JSngry

No one favorite, but let me say right now that Duke Ellington's comping makes almost everybody else's sound, uh...."unfocused".

For those of you who have heard the story, Carter is the Young Bull at the top of the hill looking down on the pasture full of cows. Problem is, there ain't that many Old Bulls left to tell him what he needs to hear. Still, in the overpopulated field of "really talented and promisng cats who would be a lot better if they had come up in the days when they'd have gotten their asses kicked more harder and more often that they could even dream about today", Carter remains my favorite. I like his spirit.

Got a mono 360 copy of Brubeck's Anything Goes at a TG&Y in Kilgore, Tx one night while the family was picking up some odds and ends before a Wednesday night Lent service. That was a trip. Then there was the copy of Woody Herman's Heavy Exposure on Cadet that was on the rack in my hiometown Firestone store, the same place that had a buncha Crown sides, including the very first jazz record I ever bought, something by, again, Brubeck.

Well, hey - if you can teach somebody to say "Basie" and still be ignorant to the music, you can just as easily teach them to say "Ornette", right? Seriously, there's always been an air of insularity, smugness, and self-congratulatoriness to everything connected to the jazz program at NT. The stories I could tell... But what's hard to swallow about this is that you hear these kids who for the most part obviously don't know a damn thing about the music that they're playing (the one or two who do stick out like a sore thumb, and their programming is noticably "off-list" for as long as they last...), and you can hear the indoctrination in the way they gush over the latest release by the 2:00 Lab Band, like they're in the presence of True Greatness, a Greatness which is beyond their mere mortal understanding. Well, the same mind that's convinced them that the 2:00 Lab Band is the hippest shit on today's menu is also the same mind that's telling them that Ornette is too strange to be trusted, that it's music that is only for the fringes, all that bullshit that we all know just doesn't hold up in the Real World of Jazz (hell, even hardbop Chris Heaney was on record as saying that he dug Atlantic-era Ornette!). So again I ask - why is motivating all this? Simple school spirit and/or pride? Nah, it's too warped to be something as simple (and laudable) as that. Again, I feel that it's the kind of "building a monument to yourself" mentality that has long pervaded a portion of the upper echelons of the Jazz Ed department at NT. They have historically gone out of their way to put out a very specific product and to freeze out any and everything that runs counter to it, sometimes going to outright scandalous ends to do so (a notable example is how all the tapes of all the Lab Bands were made available to members of the 1:00 for listening & studying. Except the ones with Billy Harper. Those were somehow "not available". Or the time that a member of the 1:00 was threatened with "blacklisting" if he allowed the release of an album he had recorded with a Dallas-based avant-garde group. Oh yeah, there's some stories to be told...) Yeah the students are there to learn broadcasting, and I'm sure they're getting a great education in same. But is they're going to have to play jazz, and if they're not going to know anything about it going in, and probably just a little more going out, why not give them a real exposure to the music, not one that is so socially and culturally skewed as to not at all fancifully be described as deceitful and totally false? I know the answer (and so do many UNT alums...), and it makes me (and them) darker than I care to be, so that's all about that.

KNON has jazz from midnight to 4 am, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. That's a totally different animal, in that it is a "community access" station. The DJs are all volunteers, and they not only do their own programming, they provide it as well. The Monday/Tuesday guy, James Stapleton, is a musician himself, and programs a variety of quality jazz of the post-bop varieties. Nothing too out, but what he lacks in breadth, he makes up for in depth. He also does an hour of real Brazillian music each night as well. Very enjoyable listening. The Wednesday night cat's name escapes me at this moment, but he's more into the 70s and beyond funk-jazz. But again, his taste in his idiom of choice is above-average, and I enjoy his programming just fine. The best jazz radio in the Metroplex is on Sunday afternnon from 3-6 on Soul 73, KKDA-AM, 730 on your radio dial, hosted by Roger Boykin. Great musician and great radio.

