JSngry

What happens when she wants sex that's like SUN SHIP? Are you ready?

Along with the bank thing, what gets me is all the sphintoids who stand in line at the Post Office kvetching about how slow the service is, how lazy the desk help is, blahblahblah, and then when THEY get up to the counter, it's with a package that's not already prepared, or a letter that's not sealed and addressed, SOMETHING that requires the postal workers to spend all their time doing what these dumbasses should have already done at the house. If you're not part of the solution... In the same category are people who are in a long line at the grocery store and wait until their purchase is fully totalled out before even beginning to reach into their pocket or purse for their checkbook, credit card, whatever. I guess it's asking too much of them to spend all that time in line doing something besides practicing their thumbus rectumus...

You met the old Freddie. The young one would probably have more, uh, fun...

Yeah, Tejano as I've heard it for the last 20 years or so is accordion-based and polka-centric, although a lot of bands "class it up" quite a bit musically. But it's dance music, first and foremost, so the beat is pretty non-changeable. And the drum machines and generically programmed synths of today's Tejano drain all the soul out of it, at lest from this Gringo's POV (PINCHE CABRON!). But I'll tell you what, in the right setting, it's a magic music for as long as the spell lasts. I used to have a girlfriend (this was in the pre LTB Days Dark of the Last Century) who was a friend of Santiago Jimenez, the guy who virtually invented the style (I think it was then called "Norteno", or "Northern", to reflect it's north-of-the-border origins), and father of Flaco Jimenez, a great accordionist who's had a little bit of crossover fame here and there over the years. Anyway, we had occasion to visit Santiago in San Antonio one weekend and stayed at his house. He was a very kind, humble-yet-dignified man, and he spoke freely about how he came up with the style when I asked him. Seems that as a youth, he was working as a laborer in the Hill Country area of Texas, the population of which is comprised of a large number of people with German and Slavic ancestry. He would attend their social functions, again in the capacity of a laborer, and hear all the polka music and see the spirited dancing that accompanied it. He fell in love with that music and the festiveness associated with it, and soon learned to play it himself, first for the Germanic folks, but eventually adopting it for his own Spanish-language songs. His fellow Mexican-American laborers became enamored of the new fusion themselves, and pretty soon, the style was the "in thing", so to speak in that part of the country. It spread through the Southwestern Mexican-American community over the years, eventually making it back into Mexico. The man truly spearheaded a musical revolution, and it wa an honor to be in his presence and partake of his and his wife's gracious hospitality. Although officially retired from music, Santiago did still play every Saturday night at a local restaurant, a family-ran place that you'd not know about if you weren't from the neighborhood. The clientele was mostly older (Santiago himself was well into his 70s himself then), and the trendy young folks were nowhere to be found. The band was just Santiago on vocals and accordion, a HORRIBLY out-of-tune- electric bassist (the I-V basslines of the songs were almost I-bV, a TRULY surrealistic sound...) and a drummer who probably could play that one beat and probably nothing more. But when they started to play, the people began to dance, not with the showiness of people who were there to be seen and to have a "PARTY!!!!", but with the lightness and heartfelt joy of people who had been doing this all their lives - going out on a Saturday night to "shake off the dust of everyday life" (apologies to Art Blakey), and to feel free for a few hours in a way that we all probably need to. There were smiles and laughter everywhere, all night. It was an intoxicating evening, seeing all these people flowing gracefully and naturally to the music, hearing this old man with the horrible band reach back and belt out songs from the soul and rip out some licks that came straight from the heart. There was a GLOW on his face the entire evening, a look that I recognized as being the feel of completeness that any musician gets when they are able to do exactly what they want for a crowd that is with them all the way. Yet again, I felt honored and blessed. So yeah, put me down in the camp that has a distaste for the prepackaged freeze-dired nothingness that so much of Tejano (no -so much of ALL "popular" music) has become. But I'm here to tell you that at it's roots is a joy and a soul that is as real as that of any music. It's a "folk" music, and like any other "folk" music, the closer it stays to the folk from whence it springs (and further away from the "business" that seeks to package it to sell it right back to those same people, people who already have it, just not as dressed up, a "business" ran in wual parts by promoters eager to make a quick buck and musicans who are earger to make ANY kind of a buck, and are willing to sell whatever they possess in order to do so), the truer and more powerful it is.

I'm proud to note that I am member #3, the first person beside b-3er and Use 3D to register. Jim put the word out on Ye Olde Bored Cryptone that this site was up, and I knew it was going to be a viable community, so I wasted no time in becoming a part of it. Tried staying loyal to the BNBB for as long as it was tenable, but that didn't last too long. Tried hanging around the other two "name" boards and using this as my "after hours" hang, but life changes necessitated chossing only one board to frequent, and this one was my choice. These days, my participation is way down, comparatively (those darn life events again...), but the Organissimo Board is still a part of my "normal" daily routine. Reading and posting is relaxing, entertaining, stimulating, and informative (sometimes to the point of being downright educational!). If the Organissimo Board didn't already exist, we would have to invent it!

