JSngry

If you think it's a good thing to reach a certain point in your learning and then stop, curl up, get comfortable, and think you've become "sophisticated" and don't have to confront unfamiliar realities any more, be my guest. Personally, I think that's bullshit. Jefferson was right - the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Mmmm, pho!

Fair enough. But did you know (I didn't until recently, shows you how out of (some of) it I've been) that Detroit is apparently considered one of the founding cities of "techno"? If this set is any indication, it's nothing like Euro-techno, it's a lot looser in feel (but still techno, no doubt). Detroit's also been a hotbed of house (as has Chicago), and there's one woman up there (name escapes me, but she's a saxophonist who's done work with Prince), who's off into this wierd-ish jazz-house, and another group of women singers (names escape again...)who make house with some pretty "interesting" vocal harmony. So there's a continuing legacy of African-American popular music in Detroit, it didn't end with Motown. I gotta think that younger cats like Taborn are as aware of all that stuff as "we" are/were of the older stuff, and I'll allow for the possibility that the music in question is in fact simply boring, but I'll also allow that it might seem that way simply because we don't really have a clue what he's talking about. But like you said, life is too short, and when you have truly great performances like the ones on this Potter side, hey, I ain't gonna spend too much time wonderring about it either.

"Thanks" to your son or to Taborn? Surely you're not suggesting that Taborn's intent (if your son is correct) is improper or is otherwise one that you couldn't get to if you wanted to. Young folk ain't always gonna court the old folks' favor, doncha' know, and more power to 'em for that. So, did you ask your son to hip you to some of the Detroit hip-hop being referenced?

It's like riding a bicycle.

Of course it is, because perception forms a large part of understanding. It might even be the impetus behind it. "Differently" goes to the core of the matter. There are different perceptions, and therefore different understandings. To claim that all perceptions (and therefore all understandings) are the same is insulting to all concerned & quite possibly rooted in either arrogance and/or mush-headedness. Now as to how "better" got into the discussion, hell if I know. But it smells fishy to me. To advocate for acknowledgement of difference is in no way to advocate for "better". And I still say that anybody who gets..."defensive" about acknowledging difference as an unalienable fact of life and god-given right probably has issues with somebody else being able to perceive/understand/therefore be something/somebody that they are not, especially if that something else is something they like & would enjoy being themself. What better way to be that something than to proclaim that difference is either non-existant or unimportant. Unilateral obliteration of individualities, all in the name of Unity. What could be easier?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Or we can just say fuck it all, hold hands, make babies, and forget millenia of history. Just wipe the slate fucking clean & start over. Yeah, sure we can.

We're getting the NFL Network feed on local braodcast TV as we speak. This must be a last minute thing, because my son was sure that it was gonna be a sports bar night for him and proceeded accordingly...

LTB & I never miss Lidia's shows on PBS. Part of our Saturday morning routine, along w/Rick Bayless' thing. But again, I will recommend Chef Robert Rainford & License To Grill on Discovery Home. Food like that don't come 'round every day!

Then tear the roof off the sucker and swim out.

CRAIG TABORN!!!!

