JSngry

This pretty much sums up my thoughts, but more succinctly! Guy ← Mine too. Having once been an idealogue myself, I know quite well the comfort and self-empowerment that comes from not allowing ambiguity, nuance, and non-absolute ideas a place in my thought process. But I eventually came to the realization that dogma as a lifestyle pretty much sucks.

He plays tenor. He plays it very well. And he plays it with attitude. For once, a young guy with chops and brains and soul ain't sounding like he's trying to be twice as old as he really is. CDs readily available from DG: http://www.dustygroove.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap...22&issearch=yes I like pretty much all of his stuff that I've heard, but the temporarily-out-of-stock Kullrusk side, which sounds like an Eddie Harris-on-Varitone-meets-Sonny-Stitt-on-Varitone-with-the-Varitones-being-controlled-by-Don-Ellis mid-60s Atlantic side, only different is one which I keep coming back to. It's laugh-out-loud, joyously delirious music. Kullhammar also plays plenty of accoustic music as well, from vamp tunes to burning uptempo straight ahead stuff. And the shit is impeccably recorded, especially the bass (inevitably the good ol' wood, btw, even on hte funky stuff). Perhaps some of the best accoustic bass recording ever done, imo. In the end, though, it's the guy's spirit that gets me. Smart, yet irreverant, obviously respectful of the music itself , but perhaps significantly less so of the "mystique" and dogma surrounding it, somebody who seems to not see any good reason why "average people" shouldn't enjoy non-commercial contemporary jazz. Gotta love that!

And he has really cool cover art on his albums. To be truthful, the cat's got more happening than most Americans right now. Definitely more spirit and life. Jonas Kullhammar!

Yes - VERY good stuff on Cadence.

Let me see - Trane was a good businessman, died young and left behind a widow and some kids, and because he took care of his business, his family was taken care of financially after his death. And that's a bad thing?

If you were distributing films and pictures as your livlihood, I doubt that you'd be so cavalier about them being freely exchanged outside of your purview. ← Yeah, maybe I would prefer to have the cops attack people freely exchanging photos if it would make me an extra buck. ← Answering the question by avoiding it is slick, but only to a teenager or a Bushite... ← What was the question? It looked like a statement. ← Well, at least the obvious does not always elude you!

If you were distributing films and pictures as your livlihood, I doubt that you'd be so cavalier about them being freely exchanged outside of your purview. ← Yeah, maybe I would prefer to have the cops attack people freely exchanging photos if it would make me an extra buck. ← Answering the question by avoiding it is slick, but only to a teenager or a Bushite...

Don't worry. In 20 or so years, these guys will have either become the type of pigs they're bitching about now, or else will have become so marginalized as to not be a threat to anybody except themselves. Us old (and older) farts have been down this road before, believe it or not. Well, there is a third option - they can become like most of the rest of us and do the best they can with what they got when they get a chance to do it. But that's not as exciting a notion as rebuilding humanity from the ground up, is it... Hey - if Utopia was ever going to exist, it would have already done so. And even if it had, it it really was Utopia, why didn't it last?

If you were distributing films and pictures as your livlihood, I doubt that you'd be so cavalier about them being freely exchanged outside of your purview.

It's been my experience that people who complain about "ownership" usually have had little or no experience with it. Same thing with "the universe" - those who think that it's all sunshine and lollipops have only witnessed it from afar.

If you've applied your theory correctly, you'll have used it to learn where all the notes are, what they'll do under any given circumstance, and what they all sound like. The next step is to trust yourself that you know where they are and go about the business of putting them there. It's time to stop thinking and start listening - to yourself. Feel your own personal rhythms, and then put the notes to them. You know where all the notes are and what they'll sound like in any given combination, but do you know where you want to put them? That's what you gotta find, and the only place to find it is within yourself. It's not easy, but that's what you gotta do. It takes a lifetime, and it starts now. Have fun!

