JSngry

Dude, a Red Sox Series triumph would be more than fine with me. After a Cubs one, of course... You think that we'll ever see either one, even if we live as long as both of us combined?

Oh wait, that's DAN, not Paul. Sorry, bad eyes right now. But if the Pats were your team too, Dan, same goes for you. Enjoy!

REALLY!

Well, sure, winning with faceless efficiancy beats the hell out of losing with personality, No bout a doubt it. It sure as hell beats LOSING with faceless efficiancy, ala the last few years of Landry's Cowboys. That run got even me, a devoted Landry hater, to feeling sorry for the poor saps - all of the stylelessness of their illustrious predecessors and none of the substance. Tough gig, that had to be. But hey - if I had my druthers, I'd take take 'em both - winning AND personality. That's the ultimate - chops and charisma. Kareem & Magic's Lakers, Jordan's Bulls, Ali's Ali, Madden's Raiders, Louis Armstrong. For two seasons, before Jerry Jones, the Dallas Police Department, and a few insatiable noses fouled it up, we had that here, and I tell you, it was glorious. Imaginations and championships both were captured. Top o'the world, Ma, top o'the world. Of course, if it was my team that was winning Super Bowls with all the flair and elan of a 1971 My Three Sons episode, I'd be satisfied. But it's not, so... Seriously, I'm glad you're enjoying your team's victory. Honestly, I am.

Heard this one last night. Produced & arranged by Bob Belden. A little different, not always a straight blowing date, but more Moody as featured soloist in a variety of settings, which at times are almost Shorter-ish it seemed to me. Moody sounds comfortable and engaged. No surprise there. I liked it. Don't know if it's necessarily a "classic" James Moody album, probably not, but I think it will reward repeated listenings. Certainly not a drag, that's for sure! Worth checking out unless you only want "a certain thing", I'd say.

The June broadacast seems to have been pitch-corrected from what was on the Fresh Sounds issue. Haven't A/b'ed them yet, but a casual listening seems to indicate that it has.

One of the two times I saw him live was w/his own group, in Chicago, at the "alternative" (Underground?) Chicago Jazz Festival in 1981. Forget who all was in the group, but I think Vandy Harris (or maybe Ari Brown) was on tenor, and there was an incredible singer, apparently lost to all since I've repeatedly tried to get info on her w/o success, names Ka'tetta Aton. A thoroughly amazing night of music. I'll remember for the rest of my life, I hope, several spots where the music got going REALLY good and Malachi was pulling the strings on his bass like an archer's bow, WAAAAYYYY past where any human being should be able to pull them. Yet his pitch remained perfect, and his tone true. You'd have to have seen it to believe it. This was a man who understood the bass, was all about being the instrument and knowing it more than intimately. This was not a man who played the bass, or who played music and just happened to use on the bass to do it. This was a man who dug as deeply as possible into his instrument (and I suspect his life, as well as those of others, from the ancient tot he future), and brought it all up and out through that instrument of his in a way that only his instrument could purvey. It takes wisdom to play any instrument with that much depth and command, but the bass may very well be the most demanding of al in those respects. Malachi had unsurpassed wisdom, depth, and command. In the deepest possible sense, he was a master. Their numbers have always been few, and they seem to be getting fewer. Pay attention to him and his peers, even if you don't understand them now. With any luck, someday you will.

No. He recorded it on his lazt Columbia album, the big band thing w/uncharacteristically horrible Oliver Nelson arrangements.

I'm all for teamwork and supreme intellegince, both of which the Pats have in spades, and rightfully deserve credit for. What I'm not for is winning without as much as a gnat pube's worth of personality, which is something else the Pats have in spades. Winning is winning, sure, but hay Zeus, freakin' Christo, when you have enough anti-charisma to make a last second win predictable and actually BORING, (did anybody seriously doubt that the game would end EXACTLY as it did, and find the FG anti-climactic?) I'd look in the front office and see if a guy named Faust has an office somewhere. This is America, not (fill in the blank with your favorite efficiency uber alles entity). If you want football as corporate entity, be my guest. I can do bad by myaelf... Quality of life, babe, quality of life.

Can your heart stand it?

Congrats tot he Pats for winnng, and for being the most exciting and charismatic team since the Cowboys of the 70s. If this is the future of the NFL, my Sundays will be forever changed!

Janet's the best thing about this one so far. Uh....cancel that. Carolina TD.

Paul Bley, maybe.

4th down spot TOTALLY BOGUS.

Earl's mention of the Country Tavern in Kilgore (outside of Kilgore, actually) is right on. Those folks do ribs that are to die for. Onion rings too.

Can't comment on the price, but the music is mostly golden.

That was my first impression too, due to the length, structure, and instumentation. I think it's likely that any number of listeners will have the same general responses to certain things based on certain criteria. It's like when a lot of people hear 20s jazz, they'll say "CARTOON MUSIC", or when they hear organ, they say "ROLLER RINK". We're generally more hip than THAT in these parts, but "simialr impressions" don't necessarily infer lazy listening/thinking.

