JSngry

The complexity for me is not just in the arrangements, or evenin the songs themselves, although that certainly is there. The real complexity, and the one that finally got in side my head and permanently messed it up, is the complexity of essence - the "unimusic" aspect of her work that I talked about earlier. Think about it - how many people are able to naturally bring all they are to their work? And how many people are so many things, not in an "either-or" way, but in a naturally oraganic way? Not that many, and even fewer over the last couple decades as societal and industrial changes have led to music getting more and more segregated, even as people are getting more and more culturally integrated. The global village is a reality, whether we realize it or not. You think about how special a person it takes to, not just "fuse" all these things, but to seemingly be all these things and still be an individual, much less what it takes to bring the nature of that individuality to a creative expression, and it makes one stop and take stock of exactly what it means to be a thinking, feeling, loving person in today's world. Not yesterday's world, but today's. It's easy living in yesterday's world, where identities (and therefore destinies) of all kinds are pretty much pre-defined. It's a lot harder to let go of all that, stand in the present, and look towards the future with all of the good things from the past along for the ride as tools of propulsion, not anchors of inertia. Monday seems to me to be the type of person for whom that more difficult way is the natural way, and for me, it's been a revelation to start thinking about my life in that way. I'd been getting old without realizing, and I'd been getting comfortable with that oldness. No more. I'm still more than willing to mature, gain whatever wisdom borne of experience I'm able to get, and to physically age. But I'll be damned if I'm going to get old. Old means saying "oh well" instead of "why not?" Old means only dreaming with your eyes closed, never with them open. Old means letting your lifeforce dwindle away and pretending that that's the way it's supposed to be. Old means losing the ability to distinguish between defeat and surrender. Old is the beginning of death. The body will die soon enough, regardless of the age of the spirit it contains, so why not keep the spirit alive, fresh, ready for surprises, and ever-growing? Why the hell not? Give me wisdom, give me maturity, and give me age. Those things I will accept with gratitude as the blessings of life that they are. But under no circumstances will I accept old.

Sorry, but the Mavs and Spurs played two rounds ago. Wade, otoh, is starting to have "one of those" series. Glad to see it, as he really is a special talent. The Heat are not a better team than either the Mavs or Spurs, not on paper, and not over the course of the regular season. But it ain't about who's a better team, it's about whether or not you can play up to your full potential and prove that you're a champion. Right now, the Mavericks are nowhere near playing like a champion. If they lose this series, there's going to be some serious head trips going on, and there damn well should be. This team can only lose by choking, and chokers suck.

Note to Avery: Have your tema get their hearing checked. What they needed to increase was their focus, not their fuckups... Riley called it right after the game - from here on out, it's as much about will as skill. And the Mavericks look to be sorely lacking in that right now. Gut check, motherfuckers, gut check.

Yep, it didn't jump out at me the first few times either. But when it finally did, it jumped out screaming. There's just so much "there" there...

Ok, bit-torrent the little ones then. That's the way to do it.

And if I caught Bill Gates in the right mood, I'd be a millionaire!

Que significa?

Sending kids by the postal service is soooo 20th century. Zip files thru e-mail, that's the way to go thse days.

No.

Why? So more and more people can grow up to want to hear (mostly) more and more of the same and think that that's what jazz "is"? Tell you what - if Starbucks puts out a Pi Records sampler, then I'll let go of my cynicism. Wait a sec - I see that Jaws is on one cut. Hell, that motherfucker's likely to scare the shit out of an already jittery Starbucks crowd. So score one for the good guys. If they live through him and Griff, maybe a Pi Records sampler would fly. One can but only hope.

Oh?

Not me.

12 cuts, and 9 of them from the recently accquired Fantasy labels. Ah, the legacy of Carl Jefferson...

Does Jutta Hipp have a daughter?

The thing that makes the J5 remixes so much fun is that it's remixes of old (but great) pop stuff that I've heard so often as to have had enough redone in fresh, interesting, creative (at times very) ways that make it sound new again. To me, that's the ultimate creative goal of any remix. JB. otoh, still sounds fresh, interesting, creative (at times very), and new to me in its original form. The J5 made great pop music. JB was a freakin' force of nature. Big difference. Still, these J5 remixes are kicking my ass going on 3 days now. Fun stuff.

A comprehensive selestion of 2006 Fania reissues here for $13.98: http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/scan/MM...?SSt2gjIp;;1117

That's one of those songs that you gotta try really hard to fuck up before you actually do. A well-crafted pop song is like that, doncha' know...

Are we correct to label yin and yang energies as "masculine" & "feminine", as if genitalia were the sole determinant on quality of energy? I don't think so. I think what we're inadvertantly doing is using general tendencies to lose sight of the broader truth.

