JSngry

A groovin' rut...ain't that like 60's Monk?

Joni Mitchell with the LA Express produced an delightful synergy, I thought. Miles with the LA Express, on the other hand, would have been and therein lies one of the many differences... But really, what's wrong with "chasing the ultimate pussy of fame and broads"? Is it better to chase the ultimate sexlessness of obscurity & celibacy? Really? The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that to rail against the "status quo" from the outside without even trying to get in takes a lot less guts, imagination, and character than does subverting it from within. If you want to live a parallel life in a parallel universe, fine, do that. Been there, done that, might yet do it again. But to live on the outside while complaining that the inside is fucked up, well, DUH, what's the point? Either get out or get in, and don't bitch about what happens either way. Personally, I think it was damn noble what Miles did (and alos vain, sure, but oh well, there's another one of the irresolvable contradictions that we find everywhere we look). He decided very early on in life that he was not going to be shut out of success, that he deserved sussess, and by god, he was going to get it the old fashioned way - by being to good, too interesting to resist. Even towards the end, when he was playing what could better be described as "instrumental pop" rather than "jazz", he was making it unlike anybody else, and far better than anybody else. I wonder - how many of the people who really rail against the whole notion of Miles' "selling out" have some reservations within themselves about "stepping out" into a greater public profile? It's one thing to find a niche and preach to the choir, it's quite another to step out into the broader spotlight and dare people to dismiss you, especially when you're delivering your vision of what you want their terms to be. That takes some pretty massive guts/cojones/whatever. Just my opinion, but I am getting tired of people (in all walks of life) who have no real ability or interest in belonging to the "bigger world" ranting and railing about their inability to do so. Like, if you got there, what would you do? Donald Byrd had some hits, and what did he do? Took the money and ran away. What did Miles do? Well, at first he ran away, but then he came and and dared the world to say that a middle-aged black jazz musician could be marginalized, ghettozied, and otherwise dismissed in terms of the culture "of the day". The world failed to do so. More power to him, and more power to the music that he made in doing so. There's really no excuse for making all this piss-poor, redundant, limited (in every way) "lite jazz". Not after Miles.

You do what you want to do. If you need metrics uber alles, go for that. I need some, but not all the time and not for everything. But that's just me. We all do what we need to do. I was just listing the only way that I could agree with what you said. That may or may not be what you meant, I was not interpreting that. But in order for me to agree with it, I would have to feel like I said I would have to feel. And by the way, you're far from the only person who feels the way you about this music. Lots of people think it's an attempt at James Brown or Sly style "funk". I don't hear the music itself as anything even remotely resembling either JB of Sly in content or intent. Inspriation, sure, but a lot of things can inspire a lot of other things, and looking at results only in terms of inspiration is not necessarily accurate or advisable. Imagination does not always yield easily to metric-ization, although metric-izers do. There's a omni-tentacled multi-gazillion dollar international economic structure built around doing exactly that

If I thought that "jazz" was always/should always be "jazz" and that "funk"was always/should always be "funk" and that this rigid compartmentalization of music (i.e. life) was a good and/or necessary and/or inevitable thing, if I could only hear or think about music only in terms of what I knew (or thought I knew) , then I would have to agree with all of this, and enthusiastically so at that! However, that is not how I feel.

Both.

Yeah, that's a fair statement, but so is saying that each of us could only have been born when we were born. It would be wrong if something didn't get born at the only time it could have.

Pat Boone Pat The Cat T.H.E. Cat

Not just of McLaughlin, but of Carlos Santana as well!

What I'm finding out is that a lot of what "we" find "dated" is what a few generations on are often finding to be "substance". And more power to them for that, as long as they treat it as such.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8Q3cqGs7I

Oh my god... http://www.cool78s.com/index.html

http://www.beatles4me.com/Catalog%20MASTER...lineCatalog.htm

say WHAAAAT?????

Remember when 225K was a lot of money?

Vrey true...the only contemporaneous jazz album on Paramount that I recall was a Darius Brubeck tribute to Charlie Chaplin.

Yeah, I think the secret weapon here is Reggie Lucas, actually...for real. 70s Miles, y'all...more and more it proves to be one of a few places where The New New began. Maybe that's why Teo rescued it from oblivion? I just wonder...how did this thing stay so obscure all these decades.

Or this! Great bass playing, and a seemingly infinite # of ways to pronounce "turning". What more do you want?

http://community.livejournal.com/vintage_ads/479978.html But this one is probably real, and might have been the inspiration:

That whole CBS news grew from back then...we'll not see their likes again. RIP.

The "pool made her pregnant" bit was a perennial Ann Landers/Dear Abby favorite back in the day. Scientifically possible? Apparently yes. But the odds are so astronomical, the conditions and timing have to be so specific that it's more likely to get impregnated by a space alien than by stray sperm swimming in the pool.

Big time.

http://hunternuttall.com/blog/2008/06/cola...act-or-fiction/

She's listed as one of the arrangers on this none-too-shabby Kim Weston (no relation to Randy, but nevertheless a delightful coincidence) side: Worth looking for...

It's only terrible if you think of it in terms of a fish sandwich...