JSngry

...no comment....too busy choking on laughter...

ILLUSION SUITE

Uh, just how IS it "intonated"?

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!!

Send me an e-mail: musicaconcarne@yahoo.com If you want to help w/the distribution, make your subject "DISTRIBUTE" or something similar. If not, make it "PARTICIPATE" or such. It's all good. Please include your full address. This is especially important for non-American participants, since my experience mailing out of the U.S. is somewhat limited. So make sure that you include EXACTLY what the package will need to show in order for it to be delivered. There is no deadline. You can post here if you like, but really, e-mail is preferable, since everybody will be "under one roof" so to speak, and I can manage all the specifics easier that way. Please don't PM me, as by box is full for the time being. My new turntable hasn't arrived yet, but I'm assured that it will be here either today or tomorrow. It will take me at least a week after it arrives to get all the music selected, sequenced, and burned, so please, be patient. Again, this BT will run 2 CDRs in length, will cover a wide spectrum of music. Not all of it will be jazz, but most of it will be. However, nearly all of it will be things that are relevant to my personal relationship to jazz. I feel safe in saying that there will be something to offend (and hopefully please) every musical taste. If something doesn't doit for you, by all means say so. And preferably, WHY. I'll not be offended if you HATE everything, if you have honestly listened and respond sincerely. There are no "wrong" answers when it comes to whether or not YOU like something. This BT is not, I repeat, NOT going to be designed to be "clever", "tricky" or otherwise intimidating for people still getting accquainted with the music. For the most part. (gotta keep the vets on their toes. If I'm able, that is...) Sure, a lot of it might be unfamiliar to some of you, but the object is to expose some bands and players that might capture your imagination and stimulate further exploration, as well as to trigger discussions that will do the same. Experience is not a prerequisite. Curiosity, however, most assuredly is! Don't freak out if I don't respond to your e-mail immediately. I'm keeping freakishly perverted hours these days, and in fact, I'm going to bed now. But I WILL respond reasonably soon, and will keep in touch regularly with those who decide to help w/distribution. So sign up now and join the party. The more the merrier. The bottom line, as my man Jim Rowan so perspicuously pointed out, is... FREE TUNES!!!!!

Not too much I admire more than a sharp mind and a quick wit, and dude, you got 'em in abundance. Best wishes, and drink some for me!

Call me collect! (Just kidding, but nothing but the best for you anyway!)

You're welcome, Peter, and all I can say is that when Larry's book comes out (when will that be, anyway?), I'm setting aside however much time I need to give it a thorough reading. The guy was a formative influence on how I thought about music in realtion to life back when I started reading DB in the early 70s, and to be able to converse with him now is both an honor and a privilige. As for Chuck, well, all I can say is that Bernard Stollman was right. This board is indeed a treasure.

Just know caught this thread. Mind-freakin'-bogglin'!

This might be relevant, becasue maybe Lloyd was lined up for the date, signed the deal w/Columbia, and decided not to be a sideman anymore (or else it was decided for him). I confess, I have a hard time "hearing" Lloyd on POD, but his light tone and personal pitch and inflections might have added a unique flavor not at odds with Hill's music.

Wise words, sir.

I'd like to ask Chuck this: I remember a DB interview with Steve McCall, I believe, and he mentioned that a lot of Henry's pieces were highly scored, although they sounded pretty much improvised. I was wondering just how much paper was in the studio for this date (or others you witnessed), and if there was a lot, was the notation "literal" or more graphic in nature? No matter - I love this band and this album. Some of their later things had more obvious "grooves" to them, but I like this one because there's a constant momentum building as silence and sound dance in and to their own personal rhythms. The actual notes might not "swing" in a conventional sense, but the overall effect is still one of motion, tension and release, and everything else that defines swing in my book. It's just a different way to manipulate the elements, one that has it's roots in traditional jazz ends even if the means themselves are not always "traditional". It's just a way to open up new options for players and listeners alike, and by doing so, it challenges us to stay alive and alert instead of just reflexively falling back on what we already know, at the risk of living reflexively, rather than actually beiing involved in the moment. That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned, and a GREAT thing when it happens like it did with these guys.

I'm very happy that they each followed their own muses and did what they did, which was to be true to themselves. As far as I'm concerned, that's the cake and the icing. After that, it comes down to what flavor you like. As a raging omnivore myself...

