JSngry

Jim Maloney Joe Nuxall John Tsitouris

I kinda look at it like if Horace Silver's not so important/intersting/whatever to you that you don't already have any of these, you might as well get the Gate thing, loop "Filthy McNasty", and call it a win.

Haven't heard it since I was a kid.

Indeed! It's time to offer up a hearty "Thank You" to you and all the rest of the wordwide network of the rabidly entreprenurial round-the-clock jazz vigilantes who signed on with the franchise and made it a name synonimous with "me" always having something to say even if I was at a loss for words, bored shitless, off taking a nap, or in the bathroom. Now, we're proud to offer an jazz bulletin board first - an IPO. Look for it on the Dow as SBS. It's a ground floor opportunity, and those who get in now are in for some pleasant surprises in the months ahead. Call your broker now!

For some reason when I glance at the cover I think I'm seeing really bad french fries. I've had reeds that probably would have been better off as french fries...

"Slink"? Sly funk? MG Slink is...slink. Kinda like a Slinky, ya' know. A liquidy push-pull of time and shape.

The "funny" thing to me is this - if you want to think that evolution follows an essentially linear path (which obviously it doesn't) , then Trane up until '65 should have happened before Cecil & Ornette. First you stretch harmony as far as it can go, then you break on through to that other side. But it didn't happen that way, did it. Compare where Cecil was in 55 to where Trane was. Or where Ornette was in 58 to where Trane was. It's almost like there was one raod with a big gap in it, only a few people were already starrting to extend the road from the other side of the gap while one guy was going like crazy to fill in the gap, which of course needed to be filled if the road was ever going to run uninterrupted. Which is why I think it's kinda funny/sad when I hear guys talk about how they gotta "work through" Trane before they can "move on", like there's something waiting for them there on that road that nobody's gotten to yet. Hell, it's already there, and it's been there since before Trane got there. Which is not to say that Trane was behind the times or anything stupid like that, just to say that when he finally made the road whole, there should be no question almost 50 years later that that particular job has been completed. But there still seems to be doubt about that, and it makes me laugh when it doen't piss me off or make me sad. Larry has talked before about "side paths" that Trane didn't necessarily have time to fully develop that certain players have been fleshing out, and that's true, but really, are they anything but that?

Isn't Interstellar space just a little bit too much influenced by Ayler? Just a thought. It always seemed to me that he was really under Ayler's spell on this one. No Ayler influence at all on that one, unless it's a "spiritual" one. Albert could never play that technically advanced for that long (which is neither here nor there except as it pertains to "influence), nor could he sustain the microstructural developement that Trane did (ditto). A lot of people hear IS as flurries of notes and sound. Well, yeah, but once you get past that, you'll hear some of the most intricate technical saxophone playing anybody's ever done. Perhaps the most intricate. Again, that's not the point of the music, but I hear some folks say that IS is just Trane freaking out, and it's anything but that. It's a new level of virtuosity for the saxophone as played in a traditional (i.e. - notes instead of shapes, conscious use of scales, motifs, and patterns to build & develop structures, all that stuff) way. Albert was like feeling the universe all at once. Trane on IS is like seeing it's every minute detail all at once, like looking into a high powered microscope from a million miles out in space and seeing the macro & micro at the same time, if that makes any sense. You get all the raw energy and you get an equal measure of precise, minute detail. It's definitely a landmark of both music and saxophone playing, and it really closes the door on using harmony (yes, harmony) as a basis for even "free" (which it is anything but) improvisation. Nothing left to "discover" in traditional music after IS except different ways to do the same things.

It's how I pay the bills.

True education and self-discovery go hand-in-hand. It's indoctrination that fucks things up.

I was doing balance transfers on the phone. What's 24, that Jackeifer Bauerland show? Haven't seen it yet. I am going to watch Anthony Bourdain No Reservations right now. LTB & I make it part of our Monday routine.

