JSngry

aka "Ecclesi-tax-a-cuts"?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Eleventy http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?...leventy+Billion Gotta love the urbandictionary.com dude. GOTTA love it.

I definitely agree. That's a great record! Who's the vocalist on "April In Paris"? One Jean Louise. Talbert: "Jean Louise was so great; she had perfect pitch. You could write any kind of intro you wanted. I think she was married to the piano player Frank Patchen [later of the Lighthouse All-Stars]. She played piano as well and was working as single when I came back to LA in the 1970s." Quote from Bruce Talbot's fascinating bio "Tom Talbert: His Life and Times" (Scarecrow), which I picked up as a remainder a few years ago. I recommend every Talbert album, especially his 1956 Atlantic classic "Bix Duke Fats." The bio BTW comes with a CD of previously unreissued Talbert tracks. I heard a soundsample of that cut from someplace & it was her singing the bridge, but even more impressive to me than her pitch was her phrasing. Long flowing lines uninterrupted by anything superfulous, not unlike the best Sinatra. There's a sensuality in those long lines, a sense of uninterrupted "outpouring" that stirs something in me... I guess, though, that if you don't gotta worry about pitch, you can focus more on phrasing and such. One less thing to worry about. Must be nice!

I bet pwn is derived from "pawn," maybe secondhand, a "lowly" form of ownership, eventhough wikipedia didn't say. From http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pwn (emphasis added)

Venus Willimas William B. Williams Johnny B. Goode

I definitely agree. That's a great record! Who's the vocalist on "April In Paris"?

If that was the only "god" I could concieve of, I'd be one too.

Ok, it's Earle Spencer. "Earl Spencer" was getting me nothing but a bun of Pricesss Di stuff... Thanks!

Yep. Thus the realism, and thus the darkness.

High Point Church? No surprises there. That place is a sham. It's all about raking the money in. I'm not at all surprised that they would sell out one of their lowliest own (the soldier's brother was a chuch janitor) like that. But that's ok. If there's a hell below... I played (subbed actually) one service at that church and felt like the biggest, dirtiest, most unprincipled whore I've ever felt like after it was over. Took the money, yeah (something like $350.00-$400.00 for less than a full morning's work, and that was just "sub" wages), but swore to never again offer my services to one of those outfits. I could probably not have to work a straight job if I got into the mega-church circuit - they pay really well, and the time involved is minimal - but although I can, have, and will whore myself out for a lot of distateful efforts, the wholesale manipulation and corruption of "god" is not going to be one of them.

In fact, they dominate the set, the uptempo tunes do. If you hadn't told me otherwise, Id have been left w/the impressionthat Greer specialized in rocking R&B, not ballads.

Is this a joke, or is this a really obscure outfit?

Damn, that's almost...poignant... Kinda like the dirge version 45 of "Baby I Love You" by Cher that Phil Spector produced and put out on his own WB-subsidiary label smeck dab in middle of Cher-Mania in the mid/late 70s. Waaaaay under the radar but......hey, it was a mfer and could damn near bring you to tears it's so....defiantly hopeless. You ever hear that one? Now as for Flav, I had a funny thing happen the other week. I was revisiting "Don't Believe The Hype" and every time Flav would pop in to expoundiate the title phrase, damned if his voice didn't sound exactly like John Hammond introducing the Basie band on that Verve Newport side. The EXACT same voice. I kid you not. So not only did John Hammond discover Bruce Springsteen, he also created Flayva Flav's voice. Was there no end to this man's generosity?

Sure. And I personally prefer the American Season One.