Yeah, ok, tell you what - let me stand outside your bedroom window and take some pictures of you and your wife fucking. Hell, you might even have a little group action going on. Why don't I just take some pictures of that? Even better - y'all got an orgy going on and I'm involved. Why don't I just go on ahead and surreptitiously take pictures of everybody doing their thing and pass them around to anybody and everybody anywhere and everywhere in the world who wants to see them - that picture of your wife getting six guys' wads on her face simultaneously will stimulate a lot of interest in y'all's next orgy, I guarantee! Now, if you say that that's not a fair comparison, well, you may be right. But it also goes to show that the concepts of "open" and "sharing" are not open-ended ones, and that people do not automatically sacrifice all rights to "ownership" simply by participating in a certain type of activity in a certain type of arena. Sex belongs to the universe, and people having sex belongs to the universe, but pictures of people having sex do not. That's the key right there - all this talk about "ideas belonging to the universe" is cool, and totally true, but - once you capture it, be it on camera, film, tape, DAT, mini-disc, whatever, you're capturing it and therefore removing it from the universal sphere and bringing it into another realm altogether. And this new realm is not that of "the universe". Hell, if something really, truly, belongs to the universe, what right does anybody have to capture it, be it for profit or not? When you get right down to it, a tape of a live show traded for no monetary gain is just as much a diminuation of the grandness of the original source as is a commercial recording. Remember what Eric Dolphy said? He knew. But he took the money anyway! Technology breaks down barriers, sure. But it also creates the illusion of a "boundary free" world that is ultimately as false as it is seductive. Every technological advance, from the printing press to television to the birth-control pill, promises an end to all traditional boundaries. It's a lie. We redraw them, we redifine them, we even blur them, but we can never eliminate them entirely. Why? It's simple really. The boundaries do not exist becaue of the technology. The boundaries exist because that's the way humans are. And no tecnology, no drug, no brainwashing, no nothing outside of a fundamental change of everybody - not some, but everybody, from the dirtiest, rottenest, most corrupt stinking soul to the purest, kindest, most altruistic angel- from deep within is going to change that. Nothing.

Yep.

Yeah, Miles didn't believe in owning a DAMN thing!

Sounds to me like he wants y'all to keep working and playing because he knows that that's what young players need more than anything else. I'd pay attention.

Yeah, my fans don't pay my Internet bill every month, at least not directly. The bill still comes to my house and it's still got my name on it. Seriously, a good discussion could and should be had about how artists can use the technology of the Internet and the proclivity of many fans to tape and trade, but basing it on the juvenile notion that "Fuck ownership of ideas" is a real insight or some such is just bullshit. "Product" is what you sell, and in this type of music, "product stems directly from ideas. So it easily follows that fucking the ownership of ideas ends up as fucking the ownership of prodcut. Fuck THAT! If the issue is one of building a new paradigm of artist/audience relationship, then hey, I'm good with that. But if it's going to be based on a muddleheaded set of hopelessly naive (to call then "idealistic" is giving them a validity that they do not deserve and can never earn) concepts and slogans, then, yeah - fuck that.

Now THAT'S the kind of thinking that killed Woody Shaw! Dude, you are so full of shit. You're waiting for a Utopia that ain't never coming. Ever. Not on this planet. Next best thing is to keep the ledgers, moral and economic, even. If you take, give. If you give, take appropriate to waht you gave. If you buy, sell, and if you sell, buy. When you get, pass it on. When you see a need, meet it. It ain't brain surgery. See, the thing is, I want people I respect to have a comfortable life, to not be trapped into depending on the kindness of "fans" to have a little somethinsomthin they can call their own. That means they gotta get something from me besides, love, namely money. So they gotta sell me something, and it's gonna be their ideas. Now, if the concept of them owning their ideas is bullshit, so is the notion of them selling them to me. Ideas belong to the universe? Fine. But electricity belongs to the power company, and the universe don't set a sack of groceries on your doorstep every morning. Let my fans pay for my next oil change, ok? This "everything should be free" shit is worthy of a teenager or a stoner, but not anybody else. Not seriously.

