JSngry

And if you can't find anything by the Madonnas, look for something by a band called Giorgio Moroder...

Yes, I know that. But only the first was done for the Theile-led Impulse! The others were done after Ed Michel took over at the label. Different deal altogether, and outside the scope of this discussion, 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.

The rest of them I'd expect that from. But Bob Mintzer should know better.

Indeed. Don't forget that solo album made for DJs to sample. Still have yet to locate a copy, although I have found a compilation w/a few selections. GRAND stuff, believe it or not.

Jim, that can be true if an entire artist is being dismissed, (good point made later about artists vs. albums being discounted) but is a dangerous general assumption even then. I agree that I need to dismiss myself from judging good hip-hop from bad hip-hop, etc. because I can't "hear" any of it. But when I dig 'Spring' and am left cold by 'Lifetime', when I love 'The Gigolo' but feel lukewarm towards 'Cornbread', when I am crazy about 'Complete Communion' but can barely listen to 'Symphony for Improvisors', when I will take 'Ready for Freddie' to the grave but never feel any urge to play 'Hub-Tones' or 'Night of the Cookers' something different is going on there other than 'I don't get it simple as that'. There has to be aesthetic involved even within a sub-genre. Not a problem. You obviously are judging "from within", with a multi-informed perspective, as are others in this thread. But there's been some really dumb, one-dimensional shit said by others. And I ain't naming names! However, for the sake of argument, I think that The Gigolo & Cornbread are fully equal, both among Lee's best, that Spring & Lifetime are apples and oranges, that Symphony For Improvisors suffers from inadequate recording, and that I'm with you on the Hubbards.

Impulse! was not built around the concept of "rotating house bands" either. They mostly brought in "known quantities" as leaders, and, other than Trane, didn't do the whole "artist development" thing like Blue Note did, at least until they got into the "New Thing". And even then, the focus was almost entirely on the leader. How many Impulse! sidemen (again, out of the Trane orb) came out of "nowhere" and were so impressive to Taylor/Thiele that they got Impulse! contracts/dates a result? Hell, Shepp had to almost gangster Trane to get Theile to give him a date. And whatever Shepp did for Marion Brown, the net result was what? One album. If Lion had've been behind those cats (and if they had come along when he was more energetic about growing the label), there would've been a series of sideman & leader dates. The talent would have been nurtured to one dgree or another. That was Lion's way, at least in his prime. With Impulse!, Thiele was, apart from Coltrane-related items, a record-maker first and foremost. Not a problem, but it does point out a difference in conceptual/working methodology between the labels. which in turn points out a difference in what their respective outputs "represent".

Well yeah. But otoh, this "overrated" business seems to be more aimed at deflating the mythology (which I'm all in favor of, btw) than it does at understanding what the mythology is all about in the first place (which I'm even more in favor of). A lot of Blue Note fandom has its roots in uncritical acceptance of any/everything put out during the Lion/Wolff era. I mean, there's no way that Dippin' & Reach Out are the same "quality" record, if you know what I mean. But you got your "faithful fans" who will swoon over both equally just because it's Hank Mobley, and just because it's on Blue Note. Later for that shit. But... There's also a level of appreciation for the label as a whole that is quite legitimate, I think. There's no question in my mind that the aforementioned "quality control" aspect of the label paid off handsomely. Even on a record that I find to be pretty much a dud overall for me, like, say Byrd's Mustang has its moments of truth and beauty. That's not something that can be said about too many other labels (although Impulse! would probably be one about which it could. But that was a label that operated from a different premise than did Blue Note). Taken as a whole, the BN catalog is remarkably consistent. And what they did in providing ongoing documentation of a whole set of players (some of whom would not likely be documented as thoroughly, if at all, elsewhere) in differing (and not so differing) contexts cannot be objectively denied. So between consistency and documentation, there's definitely legitimate grounds for respect and admiration. When you come at it like that, then yeah, I think you can certainly be discriminating between albums. You should be, in fact. But to simply dismiss a unique document like Fuschia Swing Song misses the point - it's exactly the uniqueness -in every way - of that document that makes it special. Now, if this whole aspect of uniqueness, documentation, etc. doesn't float your boat, fine. I understand that. I personally couldn't give a rat's ass about, for example, the 70s Prog-Rock that gets a lot of dicks hard on this board. But since I simply just don't dig what it's all about in the first place, I'm not going to use the few odd things therein that I do like as a benchmark to claim that everything else is "overrated". I don't have the enthusiasm for the music as a whole to make that distinction honestly, and I don't have the depth of understanding as to what particular albums really represent to the overall perspective of that type music to do that. I'll just shut up. And snicker. And Prog-Rock is just a random example. Within the realm of "jazz" itself, there's more than enough subsets of genres and scenes to make Blue Note just another one of them. The devout fans should recognize that, but so should the not-so devout. Otherwise, everybody says some really stupid shit along the way. And that has happened in this thread. Now as for Hubbard, yeah, most of his BN leader dates are to me "lesser" than his sideman dates. That's a puzzle to me, actually. Always has been, especially since he made such a strong showing as a leader on CTI (say what you will about the music itself, there's no denying that Freddie very much presented a "strong leader face" on those dates, especially the earlier ones). But few of the BN leader dates are "bad" as much as they are just....not as distincitve as they could/should have been. And again, that's a mystery to me. But yet again, there's things on those records that need to be heard if that era and those players are of more than just passing interest to you, and although I understand the "overrated" tag in this instance, I think that it's too easy to slide from "overrated" into "easily dismissed", and I'm nowhere near ready to do that, not in the context of understanding this era and these players. Because there is "relevant information" to be found, and not just a little bit of it either. Quite the contrary. But you have to want to find it, and not everybody wants to do the work. Not saying that they should, mind you, just saying that it's there if you want it. And that holds true of a lot of "lesser" BNs, and of a lot of "lesser" records in general. The information is there. Besides, I'll go to my grave digging the shit out of Ready For Freddie. Would that they had all hit that vibe!