I mean, who was it, Malcolm, Elijah Muhammed, somebody, who said that the goal of the Nationalist movement was to nurture a people who were fully confident and capable to be who they are on their own terms in order to be able to interact with the rest of the world on equal terms...that to me makes primal sense. Me myself, I'm adopted, so at one point in my life "identity" became a matter of some importance to me. Not in the form of learning who my "birth parents" were, I mean, BFD, I was adopted at 4 days old or some shit, so other than geneteics/medical history, ya' know, it was like, what difference is it gonna make now? No, it was identity in the sense of what kind of a person am I, apart from all the family/cultural history/baggage I was thrown into quite apart from and without consideration of destiny of birth. So I got to checking shit out and found out that there's a lot of "me" that has absolutely nothing to do with "family", some pretty ffundamental stuff. But there's also some stuff that has everything to do with the family environment in which I was raised for all bith those first 4 or so days of my life, and I eventually realized that there could be no "running away" from that. Not that my family was fucked up or anything, I mean, I love 'em all proundly and deeply. But we do "come from different places" on a lot of key things, and to "get past" all that, I finally had to stop trying to run away from that which there was no escape, acknowledge it, love it even, and then "add on" rather than "replace". There's a lot of things in this world that I feel deeply and that have meaning to me that transcend rationality. But not all of them are "mine" in the sense that they come from my world and were meant specifically for me. They are "mine" in the sense that they have a meaning apart from their specific origins, but they also have meaning precisely because of those origins as well, and it would be the height of egocentric, hubristic meglomania to pretend that all that matters is that I get it. The world is not mine to "have", the world is mine to be a part of, and that means receiving gifts with graciousness, gratitude, and humility and not thinking that it was mine all along, hey, thanks for bringing it to my attention, you can still have it, but so can I, so hey, see ya' later, I gotta get to the bank (literal or metaphorical). It also means that what I have received from others of themself, I should probably consider reciprocating with from myself, and that does not mean giving somebody back what is already theirs. Doing that reduces their gift to a mere appliance of convenience. I'm just suspicious of people saying that they "get" things at a deeper level than they probably do. You know that when your Old Uncle Bubba says he LOVES that Jazz and claps his hands on 1 & 3 and all that shit that he's right as far as he goes, but that he doesn't go nearly as far in reality as he probably thinks he does in his mind. Well, that's a syndrome, and like all syndromes, there's varying degrees of it ranging from full-blown to nearly latent. But even in its most benign state, it nevertheless exists. That's all I'm saying.

I hear ya', and my only comment on that would be that the only (or best, anyway) for my money to "come together" & defy authenticity is to bring one full(est) reality into full(est) contact with another full(est) reality, let everybody be who they are, let all the frictions work, and see what happens before, during, and after. The reason all those, as you call them "Arts Council jobs" are almost always crap is that "fusion" is being sought by rounding off all the rough edges, as if to prove that A)"We"'re not such evil beasts & B)"They" aren't such scary mysterious creatures after all, so let's all come together and CELEBRATE LIFE, all the while overlooking the very real possibilities that, yeah, maybe you do have some evil sickness in your psyche and, yeah, maybe you would get a grin on your face if we all of a sudden had to suffer your wrath in the form of your wildest revenge fantasies. Celebrrate THIS, bitch... I'm of the opinion that it takes a not-encouraged-by-normal-societal-standards-of-identity combination of strong, total pride in one's self and strong, total humility about one's self to make this "it doesn't matter" thing work in a way that's not an exercise in identity masturbation. Because, again, the only way you can truly get that it doesn't is to first get that it really, really does. It's kinda like, once you know where all the furniture and shit is, you can run through a dark room all you want and never stumble. The presence of light no longer matters. But until you know the layout of that room really, really well, you best to be keeping at least a little light on, because there will be some little something that will trip you up, probably even something you didn't realize was there until it found you...

It is in our world, but you know there's a whole 'nother world full of people who just LOVE all music and think that Robert Cray is BLUES & that Lightening Hopkins is BLUES and that George Thoroughgood is BLUES and by god, the love BLUES doncha' know, and it's all good to them, just because. And it ain't just BLUES, far from it. Like T. M. Goldberg more or less said, the object is not to see yourself everywhere you go. Most assuredly not.

OK, you're saying if music is from your native culture, so to speak, there are layers of meaning for you that are inaccessible to others. I can recognize that. But how am I supposed to "deal with it", accordingly or otherwise? I don't know what you mean by that. Just admit it. Nothing more than that. You'd be surprised (or not) at how may can't/won't. But the only way to say that "it doesn't matter" and have it be true is by first recognizing that it does matter. Different levels/steps of awareness as to what "is" is....

Yeah, but you don't get it the way she gets it, and if you think that's insignificant at some level, especially at the level of how/why that music gets made, then my money would be on you being wrong.

well, how many gospel groups, soloists etc give a damn about Coltrane Expressions or Ghostface Killa, "Dicty Glide" or RZA; Skip James, Pha Terrell or Pimp C (tho' Skip went to some wackass bible college in Texas); etc etc. Ya'll ever go into black record stores when they're were a lot more of 'em? You see what they had, & what the few still around today do? The cultural memory of Don Robey (say) does not exist, forget Bessie Smith & forget even Stetsasonic. so if yr talking music... you might already know more than most. Ah, but I'm not.

BIG FOOD!

