JSngry

I like the guy's sound & I understand some days being better than others, so...close enough for Early 21st Century Jazz, imo. I'll never walk away if I see the name, I'll put it like that.

Maybe it lulls people who are just handling it into a sleep?

Art Donovan Sonny Phillips Peter Leitch

Professional Dog Groomer Professional Dog Breeder Professional Dog Ventriloquist

Really? You can't have a "hit" or a "popular favorite" like everybody else, you have to have a "success"? Fopped on a largosta with the tubels, have we?

Stix Hooper The Rolling Stones Bones Howe

Fall, then, early or late. Definitely 1978, though, before Christmas, and definitely long enough before Nice Guys for it to build some momentum through touring, airplay, etc. That band had a pretty big niche following, had a buzz. Not necessarily a niche that was "fashionable" then or now, but a niche nevertheless, and one that bought a lot of records as they were released. This I'm fairly certain of. Many other things, not so much.

Release dates? DeJohnette Summer 1978, AEC Spring 1979, correct? I do distinctly remember the New Directions group touring in support of that album. They played a good-enough sized venue in Dallas (a theater w/balcony, iirc) and filled it up. People who would otherwise never even venture near Lester Bowie heard him and dug the shit out of him. In the segment of the audience I'm talking about, it was damn near a "crossover" success for Bowie, because that bag was all about ECM, & Dejohnette, and to a slightly lesser extent, Abercrombie. Bowie, AEC, AACM, those things did not exist in their world. Now, if you tell me that Nice Guys had its release delayed by ECM to move things along with the Bowie/Abercrombie exposure, to raise profile, I would be neither surprised nor disgusted, one way or the other. I'm just saying that if that is what happened, it worked as hoped for.

Define "easy".

I do remember that it was not Soundstage that presented this. The set and camera work all had a "local" flavor. The time slot, though, I seem to recall being one where one evening, there was the Jarrett American QUINTET, yes, with Guilherme Franco added. Don't think it was a part of the same series that did the Lake thing, though. It was early, not sure how many records Lake had even had out by then, or if Bakida Carrol was on board. I'd like to think that I'd have remembered if he was, but not everything get remembered at he same time, right? Blessing in disguise, too, that is.

Correct em if I'm wrong, but there is no mention of Bowie already being a "known quantity" among ECM-ers through his albums with Jack De Johnette. If we want contextualizing and or cultrural workers compensation, trust me when I tell that a good segment of young-white-music-student-geeks who were TOTALLY enthralled by DeJohnette & Abercrombie got exposed to Lester Bowie through those records, "heard about" the AEC as a result, but never bought any records (mainly because outside of imports and a random acts of cutouts and Major Metropolitan Jazz Cities, good luck on that, then) until Nice Guys, and then, hey, this is Lester Bowie's other group, eh? NICE STUFF!!! Lester Bowie essentially being Paul McCartney w/Wings and oh, whose these Beatles guys, not quite, but close enough, in that sense. So, if we're going to direct memories into History because That's How Things Work, well, here one is to add to the peristalsis of documentational time. Somebody write an article now!

Haven't made it to page 30 yet...it's just too hard to sit down with this thing and stay down with it. But it's not so much that it's "bad", I have to say that as far as overall "tone" and "atmosphere", I'm getting it, Crouch is definitely sending a vibe, and it's easily picked up on and carried through with. But GOOD GOD, I think I just read a sentence, a single sentence, and not a long one, that started out soaring and had crashed and burned a full five miles away from the period. Now, that's part of the atmosphere, the attitude, but if I wanted to hang out with some cats and soak up the mojo of the being-on-reported upon world, I would do so (and in fact, have, in my own provincial opportunities way), not sit down and read a book trying go replicate what it felt like, sumbitches and all that, and if I did, I know that the conversation would ramble and drift and go from sublime to stoopid without any warning, but that's what a hang is for, not a book. You want to live a hang and read a book, not the other way around. Still, in spite of all that, I get what Crouch is up to here, and so far I'm not in any dyspeptic about it, yet. But it's not because he's such a damn fine writer (he's a talker, that's what he is), it's because I already understand his basic lexicon and don't have to translate it into regular wordage. But woe do I pity those who do, and really, was THIS the way to do THIS?

Like some folks, I was listening to them intently before I had ever even knew who Albert Murray was, so what kind of category do I lay my bed in for not just this night but all remaindering ones, huh? Was this an accident of birth, or a reward for some stray act of random goodness performed in some previous life or a punishment for something we might all do at some point? I read this guy using Albert Murray to lead off an article about the AEC, and I'm already on the phone to the bullpen, ya' know? Rightly or wrongly, that phone's already ringing. Ya' know?

When I take my glasses off, Raymond Scott looks enough like Ross Perot that I can pretend I'm listening to a Ross Perot record, and then it's funny and fun alike.

Too many words, too small a type, and what's with the sub-plot of Jazz Critics Are Weird People and/or the irony of a Jazz Critic Himself saying that. I bought the records, I listened to the records, I paid attention as much as I could when it was happening, so where's my article? There won't be one, thank you. Just let's hang out for a while, the article will be in that.

I try to distinguish between what I think I want, what I really want, and what I actually need to become a better, smarter person (or at least musician/player/thinker/placeholder) and budget accordingly. Some days are better than others!

Oh, I'm not upset about anything. I got too much money saved from not buying this particular kind of bullshit to be upset! Upset would be wanting something nice and not having the money to buy it cause I spent it all on Ambluvianitive or whatever them labels is.

Men Who Shave With Barbasol Bill Stern The Colgate Shave Cream Man An Aqua-Velva Man

And his full user name was alocispepraluger.

http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/Erasing_Deleted_Files.asp

Well hey - ask me to do a needledrop or an MP3/WAV rip/burn for you, let me provide you some generic "artwork" and a basic disc-holder, and then let me charge you more than, say, 3-5 bucks for that, let me charge you 10-15 dollars PLUS S&H for that. Then let's see if you tell me that you're getting what you paid for. I would certainly hope that you would tell me to go fuck myself, my jiveass conman self and my triflin' lameass ripoff "product"! Yes, I would certainly hope that!!!

That's that gunslinger mentality that was essential to survival back in the day but that can get you killed nowadays. I have mixed emotions about the change, to put it mildly. Let me put it this way - if the guy didn't fight back in some manner (preferably by playing better) then he deserved the disrespect he got, and should have learned from it for the next time. Stitt would not have pulled that shit if he really respected they guy (and no matter how good the guy was, was he REALLY up to the job of sitting in with Sonny Stitt? Was Sonny Stitt his idea of a Benevolent Negro Grandfather who was there to share the love and the bandstand and make everybody feel good that Jazz Will Survive, All God's Children Got Rhythm And Can Play Changes!!! ? There's a rather...serious degree of Disrespectful Cluelessness inherent in the notion of sitting in with Sonny Stitt unless you're ready to BRING IT, ya' know?)) and/or if he knew that he couldn't have gotten by with it. Wrong place/wrong time, blood would have been spilled (or at least drawn), and perhaps rightfully so (depending on time/place). But times have changed, and we make room for everybody these days, because we are such nice and evolved people and everybody's beautiful in their own way. So MANY people play the music now, and it has thrived and improved as a result! Or something. Sonny Stitt is dead now.

If you think about what it is you pay and what it is you actually get, you (usually) really don't get what you pay for!

Duke Earl Gene Chandler