For 3/4 of their recorded output, I'd agree. But on the second side of their first album, they got away from the tight arrangements and got into something different, something that I've heard was a more accurate reflection of their live shows. Loose and improvisational backgrounds, and open soloing. THAT'S the Dreams that captured my imagination at the time. The personnel of the group, for those who don't know, included Michael & Randy Brecker, Barry Rogers, John Abercrombie, Don Grolnick, Will Lee, & Billy Cobham. This was before any of them had become famous, before "fusion" had become a clearly defined style. It was all "jazz-rock" then, and the parameters were wide indeed! Billy Cobham gets off an archtypical spot, a few years before he hit w/Mahavishnu. How that solo escaped the attention of the rock drum crowd of the time, I don't understand. I do understand how the album slipped under the radar, though - the songs on the first side ain't so hot, and the second side was just waaaayyy too "different". That side of the album sounds like a band that didn't know that they were supposed to have a certain "style". Instead, they just played the songs, and did with them whatever seemed right at the time. In fact, Michael Brecker's long unaccompanied solo that opens the second side of that first album is still the best thing he's ever recorded, afaic. It's a wild, hairy mix of Coltrane & King Curtis, and it doesn't want to be bothered with noting the difference. Things would soon change...

What's the difference between Banda & Tejano?

If you're not getting vibed by the other players, if the group doesn't rehearse elsewhere without you, and if you're not working for free while everybody else is getting a taste, I'd say keep an ongoing and/but respectful connection happening and see how it goes as time goes by. But I will tell you this - if ALL you do is "free associate bits of tunes", if and when the collective level/ambition/wahatever gets bumped up a notch or two, you WILL feel a draft sooner or later, so be prepared, whatever that means to you.

How does Compost compare to Dreams, who AFAIC got it (that kind of "it" anyway...) about as right as it was going to be gotten on the second side of their first album?

word. word UP, in fact!

I personally find it fascinating to trace the evolution of perception through the course of the Bible (as well as the non-cannonical intertestamental literature that exists, literature which is essential reading, I think for anybody who wants a full picture of the world and times of New Testament-era Judaism and how the culture from which Jesus sprang got from "there" to "here") There's a constant unfolding of awareness and consciousness that culminates in the tale of Jesus, as if the quest for understanding about who/what this "God" thing was REALLY all about kept taking a few steps forward, a few more backwards, etc., until this cat came and showed everybody that it's really simple - love your neighbor as yourself, because your neighbor IS yourself, and by operating from that consciousness, you live in harmony with the spirit of Creation (aka "God"). And seeing that all the steps backward, from the Garden of Eden on, were inevitably driven by a desire to have a "kingdom" (i.e. a self-glorification, be it individual or collective) here on Earth rather than accepting that the true "kingdom" lies BEYOND (as in non-tangibly), what better way to make the point than to have the guy die on this plane only to be resurrected and ascend, as if to say, "try all you want to get your jollies here, but all "here" will ultimately do is kill you. What you really got to do is LET GO of all this self-aggrandizing mess and rise above it all, rise into the WHOLE instead of trying to build here in the partial). Doesn't matter if it "really happened" or not. The lesson is the same either way - lose yourself to find yourself. "Die" and be "reborn" into a much, MUCH better life, a life that no longer depends on "the world" for validation or meaning, because "the world" is just part of what REALLY exists (Physics has long ago disproven the notion of a three-dimensional reality as being the "all"). Simple as that. The questions had all been answered - who we are, why we're here, all that juicy stuff finally revealed itself through the life (again, real, exaggerated, or totally fabricated is irrelevant) of a human, the only form which we stubborn and dense humans seem to pay attention to. A perfect culmination to a tale that spans more than several centuries, but one that didn't have enough sales potential (it's so SIMPLE, but it really doesn't FIT into the lifestyle of most people, then or now...) to move it beyond it's core audience (and an audience that history suggest was STILL waiting for thier "Messiah" to come back SOON and do it HERE, NOW - early non-cannonical Christian literature suggests that much of the church was expecting the Second Coming to be just around the corner, which just goes to show you that old habits die hard...), much less stop the endless persecution of that audience by people who were still VERY hung up in the "kingdom on Earth" bag from THEIR P.O.V. Worlds were colliding, and somebody needed to co-op the truth so that their Earthly Glory could still remain, and somebody else needed to sell out the truth so that they could stop living in mortal fear every waking moment. The road to hell indeed is paved with "good" intentions... So the record (a gloriously LITERATE record, btw, full of archtypical personal dramas, wisdom stories, all kinds of allegorical tales, as well as poetry, satire, and even a SEANCE!) of a cultural-specific and incredibly RICH legacy of an ongoing quest for a broader understanding of the eternal questions gets turned into something else entirely, and all sorts of convoluted "theology" arises that tries to make questions into answers, and answers found "along the way" into The One True Law, no further exploration or understanding needed (or allowed....). The medium became the message, and the message became the massage. Or the strangulation, depending on who you were and when and where you lived. Jesus wept.

