JSngry

Elder Don, you have hit the nail squarely on the head. Now that the primary audience for "jazz" is white folk (middle-class & upwards, and slightly less middle-aged and upwards), and now that real jazz musicians (i.e. - those who came up in the music/culture organically) number between slim and none (with Slim looking at the clock on the wall and then the door in intervals of increasingly shorter duration - a cat like Shelley Carroll is the exception that more than proves the rule), the need(s) for all concerned to have Crouch's "unlettered black person who should be the final arbiter of value, because they have absorbed the truth through their nostrils or something when eating collard greens and cornbread when growing up poor in the South" to have a voice through his mouth is going to be too powerful to resist. Crouch calls the notion of such a figure having such power "sentimental" & "bullshit", but damned if that's not the role he's been working himself into - The Educated Voice Of The Soul Of The Black Man's Jazz Who Is Able To Articulate That Which Has Heretofore Been Inadequately Articulated For Those Who Most Want/Need To Hear It. Too many degrees of separtation at this point, waaaaay too many (Crouch himself may have at one time been such a person as he fantasizes about, and deep inside, he may still be one, but like the Road Runner running through air after running off the cliff, once you look down, it's all over...). For almost everybody concerned. It's a con game, pure and simple, and there's enough marks to make it lucrative for the duration. But the truth is much more complex, and it's the nature of true evil to take the truth of the past and turn it into a lie for the present in order to capture your soul for the future. I'm not saying that Crouch himself is a tool of the devil, or anything like that, just that he's one of many who are falling for the lie that freedom of the soul comes in a package of ready-made pre-fabricated identity. It doesn't. But dammit if there's not a market.

Monday Michiru Newsletter Happy Chinese New Year! So I couldn't make a newsletter for the January 1 new year, but at least I made it for the Chinese new year! I trust everyone is starting 2007 well and staying healthy. Some very exciting news with projects that I would like to share with you: NEW PROJECT WITH ARTISTSHARE!! -- It has been incredibly busy for me this last month and half, unfortunately doing a lot of mundane computer work, writing, and tedious administrative stuff, but all for the love and purpose of finally launching my new project with ArtistShare. The project name is "Flow" and I am very excited about the concept, creative potential and just really getting in there and sinking my teeth into it. It will be launching before the end of the month alongside a facelift for my website -- please check out www.mondaymichiru.com for more on the "Flow" project and what I am planning for it. LIVE AT SOBs, March 4 (Sunday) -- After a series of tours in Japan much of 2006, I am happy to finally be able to do a live here in my home state, New York, and SOBs is the place! Our 4th time there, we have a great band lined up for our Release and Launch Live: My husband of course on trumpet and flugelhorn, Hans Glawischnig on bass, George Colligan (who we went to Indonesia and Japan with recently) on keyboards, and Masanori Amakura on drums. Masa is actually living in Japan and I began working with him last July and he is BAD! (...you know that means GOOD "bad.") He planned his vacation to New York and I couldn't resist putting together the SOBs live to coincide with his trip here. SOBs (Sons of Brazil) 204 Varick Street at West Houston (212) 243-4940 www.sobs.com 8:00 p.m. $17 if you buy ahead, $20 at the door Jephte Guillaume of Body & Soul will be spinning that night "ALTERNATE ROUTES" Remix EP-CD Release! -- Gosh, can you handle all this new stuff?! This is what I've been destroying my eye sight and giving up my social life for! Yes, it's finally out, a compact EP of 6 tracks: 5 remixes and 1 original track. Already some of the tracks are creating a buzz in the underground, namely the one of "The Right Time" remixed by Jephte Guillaume (who will also be spinning at SOBs on March 4). This CD is available exclusively through my website as part of the new "Flow" project under various packages. ETC -- In an effort to keep this one short, I won't go through the zillion other pots I've had my hands in and focus instead on the other exciting things coming up: A covers album which I'll begin recording soon for Geneon in Japan due for release in July; and several collaborations on my husband's upcoming ArtistShare release due out the end of May. As for lives, I'll be going to Japan for an event that Starbucks is doing in Marunouchi of Tokyo on March 13, 14 & 15 -- 2 sets each day; I'll be performing with guitarist Naohiko Higuchi-san. There's also talks of a tour in Japan during the summer as well as a possible live in NY again in June, and as things firm up I'll definitely keep you in the loop. **** On a different subject, I want to congratulate trumpeter/composer/arranger Brian Lynch for his Grammy win on his ArtistShare release "Simpatico"! Brian played for years in my mother's big band, and also did collaborations, arrangements and playing on my albums in the past, so I feel like a family member has won! Keep yourselves warm, healthy and happy! Peace, Monday Michiru

HOLY SHIT!!!

Or evidence! http://cgi.ebay.com/Joyce-Hatto-fraud-Rare...1QQcmdZViewItem

DUDE!!!!

Crouch is not dumb. He knows quite a bit about the insides of the music in terms of both technique & personality. But he is an opportunist. That's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but when you do a lot of collateral damage along the way, which I definitely think he has, then yeah, it is.

They could/should have last year, but they choked big time. I'm excited about this year's team, but until they show me they can do what they need to do all the way through, it's definitely a limited excitement.

"Well", I like to retort, "so is sex. Are you ready for that?"