Earl's hot links on the Web: http://www.sportingnews.com/features/wherearethey/campbell/ http://www.earlcampbell.com/life_after_foo...lifeafter2.html http://www.davidestrada.com/campbell/faqs.html http://www.davidestrada.com/campbell/news.html http://www.davidestrada.com/campbell/index.html These are great too:

Don't be kidding. That business about "The attempt to describe life's meaning with the lmiting language of man's descriptive prowess" hits the nail on the head. That's the real deal. No matter how much there is, it's never all of it. So what do you do - never be satisfied or give up looking and stand pat? Or... How's about digging what we already have to the fullest and humbly yet fearlessly go about looking for more, knowing that the puzzle may well never be solved but that most likely there's a missing piece or two out there with our name on it? Hell, it might have more than one name on it, but it might not fit until everybody claims it. Aw, fuck it. Let's stay home and watch TV Land. Now THAT'S a party!

I didn't know Malachi personally, and only had the blessing of seeing him perform twice, but this makes two AEC guys gone now, and I find myself being touched by their passings much more than I would have anticipated. Losing them makes me realize just how much I took their music, and more importantly, their spirits, as deep to heart as I think I possibly could, which is a place I let very, VERY few people get to. There is just so much LIFE in that music, so much character and personality and experience and reality and all that stuff that is conviniently and wholly inadequately labelled as "life", that it makes me feel like it and the people who made it are indestructable, that anybody who can be THAT fucking REAL must have figured out a way to hang out without ever needing to go home. But we all have to go home, don't we. If we didn't, we wouldn't be real. Get in line. This one hurts. Deeply. Compared to Chuck, Larry, and some others, I have no reason why it should. They knew the man in a way that I didn't. But still, this one hurts in a way that I haven't felt since Joe Henderson passed (sorry Chuck, sorry Larry, but...). The Natural And The Spiritual. God bless Malachi Favors.

And it is bittersweet to see this mentioned on this day. God bless Malachi Favors.

Honestly, I don't see why this music seems to "intimidate" so many people. It really seems pretty straightforward to me in terms of what's being done, although, yeah, the emotional intensity is usually pretty high. But if you are hip to the fact that life moves in many tempos simultaneously and that there's more dimensions than just three and that by utilizing intervals and rhythms other than the familiar ones we've all known since before birth you can begin to get a glimpse of them (how much of a glimpse is still up in the air, I think, as is what you do with it after you get it, but the door's been opened by more people than Trane, so it's pretty much impossible to turn back now), then I'd think that this music would be no more intimidating than Bartok, or Hendryx, or gamelan, or really deep hip-hop, or any music that refuse to be bound by three-dimensional perceptions and the perceptions therein. In other words, it's not that Trane makes everything else obsolete or unimportant. Oh god no. It's just that some new doors are opened in this music, some new possibilities about life that are all but inevitable, given humanity's continuous evolution in therms of how we percieve reality. Where's the destination? Knowing that there is no destination, that even not taking a journey is still a journey. No, I don't think it's about a "quest" or some such, not for us today. For Trane himself, though, I'm sure it was, just as it is for all explorers. But after they discover whatever it is that they discover, it's there. Ignore it or discount it if you wish, but time marches on and knowledge ignored will not be denied. It will come back to bite you in the ass. Maybe not you personally, but "you" collectively. Ever feel like the last 20 years or so have begun to feel increasingly "crowded", how it feels like we're still trying to live in a way that is increasingly becoming the equivalent of trying to put the square peg in the round hole, even if it means using a sledgehammer? Well, maybe it's because that's what we're doing to ourselves. We've been to the moon, we've split the atom, we've discovered DNA, we've figured out a way to be instanly connected with darn near any place in the world, we've done all this amazing shit that whether we realize it or not is opening up new "space" for our psyches to inhabit, and there is still a rather large percentage of the population who are living under the perception that life is lived in 4/4 time, chromaticism is an often=dangerous luxury rather than a fact of life, harmony should be tertiary and primarily diatonic, and that time and rhythm are inevitable cosmic wholes rather than specific selections from a bottomless pit of potential combinations. Well, once upon a time, that was the truth, because that was what we knew, pretty much all of us. But damn it, people keep DISCOVERING that, yeah, that's all true and stuff, but it's not the WHOLE truth, and the more shit gets discovered, the harder it is to ignore it. Yet there's a MASSIVE micro- and macro- structure in place that is ENTIRELY based on that once-whole-but-now-partial truth, and those structures aren't going to give up (or at least share) without a helluva fight. That's not necessarily a sign of malevolence (sometimes, anyway), it's just the nature of things, inertia and all that. But they're going to have to make room, because if something is REALLY true, then it can't be destroyed. It MUST find a place, either peacefully or not. "Comfort Zone" is sometimes a beautiful thing, but sometimes it's just greed that chooses to exploit the self rather than others. People apparently don't like the "radical" change that comes with new discovery, but they don't seem to like the stifling effects of living in willful ignorance either. So where does that leave us? Damned if I know, and damned if I really care anymore. I don't at all mind going back and forth as the need and/or mood arises, but I'll NEVER pretend that back is front and that front doesn't exsist, or that you'll fall off when you get to the edge of the Earth. Besides, even if you did, you'd still be SOMEWHERE. You're always somewhere. God bless Malachi Favors.

Earl owns a meatpacking business. Hope it's doing well. Pretty sure it is. Those Earl Campbell Hot Links have developed a reputation as THE best, outside of some of the things you find homemade in barbecue joints, and I put them up there with those. Eal's links have been available in all the grocery stores around here for at least 5-6 years now, maybe longer, and he's got a line of sauces to go with them. I think he's doing fine, businesswise.

http://www.jazzhouse.org/files/panken8.php3?read

Earl's making hot links now, probably the best I've ever had, and the only brand I'll buy at the grocery.