JSngry

Just released (in Japan only?): http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?K...157&ref=myp

Love & hope (if that's not redundant), and all that springs from them.

Yeah, if we killed the Internet, then everybody would get to liking 50th-generation Hard Bop jazzmusic & Sharp Nine would be large. Yeeeeeeeeeaaaahhhhhhh..... OmniTone's a good label, but very much a niche one. Same w/Palmetto. But the niche is only going to get so big. They should be trying to grow the niche, and offering downloads vs insisting on hard copies seems like a good way to control minimize overhead, and maybe free up some fundage for promo. Didn't/Doesn't Palmetto actually offer "bonus material" as free downloads? Smart idea, that, but it's just a start. Those other labels, I don't know squat about. Have heard about them by name, seen ads, etc. But I'm thinking that since that's as far as it goes, there's been nothing there that I care about. That's not the label's problem, but it's not mine either.

Dead, I think.

I think that griff was significantly better served at Riverside than at BN, although whether or not that was as much a matter of his own maturing as anything else, I'm not ready to say. But Riverside was definitely more amenable to different/expanded/whatever settings than was BN, for whatever reason. Now, about Unit Structures, again, some historical perspective is called for. You gotta remember that prior to that, the last Cecil date that was out there was the Into The Hot material, and that that was still "Cecil playing over time". (I know that some of the Montmartre stuff was released in the US on Fantasy/Debut, but A)that was a trio date, B)Fantasy back in those days was not all that widely distributed except for a few "hits", and C)I don't know exactly when that album was released. Anyway, good luck finding a copy, then or now). Anyway, Unit Structures was the first side with profile (and quite possibly the first side period) to present Cecil Taylor's music in the form that we all know today. It could be argued that pretty much everything that's come since is an expansion on what was first documented on that album. So afaic, it's "classic" status is a no-brainer, even if the music wasn't as incredible as it is ("Enter Evening" alone is one for the ages, & getting an alternate of it on the CD was a gift from on high). He'd have come out (no pun intended) somewhere sooner or later, but this is where it happened, and there ain't no changing that. There literally was no Cecil Taylor music like this on record before Unit Structures, but there's been plenty of it since. So I say you gotta give recording props to the recorded archetype. That's an interesting perspective, Jim. I guess that, given the Cafe Montmartre recordings, I had never thought of Unit Structures as being so much of a step forward, particularly as it came several years later. I have always considered Cafe Montmartre as the foundation for everything that came since. To clarify, I said first documented on that album. If the Mointmartre stuff came out on Fantasy/Debut before US, then I'm in error. But even if it did, the distribution was so poor/limited that it's for all intents & purposes a technicality. Now, in hindsight, yeah, the Montmatre stuff is the shit, the real first documentation, probably. But for the longest, it was US. And for the longest, remember, Cecil was nowhere near as prolific a recording artist as he's been for the last 30 years or so. If you've come to the music since then, there's been an embarassment of riches from which to choose. But it weren't always so.

Yeah, you could tell that he didn't know the bridge. 1st chorus is just kinda "well, let me hear how this goes", 2nd is "ok, it goes like this, right?", and the 3rd is pretty much all the way there.

Definitely one to get. Recording's not nearly as good as the DC thing, but I think the playing's better by all concerned.

Oooooh, NICE!

See Da' Bastids.

Hal Crook used to play with Phil Woods.

I didn't know that about Tabackin (and don't really care, if you know what I mean, but duly noted for the sake of accuracy). I thought that I had read in several places where Monday & Toshiko went back & forth between America & Japan after Toshiko & Mariano split up because Toshiko had work there, and as a single mom she took both it and Monday. But I could be wrong about that.

Well, is samples is all you've heard, then I understand. Just know that her body of work as a whole is pretty much "all over the map" stylistically, sometimes from album to album, and sometimes within albums, and even songs. "Boundaries" of styles are one thing she seems to not be too impressed with!

I think that's been true of Marley for 25+ years now, that's not new. He's probably more revered in the global non-African population as well. Agreed. But that's still going to come as quite a shock to a large portion of the American music-loving/liking community.

And what style is that? And FWIW, I don't see "pushing" boundaries as her thing nearly as much as ignoring them.

I'll even up the ante a little bit by saying this - America is no longer the cultural center of the popular music world. There's a whole generation, a global generation, who doesn't give a phlying phuck about our baggage and how it continues to circle around itself (although they dig the shit out of some of it's more serendipitous results). They're moving on, and we are going to be left in their dust. To use but one example - I'd venture to say that Bob Marley as a musical figure, never mind cultural icon, is far more revered amongst the global African population that are James Brown & Aretha combined. Far more, not even close. America, can you see the tailights? Look quick, they'll soon be out of range.