There was a macrobiotic cult in Denton that evolved into an actual normal community, much to the simmering angst of the cult founders. You know, they had a store and they offered classes and they invited you into their house so they could show you the way, and one guy - a very white guy - wore a turban and kinda scouted for "lost souls" to save. So...yeah. It was like that. But after a while, it got to be people just doin' it they ownselfs. The thing that got me was this book by Michio Kuchi, The Book of Macrobiotics. I read it, and went from a "yeah, right" vibe at the beginning to a "Yeah! Right!" vibe in the middle to a "uhhhh....ok" vibe at the end. So it was the middle part, the common-sense application of yin & ying principles to diet and the principle of letting balance in your diet drive you to balnce in the rest of your life that I took away from it. And it was good, what can I say? I can see where the thing can turn people off. It's not just "Asian", it's "Asain-cultish". But a lot of the observations about physical & behavioral manifestations of diet begin to make sense once/if you adjust your perspective away from the assumption that the way we been doing it is "natural" just because it's the way we been doing it. Yes...and no. Natural, maybe, but right and or best? Hmmmmmm.... But it is a dramatic physical and, uh...mental change, especially for hardcore "Westerners", and if you do it halfway, it ain't gonna do nothing but mess you up, so I dunno more than that right there. But "stress"? I didn't have any, at least not from the diet. Healthy as a m-f-in horse. Ran 7 miles a day, worked out in the weight room every other day, handled school tasks, laughed & partied with aplomb. The stress really began to come after I let it go, which was triggered by the pompitudes of love, which, as the say, will getcha every time... New PE? Why?

When I was at college I got my V° dan Karate degree, never been healtier or more fit..and I never followed any macrobiotic diet...I suspect it depended on my age. Could be, but I quit macro at about age 21-22, hardly an old man and almost immediately started having minor health issues like colds/sniffles/indigestion/etc. that had been completely absent. When I say I was healthy while macro, I mean healthy. Regular like clockworm (you could practically set your watch by the time after a meal that it was time to go), and was up close & personal with several ladies who had colds and flus of varying degrees and never had as much as a sniffle. I had energy to spare and consistently fell asleep no less that 5 minutes after hitting the bed. Slept soundly, woke up refreshed, and on and onit went. Haven't had that since, and yes, it started going away almost immediately upon letting go of the macro. It's easy to scoff at macrobiotics, since it's so "anti-Western" in both philosophical and nutritional orientation, and if I hadn't seen it first-hand, I probably would myself. But I'm telling you - if you have the motivation, patience, and the discipline to get all the way into it correctly (and I haven't since then), it will have your body functioning at a very high level of physical and mental efficiency. No way I'll claim that it's the "only" way, as some of its more fervent advocates do, just that done as advertised, it delivers as advertised.

FWW... I di macrobiotic seriously for 2+ years back in the college days and have never been healthier or more fit, not even close. It's not bullshit at all, but it does require dedication, discipline & structure, qualities which dietarily went out the window w/my first adult "romantic trauma". Never quite got to macrobiotics after that... However, teh basic principals - eat local, eat whole, and eat balanced (the whole yin/yang thing as it applies to food - and life for that matter - only seems crazy until you start looking At/thinking about it. Then it's the most logical thing you ever heard of...) are sound ones. However, don't "halfway" attempt a macrobiotic diet, because it's all about the wholism of the approach (and contrary to cliche, there is a diverse variety of foods you can eat, and flavorful ways of preparation). A lot of people either get the basics, don't explore past the rather unappealing "basics", go crazy from eating brown rice and...brown rice and say fukkit, or else don't learn how to transitiion, mess themselves up (and it is easy to do that...), and think it's evil. But it can work, it can be enjoyable, and it is definitely made me healthier, significantly healthier, than I've ever been in my life. But it ain't a casual thing... I lost about 27 lbs. here a while back just using portion control. Instead of 2-3 plates, just eat one, and use a little sense about what you put on it. But then I quit smoking about 2-3 months ago and 17 of it came back in 3 weeks. Literally - 3 weeks. Un-freakin' believable... But LTB & I are exercising now and reconsidering certain meal choices, so eventually that should go away. If it don't, I'm gonna be pissed and maybe resume smoking...

American Office Season One = Brilliant. Dark & Dry in a perhaps unprecedented way for Prime Time American Office Season Two = Well, they got that out of their system and/or Somebody at the network thought that if they made it just a little less harsh and put in a little bit more cuteness then thay could have a mainstream hit. Oh well. It's still "good", but no longer stop-what-you're-doing-no-matter-what-for-30-minutes good.

Sandman Sims: http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=rJv19KvNUDA http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=2tjm1smjHCs

Oh my!

