JSngry

Thank you!

Through one of those goofy Google quirks, I came across this site: http://stellargraffiti.com/My%20Pictures/ Believe it or not, I've never been all that taken by Monroe's "sexiness". Too blatantly manipulative for me, and too contrived in its presentation. But there are pictures here that are simply breathtaking in the natural beauty of hers that is revealed. There's plenty of cheesey (and cheesecakey) stuff here, but some of these pictures... Of course, the tragedy of her life has been discussed to death, but I've never really gotten all the talk about her "vulnerabilty". I was 6 when she died, so most of what I came to know about her came after the fact. She always seemed to me like a person who made a deal with the devil (figuratively) and paid the bill when it came due, simple as that. But in many of these photographs, that vulnerability comes through loud and clear, and it is actually quite touching. Or else that was an act for the camera as well. Who knows? Anyway, again, this is NOT an invitation, veiled or otherwise, to start a new "Babe Thread". It's just a link to a very comprehensive collection of photographs of a "legend". Don't make B-3er have to stop this car and come back there!

Click on what link to the BBC?

Has he come to America yet? Not that he "needs to", ya' know, but that's the only way I'll be able to catch him live.

A woman doesn't tell her age, but the Organissimo Board's Main Page does! Best wishes, and have a good'un!

Not going to say too much, because I don't know too much, and there's probably lots of posters here who do, but let me kick off the thread by saying just this- Denys Baptiste seems to have one of the freest minds I've heard out of a young jazzman in years. No hangups about what "is" or "isn't" jazz, what is fair grist for the mill and what isn't, what jazz should or should not be getting into. The cat really seems to take the "it's all good" philosophy to heart, not as a point of contention, but as a fact of life. I heard ALTERNATING CURRENTS and was charmed. Tonight, I heard I HAVE A DREAM (thanks to a nudge by Bev), and was startled. In a good way. What Stevie Wonder was doing for R&B in the 70s, Denys Baptiste seems to be thinking about doing to jazz now - throw tightass obsession about the "rules" out the window, and use whatever he needs, old and/or new, to use to get his point across. It doesn't always work, but it does more often not. And when it does...well, like I said, I was startled. Carribean, Be-bop, Post Be-Bop, Free, R&B, Mixology, Strata-East, Oliver Nelson, Charles Mingus, Marvin Gaye, all these flavors are good to him, and he mixes them freely and joyously. Keep an eye on Denys Baptiste. He's a free man.

Charles Lane, didn't he play Mr. Dithers in the Blondie movies? Figured he was LONG gone by now. Wow...

Oh yeah - "Indian Lake", "We Can Fly", & "Hair" were all big hits in their day. Might have been a few others, but those are the ones I remember. I even remember Mama Cowsill (Barbara?) appearing on To Tell The Truth. Don't remember if she stumped the panel or not, though. But hey - half the time, I can'tremember where I left my keys. Go figure. But not one B-side worth a damn. Like I said, a band that can't give you a good B-side ain't to be trusted. Of all the things I've said on this board, that's the one I'll go to the mat for.

Intresting reading in these comments, y'all. I'm learning. Bless ya'.

Could we all agree that "Blues" as we know/knew it today is the net result of a lenghty, complicated, and multi-tiered back-and-forth between deep "folk" sources and the marketplace? I mean, if Allen wants to make the argument that the 12 bar form is the final commercial codification of any number of non-folk forces shaping raw folk materials for popular consumption, I'm not about to begin to argue otherwise. Makes perfect sense to me. But if the argument is (and it doesn't seem to be, but for the sake of "sureness", let's proceed...) that those non-folk sources created the raw materials that they then also molded, well, that's going to be a harder, if not impossible, sell, at least to me. Like Mr. Litwack, I also believe that "Blues" is a helluva lot more than just a 12 bar form w/a certain set of chord progressions. This opinion might not be a popularly-held one, but it's what I've believed for longer than I care to remember.

In a way, listening backwards, this IS what Hank was all about. The clues were there all along.

Well, I'm not a particularly fast player, but I can tell you that the saxophone is designed in such a way that fast is relatively easy (some types of fast, anyway...) once you get over a couple of humps. for me, those are knwing, really knowing, where "everything is, shich is where the slow stuff comes in. You practice your scales and stuff as slow as possible, and doggone it, after time, you're going to know exactly where everything is, no "well, it's KINDA here". Because if that's where you're at, sometimes it'll be there, and sometimes it won't. Same thing with long tones. That's how you build your tone, and tone is, for me anyway, the one thing that will distract me faster than anything. I'm not just hearing notes, I'm hearing a SOUND, and if the sound I'm making ain't the same as the one I'm hearing, well, that's a distraction to the overall process, right? Perhaps the most fundamental one, truthfully. Think about it - if you're called upon to speak, and you have this totally grand oratory masterpiece all plotted out in your head, and the moment you open your mouth a squeak or some other vocal glitch comesout of your mouth, hey - it's over before it even begins, right? Sometimes you can recover, but if you never find that voice that you were hearing, you're gonna be working from behind from jump street. Your tone is everything. Doesn't matter what you play, fast, slow, straight, out, melody, improvisation, whatever, if you got your voice happening, you got the main thing out of the way. The rest is all about choices, and choices is good. And if you have to choose a technical "compromise", you can put it across a lot more effectively if you do it with the full certitude of your own voice. It's like an actor forgetting their lines - if they're able to come up with a good coverup and deliver it in the same voice that they were using for the written lines, hey, who's gonna know? but if they lose their voice... Now, I'd be a liar if I said that the slow way was all it took, But that's the foundation, I believe. Once you get a grip on that end of it, it's more a question of simple (well, "simple") acceleration than it is actually having to learn anything.

