JSngry

While this would be cool, is there anything besides the BN 50s sessions and his three Prestige albums? While all of those are out of print, they were available for years and can still be had. Waterbirds

Changes One goes on my list, although, Top 5....that's not fair parameters, there are more than five.

Nothing wrong with Diana Krall's records that this being 1966 couldn't fix. Truthfully, I'd like to hear a collaboration between her, her husband, & Daniel Lanois. Give that Ice Queen shit some meaningful & relevant contextualization. Enough of Yesterday's Classics Today, that trio could well make a Tomorrow's Classic Today.

Phil Collins is fine at what he does in his own world, dandy even. I think there's a lot of equating with "I don't like" with "the cat can't play" going on here... My perennial answer to this question - whoever it was who schlubbed their way through that Steam song "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye". Comically amateurish, not so much inept as just...BAD - fills every second, absolutely "bottom-rung" fills at that, no concept of what, when, or why, & that's why there's tambourine & handclaps front and center on that record... Hear it now and believe it later: Neverhteless, the story of the band, and that ong in particular, is one of those "only in the music biz" type things : http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&a...fpfuxqr5ldke~T1

I'm just saying that I feel her deeply, just not in any way that pulls me in. I mean, her phrasing is marvelously holistic, but...I just don't connect with her message. Why? Probably because her life and mine had/have different priorities and goals. Beyond that...who knows, who cares? Not her fault, not mine, just one of those things. She was definitely for real, though, and whether I myself can get next to her or not, that's what ultimately matters. I've given up trying to "like" everybody I "get", it no longer seems necessary. Put another way, a theoretical Bill Evans/Lee Wiley duet album would have probably resulted in a perfect album, one whose perfection I would gladly recognize, but not one that I would own.

Everybody else gets a pass (up to a point), but if you're white, American, boomer or beyond, suburban, and don't get (not necessarily "like", but definitely get) the Beach Boys, there is still some pretty basic self-examination to be done. You can run but you can't hide. And you can't move on until you've moved in and lived out. Some people think that innocence, lost or otherwise, is by definition a liability. I beg to differ. In their own way, the introduction to "California Girls" is as spiritual as A Love Supreme, "Caroline No" as heartbreaking as late Lester Young, and "409" as inane as Carrot Top. 2-out-of-3 ain't bad. True story - I once had a hip, cynical, cooler than anybody else who ever lived white guy tell me that he didn't dig the Beach Boys because he hates Major 7th chords. And I'm kinda like, ok, if you deny Major 7th chords out of your life, that right there alone is more emotionally fucked up than anything you can accuse the Beach Boys of, so... White folks can be really funny about "hip" sometimes, that's all I can say.

Born Sep 11, 1955.

But also -originally, I believe - on X : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfin%27_%28song%29 Recorded at...are you ready for this? World Pacific Studios!

I've been able to make quite an connection w/the macro-realization inherent in Wiley's phrasing, but never w/the emotionality therein. It's a trade-off I've made, but I'd still prefer to not have to.

Atomic be da' BOMB!

Indeed it was. And everybody's got one...

Interesting delivery/interpretation/whatever...no hand-wringing (and god knows the opportunities were there), just straight line intensity all the way through.

Actually....the post that got edited came after the post Moose quoted...and I didn't edit it, but there's no moderator's stamp on it either. I can only assume, then, that it was an act of God. Jeez, Jim, you having to outsource the moderator's gig now?

Indeed, but what's wrong with death? I mean, I'm in no real hurry, and yeah, it's kinda creeping me out to be feeling it approaching now, but ultimately, what's wrong with it? You gotta die, I gotta die, we all gotta die. and when we do, we've either done it or we haven't. The lead in time ain't no party, but...out with the old, in with the new, the more things change, etc. I'm obsolete, I admit it. I'm a freebop tenor player, occasional composer, got the skills to make some $$$ doing weddings and R&B and such, have had a blast (personally & musically) doing it, but the world has changed, and it's somebody else's time now. They can (and often enough to make it fun, do) call me if/when, but...it's not my world out there anymore, nor should it be. My world is in here with my family (immediate and otherwise), and...I'm more at peace now than ever, except when called upon to "go back" in some form or fashion. It just ain't there anymore, at least not for me. When it was there, it was a blast, but it's over. Time to move on, which at some point is going to mean doing the death thing, and...I hope to die with more grace than I have lived. But to make that happen is gonna take some work. Carpe diem.

And what's wrong with that?

No thanks. I am already convinced. I was just saying that her Monk book had stuff in it that I hadn't seen elsewhere. Unfortunately, it was also the exception.

