JSngry

IIRC, The Gentle Side Of John Coltrane was a pretty big seller in LP form, and that was a posthumous assemblage. I know a lot of people who dug all of Trane who bought it just because it made such a splendid unified listening experience, on its own terms. Not Coltrane For Lovers or some such easiness, just deep, soulful, meaningful playing of "gentle" things. I've never put the Ballads album top-tier on my Coltrane shelving system, but so many other ballads recorded around the same time are. And the side with Johnny Hartman, geez, if that doesn't bridge/obliterate the alleged romance/mystic divide, then shoot my booty, Rudy, and call me a cab, Calloway. Or perhaps gentility is no longer valued as a sign of true strength these days. I don't know, I tend to stay home a lot these days, so what the kids do, they do without me.

Call them. In my experience, their phone support is waaaay more on the ball than you'd have any right to expect. Seriously.

Rangers forget to put up Anti-Cowboys Power Shield to protect from bad mojo penetrating from next door, play football on opening day, lose 14-10.

"because it's in the chart"

The Penguins Who Make The Cigarettes Paul Smoker Don "Lungs" Alias

I heartily concur!

Do Right Woman Betty Wright Orville Redenbacher

I like that Earl Coleman thing.

The Whispers The Rumour David Lye

Romance is not mush when it's mystical.

Ladies & Gentlemen - It is my pleasure to announce that the job of BFT manager will now be jointly held by Hot Ptah & Thom Keith. Hot Ptah will handle the scheduling and contacts with BFT presenters, and Thom will help anyone who needs downloading help. Big thanks to these two for graciously volunteering their time to this effort, and once again, all props, respects, and thanks to Jeff, who has served the community beyond well in this capacity for many, many years. The institution survives, the tradition continues. Onward!

This might be the most unlikely Hartman sighting ever. Credited for a non-speaking part as an ambulance driver on Emergency!. I didn't notice this at all until the final credits, but going back, I think that's him a one of the drivers @ the 26:00 point, clearly(?) visible @ 26:15 here: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi2543779865?ref_=tt_pv_vi_1

I don't have that one, but I do have this one. One cut is pretty bone-chilling. The rest is basic chilly-cool actory-angsty readings with musical background that could just as easily have been recorded for some other project. A lot of anger directed at people who for the most part are dead now, and not at the fucked-up humanity on display. To listen to this, you'd think that it was a case of oooops, wrong people, not dammit, people never figure shit out, do they. End result (except for that one cut) = period rage-ragging, not timeless meditations. Too bad, really, too bad. I've seen this Massacre album once or twice but have always passed on because this one was such a disappointment. Now here's one I've never seen:

That's slick how he gets rid of the cigarette without being seen doing so. Looks like a quick drop and step, perfectly executed. Also cool how the drummer picks up his opening bow & the knee-bow that follows. At first I was wondering what kind of a world it was where you could jsut walk in for a gig and ahnd your effects to the bartender with a smile and then head towards the bandstand, what kind of star power is that? But then I heard the introduction to Night In Tunisia and it became obvious - real star power is earned, it's not enough to be naturally charismatic, you gotta work it if you want to earn it, and little things mean a lot, like not walking too fast, ever. Basic life lesson, really. The one time I saw Dexter live, he was higher than two motherfuckers, and almost two hours late. But damned if he didn't work that charisma from the second he showed up, and damned if he didn't play his ass off, although not like he does here. That night, he was so far behind the beat that he could have bit it in the ass, but the ideas were fully formed. It was a trip, a good trip.

Sage Kotsenburg Teddy Kotick David Kotock

Ram Ramirez Joe Dodge Pickup Artist

Had no idea Blue Matter was going for that much...wow... Also had never really known about The Section until this thread...never have been a huge Micheal Brecker fan, but the time/place of this creates a little "historical" interest for me, as it's another link in the James Taylor/Jazz subculture/fanbase-crossover...not unlike the Joni Mitchell/L.A. Express thing, in its own way? I don't know if I'd want a whole album of this, but if I had heard it then, in 1972, this would have gone in one ear and stayed for a lot longer before coming out the other than it does now. That's just so...commercially unfeasible these days, to bring in those..."other" elements into what otherwise could have essentially ran parallel to a Tom Scott solo with most listeners not hearing any real difference. But...Rock & Roll Trane/King Curits fusion, that thing was in the air then as a real possibility...now its all/mostly devolved into so much prefab weebleweeble. Oh well. And I do like those two Sanborn records, I really do. Have no idea how they would sound to a listener of today coming to them for the first time in light of everything that's happened since, but they were fresh and catchy in their time, kinda "groundbreaking" in their own way & place, really, moving beyond "funky jamming" into new areas of composition, texture, production, etc. Very commercially successful, and with good reason, but again, I heard it then and now as post B3-era Soul Jazz.

