JSngry

Grab all 3 if you can. The label's out of business, and supplies won't last forever. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security - Lou Donaldson's late-60s Blue Note LPs used to be in cutout bins EVERYWHERE for years on end. Then one day they weren't. That's just one example. If I told you all the things that I passed over in cutout bins back in the day because I didn't realize that nothing lasts forever... But if circumstances dictate prioritization, I'd go for MODE & 3 ASAP. If you can only get one, flip a coin. It's win/win.

This sale sucks. There's a BUNCH of stuff in there that came out during a spell of my finances being limited for various reasons and that I only have on cassette dubs. Well-maintained dubs at that. The honor system dictates that I get "real" copies when the time is right, and this, apparently, is that time. Orders $50 and over receive FREE SHIPPING??? Can I apply that over the next 4.25 quarters?

$7.59 http://www.cybermusicsurplus.com/online_ca...sku_tag=LHR3BB3 DON'T MISS IT!

$4.39 http://www.cybermusicsurplus.com/online_ca...ag=EPM3JA159632 DON'T MISS IT!

MASTERPIECES BY ELLINGTON is a severely overlooked masterwork in my opinion. Not really like anything else Duke's recorded - long, REALLY long arrangements of 3 "old favorites" (plus "The Tatooed Bride"), arrangements that go off pretty far into leftfield in pursuing their flights of fantasy, and, by virtue of being Sonny Greer's last recording w/the band (I think), the end of an era. You can look at this album as a summation of everything Duke had accomplished up to that point, laid out in full 33 1/3 RPM spendor. Things would soon change.

"Phil Flatbush" http://www.jazzmanrecords.com/bennypayne.html Could this be Flip Phillips? I'm not buying the record to find out...

I dig his LPs on Strata-East & Trident quite a bit. I like his writing too - very "populist" in nature, simple. singable lines with nice changes that you can do as much (or as little) with as you want. I like his choice of sidemen (Sam Rivers, Gary Bartz, Stanley Cowell, Clifford Jordan, Freddie Waits, Cecil McBee, among others) and I like how they treat the material - they give it full integrety and don't "play down" to it at all. Seems like real "people music" to me. I don't know that Dick Griffin is necessarily an "outstanding" trombonist per se, and truthfully, those recordss work for me because of the material and the sidemen (Sam Rivers has is a TOTAL GAS on flute on EIGHTH WONDER) a lot more than they do becasue of Griffin himself. But on those two albums (reissued on Konnex CD), I sure like his music, the overall package. This, not smooth or other such silliness, is how to "play jazz for the people" , or at least it was a few decades ago. Seems like those albums (and the CD reissues) came and went without much notice. Haven't yet heard his last album, a 1999 organ thing w/Larry Goldings, but I probably should. Anybody else dig the music of Dick Griffin?

Howdy! With taste like that, you'll be most welcome here! That "Greenbacks" solo was one of my first obsessions - LOVED it. Well, in 1977 I found a record store in Fort Wort called Sybil's Golden Oldies that had not one, not two, but THREE copies of "Greenbacks" on original Atlantic 78s - $1.25 each! Well, long story short - I ended up buying all 3 in the space of 6 weeks, because every one I bought got broken, including the 3rd one, the label of which still resides today pinned above the inside entry to my closet, like a Bizarro horseshoe.

Ok, my daughter's getting into Shonen Knife, and I want to play her "Abominable Snowman In The Supermarket" to give her something to think about (and maybe even DIG, but I doubt THAT will happen since SHE didn't discover it, but Dads get used to that, don't they), but all I got are these 20+ year old Berzerkley/GRT cassettes that I bought as cutouts in an Albuquerque Sound Warehouse one late morning in 1981 when I was on the road (sorry, I don't remember what I was wearing at the time), and I'd like an upgrade for both sonic and practical reasons. Thing is, I've got a complete set (one of those things that happens when unpopularity meets cutoutdom meets curious hopefully-fan with miles of travelling to look forward to meets chain store in a market that couldn't care LESS about Abominable Snowmans in supermarkets and Pablo Picasso never being called an asshole and stuff like that), and I'd like to replace it with same. Anything available? As always, thanks in advance.

