JSngry

I think most software comes pre-loaded these days when you buy a new PC. You don't get the individual discs anymore. True, but Dell should have provided some sort of "system" disc that contains all the preloaded software. At least they did as recently as 3 years ago when we bought our daughter's laptop from them. They've got to give you something to restore your system in case your HD crashes while under warranty or some other trauma occurs, don't they? As for ZAP. I was using it and was ok with it until the Vector-Whateveritis file (vsmon.exe) somehow got corrupted. Then the whole thing went to hell in a big hurry. Rebooting the comouter means having to sit there & wait for ZAP to try and load, then cancelling it the second the attempting to notification comes up, then going to task manager to shut down vsmon.exe. This problem could easily be remedied by uninstalling ZAP. But there's someting that's already loaded that won't let you uninstall it. Period. The ZAP has a workaround for this, but it involves 3-4 layers of manually deleting files and registry entries, as well as Safe Mode reboots. It's easier for me to just not reboot except when essential and monitor the reboot for the few minutes it takes to kill the damn thing before it spreads any furhter than it already does. If you go to the ZAP website forum, you can find the point when the product jumped the shark for many users, and it seemed to be when they introduced upgraded version 6.x. That was the one that got me. Apparently ZAP overreached in terms of attempted functionality & created a product that held/holds some potential pitfalls in terms of coding conflict w/all things Windows. My adivce to anybody regarding ZAP would be if you you have it & its working, keep it, be happy, and have a nice day (but don't ever do the free online upgrades until you "see how it's going" through the ZAP forum. That was my mistake, assuming that since it had always been seamless that it would continue to be so. WRONG.). Otherwise, look elsewhere.

WTF was Porter's own book?

Didn't Dell provide you with an installation disc for the McAfee program?

Got to hear this one last night, & oddly enough, portions of it put me in mind of Odyssey Of Iska. It's good to hear Fred back in a full-group setting. And yeah, Hamid's a bitch. Again. This one's going to get some more voluntary (& pleasurable) listening.

Sure it is. Look at it as an indicator of why there's so many typos on BN reissues & consider it a lesson learned.

As a kid, the local (Longview, Tx) AM Top-40 station always went to network news on the top of the hour. They also always used jazz(y) records as bumper music to fill up the airspace resulting from having a few seconds or more that they couldn't fill with a regularly programmed record. The only ones that I remember w/absolute certainty are "Windy" by Wes Montgomery & "Watermelon Man" by Mongo Santamaria, although I know that there were several organ jams in the mix as well, jams that I don't remember specifically. Probably some Jimmy Smith Verve things like "Walk On The Wild Side", etc. But I'm not certain about that. The more urban-based Top 40 stations I listened to had in-house news, and were significantly more tightly programmed, so the need for bumper music never arose. So what I'm wondering is if the use of jazz as bumper muisc was sort of an "industry standard" for Top 40 stations of the day who had need for such, or did Longview's KLUE (1280 AM) just have a programming director who saw fit to throw it in there? As always, thanks in advance!

Actually, according to AMG, it's Burton Cummings on flute. All kinds of cliches & stereotypes come to mind about that... I still like the song though.

Not at all a bad song. I'm surprised it's just now getting the "jazz treatment". Anybody know offhand who played the flute solo on the original?

What I don't understand is why the quote doesn't read: I mean, unless he had an axe to grind. Simon Weil Or unless, as has been posited elsewhere, he's never been a particularly "careful" and/or "eloquent" writer. Hey, people say broad-brushed shit like that all the time in casual conversation, and if it's somebody you know, you learn to let it slide, knowing as you do the difference between what they "mean" and what they "say". I've been following Cuscuna's career for about 35 years now (without knowing him personally), & I'd like to think that this is the case here - that he comitted something to print that is the equivalent of an off-the-cuff, un-nuanced bit of casual conversation. What he "meant" & what he "said" is something you gotta infer based on "knowing" the person. If it had been dropped in casual conversation, & if it was somebody I "knew" as well as I feel I "know" Cuscuna, I'd just let it drop/pass unless I either wanted to stir the pot for a bit of lively & friendly ball-busting or else I just wanted to be a disrespectful asshole. That this comment was made in print rahter than in casual conversation raises the level of "responsibility", and that's why I have no problem whatsoever with calling the cat out, and loudly, on his sloppiness. But afaic, anything beyond that is still either friendly ball-busting or else just being a disrespectful asshole.

