JSngry

Well, in my case, I've heard pretty much all the albums, spent 4+ years in a music school that rather zealously preached The Gospel According To Stan Kenton, personally played a fair number of charts from the library, and heard the 70s band live about 5 or 6 times, spending time hanging out w/the band a few off those times. So when I say that there's very little Kenton that I truly dig, a little more that I hate, and even more, the vast majority, actually, that leaves me stunningly indifferent, it is not an uninformed opinion, believe me. As for the Easron book (thanks for the reminder as to the author), I distinfly remember the Furor Amongst The Faithful upon its release, which seemed to be caused mostly by the numerous "personal" revelations about Kenton, amongst them that he was a heavy drinker (he was) and that he sometimes was an unfaithful husband (ditto). I don't remember any questioning of the portrait of Graettinger, but then again, Graettinger has long been a figure that many True Kenton Believers view with an odd mixture of fear, loathing, suspicion, and justification. No sense in rehashing the debate over Kenton, which ultimately, as in all such matters, comes down to what one likes and what one finds personally relevant. I jsut don't like the Marsallisian implication that "if you don't like it, it's because ou haven't heard enough of it", or some such.

Party-pooper.

"Keep Your Head To The Sky" by Earth, Wind & Fire (1972).

Lee Allen freakin' SHINES on this puppy: And a big YES to Butera. He was seriously into this bag long before it was "fashionable". Check out his tenor battle w/Ray Abrams on this one: Butera w/Prima is sometimes a cliche thing, but there's enough there to let you know the cat could play (e.g. - his first chorus on "Shiek Of Araby").

$99?????????? Man, it's a good album, but.... I found both of these in the used bins @ local Warehouses a few years ago for something like $6.99 each. That's where I'd go looking, local used bins and such. That online price is WACK!

Somebody needs to but the hump back into humpback!

There was a Kenton biography I once read (don't remember anything other than that it was written by a female) that painted a portrait of Graettinger as a man who never slept ("You can sleep when you're dead" was his line, supposedly) and who subsisted on potfulls of black coffee and, iirc, the occasional dose of raw eggs. Also included were recollections of fellow bandmates who recalled him as an unusually prescient individual. Art Pepper, for instance, said that Graettinger fortold the difficult times that lay ahead for him (Pepper) with an uncannily accurate accuracy. Others commented on how his graphic notation led to unusually vivid musical imagery, that if he drew a tree on the paper, that the resultant musical translation actually sounded like a tree (to them, at least). There haven't been many Kenton bios, and only one written by a woman that I know of, so this one should be easy enough to trace. Sorry I don't have the specifics, but my days of Kenton fandom have long been over. Graettinger himself, otoh, continues to fascinate.

On the "nothing" part, we'll have to respectdully disagree. How much it meant to me, however, was highly variable.

Yo man, I'm not above the quixotic approach myself. It's just that it's good to have a solid Plan B ready for immediate deployal should things not go according plan, because more than often enough, they don't.

AB, although I deeply adrmire, respect, and even condone your attempts to avoid ugliness and create unity, I'm afraid that I have to say that imo, unresolvable ugliness is an unavoidable part of life, no matter what steps we take to avoid it. To the extent that heated confrontation eventually leads to understanding, it's an "unpleasant benefical". When it doesn't get there, hey, what can you do other than step over the corpses and keep going? That's dark, I know, but really, that's the only way to live in a free world that I can personally see. Revel in the good, walk around the bad, try to change what you can, leave alone what you can't, and keep your head to the sky, as the song says.

Ah yes, The Masked Marauders, remember them and their "hit" "I Can't Get No Nookie" (Nookie being the name of the singer's Eskimo girlfriend) well. One of the great Pop Frauds of the day. Bought their album as a cutout for $1.99, played it once, found it to be sucky, and promptly sold it for $50. Ah, collectors!

I don't necessarily think it's "cool" either, but again I ask - what did he ever do to calm the storm? It seemed to me that he came into this joint looking for a fight, and then when he found one, he whined about getting it. More than one person referred to him as "passive-agressive", and afaic, that's exactly what his behavior here was. A "victim" of his own making, and really - how much of a victim is that? He reaped what he had sown. Again, no tears.