Uh...KNTU is not really a "public" station. It's a college station, and gets its funding from the school, which in turn comes from the state. The fundraisers they do are to cover expendiatures over and above what's budgeted for them by the school. The station survived just fine w/o any fundraising until about 4-5 years ago, when state budgeting started getting pretty funky. I've no doubt that if all they wanted to do was to play music, they could still get by just fine on what they. But they also offer live sports coverage (of UNT and local high schools), live Denton City Council coverage, and lots of other types of in-house of political and community service programming. For the broadcasting students, it's gotta be a helluva sweet deal, some real-life type experience in things other than playing music that most of them don't know shit about one way or the other? I mean, where else would you hear Count Basie called Count Bassey? So why should allowing Ornette on the air every so often be such a big fucking deal that you gotta take the records away from the station because the students actually want to play them? Why is it so important to brainwash them into thinking that what the Lab Bands play, and music that the Lab Bands approve of, is the finest that jazz has to offer and that everything else is to be approached with suspicion? Who's so threatened by Ornette that they need to hide his sides? Whose dick is it that's begging to be sucked by all this, anyway? Somebody who figures that as long as you got a faceful of their's that you won't be able to see anybody else's? Sounds to me like this Mark cat has just a bit too much of a stick up his ass, and that he's somebody's bitch, if only his own... I know, Alexander/Kilpatrick this diatribe ain't, but DAMN!!!!

Finding used LPs of Orgasm, Demon's Dance , and California Concerts in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, in the summer of 1989 was a bit of a surprise. The Mulligan I can kinda see (except that it's got the exact same scratch patterns that the copy my high school band director had ), but not the others. The store was a typical smallish-town used paperbacks/record store, and those three albums represented about 10% of their entire jazz selection. The rest was the usual Mangione, Benson, Spyro Gyra, et al discardage. I'm sure there's a story about how a used Alan Shorter side ended up in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and I'd like to know what it is. But I probably never will...

Austrian radio that is. Bennie played piano, bass clarinet, soprano, and tenor on that gig, backed by two able austrian rhythm players (or was one of them German?). We could vine this one here, if there's interest - what do you mean? ← Count me in! ← No others interested? ← What do I need to do?

Now batting... 33 - Bright Moments

Only if I'm able to stick to it...

ah, he's the Program Director. He's been there for years, oversees the students on-air. ← And he's on the air right now, taking your jazz requests at 940-565-3688! (btw - that's not a "secret" number, so no harm in posting it.)

I spoke with "Mark". I was told that he was Music Director. Whoever he is, he's got the authority to take albums out of the studio that he doesn't want DJs to play,

Mmmmm... Yes, it is a rap album, and yes, by "commercial" standards, it's poor. And it's not something I'd listen to more than once every very so often, mainly because the lyrics are too predictably "in your face" w/o an offsetting poetic sensibility to elevate them up to that next level that the best rappers go to. It's definitely not aimed for any kind of a "jazz" audience, that's for sure. But it's got the most interesting music of any gangsta-type rap album I've heard, so I can't recommend avoiding it altogether. I can, however, recommend not paying too much over five bucks for it, and then only as a "throw in".

Ok! 32 - Noj

The master discs have been compiled, sequenced, re-compliled, resequenced, re-recorded to fix some (but alas, not every) intercuttal level discrepancies, and are ready for copying. Could've gone with a sloppier (technically as well as musically) version that was done Sunday, but it was just too sloppy for me. The final version has slop enough as it is, but just technically. The selections and sequencing are finally right for my taste. 28 selections in all, many under 5 minutes in duration, and most in stereo! Distributors - look for an e-mail within the next 48 hours that will provide you with your preliminary mailing lists. Burning will take place this weekend. Sorry, won't be able to get to it sooner. All copies will be mailed out on Tuesday, July 5. Non-North American mailings will be sent via US Global Priority Mail in an attempt to minimize lag time between recipients. Distribution groups look to be fairly small, and I'll see to it that all distributors have their lists well in advance. It's going to be a 2 CD set in a two-sided plain cotton mesh/plastic (or whatever that stuff is) holder, so if the distributors have the time to prep their mailings beforehand, all they'll have to do is take the discs from my envelope, put them in theirs, and mail'em off. Zip-a-dee-do-dah. Barring any major postal snafus, this should allow for the first wave of discussion to begin roughly around July 12 or so, beginning with the distributors (hey - I can't pay ya', so here's your perk! ). I plan on having the answers up around July 25, so that's about a two week window for discussion, which should be plenty, I think. The material is pretty straight-forward for the most part, with more than a few "easy" selections (as far as identification goes), and one outright "gimme". If there's any in-depth discussion to be it should surface early on, since ID ain't gonna be that big of an issue overall, I don't think. But maybe I'm wrong...I can postpone the answers until a few days later if need be, though, A little bit (a very little bit) of overlap between tests shouldn't hurt. But answers will definitely be posted on or by August 1. No new signups for two days now, so it's looking like we might be set. If you want to participate but haven't yet signed up, now's the time! I'll make Sunday, July 3 the deadline, ok? Anything after that, and it'll be up to somebody to volunteer to send you a burn and for you to ask. Hate to be a hardass, but time is tight right now, and trying to fix the level issues took two days longer than I wanted, just because I'm bouncing back and forth between analog and digital source materials and don't have an audio editing program and a full-featured computer burning program like the cool kids do. So there's still a few "technical imperfections", but hey, no more delays. On with the show!

