JSngry

I think it's a drag when people "listen" to anything more than the music being played. Case in point: About 25 years ago, I did a re-harminization of "Close To You" (yeah, tha Carpenters song, but it's also a Bachrach song, and Bachrach is one helluva songwriter AFAIC). Couldn't get players to even try it just because it was a Carpenters song. So I finally took the tact of just bringing in the changes w/o the melody. Cats loved it. The I put the melody, which I had slightly rephrased to fit the reharmonization, to it. Immediate reversion to hating it just because it was a Carpenters song. Sorry, but that's just stupid. We hear a lot of talk in jazz circles about "being in the moment" (which is a Romantic notion quite often more often honored in talk than in action, but that's another matter...). Well hell, if you got some good changes to play on, and a good groove to go with it, how "in the moment" are you if you can't get a 1970 AM radio hit out of your head and let it spoil your chances for happiness? Just how fucking "in the moment" are you then, Mr. Hip Jazzmuzishun? The whole thing about not being able to shed extra-musical connotations is a surrendering to the powers that be. It's a self-imposed refusal to see life where life has been (often) intentionally downplayed, disguised, or distorted. It's letting them inside your mind and letting them decide what you can or can not have for yourself. I ain't letting nobody tell me what I can or can not have. If I want to have Masters At Work and Bird and Ayler and James Brown and any other g-damn thing I want, by god, I am going to have it, and I am going to enjoy it fully and without guilt. If you're really "hip", you know good music when I hear it, you know what functionality is, you know the difference between records and songs, and you know how to listen to levels other than those of the surface. Somebody else can worry about "connotations" and all that shit. That's just an excuse to not deal with anything outside their own pre-construted box of a "comfort zone". Once again - how "hip" can you be if you're basing your "hipness" on what you keep out rather than what you can let in? How "hip" are you if you let The Man decide for you what you can claim for yourself and what you must reject? Open up your own freakin' mind and take what you're not supposed to have if you want it. That's the act of a true revolutioary! Anything else is volunteered slavery.

The Treniers RULED!

Soul Man Dave Porter Cole Porter

The Ganster of Love A Prophet of Doom Two Tons of Fun

WHOA!!!

James Petrillo Art Shell Red Skelton

Thanks. brownie! I've got the Strand LP also, but about half the front & back cover are peeled off. But it was a quarter in a thrift store, so...

What's the definition of a "crappy" pop tune? Most of the songs listed here stike me as pretty decent songs. It's the records of them, the hit versions, that are annoying as hell. "Alone again..." is not at all a bad song, but Gilbert O'Sullivan's record of it pissed me off from Day One, and things haven't changed since. OTOH, there's any number of insipid pop songs that have been made into great records. You think to youself, "man, what a great song", but when you try and do something with it other than cover it outright, there ain't nothing there.

"I Got Rhythm"

Hampton did a chart on "Newport" for Maynard's band. Don't know if the Strand album came before or after that. But it's pretty much in keeping with the rest of his writing for that band. Slide Hampton was a prolific writer in Maynard's band, and his charts are not without harmonic/textural interest. Maybe Little's writing was influenced by Hampton's?

So much talk about "wanting to reach a wider audience", with the implication(?) that at some level it was some sort of "business decision". I'm not convinced. If you were alive (and old/young enough to be a part of the "vibe") then, you can remember how there was this window where it seemed that the notion of "universal brotherhood" was definitely within reach, perhaps just around the corner. Knowing what we know about Ayler's inclinations, I've got no doubt that he too was feeling this sense of possibility in his own outsized way, and willingly made those records in that spirit - not as a "career move", but as a genuinely felt, if possibly "delusional", outreach. Now, we also know that by the time he was making those records that his overall mental condition had changed (I would say "deteriorated", but I think it's more complicated than that), and I think that that's what accounts for the quality of those records. He really was "losing himself" in all kinds of ways, ways that play directly into the whole "messianic" trip, and ways that no doubt felt as inevitable to him as they seemed disturbing to many "on the outside". I think it was Charles Tyler who said that the Aylers had that "old time religion" so deep inside them that it eventually messed them up. I think you can look at the desire/compulsion to preach to the world what you percieve as profoundly overpowering simple truths in what you perceive as profoundly overpowering simple ways has as much to do with the records we're talking about here as anything. That's how I hear them anyway - they're disturbing in a way that the earlier musics aren't, and the most disturbing thing for me is that I can rationally hear the delusionality at work as easily as I can irrationally believe in it. Even as he was irretrievably slipping into another place, Albert Ayler had a seriousass mojo.

The guy had a message he believed in and wanted to reach people with it. Imagine that.

Here's the one I use: http://www.wunderground.com/ You can customize it for your (or any) zip code )or any country). Animated, zoomable NEXRAD radar loops, extrememly localized readings, forecasts, bulletins, etc. For $10 a year, you can make the ads go away too. The only thing missing is live radar, but the loops are updated every 5-6 minutes. Any others?

Rollie Fingers Bill Hand Odd Job

Exactly. Enjoy the fruit salad!

That blurb is kinda blurby...

Yeah, I'd go. I just hope they don't get too literal.

John Phillip Sousa John Phillips Denny Doherty

Polly Darton Pat Playjacks Velma Blank

It's do-able... Warning - Not Work Safe

I just thought that you'd forgotten to shave...

Well, sorta, maybe, I guess. The Ayler gives me goosebumps. That Bird side (just the packaging, not the music), gave me the heebie-jeebies.

That only proves my point!

Personally, for me, it's "Personally" by Z.Z. Hill. "I got somethin' ta' give ya'....that the mailman....CAIN'T deli-va." You may disagree. If so, you are wrong! C'mon, let's duke it out!

Chubby Checker Ward Parkway Cameo