JSngry

I don't know how things were in your town, Claude, but in mine, stores stopped carrying vinyl as quickly as possible once the "fad" had begun. Some even refused to special order it, even though it was available. Plenty of consumers expressed a desire to keep vinyl, but the response was never accomodating. But it was clear that the industry wanted to kill vinyl as quickly as possible. Hell, it wasn't long before you could find a cassette of a new side easier than you could an LP. "That's what people want!", they said. Yeah, sure. People wanted to buy what was in front of them at the moment, and if there were no LPs int he stores, then there would be no LP sales. I for one would probably (well, ok, possibly) still be buying LPs of new releases if I hadn't have been forced to convert to CD. None of the first wave or three of CD reissues of back catalog that I foolishly bought early on held a candle to the old LPs soundwise. And quite a few people I knew who bit hard on CD at first were starting to have second thoughts around the time the rug got pulled. CDs should have replaced cassettes, not LPs until the technology improved. It was a great portable medium, and usually sounded better than cassettes in a portable listening environment. But as a "main" medium? No way. The public got sold a bill of goods, simple as that.

I dunno, dude. I've seen plenty of questionably dressed women dragging naked babies through Wal-Mart...

I'd like to be there for...

Blessed, indeed!

I really like this part: Yeah, I remember finally being forced to choose between cassette and CD if I wanted to keep up w/new releases. I thought it was bullshit then, and it was. Now it's karma time. Motherfuckers wanted an all-digital music world, well, they now got one. Guess they should've been careful what they asked for, eh?

As opposed to the alley in front of Wal-Mart?

Must be the big, bad voodoo.

Tell you what - stop expecting a bunch of adults, some of whom have been seriously deep into this music 3-4 times longer than you've been alive, to hear things with your ears and see things through your eyes, and I'll do my part to discourage them from disparaging you from having your own 14 yr old eyes and ears and for using them as you see fit. That's what you should be doing, dammit, and for people to give you shit just because you got some sass is pretty shitty, I think. And some of us should know better. We really should. It's a beautiful thing that you're into what you're into, especially at such a young age, but trust me when I tell you that you're just experiencing the very tip of the iceberg. Some of the dissing you've gotten has been pretty rough, and I personally don't think it's right. But dammit, you're in with a crew who's gotten into this stuff waaaay deeper than you've yet even had a chance to even think about. I'm not busting you on this, or playing the "age card", but that's jsut the way it is - the longer you live, the more you learn. Hopefully... I was 14 once (hell, I've been 14 three, going on four times now ), so I can tell you that no matter how musch you think you know now, or how much you really do know now, you're going to know a shitload more in the future - if you keep your mind and your ears open, and if you don't block off new information just because it comes in an "unpleasant" package. I really do admire you for coming here, and I really do admire you for having the gumption to tell people to fuck off. That shows that you got spirit and independence, and I respect the hell outta spirit and independence. Now let's see if you have the good sense to learn about shit you're not going to be exposed to in school and not just be a fan of what they give you to look at. I for one think that you do. You got the stuff, I believe. But ultimately it's your call. Fair?

Oh, I agree, even if it might not seem like it. That whole thing is just a symptom, not the disease. Thre's been a "jazz diaspora" of sorts ever since the eraly 80s, and it came from forces both in and out of "the business". And those amnogst the refugees who were closer to the "new country" in the first place have naturally "assimilated" into far more effectively than those who come into it from a distance. Thing is, those who had that "distance" were the heart and soul of the "old world", and there's no getting around that, much less trying to create a substitute for it. It is what it is, and it was what it was. It truly is a "new world" now, and I for one am not particularly interested in trying to re-create the old one in an environment that has little use, and even less understanding, of what that old world really was. It's a waste of time, and an exercise in vanity and/or delusion. Time to move on, remembering at some level that "once an enemy, always an enemy". I say that with full love, really I do, not looking to kill anybody or anything, but that's the way it is. Core values have not changed, anywhere. They've gotten distorted as hell, but that's not the same thing as having changed. If the old ways of being true to one's self have been co-opted, then it's time to examine new ways and see what fits, even if significant alterations are needed to make'em fit. Is there any other palatable option?

