JSngry

Indeed. And this is an amazing album:

A party that comes naturally, as opposed to one you gotta suit up for. Among other htings...

Geez man, I was wondering when the discs were going out... Anyhoo... Just finished both downloads. Don't expect any problems burning. Glad I looked in!

I was born into it. My parents had the RCA Glenn Miller AAF box for as long as I can remember. They might have even had it a few months before I was born. Had an aunt who gave me her copy of The Kenton Era when I was 15. Got the first Smithsonian set in 1974 as a high school graduation present. First one I ever bought myself was, I think, the WB Bird Dial set. That was 1976, iirc, maybe 1977.

Pretty sure the tune is a Bird Verve thing. "Segment", "Diverse", something like that. Not sure who's version is on the jukebox.

Yep.

I'm not poor, thank you. I got me some money, and I'd like more. I'm all for motherfuckers making BIGASS bucks, including myself. But there's different ways to make it, and not all ways have the same outcome on society. Quanity is not the issue. Quality is. And that's very much a matter of priorities and discernment. Collective priorities right now suck, and discernment is so narrow in scope as to render the word all but meaningless. "Revolution of the mind" is an oldass phrase, but it ain't obsolete. Not yet. If it is, take me home.

Buy a lot of Sony & Univedrsal stock and start acting a fool? Seriously, I don't know. I don't own any stocks myself, other than a few options granted through my job. But somebody's gotta start making enough noise of the type that starts putting corporate decisions that so many people don't like (and in their hearts probably feel are wrong) in a negative enough light that it starts to have an adverse effect on image, which in turn should translate to a negative impact on stock prices. That will get their attention. Think about it - the only real reason so many of these decisions are getting made is that the common comatosity dictates maximum profit uber alles. Perception driving reality driving perception. Change the perception, change the reality, and in turn change the perception. Why doesn't "Megacorp announced today that it will be be be brining back 2500 jobs to America that it had outsourced" cause a rise in Megacorp's stock price? Because everybody's convinced themselves that it shouldn't. If enough people would say, "Hey, you GO Megacorp, bring those jobs back home!" and start buying Megacorp's stock as a show of support, then hey, stock prices go up, right? Pretty soon, GiantInc says, "DAMN, we gotta keep up w/Megacorp. We better bring some jobs back home too!" And on and on it goes. New perception creates the new reality that drives the new perception. Yeah, I know it's not that simple, and yeah, I know it's not that easy. But we didn't get where we are today w/o collectively buying into a perception that created a reality that created a perception. Shit don't have to be this way. So I'm saying that we need to buy out of the old and into the new. Just make it happen, one step at a time, and don't quit until we get there. If we can't do it, then that's admitting that we have absolutely no control over our destiny, and I ain't buying that shit for one motherfukkin' minute. In the words of the Profhet Nike - Just Do It.

Dude, I know you're a good guy, no question about that. So I'm not busting you personal chops on this. But... It's statements like the one above that contribute to the current climate, that give "the powers that be" the juice they need to go on ahead and do what they do w/o fear and w/o remorse. I guarantee you that that's the first line of defense when they get called on their bullshit - "We have a responsibility to our stockholders". And then when confronted, that's their first tact, to throw it back in your face - "Well, would you rather have a samller return on your investment than a larger one?" Like they're just doing your personal bidding in all this and you should by god THANK them for creating instability, distrust, and angst in the world you have to live in. And to the extent that nobody steps up to the plate and says WAIT JUST A MOTHERFUCKING MINUTE ASSHOLE, we want a return, we want to make money, we want you to make money, hell, we like money, we want everybody to make money, just not at the expense of the long-term health and stability of our society, then yeah, they're right. Thing is, this ain't nothing new. This is the oldest trick in the book, the work of the silver-tongued serpent who steals your soul under the guise of simply "giving you what you want". We can all claim that it's not our fault, but when the beast files the papers in the Case Closed drawer, it will simply smile and say "You had a choice and you made it. I just gave you what you wanted". Jan, I think you're not old enough to have lived for too long, if at all, in a pre-Reagan-era America. So this may well be all you know. But some of us are old enough and have memories long enough to know that although "business realities" are always going to be what they are, and something over which we ultimately have only a modicum of control, the degree to which those realities play themselves out are very much a matter of choice. A generation of Americans has been hypnotized into thinking that they don't have these choices, but I'm here to tell you right now that goddammit, you do. You do, I do, we all do.

