JSngry

Foghorn Leghorn Sam Ervin Magic Johnson

Boris Koslov plays/played in Monday Michiru's group. Monday tells the story of him using that axe on one of her gigs and Sue getting all pissed because it's supposed to be used only on Mingus Big Band gigs. But between Monday & Alex Sipiagin (the MBB's lead trumeter & Monday's husband who was also on the gig) they patched things up.

Hey - while we're at it, can somebody explain to me why it seems like you can go to damn near any dance studio in America and study "jazz dance" from somebody who's never heard "jazz music"? That one's had me puzzled since the 70s.

Billy Cobham Tony Williams Alan Dawson

Hey, it's cool. You just seemed to be buggin' about the terminology, and I'm all like, hey, terminology pretty much went out the window when Paul Whiteman became the King of Jazz, so big whoop what it's called or what people think it is. People gonna do waht they do, like what they like, and now what they want or don't want to know no matter what the terminolgy applied to it is. I mean, "blues" don't mean Blues any more, "jazz" don't mean Jazz any more, "soul" don't mean Soul amy more, the list goes on. It used to bug me, but anymore, I really don't care. It's too far gone to worry about. FWIW, the "bossa" sound has been infiltrating "club music" for quite a while now, I think, and the influence seems to be being reciprocated. I've got a 20-something drummer friend from Germany who tells me that using bossa keyboard samples over club beats (thus the "beats & keys" thing, or whatever it was that DG called it) has been commonplace over there for the last 4-5 years, & the Brazillian influence on Japanese club music has been noted by Rod earlier (and btw - what's the deal w/this Lisa Ono chick anyways? Any good?). Do a search at DG for just the word "bossa" and all kinds of club shit comes up that covers a time span of more than a few months. And then you got shit like Suba & Paula Morelenbaum's berimbaum (great side, imo) that come at it from the other end, taking club music techniques and applying them to pure(er) Brazillian songs. None of it's "bossa" in the textbook sense, and I don't doubt but that knowledge of the history & greats of the "real" bossa varies widely in the non-Brazillians who've been dipping into that bag for their thing, but there it is anyway, the back-and-forth of global cross-breeding that created "bossa nova" in the first place continuing on and on and on. After a while "Brazillian"="Bossa" in the general consciousness, and so it goes, no matter if the results are wholly cool or deadly dull. C'est la vie. I'm neither surprised nor pissed about the inaccurate use of the term when it occurs. Sooner or later terms are used for comvenince's sake rather than any real identificational purposes, it always happens, if for no other reason than all living music eventually evolves to the point where it's stylistically not what it used to be, even if it still comes from essentially the same basic emotional place. I'm to the point where I just don't care what anybody calls anything for marketing purposes. The band that started this thread might bug me just because they're not particularly interesting, based on the samples I heard. What they hype their music as is besides the point to me. Sooner or later, though, somebody's going to do much the same thing (hell, they might already have. I've been living in a jazz-cave for the last god knows how many years...), take a Mendes-based "bossa pop" groove, write really good songs, use club music as the underpinning, call it "bossa" or "neo-bossa" or some shit, and then I will get excited, just because it'll be good, fresh, interesting pop music, even if it's zt best tangentally related to real bossa nova. Until then, names are just words, and words can mean any damn thing to anybody at any time. I don't sweat names any more. I really don't. It's all hype, really, or it becomes so sooner or later. "Swing" was/is hype, "BeBop" was/is hype, hell, "Jazz" was/is hype (maybe now more than ever). Convenient for both conversation & marketing, but that's about it. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got Paula Morelenbaum's berimbaum playing as I type, and hell, that just about says it all. Jiva is kinda....unnecessary for me at this point.

What they were was a pop band that incorporated a Brazillian "flavor" into an "Americanized" product. Nothing more. Or less. Like it or not, that seems like a perfectly natural evolutionary step, just as it does for the next level of evolution to be to take it from there. Shit gets so diluted over time, but that's how it stays alive. Dinosaurs & birds, dig? Gotta go to work now. Will continue tomorrow if you'd like.

Well, I have, but that's neither here nor there. The point for me is that it is the nature of pop to "mainstream" differnt cultures, and that inevitably changes the "flavor" of the world in which we live. "Historical Musical Knowledge" is cetainly important for scholars and "serious musicians and fans". To the rest of the world, it's not a particularly relevant and/or ongoing concern, and I don't know that it really should be. It's nice when it is, but life goes on, if you know what I mean. The ongoing evolution of popular culture is of interest to me, if for no other reason than that it inevitably has an effect on some aspects of my life. I could go all Mr. Wilson (and often have), but when I hear about something as culturally interesting as urban Southern African-American youth turning to Sergio Mendes for inspiration for dance music, well, hey, that's a cultural twist I sure didn't see coming! And if it means that at some point in the future there will be an influx of Brazillian influence (no matter how far removed from the source) into mainstream youth's pop culture - a big if - then hey, we're another step along the road towards pan-culturalism, even if it is a pan-culturalism of diluted sources. Same thing, perhaps, but different. Or vice-versa. But the world is becoming more and more a "melting pot", and this might well be another degree of melt. Hey - I'm a "people person" at root, and this shit fascinates me at a level far beyond the music. Actually, the music is the least interesting part of it.

It wasn't the influence of Mendes that I was questioning. It was the seeming dismissal of Brasil 66/77 as inconseqential fluff. Dude - you give props (and rightly so, imo) to Andy Williams. Brasil 66/77 is every bit as worthy, I think.

Will the chirp be baked in?

I'd think that the shells on the trees were reason enough to justify their existence. Ever seen a kid who didn't think that that was the coolest shit ever?

Agree that Waldron/Lacy was a magical combination. Always. Wondering what people think of the Walron/Jim Pepper duos. I've never given a helluva lot of thought to Jim Pepper one way or the other, but the duet album of him & Waldron I have (Art Of The Duo on Tutu) is superb. Apparently this was not a one-shot deal, but I've not heard anything else.

Tim Duncan. AAAAAARGH!!! I'M A FREAKIN' TURTLEHEAD!!!!!!!!!

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?