JSngry

And if you gotta salt, try to use sea salt. The shit they do to make commercial iodized salt is just wack.

For you, because I believe in the ElderYouth Of America, the very first Weather Bird column, DB,11-22-73:

that is your project. A fair question, and other than middle-age fatigue, being in an area with next to no Dance Underground scene to pull that end from and an even lesser interest by the local jazz musicians in doing anything even remotely like this... Hey, I'm tired. Really tired. Two kids, god knows how many bands, an innate lack of "proper" business skills, living in the Musical Shithole of America, hey, I tried and didn't get it done. Maybe at some point I'kk get back some gumption to take it back to the streets, but right now, the best I can to now is offer encouragement for some kid who's reading this and thinking, "hey, that lazyass old fart might be a lazyass old fart, but he's right." Damns straight I am kid. Now you go do it, and try not to fuck it up like I did. I'm pulling for you all the way. Is that a cop out? I've no doubt that it is. But right now, that's what I got.

One of the side/aftereffects of Marsailisism is that jazz musicians often feel a sense of "entitlement" in the Cultural Arena, like yeah, hey, I'm here, I count, where's mine, bitch? Which is all well and good, but... think about it, and think about the old adage about being careful about what you ask for, and all that. Used to be that "the underground" was some place to run to, not away from. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with buying in as opposed to selling out, but if you gotta run away to get it... There's a whole big world that doesn't need/want us. Rather than howling at them, why don't we just make our own thing and get cozy and smart with it? Parallel economy and the whole deal. No reason why it shouldn't go.

Value added!

Reckon they can sell it close to a Starbucks?

Most of the "acid jazz" records from the 90s that I've heard are kinda...lame, especially in terms of bringing it all together like I'm hearing it. Not saying that it didn't happen, just saying that it wasn't documented like that, at least not that I know of. The current broken-beat scene is a lot better in terms of actual musical meat, but it too is lacking in being fleshed out by improvisationalism, at least on record. Truthfully, I can really hear, really hear, say, Joe Henderson at his early-1970s level of energy, scaring the shit out of a big bunch of people by playing full-force with some broken-beat. Sure, Joe's dead now, but surely not everybody who could do it is too, are they? The object as I hear it, is to use the tools of DJ-dom to create original live music in conjunction with the other tools we have always used, music that at the end of the day will have to be called jazz because....that's all it could be called...because that's what it is. No doubt there's a learning curve (to say nothing of a reacclimation curve for a lot of the "jazz" people, you know, "Hey, WAKE UP, these machines can actually SWING now! ), but damn, why can't it be done? Why shouldn't it be done? Why isn't it being done? Lemme get down off this soapbox now, lest I raise some jazz ire.

The Hot Dogs were kosher though, right?

And yet, you could've hear it HERE first! I mean, ok, there's a post in the Recommendations thread by some guy who's always going off the wall and it's for somebody who probably nobody's heard of, so it gets passed over, other than one guy who said that he got a review copy and didn't like it because it was too intense, that I understand, I guess, sorta. But otoh, why does it take a thread of semi-pseudo-contentiousness such as this to make people actively (or more actively) curious? Or so it seems.

Seems to me that the "revolt against Marsailisism" is taking the shape of Trying to Go Back To Where We Were Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted, which seems to me to be Anti-Marsailisim Marsailisism. Really not too sure how well that's gonna work out, but it does have the potential advantage of at least allowing for "intrusion", always a way for evolution to be encouraged rather than not. But still, retro-thinking is still retro-thinking, and... Which is why the Mark de Clive-Lowe stuff is working for me, in theory. That live clip is one thing, but the album is something else. It's like he's taken damn near every Spiritual Jazz record ever made and put them back together in a new way, turns it into a four-dimensional Strata-East Dance Record or something, the old de-/re-construction game, of course, but it works, it really works. Tell you what - I have a vision of a scene where a large, dark, hot room is filled with sweaty bodies of one giant beautifully indeterminate race/socio-economic group/marketing demographic all moving in interlockingly independent rhythms to the sound of a band that's got some live players and some DJs/drum-machinists, just a big steaming CAULDRON of electro-accoustic GUMBO (yeah, this one's for you, Daddy's Boy) throwing down some rhythmically/harmonically intricate grooves whilst horn players solo passionately and effectively at length in between verses sung by a singer who exhorts us to both free and raise our body and our mind and our soul, and at the end of the night everybody goes home to make love to their partner damn near intoxicated with the spirits of love, gratitude and groove. And not just once, but regularly. Now, wouldn't that be nice?