Awful, yes, but they also had a "jazz thing" (DEEP by experience, Aric by intuition) that was undeniable. And on a primarily jazz board, that's gotta count for something. Their bad qualities went on one side of the scale, the good on the other, and determining the relative balance was then up to individual. Or, as it turned out, the moderators. No real tears here about the decisions.

Don't know about anybody else, but my Spider Sense went all abuzz with his arrival the way that it seldom does, even with club owners and junkies. As far as never seeing anybody treated that badly, hey, ask yourself this - did he ever attempt to recognize how and why he was pissing so many people off? Not that I saw. His best response to the Zionism=Nazism buisness was, iirc, "I'm not anti-Semitic", as well as Fallback Line #15 (if there were even that many in the rep...), "You don't know me". Well, la-di-fukkin'-dah, that ain't gonna get it. Greg I saw as a case of a good guy buried inside a too-thick-for-his-own-good protective shell. DEEP was just a crazy road dog who was at once too hip and too crude for the room. Aric, well, Aric is Aric. Love him in spite of his obvious problems, but he made his own bed. Again. But che? Nah man, that guy virtually exuded problematic from Day One, and didn't do one damn thing to prove otherwise. If ever I've seen a narcisistic, self-fulfilling prophecy of doom, it was him. Like I said, the Spider Sense went off almost immediately, and it never really stopped buzzing. People told him over and over why he was receiving the reception he was getting, both publicly, and, I assume, in PMs. I told him that if he really wanted to stick around that he would just have to tough it out - acknowledge his miscalculations and his offensive (intentional or otherwise) beginings, let time heal the wounds, and that eventually his good intentions, if he really had them, would become apparent to most over time. That did not happen. Whose fault is that?

They have been released in America, although I don't know if they're still in print. Used copies should be able to be found w/o too much effort.

Well, Ingram, I see your point, but otoh, we were kind of between a rock and a hard place here. When he first came on board, a lot of people jumped all over his ass, and that came to be viewed as piling on or some such. And it kinda was, after a point. So what then? Collective teeth-gritting, PMs exchanged (I got a couple - they were "nice" in tone. I responded sincerely yet respectfully, and although I was never fully disabused of the martyr notion, I think a mutual attitude of "tolerant agreement/respectful disagreement" was struck) and, in general, a collective sense that it was just a matter of time before this guy burnt out, imploded, whatever, so we were just goiing to have to ride it out. Which we did, mostly, and sure enough, he did just what was expected. BOOM! So some of what's going on here is nothing more than a collective exhalation after a slightly-longer-than-expected holding of the breath and biting of the tongue. Not necessarily mature or whatever, but hey, hopefully it'll be over as soon as normal oxygen levels are restored... I myself am more than willing to move on, strike it up as another chapter in the Never-Ending Adventures Of Cyberspace, and call the Department of Homeland Security to alert them of his impending arrival in Nova Scotia. Seriously, if the guy really is nothing more than a troll, or a really nasty fuckhead, well, good riddance to bad rubbish. But if he's some "regular" guy who really doesn't understand how his manner annoys (at best) and deeply offends (at worst) so many people, and who reaches frustration saturation point a little too soon for his or anybody else's good, here's hoping that sooner or later he gets a clue, acts on it, and grows up/out/whatever. Everybody's got baggage, but some people seem to seem to be unable to check thiers at the curb before boarding...

Oh yeah - the liners mention that the bassist on some sessions is none other that Wilbur Little, or, at least that he was a regular member of the band. They're not clear on which it is.

Arrived yesterday, and played last night. Good stuff. Very good stuff. Hell, for $8.99, GREAT stuff!

Lee Allen, anybody?

I still say he goes to Nova Scotia, sneaks across the border, and blows us all up. It's the martyrly thing to do!

In 20 years, most of the jackets I see will probably be white...

Yeah, but would you want to see your kid in one?

Sorry, man, didn't mean to creep you out. But as I understand it, it's not uncommon for child pornograpers to take "normal" pictures off the net and turn them into something else entirely. Sad, sick, but true. Hell, if they'll can put me in a lime green jacket, imagine what they'll do to a kid...

THAT WUZ SLIGHTADVANTAGEREDO YOU NDMBSAS YU NO - GREG WAIST mutherfukker didn't even invite ME over for any... Im gonna get HIS ass banned for that!

THAT WUZ SLIGHTADVANTAGEREDO YOU NDMBSAS YU NO - GREG WAIST