JSngry

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

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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.

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