JSngry

Also coming up - a Japan-only, (mostly?) crowdsource funded collection of Brasilified remixes.

Exactly. Inside moving out. You can't say that about, for instance, Archie Shepp. Archie had some licks, was a helluva blues palyer (still is, if he's still playing...) and was not unconversant with playing changes, but by no stretch of the imagination could you say that he was a fluent bopper. No way. And it didn't matter, he had other things going on that were more important to him at the time. But Archie Shepp was not starting from the inside the same way that Dolphy, Rivers, Hill, etc. were, which is why he could never have made an Out To Lunch type (although in its own way, Live In San Francicso sorta-kinda comes close, but...not really) record, just as Dolphy could never have made a Magic Of Juju type record. "Could never have made" not in the sense of being incapable of, but rather in the sense of direction not headed that way. Dolphy was referencing Gazelloni while Shepp was pointing out Rufus & Hambone. In the end, it does all come together. But only in the end. At the time we're looking at, there were plenty of guys coming at it like Archie, and there were plenty of guys coming at it like Eric. Actually, maybe, for a quick minute, less guys coming at it like Eric, becuase the immediacy of the times led plenty of people to think that there wasn't time for all that, we gotta get it done now. But over the long haul, skills win out over urgency, at least in terms of survival. Ideally, you have and maintain both, but... So, yeah, I don't think that BN 'avant-garde" is any more or less "real" or anything else than "anybody else's" "avant-garde". It's all honest music. To return to the original topic...I'll not get into "overrated" becuase that's a tough call for me to make for reasons that Clifford gave earlier, but I will talk about "underappreciated", ok? And for me, the prime BN example of that is Some Other Stuff. Sure we all love Evolution because JackieLee & LeeJackie, but hello Wayne, hello crazy-ass genius Newarkian frontline, hello speaking the same language and not just reading off the same page, hello Herbie Hancock going there (although, for me, the best part of Evolution is Bobby, Bobby in those days was pretty damn open - and with skills out almost everybody's ass, although geez, what I wouldn't have given to hear Walt Dickerson afforded the Lion special attention). Both good, but one is a "cult classic" and the other...hell, you could always find an LP of Evolution if you looked, it hung in there a good long while. Some Other Stuff...where is the love, and where is the cult status? Like the song says, that's for me!

We're talking about starting fom the inside and moving outward. Not everybody did that.

Have you heard Eric with Roy Porter (or, even, with Chico Hamilton early on)? Sam held a gig with T-Bone Walker (and reveals it pretty strongly on that 1961 Tadd Dameron BN cut). Andrew's Warwick album? Yes, they were all very "inside" at one point. They started playing bebop, the same as most everybody else their age!

Hill, Dolphy, and Rivers were all coming from the inside going out, not just in terms of energy, but in terms of background and training. Even Cecil had such a strong formal conception going, his was "energy music" as a result of the execution of some very definite structures. Compare that to the "New Thing" players, very few of them had the degree of "formality" in their background that the BN guys of the time did. So it was going to be a different music, at least if it was going to be honest music, which I think - in all cases - that it was. "Last ditch" seems kind of backwards to me in terms of them opening the label up for the already running streams to flow in different directions. You don't dig a ditch for a river, a river goes where it wants to go, the question is, are you going to swim, drown, or just move to higher/drier ground. Classical tonality/primal blues...no need to abandon either ship upon the identification of the other. You also gotta look at the label being sold when it was. After the Liberty deal, things changed a lot. You got the two Eddie Gale sides, but...different label, already, almost immediately. Even the Andrew Hill records were different. Wayne...was Wayne. Schizophrenia followed by Super Nova...hello Duke Pearson! but that was a different type of Avant-Garde, already. There's really no such thing as "the" Avant-Garde except in marketing...it's really a state of mind, not any one "style". Ok, if you look at it like must be either/or, then, ok, that's one thing. But music doesn't really work like that. Time doesn't work like that, ya' know? Lots of things happen in the same time/space, and different speeds existing in the same space are inevitable. Hell, I'll even say that they're desireable. If everything is moving at the same speed, how can you sense motion?

Funny, i went for years recoiling at the mere thought of her. But just within the last few months, the lightbulb, it is coming on. It is an acquired taste, and finally I am beginning to acquire it. I only hope that somebody shows up who will be able to tend to her current needs in a humane manner. With people, you never know what you're gonna get...

