JSngry

You'd be surprised how many birthdays are the result of fat-fingering...

HB Eric Tomorrow!

HB MM!

HB Visenheimer!

Because Don Schlitten was a producer with a clear vision, at least when it came to music.

Sam's great on this, & a lot more "in your face" than George would be. Buy with confidence, I say. Yeah, the 1960 stuff w/Trane is the shit. But this is pretty damn fine too.

Be where? Yeah. You gotta remember that Blue Note was all but dead by the late-70s, even as a "pop=jazz" label. Those LT albums were like almost supernatural "messages from beyond" or some such for those of us on the first wave of what's now a full-fledged cult - people who were/are too young to have caught it while it happened but picked up that there was something special happening with that particular label. Those LT sides came out fast, and went even faster. As noted above, the last series or two must have had really small pressing runs, because a couple of them I only saw as promo copies. One, Thinking Of Home, I only found about 5 years later at a mall record shop in Roanoke, Va. And I had been looking... Point is, you just got the feel (later confirmed) that this stuff was being issued on-the-fly, almost as if nobody was looking. The somewhat generic general cover design seemed to have been created to not call attention to itself, to make one side look like the other so that nobody "important" would think that there was a relative shitload of stuff coming out in a relative short amount of time on a label that for all intents and purposes was no longer functioning. But like any good coded communication from the underground, there was always something there for the people who were hip to what the real deal was. And that was the photos. And I still maintain that far more often than not, those photos were more than a little fitting for the music, if also a bit "coded" at times (you might wonder what the hell a shot of a cue ball & pool stick have to do with either Grant Green or the tune "Solid" unless you were ever in an inner city pool hall that had a jazz-oriented jukebox, and then it would make perfect sense). So yeah, maybe you had to be there. But I'd like to think that with a little bit of background knowledge, those LT covers could be spared the simplistic dismissals that I sometimes see. No, they're not Reid Miles, not by any stretch of the imagination, but they're as much a part and place of the time that those albums were first released as Miles' covers were.

The article in full (just remember your mom's warnings about not making too many funny faces, lest one of them gets stuck...):

At first, I was thinking you were being a smartass, because Nat was really getting, uh... "unhinged", and Sammy was portraying it pretty well, I thought. But then Mel Torme started singing, & Pops started looking like he wandered in from the set of "Imitation Of Life", and hey, it went off the hook with stunning rapidity. Much love to Pops, but I'll say it again, just because I feel it so hard - FUCK MEL TORME.

I like the word "exorcism". Started listening to this one when I was 17 and had a lot of demons. As I got older,I accquired more demons, and this album always helped. Now that most of the demons are tamed, it remains an old and trusted friend who's shared things that most of my musical friends haven't. Or, more to the point, couldn't. Comparisons are inevitable, but ultimately useless, because this music differs in intent & in execution from any other Mingus work, including his other big-band work. Very little here in the way of explicit, fully composed themes, just a little sumphin-sumphin to get the vibe in place, and then it all comes tumblin' down, as if in the midnight hour. The closest thing conceptually would be "Folk Forms No. 1", but that one is a train to a totally different town.... The amazing thing to me (although maybe it shouldn't be), is the amount of splicing in this album, and that Mariano's solo interludes were recorded seperately, far from the maddening cloud of the rest of the session. Although you can hear the studio constructionism of the whole thing (especially after you know it well), there's a constant flow of emotion across it all that could just as easily come from a non-stop live performance. Technically, that's the mark of a good editor/producer, but spiritually, that tells me that everybody was in a zone on this project and that with skillful enough chops, it could have been spliced together one note at a time & it would still have the same vibe.

Sorry, but Patrick Roques usally does it a lot better, imo. Those King covers lack the unified design of the real deals, especially in the colors. Sorta seems like a rock band doing a Duke Ellington song, or something like that. Personal preference/taste, however, is all it is. But I still maintain that althought the full covers of the LT series were "quaint", no doubt due to budget constraints, the actual photos used were usually very good, appropriate, and, often enough, provocative. But maybe you had to be there.

Is there a difference between "particle board" & OSB, or is OSB just the preferred term in the industry?

There's different grades of particle board, determined by how compressed it is. The good stuff will hold up, not as long as high quality lumber, but at least as long as lower grade. Veneer is important to. You put a cheap, thin veneer on top of particle board, and you're wwasting money. But a good veneer on top of good quality particle board is nothing to sneeze at, and it won't be "budget priced" either. I've not bought from IKEA, but I have bought both solid wood & quality particle board/wood veneer furniture. If you're looking for something to last for generations, go for the solid wood (but it better bee good wood well constructed). But if you just want something functional that'll easily last for 15-20 years, then the other way is more than good. The way a lot of people move & redecorate, it's probably best to hold off on the "heirloom" quality stuff until you know you're good & settled. And truthfully, quality particle board/veneer is going to last you longer and better than lower grade solid wood with half-ass construction. I got off the solid wood kick a long time ago after seeing stuff fall apart due to flimsy construction techniques and/or cheap wood. Doesn't matter how good the wood is if it ain't built right, and vice-versa. Particle board is a lot like plywood (or as it's know in it's better incarnations, "pressed wood"). There's been so many low budget uses of it (with low budget results) that it's gotten a reputation for being an intrinsically cheap medium. It's easy to overlook the fact that both products come in all grades (and price ranges). A smart consumer can get some pretty good furniture w/o having to pay exhorbatant prices.

I thought they used high quality particle board, which when coupled with a high-quality wood veneer makes for some damn solid furniture at an affordable price.

I'm a fan of the LT covers. They scream low-budget cool. Some of those photos are really appropriate. Most are, actually. Dance With Death is a favorite, as is Thinking Of Home. The King covers, however, look kinda cheap to me.

Mitchell Ayres Little Jack Little Big Tiny Little

King Karol Carole King El Rey del Mambo

I was thinking Van Dyke Parks, but that works too.

The Brotherhood of Breath Whitney Houston Betty Everett

What the france?

Not that I've read.

Miss Barbara Stanwick Miss Toni Fisher Frank Thomas

Hey - Charlie Rouse played with Monk. Gotta respect that.

They'd have to find out about it first...

See?