JSngry

I dunno man, that one looks like it might be pretty intense... I'll let you do the listening What if I don't survive?

Indeed it might be... You know who the real tragic figure is in all this though? Carl. Here's a cat who tried, and succeded, in bringing the Brian "sound" into the 70s, and he managed to keep it relatively relevant along the way up until about 74-75 or so (see C&TP/ST, and if you ask me, the bulk of Holland as examples of things going wrong in a hurry). Then Brian had his "comeback", and after that... Probably he fell victim to inertia, Mike Love, and everything else that went with that territory. But the guy was a soulful singer in the Brian days, and a not inconsiderable talent for a little while afterwards. And then, poof, he just let the life get sucked out of him. At least Brian was crazy. He had a happy zone of his own, somewhere. Carl just got flat out depressed, I think, and never really snapped out of it.

I dunno man, that one looks like it might be pretty intense...

It's all about the overtone series, as it is with all brass instruments. You get a different note from the same finguring by hitting another partial of the fundamental. Actually, you can do the same thing on a woodwind instrument, but since they all come with enough keys to make the notes w/o doing so, it's not the normal way of playing. But it can be done, and quite often is. "Tightening" the embrochure is not exactly it for a brass instrument, though. It's more a question of airstream. Yes, there is some "tightening" involved, but if you teach it like that, you're going to get a lot of bad habits (and pinched tones), since the throat and diaphragm are just as involved and as important.

Sorry if I implied that that was implied. That was not my intent here. Definitely not. It is, however, a line I've encountered in discussions elsewhere.

That's true. But OTOH, fewer middle-class upbringings are truly idylic than the steretype would have you to think. Certainly it's an easier life than many, but there are pitfalls, such as abuse, alcoholism, prescription drug dependency, mental illnesses of various degrees, etc. The "coping mechanisms" are more built into the "system", but the problems are nevertheless real. Which is not to say "shed a tear for the poor middle-class white folk", far from it. It's just to say that to think that everybody from that environment is immune from feeling pain, despair, etc. is just not accurate.

Lyndon Johnson Hubert Humphrey Robert McNamara

Bob Gurland. I saw him too, with that same band. He's on the Muse album.

Wow, it's kinda got a Cruisin' vibe to it, eh?

"Telephone Man", anybody?

Well, anything/everything is authentic in one form or fashion when it's all said and done, but where I admire Wilson more than Reed is that Wilson was trying to hold onto something of his own that he knew was important, whereas Reed was trying to destroy it in order to, maybe, save it because he couldn't handle it in the form that was presently in his face. It's almost as if he couldn't find it inside, so rather than digging deep to find it inside, he went about the business of seeing if it was somewhere else. Not uncommon, and certainly not incomprehensible, but eventually, if you find it, you find it inside anyway. We can all "rebel", but there's no escaping our roots, and I believe that any peace that we eventually find has to be found on our "home turf". That's the final confrontation, and often the toughest one. As much as I understand the need to "get away", I've come to the conclusion that there's no escaping who we are. So if you're a suburban middle class white kid from Hawthorne, CA, that's how and where you gotta fight the battle if you have any chance at all of winning. You could go off into a bunch of other stuff and "win", but sooner or later, you gotta win one on that home turf. That neither Wilson nor Reed really "won" their battles (Reed still has plenty of cred, but geez, he's really just another white guy who played the rock & roll game, if you know what I mean) goes woithout saying, but Wilson has far more relvevance & poignancy to/for me just because he confronted (or tried to) the stuff that he had right there in front of him on its own terms instead of going off and looking for stuff to confront elsewhere. That's somthing that in its own way is a helluva lot more "rebellious" than taking on another world and trying to make it your own, since the ideal of the white, suburban world is that it's all good, everybody has all they really need at the mall, and cheer up sleepy Jean, what can it mean? There definitely is a suburban soul, and it's as real as any other human-type soul. That it's often denied and/or ridiculed is usually it's own fault simply because it usually does not recognize itself, too often is incapable of recognizing itself, in anything other than vanity. But the few that get past that are as worth paying attention to as any other "voice of the soul", and Brian Wilson was definitely one of those few. I'd wager that at this point in his life, Lou Reed could probably be moved to tears by at least a few Brian Wilson songs, perhaps more than by any of his own. Coming home can do that to you.

