JSngry

Well, of course you'd say that; you're the type that would... Not good enough, Moose. You gotta have jargon and nomenclature and conveniently simplified slogan-names. The object is to label groups of types so those groups can be managed as such, and then the members of each group sublimate any errant tendencies to the overriding group traits. Managing individuals is difficult, at times impossible, and occasionally creates ambivalence. Managing groups of types is easy, becuse the answers are in plae before the questions even occurs. They got management seminars out the wazzoo about this shit, ladies and gentlemen. How to run a better X by identifying and learning how to handle the Five Types Of Worker or some whit like that. Once you allow yourself to be reduced to a "type", the possibility of ever being a nuanced individual are gone for good. Extrapolate that out to society at large and what have you got? A moving company of a culture that only moves boxes and never botheres to look at how those boxes have been packed. At some point thre will be a reckoning.....Choose wisely & expect the consequences or else don't even dare/bother to complain.

What, if anything, is signified by the site address not including "www."?

The current online BFT is Roberta what's her name, the singer, which was the March issue.. So America might own the world, but not the internet, or even its own websites. Truth be told, between Hirsch, Moran, & Iyler, the only one I have any interest these days in is Iyler (Hirsch was of some collateral interest when he played with Billy Harper, and Moran...never really got Moran) . The other two, I don't at all dislike them, but their music is not really relevant to my lifestyle.

Not the best analogy in the world, IMHO - sorry. What JSngry meant to say (if I got him correctly - and if I did, I agree with him) is that he'd rather see people travel around the country NOT without a map but without a "generalist" guide that tells them "what to see and where to go". Wouldn't it be much more interesting to discover your own niches and places to go that you find fascinating even if they are considered unworthy of a mention in such a guide? In short, get off the trodden paths of what "you are supposed to listen to in order to get the essentials of the music" and search out musicians or styles instead that appeal to your SUBJECTIVE tastes, even if this means that you end up having far more records by some artist who - by the "accepted wisdom of jazz history" - is an also-ran in his field and time but just happens to be hugely enjoyable to those who buy his records evben today - much more so than maybe a huge "name" artist who just does not cut it with some listeners. Nothing wrong with that - build your own tastes. That's pretty much it, thanks. Although at some point, yeah, it's a good thing to know the classics and all that, be able to discuss them intelligently & objectively and all that too, it's really not the ultimate object of the game, at least now from my POV, and it should really be something that one grows into at ones own pace, almost as an after-effect of one's own hunts & obseeions and pursuits than it should be what one consciously sets out to do. Unless the object of your game is to be a lecturer, Guide Writer, or some other Cultural Dictate-er. But then, that's true about life in general, isn't it? Whatever real wisdom you really have is acquired rather than received, no? And it's probably not complete, by any stretch of the imagination, which is good, because nobody can really know everything about everything, if only because if you did, you'd have been alive before during and after it all happened, and who the hell can or needs to be alive that long, eh?

Ellington Uptown must be more popular and/or critically regarded than I thought...it's good (three is no truly bad Ellington) and even interesting in spots ("Sontorversial Suite) is fun every few years or so), but other than the version of A-Train, really nothing on there that I'd not put in the middlest of the middle of the whole Ellington Worthiness Scale...and even then, I think A-Train worked better as an edited version focusing on Betty Roche's vocal that was on some Columbia Greatest Hits package than it does as a full-lenght album track. I mean, really - do people crave "Skin Deep"? Or what? I don't get it...

Oh, I had guides all right..the press of the day, a few books...just not Guides. The goal (mine any way) then was all about digging players, not so much which records you "should" own if you wanted a "representative collection" or some such. It - the whole thing, press, books, my own goal - was more about finding music that mattered to me personally than it was Becoming A More Refined Listener Through Acquainting Myself With The Classics. No use for that then, even less for it now. It's a different thing to respond to players and then go off all over the place looking for god only knows what you'll find than it is to hear something you like and then get a book/website/"Guide"/whatever to tell you where to go if you want to hear more of the same. But such are the times. People apparently have that need now more than before. Far be it from me to object to The People Getting What The People Want. That's always a good thing!

After all you've contributed to the magazine over the years, you can't leverage a free subscription? That ain't right!

Wow... Serenus was the label, apparently an independent label: http://www.justabuzz.com/serenus.shtml

That's the Herbie/Elis Costello collaboration, right? Not sure how well this sold as an RCA/Novus release originally, or how available its been since then, but... I'm not at a a Carmen McRae fan, yet I'd highly recommend this one. Very nicely done on all counts and on all fronts.

