JSngry

And hopefully the music will be made by People Who Suffered More Than You. That's when it's really good.

I have it on a Moon CD called Coast To Coast. I think it's from a Half Note broadcast. http://www.angelfire.com/id/laotan/coast.html

I never really got him, probably still don't, but Lift,yeah, I get that one. Lift got it.

Anybody heard the Circle stuff that Chick put out in Japan-only? For my money, it's knowing the "avant-Chick" that gives the Captain Marvel/1st RTF Chick such a rich context.

My "top" Miles/Trane is Paris 1960. Trane breaks the time barrier on that one. Even by his "final" standards, he's scary on here. And for Trane's "classic" quartet, whatever gig it was that produced "Creation". Live '65 Trane is something very special, period, but this one might be the most special of them all. And can we throw Newk in the mix? From 1968, the two In Denmark Moon CDs hit a zone, as does Aix En Provence from 1959. Those sets are all ones on which extreme familiarity with everybody's work gets trumped by that daaAAAAMMMMNNnnnnnn feeling. You know what I mean. And although not a boot, but live, the Roscoe Mitchell/Muhal duet release gets there too, as does Cecil/Max. This music can get very serious, more serious than just serious, if you know what I mean. Not "as serious as your life", more like this IS life, this is all of life, all at once, and if there's more to it than this, well, not right now there's not. Maybe when some more dimensions are more fully revealed, but...maybe that's what it is doing, ya' know?. Not even the greatest of the great, not even Bird, could get there every time out. So when you hear it really getting there, hey, you are being blessed, and it kind of put everything else into perspective.

Paris 1971 is all I have on my note card I made when I dubbed the LP last century, and I was pretty anal about writing down every available detail.

Yeah, that one too. Seems like their whole run on BN was pretty worthwhile, iirc. Maybe not always "great" but few things really are, ya' know?

Left Eye The Wright Brothers The Upright Citizens Brigade

I used to enjoy that Tonic album of theirs quite a bit.

...be sure to stick a significantly inferior and wholly irrelevant "bonus" cut smack dab in the middle of a freakin' masterpiece so that it totally disrupts the flow of the album, and while they're at it, pretend that the epic essay that originally came with the album never really happened (although, that eventually happened to the LP as well. But still...)?

It Takes A Thief was a fine (often great, imo) show, & Thorne's Noah was a great character well-executed. RIP.

Yes, I have that one, and you think "Sonny Rollins WOW" and it is, on one cut, but he's playing saxophone pads - , just making the saond of closing and opening pads. So, yeah, parallel universe BIG time. I dig George Braith. People should also hear the one he made with The Braith Family singers. It's the very eptiome of you either get it or you don't, and either way, that's a good reason.

uhhh...

My daughter had a party here a few months ago, and one of her friends wanted to talk to me because he knew I was a musician and as he himself pointed out, he "made music" himself (which in his mind involved making beats, which, ok, you can maybe learn more from me to further your craft than I from you to further mine, but let's talk any way, because who knows?). Anyway, this guy says look at all these LPs you got, man that's the REAL DEAL, analog is SO MUCH BETTER because it SOUNDS MORE REAL and I stopped him and said, well, ok, for source material as such, yeah, it does, because that's what "it" "is", but - how do you chop your beats, how do you get your samples, how do you want your shit to sound after you've made you manipulations to the source material? Do you want it to sound analog? Do you think it SHOULD sound analog, all real-timey and shit? COULD it, even if you wanted it to? You do that, you'll have learned to make sound travel faster than light, you think that's ever gonna happen? Well, no, of course not. And think about this - I got all my shit literally covering WALLS (plural) in my house, and you got all your shit right there in your pocket? You got it any where you want it at any time, and you can send it back and forth to anybody you want at any time you want. Do you think you could do that it you had walls from my house in your pocket? HA! Well, of course not. And even more besides that (I wasn't scolding him or anything, it was a good exchange, really, in spite of how I'm writing it here) - how many of the sounds that you START OUT with even EXIST in the analog realm? How you gonna get THAT sound anyway? It's digital to begin with, how is making it analog going to make it anything other than a digital sound? At that point he was kinda laughing, saying, yeah I see what you mean, they both have their advantages and they both have their problems...to which I agreed and added, hey, it's all tools, i.e. it's only what you make out of it, so learn what it all is and then proceed accordingly once you figure out what you want to do with these tools now that you know what they are (and aren't) , and we went off on some other tangent after that. He was a smart kid who didn't mind hearing what a crazy old fart had to say, which is always nice for a crazy old fart to encounter. And I saw the guy just last week, he stopped by to hang out w/my daughter, and he asked me to recommend some drummers, so I gave him Max Roach & Bruno Carr, go look for those guys & see how that works for you. And although you didn't ask, look for some Charles Mingus records, because you will find locked-time vamps and random emotional sounds that you might find useful. Next thing I know, him and her were out to the Half-Price. In search of LPs or CDs, I have no idea...hopefully it didn't matter all that much.

Way cool. Thanks for putting that up/out. George Braith probably has enough private tapes "like this" to create a parallel universe of jazz records.

Yeah, that's it, thanks. Not exactly linearly as I remembered it, but riffage, comedy riffage. Raw talent perhaps, but the skills are there. And big love for The Roots as house band. It's fun to watch that show just to hear them. And they NAIL those turn on a dime medleys. SERIOUS skills.