Why don't you see if they're hiring?

Fair enough, but I'm 50, wear glasses that don't work as well as they used to, and have seen plenty of Fellini movies. Seriously, no dis meant to the Goldfrapp thing (seems a little "Euro-popp-y" to me, which is cool, just not what I'm looking for at this juncture), just a heads up that there's a lot of musically interesting, "musically" in the sense that you and I know it, going on in the whole house/electronica thing than I had ever imagined. It's underground as hell, apparently (at least for somebody like me), and very little of it is American (London/Tokyo/NY seems to be the main axis of the record labels), but it is going on, and there seems to be plenty of it.

Y'all are crackin' me up... What we have in the BN catalog of the 50s & 60s is a body of product turned historical documentation. As product, much of it was conceived and presented for what even then was a niche market. As historical documentation, it remains that. Somebody like Tina Brooks isn't "important" because they made grand statements that posed a new direction for the music. They're important because they had a little sumphin-sumphin different, a little flavor of their own that was very much of their time yet just every so slightly different. How much one both empathises with the original scene and the little something different will determine the value they place on somebody like Brooks. Andrew Hill? Well, whatever you want to think. But I'll ask this - whether or not he floats your personal boat, did/has anybody else made music like this? Mobley? See Brooks, only exponentially so. Blue Train? - get real - that was by far and away Trane's most fully/completely realized album until he went to Atlantic. Some historical perspective is called for. Hubbard? See Hill, only with fewer exponents. The guy was simply one of the most fluid and fiery trumpeters who's ever played. The uses to which that fluidity and fire was put can be debated, but not the thing itself. That alone matters, but I myself think that the "overrating of Freddie Hubbard" is in itself overrated. The motherfucker could flat out play, and did so a lot more times than people seem to want to begrudge him. Etc. Etc. Etc. Only a few items in the BN catalogue qualify as "general classics". The rest is for "connoisseurs". Not in the elitist sense, but simply in the sense that most of it is documentation of a relatively few scenes, of a relative handful of people (most of them top-shelf musicians) doing what they did, and sometimes changing along the way. If you "get it", it's gold, and if you don't, you wonder what the fuss is about. But it's a lot hipper to just fess up that the various evolvinghardbop/takingtheinsideoutroute/souljazz/whatever segments of the label's output just don't hold more than at best general interest for you personally. Because if it does hold more than at best general interest to you, you have a reason for caring about the minutiae. And if it doesn't, you don't. Simple as that. This whole "overrated" crap more often than not is just really another way of saying "I don't get it, so it can't be all that". Fuck that.

Haven't yet heard Goldfrapp, and based on the AMG sound clips I'm in no hurry to, but there I'm finding out that there's a shitload full of (fill-in-the-blank)-house music (which inevitably gets crossed over into "electronica" by the genre police) that fits this description and doesn't have the "icy chill" thing happening, which is more than ok with me. You wanna hear some impressive shit? Check out Some really audacious tacts get taken in both songcraft & beatcraft, and there's a variety of damn fine singers as well. 2 CDs, 23 bucks. See Da' Bastids.

In general. I've not listened to the LP in a while, but I don't remember hearing Dewey.

To the best of my knowledge, Dewey didn't play oboe. He played musette. Not the same thing at all.

Seka Seka Aleksić Monique Séka

The title to that link shows in my Firefox tab as New England Schools Sailing Ass... So she must've been really fine!

Thisng is, there weren't very many "bad" BNs from this period. It's all pretty above-average for the most part, especially from the late-50s on (I myself find the early/mid 50s dates much more variable). Some are just better than others, and that's where all the subjectivity comes in. Is every one of them a "classic"? No, of course not. But there's a consistency there that seems to lead the enthusiatics among us to think so, and that's an impression that can easily be excused, at least for a little while. I will say this - other than Royal Flush, there's no Donald Byrd album I'd just have to have.

NESSA-NESS NITTY IN YO CITY!

This is Wanessa at her convention. :-D http://www.uwm.edu/~oamedina/Pictures.html

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea...riendid=3077181

Very attractive? Dude, did you make a move? Chances like that don't come along every day... Of course, if you're already comitted, never mind...

Ah. modern Country music... absolutely the most manufactured/controlled popular music being made today, bar none. Even if more often than not there's "real talent" involved (especially when it comes to the session players), if even half the stories I've heard are true there's so many rules about what a song can/can't do (including where in the bar a phrase can or can't begin, and where vowel sounds can or can't fall in a phrase), about how it can/can't be recorded/produced, that even the best of the stuff is so tightly controlled (i.e. - manufactured) as to make Milli Vanilli look like improvisors. I kid you not. And yet, there are the occasional gems, in spite of it all... Which just goes to show you that, again, the focus of "pop" music is the record, not the performance. The performance is just one piece in the mix, and quite often not the most important one at that. Again, there's a parallel to movies, I think.

We all do!

Clarence Williams III Peggy Lipton Quincy Jones

Santo & Johnny A Somnambulist Ken Hanna