There's a bif difference between being the Word of God and the Words of God, if you get my drift...

It's about time, it's about space... It's about a thread in the craziest place...

There's an earlier version of "Moon Dreams" done by the Glenn Miller AAF band w/a vocal by Johnny Desmond that I like every bit as much as the BOTC version, just in a different way, and for different reasons. I'll say this much - going back to the BOTC version after learning the words and hearing an arrangement that is still sophisticated but nowhere near as harmonically dense as Gil's throw a whole new light on both the song itself and Gil's arrangement of it, and appreciation for both was heightened for me. Now as far as "Move" goes, I can't see anything being better than the Bird/Fat Girl airshot. As for "Deception" I prefer "Conception" from the Miles/Bird/Rollins Prestige date. Same changes, and almost the same melody. Shearing should have sued, or at least threatened to.. Actually, other than "Moon Dreams", I still find myself, on the whole, admiring BOTC more than liking it, and liking it more than loving it. Maybe you had to be there. Am I alone in this?

I like Herbie's version of "Watermelon Man" on HEADHUNTERS. Does that count?

I've only seen the Compost album (albums? - I think there were two), 2 or 3 times in my life. VERY hard to find, at least they have been for me. Can't say that I've ever heard as much as one cut.

How long until this gets moved to the Political Forum?

"Artists" are often able to lead a different life than mere "musicians". The options are many, if not always "blue collar". There's a sucker, no..., a bitch, no..., a.............. patron, yes, that's the word I'm looking for, PATRON, for everybody, some legitimate, and some, uh, sucker-bitches! The one thing they have in common, though, i$.... It's a whole 'nother world, dude....

Why anybody is perplexed/amused/whatever by the fact that a collection of cultural histories and wisdom stories written and or codified over centuries by different authors with different perspectives (perspectives which very often reflect the tenor of their times) should at times present "contradictions" is something that I find amusing. Of course there are contradicitions. Look at the varying geneologies (including Jesus') - there are inconsistencies (or at the least, ambiguities) there. Shrdlu, you no doubt believes that Isiah and Daniel were each the work of a single author. Although I respect that position, I myself find it next to impossible to acccept. There are just too many stylistic and philosophical variations over the course of each book for me to accept that position. To me, it seems obvious that these are compilations of various writings from several different generations written under several different sets of circumstances. Rather than trying to explain away the obvious (or, to be fully accurate, obvious as I see it), I myself think it's more beneficial to accept them, and then get on with the business of understanding why they exist, what historical circumstances led to their co-mingling, and then look beyond the facts in order to grasp the larger truth. To me, that is where the beauty and wisdom of God is found, perhaps even the very essence of God (if such a thing can ever truly be grasped by the human mind) - the underlying unity beneath a facade of what on the surface seems like chaos and discontinuity. Perfection proving itself to NOT be the lack of friction and contradiction, but rather the embracing of it as necessary parts, complimentary opposites if you will, of a greater whole. If all you can see is the inconsistencies, then you see the duality (or greater), but if you can see the wholeness, if you can not just accept, but actually embrace the contradictions, then you may well be on your way to embracing the unity, which is, after all, one of the GREAT themes running throught the Bible - the constant push/pull of seperation (humanity as their own highest power, with each individual person being their own potential theocratic universe) vs. unity (humanity united in subservience to a greater, common, unity, aka God). It's the story of all of our lifes told through a specific geo-cultural voice, and nit-picking for "errors", "contradictions", and such is much akin to looking for flaws in your wife's complexion - no doubt you will find them SOMEWHERE, but what does it prove about anything that really matters? I guess it's obvious that I'm not a literalist, eh? Although I do wonder whatever became of the Ark of the Covenant - cats were running around like crazy with it for a while, and then all of a sudden it's like it never existed. It's almost as if a different generation of writers took over the gig and left all that legend stuff behind!

My car when the windows are rolled down.

There's a metaphor or something here somehow...

Definitely sounds like a smaller group to me on this one. Tunes are kind of shortish for the most part, which has me wondering if maybe these cuts weren't from the same "The Navy Swings" series that was the source of at lest two other Hindsight releases that I know of, one by Joannie Sommers w/Shelly Manne, the other by The Hi-Los. The studio "sounds" much the same, it seems.

Featuring an uncredited (unusual for Hindsight) septet and Pinnochio James on occasional vocal. Hindsight HSR-237. LP. Good set, fine, often great, playing by Hamp, with a minimum of antics. And whatever happened to Pinnochio James? As always, thanks in advance!