JSngry

Not to be confused wtih Eloe Omoe.

Where is Dr, Seuss? Is HE on the leuss?

In order: No Relatively, yes Yes I'd not go that far, but it's a good'un fersure!

hey y'all, i am really serious about this. can anybody point out ANY difference in the new Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers RVG ant the previously issued non-RVG version (other than the liner notes addition?) help me out here!!!! for jsngry in the hopes that i will get a straight answer!!!!! Ooooh...sorry dude, I'm still doing LPs and older CDs on all of these. I'm not one to immediately upgrade unless I need to get something where I can hear more music than noise, or if they inclede some new takes or something. My own personal (and limited) experience with RVGs is that they are a mixed lot relative to the original albums, but almost always different in some way. As to comparing RVGs w/McMasters, I don't know if I've got the inventory to do that, escept for MOANIN', which I still usually listen to on LP. Old habits die hard... Sorry, wish I could help more. Really.

Well, any friend of John's is a friend of couw's!

Yeah, if it's like that, she'll probably kill you before she has a chance to die. 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WHO THREW THAT BRICK?

Your next wife.

Has Deus gone Dizzy?

She shore is purty. I like purty girls what make freeky music. Gets me to THANKIN' things!

I myself am perfectly comfortable with using "blues" to describe the unique African-American musical/cultural elements that made up the Primal Stew which later was contained in part by "Blues". Hey - I know what I mean, and I ain't a-writin' no scholarly tome for no public consumption, so I'm a-gonna go with what I know and leave the rest of the driving to Greyhound!

As already mentioned, Artistry In Music was a working group (or was trying to be). The origianl Cobblestone album cover (never used again afaik) had an Artistry In Music logo (of sorts) as well as the more common Cedar Walton/Hank Moble Quintet billing. In fact, the Artistry In Music group was mentioned in Mobley's Down Beat interview. This was definitely Hank's gig from the git-go. I'm fairly confident that there had been no lung operations at the time of BREAKTHROUGH. The first public mention of such health woes that I'm aware of was in John Litwieler's 1979 liner notes to the LT-Series issue of A SLICE OF THE TOP, as part of a litany of how "the 1970s have not been kind to him". Seeing as how Breakthrough was recorded in February of 1972, and how Hank had been playing somewhat regularly up until then, a lung operation prior to 1972 seems highly unlikely to me. Plus, I don't really hear any breath issues whatsoever in his playing. If I hear anything, it's a man who might well have been pretty damn drunk and on the edge. By many accounts, Hank was already drinking very heavily for a few years prior to this, often with less than comfortable results. The private recordings from his European tour that I've been priviliged to hear contain many examples of this. There are more than a few moments that border on the bizarre. Bizarre, but totally involving, becasue the tension is just so damn intense. You really don't know if he's going to make it or not, yet he always does, somehow. Genuine psychodrama. This is also what I hear on BREAKTHROUGH - a man who may or may not make it, but one who ultimately does, "prettily" or not being besides the point. Like Larry said, guys who get to that point usually don't send messages back, and after this, he didn't (that later, ill-fated audition for Steeplechase aside). Bertrand - that's a very interesting point about the proximity of the date of Lee's murder and the recording of this set. Never put that together. Cedar & Billy both, as well as Hank, seem to be really consumed by some demons that they're trying to exorcise. Cedar's comping, in particular, is in spots very unusual for him, dissonant and very percussive.

Paging Ms. Boone, Ms. Debbie Boone...

Joshua's a good player. Dewey's a voice.

Geez, if the Political Forums close, I'll have to go back to reading newspapers and watching TV news. That would suck.

Fair enough, and opinions can't help but differ on matters such as this. A few points for possible further consideration, just for grins. The very nature of Hard Bop was agressiveness of some form or fashion. It was an "in your face" music. The fact that Mobley was one of the outstanding exponents of an agreesive music while at the same time utilizing passive elements is evidence tome of a passive-agressive mind set. Specically, his tone (who some fine writer somewhere once described, roughly, as being sucked into the microphone) wasn't really "soft" or "pretty, not in the easy senses of those words. I hear it as being "rounded off", which is similar but different to Hank's own description of it as "round". In other words, there are plenty of spikes and thorns in what he played, but the tone itself was such that these things were not in the forefront of waht you immediately heard. Agression delivered in a passive manner, if you will, or at least through a sound that blunted the initial impact of the agression. Larry Kart's observation as to the importance of hearing every note with the Hank of this period plays to this too, imo. If you just listen "generally", you'll miss the finer details, and those details are where the agression is. Exactly - the tone became more agressive at the same time that the lines were getting pared down, which I consider a passive act. (BTW - I use the terms "passive" & "agressive" here in a non-clinical sense. I definitely to not have the grounding to do otherwise.). It seems to me that Hank, always a contrarian (his Down Beat interview, where he mentions his love of playing counter to his company is revealing, I think) was again mixing elements - giving us a harder tone, sure, but using it in the service of a phraseology that ws becoming incresingly concentrated and reductive. If he was becoming more purely agressive, it seems to me that this harder tone would be accompanied by a more note-y vocabulary, since big tones and florid playing have been the norm of the jazz tenor almost since Day One. But even this harder tone wasn't HARD. It was just hard-er. So we're still looking at a man who's seemingly wanting to get more "in your face", but who still seems unwilling/unable to go all the way with it. I consider that "passive-agressive", since there are elements of both involved, and neither one has the clear advantage over the other. If anything, the balance remians the same, but the scale of the conflict gets bumped up a notch or two. It's the struggle between the two that makes the ride all the more gripping. You can, maybe, let your attention wander in spots of, say, SOUL STATION (why you would, is beyond me, but you could...). Something like DIPPIN', otoh, just grabs you by the nads and refuses to let go. Gives "gripping" w whole 'nother meaning, I suppose... That's cool, but I listen to music first and foremost as a story being told, and as such, pondering the pshychology of that story is inevitable for me, figuring out the whats and whys of how this stroy is being told in this way. The musical and the psychological are inseparatible for me, at least when something involves me in its story as deeply as Hank Mobley's playing usually does. When I shift to a "purely musical" POV, it's either to study the music technically, or because the music has much to admire in terms of craft, but not as much in content. That's just my way, and of course, milages do vary. Could be, but I doubt it. REACH OUT is not very good, realtively. It's jsut kinda dull, one of those days in the studio where things just didn't get going all the way. I can listen to it, but there's no compelling story being told there for me. Same with FAR AWAY LANDS (and a few others) - nothing really special, but hey, shit happens. reeds squeak, cats can't find thir zone, they're sick (in any number of ways), and the music just doesn't happen. That's not what BREAKTHROUGH is for me, not at all. I first heard it in, I think, 1976, when I hadn't really heard too much Hank besides the things w/Miles and some '50s stuff, and I immediately felt that this was "dangerous" music, that there was no coasting or out of focus work going on, that something wasn't right. sometimes when something isn't right, ya' know, you just kinda shrug it off and mve on, but sometimes the "wrongness" pulls you in and doesn't let go. Why that is, and what does and doesn't, I couldn't begin to speculate on, at least not publicly. But this is an album that did, and I've had almost 30 years to "get over it, as it were. No doubt, there's something personal about what I hear here and how/why it grabs me like it does, but that's true of all of us and the things we like or don't like, no? Some people really dig this album, and some really don't. Neither opinion is the "right" one, imo. But the fact that it seems to be the one, perhaps the only, album of Hank's career that stirs such genuinely strong differences of opinion amongst his truest fans ought to tell all of us that it's not "just" a "oh well, shit happens" date.