I would make that argument too, except that there's been a noticable lack of the "intellectual" counter-balance in far too much of that music, which is, to me, a huge part of what made jazz the special thing it was back when it was what it was. Now, I don't meant to sound like I'm entirely blaming jazz for leaving the streets. The street over the last 25 years or so have gotten significantly nastier than they used to be, When I was out and about on them, a guy like me could get by by just following some simple, common-sense, rules. You could definitely get vibed stronger than was comfortable, and ther were even then certain pockets into which you did not tread w/o "proper accompaniment" (and one or two that you didn't, even with), but if you could handle walking among pimps, hookers, pushers, junkies, cons, and hoods w/o acting like a punk and/or a fool, you could get where you needed to go, and once there, get down to whatever business was at hand. Automatic weapons, drive-bys, crazed crackheads, and children playing Capone weren't a part of the equation then (give me 100 junkies - and 500 winos - over one crackhead any day. Seriously.) So I can understand. Earlier, I used the phrase "abdication of responsivility", and that might have been too much, given the realities. But I do question, not that people moved, but what they did once they moved. We rightly criticize government and "the majority" for abandoning the streets, writing them off and leaving them for dead. But what about the musicians? Couldn't they feel the raw enegry and the (often blunted) real intelligence coming out of all that "noise" that was coming from what they left behind? Didn't they feel at least some affinity/empathy for what was making it all go down like that? I mean, shit, I did, I heard Public Enemy back in the day when I was pretty much a "jazz purist", and said, "Yeah, I can understand this". But like too many others, I had lost my direct sense of connection (which was admittedly nowhere near as direct/constant/organic as many), and therefore any real sense of responsibility to in some kind of way find a way to look for a conduit, to let some of that into my world as something other than what "other people" were doing. I can chalk some of that up to my age, my maturation in marriage/family/etc., but some of it I have to admit was due to simply not "being there" any more and just not feeling the need. Hey, things were going well, i was making music, a lot of it the kind I wanted to make, so what if there was all this other shit going on? It could get along just fine without me, right? Well, yeah, it could get along fine w/o me, but I look at how many other "me"s there were, and how many of them had a lot more immediate conection to all this than me, and I'm thinking now that to not actively engage all this energy and raw intelligence in at least some form or fashion was a mistake. A lot of us were (and still are) hung up on the technology, and the ease with which "non-musicians" were making "music". Well, ok, we all have our vanities, egos, and conceits, but it soon became apparent that this was the way things were going to go, nothing we could do about it, so we pretty much said, "fuck it", and quit even pretending to be connected, instead looking backwards to the good ol' days when the wino on the corner had a heart of gold and some convoluted yet cosmically profound wisdom to drop on you if only you'd listen to him in the right way. That was a mistake, I think, and now where are we? Street music has continued to grow and evolve, and I hear so much of (but not on the radio or tv) it trying to grow, expand, to stretch out musically. But they just don't have the tools to get to where they sound like they're trying to get to, and whose fault is that? When are "jazz musicians" going to reach out and say, "hey bro, that's a nice loop you got going there, but why don't you try variatin' it a little, maybe like this..." or "that's a bad rap you got going there, but why don't you put this underneath it to give it a little more meat, give it a little more dimensionality"? Contrary to what "we" like to think, the possibilities are damn near endless, not claustrophobically limited. More to the point - how many "jazz musicians" of today would have the cred to make suggestions like that that would actually work? And how many of them would deem the effort "worthy" of their "talents" in the first place? "We" like to bitch about shallowness and superficiality, but at what point does that cross the line into simple curmodgeonry, of not being able to enjoy a simple pleasure on its own terms w/o feeling "contaminated" by it or some wack shit like that? We whine about the Barbarians taking over, but how much resistance are the getting these days, how many alternatives are being proposed out there where the ideas are formed long before the records get made? Have the connections been so strongly broken that there's no re-connecting, ever? Probably so, and we're all fucked long-term (other than those whose connection to music doesn't extend beyond enjoying 30+ year old reissues in the comfort of their living rooms) if they have been, but I'm not making a definitive answer just yet. In the meantime, like I said above, we need more people like Mike Ladd (in no ways "jazz", but a seriously intelligent mofo w/a serious sense of musicality). And we need to stop "training" people to play like Bird & Trane. Instead, we need to be encouraging players to pay attention to what's going on and to actively engage it on equal terms. The two things that "jazz" is largely lacking right now is a sense of immediacy, and a sense of relevancy to anything other than itself. And the two things that street music is largely lacking right now is musical depth and a perspective of life beyond itself. You'd think that there'd be some sort of hookup, nature abhoring a vacuum and all, but there are not necesarily natural times in which we live...