No argument about that, For me, though, it's just a matter of degree, and I think I might have reached the degree where, no I don't care all that much anymore. They're all dead & I'm closer to being dead than to having been born, and I've read and listened a big bunch to this point, and now it's like, yeah, well, time to live my life now, before it's too late, and....sometimes history gets claustrophobic. I mean, Monk was already MONK when The Beatles hit, I was just 8. I think I get both Monk and The Beatles all I'm going to by now, at least as far as "breakthrough" understandings go, and having been hit by The Beatles when and how I was, I'll never get Monk the way that somebody who was more there than I was would have gotten it, and The Beatles are already old and "historic" and 1/2 dead. I accept that, I actually dig that, but hell....it's all old to me by now and after a while, looking for more "there" there when what's already there is going to always be there...I dunno, life changes, peoples changes, I guess I've changed. Looking back in order to look ahead, it's just not fun anymore. Everywhere I look I see dead people. I want to dance, but my knees have gone bad. My nightmare is being a shut-in with my record collection being my scrapbook. Or even worse, being a shut in and my record collection being my "imaginary friend" who accompanies me on all these imaginary places where I can be people I've never been (or even partially knew) and whacko shit like that. Excuse me, I really would rather die first. I love Monk, always have, always will. And that bridge to "Off Minor" is one of those unfathomable mysteries about the meaning of life that can take you over if you don't watch it. But I'm reading this book and it's making me feel old, like "death beckons" old, and when I watch this week's Curb Your Enthusiasm, I laugh my ass off, and I'm like, well, they're all on their way to being dead too, and if I'm still there when they get there, am I gonna want to read about it, or will I just want to know that I know what I know because I came by it honestly, and that's the way I'm beginning to feel about biographies and such, I've played Monk's music, gotten inside it, and I've not exactly shied away from "the jazz life" as it has existed in my chosen area of the world. So right now, Monk has great meaning to me, a meaning that this book , fine as it is, just does not speak to all that much, and trying to change that meaning to meet the book just seems....creepy right now. The Monk I "know" is alive, the one in the book, like the spoiler alert let on, is dead. Feeling tremendously conflicting emotions while writing this, knowing full well that a great contributor to humanity is finally being treated as such, yet at the same time thinking that...it's ultimately symbolic, not real. Real is a lot more difficult than is generally acknowledged... Apologies to the board - this is no doubt too personal, too unresolved for "general consumption", probably should just sit and stew, rather than pump out this unformed, negative ambiguity. Maybe next time, ok?

Well, the dreaded Leslie Gourse was quite blunt in her recounting of Monk's drug use. I never heard anybody contest that (and Kelley doesn't refute it), I just heard that Leslie Gourse was essentially a bullshit writer in general (which I have no real argument worth one way or the other), so...it was the day when cats got high. Not all of them, and not all of the time, but cats got high. I'm kinda like, hell, bfd, what else is new? And ok, I'll stipulate to definitely being in a minority here, and I'm reading all this biographical detail, and it's cool enough, yeah, lot of work, no doubt about that, a job very well done, but the back of my mind is asking me is this really going to help me play the tunes any better? And the answer I can't shake is that if I hadn't already gone through a few years heavy immersion in a good chunk of the Monk compositional legacy (sorry, but "songbook" just doesn't sound right...), then it might make me think it would/was, but since I have, I'm kinda like, well, gee, this is just like reading a book, which I guess is what it is after all, I'm just saying it's not playing the music, it's not even about playing the music, which is ok, because that's not what biographies do, all I mean is that yeah, it's a really good book, but it's not the music, and in the end, Monk is for me, the music, since he's dead now, and also because when it comes to being father and husband, and son, and brother, and all that, well, that was personal to him and his, just as mine is to me and mine, and when it comes to Monk, Musical Genius, you got the music, deal with it, don't just read about it, ya' know? Like I said, I know mine is a minority viewpoint, and probably with good reason. I'm probably a Philestine or some such these days when it comes to stuff li,e this. But the bridge to "Off Minor" is... it just is. Great book, though!

I pay all my bills that I get...sometimes somebody besides myself decides to bring in the mail and sometimes they got some funny ideas about where the mail should be placed...

That's him on "Lady Madonna".

Go to the movie and tell us how it ends Allen. SPOILER ALERT: Monk dies at the end. But don't worry, there's a sequel where he comes back as this kinda cosmic savant who writes and plays all this jolly music that makes people laugh and skip and jump and grin knowingly and shit like that.

Can't say that I hear that.