JSngry

Hmmm...a blanket statement only somtimes true, I'd say...

Evans' tendency to play on top of the beat (or rush, depending on how you hear it) was accentuated on the Rhodes, imo. It weren't a pretty sight, so to speak...

Ok, Eric - how you gonna leave when you have no car? It's not like there was an organized plan to get everybody out, is it? Seems to me it was like, "Well, y'all better get out if you can, and if you can't, c'mon ove to the Superdome". Great plan that turned out to be... Hey, look - anybody who could've gotten out and chose to stay made their own bed. But dude - LOTS of poor people in urban areas don't have cars. It costs money to get a car, it costs money to buy gas, it costs money for upkeep, it costs money for insurance. Poor people by definition don't have a lot of money! And if you're old and poor, hey, that just make your options even more limited. Old, poor, and not in good health, hey, three strikes and you're NOT out! You ever see people riding the bus to work? Not everybody does it becuase they're "environmentally aware" or some shit like that. For plenty people, that's the only transportation they have. I know you don't mean to come off as callous, and I don't think you are. I know you don't mean to come off as clueless, but you do. Whether you really are are not, I haven't a clue. I certainly hope not. But you're assuming a level of options that just do not exist for many. Being poor is really very simple - you don't have a lot of money. Period. So your options are limited. Period. Plenty of room for nuance and variety and personal choice and personal character and all that stuff once you get inside those facts, but dude - that's the inescapable baseline right there. And a lot of people in New Orleans weren't above it. How many, we don't know. But it's more than just a few, I can guarantee you. New Orleans is a POOR city, believe it or not. Don't let the tourist image fool you. Away from the tourist areas there's a helluva lot of poverty. Statistics I heard the other day give the average income for African-American families in New Orleans proper at $11,000 per year. And the city proper is something like 56% African American. I make no claims for accuracy of these statistics, especially that of the income. But even if it's off by 100%, hell, that's still just $22,000 per year. Not much... Don't mean to rag on you man, but the assumptions you appear to be making just ain't right.

I'm actually hearing people blaming the people who stayed because they had no way out for not leaving anyway. I'm also hearing people claim that the media is exaggerating the severity of the situation. These people all have one thing in common, but since this is a non-political thread, I can't/won't tell you what it is. But if you're that hardcore, hell, your soul is dead.

Lack of prepared material, perhaps?

And oh yeah, the Reggie Nicholson story is a bit much for my tastes, and the word "phoner" is just too cute (again, for my tastes). But hey, you gotta have a lead-in, right?

Well DOH! It was in my inbox all along. http://villagevoice.com/music/0535,davis,67292,22.html Ok, I'll disagree about the recording capturing the full power of Rollins' tone, but maybe FD has a significantly better stereo than mine. It wouldn't be hard. And I'll disagree about Bob Cranshaw. I actually like how he plays and how it sounds tonally. Call me crazy. And I thnk that the idea of a major label trying to push all these "projects" onto Rollins is more likely to drive him away from recording any more than it is to excite him. But I could be wrong. And I don't think that Sonny owes Milestone any "loyalty", since Milestone ain't Milestone any more. It's Concord. Different world. But that's a minor point. And I dunno, both G Man and the still-growing-on-me Falling In Love With Jazz are pretty damn strong albums. Don't Stop The Carnival, otoh, is a two LP set with one album too many (or, quite possibly, the wrong material chosen). Still, the best of it is pretty damn amazing. Other than that, I pretty much agree with him on this one. Surprised? Don't be! I don't quibble just for grins, you know.

Haven't read it yet.

Listened to it some more last night under headphones, and it sounds much better to me that way. Put's you a little bit more "inside" the band, and for a recording that's this much audience-centric, that helps. Just seemed like the balance was more even. Might just be a headphone thing, I don't know. But Scott sounds a lot better like this, and the bass/drum hookup does too. Anderson still goes on for a chorus or three too long, though, but whatcha' gonna do 'bout that? The good thing about the headphone listens was that Sonny comes through more direct. I might have given the impression previously that there's not that much difference between what you get here and what you get on the best of the previous Milestones. In a sense, I still believe that, but in another sense, nothing could be further from the truth. While there's some great playing on those other albums, it's more often than not it's in compressed form, either in duration or in expansiveness. You don't get that here. The ideas flow freely and unencumbered, and the solos on "Global Warming" and "Why Was I Born" are the kinds of things that have fed the "you haven't heard Sonny until you've heard him live on a good night" legend. No, this isn't the "ultimate" latter-day live Rollins album, the one (or more) that surely exists in private collections, and the one (or more) that some day will be released. But make no mistake - warts and all, this is a significant release. Sonny Rollins is a world unto himself, and this album shows us more of that world than anything we've had official access to in many, many years. If you care even slightly about that world, you're going to want to get this album.

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=21543

Who's in charge here, Bush or Rice?

Indeed. I find this quite difficult to stomach.

If that is an accurate, in context quote, then "appaling" is nowhere near adequate a description.

Could you be so kind as to post it there? Molly is usually spot-on.

