JSngry

Speaking of which, ahve you ever seen the movie, Al? As Irecall it (which is very loosely) the soundtrack is perfect for the plot, which, yeah, pretty much implies everything you think it does.

WTF is THAT??? Watch the movie. Once. That sounds like a dare...

WTF is THAT???

Dude, she never has, not in any of her various incarnations, and she probably never will. That's just who she is and what she does. But the people who like/liked her don't seem to notice, so hey... And I still maintain that, quite apart form any subjective reading of her various recordings, historically she did play a major role in formulating a major part of 70s Rock, and for that, credit is due, quite apart form whether or not she was "good" (or not) at what she did. Go back and look at who was playing on her early/mid 70s records and see how many of those players went on to other things. From what I understand, Peter Asher & her pretty much worked together on formulating that sound, but it was her who was the "talent scout" & "conceptualist". Others were getting there before her, and certainly others did it better before and after her. But as a "catalyst" in the popular realm/industry impact, the person whose success triggered a "boom" that carried with and momentum "heard 'round the world", hey, that would be her. Don't get me wrong - I am not a fan, not even remotely (I kinda like the early Stone Poneys things, but not really all that much). But a wholesale dis of her is just too easy/cheap, I think, and not in line with the reality of her career. It may be more "musicological" than "musical", this respect that I pay her, but hell, with pop music, where does one end and the other really begin?

Those classic 70s albums really don't sound as "great" by today's standards as you might think, in just pure "recording quality" terms. At least I don't think so. But I'll take'em anyway. As for the 80s, hey, two words - early digital. Recording, keyboards, drum machines, everything. It sounded cheap & garish as hell, but everybody went with it, and nobody noticed, because it was the 80s, and cheapness and garishness was the order of the day (and read as much or as little political implication into that as you wish... )

Exactly, Shawn, and maybe those who weren't around at the time don't really have a grasp of it, but with each succeeding Steely Dan album, there was at least as much discussion about the production/recording techniques (and rumors about how anal they were getting - rumors of things like taking 8 hours just to get a bass drum sound were commonplace) as there was the music. At least as much.

Something else - what changed rock from an AM to an FM music was the psychedelic/etc bands of the late 60s, but what kept it an FM music to this day was in great measure the sound of so much L.A. Rock, which again, and do not underestimate this, was a direct offshoot of the production of Abbey Road.

Just like, you know, I'm not really crazy about Stan Kenton, but you'd not have "West Coast Jazz" (or at least "West Coast Jazz" in the form it took) without him. "Like" is not the issue. Something happened, a lot of people were caught up in/by it, it had long-lasting repercussions, and it created a lot of good music as well as a lot of dreck. That deserves objective notice and acknowledgment (and even respect, of a non-valedictory type) quite apart from personal tastes.

Ok wise guys, laff all you want, but if you think you'd have the beloved Steely Dan (or at least Steely Dan in the form they took) w/o Linda Ronstadt, think again.

Maybe not, but you get a Big Strong Right Thing for doing stuff like this with & for your wife!

And I hear you as well. The way that i look at it is that it's there for the taking, if/when it's wanted, and that what I'm likely to want it for is not the same thing as most others who take it want it for.

Yeah, we want to think that, and at one level we do. But...history suggests that what are "choices" are in fact more often than not "inevitable" more often than we'd like to think. Things don't happen in a vacuum, so the notion of making a choice, any choice, totally devoid of influences from the varying currents and crosscurrents already in place presupposes a degree of disengagement that 99% just don't have. Even a "counter" choice is in reaction to a prevailing trend, not something somebody just pulls out of thin air. And when you're talking "popular music", hell, by definition, the pull is going to be towards the underlying consensus, even when it comes to how and when to move things along. That's how and why it is popular.

Yeah, there was a mini-trend back then of having jazz/jazzy solos in the middle of pop tunes. Remember Zoot Sims on "Poetry Man"? Say whatever you want about the environment of L.A Rock culture of the time. for all the schlock it gave us, it also gave us Joni Mitchell's best work, as well as Little Feat's & The Doobie Brothers & The Eagles' (I myself never had any interest whatsoever in the latter two until they got "slicker"). Which is not to say that it was all good, anything but, but just that when it worked, it worked splendidly.

