JSngry

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!

I feel sorry for any woman who loses her virginity to a man who thinks that sex should be like Stan Kenton sounds.

...and well he might, but did you hear that Delmark side he did with, I think Brad Goode & co. a few years ago. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed that whenever Fuller stepped up to play that the sound suddenly got swarthed w/massive reverb and a different EQ. The "real" sound inside all that seemed really small & feeble to me. It really made me sad.... I know that sounds disrespectful, and damn, I don't mean it too. Fuller's long been one of my favorites, often my most favorite in that post-JJ "hard bop" context. And like I said, much love for fuller here, no matter what the ravages of time have (or haven't) been. I only make these comments in the context of HP's sense of disappointment after seeing him live over the last few years. Tell you what, HP, besides all the great work he did w/Blakey, see if you can find an old Bob Brookmeyer Emarcy side called Jazz Is A Kick. Half of it is by a two trombone frontline of Brookmeyer & Fuller, with a rhythm section of Wynton Kelley, Paul Chambers, & Paul Motian(!). There's a long jam on there by that quintet called "Cooperation" where Brookmeyer & Fuller go back and forth and DAMN is it good. Alos, his two Mainstream sides, although not wholly successful from a "production" standpoint, show him progressing into the modal/post-modal bag in a more than causal way. All I'm saying is that even if he was totally shot today (and I don't think he is), this is a guy who's definitely been there and definitely done that.

I think his chops have been shot for a while now. In his day, good player, sometimes better - or much better - than good. Definitely deserving of the name & the reputation. but between age and...things...I don't know what he has left physically.

Dude...I miss Bill Cullen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BerVyqhk4qQ

I'm guessing a reissue of this: http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Out-Stars-Vangu...s/dp/B000002MYU ?

See also here: http://www.bonle.com/low-more.asp?ProductID=6416 and here: http://www.bonle.com/high_1.asp?ChannelID=15&ClassID=343

Interchangeable. That, and I felt that the subtleties of his style - displayed very well in the sounds, I thought - were too often sacrificed for the "grand gestures". But that's just me.

You're right to hear the west coast vibe here, & yes that's Lanny Morgan--there's a particular Birdish lick he tends to play every 8-16 bars that gives him away! Shew is in the band but isn't the trumpet soloist. Not Christlieb. I included this in part just because I really like listening to these kind of dazzling workmanlike players who really feel the music. I was reviewing this album at the same time that Dave Holland's first big band album was getting a lot of press & I was thinking how the Holland album sounded like it was the work of players who really had very little big band experience mostly & how much it sounded like that. & while, yeah, the chart's not anything that speaks to me, I still like the panache with which it's delivered, especially the trumpet solo. I've had the same reaction to a lot of big-band albums made of all/mostly soloists. There's a reason there's parts, and there's a reason people who play them well had a valued place in a time when most music had parts. Sure, the feel comes first, if you have to choose, but if you do have to choose, you should be asking youself why.

Like another track here (Bonus #2) this is included partly because I actually saw the saxophonist in concert (though of course not this particular performance, which was way before I was born). Not a big name, though I think he recorded a disc or two for Concord near the end of his career. The pianist took his life a year or two after this recording was made, & remains something of a "what-if?...." A shame. to be continued.... Fraser MacPherson?

Mid-1980s. Yeah, I'm somewhat ambivalent about this kind of music, but, hey, I found myself enjoying this more than I thought I would the most recent time I pulled it out for a listen, & it's certainly got rarity value, so I thought, hey, let's put it on the BFT...... -- You have any clues to the saxes? I was wondering what your thoughts were on the tenor in particular (who's spoken of respectfully in these parts from time to time). Starts out very Wayne-ish, and goes from there. Good use of space too. Is this a Laswell thing?Sounds like him, but...not Last Exit, surely?

Dude - one word for those times & why I can't be expected to have remembered everything: BACARDI.

I think what happened is that A) It was on Concord & B) Post-3 Sounds Gene Harris has proven a mixed bag for me. So I don't think I ever bothered to turn the record (or, later, CD) over to see who the "Plus One" was. OOOPS!!!