JSngry

The original mission has largely (and arguably) been accomplished. Now it's about staying in business. There's more Ricky Hendersons than there are Sandy Koufaxes.

What, a Felsted set? I'm in!

Well, sure--Blue Note for one, to make a case quite close to home. Where did most of the posters on this board come from? Of course you buy for the music, but I don't think you can deny that a # of the people who post here certainly "trust" the Blue Note label of yore. And Mosaic, IMO, has very much built upon that sort of identity/brand/label loyalty. I agree w/most of what you're saying and don't think that ultimately this is a big deal, but I would certainly define Mosaic as a "label"--even if they do only reissues. A label in the sense of a record/business company purveying a certain brand of music. And yeah, Blue Note recorded a diversity of artists, but there are a lot of folks on this board unhappy with the current incarnation of the label for the direction they're taking and the artists they're signing. Like I said, no big deal to me, as long as they keep putting out the classic stuff... and yeah, the timeframe inevitably stretches and has to... I mean, hell, the Tony Williams set covers recordings made after Mosaic was launched. But that doesn't have much to do with what gets defined as worthy jazz... we have yet to see a "sweet-music" band set from Mosaic, even though they do lots of early jazz. There's a lot of stuff from the 1980s and 1990s that I'd like to see Mosaic get around to putting out, but none of it emanating from the "contemporary" purview. It's easy to get "sentimental" about a label & develop an emotional attachment to it. I speak from experience, believe me (in the 70s, I used to crash "jazz parties" with a stack of BNs and bully the crowd into listening to "the REAL shit". There was a reason why I had to crash those parties instead of being invited to them ). But the reality is that it's all history now, even the 70s, 80s, and, soon enough, the 90s. We're talking about companies in the here and now dealing with music and labels (even Columbia) of the then and there. There's going to be some changes. There have to be some changes, because the selling of "old" music is a different game than the selling of new. I'm sure we'd all love to see the latest batch of RVGs, Conns, etc. be treated as exciting new releases, because to a lot of us, that's what they are. But that ain't reality... I've reached the conclusion that the collective passion for the older music is just as high as it was when it was new. The difference is that it's a collective passion that's more concentrated now because it resides in fewer individuals. Do you know how easy it was to yawn at a new McCoy Tyner Milestone side in the 70s? Hell, wait a week and there'd be another one! Everybody "heard" it, and quite a few people bought it, but the passion was diffuse. Now, you got fewer people digging it, but those who do are into it. Unfortunately, businesses can't sell to collective passion. They have to sell to collective unit consumers. And those are dwindling. So if Mosaic wants to say, "You know, a lot of that 70s stuff wasn't all that bad, some of it was actually ok for what it was, and we can probably lend out "prestige" to it and sell enough of the best of it to make the bottom line look better", hey, that's pragmatism at its finest if you ask me. Super Blue is not a bad album. Afro Classic does what it sets out to do very nicely. Earl Klugh can play. And apparently, somebody thinks that enough people want to buy those type things that it's a do-able proposition to reissue them on a Mosaicianish scale. But here's the deal - none of this stuff is going to sell in quantities that would make it a viable proposition for a "regular" label. Does anybody think that Breezin' or something like that is going to be out on Mosaic Contemporary anytime soon? I don't think so. 10 years down the road, maybe, but not now. The idea of Mosaic as some sort of "sacred" repository for classic jazz is one which held true for quite a while, and will in all liklihood continue to largely hold true into the future. But it's at least in part an illusion borught on by the peculiarities of the marketplace over the last 25 or so years, a marketplace which is rapidly evolving into a whole 'nother creature, what with the legit or otherwise Euro-PD labels, legit or otherwise downloading, all that. It's easy to build an image of "prestige" when the market forces of the time are in your favor. But when they're not, whatcha' gonna do then? Buy up all the rights to the shit you've already issued, remake the sets that are now OOP and keep them available into perpetuity? Now that's what I would call a "sacred" repository, and that's got absolutely zero chance of ever happening, and only a slightly higher chance of even being in anybody's thought process/business plan right now, or any time soon. Don't get me wrong - I have a lot of love for Mosaic. But the "reputation" they've created over the years was one which was not too hard to cultivate in their time and place. They created an image that fit their product in the time which it was being offered, and it fit. But I learned a long time ago that taking an "image" too seriously is almost always setting one's self up for a slap in the face at some point, becuase image is ultimately a tool of marketing, and marketing is all about the business. It ain't about the "love", it's about doing what you gotta do to stay solvent, and whatever that is inevitably going to, at some point, change in a fundamental way. Those who are truly doing it just for the love will say "fuck it" and get out. Everybody else will adapt. Very useful trait, adaptation is... If anybody thought that Mosaic was going to live on forever in a world untouched by reality, hey...