Yeah, you know, shit don't have to be HEAVY to be meaningful. It's all a question of what you got vs what you put out. The "problem" I hear is a lot of cats putting out more than what they got, it's "manufactured", not birthed. Just because you play a lot don't mean that you say a lot... As far as playing "in the tradition" goes...what tradition? Whose tradition? If you're 25 or even 35 years old, the odds that you know the "jazz tradition" as anything other than a learned experience rather than an organic one are pretty slim. So why fake it? Why not use it as a part of who you are, along with many other parts? Oh, I know - because then you get folks dissing you and saying you're not "serious" and all that shit? Well, what difference does that make? Easy - it's essential if you want to have a career. The career-makers are looking for a certain "type", and people who don't pretend to be "all about JAZZ" don't get in. And there's a huge difference between being "about" something and actually being it. Take Chris Potter - for years, the guy's bored me to tears playing all this really badass SOMBER pseudo-passionate math. Impressive as hell, but no connection for me. But damn is he "serious" about his jazz. Then he comes up and says fuck all that, puts together a "fusion" type band without a bass player, and WHOA, this motherfucker all of a sudden sounds REAL, and not a little scary, in a good way. Do ya' think it might be because that new setting connects more directly to the world he lives in and grew up in than the other one, where you have to pretend that a bunch of things in the world of music and the world of the world kinda never happened or happened on the fringes? Ya' think? I say we all just let this "tradition" thing GO. Forget about it, and let peoples be who they will be without putting up these layers of "expectation". What I suspect we would find if we could do that would be more people who ultimately fit in with what the tradition means without necessarily fitting in with how it's supposed to sound.

Yeah, to think about the kinetic enrgy of broken-beat hooking up with really strong, fearless improvising, man...that's just got to happen... time for the music to get frisky again. All this "dignified" shit ain't doin' nobody no favors right now...

Still terribly raw live, but...the potential is immense, I believe.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...iendID=77704650 I don't know 'bout no "points", but this is some pretty parts-grabbing music, and that's really all I ask for at first, that some non-wallet part be grabbed.

It would be nice if they would sell it at Starbucks.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...iendID=77704650

Glad that's all it is!

http://www.therightfoot.net/mystuff/whatev.../bubblewrap.swf

Yeah, it's been a while.

Oh, btw - Murray is only on one cut. The rest is all Wiley & crew.

I showed this 1968 magazine ad to my healthy and non-waifish 17 year old daughter, and she was incredulous that there was ever a time when women were encouraged to not be as thin as possible. It made her happy to realize this. Happy and sad...

Cacaho got mini-props on Dancing With The Stars this evening. Nice.

Can't really say that I hear Wiley as being "influenced" by Murray in anything other than the very broadest possible sense of post-Ayler/post-Shepp R&B-meets Free Jazz Black Tenordom, and if it's got to come down to that, well hey, too much math for R&B, if you know what I mean. I like that, thoug, "too powerful", that's a fair individual call that goes right to the meat of the music her. It is powerful, very powerful. And what goes down on "Amazing Grace" (no cunnilingus jokes, please...) is damn near amazing. An old spiritual gets slowly but surely turned into a wailing desert song filtered through god only knows how many storefront churches and juke joints, tongues are being spoken in, equal parts street and esoterica, and that's just one cut. Like I said, it ain't a perfect record. But "perfect beauty" may in fact not be beauty at all...

That any discussion not including the Ganelin Trio is lacking in merit?

Agreed, and to the point where I'd say that they're most likely not making/playing anything like the music made by the ones before. That's something to think about, that is...maybe, as is maybe the possibility that the new giants are still relatively embryonic, as is the world in which they will become giants (or inspire those who will be). But you know, one thing I'm hearing in damn near all of the comments here is a variant of "so what if XYZ isn't as great as those who came before, they're still..." STOP. HOLD IT RIGHT THERE. If it's damn near...unanimous that XYZ isn't as great as those who came before, where's the beef? What is there to get upset about? If we're all saying the same thing up to and including the REAL point here, doesn't the disagreement come down to "I know it's not as great as BLAHBLAHBLAH but I like it anyway"? Well, hey, good then! I for one have explicitly stated that different peoples might be getting something different out of these guys than me, and vive le difference, I guess, although if it's going to turn into a bitch-fest about how there's something wrong with those of us who ain't getting that something out of it, then six of one, apples and oranges of the other, and how come ain't nobody talking about that Howard Wiley side?