JSngry

Skip Butler Skippy Martin Slippy Slabberwocky

I was asking about him just last weekend when I was in Houston. I have fpond memories of the guy's playing from his days with Kenton. Here's hopes and prayers for the best.

HA! I only wish that America suffered from overexposure to Wizzard. Pretty much an unknown quantity over here, always has been.

Now that's a funny Christmas song! Roy Wood!!!!!!!!

Wizzard? Roy Wood? I'm a fan, but the Christmas reference is lost on me here. Please clarify?

I don't think Claire Fisher would say anything remotely like that. Trust me. And truthfully, over the years I've read a lot of good things about the album, which is why my hopes were so high. I mean, I dig Claire Fisher's writing, big time. So if you're hearing it to your satisfaction, you are not alone, and follow your bliss that way. Nothing to feel "funny" about. Now as far that Perception album, that's kind of stealth, because "popular perception" is that it's pretty mcuh a "funk" album. But hell, what's this? NO KIT DRUMMER. And who's in the rhythm section? The Gonzalez brothers (Andy & Jerry), Nicky Marrero, Patato Valdes, that's who, along w/Mike Longo & George Davis on guitar. The Gonzalez brothers alone would be reason enough for me to check it out, but you add those other two cats, hey... What you really got hear is a stealth descarga album, not a jazzy/funk jam, although if that's the only point of reference you can bring to it, then you can go there with it as well. But Andy Gonzalez is at root a Salsa bassist, not a jazz or funk one, so that's your foundational rhythmic pulse right there. The feel is subtly different, even if the grooves are, on the surface, familiar. Whole 'nother thing, it is. Put three percussionists on top of it, and even a tune that is "jazzy" in structure like "Timet" becomes a Latin tune. Definitley a sleeper of an album, I think, and one that very few jazzmen of the time besides Dizzy could have made so effortlessly & organically. Check it out. BTW - I saw Andy Gonzalez once w/a Tito Puente "Latin Jazz All Stars" band, and the cat was BAD. Jorge Dalto was on piano, moving the chords all over the place, and Andy was right there with him, never losing the clave. Pretty amazing playing, and part of a relatively underground musical world that a lot of "jazz fans" know casually if at all, myself included, to be honest. All I'm saying is that when you listen to Portrait Of Jenny for the first time, listen to Andy Gonzalez' bass work. Everything else is coming off/out of that.

Now here's a Dizzy "Portrait Of..." album that is worth a revisit every so often:

It was disappointed in it as well. Maybe I had set my hopes too high. Or maybe in a different place than where the music actually was. Maybe Fischer could revisit the album/arrangements and have Jon Faddis play Dizzy's parts on a new "shoulda done it THIS way" anniversary tribute donkatontennial celebration album.

"tongue in cheek" isn't roughly the same as "taking the piss out of"? Ok, my bad. I still think he's fucking with people, but only those who will let him fuck with them. For everybody else, I agree, it's Happy Holidays!

Hell, anybody can get that.

Gol-durn trying to make the moment the forever...

...not too many things in life so far that I've not been able to get at least some kind of handle on, no matter how vague, but this is one of 'em. Something tells me that it's wrong to even think about trying to... I'm all for feeding the fires of power, beauty, and sensuality, I just don't understand how shoes do it. But they do it, and I gotta admit, I dig it when they do. I just don't understand it. Oh well! Exceptions to the stereotype stipulated to and in unlimited quantity. But I'm not talking stereotypes, I'm talking real life experience.

"Here Comes Santa Claus".

Lots of people are happy until they get married.

And I still say he's taking the p**s out of his fans. Not for the first time. I think them horses is saying exactly that. At least the one on the left is. But there are two... And then there's the man and the woman. I think they're digging it at face value. So really, the cover tells you everything, which is that this one is whatever you want/need it to be out of a Dylan album. Not for the first time.

I still say them horses on the cover get it the way it's meant to be got.

Hey, I thought that was me!

Hey, the notion of recording fundamentally compromises the integrity of the music itself, so...

So you gotta ask yourself - do I deal with the wrongness of my rightness, or do I go with the rightness of my wrongness? The unexamined life is not worth living.

I don't like Wynton's presentation or his music, but I'll wager that he'd whoppass on anybody who would use him for an avatar & then turn around & dis Luis Armstrong. Or who would dig Bing Crosby but not Louis Armstrong. Hell, Bing Crosby himself would probably go get the belt for somebody who did that!

All I can tell you about that is that if you're in a brick-and-mortar, they come in red slipcases that have a smaller image of the original cover inside the red border. That, and that in these parts it seems that they're more or less universally acclaimed.

A four day club booking? Impressive!

I'll be damned. I skipped some tunes WTF? TRACK SIXTEEN - Oh HELL yeah. Buster & Hog, apparently an anthropologist's dream. This makes me happy. Deeply and truly happy. TRACK SEVENTEEN - Max, and that is just sick. TRACK EIGHTEEN - Like it, don't love it. Don't know if I need more, but I want more. Ok!