JSngry

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I remember when Belinda Carlisle used to date Steve Garvey and go to Dodgers games. Let them get good again (the Dodgers, that is, Belinda Carlisle done did all she can do), with all those high dollar$ shining in the Pacific sun, and it'll happen again. Not literally, though...that would be weird..and not so glamorous, except in an Senator And His Ex-Wife knid of way...

Duly notated. And I think it is accurate to say that Mingus was not "disinterested" in Ornette (was Mingus ever disinterested about anything? ), or that he was not "uninterested". He was interested, irregardless of which prefix is amended, although I'll make no claim whatsomever to be able to accurately ascertain to what degree which. And Ornette would be, like, ok, a prefix is just a pivot tone, and Mingus would be, yeah, but you gotta know where you're pivoting from and where you're pivoting to, and Ornette would be, doesn't matter, really, because after you get there, you're already thinking about where to go next and in the end, you say what you say and it means what it means and once it's said it's already said, and Mingus would say, well in that case there's no beginning or end, really, up is down and right is left and in is out, and one is all, and Ornette would be, yeah, that's pretty much it, and Mingus would be all ERIC, HELP ME OUT HERE!!! Thus the beauty of it all.

Sure. It's not that Mingus was "disinterested" in Ornette or anything like that, probably more that he likely heard the genius but still harbored "reservations" as well. Probably one of those "had to be there" things to fully appreciate in full, no doubt. Especially now, it's hard to realize just how much of a "slap in the face" Ornette originally was to a musical culture that had come to insist on technical superiority as a prerequisite to acceptance. I know I can just begin to imagine it, because it's evident to me that Ornette could play in the conventional sense, always has been evident. Same with Albert Ayler. Some of that stuff you just cannot do without some serious, dedicated, focused practice. But I came to it all after the initial impact, and seeing the photo of Mingus, Ornette, & Kenny Dorham playing together at the Newport Rebels festival is kinda like, oh, ok, that might have been a challenge for everybody concerned for all kinds of reasons, like, KD is gonna stay in town, Mingus is gonna look to expand the limits, and Ornette isn't even concerned with gravity, and then, yeah, some perspective begins to form about what a fundamental shift Ornette was really bringing to the table, and why not everybody, even some kindred spirits, didn't jump right in and take off in the same car.

Shad Collins Wendell Culley Al Aarons

That, and rendering the Angels irrelevant (as marketplace competitors, anyway) once and for all...

Everybody's "interested" in Hamilton...including the Rangers. But there are so many variables that come into play, and only some of them are predictable (age) and/or manageable ("not feeling good"). At some point you'll also get flat-out weirdness of unpredictable and unmanageable intensity and duration, and then, at some further point you'll get it again. And again. After long enough, the whole risk-reward thing is nowhere as near clear-cut one way or the other, as it was when you looked at it the first time and then...it gets weird. Real weird.

In other words, aging jazz musicians could now grow out their sideburns and combovers, unbutton their shirts and get hip to the feelings, moods and vibrations of today. Well, that too. But Coltrane was conversant/conversing w/Shankar before any of that happened, and to the best of my knowledge, Trane never had a comb-over.

Don Goldie Jean Goldkette Laura Alvarez modeling her salmon croquettes http://www.layouth.com/salmon-croquettes/

Yeah, that's pretty obvious! On the somewhat other side of the coin, there's that Thad "arrangement" of "Tuxedo Junction" for Harry James that's nothing more than a stock chart with a 32 bar Thad-composed sax soli in the middle. Everything else, purely stock. And I've played charts by Bob Brookmeyer and Al Cohn from the old Ralph Marterie book that were close enough to being stocks as to make no real difference. Wouldn't surprise me at all if they farmed at least some of those out to up-and-coming "assistants" or some such with some general instructions and final review and that was that. Pens for hire, money to be had for both doing and semi-doing and just "facilitating". Plenty work, plenty workers, plenty money. Nice work if you can get it (and these days, you can't).

Guess who?

HHH LBJ JFK

And that is how it should be, I think...balancing "the moment" with "the timeless"...choosing to eliminate one or the other means denying spontaneous inspiration on the one hand, ongoing traction on the other. Either way you're a prisoner... Hell, you're a prisoner in some form or fashion no matter what. But at least you should be able to decorate your cell walls!

Chuck Rainey Chuck D Sheila E.

Shepp came to learn to play changes fairly well, but it was long after his initial burst of fame. And I'm not sure that it was ever going to be the first thing that he was "about". Truthfully, I've been on both sides of that fence, and it's still hard for me to reach any hard and fast conclusion one way or the other as far as "validity" of any particular expression at any given moment goes. But I can say that the more developed a skill set you have, the more you can build past any initial momentum you might generate from sheer emotional immediacy. So the question then becomes do you want to be the jazz equivalent of a "one hit wonder", and if so, fine, one hit wonders are still wonders, and sometimes they are WONDERFUL wonders, but...you got a life to think about too, and being "in the moment" is indeed the object of the game, but moments change, that's why they're moments, and eventually they change enough as to not be there anymore, and then what?

Can anybody familiar with the whole Bollywood scene comment about if maybe there "cross-cultural" exchange between Indian Classical Music and American Popular Musics maybe went both ways - i.e. - did Indian Popular Music begin to take a different direction at some point due to Western influences that might not have been there before Shankar? In other words, when The West began looking in to India for inspiration, did India begin to look back in the same way? Or would all that have happened anyway..or was it already happening?

Mingus never did get fully on board with the free jazz "movement"...he was skeptical of, for lack of a better term, breaking the rules before you knew them. And he was ambiguous about Ornette, too, once calling him "old-fashioned" in a not-necessarily flattering way, as well as talking about "he only plays in the key of C..he's a genius in the key of C" or something like that. And the Adams/Bluiett fron line, he was on tehm about not knowing the changes, just freaking out...something like that...but he liked the energy. And remember - Dolphy was a virtuoso is the traditional sense, knew all his instruments inside and out, knew theory backwards and forwards, he "knew" what he was doing as both intellectual schematic and emotional imperative. There's always a line between radicals from within tradition and radicals from without it. I think it's safe to say that Mingus was a radical from within, somebody who didn't feel the need to "destroy the rules" nearly as much as he did to forcibly remake them in a way that would accommodate him.

You talking about Youk or Napoli? Problems with the physical, I'm hearing...hate to hear it but wouldn't be surprised...

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Besides his importance as an artist in and ambassador of his own music, this is a man who changed everything in jazz and rock, if not necessarily directly, then by creating a new awareness and curiosity that re-framed the concept of "new" and "possibilities" in such a way things could never be put back exactly the way they were before. RIP.

Is a drawn penguin ever not cool? In my experience, a drawn penguin is always cool.

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And Carole King? And Neil Diamond, if your memory goes back far enough and stops soon enough?