And when it comes to pure production chops, yeah, Alpert wins w/o a contest.

Yes, Alpert. My bad. On those two tunes, yeah, I can see your point a lot better. The difference, I would suggest, is how those two tunes got stretched out and morphed in live performances over time. They ended up sounding very different than those studio versions. That's where/how Miles ultimately put the "Miles" into the material, and which is where Miles and Alpert ultimately become two different birds. But Alperts always had a good ear for pop sophisitication, the TJB stuff not withstanding. A&M had some really tasty acts back in the day. Are you like me, though? Do you really enjoy hearing a well produced instrumental pop record and picking apart the production? I don't mean some hack "smooth" crap, but something that's obviously had a lot of musical thought and effort put into it. I really dig dissecting that stuff, just to see how it's done, how all the little things fir together, and why they're in there in the first place. I can really get into that sometimes.

Long tones (LOTS of long tones) and slow technical exercises, then whatever the focus of the moment is. Because you can't play it fast if you can't play it slow, and because it's a helluva lot easier to play anything if you don't have to be distracted by your own bad tone.

I'll take you at your word on that, but please understand that I'm a little skeptical that Albert's material of the time was exactly like Miles'. Not unless Marcus Miller was producing Albert as well, and not unless Albert was into zouck, go-go, and such. But like I said, I've never heard the stuff, so you could well be right!

Damn, Chris, do you have any actual ROOM in your place? Seriously - great, GREAT stuff that you keep sharing here. Sincerely appreciated.

Sorry, but those are Albert sides I've never heard. After the TLB (I'm an old fart, remember ), "Rise" is all that I know (and I swear - everytime I hear that one on the radio now, it sounds like thay mastered it from an off-center 45!) Do you mean that the production is identical or that the playing is? I could maybe see the former, but I'd have to hear Albert play with as much "knowing" as Miles, even on pop stuff, to believe it.

Yiou know, I've heard the name "Preston Sturges" so much over the years, read so much about him, seen all kinds of tributes to him, etc., that I figured that I had seen at least some of his films at least once. That list proves me wrong. Never seen (or heard) of any of them. I feel so...so...IGNUNT! (which is why I started this thread - I don't like being ignunt! ) Discovering this stuff oughta be BIG fun! I mean, any cat that has a newspaper headline that reads MUSSOLINI RESIGNS! "Enough Is Sufficient", says Dictator (or something very similar) in the wake of some American chick giving birth to sextuplets obviously lives on a planet that I'd like to hang out at for a while.

The last few years of Miles' career, it really seemed to me that he was making instrumental Pop records, and bringing his musical esthetic along with it. That's no problem for me, because I've always dug quality Pop, and I've always dug Miles' musical esthetic, so, hey... Why was he doing this is a fair question. To make the bigger bucks? To stay "current" in the eyes of the public? Because it was a new musical challenge for him? All of the above, I think. Not all of the albums were equally successful, and not all hold up from start to finish, but live, those late bands could take the material from the records and do incredibly varied and musical things with them. The Montreux box shows this, as does LIVE AROUND THE WORLD, and as do any number of bootlegs from those late shows. LOTS of attention to details in the overall group sound, and no little emphasis on varied textures. The synths and percussion gave him a very broad pallate with which to work, and work with it he did. The fact that he used it to create instrumental pop instead of jazz is true enough, but only relevant for reasons of personal preference. And his own playing in these contexts showed a very keen understanding of what was required in such a context in terms of drama, pacing, phrasing, etc. Herb Albert wouldn't have a CLUE how to do what Miles did in that music! It's not the Miles a lot of us will go the grave clutching to our collective bosoms, and for a lot of people, it's music with no redeeming value whatsoever, even moreso than the 70s stuff, but hey - I like it. I know what it is, and where it stands in the grand scheme of things, and I know that there was high-calibre musicianship and intellegence on display. No slacking whatsoever, just a different application. No way I'd get into a heated dicussion about the "profundity" of this period, but I like it nevertheless, for what it is, and for how it's done.

Wow Daddy Pop! I'd love to see that flick. Never even heard of it, or don't recall anyway. Sounds like a limited circulation thing. I'll have to search on that one. Thank you. Uh, Cary... http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...=0entry317105

Just finished w/Preston Strurges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, which I had never even heard of before this evening. I could say, "whoa,,,,", or, "WTF?!?!?!?!" or, "Oh...my.....GOD!!!!!!", but I'll just let our robiticon buddy express what this movie left me feeling: UNbelieveable movie! Brilliant, audacious, and how the hell did it get made?

I hear it's something in the brewing luminous. Don't get any on ya. I will be having a memorial barbecue here. if you bring some brews, you are invited. I'll drink to that! I'll bring the tiki torches! I'll throw on some island music from Poland They have islands in Poland??? is the Vatican an island? think so... does the pope dance to this music? He gets down and shrutis. This needs to stop. We done broke the board once before with this kind of thing, remember?