YES!

Back to FREE STYLE, I really dig the opening tune, "Hand Jive" is an abstaction of the old Johnny Otis tune. They abstracted it enough that they didn't give Otis composer credits, but they ain't foolin' me!

Mobley's playing, and as a description of his basic musical personality than as a negative psychological evaluation. From the beginning, Hank's playing had alwasy has a certain "held back" quality of sorts to it. That's what created the tension of those great early works - the pull between holding back and letting go. As he went further along, especially through the 60s, and his personal situation began to get more, shall we say, "frayed", it's the quality that he drew upon more and more. When everybody else was creating energy by playing more, Hank was, quite stubbornly (the passive-aggressive thing again), I think going against the grain by creating more energy by playing less, reducing his vocabulary to a relative handful of devices, which he packed with emotion, often to the point of sounding like he was about to explode. By the time you get to BREAKTHROUGH, the man's personal situation was definitely frayed, and his playing here is a "bare wire". He's still got all the internal emotional & musical conflicts going on, but the defense mechanisms are pretty much gone. I made a mix-tape for a friend once, w/o any artist IDs on it, and included "Early Morning Stroll" from this album. The title I gave it was "The Ultimate Hard Bop Fuck You". To me, that's what HAnk's got going on here - he's bitter, he's frustrated, he's slipping into darkness, but for whatever reason, he's unwilling and/or unable to go all the way and just VENT all the darkness he's got inside him. Passive-agressive. His remaining years, spent as they were in the pursuit of self-destruction and basically saying "fuck you" to any and all real offers of assistance are a classic example of passive-agressive behavior, I think. In no way is this intended as a dis on Hank, nor on his artistry. The guy's a derious favorite of mine, and always has been. It's just a recognition, in rretrospect, that Hank always had some stuff going on inside him, stuff that, had his life taken a few different turns, either gotten resolved or at least stayed somewaht sublimated. And it's definitely a retrospctive conclusion which I draw. Listening to the early and mid period works on their own, there's no indication of anything other than a player who's juggling a lot of stuff quite masterfully. But the trip to BREAKTHROUGH was not a sudden veer off the road, I don't think. The "signs" that this was a possible outcome were there all along, at least as "possible outcomes" of the inner life that Mobley's playing suggested, all the way from the beginning. But that's 100% hindsight. I'm in no way saying that BREAKTHROUGH is representative of Hank Mobley at his "best", but I do think it's about as "naked" an album as he ever made, and naked ain't always pretty.

Here's one that's "jug"-less. http://stellargraffiti.com/My%20Pictures/A...%20Nature.l.jpg

Passive-agressiveness.

If that cover's not an Instant Classic, I don't know what is.

That "Footprints" was nice indeed. And fun! But this I HAVE A DREAM thing is outright startling! Which is fun, too! The only section of it that I felt fell flat was the "gospel" portion. Just didn't feel "real" to me. That's a feeling that comes from a specific environment, and one that can't be faked. But then again, not a lot of contemporary American gospel feels real to me either, so what does that prove? Are there Sanctified Churches in the U.K.? Maybe it's realer than I realize! Otherwise, ragged around the edges sometimes, but the cat's writing some stuff that I ain't heard nobody doing. Not so much the raw materials as the way he puts it together. At times, it seems like ATTICA BLUES arranged by Stevie Wonder for Strata-East, but not really, not literally. "Spiritually", if that makes any sense... This thing was just released over here, but it's been out in the UK for a while now, tight? Any buzz about what the next Denys Baptiste album will be? I will be listening!

Yeah, like if you really love something, you love all of it, even the stuff that ain't necessarily gonna be so hot to somebody who doesn't. Not that I can relate to that sentiment, mind you...