On CD, everything was jiggled around, but on LP, New York Is Now was mostly all about Ornette's "let's improvise on the tempo" trip and Love Call had the "swingers". As a result, the former has Elvin stepping all over his dick, out of his comfort zone, and the latter doesn't. Again, the CDs combine the material differently than the LPs, so the impression the create is a different one, perhaps, than the LPs. But the LP of Love Call...whooo-WHEEEE! As far as Elvin stepping on his dick on NYIN, I love it, becuase I love Elvin period, and you can learn a lot about what makes a guy really tick by observing what happens when he's trying to tick but isn't quite getting there. He's trying to variate those tempos, he's really trying, but poor guy, that's just not what he did, or who he was. And when not asked to do that "thing", geez, you can feel the rhythmical sigh of relief. Otherwise, I still can get angry about what the CD does to "We Now Interrupt For A Commercial"...that's not what that piece was. No matter what the reissue board of directors thought about it, they corrupted it in a most fundamental manner, so boo-hiss-BOOGERS on them for that. Besides, the inside photos on the NYIN cover were gorgeous, bright-colory affairs, and they have vanished in the CD incarnation. So my advise is to, if you really care enough to care enough, get those two on LPs, not for whatever sonic debate there might be to be had, but just to get the original presentational impacts. In this case, they are significantly different. But Ornette/Dewey/Haden/Blackwell...has that Trio Paris Concert thing ever been reissued, or did Ornette put the kibosh on that? All I have is a cassette dub that I'm afraid to play any more... That's one long stretch of pure zone right there, you can drop the needle anywhere on the four sides (or since it's a cassette, two sides, and FF/REW) and it all sounds the same, and I mean that in the best possible way. BN "avant garde"...that's a trick subject (and a subjective one too...). They were not ESP or even Impulse!, but they weren't trying to be, really. They weren't there for the guys who were "starting their journey on the other side", so to speak, so, no, that's not there. But - Unit Structures was an incredibly important record becuase it was the first real "presentation" of Cecil's cellular method of structuring his music, which he still uses today. Maybe that's not clear, or even relevant, today, but..just sayin'. You look at what he had released up until then, and whoa, quantum leap. The disagreements are only possible with the gift of retrospect. Conquistador is the Cecil Taylor Quiet Storm record, so I'm thankful for that as well, becuase me and my lady, you know, we like a little jazz between the sheets, if you know what I'm sayin'. Otherwise..how do you make a better Dialogue-type album than Dialogue? In terms of inputs &objectives relative to outcome, I don't see how you do? Now, sure, you could make different records, but with those people, why would you? Would you wnat to hear, say, an album of Joe Chambers material on ESP? Or Marion Brown on Blue Note? Or The All-Seeing Eye on Impulse!? Not really? Different portions of the spectrum, that's all. Terms like "avant-garde", "free jazz", etc./...useful, but only up to the point to where they clarify rather than distract. Bobby Hutcherson vs Karl Berger...two different people, two different stories, two different worlds, really, and each beautiful in their own way on their own terms. But - two different worlds existing in the same world. don't ask me to choose, becuase I won't! On, and Andrew Hill? POD has that "stillness" that comes from its planned "formatlity", so there is that (and a lot of people will go for that, it is not an unattractive quality, see Claude Thornhill), and Black Fire is of course a serious MF, but, for me, my turntable plays Andrew!!! more than any of them. Gilmore, Hutch, Davis, and Joe Chambers...it feels like a working band, although I doubt it was. The bobbing/weaving/push-pulling is about as organic as it ever got on an Andrew Hill record, and for that, I look at Gilmore with a gaze of perpetual grinning happiness.

I like that Horsey Sauce, but discovered Woeber's a while back and that was that.

I love the Ornette BN records with Dewey, JG, and Elvin. Not sure how "perfect" thay are, probably anything but, but that's love for ya'.

Francis Scott Key National Velvet Ann-Mari Thim

Let's hear it for stewardesses!

Bernie Taupin Bennie Maupin The New York Jets

John Poindexter My Little Pony Suede

As does, I think, how "country" Ornette's conception was/is at root.

Hmmm....the cuts with Sonny & the Art Ford cut I've had for quite a while. The others...

Mister Charlie Uncle Charlie Uncle Buddy

The items with Trane are not the Bohemia sets that have been booted numerous times dating back to Boris Rose labels, correct?

On "It Might As Well Be Spring", check out the last A-section, especially from "crocus" though "wing"...that's about as....something as I've heard anybody sing that passage. The percussive but fully held "bud" followed by the damn near melismatic "or" and then the Prez-like timbral manipulation of the three same pitched syllables of "robin on" and the final "sealed off" timbre on the end "wing" that definitely gives closure to that whole episode of both melody and lyric before moving on, and then when she does move on, there's "feel so gay" in a beautifully pocketed syncopation, and even she smiles, at least as much as she smiles, it's that right...ooooh, that's neither common nor "logical" not easily explained, that's some kind of zoneage going on there. That's the kind of thing that gives me reason to keep coming back to Astrud Gilberto, those little moments like that. They appear just as fleetingly and inexplicably as do her really off the wall moments, and eventually, it's all coming from the same place, I guess, so whatever that place is, I'll enjoy it, respect it, and wish it no harm whatsoever.

Yes, a lot.

Fat Mattress Pat Buttram Cat Analyst

Hey, different strokes. For me, Hank with Miles at the Blackhawk is the most boring playing he ever did (or for that matter, that any Miles per-retirement Miles bad ever did, although In Concert will give it a good run, even if that one's a boredom springing from a lack of cohesion rather than an ability to coast at a really high level, like on the Blackhawk sessions). Not that I believe the old, too-easy "Hank was a bad fit for Miles" canard, I mean, Hank with Miles at Carnegie Hall was on, but that Blackhawk stuff, geez, I keep trying to look at it as something more than lesser music from a great group of players, and it ain't happened yet. It's kinda like sex with a super hot chick who's putting on a show for you, looks good, feels good, she's into it at some level, sure, but the longer it goes, you notice that she's looking at the clock on the wall behind you, and then...what do you do then? Keep going, no doubt, but it doesn't feel the same now. That how the Blackhake stuff has always hit me, hot band, great act, all the right motions being gone through, but there's that matter of the clock on the wall behind you... But that's just me. I prefer Hank the later he goes and the quirkier he gets, which by the end is for some uncomfortably quirky, or, for others, boring...I don't understand how anybody could hear something as what strikes me as bare-boned exposed-nerve bloody as "Summertime" from Breakthrough as boring, but some do. Individual perceptions are what they are. We are engaged by that with which we are engaged, eh?

Running Fred Flea F. Lee Bailey

Slow Learner Ike Turner Jerome Kerner

Not boring.

Andy Griffin Andy Griffith Andy Griffiths