Well, yes and no. I think it depends on how much buzz/mystique/whatever builds up around any given artist over time. And for that to happen over time, there had to be something at least "above average" happening in the first place, something that will make people in the future curious about that artist at that time at that place. And their curiosity will need to be rewarded with either real substance or a kind of sense that the artist was somehow "different". Or "relevant". And once you get too farremoved from the original time, somebody almost always has to create/sustain the "image", because without it, who's really going to care other than a handful of geeks like us? Old-school BN, Verve, OJC, etc. yeah, that rewards. Classic pre-bop, yeah, that too. Because there was some different, there was some relevant. But 20-30 years from now, if I listen to a Harper Brothers, am I going to get the same reward? That'll take some serious myth-making! Otoh, I agree completely that the corporate mentality is no longer interested in having any size piece of a small pie, especially one that takes time to come out of the oven. It's a microwave economy, not a crockpot one.

It's been my experience that jazz had a larger following in the "blue-collar" African-American community then than it does today. Ammons, Stitt, Jimmy Smith, Blakey, Silver, a.o., these were all artists who definitelyhad an appeal beyond the "hardcore jazz fan". Not syaing that it was a broad appeal, but it certainly was more of one then than analaogus artists are today. Still might have been a "niche", but yes, I do believe that the niche was bigger then than it is today. Witness the steady decline of the number of jazz clubs and commercial stations airing jazz. Another thing is this - the audience and the music have both changed. The aforementioned "blue-collar" African-Americans are more likely to go for Smooth Jazz today. It's more relevant to them. The older forms of "straiaght-ahead", "modern" jazz are more likely to appeal to a (mostly) white, middle-aged audience, many of whom have only relatively recently discovered the music. The more "avant-garde" styles (including those that incorporate electonic(s)(a) are going to have a limited audience, if for no other reason than even pop music which stretches boudaries is a minority taste these days. And along with this, outside of the Smmoth & Jam scenes, how many jazz musicians really see it as a part of their mission/function/whatever to attempt to "relate" to anaudience beyond what they know already exists? Sure, everybody wants a piece of the pie, but how many people who consider theselves "serious" jazz musicians are contemplating that maybe instead of getting a bigger piece of the pie, they need to be trying to make that pie bigger by adding some different ingredients (not all of them musical, btw)? You do that, and you're in risk of losing your "jazz cred" among the powers-that-be. Either that, or the other powers-that-be get hold of you and don't turn you loose until you have lost said cred. So we end up with musicians who really don't know how to relax and just put it out there for the people in a genuine way, and we end up with audiences who aren't too much interested in hearing what the musicians are putting out there because they don't see any need to. And honestly, quite often I can see thier point. "Relevancy" to today's "average person" is often at best marginal. Which is not to say that it's the musicians' fault that there are so many people who don't get it, don't want to get it, and don't even want to want to get it. But ask yourself this - in 2006, what is the overriding compunction of a 26 year old of average or above intelligence to listen to, say, Hank Mobley, other than to feed an appreciation of fine music? Not much, really. Now, you take the same 26 year old of average or above intelligence in 1956, and he's got a helluva lot more reason to be checking out Hank. That shit was hip in several time-specific ways then that it's not now. It's still hip, but not for all of the same reasons, and not all of the same types of hip. Times have changed, and for better or worse, there ain't a damn thing nobody can do about that. So, what's hip today for people today who are "tuned-in", but who are not Pavlovian chasers of the latest media-fabricated "stars"? Well, lots of things, but how many jazz musicians would make the list? More importantly, how many jazz musicians would scoff at anything/everything that's on that list? For the few remaining Old Masters, that's really not that much of a concern. But for everybody else... Of course, hipness in and of itself is nowhere near being the be-all & end-all of ultimate worth (and no, I'm not going to try and define what that is ). But hipness does play to relevancy, of ultimate meaning to the world that anything exists in, and on that count, a lot, a helluva lot, of today's jazz falls woefully short. Didn't used to be that way.

In hell, no. In the real world, well, yeah, they still got a shot. Shit can happen. Injuries, collective loss of focus (again), multiple players on the Heat catching fire all at once for a prolonged, multi-game stretch, hey, shit does happen, which is why they play the games. But under normal circumstances, looking at everything objectively, you gotta think that this is still the Mavs series to lose, and that the events of Game 3 are not going to be a predictor of the rest of the series.

Depressing, yeah. But you get some John Gilmore, so, like so much in life, hey.

Well, not flaccid anyway.

Don/t know, don't have it yet. Don't know if it would be as good as the Jackson 5 thing. I mean, the Jackson 5 are one thing, but JB, man, that's a whole 'nother thing...