JSngry

Thanks. Lunch, actually. A nice BIG bowl of Pho with all the ingredients, including "tendon", which is really gristle boiled into an irresitable delicious Gelatanous Flavor Delivery Module aka GFDM, not to be confused with GDS, STD, GNP, or GRP). My daughter and I love the Vietmanese food, and vegetarian LTB goes along because, well, she's LTB.

Are dolphins naturally green or blue? Never could get a handle on that.

100% is an awfully big number, Dan... You know, when you or anybody else says that they just don't like something, that as far as they're concerned it's worthless crap, hey, I can't/won't argue with that. Personal taste is something I highly respect, and besides, there's a helluva lot of good music out there. Nobody has to like it all. But if we're going to play the "I don't like it, so it is crap" game, well, I'm gonna have to call bullshit, even if it means getting called on it myself for calling it in the first place. Not my first time down this road, and not just with this type music. Music, "real" music (and let's define that in a way that doesn't define by exclusion, don't define what "real music" isn't, but instead defines what it is), is being made with samplers, laptops, all of that. Nobody "has" to like it, but let's keep it there and not make absolutist claims that won't hold up in reality, or that can only in the end come down to personal taste. I'm going out for Vietnamese food.

Agreed. Are you familiar w/Ruiz' work a decade or so earlier than that on Jerry Gonzalez' Ya Yo Me Cure? That was the first "mainstream" (as if an American Clave side could be considered "mainstream" ) use of the word "Nuyoriqueno" that I remember, although it had certainly been in street use a few years or more before that. Anyway, Ruiz is all over that one, and his version of "I Love Lucy" is one of those things that you can take straight or as a sly joke and end up the same place either way. He wa certainly a unique talent, he was!

Mike, I know you're pretty hardcore about the whole descarga/Afro-Cuban thing. Hope this satisfies, as it is not entirely old school. But for the most part, I think you'll enjoy it.

Baba Louie Baba Wawa Gonzalo Asencio, El Rey del Guaguanco

My PM box has a tendency to always be full. Please send an email thru the board, if you don't mind. I'll be looking for it. Thanks!

Patti Mayonnaise Kraftwerk Don Wert

Put me down for the download as well. A lot easier that way. What format audio file do you plan on using?

It's bullshit to think that a saxophone playing GDS is going to be intinsically more creative than a DJ w/a laptop. Either way, you're dealing with people doing something, so it's all going to come down to who the "theys" are and what they're bringing to the table as far as spirit, intellegence, and creativity. If, IF the DJ is some cat with fire in the gut, a deep sense of musical curiosity, and wide open ears, and the saxophonist is some placid caveman regurgitator, you tell me A) who's most likely going to be more creative and inspired at any given moment; and then tell me B) which one you'd rather vibe off of. If there's a difference in the answers to A & B, or if can't see that there actually is the possibility of a real-life choice to be made here, then please explain to me what is meant by a "bullshit mindset".

Rod, remember Bill Robinson, "Terrance", & the Illuminati lectures in the Bruce Hall lobby?

Klingons Ding Dongs Hostesses

The Brooklyn Dodgers Branch Rickey Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

I have praised this disc in at least one thread - probably more. I'm placing my order tonight. Placed mine last night, specifically after seeing the overlap w/The Yale Concert, which to me has always been a highly frustrating album. The band just didn't seem "on" that night. But the material....

Have to say that overall I wasn't a "fan". But I had immense respect for the cat as somebody who dealt with a lot of different musical challenges, always with integrity, grace, and aplomb. Going way back, his solo on the beginning of the second side of the first Dreams album was in its own way a startling wakeup call, and his solo on James Taylor's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" was a textbook example of how to play on a sax solo on a pop record w/o dumbing down. Stories I've heard over the years lead me to believe that he was 1000% humble about where he stood in the grand scheme of things. No ego, no inflated sense of "importance", he seems to have seen himself as somebody with skills who was blessed with a good living because of them, and he put those blessings to use to further his personal growth as a player. If that's not worthy of respect, what is? His loss will be felt.