Does WallyWurld edit/censor their downloads like they do their CDs?

She shore looks dark. What, did she sign up to get Michael Jackson's discarded mellanin? Them crayzee sellebritties!

Adult Swim has some cool shit on there.

I'd be much happier with a deal that gives you free coke when you buy music...

Yeah, sell'em ALL and give him his opening!

I think it better than I spell it. Sometimes...

Oh, btw - kudos to Dan Gould for his stance in this. Dan is obviously not an Ornette man, but his postion towards what is a good programming policy for a station such as KNTU is to be commended, and shows that it is possible to seperate personal taste from the "bigger picture" when called for. Dan gets a lot of flack (much of it good-natures, I hope!) for his highly-focused tastes, but hey - I for one appreciate him very much for calling 'em as he sees 'em, whether I agree or not. And on this thread, we defintiely agree! The rest of y'all, hey - I'll not be a prick and post the MD's direct office #, but I will post the staion's e-mail: kntu@unt.edu Direct it to Mark, and let him know that you're a Metroplex resident who's been a staunch supporter of KNTU, including making regular donations, for many years, but now you're having rather serious doubts. In other words, lie like hell!

I don't know about all the management, but the cat I talksed to was a familiar voice who does morning drive and fundraisers year-round. The funny thing is, his rap was so damn predictable. It's like he was reading off a script, or had been programmed in his sleep, or something. But it's no surprise - UNT has always been averse to certain elements of musical society. It's really institutionalized, which is why I shouldn't be surprised. But it was just so blatant. It was like this guy had a manual in front of him with a chapter entitled "What To Say When A Listener Requests Something We Don't Approve Of", and after he had read everything there, he hung up. Didn't (couldn't?) come up with anything other than the party line. Thinking for yourself must not be a prerequisite for that gig. But then again, his future in Korporate Amerikka is surely to be BRITE!!!! Hey, I know that sometimes things get a little snippy around here amonst various musical factions. Just try and understand that for some of us, it's not you we see/hear when "you" make comments, pointed or otherwise, about music beyond the "mainstream". It's years, literally years, of frustration of dealing with the type of mentality that removes CDs from a station so the DJs won't play them because nobody wants to hear them, not even the people who request them or the people who have never heard them... It builds up inside, man, it builds up. And sometimes it explodes and hits civilians. Please forgive us when it does.

Ok, this is rich... I just spoke with the Music Director at KNTU, and he told me that, yes, they do have 6 Ornette CDs, and that they used to have more before he took them out. Why did he take them out? Because "students don't always make the best programming decisions". What does that mean? Apparently that "we aim to targetr the classic/mainstream market, and Ornette Coleman is neither." Seems that "only a few people like avant-garde jazz, and they don't listen to our station." Yeah, people like the student population who you have to remove the albums from to keep them from playing them... I was in the middle of politely (promise!) telling him that I know lots of people who like Atlantic-era Ornette, even people who don't like "avant-garde" jazz in general, and that his reasoning sounded like somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy, when I heard a click. The motherfucker hung up on me! Wait until the next pledge drive! "Jazz Education" my MOTHERFUCKING ass! The sentiment of the thread title just intensified.

I wouldn't even begin to speculate. Hell, he called Ornette "their", so far all I know, they still have the sides, but he was looking under "O"! Think I'll give'em a call and find out...