JSngry

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all great (as in great). Buy'em all and love'em forever (and I do mean forever) But.... When Desert Island Time comes, this is the one I'm taking with me, and unhesitatingly so. I'm even extracting it out of the OJC tw-fer w/the same cover just to have it all by itself. Because it is that good. If "Hey Lock" isn't the greatest recorded example of TenorTandemOrgasm in the history of the this or any other world, then I'm a ring-tailed monkey with the cobbity chop. And I'm not.

PJ had a little bit of a "now sound" thing going on back then didn't they, what with the albums listed above + the Buddy Rich & Gerald Wilson sides, not to mention Craig Hundley. Nehrus and/or turtlenecks on the house!

Depends on how bitter you still are...

Dude - I GooglImaged "Free For All birthday", and up it came, like a welcoming welt of warm wishes. How could I not?

The few really old King LPs I have are black label, if that means anything.

Superb phrasing.

You beat me to it, Lazaro! I haven't been listening to a lot of jazz lately, but this one got left in the changer for a week, and gladly so. Highly recommended!

Ok, thanks. Must just be site-specific issues. Again, thanks!

Another thing about the best house - it rewards (yes, rewards) close listening (yes, listening). The best cats are highly specific about detail and minutae of all things sonic, and subtleties abound deep within the mixes. Surprised, no - shocked the hell out of me, but there it is. Now, let's get back to George Russell.

Has anything been up "legally" in the UK about podcasting the last few weeks? Two UK sites I've visited (one with a relatively lengthy history/archive) regularly have both suddenly stopped updating. The archives are still online, but nothing new since mid-late February. Both of these sites had been updating weekly until then. No explanations given anywhere that I can see. Just wondering if there had been any sort of government/regulatory actions taken and/or threatened about podcasting in the UK that would explain this. Thanks in advance.

The best stuff I've heard swings like a mofo. Swings. When I last left house, mid/late-80s, it was something I heard unwillingly on breaks in clubs, and it was pretty mechanical/techno/boring/irritating. I hated it. Things have changed, at least in some quarters (there's so many sub-genres, and I do not give a rat's ass about learning what's called what). There's effortless swing, joy, grace, and above all, soul. Deep soul (screw all these "divas" that get all the press. You wanna hear REAL soul singing, there's some stuff in the House that'll blow all that stuff away, and make you wonder where this has been all your Smiling At Freeway Of Love Because It Was Simply An Update Of The Good Old Stuff Wasted Life). I'll take it for as long as it's good to me. One thing, though, that's definitely sticking is the notion of "set structure". I've long been enamored of playing (in both "free" & "inside" contexts) seamless, continous sets that create an arc, tell a story (big cliche, but a useful one nevertheless), and treat seques between songs as integral musical entities in their own right. But getting players to think like that takes some doing. The bass player needs a sip of scotch. The drummer needs to adjust his hi-hat. Somebody gets sweaty and needs to remove the offending wetness from their forehead. On and on and on. Cats think it's normal, and maybe in one zone it is, but dammit, there's a zone to be reached where none of that shit matters, where you're in the music and the music is in you and it just flows and flows and flows and if/when you stop, you come back to where you started from w/o ever really leaving. I've seen the AEC play sets like that. I've seen Tower of Power play a set like that. I've got a bootleg or two of Sonny Rollins playing a set like that. I've seen all kinds of bands play a set like that, sometimes as an act of professional necessity, and sometimes as an act of true communion with the musical spirit. And this house stuff, these DJs (who may not be "musicians" but who certainly seem to have a better grasp of what's at stake than many/most who "are") goes there willingly and gladly from the git-go. GIGO still applies, obviously, but you get a cat who's savvy on all counts and you can get there. You can do it live with "real" players, but it takes a willingness to want to get there, and too many cats just aren't interested. Sign of the times... The bass player needing to stop the groove for a sip of scotch between songs and things like that are definers of a musical zone that I'm no longer interested in inhabiting. If you come to a natural point of rest, hey, take it. But stopping as a matter of ingrained custom and/or "self"-consciousness, hey - you ain't transcending a damn thing in that zone, you're just digging yourself deeper in. Fine for those who want it, but I'm not one of 'em.

Ok, I listened to samples of all the clips. Good enough, but, uh....Max & Abbey done been there, done that, timelier, angrier, and better. At this point in the real world, this is truly harmless music. Certainly not what he had in mind, I'm sure, but damn... I feel sorry for the guy at this point. I really do.

Well yeah, if he had wanted to. One of the memories I have of that clinic is Russell recounting how he had been offered the arranging job for Art Mooney's record of "I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover" (I've heard rumors that he actually took it, that that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back as far as him pursuing a career as a "commercial arranger", but rumors is all they are). The look of disgust on his face and the tone of repulsion in his voice were almost freighteningly intense. So I don't think he had any eyes whatsoever for anything other than what he did.

