JSngry

Did not know of that one, who's on it? John Collins was much the player!

so...what kind of "Unity" are we talking about here?

I'm all for understanding mental eccentricities and encouraging their understanding by all involved, but just as much in favor of protecting people from unnecessary and preventable danger and/or injury. So it's in that spirit that I gotta ask, "WTF was THAT bullshit?" I wish him well on his apparently ongoing journey toward sanity, but...that's enough.

All this, and Larry Young too.

Lloyd Ellis... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZeOzefL8S4&feature=relmfu Maybe more of a "picker" that a "jazz guitarist", but oh well. If Les Paul counts, stuff like this should too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8meSUxzJaag&feature=relmfu

North By North West Coast!

I was completely unaware of those two duet albums w/Alan Broadbent on Milestone. completely slipped under my radar...this looks like a good set to get, then, good value and "from the source". The only Konitz Milestone album I'm not too into is Peace Meal. The others range from damn good to great, imo.

I was 17 or 18 when it came out, and many of the white kids and all the black kids my age really dug it. Then I went to college, got involved in the black frat-party band circuit, and everybody on that scene all dug it - and were the ones buying the Sunlight/Secrets type stuff as well. You didn't work a black fat party back then without playing looooooonnnnggggg jams on Mister Magic, Chameleon, Summer Madness, etc. People liked to find that groove and ride it for 15 minutes on up to....whenever it ran out. Still is like that - you play in a band that plays for black dancing, you better be ready to go long on the real jams. None of this three minutes and out crap. No. I could tell you stories... At the same time as that, I had a good buddy, an uber-whiteguy from Overland Park, Kansas, who transcribed Spank-A-Lee and orchestrated it for the 1:00 lab band. He was quite enthusiastic about scoring the clavinet parts for the sax section. That music captured a lot of imaginations and filled a lot of dancefloors in its time. I was there and I do not lie.

Overall, yeah. It's a good time to be a Rangers fan. But it' still just April, and...you know,.,,shit happens, right? But so far, so good!

If that tone was a car, you couldn’t drive it down the street today without scaring people shitless. But you could hold a company picnic on the hood and raise a family in the trunk.

Absolutely, and considering that if not for his two-out loss-of-it that led to the Tigers' only runs of the game we might well still be playing ball, cause for satisfaction, if you can ever look at a loss with satisfaction, and I think sometimes you can. He got out of it & kept the team in the game. Can't win 'em all! The "one bad inning" syndrome, geez, that's frustrating seeing with a young starter. Last season, remember, Holland & Harrison were always dealing with it, and this year, so far, the seem to have grown out of it. I suspect that Feliz will too. Mike Maddux, that guy...you gotta love him. Although, I don't know if I'd enjoy filming a commercial or going fishing with him...

Seemed like a guy to me who always handled his business, showed up ready to play, and always did. No drama, just solidness. Here's to people like that. More, please!

Exactly. It's all human responsibilities, and we all have them, and they extend beyond our own self. I'm tired of some "artists" (real or pretend) thinking otherwise, never mind militantly justifying otherwise. I can dig wrong thing/right reason (and vice-versa), but there's gotta be an express/basic recognition of the imperfections therein rather than viewing it as some kind of "triumph" or "integrity" or whatever. No. It's just another form of flawed human behavior. Yet another.

Maybe the flying18-wheelers collected all the bad mojo out of the it, because we've had beautiful weather nonstop ever since. Days in the mid-70s (at most), nice breezes all day, warm but not hot sunshine, birds singing happy songs all day, that kind of thing. Whenever the inevitable Summer Hell gets here, it will be too soon.

Nah, I don't even believe in "artists", and only slightly more in "Art". It's not an "artist" thing, anyway. It's a human thing. An "artist" has no more or no less "responsibility" than any other human. Thinking otherwise is the platonic notion. That's a rather glib and irrelevant response, as I never said I only like work that is akin to my own. I merely stated that when judging my own work I ask myself, would I approve of this if I were a third-party consumer of said work. And in that role, standing back, I can only speak for my own taste, nobody else's. I'm never going to sing like Jimmy Rushing, I'm never going to write fiction like Robert Penn Warren or Georges Simenon, because they inhabit a space that simply doesn't intersect with what I want to do or am capable of doing (in the case of Simenon, I'm not capable). But that doesn't stop me from loving the work, and it would be the rare narcissist who looked like your straw man. Please read again - I didn't say you were going there. I said that's one place where it could go. And has gone. Lots. And with that, sir, I believe you have hit the nail squarely on the head!

It's only April. Nothing's even really started yet,, especially at Comerica, where weird stuff always seems to happen to us (that was where Hamilton broke his collarbone last year, and another spectacular start suddenly slammed to an unceremoniously hard stop). Same thing with Target Field in Minneapolis. The fact that the first early series in both parks this early season have gone as they have does not lessen the shadows of the past one feels looking over the shoulders of the current season. Rainout last night forcing Scott Feldman into a spot start against the Yankees next week (not bad in and of itself, but there's a reason why he's not in the rotation...), Beltre's hamstring tweak today...plenty of baseball left, and plenty of time for the old curses to return. Cold damp weather and the Rangers....I don't like it, no sir, I don't.

About the "always be of service" goal, as opposed to (if indeed it is) Pete C's "the only question an artist needs to ask is, 'Am I making something that would please me if somebody else had made it.''" "Always be of service" would seem to call for one of two things (and maybe more): that the artist be able to read the audience's mind, or that he regard applause, ticket and recorded music sales, back-patting, etc. as the primary determinants of what he or she should be doing. And a secondary question: if the artist could read the audience's minds, how does he balance out, say, nine people who thought the results were so-so and one who thought they were life-changingly brilliant versus ten people who thought the results were good. Also, in that first sample, who is this tenth person? Is he Jim Sangrey? Chuck Nessa? Me? Charlie Parker? Duke Ellington? And who are the nine others? Where do you get "always" be of service, Larry? Don't think that was ever in the mix, "always". Point being, the whole notion of pleasing yourself with your art can go many different ways, from total self-indulgence to total self-negation, depending on how you get your pleasure. Same thing with the notion of doing something that you think you would like if somebody else did it..I mean, WHAT? That can go a lot of ways too, up to and including the "I only like things that reinforce me, so anybody who does what I like is great, because I am great" bullshit that passes for "artistic awareness" in some circles in some places in some times. You really, after all is said and done, can't help but be the center of your own universe, but it's never a good ideal to get to the point where you think that your universe is the universe, not for too long anyway. One way or another, that's just...not good over the long haul for either the art or the person, or the people involved with the art and/or person. Damaged goods are bad enough, but creating damaged goods...not the best possible outcome. The notion of service, in some form or fashion, is not something to treat cheaply or lightly. You can abstract it out into infinity, good or bad, and you can nervously give lip-service to it. But at the end of your life, you've either left people/places/things better than you found them or you haven't. It's really not all that complicated. There's a time to decide to get to know yourself, and there's a time to decide what you want to do with yourself, and then there's a time to decide who you want to ultimately be. Those are separate decisions that do not always get made at separate times.

Yeah, always be the center of your own universe. That's the ticket!

Got too wrapped up in too many things over the last few weeks,,,called this morning for tickets,,,sold out as of last night. Shuchks. It's cool, I've seen Palmieri before, but he's traveling with a quartet that includes Bryna Lynch & Daphnis Prieto. I really, really wanted to catch Prieto. Oh well... some other time, perhaps.

Are they eating cake?

w/Von Freeman & Joe Diorio. Not music, but on a record LP album, like some music: