JSngry

Stanley Myron Handleman S.J. Perelman D.W. Ditty

Yeah, rod, you're singlehandedly worse than the entire pre-union US coal mining industry! You BASTARD! :g :g

Well, I kinda do. Because something like this can go either way without a whole lote of effort.

http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=gw6...p%3Bincl_cs%3D1

George would go in retroactively. I can tell you with absolute certainty that at the peak of the P-Funk juggernaut of roughly 1974-1980 that it was very much a non-white thing. In fact, I saw more than one white dancefloor at the time come to an abrupt, screeching, grinding, hostile (!!!!) halt when "Flashlight" or "Not Just Knee Deep" would get played. And even today, I wonder how many white folk who think that something like "Tear The Roof Off The Sucka" is all, like, SO HIP and shit have gotten their heads wrapped around stuff like "Chocolate City", "March To The Witches Castle", or "Let Me Be", much less know about Mister Wiggles like they do Star Child & Sir Nose. But I digress... The thing with discussions about folk like Aretha, The Beatles, sinatra, etc. is that for me, the semantical implications of "Sure, ASDEF GERT is a cultural icon, unique talent, and a great artist, but.... consider questionable iniquities A-Z" are slighlty (or more) different than those of "Sure, ASDEF GERT did questionable iniquities A-Z, but.... they remain a cultural icon, unique talent, and a great artist in spite of all that." Me, I'd prefer that the conjunction in both of those stateements be "and" instead of "but", but forced to choose, I'm probablly going with the latter form of declaration more often than not. Just because. And also because how can you have something like "mass success" and not have things like "commercial pressures", "questionable artistic decisions", "power of marketing" and other things come into play? And how can you have an artist who is at once "highly regarded" and "massively popular" over a long period of time without there being something there beyond "great talent", and even "great artistry"? These ambiguities & conflicts are at the core of ordinary life in the mainstream for anybody who thinks and feels of their own volition, so to expect relief, escape, or solace from them in any type of art/entertainment that functions in that same realm is a little unrealistic, no? Embrace them, I say, because to do otherwise is to create a "conflict" where there really is none. It's Yin and Yang, not Yin vs. Yang. And one last(?) note about the Aretha/Inez/Gospel thing - what might be being overlooked here is that a lot, a whole lot of Gospel singers from the Golden Age would have had a bitch of a time dealing with the funkier rhtymic underpinnings that Aretha's Atlantic music had pretty much from jump. The rhythms of "Soul Music" weren't all that much differnt from those of Gospel, but when you get to things like "Chain Of Fools", "Respect", and later on, the Full Funk of "Rock Steady", you're getting into a zone where somebody like Inez would have foundered, and founderd badly. I've got later a later recording by Inez where some of the tracks kind go there, and it just ain't right. She can't go there, she needs that deep, basic, steady 4 to lean into and push against (although, she finds it on "This Is Not The First Time", and the results are gripping, to put it mildly. but htat's hardly a FUNK groove...). Ditto Clarence Fountain. And The Dixie Hummingbirds' version of "Jesus Children Of America" works so damn well precisely because they don't try and cop Stevie's groove on it, kickin' it back Old Skool instead. Sure, there were others of Aretha's approximate generation, like Johnnie Tayor & Lou Rawls, who came out of Gospel and had no problem adapting to the post-JB syncopatic sensibilities. But also note that they (and any others that I can think of) came up in groups, quartets, etc. Aretha was a soloist from day one, and that's a whole 'nother bag. The way her rhythmic sensibility migrated/transferred from Gospel to Soul to Pop is nothing to be casually dismissed and is at the root of any cliams made in her behalf as a true innovator. She had an interior rhythmic fluidity that allowed her to...fly over the basic beat that virtually none of her Gospel peers had, but that almost all of her successors do (and I think those successors would openly credit her for that). I do think that the R&B sides bring it out more, as they should, but it's there in the Gospel stuff too. Again, her sins are multitudinous, but in the end, her redemptive powers are too. Deny neither, accept both, and Hello World, Doggone Ya'!

Works for me.

http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=2r7...p;ref=index.php

http://www.hip-oselect.com/scr.public.prod...68-2DC48EC4E84F

Of course bigger isn't better, not intrinsically, but sometimes bigger gets bigger for a reason other than just marketing. It's a reason that has nothing to do with "better", but you can only market turds for so long before people start to realize that, hey, these turd things taste like shit! All I'm saying is that attempts to bring Aretha "down to size", or whatever they are without confronting/accepting the notion (I call it fact, but that's just me) that, ok, she might well be an icon becasue of "marketing", but that without some intrinsic something that has absolutely nothing to do with hype, she'd not be an icon, she'd just be a... "star", "celebrety", "diva", or some similar lesser quantity. I mean hell, I hate Elvis. Fuck Elvis. Elvis didn't mean shit to me and still doesn't. But as much as I hate that motherfucker, I can and will admit that he had something "above and beyond", and that his near-god status is due to something more than just hype. What it is, I don't know, don't want to know, don't need to know, but hey, I know it's there. So it is with Aretha. We can all sit hear and play Objective Critic from now until yesterday, but it doesn't matter. If we think that denying that Aretha had something...different about her that propelled her into Iconhood, something that maybe a gajillion other Soul & Gospel singers who sang just as well or better and who felt just as much or more and maybe even put across just as well or better didn't have, and that that something might have everything to do with why the marketing worked but that that the existence of that something might well have had nothing to do with the marketing, makes it so, if we can't deal with things on this level (I don't mean that we gotta "like" them, just that we gotta understand that they do exist and that they are what they are no matter what, "like" don't enter into it), then I gotta wonder if we really understand human nature and how music interacts with it other than from the perspective of me, myself, and I.

I'm saying that "Amazing grace" is no different from other Gospel albums because it's Aretha and that "Amazing grace" is completely different from other Gospel albums because it's Aretha. Simple as that.

Well hey, Forrest Tucker alone probably touched people without really trying to...

Marketing (and its effects) is what it is, and what it is is part of the whole picture. If that (the marketing) is all or most you see, then you're not seeing the whole picture. Obviously. But if you try to look at something without it, you're not seeing the whole picture either. Perhaps not so obviously. The big picture is not the whole picture.

Same here!

I didn't get the Max set. Never had the $$$ once it got to Running Low, have virtually all the material already in some form or fashion, and just thought that I could not get it and live with that decision. Guess I was wrong.

That Feldman cat looks kinda creepy to me. Bring back the cartoon.

Well...yes and no. If you want evaluate the music purely as "music" and eliminate all context provided by "person" (and you can), then yeah. But how do you evaluate an "Aretha Franklin Gospel Album" without considering that it is Aretha Franklin? And even if you can, does that create a real or less real picture of what the music "is"? It's like The Beatles - like it or not, whether it "should" or "shouldn't" be like that, The Beatles are THE BEATLES and will be until history fades to a point where nobody knows anything about them except the sounds coming outta the records. And will such a time ever come without some major, probably malevolently inspired, revising of history? Like it or not, an "Aretha Franklin Gospel Album" comes with a lot of backstory. Of course, almost all music does (I mean, just reading the AMG bio of Steam sent my jaw dropping...), but certain entities, and Aretha is one of them, carry a backstory that you almost have to will yourself into ignoring to ignore. And yeah, sure, that's a good thing for a little while, but how....real is it, really? Not in terms of assessing "talent" or anything like this, but in terms of knowing just where this fits in the "real world" scheme of things. EDC made the point a few months ago that by the time The Beatles released the "White Album" that they were no longer "relevant". To which I countered (and still believe) that you can't be The Most Popular And Respected And Influential Band In the World and be irrelevant. It just don't work that way, not in The Macroculture of The Popular Arena. We can all create our own little Personal Comfortable Microverses, but if we do so pretending that The Macroculture of The Popular Arena does not exist, or that it is somehow "meaningless", then we are kidding ourselves big time. Now sure, Aretha's Gospel work has been good-to-great, and yeah, others have hit it harder and longer. But for every person that, say, Inez Andrews has "touched", Aretha has done the same 100 X (or more) over. So when Aretha makes a Gospel album like Amazing Grace, one that gets heard by a lot more people than would hear anything by Inez Andrews, how it does or doesn't copmpare to Inez Andrews' work is at once germane and totally, totally irrelevant, if for no other reason than what difference does it make to somebody who is moved/touched/whatever by Aretha's work who will never ever hear anything by Inez Andrews? Not what doffernce does it make to "us", what differnce does it make to them? I'm ok with co-exisiting in "my world" and "Popular Culture". Render unto Caesar, and all that. But attempting to reconcile them in such a way that one is ultimately "more real" than the other in comparison to anything but itself is a bit of fool's game, akin to playing baseball in a full swimming pool and thinking that the game will get easier as soon a the rain lets up.

If you have your own music inside you, you really don't need to hear it anywhere else, unless it's a consensual act among others, and even then, that's probably more a desire than a need. I mean, yeah, we all want to share that which is dear to us, but "music as product" is a much bigger Pandora's box than we realize, and that includes "hey, check this out!", becuase then at some level, perhaps subconsciously, perhaps not, perhaps benevolently, perhaps not, we're peddling ourself through music. Again, this isn't inherently evil, in fact it's usually quite good, very nice. But it is using music as product, and that does hold the potential to turn into something else altogether. Because anytime anybody puts music out in the open to be heard by somebody else, something is being peddled, be it an emotion, an idea, a desire, product, something. There's always a reason why somebody makes a sound to be heard by somebody else. So - what are you listening to right now?

Oh, no need to apologize. No hidden hints or anything like that, I just know that it is Bob.

Indeed it is, Squire! Time to pour up some good juice, put on some Pops Poopadeaux, and lay it on mellow for all the swingin' cats and chicks out there in Organissimossimo land.

Why stop there? First, you ductape a gerbil........gerducpormutteef! And then you do the Hokey-Pokey, because that's what it's all about.

http://youtube.com/results?search_type=sea...ded=&page=1

Hey now, I'm thinking this - why limit the concept to just fowl? Why not go four-footed & wingless, huh? Imagine - go grab a pig, stuff it inside a lamb, and then stuff that inside a cow. Pormutteef!

Oh, you'd need more than a grain for all those...

My deepest & most heartfelt congratulations to all. Your life has been forver changed, God willing for the better!

Well, there is still-unreleased material...