Failed to add a final "Thanks for an enjoyable ride!" before hitting Add Reply, and don't like to edit my guesses, so hey - Thanks for an enjoyable ride!

Well! For once I got a chance to listen at length and in a quiet environment before posting guesses. Let's hear it for BFTs arriving on Friday afternoons! As always, the usual thanks and disclaimers are firmly in place. TRACK ONE - Warne & Ted. Yeah. The mid-50s resulted in a lot of overtly "happy" (relatively speaking) music from Warne. Seems that being back home in LA, away from NYC & Lennie, and having opportunity for regular, if not spectacularly high-profile, work agreed with him, at least for a while. This session is from that time, and it's a splendid one. Of course, with Warne the story wasn't complete until the very end, so there would be much more to come - more evolution, more deeping of expression, and more mastery of both his instrument and the music he made with it. But also with Warne, it was good from Day One. So this is definitely one to have, but any of the new Warne fans think that this is all there is. Or vice-versa, if you come to him from later work. TRACK TWO - "Indian Summer" by Two Brothers. But which two, I'm not sure. One sorta sounds like Al Cohn, one kinda like prime Bill Perkins, but neither totally so. I honestly can't tell, other than the first soloist really hits that Perkins "float" zone in a few spots. Maybe Richie Kamuca's one of them? Is this that PJ album they made together, Perkins & Kamuca? Never heard it, but I like this cut a lot. This is the kinda thing I used to love to death when I was in high school, just discovering jazz in a very jazz-hostile (literally and figuratively) cultural environment. The whole "cool" thing held an element of escapism that was just what I needed at that time and place. Kinda cooled on it (no pun intended) when I left home and got more into the thick of things, and have gone back and forth with it quite a bit. Having finally stabilized somewhat, I now dig it when it hits a groove like this. Nothing complicated, other than the relaxation, which is anything but simple to achieve, no matter how sweet your life might be. Of course, it's a fine line between relaxed and inert, and many players of that school crossed that line sooner or later, some never to return. Perkins & Kamuca weren't among them, although Perk went off on some pretty tangental tangents career-wise, to put it mildly. But this cut comes from a time when it was all good. If this is that album, and it ever gets reissued, I'll buy it in a heartbeat. Bill Perkins at his best was a very special player. TRACK THREE - Only things I can say with absolute certainty is that Coleman Hawkins is here, and that it's a Columbia recording. Those are two unmistakable sounds! Might be one of those Buck Clayton jam session things, I've never heard those. No matter, this is great stuff, the sound of men who refused to be fenced in inside themselves. Everything about this stuff is big and wide - the beat, the time, the tones, the pacing of the lines, everything! I love it, really love it. It's as free, in its own way, as any music ever made, at least when it's played like this. Now as far as who's who, I can't say. the second tenorist might be Bud Freeman, and I think I hear Lawrence Brown on trombone. And one very Cootie-esque growl! And one helluva solid bass player! Other than that, I can't do any more than guess. But I do love it. Yes I do. TRACK FOUR - Trombone & piccolo? Haven't a clue, really, but the drummer sure sounds like early Elvin to me. Whether it is or not, though, there's the rub...I was thinking maybe JJ & Bobby JAspar, but I don't know if Jaspar ever played piccolo... Whatever, the head is very, very attractive. The blowing goes into kind of a generic "Bird blues" kind of thing, but good things get said. Guitarist might be Burrell, but I don't think so. That drummer sure feels like Elvin! Flutist (piccolo on the head, flute for soloing) sorta sounds like Frank Wess tonewise, but I'm not exactly a connoiseur of flute tones...Trombonist, not JJ, I don't think, and not Curtis. Might be Jimmy Cleveland, or maybe even Rosolino. Or neither...Whoever it is has amazing fluidity in both chops and tone, and a bit of harmonic daring, at least in terms of the time and the rest of the group. Tell me that's Elvin! I liked the head more than the rest of the piece, but it was all good. This one's a stumper! TRACK FIVE - This one I can deduce just from a few distinctive, key sounds/tonal personalities - Jimmy Woods, Harold Land, Andrew Hill, and, this time for sure, ELVIN! I don't have this album yet, but this is all the incentive I need to get it! KILLER! TRACK SIX - Fathead! Sounds like one of his more recent sides by the recording quality, possibly the one w/Curtis. If this is Curtis, well, he's seen better days for his chops than this, I'm afraid to say...His tone is kinda shot...But everybody else is on time and sharp! And Fathead! You either "get" him or you don't, and I do. Took me a while, really not until I had had professional experience playing R&B gigs where a little jazz was part of the early sets. Having to deal with that dynamic, in its native environment, really opened up my heart and head to where Fathead's coming from, and I've been hooked ever since. He ain't fancy, but he is about as real a player as there is. Works for me! TRACK SEVEN - "Solitude", and not to my liking, I'm afraid. Don't care for the tempo (too fast), the right hand (a little too glib), the left