What I see happening more and more in what little "contemporary pop" I hear that captures my attention/imagination (and that right there narrows it down to a less than insignificant statistical sample) is the layering of "events"...it's not about "songs" any more nearly as much as it is a bunch of things that in the old days would have been in the forefront all getting subsumed/consumed into one big interlocking whole. I mean, foreground/background...amybe not so much these days, and really isn't that how most people live today, in interlocking layers of only-sometimes-related simultaneity? Is this not The Truth we learned from Cecil Taylor LAST century, that yeah, it's there, it's real, and it's good, so when will The Masses catch up might not be the question now, maybe The Question Now is Hey, Look At It Happening, Baby Steps, not Giant Steps. But - maybe it IS happening, so let's not bury the lede. Now sure, what makes up those parts is getting more and more "simple" (except for, again, some of the drum programming, which is more like On The Corner than anything else, however that happened), but if I can not listen to it like that (and yeah, I'm fully aware that if I have to make myself listen to it like that that it's something that is not of/for me in any "organic" sense), I can hear how maybe it's got to be that simple in order for it all to fit in a "pop" way, at least right now it does, and that maybe this isn't so much a de-evoltuion of one sophistication as it is the ground-floor level of the beginning of a new evolution of another. Or maybe the world is going to hell in a handbasket and civilization is in fact fucked, nobody believes in songs, nobody believes in god, hey, it's Thug Rule EVERY damn where. Or maybe Going Digital is the ultimate You Can't Go Back (and well, isn't THAT a coincidence?). I can see it happening both ways (simultaneously, of course!). Either way, my personal preference is to look in on at what I can stand to look in on, and then like what I can like, which once you get past the math, really is not a complicated proposition, same as laughing. At root it's a gut instinct/reflex and all the "schooling" and/or "thinking" in the world won't change your gut, unless you're REALLY fucked, like Manchurian Candidate fucked, in which case:

I can't hate on anybody for having fun making money out of pop music and for making money having fun with pop music. If it's Ear Candy (and this definitely is) that gets to my sweet tooth (and that Suit & Tie thing definitely does, as does something like Janet Jackson's "Escapade", that's another one, that ok wtf EVER, I like this, ok?) then it's up to me to Consume Responsibly. Stoopid always gonna be Stoopid, so WATCH OUT, especially for The Other Guy! As far as pop music "regressing", yeah, maybe at some levels, but I've found myself landing on some Top 40 hip-hop stations and wondering at how everything could be so thuddy except the drum programing, which is skittery-skeeting ALL over the place, and finally coming to the conclusion that whatever "regression" is going on is on terms that perhaps no longer apply to anybody except somebody who cares. So let's see where all that's gonna end up, that and these melodies that kinda cross barlines at weird places with internal melismas that are almost "Arabic" or some such. I mean, it sucks getting old and finding out that Your Standards No Longer Apply, but once you come to terms with that, hey, there's fun to be had anyway. And I'm gonna have me some fun. If I don't, they win. And that there is a difference...the 2nd cut that Timberlake did on SNL the other night was a total drag, not good for me at all, so fuck him on that one. See, it's just that easy!

Oh yeah, one more thing that cracked me up - Fallon was going on about how every song on the new album sounded like an instant classic, how even though they were brand new songs they sounded like you'd heard them forever. Well, I was smelling that one, and Timberlake was too, because he jumped in and said, totally serious - that's because they're all just bits and pieces of songs that I stole from other people....JUST KIDDING, but him and Fallon both had facial expressions that said, no not JUST KIDDING, and I was like, man these two guys are GAMERS, ya' know? So yeah Show BIDNESS baby, and knowing that the guy KNOWS is why, I think, I found myself grooving on this Presentation more than even my most permissive conscience should allow for: Being Damn Good At It is all the seriousness this type of thing can handle, and needs to handle, ya' know? And that bass playing ain't bullshit either, if anybody's bother to listen.

Did you see Fallon last night? Don't know if you watch regularly or not (I watch semi-regularly), but every so often he gets into a riffing match with Steve Higgins. Last night was an exceptional one, with Higgins just goading him to go on, and with Fallon accepting the challenge, it was like a cutting contest/jam session. Cool stuff, and not something you see regualrly on Fallon's show. But it does happen often enough for me to tune in sem-regularly, jsut to see if it'll happen that night. Anyway, Timberlake comes out (he'd been a guest-in-residence all week), and Fallon starts pimping the new JT album, (which of course was the reason for all of this) & he's his usual gushy-effusive self. JT finally interrupts him by looking at the audience and saying something like Hey, this is the best review I can get, right here! Show-Biz Nice Guy 101, and Fallon stops and says, well, I don't really care for it myself..pause...it's not MY type of thing...etc. and before you know it, it's cutting contest time again, with Timberlake finally getting control with "I don't even like music, I don't even like the SOUND of music" and then BAM, he's off into a bigass bag full of Sound Of Music riffs, some of which were pretty dark, and none of which I can quote verbatim the day after, alas. I doubt that it was all scripted. It might have been outlined, but even at that, Timberlake is shaping up to be somebody who's seen enough and done enough to really know where the absurd is, and given half a chance he'll poke at it mercilessly. And here I was all ready to steady-hate on the guy, Dick In A Box notwithstanding. I was giving that one all to Andy Samberg. But now, I think JT might have some skill of his own. Sure looks that way. And speaking of Samberg/Fallon... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgcYP3EKBKA

Speaking of the Timberlake/Fallon tandem, his isn't really comedy, but it's new-school old-school variety-show bit at its best (imo): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9EKunCS_As http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fhQ2UfEQxo They did Part 4 last night. Fallon is totally whoring out, but he's not hiding his skills while he does, so...Show Biz Livz!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJzCqoyUW0I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLR0do3mWtA Sure he probably didn't write it, but still...

Never mind the boybandpop, is it just me or does this guy have an uncanny ear for comedy?