Dude, he's talking Texas musicians here. Of course there's OT - the client pays the agent, and then.... And then.

What you need one for?

Dude, Taborn is holding this shit together like The Glue Of God. No bass in this band either.

"It's Time"

Well, ya' know, just because Music Is Universal doesn't mean that every part of every music is. I mean, I can be moved to tears by a really good bolero, but if it's one that uses the portion of the Spanish language which I don't understand (which is most of the boleros & most of the language), then all I'm really "getting" is a general, which is all I really need to know for me in my place and my space, but it really doesn't meant that I really appreciate, understand or "get" the song, the idiom, or the people involved therein. I have what Ellington refered to a "tourist point of view". So yeah, I've got no doubt that you don't have to be a "believer" to feel Gospel, and even feel it deeply. But even if its at the depth of a believer in one faith recognizing a kindred spirit in a believer in another, there's going to be a level of specificity of understanding missing that needs to be admitted to & understood/accepted lest one become convinced that one understands more than one really does. And I say this as a white male who freely admits that no matter how immersed I have been in African-American music and culture over my lifetime, that there will be some things about life as an African-American (and therefore African-American music) that I will never be able to fully understand. Never. And I'm ok with that, because it's the truth. What that has to do with this though is - as much as I, a believer (albeit a "non-traditional" one) feel the power of a good African-American Gospel performance from a spiritual, musical, and social standpoint, there is no way that I am ever going to understand it the way that the meek little African-American lady who rides the bus to work every day and who never makes a sound outside of her house but OPENS HER SOUL ALL THE WAY UP when she hears Inez or Aretha or Shirley or whoever. You might think that that's a cliche, & no doubt it is, but believe me, it's even moreso a reality. As much as that music is for "everybody", so much more is it for people such as that lady. Failure to recognize this and deal with it accordingly is ultimately just more of the same ol' same ol' Clueless Colonialistic Caucasian Condescencion.

Exactly! Sounds like you got Electric Soul, which is ok, but kinda unformed. Seems that Terry might've started recording before his chops were fully developed. Natural Soul, that's the one you don't want to sleep until you find. Not that it's "great" or anything like that, although it is pretty damn good for the most part. It's just got NEWARK VIBE out the ass, and in a really good way.

I think it's really long overdue (perhaps fatally so, but we'll see about that one) for people like Potter to finally just go ahead and deal with the fact that electricity & non-"swing" rhythms are at least as organic to who they are as people (not "jazz musicians") of the last quarter of the 20th Century & beyond as are acoustic, "swing"-based jazz, and just go ahead and play that way w/o any kind of retro-winking with literal references (a fault I can find w/some of Dave Douglas' work & definitely w/Wallace Roney's recent stuff, even though in both cases, the music doesn't piss me off to the higher levels of such). Continued listens to this side are making that my major liking of this album, the attitude of the concept and of the playing. Potter still has some of that "objectivism" to him that is what I think others have refered to as "gesturing" or some such (and as much as I know what they mean, I also think that such an "attitude" is also one of the logical outgrowths of Coleman Hawkins' esthetic), and that's a bit of an obstacle to full appreciation for me, but in this context, it makes more sense, it feels more real, it sounds more like this is just the type of guy he is rather than somebody who has an emotional disconnect with the music. So it's all good like that, and if the ultimate "meaning" of it is that the "middlebrow" of jazz is finally deciding to wake from it's mummy-like stupor of the last how many ever years and realize that some things about music/art are timeless, but that some key things that go into creating that timelessness like individual time and place are not, hey, that's all right by me. It's about f-in' time, yo.

And yeah, Pure Dynamite, that one's got a real late-60s, Miles feel to it. Terry was probably in over his head on this stuff, and it would in no way have been a sustainable direction for him, but for this one record, hey, it worked fine. I was more than pleasantly surprised at jsut how fine it did work out. Awareness is ok, but...coulda/shoulda and all that. Terry did one last Mainstream, Lean On Him, that was kind of a Gospel/Jazz/Pop/Etc?Whatever ate w/a larger-ish ensemble. If you're into "that kind of thing" (think an Atlantic-type date geared for R&B/Jazz airplay), then it's not bad either. But Natural Soul, dawg, hey. That's all the Buddy Terry you need to know.