Fair enough, & I totally understand where you're coming from, if for no other reason than it could've (hell - would've) been me not too long ago. All I can say is that for me, it's a new kind of "colorless" soul singing, one that's international in scope, and one that's put all the societal baggage that went into the creation of the old soul singing behind (as much as possible). There's a fair amount of it going on in the world at large, still mostly underground, but it's there, and it feels real enough to me more often than not. There's a pocket of multi-racial "neo-soul music" going on in England that's neither "white" nor "black" sounding, at least in American terms, but that might be the point. It excites me, because at some point, the world is going to have to let go of the rancid legacy of European colonialism and get on with the business of moving on, just saying "fuck it, I'm done with it". That's going to be especially difficult, if not impossible, here in America, but hey, that's where I am. Let the dying play the games of the dead, and let those who want to live get on with the business of living the way living should be done. Monday's certainly got the background to come by this attitude naturally - Japanese/Italian parentage, Anglo step-father, totally jazz-surrounded household, a childhood split between the US & Japan, and by all accounts, quite the club (i.e. Black/Urban Dance Music) kid for quite a while. At some point for her, I'd imagine, she finally caught on that "soul" really is a universal quality if you let it be, and just went with it. Fuck being any other race than simply human & just let it roll like that. For that, I think she deserves some sort of Role Model For the 21st Century award. No, she doesn't sound "black". But she doesn't really sound "white" either. Aretha she's not, but neither is she Helen Reddy, dig? She just is who she is, a pan-cultural child of the world who loves it all, and she doesn't pretend to be anything else. That mike take some getting used to for American ears, who are accustomed to having racial identity telegraphed from a million miles away every time they open their eyes and ears. It's how we are, and it's not our fault. But at some point, we're all going to have to let it go and be "from" someplace and be here now, if you know what I mean. In my opinion, the whole "white folks needing to feel black to prove they have soul" thing was necessary for a good long while as a societal transitioning tool. But the thing about transitioning is that sooner or later, the transition has to complete itself and a new thing has to start getting on with business. To me, Monday's there. Like I said, for Americans as a whole, it might seem (and may actually be) unreasonable or even unfathomable, to imagine such a thing, much less put it into practice. Very well might be. But for what it's worth, I'm down with it all the way. Just my opinion, and I'm certainly not expecting a unanimous round of applause from the house for it. But there it is anyway.

I'm still figuring it out myself... But it seems to be a form of house music where the beat is fragmented like hell, w/all kinds of stops/starts/sputters not unlike Andy Newmark's drumming on "In Time", or the freakier stuff that DG did w/Tower of Power, except there's silences in between the accents. The shit grooves like a motherfucker, I'm telling you, because some cats layer that shit and you got all this polyrhythmic stuttering - with stops and starts - going on in the service of a deepass groove. What ups the ante for me is that the musical sophistication required to program like this means that the form is not at all unfriendly to some equally/relatively sophisticated songwriting, and, in the case of a group called The Society, that goes so far as to use it as a foundation for some "real" "jazz" improvising over some "real jazz" type compositions. Of course, it ain't nowhere near all the way there yet in those terms, but the potential is definitely there for the if/when of real "real" players decide to go stepping into it. For a good taste of it, check out the KJM side I referenced above, as well as a cut off of Ursula Rucker's Silver Or Lead called "Q&A" that'll damn near dizzify you to death. I'm sure there's a lot more (and maybe better, still haven't really gotten to IG Culture or 4Hero outside of some Monday remixes which certainly caught my attention by the huevos), but that's the thrill of ongoing discovery, no?

Which would be what? Just curious, really.

Oh geez... (insert extreme embarassment smiley here). Yes, thank you. Your package is forthcoming.

Well, I'm of the mind that for sheer dancing delight, nothing comes remotely close to Andrew!!!, so that just goes to show ya'...

Stollman wanted and did make a play. CT did not want. And that probably happened more than once with more than one label during that time?

Never saw that much of a resemblance between Monday & Toshiko until...

The Warne/Tabackin was a Toshiko-produced thing for the Japanese Disco-Mate label that she/they then leased to Inner City. Same thing w/her trio side, Tributes.

Dude, I'm just not into anything "Eurotronic" right now. Just a personal POV at this moment. I'm old enough to have caught both the first & second wave of it (and to have lost interest by the time the third wave came around). What's hitting me now is stuff like the Broken Beat shit. Some of that stuff is just nuts, swings like a mofo, and yeah, it's costing me money. But it's making me happier about music than I've been in quite a while (even though it's making me realize that I'm probably obsolete now, but oh well, I had my fun and then some, and besides, you never know what kind of freaks you're going to hook up with at some point...), so it's all good like that.

Cecil was too big to fit into BN for any longer than he did, especially after Lion quit. Hille, remember, had a bit of a sabbatical around the time Lion left, and he definitely made a different type of music upon returning (again though, that sabbatical and the change in music might have been a personal change as much as anything). Really, we can play the "what if" game for a lot of scenarios, and this Cecil/BN thing is definitely a major one, but I don't know if but that by doing so we run the risk of building up some subliminal resentment against what really did happen because of what could have but didn't. Hell, it happens to me, especially when I hear In The World & wonder where the fuck damn near all the rest of that music was studio-time-wise during that time. Hill's gain at BN didn't necessarily come at Cecil's expense, dig? Theile could've done it just as easily, no? But Impulse! was pretty much TraneTown, and that was that. You gotta think that Stollman could've at least made a play (and maybe he did?). Lion did what Lion did, and that's how it went down. Hey -fate is a cruel bitch sometimes, and if anybody can find a way around that, they can have my momma's car, my wife's negligees (very tasty, picked most of 'em out myself, with an eye for detail), and my other tenor.