And what role is it playing now?

Who is he?

He was married to Linda Evans, you know. And she's old enough to be your grandmother.

The only two Xanadu guitartists who come to mind other than the Raneys are Ted Dunbar & Peter Sprague. That's not Ted Dunbar, I don't think, so....

Oh, the academy is still there, but the curriculum has changed, and the faculty have (mostly) all ran away rather than deal with it on thier own, supposedly "higher" terms. Hip-hop is not the enemy of jazz. People who refuse to confront it on its own terms and steer it constructively, and who in the process leave it to its own worst impulses, are. Think about it - "back in the day", waaaaay back in the day, "jazz" was not a "respectable" music. But that didn't keep intelligent people, "street" and otherwise, from jumping in headfirst, and the music reaped immeasurable benefits from that combination of raw street vitality and a more "considered" intellectual input. But as the streets changed, got rougher and meaner, the balance of power shifted towards the thugs (and if anybody thinks that there haven't been street thugs, true street thugs, in jazz over the years, grow/wake the hell up, ok?), in part because the weaponry got nastier, but also in part because the counter-balance had developed a sense of "artistic entitlement" that led them to believe that they didn't have to take this shit any more, and that college kids were a more worthy recipient of their "smarts" than were street kids. Of course, this sense of "artistic entitlement" also led to the presumption that what they already knew was "better" than anything they could learn, so why bother? I dunno, but the best teachers I've had, in any field, were the ones who were still open to learning something from their students as well as steering them. It's kinda like riding a horse - the best riders get to know their horse and work with it in a symbiotic relationship so that they both know each other, they don't just jump on and beat the poor thing into submission. Add to this whole sorry state of affairs that, with but a few exceptions, the world of "academia" that even the best jazz musicians enter into is a world not of their own making, and all that follows from that, and you end up with a state where "the streets" have literally become the enemy of jazz rather than its lifeblood. Sense of entitlement, abdication of responsibility/opportunity, inflexibile hostility towards/in the face of changing times/technologies, hey, if that's not a recipe for suicide, I don't know what is. Generally/braodly speaking, it was all a grand, glorious cycle, perhaps the singlemost meaningful collective artistic expression of the 20th century, and it came from an ongoing interaction between street smarts and "brain" smarts. But that was then, and this is now. One part of the equation has deliberately removed itself. For it to blame the portion that didn't is a copout. Game Over, and we need more people like Mike Ladd.

Did you listen to the lyrics?

Earliest version I can find documented is a 1977 one by Sergio Mendes, none by Stevie himself. Just wondering.

Yeah, this is even more depressing than Michael & Lisa Marie.

Absolutely the most self-destructive performance by a Cowboys team I've ever seen. Firt the Mavs, now this. What, is "Dallas" Latin for "choke"?

Have I started something here?

If this gets a "legitimate" release, I'll buy it.

Are they still wearing zoot suits and stuff?

Well, you got one out of three right. (#3). The bonus question was an opinion-only thing, and that was definitely an opinion you gave! So, you made a 34, + 10 for the bonus. Final score = 44. Close enough. Oh hell, I'll give you #2 as well. I disagree, but that perception is probably why it's not played more. Can't give you #1, though. Weather Report's was the original. So hey, grading with a bit of leftover holiday generosity, that's a 67, plus 10 = 77. Passing in anybody's book. It's official - you're a geek now.

You think it's fascinating now, wait until you've really gotten into it. It'll take over your life like you never dreamed possible. Don't say you weren't warned.