I hear you, Mr. Kart, and I know where you're coming from. It' s different for me, who comes to a vast majority of the jazz legacy "after the fact", than it is for you, who has lived through, what, about half of it?, in "real time". I envy that in a lot of ways, because there's really no substitute for having been there. I can certainly see how Joe might have seemed a "safe modern" alternative in some circles, and how one's response to him, pro or con, could be colored by that perception. I guess I feel like this - that might have been who he was in relation to the times, but I really don't think that he set out to fill that particular niche. It seems to go against the nature of his entire career, which as I said earlier, seems to have been "about" nothing more than playing the tenor and loving it. You know, I can put on either ASCENSION (did last night as a matter of fact, for several hours, over headphones, while doing data entry; talk about salvation!) or INNER URGE and totally enjoy both, because I came to both of them after the fact. Free jazz was already into its third wave of evolution when I got into the music, and the modalesque, Tyner/Elvin groove had already achieved iconic status, so for me, they're both slabs of really beautiful music that happened a few years ago. But if I had been alive when all this was happening, I can see how the turbulence of the times would definitely color what I liked, what I figured to be important and what I figured to be of less urgency. The same thing might be happening to me now, because there's no doubt a lot of recent stuff in a more "traditional" vein that I know is well played, and even has a bit of personality to it. But I just don't care. It's like I've more or less heard it already. and what "difference" there is is not overwhelming enough to grab me. I'd like to think (I'm pretty certain, actually( that if there was somebody playing in a "safe modern" bag (in a natural, non-ideological way) who had such a TOTALLY distinctive time and feel as Joe did back then that I'd hear it, but you never know... Anyway, we are who we are, and we got here how we got here, so there's nothing much left to do except party on, eh?

Soundbite answer - Miles made the music, Teo made the records. Where one began and the other ended got harder to discern as the music went along.

Free tunes, dude, free tunes...

Well, Joe always struck me as an R&B player at root, albeit one who was hip to Trane, Tristano, and a buncah other stuff. But at his best, I hear him as a honker and a shouter with a REALLY broad pallate. A lot of his "out effects" are based on overblowing and false fingerings, and I believe that this goes back to his early fascination w/Prez, who used exactly the same techniques to his own ends. Overblowing, false fingerings, playing of the natural overtone series of the horn, these are all things that also figure into embrochure and breath control exercises in classical saxophone playing, and surely Joe encountered these in his studies w/Teal. It must have been a revelation for him to find a common ground between Prez and the conservatory, to realize that he could have it both ways technically. And technically, he was as adept at this technique as anybody I've ever heard. He plays whole lines that are fingured one way, but come out either a fifth or an octave, or a tenth (or on up the ovettone series) higher, and he plays them with perfect tone and intonation. The cat just had that kind of shit mastered in a way that I can't say anybody else has. Same way with his use of open side keys in lieu of closed hole fingerings to produce a different tone, another technique used by Prez for playing and classical cats for exercises. Joe could do that shit PERFECTLY. But it's more than the technique I love, it's his time, his swing, his ability to push and pull against the beat at will. That's an area that I think he got from Newk as well as the Tristanoites, and it's where I feel him most when he's got it goin' on. Yeah, melodically (is that how you spell that word?) he had sort of set parameters more often than not, but how he permutated those lines rhythnically COULD be totally unpredictable. He could stretch a line out to where you think he's going to fall behind, and then BAM, he snaps it back into the pocket quicker than you can say motherfucker. Same thing with his mathematical triplet permutaions - he'll get going on those and begin stretching the harmony to the breaking point, and it all comes back in at the perfect time. A lot of times, yeah, you can hear where he's going before he gets there, but it's the times where he throws those wicked curveballs that catch you looking for game over strike threes that make me love him as much as I do. I wonder how much of our differing views on the cat is chronological in nature. I have to confess, when I got into jazz, it was mostly from the left side of the street - late Trane, Ayler, the Shepp Impulses, Ornette, Mingus, etc. The little bit of Joe that I heard left me nonplussed, and this continued into my early college days, where I didn't go out of my way to dig deeper into his work. I think it was my sophomore year, some guy I had just met asked me, "So, what do you think about Joe Henderson?" "Uh, good chromatics scale" was my flip reply. Well, this cat got LIVID on my ass right there in the middle of the dorm and threatened me with bodily harm if I didn't come upstairs RIGHT THIS FUCKING MINUTE and listen to INNER URGE. Ok... I dug it well enough, and a bit later hear THE REAL MCCOY for the first time. REALLY dug that one. Then after a while, UNITY (oh, that solo on "If" - bebop, R&B, you name it, it's in there, and it SWINGS LIKE HELL!!!), and the die was cast. I began to appreciate Joe for what and who he was - not a trailblazing firebrand or tonguespeaker like those I had been originally attracted to, or a whisperer of secret tales of quiet and private coolness like Hank or Prez, and not even revealers of the mystery like Sonny or Trane. Nah, Joe wasn't all about that AT ALL. Joe was just a cat who played, a cat who liked to swing when he felt like it, liked to go a bit out when he felt like it, and didn't see any reason not to do any of it whenever he felt like it. A genuine R&B player of the VERY highest level. Joe was just a guy, a tenor player, period. Not a prophet or a messiah. Jazz has had those, and it would be wrong to put Joe in that category, for sure. I know that. But I'm just a tenor player myself, and I can dig where the cat was coming from. He was perhaps the ultimate "tenor player", somebody whose love was in playing his horn, and not much else, I'd bet (I sat next to his wife at the bar at Fat Tuesday once, and she was HOT. But Joe never once came over, not the entire night) and somebody who had mastered every facet of it. Playing the horn was his comfort, that's my guess, and if he didn't always seek "surprise", so be it. There's a place in music for "comfort food", and Joe was a gourmet of it. I hesitate to say that my love of his playing is a "tenor thing", but maybe it is. I love how he played the horn, and I love how he was able to make it do HIS bidding, which was neither as broad nor as deep as some, but in combination was a whole lot of both, something that's not at all common. Not everything he played was golden, no doubt, but enough of it rings true with me in a way that not very many things do. I can feel him. What can I say? Oh yeah - the big letters? Look above the post box, and see the "size" options. You got small large and LARGEST. It's one of the many joys of Organissimo!