Gary Kroger http://www.brookshires.com/ Tom Thumb http://www.tomthumb.com/IFL/Grocery/Home Tom Brookshire http://www.brookshires.com/

When I first got interested in jazz, I would pretty much buy anything that gave the impression of being jazz (thanks in no small to abundant cutout bins, sure, but there's sharity blogs aplenty today that are marginally less expensive...). a lot of it i liked, and some of it is not particularly well-regarded critically, even today. But I can make the case for it, not because I have the weight of "critical authority" on my side, but because I discovered it on my own, listened to it on my own, and formed an opinion on my own, an opinion which morphs as the years go by and there's a broader frame of reference in both music and life to which to put it up against. In other words, I have my own opinion based on my own life. The musics have a meaning to me as more than just "classic recordings", which is really just another word for "an object". AFAIC, that should be the goal of every non-casual listener of/to music. That's what I don't like about these "guides". Useful as reference tools to see what's been done, yeah,, sure. But if evrybody follows the same book, everybody's going to be looking for - and finding - the same thing, with the same expectations. It's one more step to the codification of the music as being one set "thing". Even if that is inevitable, I don't like it, and I know it to be at root a falsehood. People don't need "guides" nearly as much as they need desire, hunger, & instinct. Otherwise, it gets to be just another form of "jazz education" - somebody decides they want to become a "jazz fan" and instead they put themselves in somebody else's hands and essentially say "make me one". Just as we now have an overabundance of cookie-cutter "jazz musicians", so it gets to be with "jazz fans". I'd rather see somebody who really really digs Hank Crawford and is indifferent towards Jackie McLean than to see somebody who has all of the "classics" in their collection and can name all the names but who can't sing even one solo off of any of them. Hopelessly impossible notions, I know, especially since jazz has pretty much (is 90% too high a guess? Realistically?) become a re-creative music, but still...

Here's what I wonder - all these people who rely on these guides, if they see an album that either looks interesting, and/or has players on it that they either like or are curious about, and/or is an album they've heard about as being "important"/"fascinating"/etc. and if one or both of these guides gives an indifferent-or-worse review to said album, will they buy it anyway? Same for players - if one or both of these guides paint a picture of player X as a marginal or otherwise "not really important" player, does that end your curiosity about said player right then and there?

Yeah, some people just like what they like because they like it and don't give a rat's ass about bullshit like "taste culture", "social and cultural capital", and -especially - about being labeled and "studied" by voyeuristic pus-heads like these clowns, whose "work" somehow gets legitimized by other pus-heads & results in the compulsion to always, always, look at people as "types". Enter at your own risk. Can we just go ahead and pop all their pus-heads and get back to just naturally being ourselves? Please?

I would not be surprised if they only did one.

Well on the notebooks you're touching the trackpad, not the screen itself. With OS version I'm using it only recognizes between 1 & 2 fingers. 1 finger moves the cursor around, 2 makes scrolling on webpages a breeze. I really miss the latter when I have to use Windows. Yeah, I got that, it's just that it "feels" like a touchscreen cognitively...just violates everything I've been programmed as far as what is and isn't ok to touch where electronics are involved...but I also don't do well with touchpads in general, or even those trackballs...guess that a brick wall of mine, but it feels like putting you fingers on a LP playing surface or something... Good news, though, I've not passed the quirk on to my kids.

Don't know that I'll ever be a touchscreen/pad type guy...too much like putting your hands on the TV screen, which was always strongly discouraged in our house...but that's just me.

Not sure if this has been discussed here before or not, but... http://www.deadmalls.com/ If you're old enough, it's pretty chilling reading sometimes...

Shadrach Meshach Abednego

What does this mean? I'm curious.

Billy Pierce was in Tony Williams' Blue Note quintet & has done a fair amount of "modern mainstream" dates over the years. Alan Pasqua was in the 70s edition of Lifetime. Tony must have maintained some Boston connections through the years... Delmar Brown was in the Jaco Word of Mouth, latter-day Gil Evans orb, Keith Copeland is Ray Copeland's son and has also done a fair amount of "modern mainstream" dates as well.

Same photo, different cropping.

This looks interesting... http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/freddie-hubbard-quintet/concerts/carnegie-hall-july-05-1974.html?utm_source=NL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=110304 Freddie Hubbard @ Carnegie Hall, July 5, 1974 with Junior Cook, George Cables, Reggie Workman, & Jack DeJohnette. 1. Announcer Introduction 0:22 2. First Light 24:32 3. Song Introduction 0:57 4. Here's That Rainy Day 11:39 5. Song Introduction 0:30 6. Space Track 15:22

One of the greatest album titles ever.