JSngry

It would be nice if BN reissued that freekin PJ trio album!

Exactly!

Thanks! Some of it sounds like Stan Kenton playing a Johnny Quest show, but some of it's a litle more interesting. In time I suppose... But the rest of that site definitely caught my eye!

http://www.dustygroove.com/jazzlp4.htm#432135 Well, I don't know how pyramids feel at dawn, but this sounds like it might be interesting. AMG's description of this band in their bio of Ragab makes it sound like this might be really good, really weird, really bad, or maybe all of the above. Anybody know of this work by this band? As always, thanks in advance.

Yes. I would anyway. She's just not that impressive a player to me.

His brother Peter was the genius behind Paul & Mary.

As somebody who's heard more than a few auctioneers, I tell you this in all sincerity - it's like a Buddy Rich drum solo, only better.

No scorn towards Regina Carter here, just towards her receiving this type of an award.

Jerry Valentine Jim Valvano The Fine Folks At Valvoline

I've got a couple of Enja things on CD (Angels Of Atlanta is indeed gorgeous) & the Muse, as well as his "symphonic" type thing on Teldec (not too fond of that one...). There was an Atlantic thing that I've still not heard. Same for an MPS date. The guy's not exactly been prolific over the years, but more often than not, when he's spoken, I've at least listened. Strong player with a true spirit, it seems to me.

No hatred here. But read that list...

I've been ordering a fair amount of dance/remix/electronica/nu-jazz/whatever from Da' Bastids, so I don't know if they targeted me for this one or if they're giving one to everybody. But with my last order (Tolliver's Impact on Enja & Jazzanova's In Between), they send me this nice samler CD from Cubop records, which is apparently "the Latin jazz division of Ubiquity Recordings, Inc", which also owns the Ubiquity & Luv n' Haight labels. So anyway, it's got a bunch of pretty nice recently recorded Salsa by some names I've heard of (Jack Costanzo, Dave Pike, Snowboy, Babatunde Lea), some I haven't (Grupo X, Marlon Simon, Bobby Matos, Ray Armando, The Jazz on the Latin Side All-Stars - w/Al McKibbon! - Afroshock), and one I'd just as soon not have (A.Sandoval, for those who might care). Anyway, my receipt was stamped with a red Shipment includes free promotional CD! Yes, there was a "!". There's always a "!" at Dusty Groove. I think they do it on purpose. But hey - free CD, and I didn't even ask for it. !

Looks like Plas Johnson's on it: http://www.plasjohnson.com/PJ/Biography/Di...y/plassjazz.htm

Zorn? Yeah, ok, whatever, sure. It's that kind of thing for that kind of world. But Regina Carter? Based on what? I'm calling bullshit on that one. Not that it matters, and not that it's a surprise. But I'm still calling bullshit.

Forty-Niner Darling Clementine My Funny Valentine

I got a Hannibal 12" single direct-to-disc thing from Japan that's "Naima" on one side and something else on the other. Pretty nice, but how and if it'll ever be reissued on cd beats me.

He's on part of Andrew Hill's Spiral (Lee Konitz & Ted Curson are on the otehr part), and he plays great. His playing on the closing track, a Hill ballad called "Quiet Dawn" - not the Cal Massey tune) still gives me goosebumps.

Neither Supersax, nor Ra, nor Walter Davis, nor Quinichette sound exactly like the spirits they may or may not have been chanelling. With the first two, that's sort of a given, but I bought that Walter Davis thing after hearing about it, and, no, he doesn't sound like Monk. I can hear the spirit (and hard), but the voice is still his. Quinichette? Hey, there's been any number of times where he's almost fooled me, but the key word there is almost. Sooner or later, it becomes apparent who it is, and it ain't Pres. Now, on this Wilbur thing, it was obvious that it wasn't Hawk, but it was also obvious that the players were going beyond a simple "chanelling". This was an intentional, conscious attempt, probably even a premeditated one, to speak in somebody else's voice. Nothing spontaneous or mystical about it. An ensemble re-creation of Hawk's playing, a la Supersax, would be one thing, but to hear a sequence of solos so blatantly imitative (and in a pretty detailed, intimate way at that) is another. And irony of ironies - is Allen the one guy who's not sucking on the Hawk tip? The bottom line in all this for me is this - are you receiving a spirit, or are you taking it? Big, big difference...

Call me crazy, but I think there's a good chance the chick in the picture is really a dude.

I'll send you an email.