I think there's a useful parallel to be made here with the early New Orleans players. I remember reading a Leonard Feather Blindfold test-type thing from the 1950s where he played some early-ish N.O. jazz (maybe something by a Jelly Roll Morton group) for a variety of jazzmen of more recent vintage, including some "swing" players. The reaction was varied, but there was one common thread to the comments - that this was some very early stuff, and that the music and the musicianship had evolved considerably since then. Some of the participants didn't care for the music at all, some admired the spirit in spite of the "roughness" of some of the players' technique, but nobody said that this music was "perfect as is". Today, there are many people saying just the opposite, that that music is perfect as is, and that even with all the subsequent evolutions, that this particular type of playing is just fine for its time and place. I'm in sympathy with both sides of the issue, because yeah, "limitations" are what they are and they do what they do, but yeah, you are what you are where you are and you have/don't have what you have/don't have (and nobody has everything), so if you doing something that matters with it all, hey, good for you. Most people don't. All I'm saying is that appreciation, even a deep appreciation, for something and recognizing the realities of it's "limitations" and sorting out it's ultimate "historical place" are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And I don't think that they should be either. Those are really two different angles/perspectives/whatever of looking at the same thing, both valid for what they ideally set out to do, and both containing the potential pitfalls of rigid dogmatism & sloppy sentimentality. It's really the same old story - heart vs. intellect, objectivity vs. subjectivity, yin vs. yang. These are things to be dealt with equally and, hopefully, ultimately, balanced. They should not be warring entities demanding an either/or Death Match Ultimate Triumph. The people/things that do make the General Cut over the long(est) haul, though (and really, at 40-50 years distance, that determination is far from yet being made), are almost always the ones who have and offer up a substantial balance of both. That's not an accident.

The Impulse! side is something you'd have to be in the mood for, and so far I haven't been. Some day, perhaps. Or not.

No, not at all. I don't believe that you have to be a master of the old to delve into the new, or even that you have to know the old to do it. You can, however, save yourself a lot of time, energy, & unnecessary duplication of labor by doing so, but at the same time you can also waste a lot of time, energy, & get caught up in a helluva lot of unecessary duplication of labor by focusing on what's already been done damn near perfectly. So no, I'm not a holder of that "conservative" position, although I will say that knowledge in and of itself never hurt anybody. Tools is useful. All I ask of anybody is that they know what they are doing, and that includes why they are doing. If that's in place, then it's all fair. What's also fair is if/when musical/societal evolution reaches a point where it's time to move on/beyond and you get "left behind" if you're not "equipped" to do so. That's not a reflection of the "value" of what you have relative to the time you got it, it's just a fact of life, and not just in music.

In the context of what was being discussed (the creation of the "loft scene") I really see nothing "onerous" about it. Sorry, I just don't. He's just saying that the scene was getting tired, that's all, that the "first wave" had run its course. And I have no reason to doubt that that is an accurate enough assessment, no matter how clumsily it's worded. I don't see it as a "value judgement" of an entire ethos or anything like that. Y'all are free to extrapolate whatever else you want to out of it, but again I say - look at who it is saying this before you presume to assume. And ask yourself this - was somebody like Byron Allen "equipped" to create a body of work even remotely comprable to somebody like Julius Hemphill? Or Roscoe Mitchell? Or Anthony Braxton? Or even, bumping it down several notches, Luther Thomas? Yeah, I'm all for "appreciating the individuality of the individual" and all that. But at some point, like it or not, the "big picture" does come into play, and at some point, like it or not, it does matter. You can bet on it.

I really don't see it as a "smear". I see it as one guy carelessy describing a/the "malaise" that was, by many accounts, on the scene at that time. I mean, we now can pull out selected records A, B, & C, put them on, and think, "Yeah, that's the shit right there." But it's a different thing to go out night after night & hear that same thing over and over w/o hearing it really going anywhere. And that thing, that blow-it-all-out style of venting w/o any real compositional contextualization really does not, as a rule, hold up over time as too much other than a totally "in the moment" thing, and after a while there comes a time when enough of those moments is enough to last for a good long while. "Emotional excesses"? Well, yeah. Venting for the sake of venting is an "emotional excess" if it goes on and on. I think we all appreciate passion and intensity, but let's face it - if it doesn't eventually get "tempered" by something "esthetic", it eventually wears us down. Point of diminishing returns and all that. "Lack of musicianship"? Well, yeah. There were and all plenty of "free" players who couldn't/can't navigate their instruments in a conventionally "technically proficient" manner. And there are many who can. But if you can't, you had better be able to navigate it in a musical way that posits the existence of an alternative/parallel "technical" universe. And using the instrument to simply vent through honking, squealing, etc. with little or no attention to "finesse points" ain't the way to do it, at least in my mind. Call me a latent reactionary, but "spirit" by itself, no matter how powerful, is not enough to sustain you over the long haul. sooner or later you gotta learn your instrument or else your "spirit" will end up getting stifled by the inability to find its fullest expression. I'm very much of the impression that the New York "free jazz" scene in the days following the deaths of Trane & Ayler was pretty much a disspirited mess. I've not hear a body of recorded evidence that suggests otherwise, nor have I read contemporaneous accounts that paint a picture of an energetic, healthy creatively evolving scene. It took the influx of the Mid-Westerners to get that going again. NYC in 1965 was a cauldron of revolutionary creativity. NYC in 1970 was anything but, and it's that scene, that whirlpool turned stagnant, to which I think Cuscuna is alluding, not some blanket condemnation of an entire school/era of musicians. I have absolutely no reason to think otherwise.

