JSngry

That drummer's got the right idea!

It's a miracle nobody's gotten run over yet.

"That's the way the world ends - not with a whim, but a banker." - Paul Desmond

Yeah, I know what you mean. I know a drummer whose idea of a jazz beat is ching-chinga-ching.

Oh yeah - THIS motherfucker: If you definition of "jazz" includes On The Corner, then by all means hop right in! Also on the list for me would be groups like United Future Organization, Jazzanova (corny name, but some pretty involving music), & Kyoto Jazz Massive (ditto), although the latter tends more towards taking the whole "jazz/electonica" thing towards "dance music", if that's a problem. If not, there's some amazing confluences happening in the stuff of their's I've heard so far.

Often better by what it suggests to be possible than what it actually delivers, but what it suggests is pretty damn intriguing... I've almost posted about it in the Recommendations forum, but DG no longer carries it, and I don't know of another reliable domestic (i.e. USA) source. But definitely worth searching for, if only to give you something to think about, like what's, maybe, hopefully, yet to come... And have you checked out Mike Ladd? Negrophillia has got Thirsty Ear written all over it (and I mean that as a compliment), but Welcome To The Afterfuture is a "hip hop" album that feels a helluva lot more like jazz than it does anything else, at least to me. And Ursula Rucker, although a "hip-hop poet", almost always has jazz-informed electonic music behind her. You can get into the words, get into the music, or get into both. Obviously, the last way is the way I'd recommend.

I don't know either, but I do know that "the world" and "the music" have more often than not been going off in somewhat different directions for the last howmanyever years. It's nice to be right, and it's ok to be alone, but sometimes I ask myself if what was once even a tenuous connection to "real life" has become no connection at all. In a few cases (Braxton, Threadgill, Cecil, a.o), the answer is a resounding no, but sometimes I get the feeling that a party's being given and nobody's coming because it just ain't that much of a party in the first place unless you've never been anywhere else...

Well, thank god it's ART now. Hardly anybody cares, hardly anybody listens, but so what? We got CULTURAL LEGITIMACY now!

Yeah, that took some getting used to, but I got over it by A) finding some stuff that actually didn't have it (or where it was more subtle) and B) focusing more on what was happening above the four-to-the-floor. That's where the real action is! Then again, maybe what I've been listening to isn't stereotypical "house". I keep popping up against the term "dance underground" when checking out new stuff that I like, and I still don't know if that's supposed to mean that house itself is still considered "underground" or if there's a whole subset of dance musics being made that run counter in one way or another to the stereotypes. Either way, the one thing I've known from the git-go is that this is not music that's intended for "serious listening". It's made to purely be felt, and to be moved to. I'm asking myself if that quality automatically precludes having something else included, some "musical substance". I've heard plenty of things to suggest that it doesn't, although nothing fully formed as much as I'd like for it to be. But I'm thinking that that's not a "problem" with the music itself as much as it is the people who are making it, or more to the point, the people who aren't making it. Why shouldn't seriously musical erudite people make seriously musically erudite dance music for serious dancing? Why aren't seriously musical erudite people make seriously musically erudite dance music for serious dancing? Other than a few cats like Eddie Palmieri & Monday, I hear cats that are mostly on one side of the fence or the other. Is it that they can't, or is it that they don't want to? Either way, I see a problem with that. I'm not one who believes in feeding the mind and starving (or even under-feeding) the body, or vice versa. The former macrobiotic in me still screams the need for BALANCE. And like the man said - the bigger the front, the bigger the back. Anything else just ain't right.

Of course Tapscott was committed to the movement and to the record. But that's got no bearing on how the record itself was made, if it was in fact a studio recording. What I meant by "live" was "live in the studio", not "concert live". If it was the latter, then yeah, I doubt it was dubbed. But if it was studio, then my bet would be that the vocals were dubbed, or at least recorded in an isolation booth for later "fine-tuning". If I gave the impression that this was some random session that was used as backing for Brown's vocals, then that's bad communication on my part.

I'm listening to samples on AMG as we speak. Most interesting, although a lot more "electronica" oriented than what I've been checking out, which is stuff with a lot of Latin/Afro/Jazz/Etc. feel informing it. But I can certainly hear the attraction!

Bubbles Whitman = the man who said "Diddy Gallippy". You know what's fun? Get some of those fully intact airshots and put them on in your car while you're driving around late at night. Talk about hearing something "as it was meant to be heard"!

No, totally unfamilair to me. What's the deal?

Your perogative, of course, but please use a different stick when it comes time to stir the pot. Fecal bacteria in food can have some most unpleasant side-effects!