Well... Well....................... Well................................................. Sonny plays great. No surprise there. Anybody who's been paying attention to the Milestones of the last few years, faults and all, will know that. The advantage to this release is that we get to hear him play at length (but there's that on some of the Milestones, too), and play at length he does. He's an old man now, and he sounds like one, in the best possible way. The word "transcendant" has been popping up in several circles regarding his playing on this album, and it is apt. But again - it's been apt for longer than most people seem to realize. Still, if this is the album that's going to make people realize that, then, hey, beautiful! Otoh - the recoding itself is very much of "audience tape" quality. We hear Sonny's playing, but we don't get even half of the body, the immense massiveness of his sound (and that's no small part of the transcendance that comes from hearing Sonny Rollis in full flight). We do, however, get to hear the immense massiveness - and then some - of Clifton Anderson's miked horn. We also get to hear applause that is louder than anybody in the band. I guess Sonny's approach to live shows now that he's an old man is to let his band have their say before he comes in to obliterate the need for them. That's not what reviews of other recent shows would seem to indicate, but that's what happens here. No big deal, and not a problem when you're in the venue experiencing it all in the moment. Anderson's developing into a nice, if predictable, hard-boppish player, and Stepen Scott, who seems a little out of sorts here, is a developing talent who no doubt benefits from the unconstricted space that Rollins gives him on their gigs together. And when Sonny comes in, it's to take no prisoners. At his age, he no doubt needs the space between solos. He still gives it his all when he plays, and the sheer physicality of the way he plays would drain many a younger man. Considering that he was about a month away from turning 71 (or 72, depending on whose info you believe) his playing here is damn near defiant. Let him have his breathers! But the result of this on an album is that you gotta listen to a lot of good=but=certainly-not-even-close-to-spectacular playing before you get to the real deal. A lot of it. The downside to even the best Milestone studio albums is that Sonny's playing was often truncated. The upside is that the sidemen's playing is too. That....is not an issue here... There's "better" live Rollins (from all decades, including the last 3) floating around. But this one ain't bad. Far from it. But without some judicious, even cruel, editing/tightening up, a bootleg it was, and a bootleg it remains, if not legally, then aesthetically. If you have even an inkling of an interest in hearing why some, including myself, still consider Sonny Rollins to be a musician who's beyond category, a genuine giant of an artist in spite of all the ill/half-formed trash talk that's been getting around for the last 30 or so years, then by all means hear his playing here. Just be be prepared to sit through a lot of other stuff, and to not hear that glorious sound of his fully captured. Even at that, it's worth it. But you shouldn't have to work so hard to get to it.

Well, yeah. Exactly. I've always been struck by the irony (and not just in this case) of preaching "self-rrelaince", "self-sufficiency", and such to people, and then when their backs are hard against the wall and the actually do exactly that, there's frequently no consideration given to things such as "mitigating circumstances". That ain't right either.

In Bertha's case, I think that her response would suggest that the wounds haven't healed. Perhaps they never will. More's the pity (for her and for us), but again, no judgements either way. Love is indeed strange.

Yeah, going for the TVs and shit is totally fucked, but I'm not so sure that if I was in a similar situation and needed some clothes and food and other survival shit for my family and saw no ready relief in sight that I'd not pursue the self-help route myself.

I'm of a dual mind about that. Otoh, yeah, we need to get an accurate history from those who lived it while we can, and like you said a lot of the warts are already common knowledge. But then again, when you're talking about a husband/wife relationship, you're getting about as personal as you can get, and I don't know but that Bertha's reluctance/defensiveness/whatever can't be fully understood/respected. They were married quite a while, and only they/she knew/knows how deep the various hurts/frustrations/whatever were, and may still be. One thing it's probably safe to say is that the marriage was no picnic... No judgements here either way.

I'd be temopted to do Elmo Hope, simply because Bertha's still alive (and playing splendidly, btw, if the recordings are any indicator). But there might have been a lot of pain there that she might not want to revisit...

To put it mildly... "Let The Four Winds Blow" is a better song than it is a hurricane survival strategy... Anybody heard from Zig? Or the Indians? This, to put it mildly (again), sucks.

That thread's already overbooked.

Everybody lives in the past more often than not. The future's always yet to come, and as soon as you recognize the present, it's already become the past. I mean, this "in the moment shit sounds like a great idea, and if you can really, really get there, it is, but only for some things. Try pushing a lawnmower or washing dishes while being totally "in the moment". Time, as the man said, is what keeps everything from happening all at once. What's a mutha to do?

"East Broadway Rundown" could easily have been an Ayler tune. FWIW, critics early on compared Ayler's motivic improvisational methods to Rollins. I often feel that if you pursue a certain mindset on the tenor long enough and focused enough, you'll eventually end up at Ayler, no matter where you start from. His playing, especially the Spiritual Unity-era stuff, is the "logical conclusion" of so many basic jazz feelings as applied to/through the tenor.

The core of the Denmark sets are lengthy (to put it mildly...) versions of "Four" & "Three Little Words". Imo, they're amongst the most valuable live recordings ever released. We're talking 45-minute versions of songs, of which all but 3 minutes or so are Rollins either soloing or trading fours. We're also talking 1968, which is a time not documented by official recordings. And we're talking a live, informal setting (Cafe Montmarte), with Rollins apparently feeling relaxed, open, and in the mood to play. Pricey they may be, but how do you put a price on heaven?