JSngry

Yeah, I spent a damn eternity looking for a good YouTube clip.

OOPS. Today's score: Insomnia 1, Jim 0. My bad.

You don't think so? Bird in particular was very erudite about "the classics". The cat constantly quoted shit like Firebird & Carmen. That Rachmaninoff piece was a staple of the day, and I'm sure they both knew it.

It's also, believe it or not, derived from Rachmaninoff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5nAH-CwGt4

Cy Coleman wrote it! Great song indeed! The "definitive" vocal version is Sinatra's, but Donald Byrd did a very nice instrumental take as well.

Ok, previous comments about having murderous thoughts to the contrary, I'm not one generally to "get angry" with/about Jarrett, but I can say that what "bothers" me about him - sometimes - is the narcissism. The guy has so much real talent, deep talent, that it's a drag for anything to interfere with that. And interfere it does, when he gets out of his deepest zone and into that "look at me, ain't this (i.e. -me) BEAUTIFUL!" zones. sometimes there's just a touch of it, sometimes there's a whole lot of it. And no, not everybody hears it like that. But a lot of people do (and just as many, I suspect, don't hear it, but project it, due to Jarrett's well-documented pissiness). But I do hear it, have heard it since I first started listening to him (mid-70s, Atlantic & Impulse! sides, soon after the early ECMs). It just makes me feel....betrayed, cheated. I mean, ok, yeah, everybody falls short sometimes, lots even. And yeah, lots of people are quirky, some very much quirky. and maybe Jarrett's best moments really are the triumph that he's after. Maybe the struggle he so wants us to see him having is the struggle, not to transcend the here and now & fly into the arms of The Eternal Muse, maybe it's a lot more simple than that, maybe it's just the struggle to get rid of his own neuroses and let himself flow unhindered by them. Well, ok, if that's what it is, that's what it is. And the best of his work is as good as it can get, so if that's what it takes to get there, go ahead and go there, right? It's just that Jarrett's neuroses are not (or do not seem to be) particularly "adult" in nature. As I've said earlier, there's very much the air of the "wounded child" about him and to my eyes, that's how his various "misbehaviors" and "quirks" play out - as not quite adult. Now, when he's in that top zone, his music is super-adult. But when it's not.... I've been around a lot of "quirky" and "wounded" souls (musicians and otherwise) over the years. Most of them I can deal with, make allowances for, etc., especially if the pain is worth the gain, musically or otherwise. But the one thing that turns me off faster than anything in anybody, is the "whiny boy" (or girl), the ones who, without the trigger of a genuine chemical imbalance, just refuse to accept that ok, yeah, sometimes life ain't perfect, sometimes it actually sucks and ain't a damn thing you can do about it except keep going. Bitch all you want to along the way, just keep moving, goddam it. It's the ones who want to stop moving and throw a tantrum, like a kid in a grocery store who falls to the floor and refuses to move, that piss me off. Those of us who have grown up (sometimes against all odds and/or with great difficulty) just find that really, really annoying. Now, I'm not saying that Jarrett brings the "tantrum" to the music. He doesn't, at least not that I've heard. But he does bring the "emotional state" that produces the tantrum, that "arrested development" that says, "I'm wonderful, I'm perfect, LOVE ME!", and the degree to which I like, even love his music is directly proportional to how much of that is not present in it. And it's happened more than often enough for me to still find him worth checking out more than infrequently. But there is baggage sometimes, and I am not a bellhop. That baggage cheats everybody, including, most of all, Jarrett himself, out of some musical brilliance that we all could use. And I've never heard him admit that to anybody, at any place, at any time. Quite the contrary, in fact. Again, completely subjective, and not everybody hears it that way. But the question was asked, and this is my personal answer.

Who cares what games we choose? Little to win, but nothing to lose.

I don't know nothin' about no Jazzrcise show, but 20 Minute Workout? Heyyyyy....

It's not an unsound principal, this "life = vibration" thing. I mean, it's true. Everything vibrates, if only at the atomic/subatomic level. So I don't blame people for trying, such as it is. Where things get off, imo, is when people confuse recognition with understanding, and then understanding with power, and then power with the ability to impose concrete reordering onto a level that nobody can actually know other than abstractly. It might be possible, but the evidence to this point suggest that...uh...there is still much that needs be learned if it is.

Aretha on Columbia = Trane w/Miles? Somewhat?

The first airing on KERA was in 1974. That's more than a quarter century ago!

It's been very seldom, in fact, well neigh never, that living in the Greater Dallas Metropolitan Area has provided any distinct cultural advantage over anyplace else in this great round world of ours, but.... KERA, Dallas' PBS outlet, was the first station in the US to air Monty Python, and I, quite by accident, was in front of the tv watching it when they did. Believe me, within 10 minutes, I was on the phone to all my friends telling them to turn on Channel 13. And believe me, they all called back afterwards with a big bunch of deliriously ecstatic WTF!!!s. http://www.dailyllama.com/news/2006/llama311.html

No controversy from me, Bill. It seems a natural progression to distill as one ages and matures, to cut closer to the essence the closer you find yourself getting to it.

Go ahead and roll your eyes, mister rightful disdainer of not so good puns, but believe me when I tell you that instrument repair people are the top secret superheroes of the music world!

Yeah, I remember the Coryell & Vinson sides, both recorded live @ Montreux iirc (was there one other?) . For some reason I thought that label was a Flying Dutchman/Bob Thiele offshoot. Obviously not.

THAT'S where I've heard the name!

But it's my only line!

My copy says George Avakian & Augie Blume. Do you know differently? And who is Augie Blume? That name sounds familiar...

Yeah, I guess McCuen was w/RCA in the 50s as well. From http://www.scottymoore.net/richmond.html :

Well, that's what I mean, even when he produced albums that seemed to be aimed at the MOR jazz market, there was always meat there as well as slick. You could listen to it either way and be well pleased. I respect the hell out of anybody who can do that, because usually it's either/or. Both/and is the road less traveled, probably because it takes, as you suggest, tastes that are more well-rounded than usual from all concerned.

And McCuen was with RCA just in the mid-late '60s, not before, right?

I only know of the material released by Chess. What are the details of this material?

Myself, I'd like to read That Devilin' Stritch - The Autobiography of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Repairman.