JSngry

People be getting dazzled by the gesture without having a clue as to the mechanincs, what's actually happening. "Mixing jazz and hip-hop", well cool, but what...does..that MEAN? What is being done, exactly? Where is the jazz, where is the hip-hop, and how is this all being fit together...or is it really fitting together at all? I mean, I've heard great shit and I've hear shitty shit, and I'll be damned if I know who to go to who's regularly displayed a modicum of non-hype, non-jargonical ability to break it down to me in a way tha makes real sense. I'm not asking for Mister Peabody, hell just be able to tell me maybe waht samples are being used - and how -, and why record X is lubed like a room of recreational porn starts after-party and why record C is like a pile of dead mashed potatoes that kill lab rats. In other words, display some knowledge of the music that matches what you proclaim of the sociological, and then we'll know who's got meat in the freezer and who's trying to hustle an invite for lunch. But this music is going to keep happening. There's every reason why it should, and hardly none why it shouldn't. And me, I'd prefer it be good, because when it's good, I really do like it.

I think we just need to let people be and make whatever music they feel like making, for whatever reason, to which end, the more I see how...upset things like this Glasper record & Nicholas Payton's thing make some people, the more sense Payton's whole "jazz is death" and "BAM" thing is making. It's like, there's no reason why you have to play a certain thing, or a certain way, other than to appease your "owners". But if Robert Glasper can make a good contemporary R& B record and bring some "jazz sensibility" to it (and I hear it, just like I heard it back in the days of The Great Sellouts", and just as I stopped hearing it when people started playing that type of music who didn't have it), hell why shouldn't he? I mean, did he make a compact with God to not ever do something like this? I dog that a lot of "a certain type of people" can' get with hip-hop on even the most pbasic principle, and I get how there are other "certain types of people" who don't ever want to hear non never pop/R&B/commercial/whatever music. But isthis their world to determine what everybody/anybody should or shouldn't play, what kind of musics, for what motivations, to what ends? I think not! Tell you what - I've been reading "jazz criticism" of some form or ilk for a little over 40 years now, and I don't know that I've yet to read one, not one, critic or pundip or punjab who can deal with any ongoing "commercial jazz" scene from about the mid-1960s onward in the sense of displaying genuine musical discernment. Like what Grover Washington records are better than others, and why? Herbie w/Vocoder, what happens if you don't reflexively run in horror? Ramsey Lewis, what's up with those tempos, jack? Why so just-so? CTI, when do the base track drive the post-production, and when does the post-production come to the rescue, these are all very real questions about how these type musics get made, and a quick "commerical" brushoff is dishonest and inaccurate.. Whereas lots of...words get written about not so much of nothing more than the same changing back into itself. Confound expectations - make music that carries with it no other expectation that it is by-god going to get made, and let all of "those types of people" free to just leave you the hell alone.

Another difference is that some of the people who heard those 70s albums actually liked - and still like - some of them, and see no reason to not like them, or to incorporate that which they like into their own stuff. Nothing at all wrong with that. One more difference is that today some people recognize that some of that stuff was actually good music, period. Not everybody, of course. Remember "Bebop Is The Music Of The Future"? Nice try, that was.

And don't forget his game show hosting!

Seems right to me...everybody I knew who had original copies got them from their parents, and the stories were always like, yeah, the old man would come home from work and...or Sunday afternoons were reserved for music and...just various scenarios of the records being "lifestyle items". Remember, this was back when you could buy record players at Western Auto & the average tracking force was 37 pounds.

Yeah, that red cover is the only one I've known. Thanks!

maybe....

Is that the original European cover?

There's a lot of possibilities here...having Shafiq do more than a vocal cameo would be cool...Madlib's "worked with" Blue Note in the past (not sure who the "in" was there), but...there are definitely possibilities if both Glasper and Blue Note really want to go there.

I understand your frustration. There's only 160 games left.

Dude, you should have an electrician check that out. Could be a fire hazard.

Yeah, sure, ok, and I appreciate your civic pride.

I work on commission you know...

I bought Ideal Scene back in the day and it never really clicked with me. But I love Lee, and maybe I just wasn't hearing it then.

Hey, different strokes and all that. Me, I've never been that much of a fan of it to begin with (when the Liebman/Grossman thing was "all the rage" back in the 70s, I was not leading the cheers, if you know what I), and am even less of one now. Nothing "wrong" with it, just not relevant to me personally, not as much as a lot of other stuff, past, present, and, hopefully, future, including musics emanating from New York City. Just not that one kind with that one feeling. Seems like the meaning of "tight" has taken a turn for the worse of the last few decades. But that's just me.

As it was happening in real time, there was a year or two where it looked like Applause was going to be the only way to get Blue Note. The "real thing" was totally dead, and this was all that was coming out. You talk about the future looking dark...

Trying some ol' reverse psychology eh? On myself, yeah. Last season was...extremely intense for me personally. Don't know if this one needs to be quite as much so. Besides, getting to the Series three years in a row? Not likely by any rational/reasonable standard. Now, next season...

Absolutely. But - Different time, different scene, different business/career models, different drugs (generally speaking, cocaine is not the best possible jazz drug, neither as an ongoing proposition nor as a lingering after-effect), different music, different everything. That was cats coming to play, not to burn. True burning happens, it's not set out for before even one note is played.

Street preachers are (or used to be) fairly commonplace in more urban communities, including African-American ones. Perhaps even more so there. "Priest" shifts the lens to a more African/tribal perspective. I think it just means that these are guys preaching their "tribal" truth on/from the streets, "street" being more figurative than literal, meaning that they don't have any real formal, built-in support structure & have to hustle for anything/everything they get every step of the way. A tribe of barbeque dogs preaching on the streets of the world, there you go!

I never got him either, but I do think it's cool that he like to blow up stuff on his ranch. I wonder if he like weenie-water soup too?

Now there's some shit that could stand to be hacked!

Just another way of saying living hand-to-mouth, which is how a lot of players live.

And that's how they do it...and how they should do it. That most of it is of no interest to me just means that fjords don't resonate with me, not that fjords are off-limits. Same thing with standing in a 12" asbestos circle and "burning" to no end other than to have a burn...if that's your world, cool, but...that ain't everybody's world, and for many people, that's by informed choice.

"NY Jazz records" are those where everybody shows up to BURN instead of to play. And they try OH so hard and it's OH so obvious that they're trying, and..true burning don't need all that. It's not just a "NY" thing, but cats get all caught up in that scene and get all tight about shit and feel the need to BURN all the time, and in the rest of the world, it just ain't ALL about that, if you know what I mean. We got back yards and back roads and...stuff like that. "Marketplace records" are those where the "production team" (including the players, often enough) get together and say, "let's make sure this is aimed t the marketplace. Let's do what we need to do to make it sound like that". And for certain jazz artists/producers, that "NY Burn" is a part of that, even on more populist material. So it ends up with everybody playing down instead of playing to. What Glasper % Payton have done (or seem to have done to me) is more like "let's just make some R&B the way we'd like it to be". And why not?.I don't senbse that the music itself is contrived or condescending (in fact, Payton's shit is pretty left field in spots). Garrett's Black Hope is such an album too, but nobody really got hip to it. I'd like to hope that he still has some more like that in him, because that tone of his,,. it speaks of things besides just Burning & Playing Down.