JSngry

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

Exactly. And many pop records are not about the performance per se as much as they are about the finished record. A movie actor might need multiple takes, just as a pop singer would. Movies are made in stages just as pop records are, and not everbody's in the same place at the same time (2nd units, anybody?). Plus, the director of a movie is analogous to the producer of a pop record. Both provide the overall vision/direction of the finished product as well as how that product gets put together along the way. And - both can, and often do, get a lot of help from various "assistants". only some of whom are only sometimes properly credited. So I stand by the analogy. In fact, I might even posit that the reason that we tend to look at manufactured pop music vs. live performance skills in a different light than we do manufactured movies vs live theatre is that most of us have a far greater exposure to movies than we do live theatre, but most of us have heard at least some quality live music at some point in our life. And that goes double for performing musicians for whom the notion of "manufacturing" a product instead of creating it live runs counter to our personal esthetic within our own field. But hey - if making a successful (commercially or otherwise) pop record was really as simple as "we'd" like to think, then anybody could do it. Anybody can't, and not just because of the vicissitudes of the industry. There's a high amount of craft involved in the manufacturing, and occasionally that craft can cross the line into art. Myself, I respect the hell outta that even when I don't like/love it.

Well yeah, ok, but how many "movie stars", could do a kickass job in live theatre w/o a lot of prep work? And how many "celebrety" editors are there? Cinematographers? Soundtrack composers (other than the John Williamses, etc> And even then. who's got the bigger name - him or Spielberg?) Etc. ? It's all directors and stars in the public'e eye, and mostly just stars. Which is ok afaic, I'm just saying that the manufacturing of a movie & the manufacturing of a pop record are much more similar than not, yet they're percieved in totally different lights in some circles. Not by me, though. I'm a fan of well-constructed pop records just as I am of well-constructed movies, assuming in both cases that the end result is a good story well told.

Tippin' The Scales wasn't even regarded all that highly by Lion, apparently, seeing as how it wasn't released until the 70s...

Not apart at all, as long as we recogognize those value judegements as being exactly that (and treat them accordingly).

You totally off da' hook, Dawg! Seriously - movies are at least every bit as manufactured and post-productionalized as pop music. But one's considered an art and one's dismissed as evil crap, just because. Go figure that one.

You had me till that last sentence... Once it's recognized & acknowledged I don't hink that you can "measure" soul w/o at the same time measuring human worth, and that rapidly becomes a very slippery slope. 101 Strings, yeah, I'm willing to say that that probably has little or no soul. But Dionne/Bachrach vs Aretha is very much a matter of different expressions of different lives, and unless/until we're willing to say that one of those lives is more "meaningful" than the other, then I'm content to let it go that Aretha's (or Willie;s, etc.) "soul" is more easily grasped my "most of us" simply because it resonates closer to our life experiences (or percieved life experieces anyway...) and is more overtly expressed, not that she herself is a human being with more soul or that her music has more intrinsic feeling in it than Dionne's. Granted, Aretha is a force of nature, so perhaps that's not the best example. Probably isn't. But to get all Tristano-ish about it, there is a difference between "emotion" & "feeling". Too often that distinction is not recognized, and too often easy dismissals are made as a result.

J. Fred Muggs Molly Pitcher Tom Beers

Johnny Spence Skip Spence Four and Twenty Blackbirds

I'll take indignace about "manufactured" pop music seriously when the same people who bitch about it apply the same indignace to movies.

Is it just me, or is there a hint of Boyce & Hart's "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" in the hook to "Momma's Not Coming Home Tonight"? Ah, manufactured pop music. Not to be taken seriously at face value (usually), but a goldmine of riches nevertheless. 50,000,000 Elvis fans indeed can't be wrong, but about what is still open for consideration!