JSngry

You know, if enough people make the trip, it's not crossing over any more, it's a new "there".

No. Not even. On any given day, I'll take a good Ronnettes record over anything by Spalding (and consider it "better"), but that's not the point. My ongoing affection for quality ear candy should be a matter of record here. If it's not, it's certainly not my fault. The point, or one of them, is that while both Spalding & Bieber are both "aiming pop", each in their own way, Spalding is aiming there with some pretty loaded musical ammunition - harmonies & melodic contours that fall waaaay outside the genrally accepted "conventions" and are frequently banned (sic) in the places that decide who gets to hear what along the way. "Jazzy" has nothing to do with it. You could write a total boy-pop song with non-diatonic harmonies and angular melodic contours, and with the right talent behind it along the way, possibly even sell it. But that's not going to happen any time soon. "The powers that be" these days get nervous, angry even about stuff like this. The net result is that our Collective Popular Ears are devolving to the point where we can only hear total Smoothness or Total Noise, nothing in between. Mental processes follow suit. Not that there's not a place for Bieber-like performers. There always has been, and there always should be, and sometimes some really nice work gets done. So no beef here about that. What I do have a beef about is the ongoing "smoothing out" - melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic - of all mass popular music over the last several decades. That reaally, really bugs me, because it's all about limiting perceptions/feelings/whathaveyou rather than opening them. So if Spalding can get popular and get some of those "thornier" shapes back into the popular mix, hey, go for it, and go for it well. I myself don't know how much she'll ultimately be able to get away with (not too much more, I imagine), but I searched YouTube for an hour or so last night looking for something of hers that was just pure diatonic flatline BLAH in content and couldn't find it. Execution varied widely in terms of "intensity", but that is not a factor of her presence that I have any interest in, at least not now. Spalding is likely to become a "popularizer" more than a "creative force", but I'm ok with that. Anything that makes "wider" musical constructions sound less "weird" to the mainstream is ok by me. The arguments of "artistic merit" are for another place, at least for me. Right now, there's somebody bringing the 64 box to school instead of the 8. I'll not be the one to discourage that.

Think about it - This: was named Best New Artist over this: Anybody here got a problem with that?

Seems to me that the need for expression (of something other than the same old "jazz truth") is what is dictating Spalding's music...that's why it really doesn't overtly sound like anybody else and doesn't make too much of an effort to be conscientiously "jazz" or any thing else. You don't like it, fine. I'm sure that Stanley Crouch doesn't either. Who isn't/doesn't/hasn't?

You used to be a driver, Aloc?

For somebody who gets all rippy-zippy about incomplete quotations being used out of context to create server the quoter's agenda, I'm a little surprised that you don't use the whole quote (which was not all from her, btw, but from some WikkiWikkiWikkiPedia Person: Would you seriously care to seriously argue against that point? Seriously? Besides, I think she's mostly right that You don't? [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanza_Spalding#cite_note-Jazzreview-5"]

What was being done not really carefully, the work or the listening? Or both? I have days like that...today, in fact...

Nothing about Osby here, but plenty of other background, some of it interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanza_Spalding For instance:

Yeah, but it's still a pretty damn weird thing to contemplate. Where is Dookie these days?

Any standard? Wrong. Justin Bieber & Esperanza Spalding are most decidedly not = in "mediocrity" when placed on the same platform for comparative consideration, which is what the Best New Artist Grammy Award does. And could Deion Sanders have covered Deion Sanders? With his wardrobe, yeah.

Let's be real here - her "merits as an artist" are such that she would be considered for a Grammy as Best New Artist, meaning that I don't think that she's in any way a "jazz heavyweight in the traditional sense". I also don't think that she wants to be, or the she needs to be, or that she needs to want to be. But I do think that she merits consideration as a talent, an artist even, and that her music is far more likely to serve as a "gateway to the harder stuff" far more than either pale imitations of the real harder stuff and/or anything else "jazzy" that's being sold today. And honestly, I like most of what I've heard by her, precisely because it's not anything/everything that "jazz fans" are all about these days. It's about a young 21st Century woman with some decent enough jazz skills as part of her overall musical palate who sounds like.... a young 21st century woman with some decent enough jazz skills as part of her overall musical palate. There will be more like her to come, I'm sure. Let's hope so. I've heard plenty of great music made by crippled human beings, but sometimes it's nice to hear good music made by non-crippled human beings. All things considered, I'm ok with that...

