JSngry

Thank God! I was beginning to feel like Jethro Modine!

Ok, this HAS to be it. "If you were a parrot, I'd let you wake up in the morning, but I'd still be sober!" Right?

Thanks, Larry. At under $5, it sounds like a can't-miss deal. Teo actually wrote that? GEESH! You think he had a relapse on QUIET NIGHTS? (I know, better than generally acknowledged. But I takes 'em where I finds 'em...)

I think two full weekends after the first guesses begin to roll in is a good window of opportunity.

My bell bottom has turned into a bell gut. Different kinda riot goin' on there!

Fair enough underground, and I'll agree with you, if subtly. Perhaps it was the "neither fish nor fowl" aspect of Sly's pre-RIOT music that was his "downfall"? Not quite rock, not quite R&B, not wholly black, not wholly white. A little bit of everything at once with a very imaginative (damn near all those songs have SOME sort of REALLY wierd musical element to them; weird but right) producer/arranger/bandleader running the show. "Something for everybody" works only until everybody wants something. Because the more they get, the more they want. Idealism is a great come-on, it gets you in the door and to the table, but how often is it actually in the contract? I don't think Sly read the fine print.

Can't find the images on line. Been looking. Lon's right, INFINITY IS has a goofy-ass cover. There was a third Atlantic - WITH SOUND REASON. They were all "good", but a HUGE let-down after the Strata-East & Horizon stuff.

Wait a sec... If you were my parrot, dear lady, I'd LET you! THAT'S how it went, right?

Well, I was just "passing thru" the store in a bit of an unauthorized-stop-better-get-the-hell-home hurry, so I put it in a "safe spot". It'll be there tomorrow, trust me.

Yeah, what's up with THAT?

Saw a used LP (has it ever made CD?) for cheap, might go back tomorrow, good lard whelping and the greek don't cry. Any good? Carisi's name always piques my curiosity.

Well, I might be drunk, but she, sir, is a parrot, and I can sober up. Wasn't that how it went?

Obviously it would!

Would the other one be "Infinity Is", or something similar?

That 1960(?) JATP IN EUROPE stuff would make a nice set too. Was it ever released "under one roof", or just in individual albums? The jam w/Getz, Byas, and Hawk is choice.

We'll have a poll soon. Maybe there are those who oppose the idea but are hesitant about saying so. This will be their chance to be heard and to be counted.

You really think Sly was a "ghetto poet"? Some do, but I don't. Used to, but not any more, upon further review, as they say. Certainly, he was deeply racially aware (how could he NOT be?), and deeply in touch with his roots, but he was just as deeply in touch with some OTHER roots too, and I think he had a totally different agenda than, say, Curtis Mayfield. To me, the story of what happened to that agenda is the real story inside THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON. I used to think otherwise, but I've become convinced that the REAL riot that was goin' on in this album was inside Sly's head, not on the streets. THAT riot had already been covered, and covered well, with STAND. Now, Sly was taking it OFF the streets and into himself. DEEP into himself. Remember, he was two - Sylvester Stewart, the child who "just loves to learn", who produced the Beau Brummels and who studied Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration book & The Beatles as much as he did R&B and Gospel; and Sly Stone, the child "you just love to burn", who led a defiantly multi-racial, multi-gender band that white capitialists and black militants alike wanted to own in toto. After a while, they both got lost inside each other, and the only way out WAS out. So far out that neither would be heard from again, not even amongst themselves. FRESH, in spite of the funkiest jam EVER ("In Time") begs the question more than just a little too much. Did we want him to stay? Well, hell yeah. But did HE want to stay? That question had long before been answered. Watch out, 'cause the summer gets cold, even with all the hot fun in it. That's what happens when you look at the devil and grin at his gun. Once you get so far lost, can you ever be yurs elf agin? Can you make it if you try? Are you really crazy if you cop out? Even if you don't need to move? Sounds like grounds for a riot to me.