Nor Cucamonga.

Ain't that the truth.

Then again, what else is there to have memories of? Can't say that I can remember being 70, not yet. Give me a few years for that one.

Don't know. I've been young, but I haven't been dead, at least not to where it took...

When I have memories of death, I'll post 'em.

I took a left turn at Albuquerque.

Continuum/continua... I believe that there's at least several continua - the stylistic, the socio-cultural, the "spiritual" (as in what kind of spirit you are, although if you want to go churchy with it, you can), probably more. For the longest time, "jazz" naturally, as a matter of evolution, hosted a convergence of those three continua, and hosted it naturally, graciously, and spledidly. But if a continuum does indeed by definition represent continuity, does that also not imply motion? For anything to remain alive, does it not have to be in motion at some level? I think we're at a point in our evolution where the variuos continua that once co-existed in one place are beginning to go there own seperate ways, slowly, gradually, but inextricably, Of course there will still be intersecting, temporary as well as permanent, but "jazz" as it came to be and how it came to thrive was the product of a massive set of circumstances that either don't exist any more, or have changed in some pretty fundamental ways. The various continua were all there at the same place and the same time for the same reason. It's not like that any more, and I don't think it's anything to get too weirded out about. As noted above, plenty of young people have the spirit, but the socio-cultural element has changed, and the stylistic continua might no longer be "relevant" to them getting done what it is they feel they need to be done. Yet the stylistic remains firmly in place. You can go to damn near any university and study it to death, and you got plenty of people who are most proficient practitioneers of it, some of whom actually bring a little something special to it. But the "jazz style" has become that - a style. Nothing wrong with that per se, but if you're young and looking for a true voice of your own, a "style" may not be what you're looking for, even if it is what you end up with. Shit's funny that way sometimes... To bring Wynton back into it (sorry), I thnk the biggest lie that he tried to perpetrate was that the stylistic and the spiritual continua had to continue to coexist in a state of mutual bondage. That's just so wrong in so many ways, and I'll leave it at that. But we find ourselves now in a place where old "friends" are beginning to go their own ways here and there, and rather than wishing them well, offering moral support, and just in general keeping the love, a lot of folks feel a sense of betrayal and abandonment, like a parent who gets pissed when their kid doesn't do what they think they should do with their life and cuts them out of their life (and looking at the average age of the average jazz fan, this is probably very much to the point!), or like a clinging spouse who won't tolerate the notion of you so much as even thinking about spending one second away from them. Where's the love there, and what good can possibly come of it? Like I said earlier, just let people be who they are. If the stylistic continuum doesn't go with them in full, or even in part, fine. If the spiritual continuum stays with them, hey, it's all good in the end afaic. And if the stylistic continuum loses the spiritual one, well, ok. It still means something to somebody, right? Let them have it. I don't think we have to get that drastic about it at this jucncture, but the last 25 or so years in too much of hjazz have not been lived in the spirit of love and community and encouragement of going wherever it is you need to go. They've been lived in the spirit of smothering, clinging obsessiveness. And how many young people get into that? Us Boomers and near-Boomers ain't kids any more. Some of us are damn near old, and most all of us are closer to our deaths than we are to our births. If we have any love of life left in us at all, we damn well better start recognizing that noblest legacy we can leave our children is not fucking them up and/or over by not letting them be who they are in the best, fullest way they can be it.

Yep. It's Shank. Lou Adler tells the tale: http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20020708.me.dreamin.adler.ram (REAL PLAYER REQUIRED)

Of course. My bad!

Well! I retract any and all comments about the team lacking flayva!

Yeah, I've got that one too. Best listened to in its entirety, from start to finish. It's a trip, and in more ways than one.

For that matter, try explaining the notion of recorded music that you can hear at any place at any time as often as you like...

Go HERE and scroll down the page. On the righthand side there's some tapes of Levan in action, spanning the years 1982-1987. Real Player is required, but the links work.