JSngry

Aren't we all?

71? Wow...

"Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes." - Alan Watts

I'll disagree - they ARE a great band. None of the individuals involved are "great players", not as we commonly think of it, but the synergy is real. It's the collective vibe that gets me, not that of the individuals. I'm very fond of TONIC, but I find that a lot of MMW fans aren't. Discuss?

Geri Allen

And I'll go one step further and suggest that it's not really a matter of "transcending" duality and separateness in order to achieve unity, it's "simply" a matter of just accepting it (unity). Unity is not something we invent or earn, it's just the way things ultimately are going to be, no escaping it. Just because we are unable/refuse/whatever to see it doesn't mean it's not real. Or that it's not always there. It is. What we too often invent are reasons for not accepting it. What we need to transcend is ourselves, not something external. On one level, that's a semantics game, but on another it's not - how do you "discover" something that's already there? It might be a personal discovery, a breakthrough, even, but so is the revelation that toughing your genitals feels good. I had a comic strip (forget which one it was) on my fridge door for years that said, "Always remember - you're unique. Just like everybody else." I LOVE that!

Soloff's a different bird - not really a "jazz musician" per se as much as an excellent, superior even, all-around musician who is able to bring a high level of competency and intellegence to a jazz setting, If that sounds like it damningwith faint praise, it's not. It's just that Soloff has played a different game all these years, the game of the "professional musician". without any other adjectives. He's the worthy successor to cats like Jimmy Maxwell and Ernie Royal. Those kind of guys are equipped to play ANYTHING well. It's a different game than being a "jazz musician", but noting the difference in no way presupposes that one is a superior to the other. As for Wallace Roney...nah. Not even. His wife, otoh, is a national treasure.

Can you clarify? (In other words: Who you callin' a sucker? ) The real game, as I see it, is transcending duality and separateness. Which is often easier said than done, as we can see by this thread... The suckers are the ones who pick a fight based on one side or the other of the duality/dualities rather than attempting to, as you say, transcend duality and separateness (success at which would result in a state of unity, right?). A fool and his harmony are soon parted.

But I don't see any way around it.

But I'm sticking to it until given a more viable alternative.

Oh yeah, that's just my opinion.

That's a sucker game, bro. There ain't no duality, there's only unity. Everything else is a choice between incomplete perceptions.

This whole duality trip is cracking me up.

Is the degree of difficulty being factored in correctly?

I am indeed serious. Although my information is entirely secondhand, it's from not unreliable sources. I can't see this format making it "big", but I can see it carving out a niche in urban markets. Frankly, anything that helps to kill off the residue of the 20th century amongst those who uncritically accept it as THE way is fine by me. You got people who still think that The Clash were "radical". CRAZY radical, in fact. Cecil Taylor's been making records for almost a half-century. Talk to me about "radical".

How much was it? If it was under a fin, I'd have to have it just to satisfy the geek jones.

But composting the old and expired enables something new to grow. Maybe...

I see this format functioning as a barrage of "nonstop hits" in continuous medley form, not at all unlike a club DJ does. As for the talkovers, my guess is that there won't be any, or very few. If ever a format was made for automation, it was this one. Now whether or not it actually takes off, that's another deal altogther. But by titlint it "Short Attention Span System", they might be hitting closer to the mark of modern reality than any of us would feel comfortable admitting. If you don't give people time to think, they'll never know what hit them, and a rapid-fire attack of smoothly edited hits with "just the good parts" left in might hold more of an appeal than we would imagine. I mean, who would have thought that people would flock en masse to eat McDonald's hamburgers, not just as convinience, but as "the real deal"? What I failed to mention in my initial post was that Gimarc & Co. have supposedly (this is all "grapevine" talk, mind you, but fairly reliable) accumulated a library of songs in this new format that numbers in the tens of thousands. How much ear candy can you stand?

This is not a joke, this is a real format that's being worked on. For those who know or know of him, it would be supremely fitting if George Gimarc went down in history as the man who finally killed conventional rock radio by letting it choke on itself.

Do cheese enchiladas make you fart?

The only mention of it that I could find on the Web was here http://www.michaelspears.com/about_current.htm at the bottom, under "RADIO SASS — Short Attention Span System", and it's vague, to say the least. But I hear through the grapevine that what Mssrs. Spears and Gimarc ahve done is to take all the beloved and overplayed oldies of the last 40 years or so and found a way to edit them all down to 90 second "mini-records". Hey - if you still need to hear "It's My Party" or "Kashmir" or "I Ran" or ANYTHING like that more than once a week or less (approximately), then 90 seconds ought to get the job done, no? Hopefully, the net result will be that "the masses" FINALLY wake up and say, "Hey, I've heard this already! What ELSE is there to listen too?" But that's hoping against hope, I'm sure... Downside is that wedding bands will have to GREATLY expand their repertoire in order to fit it all in. Sure to be controversial if it takes off, I'd imagine. Stay tuned.

I'd just like to say that LTB made some incredible cheese enchiladas with tomatillo sauce this evening, everything made from scratch with all fresh ingredients (except the tortillas, but they were quality. And the cheese, of course - we don't own any cows). It made her happy to fix them, it made me happy to eat them, and it made us happy that the other was happy because of what we were doing. I felt the love, she felt that I felt it, and vicey-versy. That's a good thing. Just had to say that.

Sad to see him go...

Wow, thehilos.com, eh? DOH! Never let it be said that I am one to go straight for the most obvious...