If Mosaic puts out a Chu Berry set and an Earl Klugh side, hey, what does it really mean other than that Mosaic's put out a Chu Berry set and an Earl Klugh side? I don't understand the "fuss". Do you buy the label or the music? Sure, there's been a few labels where you feel that "if it's on Label X. it's got to be worth a listen", but c'mon... Those are inevitably indie labels ran by one or two people with a shared vision. Mosaic was never such a label, "romantic" notions to the contrary. Mosaic was/is a reissue label. Now, the whatever-it's-called division of Mosaic that's put out the Tolliver thing, that's a different story, and that is probably going to be one of "those" labels. But Mosaic proper has always been about reissuing, not producing. A reissue label needs to have something to reissue, and the pool of viable or even semi-viable reissue product is not infinite at any given time. You gotta wait for time to pass and a void to be created. Apparently, there's a void for Earl Klugh. It may not be "our" void, but hell, so what. Texas has given us Fathead Newman as well as George Bush. Mosaic can give us Chu Berry and Earl Klugh. It ain't a perfect world. Besides, Earl Klugh can play. I'm not at all a fan of what he plays, but the man can play. There's worse things in life that can happen than people who can play being viable commercial entities. I will say this though - Matt Pierson may or may not be a "moron", but his work at WB left me unimpressed far more often it didn't. The guy brought a "major label" agenda to a decidedly non-major label music, or so it seemed. Thank god he's just handling reissues of stuff that was originally conceived in line with what it appears is what he already knows. Again, there's worse things that could happen...

Earl Klugh's first few albums were on Blue Note.

Monday w/Mondo Grosso is all I can gather. No credits given on the youtube site beyond that. But it sounds like Monday's music, and definitely her words. Let me do some asking around, and I'll get back with you. Ok - the song is "Star Suite III", and it's from the Mondo Grosso album MG4. And as I suspected, the cat who did the doll video is in no way connected w/the music.

No.

She's a beautiful woman, no doubt about that, but it's her music that hits me where I live. Plenty of beautiful women in the world, far fewer beautiful spirits, and even less beautiful music full of beautiful spirit. Appreciate the bounty, but cherish that which is scarce, for that's where the true treasure lies.

Monday w/Mondo Grosso is all I can gather. No credits given on the youtube site beyond that. But it sounds like Monday's music, and definitely her words. Let me do some asking around, and I'll get back with you.

Tolliver's in no way a big band lead trumpeter. That's a whole 'nother set of skills, specific skills, right there.

If by bogus you mean made up/exaggerated by the media, no. It went down like that. I noticed it on tv and was a bit surprised.

We're on the same page here.

Somehow, based on this review, I don't think I'd take this guy's opinion very seriously. Not about Tolliver anyway.

Hopefully this will be a tighter LM side than the ones on Mainstream & Denon. Those were "good", but I always felt they could/should have been better. But having Elvin on board, hey...yeah!

Yeah, that's not at all a "simple" song. And Monday's poetry has a flavor of its own, not unlike her music. Her work w/Mondo Grosso is something I've not yet explored due to difficulty in finding it (and the expense of what I have found), but I'm doing research & budgeting. A new kind of R&B... As for the dolls and stuff, I'm thinking/hoping that the music was added after the fact.

What did you read? I just noticed it at the time and then let it go. Didn't realize that it had become an "issue" or anything. Did he really go off on some people or what? Hey, I feel his pain, really I do. But shit happens to the best of us, ya' know? And it's not like the Colts were going to choke forever (a team like the Bills only comes along once in a generation). I just thought he could've handled the whole thing with a little more aplomb, even if it meant faking it, which it undoubtedly would have. But the guy's one helluva coach, no denying that.

A guest appearance by Marianne Faithfull might prove fun...

C'mon dude, if you can talk about George Adams and the crack pipe, you can tell us about the celebs who walked on the wild side. Just the dead ones, ok?

Any Kessell completist ought to buy Philles 45s for the B-side instrumentals, just in case. They're probably mostly Tommy Tedesco, but Kessell might be there too.

Holy shit.

Hey, I'm actually glad to see this stuff getting released on a "major" label, BN or otherwise. It's not formulaic (except in the wearing of its eccentricity on its sleeve), and if it penetrates the mainstream musical consciousness deeper than that of "novelty" (a highly unlikely proposition, but who knows?), then so much the better. Interesting, perhaps, is that AMG shows this as having been released in 2006 on Metro Blue. What w/all the recent shakeups at EMI, maybe Lundvall's yet again playing the survival game. If I was going to pretend that it still mattered outside the cave, I'd think that Metro Blue would be a perfectly acceptable lable for this release. Along those lines, condier the Mosaic/Blue Note alliance, co-brand, whatever...

"No comment" on the softcore doll porn, but this is a pretty interesting song used for accompaniment:

As requested:

Yeah, Kahimi Karie. I am a kitten: WARNING: ACTUALLY COOL SONG

Or even better, w/the shibuya-kei crowd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJAXaq8c4nI Or Kahimi Karie: (this is more what I'd expect out of a Lowell Goerge daughter!)