hand (not enough of any one thing), nor for the recurring "Tenderly" quote ("cute" the first time - I HATE "cute" - and worse every time thereafter). I'm sure that it's a very good player, perhaps even a great one, but nobody's perfect... TRACK EIGHT - Now this one fucked me up! "East of the Sun", one of the great tunes, and still relatively underplayed. The alto tone is remisiscent of Art Pepper (albeit on an "unhealthy" day) or Frank Morgan (likewise). The cat's having instrumental issues, but is still playing his ass of in spite of them. So I'm really thinking that this is some rare Pepper outtake or something. Hearing Leroy Vinegar (can't mis him in a context like this!) stenghened the notion that this was vintage West Coast Alto Great. But something about the alto made me think that it might not be Pepper, bad day or not (the tone is not as controlled as his, and the fingering is a little sloppy here and there). So I listened over a few times, and finally, on the third or fourth time through, it clicked. At 6:01, to be precise - that little strestch of working the one note, and the little flurry that concludes it, were the giveaway, a thing very personal and specific to this player. Since I'm the first one to respond (or at was when I started...), I'll not give it away, but suffice it to say that once you know who it is, the whole thing falls into place, and beautifully so. And the instrumental issues are perfectly understandable. What I don't understand is, if the rest of the side is as great as this one cut, how come I've never even heard of this record? Sure, the performance is old, but it's a pretty recent issue. And I've not heard one word about it! Either I haven't been paying attention (entirely possible), or else this is one sleeper of a side that might well disappear without a peep (ditto). That would be sad. TRACK NINE - Lively and frisky! Sounds like it might be something from the UK, ca. 1965. Tune's got a really interesting, stretched-out form. The changes are straightforward wnough, but those extended sections are the typ of thing that can really throw a soloist for a loop - you get used to building and resolving your lines within certain cycles of phrase lengths, and when something like this comes along, all of a sudden there's this...extra space to fill in before moving on and you're all like, WTF?!?!?!?!?! But that's not a problem for these guys. They've gotten inside this one. It sounds like a working band, which is still the way to go afaic. My guess would be tubby Hatyes or Ronnie Scott with Stan Tracey, not based on anything in particular, just the vibe of both the band and the audience. Whover it is, they got their own thing happening with this one, and more power to them for it! TRACK TEN - Vonski. Oh HELL yeah! To be totally blunt, and equally totally accurate, this guy's a BAAAAAAAAD motherfucker. If you don't know him, you are deprived, and if you know him and don't dig him in some form or fashion, you are wrong (or maybe you shouldn't be listening to jazz just yet). Simple as that. He's still alive, folks. Show the love before it's too late. TRACK ELEVEN - I've often wondered what Hawk thought of this one. I mena, he shows up ready to throw down some freakin' brilliant readings of Ellingtonia (and he does), and he gets presented with THIS! I think it's a hoot how the thing just goes on and on, like everybody's just WAITING for him to join in, and he's just not gonna do it! He was probably all like, "wait a second, this is NOT what I came here to play...", you know, all Hawkish and shit. But he finally does, if only for a short say, as if "well, if I HAVE to...", and then Sam goes and locks his shuffle beat into Hawk's eighth notes just perfectly, which is something that very few drummers were able to do, as if to say, "we gotcha now, mthrfkr!". I wish I coulda been there to see it. TRACK TWELVE - Sounds like one of those Pablo jam session sides. Sweets (or Clark Terry, maybe) and Lockjaw. Lockjaw is proof to me that God talks to tenor players the way he talks to nobody else. No other way that instrument gets played that way - it ain't natural! But is sure is hip. Thanks, God! TRACK THIRTEEN - This one creeps me out, more than you know! The clarinet and piano and audience all sound like some location recording from the 30s or 40s that have been really digitally scrubbed, but the bass sounds like somebody overdubbed it, like, yesterday. It's like Mingus & Massey Hall, only nowhere near as obvious, which make it just too damn TOO wierd. It's a fine performance, but until I find out that this is some sort of "concept" recording, I'm taking the stance that this is Devil Music! TRACK FOURTEEN - this one intrigued me. Obviously Teddy Wilson, but there was just a hint of "moderninity" to it that had me stumped as to who else and when. So I did the research and found out what it was. A vwery interesting blend of players, and another one that I knew absolutely nothing about, and another one that I'd eagerly purchase should it come out again. TRACK FIFTEEN - Errol Garner on a tune that I know I know, but can't for the life of me remember the title of. A little Errol usually goes a long way for me, I men, I dig him, but he was definitely a "stylist", albeit a thouroughly enjoyable, and at times, unpredictable one. Still, for me, the highlight of this piece is the intro - now THAT'S some mojo! TRACK SIXTEEN - Some trumpet blues. I think I hear an older Clark Terry, some Jimmy Owens, and somebody else(?). I bet it was fun to be there.