Ok, this is freaky. I'm walking around the house doing chores with John's disc playing, and "Mr. Jones" comes on. Damned if, from a distance and filtered through a wall or two, Farrell doesn't sound like George again. To complicate matters, there are spots where Farrell plays some Coleman-esque licks, and their tones get similar enough in the upper register to where a little tampering with the overtones, like listening thru indirect and/or sub-standard means, and they DO begin to sound alike unless you're listening closely and carefully. Which leads me to a flashback as to why I stopped listening to Elvin's bands so much back in the day - there seemed to be a de facto "Elvin Tenor Vocabulary" that everybody who played with him in the late-60s/early 70s used to one degree or another, from Coleman, Farrell, & Frank foster on thru Liebman & Grossman. I mean, it's beautiful, but after a while, it all starts to sound, if not the same, at least a little similar, if you know what I mean. It's a necessary thing to go through, and it's always good to come back to it, but having this bit of confusion reminds me why I gave it up as heavy, regular listening. But to those who have asked, yeah, get the Mosaic. There's a ton of good stuff on there, a fair amount of great (and yes, this cut is one of them, never mind me and my personal head trips), and the worst is still ok. Those bands Elvin led back in the day were hugely influential and popular in a lot of circles, the players created a template of sorts for a lot of contemporary jazz, and you need to hear them and know about them if you haven't already. Better to get into it and sort it all out for yourself than to never have known about it at all. And no matter what else is going on, there's Elvin, and that's enough by itself.

In all honesty, what probably happened was that I heard the first few notes of the head, knew that I knew the tune, remembered it being George, even though it wasn't (for some strange reason, I always think that this tune is on COALITION, which is my favorite George w/Elvin, on "Yesterdays", so there's probably some weird mis-wired mind-association going on), and went thru the thing just assuming that it was him. The cheapo reproduction systems certainly didn't do anything to shock me out of my delusion, but, bottom line, I just got lazy on this one. My bad.

It means what you think it does, that Lee plays on tracks 4 through 7. A hyphen could also be used.

I think the Horizon stuff is great. The BN stuff is good, but the Horizon stuff is great. Anybody heard his Konnex things? I haven't. Joe Milazzo played me some relatively newly released live Mongo thing on Columbia from the late-60s or so that was positively gonzo. Gotta get that one! And both his and Charles Sullivan's Strata-East dates merit a-huntin'.

Hey wow! Me too, nowthatyoumentionit! Well, ok. In the 70s (last time I heavily listened to this stuff), it sounded like, uh... I don't remember. It was the 70s... In my car, over some $9.95 headphones on the office PC, and through my so-so computer speakers at home, it sounded like George. A LOT. But I just played it on my "real" system (not necessarily that much of an improvement, btw...) for the first time (I seldom get to do any listening that's not "on the run" in some form or fashion), and yeah, it's Farrell. Unmistakably so. And - I just A-B'ed the Lp with John's BFT, and although the LP is a bit wetter (and a lot brighter), it still is umistakeably Farrell. Go figure THAT! So much for depending on your memory and for sound quality never mattering...

Spin-O-Rama was the ORIGINAL label? Had a listen this morning, and it's nearly hamp all the way (surprise! ), other than "Flying Home" which features Richardson and the two tenorists, one of whom's job is to play Jacquet's solo (and neither of whom sounds the Board on DJ, which in this context is, of course, no grounds for comparison). Other than that, and a bit of locked-hands piano from Buckner on "Boogie Woogie", the band exists to play closing chords and tags. Seems like a horrible waste of a great band, but otoh, Hamp is, as always, a combination of superior musicality/invention and shameless pandering, a combination that for some reason endears him to me, mainly, I guess, because he's so damn EXTREME in both directions. Oh, btw - "Out Of Breath" is actually "I Can't Get Started" (makes sense, right?), & "Autumn In New York"" is actually "September In The Rain". I think they used those psedonyms (on this album, "Malibu Swing" (Stardust), "Autumn" (September..), "Breathless Vibes" (...Started) & "Short Of Breath" (...Boogie...) because there's no melody statements. The things begin with Hamp soloing, and stay that way. $ave$ on paying publ$hing royaltie$, don't cha' know, which might explain the plethora of "budget" labels this thing seems to have appeared on. All in all, not a "lost treasure" or anything, but for 3 bucks, a mighty fine addition to the "rest of the story" part of the collection (a part I find essential in its OWN way), enhanced by the superb "you are there, sitting around the campfire while the band plays" quality of the original Coronet pressing. Spin-O-Rama was the ORIGINAL label?

No surprises here. Now, if Sid Vicious did the show....