Don't know that there's a lot of "general interest" in Sly's music (as opposed to Sly the "legend") these days. What's best known/loved are the hits, and those are well-represented & available. The albums are definitely for more "specialized" tastes (and I will be getting them), but really, for the long haul, the hits (and, of course, Riot) tell the story that most needs to be told. I will say this - if Legacy was gauging the market by that mostly P.O.S. tribute/remix/whatever side they put out last year, they shot themself in the foot big time. Other than a killer track of Chuck D. doing "Sing A Simple Song", that thing sucked donkey dix. Hardly a good way to stir up interest among new audiences.

Yeah, I'd recommend the albums just for those two. Everybody else, yeah, ok, but. The Wilner/Monk thing is ok, something to hear at least once, but for me, not a lot of it has real staying power other than something to pull out once in a while to see if anything's changed. Wilner's first project,though, a Nina Rota project, is much more succesful in that regard, I think. But good luck finding it.

Yes, up to a point, though your "as is any pop record" is both an exaggeration, I think, and an apples/oranges thing -- the goal/model for post-production manipulation in the classical world pretty much remains the "image," or an image, of what the piece would have/might have sounded like in a concert hall. That is seldom if ever the case in the pop world any more AFAIK. Moreover, none of this has any relevance I can see to the Hatto hoax, which involved the direct copying of issued recordings of complete works by other pianists, which in most cases were then digitally manipulated (sped up but without altering pitch) in order to disguise their origin and to make the results sound more virtuosic. The husband's claim that all this copying began because he wanted/needed to edit out from otherwise topnotch Hatto recorded performances his sick wife's coughs and cries of pain and then thought of Schwarzkopf dubbing in a high note for Flagsted in Furtwangler's recording of "Tristan" recording is absurd. Well, yeah. But... Personally, I think the use of "tools" to create an "alternate reality" in sound (as in pop) that might well not exist otherwise is a lot more ethical - and creative - than using them to create the "illusion" of a "true" reality that could exist if everybody played everything right all at once. Relevancy to the Hatto hoax? Minimal at best, other than instead of sending people off into a tizzy about fraud, it ought to get people asking what they've really been listening to all along in classical recordings, which many hold as examples of "pure music". Lots of illusions would/should be shattered.

"Little Rootie Tootie" & "Work", both on Prestige.

I've yet to hear anybody comment on how most (all?) "classical" recordings are as labored over & pieced together in post-production as is any pop record. Hell, most symphonies are recorded in bits and pieces & then pieced back together from multiple takes. Sure, they can "do it live", but they don't do it live for the record. But they posit the record as The Record just as much as does any pop artist. Or fan. A dirty little secret (except for Glen Gould & a few others), or what?

Genres are useful for marketing, and marketing is useful for getting stuff heard, so that's not at all a bad thing in and of itself. But genres as a means of identifying yourself, your soul, hey, that's death. Unless one chooses to become one's product, in which case, hey, go for it. Sucker.

I have widely mixed feelings about Metheny, depending on the specific performance/album/whatever, but anybody who's thinking about music in those terms...

Paul Jeffries Jack Jeffers

Hey - being in a hot, sweaty bed alone at midnight is a totally different psychological dynamic that being in a hot, sweaty bed with somebody you're...well, you know.

Not sure how "complete" it is, but it sure as hell is credible.

Ah, well someone else needs to answer this. Sounds like they play the tune to me, but what do I know about form? MG Well, I thought so too until I listend closer, and then I wasn't so sure. Sounds like they hit on all the key parts of the song, just not necessarily in the order/duration of them as it was originally written. Kinda like Grant and/or Larry had heard the song a few times but not really learned it "proper" and put together a homemade arrangement that met their needs. But I'm not totally sure about that, and ultimately don't care. I just think it's kinda funny (as in laughing, go-ahead-on-with-your-bad-selves funny).

Screwball Slider Curve

True, but those same houses accomodated the heat by allowing people to leisurize in relative comfort while "other people" did the work. Those "nice old southern houses" weren't built by & for the working class. And besides, I've spent enough time in enough of them over the years Denton back in the day was full of such that had been turned into rent houses, either in toto or broken up into quasi-appartments) to know that no matter how relatively comfortable they are during the day, in bed at night, if you're upstairs, the only way to get your mind off the fact that you're hot and sweaty until at least midnight is to have somebody in the bed with you to provide an alibi for the sweat...

Edit: I once spent a summer in Houston. I have felt your pain. Houston is quite a bit worse (IMO) than the DFW area. The humidity's alot higher. Absolutely correct. DFW is just Hell. Houston is Hell's VIP room.

You know, Lorez has never really clicked with me (fine singer, but I dunno, just doesn't connect on a personal level as deeply as others have. My problem, no doubt), although she did a side for Argo w/the Ramsey Lewis trio that comes as close as anything. It's called Early In the Morning, & iirc, Ghost featured some of it on one of his shows. Check it out. You might also well enjoy this one: Part of an Ace/BGP twofer: http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?pa...mp;release=4754 or as a single King CD that was released in the early 90s.

Althea is not a good singer by any stretch of the imagination/definition, but I feel her soul anyway, and it touches me in a totally non-musical way. Which is more than I can say about that Tequila chick on the Fuel albums...