I spent a day with him at a clinic back in 1981, and I left with the impression that a "bit" is all that anybody's ever going to get. But that's enough to get you started...

I've had a burn for a while, finally went legit @ 12.99. I dig it a lot. It's kinda nutty, funny, all in a hip way. Much of it has an I Dream Of Jeanie vibe. Makes me wish that Braith had written sitcom themes. Life for TV viewers would have been infinitely better.

Young-Holt in reverse!

Call me old school, but...Albert Mangelsdorff. The original liner notes to Tension are a freakin' manifesto.

Well, if they wanted a truly "accurate" picture, that would be what they would have to do. Impractical, obviously, but it ought to serve as a reminder that "history" is never complete, that it's always going to be an interpretation of what's left behind, not a true representation of things as they really were. Nor should it be anything else. As long as everybody recognizes that and proceeds accordingly, everything's cool. But that's not alwyas the case, is it...

Thanks, David. Now to get the thread back on topic... Shrdlu, you're a player, so I gotta think you know why Russell didn't do the more "mainstream" arranging gigs. Listen to the standards on NYNY, do you hear anything remotely "mainstream" about the handling of them therein? Melodies are morphed and harmonies extended to the breaking point. Sure, it sounds normal enough in terms of instrumentation, but dude, ain't no way that stuff would get into the mainstream of its day. No way!

Sorry, didn't meant to be a downer. Hey, this (jazz) is music that can change your soul, change your mind, change everything about your life. I oughta know. It's done that for me, and I will forever be grateful to it for doing so. It's in me, and it ain't never leaving. It's just that...how long can it be there by itself before the thing itself becomes a stationary object of admiration and not a moving vehicle of transport? Sometimes you need a fresh perspective on the elements of music, what they are, how they can work together to communicate with the mind, body, and spirit, and how what some people think of as one or some might well reach others as being the other or some others. Certainly the best "older" jazz was all about communication through highly specific conveyances of spirit through tone, rhythm, and texture (notice I'm leaving out harmony, because harmony all by itself really conveys nothing without tone, rhythm, and texture), less so (for me) the overwhelming majority of "current" jazz. The best house (or more precisely, the best house mixes) I've been hearing displays an incredibly acute awareness of the power inherent in rhytmic manipulation, building tension and release through using conscious repitition & quite specific variations within to get into the subconscious. I'm hearing a "message" there that strikes me as profoundly more relevant to life today than listening to some cats playing tunes & running changes, or doing some abstract "conceptual" thing that you have to think about in order to be able to "feel". That's backasswards to me - first you should feel it, then you should think about it. Of course, there's always exceptions to that, but in my experience, that's the sequence of events that pays off best over the long haul. Feel, then think. I've said this countless times, but I'll say it again - life today is fundamentally different than it was even 15-20 years ago, and it ain't going back to the way it was any time soon. Time is compressed, "space" & "quiet" as we once knew it has all but been destroyed, and "place" has come to mean not just where you are physically, but also where you are with the assistance of the digital/cyber device of your choice. What I'm liking about house is that it doesn't try to deny any of this. It's built upon it in fact. But the stuff I'm hearing and responding to uses that acknowledgement and turns it on its heels by creating a world of seemingly infinite possibilities of tone, rhythm, and texture (and therefore, emotional/spiritual "space") on top of it all, just as jazz used to "rise above" the horrors and mundanities of its time by confronting them head on and beating them at their own game by finding the weak spots in the logic and plowing through them on the way to the glory of the other side. Do the people/minds/spirits of house music have what it takes to do for their music to do what jazz did? Well, that will depend on who those people/minds/spirits are, won't it? Over the long haul, I remain skeptical, but what has been done by some people ought to leave hints as to the possibilities for anybody so inclined who's coming along. And since the best of this stuff is still "underground" (although in a pretty large, global underground), untouched for the most part by "mass media" concerns, hey, one never knows, do one? I will say this though - any young, creative musical spirit ought to be paying attention to this stuff, because there's more truth/reality going on there than damn near anywhere else in music today. And just as much bullshit. But what else is ne about that? Can I burn out on it? Sure, I would think so, given the root functionality of it, and my non-organic relation to same. But one can burn out on the specifics and still learn broader lessons to carry on/out long after the debris is cleared away. If you can't do that with anything, hey, what's life for, then? Now, what does any of this have to do with George Russell? Well, nothing, but then again, everything. Time, place, space, tone, rhythm, texture, harmony as a means of spirit rather than a tool of functionality, and above all, refusing to become trapped by pre-ordained notions of what all those things "are" that have been handed down by forces ranging in spirit from cluelessly maladroit to venally malevolent and rising above it all by beating the bastards at thier own game, hey, you tell me.

Not if you don't start now!

And full of singing that brings home what a waste most of the last quarter century of Sinatra's recordings were.

No problems here.