My wife, an otherwise beautiful spirit and exemplary human being, enjoys watching Extra! every night. Well, last night I decided to watch it with her, just to see the day-after Grammy coverage, just to see if..you know... "Upset of the night" wasn't ES, it was whoever won the Album Of The Year Award. Bieber was everywhere, including mugging with the New Artist Trophy. "Can I take it home?", he said to chuckles aplenty and phlashing phlashbulbs. Esperanza got to say "Hi" & "Thank you" to the Extra! reporter. That was it. Bieber, otoh, was in there everywhere they could fit him. Between the fix being in and "jazz fans" (mostly) wanting death warmed over in some form or fashion, I doubt it too.

She sings. She's young. She's female. She's not afraid to bring recent "pop" flavors into her music. She doesn't appear to be afraid to have people like her who don't "understand" her music. She doesn't appear to fear being popular. Why should (most of) today's jazz fans congratulate her? She stands for - and does - everything they don't dig.

Chicago ain't the world. Hell, Chicago ain't even America. It might be a toddlin' town, but it's a totterin' world elsewhere. Didn't say Chicago was the world or even America, but it ain't nothing, aesthetically and otherwise, and has been something for about the last fifteen years. What it is is Chicago, the one place where things are (pretty much) what they used to be (after a fashion). Everywhere else, even/especially what's left of NYC, not nearly so much. Everywhere else, 26 is still pretty young for a "jazz musician" to have developed a more-or-less "original style" and have gotten enough of a national spotlight to win a Grammy as Best New Artist in the face of PreFab Industry Favorites. "Precocious", like most adjectives, is relative. I don't know but that it might not be just a tad hype-ish myself, but comparing the relatively recent "now" with the historical "then" to reach some sort of baseline as to what the word is relative doesn't strike me as a particular efficient or accurate methodology of measurement.

Funny guy.

Not just a scene, but a lifestyle, one where you could fall out of bed at any time of the day or night and fall into a session going on somewhere, with or without there being a "gig" attached to it. Living in a world like that made being a legend (and maybe even a dead one) by 25 quite possible. This world is not that world. Nowadays cats might not even get out of school until they're 22 or 23, and in school often ends up being the most like the days of yore than anything else they'll experience in their life, except, of course, that it is in school. Chicago ain't the world. Hell, Chicago ain't even America. It might be a toddlin' town, but it's a totterin' world elsewhere.

Yeah, but that was when playing jazz was something you could do pretty much anytime you wanted to, 24/7/365.

I'm looking at that lineup and leaning that way myself...Nance tips it for me.

Then again, how many player with rings, lots of rings, even, are even half as remembered/beloved/dietized as Ted Williams? And - would the Red Sox Nation still have the same "mystique" if Williams had left the team in, say, 1952? or even 1955? No, it's a good thing to have a legend stay a legend with one team. Legends tend to last forever. The long-term payoffs are there...

I don't know, what's the going rate for single-franchise-for-an-entire-career-with-the-same-team-surefire-Hall-of-Famer-who's-still-got-plenty-of-good-to-great-years-left? St. Louis is a true baseball town, and to look at "worth" strictly in terms of age/salary/stats misses some "character of the town, character of the team, character of the game" points that it might be in everybody's best interest to not overlook.

Assuming that they're actually as good as we want them to be...

Well, ok, but if he goes, who takes his place, and how many more years does he remain above-average (or better) in somebody else's uniform instead of yours? Besides, Pujols has been a gentleman of sorts, and to have him gradually become the dignified veteran/elder statesman/franchise icon holds a vlau to a team and to the game as a whole that transcends money vs stats. Now see, A-Rod don't get that consideration because A-Rod has not been the class act that Pujols has. More than that I will not say.

Ray Nance is always good! Found it on an album covers blog: http://nicealbumshameaboutthecover.blogspot.com/ No place else, yet...

Take your pick as to which one "sounds better". Saxophones in unison can be so freakin' beautiful...