JSngry

I have an EmArcy 10" of that one and it's green instead of red. Whazzupwidat, Vol 1 & Vol 2?

It was a rhetorical/spiritual question, but thanks for the updates anyways. I didn't know any of that. I remember Cowens as a player, and....yeah. Hell yeah.

Case in point: No way in hell that it's anything other than a sad, depressing affair. There's nothing left. And yet, there's something there, something undeniable, something core. So, sad, depressing, but meaningful. Is that realtive/parallel to Ella? Maybe, maybe not. But the tune that I most remember from that last album, "Dream A Little Dream Of Me", had some emotional something that I was not used to hearing from Ella Fitzgerald.

Well. "depth" might not be the exact word, but it's always interesting to hear what's left when there's nothing left. Sometimes there really is nothing, and sometimes there's something.

And also, relative to others' comments about late-late Ella, I've heard a cut or two from her final album, and yeah, the voice is pretty much gone, but I got more sense of "depth" there than on a hundered or more albums where it wasn't.

Otoh, that album cover could easily be used as the starting point of a symbolic analysis of what some of us find "wrong" about so much of her work... But that wouldn't be all that much fun (a few years ago, sure, but life is short), and, yeah, her very real skills as "straight" (no rumors, please) singer are not to be dismissed, I don't think, just as her place as "jazz" (no rumors, please) singer is not without...er..."complications" of one type or another for many.

Where have you gone, Dave Cowens?

Any claim that "What's Going On" was an "inferior" song relative to the "superior" talent of Ella seals the deal on at least one facet of EDC's positations. Damn... As for Ella & "standards", my enjoyment of her is directly proportional to the lack of "feeling", "interpretation", etc. she puts into the performance. When she just sings the song, hey, that instrument can be a marvelous thing. When she gets "jazzy" (and I know that she's of a time & place where the term "jazzy" is an insult, hell, in a lot of ways & for a lot of people-types - not all of them "clueless", she is a certain type of jazz, but that just goes to show you that "jazz" is a lot of differnt things to a lot of different people), I tend to, eventually, have to excuse myself to go to the bathroom. Thanks T! And her scatting, well, on the (almost 100%) whole.....no thanks. But there does exist a realm of Pop where a good song well sung without too much "personal" intervention on the part of the interpreter creates a "tabula rasa" of sorts, a blank slate where we the listener can project any/all scenarios onto the performance which in turn can lead to a sort of un/sub-conscious self-examination (which may or may not pop up into the realm of the conscious, where it then may or may not be a "good thing"). There's a place for that, as well as for good songs well sung just because. Ella's done her fair share of this type work, and if, based on her total career, she's definitely at or near the top of my personal "Jazz Legands You Really Don't Give Too Much Of A Rat's Ass About, Nothing Personal, I Just Can't Relate" list, there are things, more than just "a few", but significantly less than "a lot", here & there that I do very much enjoy. Just not enough relative to the "legend". And btw - the best moments of the Nina Simone remix album are anything but "dumbed down" (and the other moments aren't any "dumber" than the originals, they're just "dumb" in a different way. "I Got Life" is dumb no matter how/what.) A different esthetic - a decidedly non-linear esthetic - is at work, sure, but it's anything but "dumb". To call the remixes of "Save Me" or "Obeah Woman" "dumbed down" is more a judgement rendered from only "hearing" what isn't there than from having a grasp of what is. Dumb is as dumb hears... I'll stop now, but I really don't want to...

Hope ya' like candles...

Happy Birthday to a very wise man. Ok wise man, explain this to me: http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&a...G=Search+Images

Cecil Taylor & Anthony Braxton

Word.

Cannonball & Blakey

Closed captioning?

Yeah, but how can you say "Cynthia & (now) Johnnie got a message that's sayin' ALL THE SQUARES GO HOME!" & then throw a trombone in there? Nostalgia sucks.

Trombone?

Holy shit!! Indeed.

I got no problem with that one myself (the makeup of the "real" Archies might surprise you...), it's got a subliminally slinky groove to it. But if you need a cure... Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBqDBvplA64...ted&search=

"Ma Belle Amie" by The Tee Set. My god what a fucking constipated piece of buttcheese this thing was/is. And yet, almost 30 years later, it pops in and shits in my brain for no apparent reason other than that Satan is still trying to drive me over the edge. Well guess what - fuck you Satan, fuck you The Tee Set, and fuck you "Ma Belle Amie" - espcially that totally dickectomy-ized little drum thing. Your powers are all strong, but they are evil and threfore can only triumph when resistance is gone. Uh-uh. Not in this lifetime.

Yeah, but having the earlier stuff w/o getting any of the later stuff is kinda like walking off a cliff and never getting hit by gravity. I've been doing a lot of musical "filtering" the last year of so, & I've just about come to the conclusion that Leater Young's music, all of it, is something from which there is no escape in terms of musical substance & human meaning. No matter where you go, as they say, there you are. Not that I didn't already know this, but when you start letting go of stuff just to see what comes back, the stuff that refuses to even be let go, hey, that's the real deal right there.

Nothing that a good companion couldn't fix.

I'd be a lot more happy with a simple updated/revised edition of the Porter book. Besides, I doubt that any revisions therein would be be anything of fundamental importance.

Did they provide you with any system/software discs? I mean, the system came w/some stuff like Office or something, right? You paid for that as part of the price of the system. And if you "upgraded" to any other software, you paid for that too. So what are you supposed to do in case of a system crash and you need to reload the software that you paid for? Maybe the McAfee was just a trial version. In that case, I could see them not providing you w/any way to restore it. But still, if it's a 90-day trial & you didn't get 90 days out of it... On my daughter's laptop, all the stuff like the anti-virus, etc. was on an innocuous looking/titled "Applications" disc. No brand names or anything mentioned, just some generic terms in fine print like "Internet Software", "Anti-Virus Software", etc. If Dell's no longer even giving out that much, that's a big suck for them.

I think it's safe to say that the "typical" Down Beat reader of 1965 was not an organ and/or Soul Jazz connoiseur. Jimmy Smith might well have been the only organist they were really familiar with.