Hell yeah it's good news. Damn near everything that passes as "dance music" on commercial pop/R&B radio is prefab, soulless, grooveless bullshit. This shit is the real deal, real dance music, made by and for an audience who knows the difference. I've played a lot of gigs for championship-level "push dancers" (and some pretty damn good salsa dancers w/Latin bands) and have learned that real dancers have a feel for the subtleties of groove that most people, including a lot of musicians, don't. So any exposure for real dance music for real dancers is a good thing. Real always beats phony. Funny thing, though, how many jazz musicians are outright repulsed by the notion of playing dance music, or of dancing in general. I understand all too well the disgust that comes from playing lame music for lame dancers, but tell you what - when the real shit happens, it's beautiful in a way that few things are. It's almost spiritual. Hell, it probably is spiritual. But we don't even give ourselves the chance to go there, at least in part because the opportunities are so rare. But I wonder how many of us wouldn't take advantage of it if the opportunity came along. What -we're "jazz musicians" and "artists", and by god, you're supposed to LISTEN to us, show us RESPECT and keep your asses in your seats at all times? FUCK that! I think that too many, far too many "jazz musicians" today are actually sociophobes (is that a word?) at root, and intentionally make music to keep themselves seperate from anything resembling "normalacy" as far as human interaction goes. That's a far cry from just being who you are and if it's different, it's different, big deal, we can still party. And then, these same people who none-too-subtly give out the vibe that they don't want to be liked by any but a select few have the nerve to get bummed and pissed off when that's exactly what happens (a certain quartet in Dallas comes to mind... ). It's nuts, I tell you, literally unsane! Yet it's the rule more often than not. "Average people" are far more sensitive to the vibes a player gives off than generally given credit for. You can play the most horrendous shit with a good vibe and it'll be liked. You can play the hippest shit with an aloof vibe, and it won't be (other than by similar people, of whom there really aren't that many). Well hey - why not play hip shit, deep shit, and give off a good vibe about doing it? Why is that such a difficult proposition? Do you want to actually reach people, or do you want to prove something about either them or yourself? Or about both? Sure, there's always going to be some dumbasses who simply refuse to get it because they're convinced that what they know is all that matters. But they're the doppelgangers of the players who just as simply refuse to give it because they're convinced that what they know is all that matters. Music is nothing without spirit, and the same notes played with a good spirit is totally different music than the same notes played w/a bad one. It may sound the same, but it won't feel the same. I'll tell you what - if all I can have is an audience who responds only to feelings of superiority, I don't want an audience. If I can't get an audience with at least some people who don't know shit about what I'm doing but get a good feel from the music, then I'd just as soon not play. Becasue I feel that my music is a source of joy for me, and that joy is a blessing, and that blessings are meant to be shared with everybody, including strangers. And I see too many of us not wanting to talk to strangers. That's good advice for a six-year old, and there you have the whole thing in a nutshell right there. Do I "even LIKE jazz anymore"? Would I be going off on this tangent if I didn't?

Yeah, a lot of the house-influenced jazz I've heard has been lame. They don't give it up to the pulse the way they need to. Either that, or they haven't figured out how to make the machines really groove like the best house cats have. Whatever. What I've definitely gotten over is my esthetic objections to using "machines" to make "non-electronic" music. Hell, unless you're a singer, you can't make music w/o using a machine of some type (and the argument could be made that the vocal mechanism is itself a machine, so...). If you gotta get it out of a case, or put it together, or plug it in, or do anything other than just use what you were born with, it's a machine. Period. The problem for me has been that the machines (mostly the drum machines) haven't felt natural. Well, now either the technology's advanced, or the programming skills of the users have advanced, or both have advanced, to where you can lay down a serious groove using machines. No, it doesn't "sound real", but it feels real, and that's all I'm looking for. Myself, I think that the problem that "jazz" is going to have with all this is that the music's gotten so hung up on certain prideful and inflated notions of "tradition" and shit that even those who make a sincere effort are going to have subconscious blockage against letting go of it, and that's going to come out. Tradition is good and all that, but it's like inherited money - the further away you get from the person who actually earned it, the more it becomes a hindrance to finding your own self. Claims of "entitlement", for whatever reason, fall flat to me when all I hear as a result is second-hand glories filtered through third-hand lives played for fourth-hand audiences. That shit can go on indefinitely (and no doubt will), but... no thanks. I mean, it's all good, really it is, but no thanks. Nothing personal.

In The House Guess it's been going on for over a year, but I just heard it a few months ago. This cat plays the good stuff too! Here's hoping that the "jazz studies" types take a lesson and learn what swing is really all about. Sticks up the collective asses is not conducive to good swing. No matter how "sophisticated" the stick might appear, it's still a stick, and it's still up their ass.

"Madness"

Only 7 horns, but it's arranged & played like a big band, mostly.

Yeah, but this type of thing would almost certainly have the vocals added on top of the band tracks, unless it was a live recording. Brown was probably not a professional singer, so there'd have to be some "work" done on the vocals in terms of phrasing and stuff like that. Maybe even moreso if she mostly did recitations. They'd most likely want to work w/the phrasing of the speech. Jayne Cortez could do it live w/Richard Davis, but that's Jayne Cortez, dig? This was Vault, not a big label by any means, but not a DIY either. Some "professional" production was probably at play. But I could be wrong. I'm expecting a copy quite soon, and will report back. BTW - anybody ever hear that Flying Dutchman side of Pete Hamill's writings narrated by Roscoe, w/James Spaulding & Ron Carter playing in the background? That's definitely reading added on top of tracks, and that's what I'm expecting here, especially since it's a full ensemble playing, not 1 or 2 people.

The CDs or her playing?

There's a version of "Windows" from 1/05/66 that was recorded at a Mercer Ellington Septet session (w/Chick on piano), by a quartet of Paul Gonsalves, Corea, Aaron Bell, & Louis Bellson. It can be found (and retitled by somebody as "Ugh") on New Mood Indigo, a Doctor Jazz LP that's probably been out on CD somehow. Wasn't released until 1985, though. Chick seems like he never went to a session w/o a tune or two. Don't know if they'd been requested beforehand or not, but the cat seemed to be somebody who always had tunes ready for a session. That's smart.

All I can add is that when/if the Herman Phillips (you have heard of Herman Phillips, haven't you?) Mosaic comes out, there's gonna be a lot of happy campers, yours truly included.

Tom Slick Slick Rick Doug E. Fresh