The ultimate preorder!

Amina Claudia Schiffer (s/b Claudine Longet, but hey...) Mike Myers

Flow isn't even in production yet. ETA is 3-31-08. But there's already some journals and a lead sheet up & available.

Bunny Briggs, Sandman Sims, & the truly amazing Chuck Green: The greatest, truest jazz movie ever made, even if it's not about jazz.

And that is more than understandable, just as the same impulse is for poor country white folks when it comes to rap & hip-hop, or anything even remotely urban (regardless of "ethnic origin"). But (and I think I'm hearing you say this) one of the biggest barriers that people are up against is confusing specific point of origin with basic universal humanity. Sure, circumstances real and manufactured conspire against making the expectation of getting over that hump on a broad scale all but unthikable , but when personally confronted with the very real possibility that we all got our issues in our own way, the choice to either open up to the possibility of recognition on a scale beyond that of pure, immediate self or simply choosing to live in a self-centered microverse and pretending it's the universe is one that must be made. The fallout from whatever choice one makes is far-reaching and will ultimately decide what kind of world you will live in and create for those around you. And the "easy" choice is seldom the right one. I agree - it just takes a little time to get there. Well, of course it does, If it didn't, we could have the life expectancy of a butterfly and still live life to its fullest.

Well, as far as the DVD goes, I can tell you that if Henry Hey is no Dave Kikowski in this environment, he still brings more to the table than indicated on the studio stuff and that it is more than "just" good, that Sipiagin's playing is precise, consise, and loaded with content, and that Genta has some sort of magical, impish, gnomish quality in his playing that brings out the best in everybody, especially Monday. As for the other live material, I've not yet gone looking for it either. But I bought in at a level that I know it will be there when I do, and I trust that it will be just fine.

And that is more than understandable, just as the same impulse is for poor country white folks when it comes to rap & hip-hop, or anything even remotely urban (regardless of "ethnic origin"). But (and I think I'm hearing you say this) one of the biggest barriers that people are up against is confusing specific point of origin with basic universal humanity. Sure, circumstances real and manufactured conspire against making the expectation of getting over that hump on a broad scale all but unthikable , but when personally confronted with the very real possibility that we all got our issues in our own way, the choice to either open up to the possibility of recognition on a scale beyond that of pure, immediate self or simply choosing to live in a self-centered microverse and pretending it's the universe is one that must be made. The fallout from whatever choice one makes is far-reaching and will ultimately decide what kind of world you will live in and create for those around you. And the "easy" choice is seldom the right one.

The surf/summer oldies radio fodder is (mostly) something that I can certianly do without for quite a while, except on my terms at my time. Nostalgia as a lifestyle is not for me. But as noted above, starting with Today there's a confronting of the loss of innocence that is at the core of what makes Brian's best work relevant. That's where the soul is, the fear, and the pain. That he himself never quite got over that particular hump is another part of the same story, and it's a part that makes it easy to use his personal end results to critique the real-time dispatches from the front. That's cheap, easy, and quite wrong, in my opinion. We devalue innocence in our society. We celebrate its loss of it in ourself, and we glamorize environments where its existence is all but impossible. And when we do "celebrate" it, we do so by turning into cheap sentimentality, the type of thing that only a fool would embrace and the kind of thing that we can feel comfortable with only when it's ultimate unfeasability and demise is built into it. But innocence is (or at least can be) so much more than mush-headed naivete. It's innocence, not "reality" that provides us with the foundations of hope, love, optimism, all those things that give us the ammunition to fight the battle for the soul, should we choose to do so (and so many don't...). Confronting the reality of realizing that innocence needs to be armed and ready in order to transition into adulthood can be a terrifying proposition, and it's that fear that you hear in the best of Brian's work up until about 1975 or so. Those massively layered vocals are as much an attempt to build a shield as they are anything, and the post-Smile "chill out" music is a nothing-if-not-real attempt to hold onto that innocence at all costs. If the costs of protecting the innocence eventually proved to be the thing that destroyed it and turned it into an illness, the soundness (one could even say nobility) of recognizing that there was something there to be valued and protected should not be overlooked and/or dismissed. What you hear in Brian Wilson's work is the sound of a man who fought the battle for the soul on his turf. You also hear the sound of a man who was apparently unable to reconcile that the only way to hold on is to lose something in order to make room for the old to grow into the new. The glamorization of the "man-child" & "Mad Genius" is as wrong as is the dismissal of the "Endless Summer". Both poles deny the real struggle involved in getting from Point A to Point B that many of us face (or should face...), and both poles refuse to accept the tragedy in this one particular personal struggle as anything other than a "show biz" thing. Innocence per se is not meant to be a forever thing. Where Brian ultimately fucked up was in thinking that it was. But what innocence engenders in the mature psyche is a beautiful thing to be treasured and nurtured forever. Where Brian went right was in recognizing this and championing it in his own way. If he himself was not adequately prepared to make the transition himself, that in no way invalidates the message, at least not until it turned on itself and became an object instead of a goal. And even then, it became a freak show with some pretty damn interesting musical accompaniment. Love You is in no way the work of a mature, sane adult, but it sure ain't the work of a dysfunctional incapacitated burnout either. I still say that "Caroline, No" is one of the saddest songs ever written, and that "Busy Doing Nothing" is the work of somebody who knows a helluva lot more than they're willing to admit, even to themself. And I maintain that most of the white, suburban, middle-class people of a certain time & place who mock(ed) the work of Brian Wilson saw just a glimpse of the battle at one point, got the shit scared out of them, and surrendered without as much as an idea of a fight.