"To ball" easily got past the censors because is was common slang for "to party". Among other things,...

Best!

Mine's beat with a stick too, but I found it at a Goodwill for 50 cents back in the early 80s, when James was considered passe and washed up. But damn it's good. If it's ever been reissued in Japan, I'd say that it's worth hunting down and paying a reasonable J-price for. In the meantime though, Hot On The One finds James in post-mountaintop HardPartyFunk mode with a great band and an enthusiastic Japanese audience playing both old faves and some of the cult classics from the mid-late 70s Polydor sides much more spiritedly than on those records. There's worse things in life.

Hell, there was a Walgreen's right there, why didn't she just grab a lozenge?

It is "sucky". It's a illusional/delusional "reality" that people buy into. It's a rationalization for simple, old-fashioned greed. And it has but one eventual outcome. Shareholders who value the notion of a "good-enough" profit that comes accompanied by things like long-term social responsibility and a respect for cultural values had better start speaking up loudly and immediately, before it's too late, if it's not already. WAKE UP!!!

psssssst.... sssssssssshhhhhhh....

And the Del Shannon clip just confirmed a long-standing suspicion of mine. That cat was plian ol' WEIRD.

Musically, yeah, it's pretty, uh... whatever. Although the Eugene McDaniels clip is something else, and in the best possible way. The exhaling of cigarette smoke while singing is sublime. And the trad stuff probably sounds better to my ears now than it would have a few years ago. Hell, it's POP MUSIC, and as such, hey, why not? But it's not the music, it was the directing, especially in the first half. Ray, if all you saw was the last bit, you missed the best stuff. Visual puns and gags out the wazzoo, easily at the level of the best of Kovacs. My favorite - a raucous drum break with the camera aimed fairly close up at the drumsticks, which do not move even a little. WTF!?!?! And lots of camera/editing jokes too. Unlike most of these type movies, I tolerated the music to get to the movie itself. And I was highly entertained!

I thought it was Gene Ammons who was Jewish... Or was that just at Carnegie Hall?

Clark Terry?

What kind of psycho/goof/nutjob kind of a flick was this, anyways? Richard Lester, y'all, RICHARD FREAKIN' LESTER!!!

Understood, Cali, and I'll look for that documentary. You know, I just had a flashback to a classmate of the time, a really funny guy who was in retrospect more than a little "high strung". He let it be known early on that his older bother had moved to California & was involved in the Panthers. At the time, that was kinda like a WOW thing for us white kids (at least the ones who didn't run away in fear ), but now I realize that for this kid, coming to school with us every day and "getting along" might have taken a helluva lot of "acting", and that the "high strung" part of his personality might have been more just "personality". I mention him in this context, because I remember him any number of times spontaneously shouting out "SAY IT LOUD" (just that part of the phrase...) to no one in particular out on the playground during recess. At the time, we thought he was just singing the song becaue it was popular, but in retrospect.... All of this to point out, no doubt unnecessarily, that the movement moved at different speeds in different parts of the country with different rates of success (the area I grew up in is probably more racist today than it was then, a dark, dank, rancid collection of human spirits clinging to the spirit of death thinking that's it'll keep them alive). A moment like "Say It Loud..." seems to me to have been a relatively rare one where everybody could be on the same page at the same time for everybody else to know about, like it or not. And now I'm left wondering - whatever happened to my friend, Randolph Jeffery?

Frank Bank Andy Pandy Milli Vanilli

Well, there's always the albums by the actual Headhunters themselves. I'm more than fond of Straight From the Gate myself. The rest...

To me, that one lags a bit in spots. But when it doesn't, yeah! Two really good live JB sets, from different eras, that nobody talks about too much these days are and The Apollo sets & Sex Machine (only partially truly live, but who knew then?) are justly revered, but these 1967 & 1980 albums more than hold their own in comparison. The earlier side is downright incendiary, and the latter shows that no matter how consistently dreary too much of the 70s studio material had gotten, that JB could still bring it live, even if "it" wasn't quite the same "it" as it used to be.