Well, what IS it anyway? Dairy, sure, but you can't drink it, freeze it, or put it on sandwiches, so is it a salad, and appetizer, a condiment, a fruit a vegatable, a piece of pie, I mean, just what the hell IS cottage cheese in the grand gustatutorial (that's when food teaches us stuff on an individual basis) scheme of things anyway? I wanna get Larry David's input on this matter. Let's put that "Seven Degrees" stuff to the test - SOMEBODY get Larry David on this board!

I winked, is that kind enough? Besides, I LIKE cottage cheese. I put jelly on it, but that grosses some people out. Some people put PEPPER on it, and that grosses ME out. Anybody got Larry David's number? I'd like to get HIS thoughts on cottage cheese.

What does Larry David and his one-of-the-funniest-shows-I've-ever-watched-really-EVER show have to do with cottage cheese?

Can I say it again? Yeah? You sure? OK - IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! IAPETUS!! I have fond memories of the 70s myself, it being the last decade where jazz was naturally itself instead of a pro or con reaction to Marsailisosity. Yeah, that's a broad generalization totally devoid of nuance, but if you want a "soundbite about the 70s", that's mine. PLENTY of great music, "old" AND "new" going on in those days. Air, Braxton's Arists sides, Dexter, Woody Shaw, the "resurgence" of Jay McShann, the "emergenge" of Von Freeman, PLENTY of great stuff in the 70s.

You say "short but sweet" and the first things that pop into my mind are Fred Lipsius' things on BS&T's "God Bless The Child" & "Without You". I don't know if Lipsius could do anything besides "short but sweet", at least in those days, but with BS&T, he did it extremely effectively. "Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While)" from BS&T 4, that's another one, not QUITE so sweet, but still a good'un. That "Skin" solo is by Al Grey, I'm 99% certain, and it's a great one indeed, but be mindful that it's "based on" the original solo from SONGS FOR SWINGING LOVERS, which was played by Milt Bernhart. Speaking of Sinatra, Plas Johnson's intro on "That Old Feeling" from NICE AND EASY is a gem, staying perfectly as it does "inside" Nelson Riddle's superb arrangement and setting the tone for the equally superb performance that follows. He gets a little solo spot later on, and it's nice enough, but tht intro - HELL YEAH! One more - the VERY brief (2 bars!) alto break on The Mothers' "Who Needs The Peace Corps" from "WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY. Don't know if that was Bunk Gardner, Ian Underwood, or somebody else, but HOO-EEE that's some hip shit!

And I don't really "like" the guedsing aspect of Blindfold Tests (aww, who am I kidding - I LOVE stumping people. But I despise BEING stumped!). But I've had enough experiences where hearing something completely blind, not knowing who it is, has been an enlightening experience and has forced me to reevaluate some of my opinions about certain players. It's that aspect of blindfold tests, the "unprejusiced response", that I think has real merit. The "guessing" angle is fun for some, not for others, but either way, it's a game.

Free music? Count me in!

Yep. HELL yep!

Dude - print those words and frame them. You're going to need them in about 13-14 years, REALLY need them. Trust me. As far as my perspective being different and perhaps more difficult, well, maybe so. (and it feels REALLY wierd to even talk about "my perspective", because I view myself as a perpetual STUDENT! But I guess time passes, and if SOMETHING doesn't eventually sink in, then you're REALLY fucking up your life...) I've had some people grasp it relatively easily, some slowly but surely, some not at all, and some are outright hostile to it, all of which is, I'd think, normal enough. C'est la' vie eh? It's like the time somebody pointed out to Cecil Taylor that 75% of the audience at a particular gig had left early on. Cecil's response was, "I don't play for the people who leave. I play for the people who stay." I've always liked that quote.