Some of her album cover art in LP days used to be nice ! :rsmile: I'm going to stick my neck out and say that back when she was still in a vaguely country vein she was pretty good. I'll stick my neck even further out & say that her "classic" 70s work (w/Peter Asher at the helm) was hugely influential in terms of creating an archetypal "L.A. Rock" sound & production style. I'll go out even further and say that the James Taylor cut remains a favorite, just for the groove. JT had a fan base among jazz musicians, not just for his songwriting, but also for his ability to put together a damn fine band that could give him a groove to be his stiffass self on top of. Not nearly as easy a trick to pull off as you might think, and, geez, it's been a while, but I think that the players he's using are some of the same players that Ronstadt used, which goes back to the point of her work's heavy influence in that time and place. But maybe JT was using East Coast cats. Like i said, it's been a while. As for the rest of this stuff, liking it or not is wholly subjective, but any objective analysis of it (ie - looking at it for what it was rather than what it's become) must accept that this whole...thing is a direct offshoot of Abbey Road. I can tell you for sure that although today, it's the Beatles' songs on that album that endear, back then it was every bit as much the production style that captivated. And this vein of 70s rock was all about production first & foremost. I mean, "hating" this stuff for being squeaky clean and "style"-centric is like hating Manute Bol for being tall. It is what it is and it had no choice but to be otherwise. ???? Well, hey, this was the Pop Culture soundtrack of my college years. I've never been one to really "embrace" Pop Culture, but I've never been one to completely deny it either. I figure that it is what it is, and you're not going to avoid it unless you choose to live in an alternate universe (which I have done, but for whatever reason, never permanently. Maybe because for me, it's always involved some level of delusion/denial). Plus, I'm of the generation that got into music through the Beatles and their aftermath. Jazz was not something I/we heard from the crib on, if you know what I mean. So, even if 70s rock of this ilk was not something I really "liked" (with a few exceptions), it's not like it was totally foreign to me either. I's like to think that I can evaluate it objectively in terms of lineage w/o having to "like" it at all. Besides, it's not like I (or the people I was around) was living in a vacuum. I had friends who were into the whole Black Nationalist thing, and I had friends (not surprisingly, mostly from SoCal) who were into the whole L.A. Rock thing too. Both were very much "of their time", and everybody was engaged in what they were engaged in because it resonated with them, musically & personally. I've never been one to limit myself to one "type" of person or music, at least when it comes to allowing myself exposure to it in order to get a better understanding of the "people" factory, although I must say that as I've gotten older, my need for this has greatly decreased, if only because it seems as if the same dynamics keep repeating themselves from generation to generation, and I got mine when I got it. But like Alexander said in another thread about grunge, if you were of a certain time & place, there were certain things that you just didn't ignore if you were part of the times, engaged in them rather than being passive participants. L.A. Rock was one of them, P-Funk was another, Woody Shaw was yet another, as was the emergence of the AACM/BAG schools into the broader public consciousness. Hell, there was a buttload of stuff going on, "popular" & otherwise, and the "music industry" was firing on all cylinders in the post-Beatles "youth culture" aftermath. "Liking it" was one thing, but hearing it, and hearing it in real-time evolutionary context, was damn near inescapable if you were part of the generational continuum, which i was.

Some of her album cover art in LP days used to be nice ! :rsmile: I'm going to stick my neck out and say that back when she was still in a vaguely country vein she was pretty good. I'll stick my neck even further out & say that her "classic" 70s work (w/Peter Asher at the helm) was hugely influential in terms of creating an archetypal "L.A. Rock" sound & production style. I'll go out even further and say that the James Taylor cut remains a favorite, just for the groove. JT had a fan base among jazz musicians, not just for his songwriting, but also for his ability to put together a damn fine band that could give him a groove to be his stiffass self on top of. Not nearly as easy a trick to pull off as you might think, and, geez, it's been a while, but I think that the players he's using are some of the same players that Ronstadt used, which goes back to the point of her work's heavy influence in that time and place. But maybe JT was using East Coast cats. Like i said, it's been a while. As for the rest of this stuff, liking it or not is wholly subjective, but any objective analysis of it (ie - looking at it for what it was rather than what it's become) must accept that this whole...thing is a direct offshoot of Abbey Road. I can tell you for sure that although today, it's the Beatles' songs on that album that endear, back then it was every bit as much the production style that captivated. And this vein of 70s rock was all about production first & foremost. I mean, "hating" this stuff for being squeaky clean and "style"-centric is like hating Manute Bol for being tall. It is what it is and it had no choice but to be otherwise.

Did William Claxton do a lot of these type shoots? I know him mostly as a jazz photographer, but I do know that his wife was some hot fashion model or something...

http://www.johnhenrysfoodproducts.com/ http://www.johnhenrysfoodproducts.com/gourmetblends.asp http://www.johnhenrysfoodproducts.com/gourmetblends2.asp I met this guy at a cooking demo once, and him & his products are the real deal. A few examples" The bio: http://www.johnhenrysfoodproducts.com/about.html

Corny? Compared to what?

http://learning2share.blogspot.com/2008/10...la-andress.html

How the Madison and the Twist “Crossed Over”: http://wallofsound.wordpress.com/2007/10/0...t-crossed-over/ An excerpt:

http://learning2share.blogspot.com/2007/10...combo-1960.html

MG danced The Madison. Chuck Nessa danced The Madison. These are gods amongst mens. Tom Storer - did you as well also dance The Big Strong Madison or did you just go tru the motions to make your wife happy?

What a coincidence! I was just revisiting that first Dr. Buzzard album late last week.

I saw that same band...Estrada (who, remember, went on to be in the original Little Feat) ended the concert by walking around stage in a Frankenstein-like stagger, culminating in "vomit" coming out of his mouth in a seemingly endless stream. I also remember it being a heavily instrumental concert. vocals were there to frame the instrumental music, not vice-versa.

Yeah, i guess that was the big hit version, and the one used in the John Waters film. Ya' know, the notion of teenaged American dancing to Ray Bryant, even a "commercial" Ray Bryant (and hell, it's just a riff blues with a deep-ass groove, so how commercial is it really?) is one that strikes me as not at all undesirable or unpleasant... "I want the big strong Jackie Gleason & back to the Madison." KREE-ZEE!