It is the core of it, yes. Everything else builds upon that, including how I appraoch non-musical situations (of which lately there have been quite a few). It's affected who I fell in love with & married (and why), and I can't see that there's anything more "fundamental" than that. It's at the core of everything I believe morally, politically, you name it. Or I guess you could say that those other considerations affect my musical identity. But at this point it's probably a "chicken vs egg" thing. And every musician I've know who's worth a damn in my book is the same way. Not that they always act on their best impulses (Getz would probably be a prime example, as would Mingus, Max, and a gazillion others), but then again, I believe that when there's a "conflict" like that, it's almost always a result of somebody using the music as "therapy", of it being the one place where they can be who they truly want to be, and would be if only they could. In the beginning was The Word, Sound. Logos. Vibration, You name it. You betcha "sound" matters, and anybody who would treat it so cavalierly as to blatanly steal somebody else's and think it's "cool" is not somebody I want to get too close to, whether it's meeting them on the street or just listening to their records. That's some seriously weird shit right there, and I don't want any part of it. They may think it's perfectly innocent fun, but if an innocent child kills its parents because they think it's "fun", does that result in any less damage? Evil works in all kinds of ways and through all kinds of people. That's just me, though. We really probably don't want to pursue this too much further, because I don't want to give the impression that I think that anybody who enjoys this kind of thing is an accomplice to evil, or any shit like that. I don't think that at all. We take our fun where we find it, and lord knows I enjoy some pretty suspect crap myself. But I do think that anybody who regularly plays in a manner such as that is treading on very, very dangerous ground.

Some days I'm not even sure if I have a head... That about sums it up, I think. There's more gems there than are generally given credit for, but not as many as "we" would like. It's a complicated mess, but if you wade through it all w/o expecting the "records" to be like they were back in the day, there's cumulatively more than a little great Rollins playing to be had

Wow, that's a lot of years to cover... Can I get back to you?

A fair question, and one to which I'm not certain I have a wholly explainable answer. The closest I can come is that I have real strong feelings about identity - musical, personal, and otherwise. The reasons for that are too complicated and personal (and truthfully, not fully known/understood by me) to go into here. Let's just say that I understand study, respect, admiration (love, even to the point of "channelling") and all that. What I don't understand, and find creepy to the point of perversity (literally) is whatever it is that drives an individual to seemingly want to literally become somebody else, not in "spirit" but in exact detail. Maybe it's a "sign of the times" that I've grown up in. I started getting into music (and jazz in particular) when "having your own sound" (i.e. voice, i.e. identity) wasn't just a catchphrase, but a damn near religious imperative. Didn't matter how good you "played", if you didn't sound like you, then you weren't really valid. No doubt, that attitude sprang from an environment where identity, musical or otherwise, was at a premium due to none-too-subtle societal/cultural pressure to not just supress, but to deny same. But whatever the driving force(s), I came to realize that, yeah, it's all too easy to become somebody else's idea of what you should be, and then who are you? If you're not you, then who are you? It seems that if you're not you, or in the process of becoming you, that you end up being somebody else's bitch in some form or fashion. And that's just not something that appeals to me, not even slightly. Comfort at too steep a price is no comfort at all, is it? Now maybe my definition of "too steep" is a little more severe than most folks, but there it is. You asked me about my feelings, and these are them. I mentioned the time in which I first got into music. Well, those times are all but gone. Between Clonetranes, Elvis impersonators, Marsaillian neo-cons, American Idles, and the general-if-subliminal sneaking suspicion of more people than we might realize that music/culture/life as we knew it really is "over" (or is in the process of becoming that), the comfort factor of hearing such detailed impersonations has left the premium placed on individual identity in the dust. Yeah, we all say that we want to hear "individuality", but the world's so different now than what it was 25 years ago that is that what we really want? Is that what "the public" wants to hear? And is it what musicians really want to deliver? Or does everybody involved want to keep some things alive, by any means necessary, that have passed peacefully and honorably into the night? Then was then, now is now, and being "different" than now is pretty easy - just don't relate to it, treat it like it's evil, and hey, you're home free. The means to having an identity has evolved into more a matter of identifying with a certain esthetic than with actually developing an individual voice. Yeah, I know, the number of true individuals has always been relatively minimal (and getting at least a superficial identity by identifying with a "group" is a trait that has always been with us). But the goal has at least had lip service paid to it in degrees ranging from cheap to sincere, and I've known up close and personal more than a minimal number of people who have taken that ideal very, very seriously. Taken as a group, they might have been a lot of things, not all of them "good", but one thing that none of them were was somebody else's bitch. And to me, that matters. A lot. Now, what does this have to do with this particular BFT selection? Maybe nothing, maybe everything, maybe something. Mileages no doubt vary, and wildly. I was going to just let it ride. But you asked me a question, Mike, and this is my answer.

Helen Gurley Brown Cosmopolitan Lady That Chick In The Song Who's A Native New Yorker