JSngry

7/19

Take him up on the offer, Johnny. He's good for it.

Looking closely, there's a slight bulge in that groin that is kinda creepy...

Spiro Agnew Nattering Nabobs of Negativism Stanley Crouch

Then you should be Josh Howard...

A bit of an over-simplification, I think. Mendes had/has cred, and the "candy" was quite often quite high-quality. Besides, Lani Hall's voice was (and maybe still is) an instrument not to be disregarded. This whole notion that "pop" is intrinsically fluff is not one with which I can agree. It's through pop that a great deal of cultural assimilation occurs. Granted, that assimilation usually results in the weakening/alteration of the original "flavor", but then again - how else does one assimilate? We can legitmately bemoan the dilution of the original, but shouldn't we also take note of and give credit to/for the cultural breakthrough? On the one hand, we bitch about how people don't know "the originals". On the other, when a taste (or more) of the original breaks through, we bitch about that. In the meantime, while we sit in our purist's corners (and I've got one with my name engraved in gold ) and bitch, the rest of the world continues to assimilate all these different things and moves on about its own affairs. It's always worked this way, and I doubt that it will ever be otherwise. Bottom line - there are infinitely moe options available in pop music now than there were 50 years ago. Whether or not they've always been put to good use is debatable, to put it mildly, but I don't think there's any arguing that their availability and their penetration into the "mass consciousness" is infinitely preferable to their not. One more thing - That's no doubt true of the "general audience", but I'd not be so quick as to assume it of the musicians. Plenty of young musicians have availed themselves of the ample supply of archival material available in the digital age, and have checked it out. That they choose to be "influenced" by it rather than studiously attempt to "replicate" it is to there credit, I think. Whether or not we Boomers approve of it (and in the case of the samples above, I remain superbly indifferent) is really not relevant to them, and to that, I say Right On. It's pop dance music, not a freakin' music history class. I didn't dance to my father's music when I was 24, and I would shudder if my kids danced to mine when they get to be 24.

Just received shipping confirmation. With the Trane box!

Roy Head Monica Lewinsky Mitch Ryder

The more relevant question is this - why isn't my guy in charge of hiring, training, and firing (if need be) your guy, and all the others like him?

Just got off the phone about my order of 7/19. It was said to be "in the warehouse" (of course...), but the CS rep took the trouble to call me back to confirm that the order would ship either today or tomorrow, and that the Coltrane box would be included. Initial execution sux donkey dix, but the follow through showed every sign of being exemplary. But we'll see if it ships as promised....

Yeah - in the mirror.

http://sabineehrenfeld.tripod.com/gallery.html Her name is Sabine Ehrenfeld, and apparently she's one of the current Internet Hottie Faves. Who knew?

Thanks! I listened to the samples and definitely hear a "Bossa" influence on most of them. Overall, the Sergio Mendes (of the late-60s/early-mid 70s) reference seems to be the most apt. Can't say I'm "enthralled" by anything I heard, but I don't think there were any Louie Vega remixes avaible for sampling either. Louie Vega, both individually and in tandem w/partner Kenny Dope - together known as Master at Work/MAW - has been responsible for some of the most rhytmically intricate & interesting dance music productions I've been encountering. Definitely a talent to take seriously. He's more than a little versed in traditional Salsa (his wife is Salsa singer India), and the way he brings that flavor to contemporary dance music is quite often more than a little interesting. Also intersting, not so much musically but "sociologically" is how a group of African-Americans from Atlanta are taking the "easy listening" sounds of that era's Sergio Mendes & hearing it as "soul", reinterpreting it, and finding success with it in the dance underground. I myself always thought that Lani Hall had an incredibly sultry voice, and that the Mendes records of that time had an element of feeling (I'd not call it "Soul" per se, but that's probably because I'm of an age and time where "Soul" had a very specific musical/sociological meaning. But then again, that time has passed) that set them apart from being "merely" "easy listening". That there's an apparently global, cross-cultural group of young adults who are tapping into that element as being contemporarily relevant (and danceable) is a fascinating notion for me.

Shakira Shakti Shaq

It's all about the O.

Yeah. Doesn't mean that I don't think it's unnecessarily convoluted and/or silly, but yeah, having shopped at DG for a few years now, it makes sense to me. But you left out too many exclamation points.

Major Harris General Johnson Private Eye

I just split them open along the backside and leave 'em on there.

Thing is, I'm to the point where I can understand a lot the DG lingo. "beats n keys" makes sense to me.

I've got that one. Pretty disappointing, actually. Safe, prefab, and bland.

Not really looking for a way to feel young(er). Just a way to not feel trapped. Hell, I love having lived as long as I have, seeing what I've seen, and knowing what I now know that I didn't know then. Looking forward to adding on more years, and more learning.

This makes perfect sense to me.

Marc Almond Joy Dvision Kid Creole & the Coconuts

Yep.

Well, if it leads to an "intellectual" understanding of something w/o a concurrent "emotional feel" for it (or vice-versa), then that's sort of a dead end. But hell, that's a potential problem no matter what, and always has been. I will say this - now, more than ever, I think I understand why Miles went electric. Money & vanity might have been big factors, but I don't think they were the underlying motivator. I think it was a desire, probably even a need, to confront "pop culture" on its own terms and win on "artistic" grounds, to prove that the emptiness of so much of it was due to the emptiness of its practitioneers, not of the medium itself. There's a "social statement" there that is about more than money & vanity. Some might say that that's a battle not even worth fighting. Fair enough. But the alternative is to surrender the "real world" to the morons and soulless deathmongers w/o putting up a fight. And if you don't fight, you got no room to complain. That fight can take many forms, but to deny the validity of fighting from within seems to me to be the equivalent of not mowing the grass because it's full of weeds. Cut the weeds down to size and the grass has a fighting chance. Leave them alone, and the grass dies a sure death. So I'm envisioning a potential future as a yard man. Oh well.