Uh, by freeing me of the nightmare of still having to make a living by playing "Mustang Sally", "Green Dolphin Steet" & "Nardis" (especially "Nardis!") when I'm 75 just to put some money in the pocket. That is not a future I'd wish on anybody. Yeah, I still got a saxophone, but when you gotta use it to make a living instead of using it to make something you really believe in (and I still believe in Marchel Ivery playing GDS, just not me playing it), it's much more of a curse than a blessing. Am I a dinosaur? Am I irrelevant? As a person, no, I hope not. But as a craftsman desperately trying to eke out a living by playing shit that is for all intents and purposes dead & irrelevant outside of the cave, God I certainly hope I am. I've recently turned down a few such club dates, pickup bands playing Real Book tunes for $50.00. Fuck it. I hope it all dies, and soon. If that's all people care to make of music, fuck 'em. Life's too short to aggressively persue personal & spiritual mediocrity, and life's too interesting outside of that particular cave to live and die there. Give me something to believe in. I can't believe in music being "important" just because it's a job, or because it's all I "know", or because I "love" it (besides, not all love is pure, and not all love is healthy). It's gotta mean more than that, and it does. When/if I can find something to believe in, I'll be there. Until then, if you want it like that, you can have it like that. Me, I got better things to do than get upset because the mode of making a living I've had in the past is no longer viable and/or relevant to the 21st century. I've got options in this life when it comes to just making money. People say, "oh, but at least you're doing something you love". Yeah, like I love playing tired ass shit with tired ass players. Can't get enough of that, let me tell you. Playing "Mustang Sally" & "Brick House" & "Ipanema" & GDS & Stella & all that other shit is better than being a plumber or something? Why? Tell me why. For most of the people I know who believe that, it all comes down to that it's better to not have to deal with "regular" people any more than you have to. It's better to play bullshit than it is to deal with reality. Is that the best that music has to offer, an outlet for socially-challenged recluses? I think not. Is music your soulmate or your cheap ass street whore? Give me something to believe in, not to fall back on. It ain't 1997 any more, and it sure as hell ain't 1957 any more. Music as who I am has little if anything to do with "playing gigs" if those gigs are nothing more than exericises in delusional futility. And the ones that are going away for the most part are. No tears here.

Dude, if you can pay $300.00 (or up) and provide a good vibe for a local band that's not playing the same old same old, you're going to be swamped with requests to play your series!

Differnt curves curve at different angles, I guess. Never have really heard this one. Heard it a few times over the years, and it seemed really good, but never did it stop me in my tracks. But it's been 20 years or so since the last time, so who knows?

Dude, you have to have no idea about what's going on in the underground to make a statement like that. Jesus, I've just scratched the very surface of it, & I'm hearing shit that is totally irrelevant to a statement like that. Cats are playing drum machines like a percussion orchestra, and samples are being morphed beyond recognition of their source, turned into something else entirely. And sometimes - GASP - "real" players are being used right alongside all that. Music is being made.

Seems possible.

Bingo. So, I guess Dickie Wells & Curley Russell were victims of rap too... The gigs now are with the new musicians making music the new way. When things change, bodies fall. Adapt or die, gracefully or otherwise. In the big picture, all that's being "lost" is gigs for competent (or better) replicators for whom there is a dwindling need (who needs a suckass funk drummer on a dance gig when you can have Clyde Stubblefield on your hard drive? Now, if you got a suckass drum sample, whose fault is that - the machine or the person who created the sample?). The herd's being thinned, and boo-hoo about that. Sure, there's original, creative voices who are having to struggle, but where's the news there? Did computers kill Herbie Nichols? Anybody who's got the real thing will find a way to do it as long as they can hold on. And how long they can hold on has always been an issue. But what about the young players who don't have the outlet? Hey - young cats who really want it/have it wil adapt, one way or the other. Everybody else is fucked, but oh well. It's about time. Let them be fans. We need more fans, not more craftsmen masquerading as "artists". "Rearranging old music"? Yeah, like playing "Green Dolphin Street" for the 90000000000000000000000000000000th time on a club date with an unispired pickup band is a bold declaration of creative independence. Right. Or like cover/bar bands provide a real creative outlet. Of course they do. Changing tastes, changing economics, hell, changing mindsets, failure by cavepeoples to accept reality, lots of things going on...... Waaaaay too many easy generalizations going on.

Damn.

And why should you?

I'm talking about the LP (which I have) relative to the way I know it would have sounded live. This downloaded file alters that sound somewhat. But really, once you've had a good taste of live big bands, recordings seldom satisfy w/o the compensating use of some imagination/memory...

Gary, Indiana nearly made me vomit. Square business.