Fair enough then. I just like being around youthful energy & enthusiasm. I don't have to tell you that by the time we get to be our age that far too often it's all but been extinguished, and that that can have a corrosive effect on the soul. Being able to nurture youth in an non-"controlling" accurate-yet-positive direction with whatever accumulated "wisdom" we might have obtained is a good way to counter the corrosion. At least it is for me.

The live Routes DVD was included in the package level I purchased, and it's fine. It's a three-piece band (Sipiagin, Henry Hey, & drummer/percussionist Genta) + Monday, with tapes & sequencing(?) added as needed. To see how they do this stuff live is a real eye-opener, and as you might expect, the arrangements are not straight record copies. It's a real treat all the way around. Edit to add that if by "excited" you mean by Monday's stage presence, etc. well, yeah, maybe. She seems to be really focusing on keeping her pitch together and sometimes I get the feeling that that's inhibiting her "extroversion". I give her fullest props for putting musicality before show. But between songs, and occasionally during them, yeah, it's the same free-spirited, joyous, slightly goofy (in the best possible way) Monday that we love.

Since you're deeply familiar (and well-pleased) with Routes I think you'll be well-pleased with Alternate Routes, perhaps even more than well-pleased!

You know, my initial problem with the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson is that they sounded very "middle class" to me, and I harbored a bit of a grudge against that in my youth. I think it was only after I came to terms with that that I could get into their music. It was a long time before I could take any music that lacked a certain "bite" seriously. My point exactly, more or less. I know plenty of white, suburban, middle-class people who still hate the Beach Boys precisely because they sound white, suburban, and middle-class. So they look anywhere/everywhere else for things like "soul" and "edge", never coming to terms with those things as it relates to their first-hand life experiences. Well, ok, but at some point, when does that become vicarious thrill-seeking at the expense of self-honesty? I mean, good god, there's pain in a lot of Brian's songs, there's soul, there's feeling, deep feeling, and there's a thread of spirituality running through his best work. It's just coming out in a very white, suburban, and middle-class way. But that's what it and him are, just as that's what a lot of "us" are. And if we can't find it in ourself, recognize it, and be comfortable with it as such, how the hell can we deal wit it in others without projecting some sort of personal "need" onto it that turns it into something differnt/less than it really is? Of all the routes in America, being white, suburban, and middle-class is definitely one of the "easiest" to travel. But it's precisely that ease which leaves many feeling the need to go elsewhere for the tools of self-confrontation. And how the hell can you truly confront yourself through somebody/somewhere else? You can't, not unless you do it from a perspective of being fully comfortable (not comfortable in the "material" sense. but in the sense of feeling fully human beyond all that) with who and what you are.. All you can do is discover what others have, compare it against what you have or don't have, and develop self-loathing at some level. The constant rush to find the Great White Hope of The Blues is a perfect example. Sure, there's been some fine white blues players, but the ones that get the White Folk all excited are inevitably the ones who exaggerate & distort the subtleties of the medium in an attempt to prove (consciously or otherwise) to anybody/everybody how much "soul" they have. All they're really proving is how much soul they'd like to have... For how long has somebody like Warne Marsh been labelled "cool", "intellectual", etc.? Hell, Warne Marsh was one soulful player with feeling out the ass. But it was a soulfulness and a feeling that came out of who he was, not out of what he and "the world" thought that soul and feeling should be. Big difference. I'm all for personal growth, and I'm all for tearing down artificial barriers. But I'm all for those things for the purpose of people coming together to become the one soul that we really are, not for the purpose of letting people into "our" world so we can use them to get from them the fundamental humanity that we really have in ourself if we'd just be humble (and secure) enough to recognize it. Only when that dynamic is in place can any exchange take place that is not ultimately exploitative and one-sided. It's one thing to expand, it's another thing to mine, dig? Sure, the above diatribe is only truly relevant to certain people of a certain time and certain place. But they exist in quantity, and if/when they turn up their nose at "Caroline, No" and then get a hard-on for "Please, Please, Please", you're seeing the truth in action. And it ain't pretty.