Hideaway & Voyeur are stone classics, although I don't know how "fusion" really enters into them, they're post B3-era Soul Jazz, imo, as is much of this type music. Then again, who really cares? Same with Winelight, god, that's definitive. My wife and I fell in love to that record. Now, Spectrum & Crosswinds, those are fusion, and classics as well. The Schofield things, those were originally Grammavison, correct? My thing is, these have mostly all been available for a while anyway, correct? And speaking of video game music...that's a cult audience right there. My son has been to several "pops orchestra" concerts of both "favorites" and entire scores of some games. I stopped playing a year or two into the SNES, but he's remained a lifelong gamefreak, and I started noticing how the scores of some of the games, especially the RPGs (and especially the Final Fantasy series), would keep getting more and more....interesting. And then there's this, which has nothing to do with fusion, but just shows you how much interest there is in the idiom, as well as how there's more work with than the old 8-bit blippysqeaks.

Unfortunately, mos of the discussion lately has been about Stanley Crouch, not this book itself I mean, if your opinion about the book is that you're not going to read it because it's by Stanley Crouch, then you really have no opinion about the book, just one about Stanley Crouch. I'm getting to the point where Rebecca Ruffin is reminiscing, and talking about how Bird was turning into a man now, from a boy to a man, and...there's just something about that storyline that touches me. And has anybody else notixed how as the years pass, Addie Parker is more and more portrayed as, if not a villain, a Major Contributor to Bird's particularly improvisatory brand of "personal discipline"? I wonder how much of this is objective psychology-based observation, and how much of it is men (and for that matter, women, ) having "mommy issues". Nobody's coming out and saying, hey lady - YOU'RE the reason Bird was so fucked up (well, maybe James Lincoln Collier did, but he writes like a sick fuck his own self, so...), but there's always this....implied pointing out of her being the Original Enabler, if you know what I mean. Yes, Our Story So Far is at times stunningly clumbersome, but I'm going to keep reading in smallish doses all the way through, because I guess if you want a "factual biography" you can read something like this: http://www.birdlives.co.uk/article/adolescence but for me, that reads like "study", which is of course useful, encouraged, and appreciated, but Crouch is not writing that type of book, not even tying to, don't think I'd want him to myself, really. If anything, this has the feel of Sharon Green's biography of Grant, which I know w a lot of people hated, but which I dug because it read like a family reunion, basically, a lot of people coming together and telling stories of various accuracies and reliabilities and veracitites about the family. Some, all, or maybe even none of it is reliable as "history", but nevertheless as far as forming persona;/group identifiers as what it means to be of this family, hey, unbeatable. These reunions a time-honored tradition in some segments of American life (some families come home from the reunion with really elaborate t-shirts created for the event, others book hotel rooms in block, and others still will vibe you really REALLY hard if start missing consecutive years), and to expect a family reunion to function as an academic treatise is....silly, superheros? What I'm picking up on Crouch trying to do is is to do the same type thing, only than participating in the reunion, he's kinda MC-ing it, providing what he feels are relevant historical contexts and character framing for the family stories. With that as his aim, I can say, to this point, that his success rate is incredibly erratic, but reading it with that intent, rather than creating an academic tome, in mind, I can go with his flow just fine. Some times with less of a need to stifle LOLs than others, but, yeah, there's a flow that I'm willing to follow. Also, keep in mind that I do NOT enjoy Stanley Crouch in his role as critic - social, musical, whatever. He's whatever the 1960s Watts equivalent of a Country Boy Gone To The City And Gettin' Above His Rearin' syndrome is. Problem is, I am generally prone to liking a good street intellectual better than a formal one. I might not agree with them more, but I'll enjoy their company more. But Crouch has seeming yearned and willed his way into at least a veneer of "formal" respectability. Dude, just stop it, ok? As if. But -that's my thoughts about Stanley Crouch, not the book he's written about Charlie Parker, which, again, I am enjoying to this point for reasons quite unrelated to how I feel about Stanley Crouch.

Whatcha' been up to? It's been a while!

Keith Baltimore http://www.baltimoredesigncenter.com/baltimoredesign.html

The camera would have been on the floor for this one, correct? Not being a photographer myself, I ask in all seriousness, since this appears to be a candid shot, would Stewart have been on the ground himself as well? Is having a photographer on the floor at sessions something that people were used to?

Ima Hogg Y.A. Tittle Tillie

I meant Richard Horry, as a fitting-the-flow pun on Richard Scarry. I had to confirm that there was at least one real person by that name, and sure enough, there were. To resume: Dorothea Dix Dixie McCall Carl Carlton