Well, they could always combine it with Monk's Blues and restore this classic piece of coverart wierdness... I've owned this one since it was first released, and, depending on my "condition" while viewing, have found it in turns trite, hilarious, and absolutely horrifying!

Found this one a decade or so ago as Linger Awhile on the Classic Jazz label. It's everything you say, Billie!

After a point, sure. But the concept of "apprenticeship" is a sound one afaic.

Yeah - I'm thinking that Sonny was in good enough form that night that a little/lot of judicious editing of the sidemen's solos could have allowed us to hear all/most of the concert's material to greater effect. HEring Clifton Anderson and Steven Scott at lenght on every tune live, in the moment, is onething, but hearing it repeatedly at home on a record is something else, especially once you know what Sonny's got in store. But I doubt that such a process would've been approved by the man himself, which is as beautiful as it is frustrating... Another thought, albeit a sobering one - I can't help but wonder, with if the death of his wife, if Sonny's not "closed a door" on one period of his life, one focused on privacy, personal matters, and such, and decided that this next period of his life is his "home stretch". I mean, the website, the open (in comparison to the past) interviews, the accquiesence to the release of a private recording, these are all things that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago. I can't help but wonder if Sonny's not made his peace with Lucille's death (from all I can gather, they were very, very close, and she served as his "shield" in a lot of ways) and decided that hey, this is it, what's left is going to be it, so I might as well go out with a blaze. It's not exactly a comfortable thought to think of Sonny Rollins dying someday, but at his age, it's something that is probably going to happen, all things considered, sooner than later. If that's the conclusion that he's reached as well, and if he's at peace with the notion, and if this is how he's decided to take it out, hey - I think that just seals the deal on him being a man who has looked at music and life and found a way to blend the two over the long haul in such a way that is ultimately as wise as it is unconventional.

