JSngry

How about they only record at home and never sing again? That would be even better!

Then again, it IS a Ford....

It's a commercial for a car. A FORD, no less! The car hates cats. So if YOU hate cats enough to lure them over to you and then decapitate them, THIS is the car for YOU! That's the only message I get from this advertisement. At least the pigeon ad, which I DID find funny, had a context. Pigeons shit on things. It's what they're famous for. But - the pigeon was not overtly killed. Hell, it might have just been knocked senseless for all we can tell. But the cat's freakin' head FALLS OFF in plain sight! Sure, I could imagine any number of contexts for the cat deserving its fate. THEN it would be funny to me. But in a commercial (any work, really, but ESPECIALLY in a commercial, where the start-to-finish story arc is usally the key to its successful mass appeal), that context should either be explicitly provided or else implicitly suggested in some way. None was provided here. It's a crude concept crudely executed. All I see is a car that bites a cat's head off for no other reason than it's a fucked-up piece of malevolent machinery. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Not.

Q: What do you call a car that's made entirely of stolen and/or "found" parts? A: A Proper Box! (JUST KIDDING!!!)

What I don't understand is this - why is it that on that fateful night, when, in desperation, the young man breaks away, that he buys a gun and steals a car? What's the message here - that he's driven to crime but still remembers his manners? Either an incredibly sick stereotype or some sublime nuance, I can't tell which. But coming from the same guy who did "Baby, Don't get Hooked On Me..."

...but is was written by MAC DAVIS!!!!

I got Dizzy Gillespie to autograph a Bird t-shirt when I was 18. If I had known then what I know now, I'd have gotten a Dizzy tee for him to sign... Oh well, a few years later, Clark Terry autographed the same shirt, and I had Dizzy autograph his autobiography, so that must make something right. Funniest autograph scene (non-jazz) I ever saw was in Albuquerque, 1981. I was playing in a show band at the Four Seasons hotel, and Flip Wilson was in the house. The front-peoples of the band were a husband-wife team who travelled w/their boys, then aged 9 & 11. They had apparently crossed paths w/Flip a few times over the years and invited us all over to meet him. Flip was cordial enough, but obviously wasn't into a long hang, so we all said our pleasantries and began to tail off. Just as we did, the 11 year old (who ran the lights for his folks show) came running up and shouted, "MR. WILSON!!!! CAN I HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH? PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZZZEEEEEEE?" Well, Flip, not missing a beat, asked the kid his first name, reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a checkbook, wrote the kid a personal check for $100.00 and handed it over to him. "Now, kid, what you have to decide," he said in that "Flip Wilson voice", "is what you want more - my autograph... OR A HUNNERT DOLLARSSSSSSSSSS". Last I heard, the check had still not been cashed.

Robbins' "A White Sport coat and a Pink Carnation" was bad. Worthy-of-consideration-in-this-thread bad in fact. "El Paso" is indeed classic, although Jay and the American's quasi-ripoff "Come A Little Bit Closer" might qualify here.

Like Tibbles? Now, THAT was funny!

All sick humor is sadisistic, but not all sadism is sick humor. An obnoxious SOB who gets decapitated by a sunroof, well, yeah, that's funny. A really whiny girlfriend or some such? Yeah, same thing. There, it would be setting up a revenge scenario that I could see the humor in. But a plain ol' cat? Sorry. Doesn't do it for me. If the cat had been set up to have been a really EVIL cat in someway, like clawing the upholstery or something like that, yeah, then I could laugh. But this poor little thing was just hanging out, jumped up on the car (which is grounds enough for execution w/some people I know, but I'm not one of them), stuck it's head in (ditto), and the evil car (it LURED the cat over to it) bit its head off. Not funny to me at all. Not because it's "cruel", but just because it's not funny unless pure sadism makes you laugh, and for me, it doesn't. There's nowhere near enough context or nuance in the setup, and it's not even TWO-dimensional in the execution. Just plain Dice Clay-ish - "Here kitty-kitty... WHACK!!!" Some people thought Dice Clay was a riot. I thought he was an idiot. All fire, no heat. Different strokes!