No man, you're cool. Allen's cool. He's just talking like he's gotta fill out a 100 word review for a ghost-written AMG piece or some shit rather than thinking about what he really knows.

Well, is it? You're going to break it down as to waht, in your opinion was "wrong", so you must have a well-formed idea of what would have been "right". That's what a "crtitcal thinking" musician should do, right? Right? Or is it possible that the reality of what was was the best possible outcome and that your personal preferences lie elsewhere. That I can respect, even if I totally disagree with it. But dammit man, don't sit there with a straight face (presumably) and give me this spiel about how the increased "verticality" led to a loss of propulsive swinging horizonticalism or whatever it was when I know good and damn well that Max Roach was on fire up until almost the very end. You don't "like" that type of heat, fair enough. But don't insult me by trying to get me to believe that that heat still didn't peel paint. You can get people hurt with lies like that, especially if they're fool enough to believe 'em.

It's always imprudent to step into the no-man's-land of someone else's debate, but here goes. Seems to me Allen isn't saying "Max shouldn't have experimented with this or that"--what he's saying is that he believes Max's efforts to those ends weren't entirely successful. Same with his comments about Pepper/Morgan and "misunderstood modality"--I don't think he's saying they shouldn't have gone in that direction. Rather, he, like you, hears "the reality" of what they played but hears it differently, and judges it somewhat harshly. Further, he speculates that the results might have been better if the musicians had been more given to conscious critical thought about their own music. It seems to me that what you're saying is that if a musician follows his or her muse into uncharted (for them) territory, that approach is so laudable and honest in its intentions that someone who feels the direction proved fruitless isn't allowed to criticize and analyze the move because that would be tantamount to "telling everybody what's good for them and who's a good boy." But you could say that about any negative criticism of the arts. No, what I'm saying is that Allen has made a bunch of blanket generalities that just don't hold up. Tony Williamas lost his individuality. Max lost swing by going to a more "vertical" approach. Art Pepper sounded artificial (or something...). I'm saying that that is so much over-generalized, pseudo-critical soundbite hooey. If you want real critical thought about the matter, you'd have to see that Tony Williams never sounded like anybody else, Max never stopped swinging HARD, and that Art Pepper...remained the tightly would head case that he always was. Which is not to say that it was always good, because it wasn't. Tony's 2nd Columbia album, that Legs thing, pretty much sucked dead donquis dix (so much sothat i refuse to call it by name), Max's later Soul Note sides were more style than substance (but what style it was!), and I've got a private recording of Pepper sitting in w/Warne Marsh @ Donte's ca. 1977 that is freakin' hilarious in the way that Pepper goes out of his way to be "hip" in the face of Warne's steadfastly resolute genius. He sounds like a f-in' idiot, he does. So yeah, it all could, and sometimes did, go horribly wrong. But sometimes, a lot of times it didn't. In fact, I'd say on the balance that it went right most of the time, at least to their satisfaction, because there it stayed in some form or fashion up until the end. It's hard for me to accept that once keen minds and ears just totally lost it all and couln't hear how horrible they sounded. It's much easier for me to consider the possibility that they were getting to where they wanted to get, and that out of respect for them and out of a sense of humilty in the face of the individual creative process in general, that I might just have a "criticval" responsibility to try and hear things from their POV, to hear the whats & whys of what it was they were telling me NOW as opposed to what they used to be telling me. Because these were not people to be dismissed lightly, dig? And comments like Allen's been making don't allow for that, nor do they concede the reality that people like Tony, Max, & Pepper weren't exactly esthetic lightweights in the first place and were not going to be prone to shallow/superficial trendiness in their music. Whatever changes they made were going to be for some serious reasons. These were not players prone to dabbling or dilletantism (sp?). No, they made the moves that they made for a reason (hello "critical thinking"?!?!?!?!?!), and if part of those reasons were one form or another of the desire to "stay relevant", well shit, Allen was just bemoaning how cats lose their edge as they get older. Here's some cats who conscientiously fought that, and he's displeased with the results. Lose/lose? WTF is that all about? There must be a foolproof way to go about it, becuase apparently just diving in and stepping on your dick as you go along until you get it to where you (or more where) want it to be is "critically" unacceptable. Or something. Besides, I can't believe that any serious musician would think like that. Any serious musician knows that it ain't always easy and it damn sure ain't always pretty. As well as that sometimes, quiet as it's kept, it's easier to just keep it a secret to yourself and only go public with it on "special occasions" for fear of upsetting the people who keep your career afloat. Or, like Cannonball, find a way to do it in such "commercial" setting that "nobody" notices. I can't believe that a serious musician such as Allen would take such a hypothetical, idealized, unrooted in reality stance. Yeah, I do tend to be a "thinking" musician myself (or am when I am a musician, which is less and less these dyas, but oh well about that, at least for now), I can give all but the most prolix a semi-respectable "critical" yadda-yadda (and actually MEAN it, such as here), but damn - when you forget what things are really like when you really are doing it, man, that's just....I don't know what that is. I don't understand that. Not at all. But that's not what I'm saying. Really. it isn't. What I'm saying is that sometimes players, sometimes some very good players, want/need to move out of their comfort zone but not all the way into somebody else's comfort zone. That would indeed be forfeiting your individuality. So they check stuff out, take what they can use, work it out, keep it or drop it, etc. If you want to hold on to your old illusions about who they "are", then oh well, you feel the loss. But that is an entirely subjective feeling, just as is my feeling that if you listen to what is there now instead of what's not there that used to be, you can have a pretty good time there too. Case in pooint - I only heard Max live once, 1979, Carnegie Hall(?, maybe Lincoln Center, I don't remember). Newport NY w/the quartet. Odean had just joined. Max was freakin' levitating the whole joint. It was hot up in there, jack! So on the way out, this old guy in a suit and shit says to his wife "I though he was still playing like he did with Clifford Brown. I sure did miss that". Well, so you did, I thought to myself, but you're also missing - in a whole 'nother way - the way the cat's playing NOW. And now is where we are whether you want to/are able to be there or not. And I just heard Max Roach play with the power of God NOW. Sorry you missed it, buddy. Glad as hell that I didn't. No, not everything works for everybody all the time. But don't tell me that it never did, or that they would have been better off not making the move, unless it really never did work. And there ain't no way that I'm going to hear what I've heard and be convinced that it never worked for Tony, Pepper, or, especially, Max. "Critical thinking" does not = convenient soundbite generalizations that ultimately lie by not telling the whole truth, or in Max's case, even the largest part of it. Has this been enough "oppositional critical thinking" for one sitting? God, I sure hope so! :g

