have been lived. These are not people, nor is this an esthetic, forged in, around, and by what has now become The Traditional Great American Jazz Paradigm, if you know what I mean. So they're pocket is not going to be THAT pocket...I could go on, but to no particularly more productive end. Same thing, though, with Toshiko. If you're going to hear her writing, you're going to have to accept that it's going to be played by - and written for - people who don't fit many of the stereotypical jazz molds. If that's a deal-breaker, so be it, fair enough, but if it's not, DAMN, that woman displayed a lot of substance, imagination, and awareness. Given that, I credit her, and Holman, with triumphs of substance over style, which I hesitate to do, because it gives a lot of people whithout nearly as much to say - and/or skills to say it with - a false sense of "rightness" about their shallowness. But dammit, credit due where credit due, if credit is to have any meaning at all, correct? As far as Kenton...I have made my piece with Kenton, on precisely those terms, and because when he had a band and a book that were equal to each other's challenges (which was nowhere near as often as I wish it was), well, that was a vision being realized. The convolutedness of both the vision and the mechanics of realization aside, hey, that was just how it happened, and if nothing else you can say that Stan Kenton's best bands playing their best material made a statement, a big, loudassnasty STATEMENT. The more that 20th Century music crawls into the 21st Century as limpotent auditionees for local tourist clown-museum space, the more I appreciate an essentially misanthropic roar that might not really understand too much beyond NO, but by god, it's a NO that will not be gotten past, and god love'em for that much.

Jim, how does what you said above relate to your comments about the Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in it's various periods? They increasingly moved into a pocket that was less to my immediately liking.

Hello.

Don't understand the phrase "too much precision"...perhaps not enough precision, relative to preferred pocket. But...getting in that pocket takes more precision than getting out of it does. It's not a question of amount of precision, it's a question of placement of precision, or direction of precision. This application of Newtonian measurement to quantum outcome seems to me to be not be solutionable. Tell a cat that he's not making it because he's playing too precise, odds are he'll just play the same way, only sloppier. Then it will go from sounding unappealing and clean to sounding unappealing and sloppy. Not an improvement. Not an improvement.At best a lateral devolvement, "jazzy", "authentic", anything that begins and ends with ". Goal not achieved because goal never understood to begin with, don't confuse the confused with new confusions, that's just cruel. OTOH, if that's the collective consensus of where "it" is, this uber-"precision" that does not fall into what for me is an appealing pocket yet is fascinatingly well-written (yeah, I'm looking at you, Maria Schneider), then so be it. Different strokes and all that, and congratulations on your dreams coming true, sweet dreams, see you later, if not in my dreams, fair enough. Like the old folks used to say, mean what you say, but like the kids say, know what you mean before you say it, and never stop finding new meanings in old sayings, old sayings for new meanings, and put that in your pipe and vape it, new breed smokers.

Just assumed that Tiant was already in, kinda shocked that he's not, actually.

You know it's Hot Stove time when a debate halfway forms about should Dick Allen be elected to the HOF. http://www.lonestarball.com/2014/11/7/7173949/poll-should-dick-allen-be-voted-into-the-hall-of-fame

Nolan told be he was sending you a fruit basket. Has it arrived yet?

The music industry isn't dying, it's just between owners.

Worst Rock Dreamers? Nightmare's more iike it! Can't blame it on old age, either.

Scoring could become a factor for film/theater usage, etc. Could. Or if somebody wanted to compose something new for the instrument within some sort of ensemble, although the interest there would as likely be in the motivation as in the work itself. No idea about the survival of original instruments, but don't rule out the possibilities of what might be found in Middle/Far-Eastern environs, from which the Shawm might well take its ancestry. Even if nothing "old" is found, possible comparisons of "traditional" instruments still around might prove instructive or whatever.

The subject of Thad's sudden disappearance from the America scene (and the circumstance under which he return) are still one of the "unsolved mysteries" of jazz. Plenty of rumors at the time, and Mel never seemed to really find his peace about it. I can see both points about Thad/Mel vs Mel/Vanguard Orchestra. Those really were (or became) two different orchestras in terms of style and personality. Time was making that happen even before Thad left, but once he did, everything accelerated. For me, the early-ish Thad/Mel was definitive, the later Thad/Mel sweet but changed, and Mel?Vanguard something else entirely, something I enjoyed but for totally different reasons. But that early Thad/Mel, up until the "veteran" contingent had dwindled down to just a few stalwarts, that was something special.

Different keys, like a harmonica, yes. But not a transposing instrument that I know of if/when it comes to writing parts. A=440, interesting question...especially about the original, older ones. Don't know, although I'd think that any one made in modern times would at least aim towards that.

It's a cylindrical bore, so the tuning will be based on the physics of that, like a recorder, flute, etc. I assume that's what you mean. And it'll be a C-instrument. http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/conecyl.html

Getting through Season 4 of the Dick Van Dyke Show, fixing to watch the episode where Laura gets her toe stuck in the tub. So ready to see Laura in the tub, SO ready. Once Carl Reiner turned over the writing reigns to other people, it changed. Still funny, still great, but just not...Reineresque. However, Laura in the tub in a few minutes, and, pretty soon, Buddy's Bar Mitzvah. And I think in Season 5, Laura gets a new do. That's what always distracted me about her in years past, that helmet head of hair. In a way, I regret the distraction, but in another way, I feel justified. So many beautiful women of that time got time-shafted by their hairspray, and Laura was one of them. I'm a hair guy, for one thing. I notice.