Hakky Birkadillyday!

Ok, but you can see the cat's head falling off into the inside of the car. Some things are sick, but funny in the abstract. When you actually SEE them, they lose the humor that comes from the situation not REALLY happening. They become purely sick. Computer-genrated or not, this falls into that category for me. Just sick.

You know more than some singers...

A logo to live by!

Some nice covers there. But the one above is the cover of the Charly reissue from the 90s. This is the original: "Original" is a bit misleading, since this album was not released contemporaneously. Sat in the vaults for a decade or two! BTW, here's ANOTHER cover, this one from the delightfully named Portugese label "Yes To Jazz". It says it's leased from Charly and shows a copyright date of 1984.

Imyrtrdting to hear that the reissues sound so good, since most of the VeeJay LPs I've heard don't sound so hot. Wonder what the culprit was back then?

http://www.tao.to/funny/flash/tv_ibc_arm.swf

We were once our own country, doncha' know. Might go a long way towards explaining a lot of things...

How's the sound?

AND - What about shifts in technology affecting potential for income? If we were still living in an age of records and tapes, and if we were going to keep on doing so forever, then the P.D. approach makes a bit more sense. But we're not. The CD/digital revolution has only been in the mainstream for what, not quite 20 years yet? We all know how much older material this revolution has broght back into circulation (and how much remains!). Is it fair to the legitmate holders of the rights to this older material to have just a few, or in some cases NO, years to sell this material before every Tomdickandharry can offer it? What about the smaller labels who have to take their time getting things out in digital format. Or think about the labels whose catalogs are in limbo for whatever reason. For every Universal, there's a Nessa or a Palo Alto or a... You get the picture. The laws and the technology are NOT in sync, and people are getting screwed, including many who probably "have it ccming to them" (Universal). But I don't think that revenge is necessarily the wisest principal for establishing law...

And consider this - what are the P.D. labels going to use for source material when/if the "big guys" stop/significantly decrease reissuing things done right as far as remastering, etc. goes because of an unfeasable profit projection due to the PD label's undercutting? Seems like they most all like to boast about how good their stuff sounds (well DUH! = why shouldn't it?). The few labels, like Classics, who are truly doing this for archival/preservation reasons won't be bothered, but the other guys (the vast majority) won't have much new to offer to thier customers, not having new sources to steal from. Yep - when the fat kid gets off the seesaw, the kid on the other side goes BOOM!

Every scenario affects real people. If you don't know them, somebody else does. Which is why the "absolutist" approach to things moral and legal just does not fly with me. There's more to it that theory - there's real people involved.

Sad indeed, but if he's been in the hospital for three months and wants to go out playing (as indicated by Larry Applelbaums' report of Keiko's stage announcement on the ejazznews article), then so it should be. The man has been such a vital lifeforce all these years that to deny him that at the end, if that's what he wants, would be cruel. However, there seem to be conflicting reports. Dr. JAzz mentions the need for money. Here's Larry Applelbaum's report: “I saw Elvin last night at Yoshi's here in San Francisco.He could barely make it to the stage, his wife helping him sit and placing the sticks in his hand. Elvin had trouble hitting the drums but his time and sound was impeccable. His wife made an announcement that Elvin was obviously very sick and has been in the hospital for 3 months and she wanted him to spend his last moments, at his wish, behind the drums. He looked about like he weighed 75 pounds and was truly sick...it was one of the saddest moments of my life. I was so used to seeing him look fit, happy and powerful. The last number was announced, Dear Lord, and his wife asked us all to pray as she hugged him from behind the drums for the entire tune. I could not stop crying... Please send prayers to this legend, the great inspirational Elvin!"

...including a snippet of the live "A Love Supreme"...

Braxton doing standards can be quite good, or quite not-so-good (those awkward Magenta sides come to mind). I'd very much like to know who the band will be (if there even is one!). But I'm defintiely interested!