The new artistShare project is underway: http://www.artistshare.com/artist_project_...amp;selection=1 Also, the Alternate Routes remix EP (6 cuts, including one new piece, over 45 minutes worth of music altogether) is now available, and comes highly recommended. Out of the 6 cuts, there's only one that to my mind/ears doesn't offere up a substantially different & invigorating reinterpretation of the original. There's remixes that are essentially "functional", and then there's remixes that are creative musical works in and of themselves. These firmly fall into the latter category, and whoever Yellowtail, Jephte Guillaume & Part Time Heroes are, they're some baaaad muthaphukkas. Any of their work could have been released as the original versions and you'd not suspect that they were anything but, that the performances were designed & built that way from the git-go, and that these were works of contemporary dance music of the highest level. That they're remixes attests to both their talents of the remixers and to the quality of the original material Tracklisting for Alternate Routes: 1. Hung Up (PTH Sprung Up Mix) - pretty much keeps the original form, but revamps the rhythm tracks 2. The Right Time (Yellowtail remix) - A mindfuck for me. Takes the original, which stretched boundaries that I didn't even know I had, and turns it into a nastyhot broken beat jam. It's a case of putting back together rather than taking apart, the opposite of many remixes, and damn does it work. 3. Don't (CASAMENA Backyard Mix) - Doesn't work for me. The original is one of my most favorite of all of Monday's works, and this one is basically taking the "jungle beat" from one part of it, running it all the way through, and putting the rest of the song on top (or more accurately, inside) that repeated beat. Much is lost, although now you can dance all the way through it. But... 4. You Don't Know (Monday Michiru featuring Part Time Heroes) - a new original. Very strong melody (replete with fanfare-ish horn parts), unconventional changes, a bit of broken beat, and lyrics that demand attention. Connoiseurs of old-school B-sides will recognize this as one of those things that come out of nowhere, hit you upside the head for a few minutes and then float away into the ether to become "cult classics". 5. Philosophy Road (PTH Hideout Mix) - Psychedelic house. Can't say that it "improves" on the original, but it certainly takes it somewhere else entirely, to a place that is very much to my liking. The vocal comes ut more, and Sipiagin's trumpet is changed from solo to running commentary. Very nice. 6. The Right Time (Jepthe's Tet Kole Mix) - A 13:53 super mindfuck, especially if you know the original. Sets up a nasty samba/house thing and doesn't let go of it for even one second. Words are kind of failing me on this one, but suffice it to say that the world needs music like this more than ever, and that the world ain't getting it without having to go digging for it in the uber-enderground is a big sign of why the world is what it is today. You can dance to this disc, or you can listen to it. It works splendidly either way. Or you can do both. That works even better.

Dude, that's just all kinds of wrong. She's 14. Both of my kids are older than her. If you think that the only feelings that a man can have for a young girl are "hormonal", then you must not have a daughter. "Nurturing" is not an exclusively female trait, and any male who can't/won't realize that has got some pretty serious issues to be dealt with. Put your brain back in your cranium, where it belongs, and where it can do some good.