Agreed! There's one cut on here that is a delightfully devious misdirection, and another that's just a plain ole' mindfuck!

I seem to remember JK mentioning that their bassist's father was Dominic Duval, in which case, the advice is probably a lot more nuanced that a simple "play bebop or else you're not cool". I mean, this cat's C.V. (see HERE) is almost entirely "free jazz", at least on record. He might even have been pulling your leg. Or he might have been suggesting, in a very kind, fatherly way, that y'all's "fundamentals" still need some tightening up. Or he might have simply been transferring his own personal career frustrations onto y'all, letting you know that life as a professional jazz musician is indeed a lot easier if you "play by the rules". I don't know.... What I do know is that the notion of learning how to play "in" before you play "out" is not necessarily one to which I subscribe, at least not dogmatically. Nobody suggests that we must learn to play "Dixieland" before we tackle bebop, do they? Playing music as a means of self-expression is first and foremeost about finding "it" within yourself and getting it out in the deepest, truest, and most refined manner possible. That requires constant development of instrumental and personal skills, but it doesn't necessarily require learning the specifics of one particular "style" inside and out. I mean, if Marion Brown's your main inspiration, then copping all of Phil Woods' shit is probably not going to be relevant to your lifestyle, if you know what I mean... Having said that,, though, I can't stress enough how deeply I believe in continued learning in general, which is not the same as learning a specific style or genre. If you're going to be using an instrument as your means of expression, you need to know not just how you feel, but also everything that the instrument is capable of. Getting into your zone is the ultimate goal, but if you don't know what has already been accomplished, you may well end up performing the musical equivalent of discovering a crack in the wall and thinking, due to a lack of a broader perspective, that it's the Grand Canyon. I see a lot of that, unfortunately. There is no, I repeat, no substitute for knowing your instrument as thoroughly as possible, and that means investigating, and learning from, the past as well as exploring, and creating, the presentfuture. Learning about other musics (styles, eras, whatever) isn't really about learning about other musics. It;s about learning about other people - what they've come up against musically, professionally, and personally, and how they've dealt with it. The last thing I want to hear out of any music is the story of somebody who's either so insulated from the world at large that their music has no relevance to amybody but themself, or, conversely, music that is so generic that it creates no compulsion to care about it as anything other than a passing blip on the generic noise radar. You've got to find your own way, but you've also got to make it relevant to somebody besides yourself. Learning isn't monodirectional, it's omnidirectional. You gotta learn about yourself and about others. about what you might be able to do and about what others have already done. You've got to learn "backwards" as well as "forwards". Now, "learning" does not in any way equat with "copying". Copying is physically taxing but spiritually, it's the easy way out, if that's where you stop. - It's really just a matter of mechanics and muscle memory. Period. It's important, but, really, it's a preliminary at best. Knowing why the old guys played why and what they did, that's where the learning comes in. That's when and where you discover the true humanity of the music, and it's a maxim of any kind of education that the more you learn about the humanity of others, the better equipped you are to learn about your own. If the result of "learning" is simple cloning, well, that's no learning at all, is it? That's merely a means of mass-production, dig? You've reduced yourself to a faceless cog in the machine, and you will be treated (and will treat yourself and others) accordingly. Nice work ir you can't get it! In a nutshell, my advice (other than adding the caveat that all this is much easier said than done...) would be this - know what you know and go with that with a firm pride and confidence rooted in an even firmer humilty. Know that what you know is nothing in comparison to what there is to be learned, that in fact some of, or even everything, you know today might well be right, buit that it also might well turn out to be partially, or even totally, wrong tomorrow, and that it will always be that way. Proceed accordingly. What, if anything, that means to you, now or later, will determine what direction your music, no - your life, will take, and that, my friend, is entirely your call.