It's also on Pangea. Yeah, Midnight Special was on NBC, a "live-in-the-studio" show. It had its moments, but the Kirschner show was an infinitely better deal, at least in its early days.

Details: http://www.plosin.com/milesAhead/Sessions.aspx?s=730501 But yes, I remember that tune well. How could you not? So distinctive! I searched in vain for it on Miles' albums of the time. "Prelude" comes close, and appears to be eithr a variant or even predecessor of it, but it's not exactly the same. First time I heard it for real was on Dark Magus, and then on a few live shows. But it was quite a while after hearing it on TV that I actually heard it on a record.

That tune is what's come to be known as "Turnaroundphrase".

Vaguely rememeber the percussion duet, but definitely remember Badal Roy/tablas. The whole thing might have been less "disorienting" if they'd actually have kept the camera on Miles while he was soloing instead of on Cosey, who was playing rhythm guitar while Miles soloed. That was a real

Exactly.

And, as noted, Ra. But there's nothing/nobody there - even Ra - that would have forced the issue so resolutely out of the realm of change-playing, even if freely, than getting the handoff from Trane in 1965-66. You had to go there, and go there all the way. There simply was no other option.

Return To Forever was on there (although the show's name might have changed to "Rock Concert" by then). I taped it off the tv onto cassette & might still have it. Funny thing about the Miles performance. I actually came home from my senior prom to check it out. The poor cameraman/director/whoever kept hearing this electronic wah-wah sound and kept the camera on Pete Cosey. Except that the sound they thought was Cosey's was actually Miles. OOPS! I also remembedr seeing a totally goofy performance by Roy Wood's Wizzard that opened with someting from The Nutcracker Suite played life w/Wood on bass clarinet.

Death of a Ladies Man is a great record.

And oh yeah - Arthur Doyle as anything other than a "curiosity" and/or "character" is a figure of comedic proportion & Jameel Moondoc's playing would be infinitely better if he'd simply practice enough to get the unintentional sloppiness out of it. Yes, I can tell.

This is going waaaay overboard. Look - Cuscuna was NYC-based in the late-60s/early 70s. The Mid-Western influx didn't begin unitl, when? 72 or so? 73? NYC being the eternal NYC, I have no doubt that the immediate post-Trane years saw a lot of "empty noise" being made locally, music that was stuck in 1965 and had no vision (or ability) to move beyond that. That's a depressing notion even now, so you can imagine how depressing it was then. (point of historical reference - you hear similar tales about NYC in the early 50s, after the Bop Revolution had cooled off, smack use didn't, and everybody was basically hanging out high playinghte same old Bird shit into the ground. Of course that's not the whole truth, but it's far from being untrue eitehr...) Ok, now let's look at some names, courtesy of Mr. Secor: Roswell Rudd's Everywhere - reissue produced by Michael Cuscuna, paired with the material from Cecil - Into the Hot Archie Shepp - numerous Impulse! reissues produced by Michael Cuscuna Marion Brown: Three for Shepp, Porto Novo - both reissued/issued in America by Michael Cuscuna And let's not forget the Albert Ayler Impulse/Freedom sides that Cuscuna was directly/indirectly involved in reissuing/issuing in America To go beyond that - The AEC's two Atlantic albums - both produced by Michael Cuscuna Countless Arista/Freedom & Muse (yes - MUSE) new releases by "avant-garde" players either produced or licensed for US release by Michael Cuscuna. In fact, Cuscuna at one point promised (to me, in a letter) to do an Ayler ESP box. This was in 1991 or so, and he was looking for Bernard Stollman. The whole glorious Anthony Braxton run @ Arista - all produced by Michael Cuscuna. We could go on... None of this strikes me as the work of a man who would intentionally "smear" an entire genre of music that he himself has been so invested in over time (in fact, I seem to remember him saying that he was racing/fighting against the "powers that be" to get the more "avant-garde" Impulse sides reissued. Seems to be the story of his life, from the Braxton/Arista series, to the BN LT series, to the Verve material, etc.). No, I think that this is simply a case of sloppy/lazy writing (as Clem noted very early on, Cuscuna's never been much as a "writer", and besides, when will the cumulative number of BN reissue typos reach four figures, if it hasn't already?). The guy was encapsulating a sense of malaise that was "in the air" at a particular place and time and pimping how Sam's Studio Rivbea was a breath of fresh air to counter that malaise. Reading anything more into than that by anybody who know's Michael Cuscuna's history, past & relatively recent (why would he be getting the Shepp Impulse! sides reissued if he didn't think they still mattered? They sure didn't sell as well as any other number of other things could/did) is just kinda....too much. Waaaaay too much. I also don't care if Mosaic's done a Four Freshmen set, and/or any other number of sets that run directly counter to the whole "Fire Music" ethos. That's business, and if "we" don't like it, then let's do it on our dime and see how it goes. Good luck!

True. Although, Freddie Hubbard sat in one night. Paul tried to play up the Indy connection, but Dave didn't seem too thrilled.