JSngry

With love, from Rod, to you: http://heydullblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/re...-1-in-head.html

The Stash album: I'VE HEARD THAT SONG BEFORE I DON'T WANT TO WALK WITHOUT YOU HAPPINESS IS A THING CALLED JOE BUT NOT FOR ME I CRIED FOR YOU I HAD THE CRAZIEST DREAM YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU YOU'LL NEVER KNOW MORE THAN YOU KNOW Hank Jones on Piano, Frank Wess on Tenor Saxophone and Flute, Grady Tate on Drums, George Duvivier on Bass, Jim Mitchell on Guitar, Bob Zottola on Trumpet and Flugelhorn and Clint Sharman on Trombone. And what, prithee, is this?

HIGHLY recommended:

Forrest's voice is like a sensuous laser beam. Glad to know that she was such a nice person, too. Indeed she was. She didn't have to be either, I mean, the group that hired her both times was the type that was so struck with hero worship that she could have been Queen Bee The Super Bitch and they'd have been more than happy to play along, but...she wasn't, not even slightly. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't take at least a little bit of a lesson from that... But did you check out that chart? Again, DAMN! There's a synergy going on between band, singer, and arrangement that bespeaks a whole lot of people at the top of their games coming together on the same wavelength to produce both magic and greatness. I've heard Forrest w/Goodman, Shaw, & James (as well as a nifty little latter-day date on, I believe, Stash?), and she herself is fine all the way around. but the Forrest/Goodman/Sauter stuff.....WHOA. You just don't get that level of collective greatness every day.

Forrest was blessed to be w/Goodman when Eddie Sauter was cranking out one gem after another. Great band, great singer, great charts, each as good as they could be. Check out "Perfidia": I mean, DAMN!

I had the pleasure of twice playing in a group that backed Helen Forrest, 1982 & 1983 in Albuquerque. She still sang superbley, and not in a "for her age" type way either. On top of that, she was a real sweetheart too. My folks came into town to hear her the first time, and I told her that my dad was a big fan from back in the day and would really appreciate having his picture taken with her. She accommodated that request with no small enthusiasm, and later that night gave me a solo spot on "The Man I Love", going so far as to announce my parent's presence in the audience afterward. A "class act" all the way if ever there was one.

The collective restraint of this community is to be applauded!

Prompted by hearing them both in a few minutes of each other this evening. Not saying that they're too much alike, or that one is copying form the other, jsut that they....kinda got to the same place sometimes, at least in terms of phrasing & time (i.e. - phrase lengths, phrase shapes, accents, and use of space). How 'bout that?

Derived from "lope".

Tuck Andress Duck Dunn Mr. Dunn Didd Datt: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...endid=103278352

He appreciates your comment, as well as your sensitivity to his writing's emotionalities:

Stanley on "Things Ain't...". On a album full of cattin', that might be the cattin'-iest.

Is it bad that at the moment of...uh...culmination I often shout, "THIS...IS AN ORCHESTRA!!!!"? Did you once have a great band break up arguing over applause?

Don't need Pete, just June -- a cappella. Cue "Eager Beaver"...

Would that make Pete Rugolo, like, a porn director then?

Or maybe that not even Miles had the balls to demand that Monk not comp on his own tune?

That's enough!

We're Electrolux & Kirby people here. Costs more, but worth it, especially over the long haul.

Same here. You really do dance all night, and contrary to what that song leads you to believe, that ain't nearly the picnic it's cracked up to be.

Oreck is yesterday. Today is the Dyson ball:

Geez man, it's been about five years since I played that album.... DAMN!!!

You want that the Big O Street Team look into this situation of potential instability and effect a positive outcome of stabilization?

Makes complete sense to me Ray. Hell, quite often I find that it's a lot more engaging to play like that than it is to listen to it. The key, I think, is just how willing are you to go all the way there. That's easier to do as a player than as a listener, and easier as a listener at a gig than at home or in your car. This type of music tends to best reveal itself when all disbelief is suspended and all distractions banished. Of course, all music is like that, really, but this type gives the listener less "breathing room", that is, moments where you can kind of space for a few seconds/minutes and get right back into it w/o feeling that you're totally lost. I say that, but honestly, after 30-40 years of pronged free/collective improvisations of various hues and cries, I think that's much less true now, especially for those of a younger age wfor whom this is as much a part of "what music is" as is anything else, perhaps even moreso than a lot of the "older" types. Myself, I have done a lot of this type thing over the years, some of it good, and some of it not, and most of it...in-between. For me, like so much other, it's run it's course. Great place to be from, if you knwo what I mean, and for those who haven't gone there yet, well, at some point, either in this life or one of the next ones, you will, just because. It's inevitable and it's good, unless your spirit is devolving rather than evolving. But in the course of all evolution, you know, all things...end, even what once seemed like the most vital, urgent, necessary acts possible to a living creature. The point of "infinite openness" isn't to just discover that it exists, it's also to figure out what to do with it after you discover it and get apretty good grip on what it all means. Not for nothing was the AACM the next (and in my mind, last, although different strokes on that, no doubt) big, serious evolution after "total freedom". The push/pull between freedom and structure is what creates the friction that holds everything together, if you know what I mean, and that also means that, if you can get there with it, that it's all really the same thing. That freedom and structure are more a matter of informed perspective than anything else. Just my opinion, and who knows, liable to evolve into something completely different in another 25 years or so!