If musicians - hell, if people in general - wouldn't get so damn complacent about confusing "being who they are" with who they've let themself settle into being, then their creativity would not tend to wane in their elder years, as it so often does. And yet when some "name brands" do confront that complacency head-on, and apply directly to the forehead, they catch hell from some "critical thinkers" who bemoan the loss of some perceived "essential quality". Why doesn't somebody just write up the rules in advance and send it out? You know, "Mr. X, feel free to experiment with this, but you better leave that alone. "Mr. Y, you on the other hand cand go there all you want to, but whatever you do, don't mess with this here". You know, tell everybody in advance what is or isn't gonnna be good for them and then see who's a good boy, and who's not. Yeah, that's the ticket. Rejection of a specific critical position or set of positions does not necessarily equate with a rejection of critical thinking in general. I'm very confident of my opinion of Max Roach as it relates to me, and I don't think that it is without such thinking. To that end, I challenge you to answer this question - how would you have had Max play from about 1964 or so onward and still remain true to Max Roach the person as well as Max Roach the musician as well as that person and that musician in those times that would be substantially different than how he actually did end up playing? You're not crazy about how he did it, fine, come up with an alternative. If the musician's primary duty is not necessarily to do, then hey, here's an opening for you to prove it. Come up with a plausible alternative Max Roach. In the meantime, I hear what he did do, take into account who he was as a person, as a musician, and as a musician in those times, and frankly, I am usually riveted by the reality of the results. Watch that video again and tell me - is there a problem there?

I mean, is there a problem here? http://youtube.com/watch?v=UGzAvbYOFr4 Especuially once Cecil Bridgewater finishes? Does this sound like a man out of his element? Is there any kind of a problem here at all?