Well, Chuck knows how much I dig him, and I hope you know of my unlimited respect for you too, Larry, but nobody's perfect, and y'all's opinion of Joe Henderson is just wrong, Wrong, WRONG!!!!! But you're right about his sound - it was not particularly "loud". He used a close tip hard rubber mouthpiece that had, I think, the chamber slightly bored out to give a fuller bottom end. That's not the setup to use if you want to play loudly, not at all, but what you DO get is a beautifully burnished, dark tone that although not as "bright" as many conventional jazz saxophone tones, is every bit as full. Perhaps even fuller in terms of eveness of distribution of overtones. I heard Joe a few times, and I remember being struck by how "soft" he sounded, but the longer I listened, the more I realized that regardless of the volume of his tone, he was PROJECTING. I could hear him no matter where in the rooms I was, and he wasn't drowned out by his various bands. I think this comes from his classical training w/Larry Teal, one of the gurus of classical saxophone instruction, and a man whose principals quite often apply across the hoard to ALL amnners odf saxophone playing. One of the bedrocks of all instrumental (and vocal) instruction is air support coming from the diaphragm, and Teal REALLY stresses this If you master it, you can play or sing as softly as imaginable and still be heard, and at the volume you intend, at the back of a room and over all but the most racuous noise. Joe had this training and it showed. I'll agree, though that his was a tone better served by microphones (or very intimate settings, which is ultimately the role of a microphone in traditional usage - to create "intimacy" where none has a good chance of existing/surviving), simply because his tone had so many layers to it, and he used such a variety of microshaded tonal nuances. In that sense, he was very much a chamber player, and I think that reflects across his entire career - I always had the impression that he would be just as happy playing in a small room with a quartet and 5-6 people listening as he would in a crowded concert hall. Probably even happier. He seemed to be that kind of "reclusive" a person, and when fame at last found him, it seemed like his attitude was one of "y'all are joining this show already in progress. Don't expect me to stop and fill you in on the story so far, just pay attention and you'll get it". Hardly seemed to be a headline grabber, if you know what I mean. I think he, at root, was a cat who really wanted nothing more out of life than a good reed, a good buzz, and a good rhythm section (not necessarily always in that order), no matter where they were or who heard it when they were there. This I can relate to. Quite a bit, actually. No sense arguing matters of taste, of course, but for my money, other people played with more passion, others with more intellect, and still others went far deeper into uncharted territory, but few combined them all as comfortably and as naturally, as organically, as Joe. To me, he's about as "hip" a player who has ever lived, if by "hip" I mean combining the full funk of the street with the full brains of the street (sic) in a balance that refuses to let one get the better of the other, because he was hip enough to realize that there was no need whatsoever for them to struggle against each other, that they might be opposite sides, but still the same coin. And I do. I'll certainly grant that many of his recordings show him to be a "licks-bound" player, but they're his licks, or his own idiosyncratic permutations on the standard vocabulary, his "post-modernization" of it, if you will. For the assembly line-like schedule that labels kept back then, I'd think that this was what kept him busy, because, not unlike Sonny Stitt, he had a "ready made" sound (call it a formula if you must, but I find it a bit too variated in it's various apllications to use that "derogatory" designation) that could walk right in, sit right down, etc. But he could also bump it up a notch or ten, and often enough did. And nobody, NOBODY, swung harder than Joe when he wanted to. Just my opinion.

Sign-up details will be posted tomorrow morning.

Bust sersiously, the simples solution is to use a mulching mower. Ain't no need to blow no leaves, and you're making natural fertumilizer for your yard.

I agree; I think those people are disgusting and should stay out of the fields. Leaf blowers, melon ballers, it's a sex crazed world, ain't it? Now where do I get my sump pumped?

Who/what is Squidco, and have you done satisfactory business with them before? I'm liking what I'm seeing, but desire a vote of confidence from satisfied customers.

I got the Vons at www.cybermusicsurplus.com - they seem to be carrying selected Steeplechase titles now, as does their parent site, Allegro.

You ordered the McPherson too? That's a beautiful record, man, beautiful.

That's it! Many thanks, Mr. Sweede. Always a pleasure.