Call NPR Tony, here we go again! As I pretty clearly tried to point out in my original post, I believe that "the raw drama of this band came from the Davis/Shorter/Williams triumverate", which is what I heard you saying. But although, as you say later, " the music would actually play QUITE well as just tenor, trumpet and drums - in NO WAY as well as it does with the whole Quintet, of course...but nonetheless it could effectively stand on its own in that form while it would NOT play very well at all if you eliminated any one of those three foundation pillars", I can say only maybe yes, maybe no, but either way it would be a TOTALLY different music, not "Plugged Nickel" music. The closest we get to hearing anythng like that is a few years later on parts of FILLES DE KILAMNJERO's "Tout De Suite", and even there, although the Tony/Soloist interplay is QUITE the defining feature of the piece, it's STILL more than that. It seems that this band was incapable of functioning as anything less than a REAL group. Gotta love THAT! I understand that you did not mean "secondary" to mean "less important" or "superfluous". My point, though, is that I don't hear Hancock and Carter as "secondary " by ANY definition, not at this point in the game, and that's what I was offering as advice as to how to (better?) "get into" this music. The Davis/Shorter/Williams (re)action(s) is/are the most OBVIOUS element(s) of it but I can't equate "obvious" with "primary", not having SOME first-hand knowledge of how an interactive improvisational band operates, how ideas that most listeners hear as coming from a soloist might have actually had their genesis way back in something that the bass player played that the drummer picked up on, the pianist shaded, and the soloist began to build upon and finally refer to explicitly (ocassionally not until a few songs later!). If you want to hear the way the PN band REALLY played, that's how you gotta listen to it - wholistically, because that's how the music was made. I don't know if that advice is too "esoteric" for the "average" listener or not, but I believe in humanity (the truly jazz loving portion of it anyway, not so sure about the rest of it... ), and I believe, TRULY believe, that they have the capacity for, to quote a Sonny Fortune title, "seeing beyond the obvious", which as I'm sure that ANY practitioner of ANY craft/art/whatever will agree, is an essential step to accquiring an ACCURATE appreciation of whatever it is that is being attempted to be appreciated. So I offer these comments based on real-life experience, just as others have done for me. (A KEY turning point in my understanding of listening to music (and playing it) wholistically happened back in 1976 or '77, when this Monster Bassist (now THERE'S a show I'd like to see The Discovery Channel do) named Jim Stinnett stopped off at a hang on his way home from a session. Miles' MY FUNNY VALENTINE album ("the slow one" ) was playing, and I commented on how I dug the rhythm section's shifting style. Well, Jim, for no reason at all, pulled out his bass, started the record over, and literally played along with it verbatim, stopping quite frequently to point out how and when Ron was directing traffic, Herbie was, Tony was, etc., and how/when the soloists were leading the rhythm section and vice versa, on and on. It was a Master Class for the cost of a few bong hits, and it wasn't even my crib! I literally never heard music the same way again after that. It took a long time to sink in (hell, it's STILL sinking in), but what the cat taught me that evening was, and is, real. It needs to be shared, and if ti takes a while to sink in, so be it. Good things come to those who wait. Supposedly...) So if I seem to quibble over a word like "secondary", it not because I'm a stickler for semantics (God, the way I mangle syntax and spelling...), it really is because I DON'T hear it that way in ANY fashion. I can dig where you're coming from, but that's just not how I hear it. Not now.

You mean the IASW "It's About That Time"? Nothing, NOTHING at all like the live band. Imagine Circle w/Miles & Wayne at their most obsessed/possessed, or the Plugged Nickel music simultaneoussly on acid and coke slowly but surely morphing into the BITCHES BREW music.Imagine "Masqualero" as a staple of live gigs rather than a miscellaneous album cut! A few boots of this band have made it to the "grey market" - Lon had one for sale here recently, and still may. Other tapes have been circulating amongst collectors for years now, and I've been lucky enough to hear some. Let's just say that NO Miles album of the time portrayed the live scene TOTALLY accurately between MILES SMILES and LIVE-EVIL, FILLMORE getting disqualified because of too intense editing. That's a 5-6 year period where Miles' music underwent numerous seizmic shifts, and the records only tell a very, VERY small part of the story of those years., which is a major reason why the PN box was such a revelation. [add edit]Oh shit - you menat the live thing that was just released last year, right? Ok, I dig the shit out of that one, but that's late in the game for that band - Wayne's last gig in fact, Airto already added, BITCHES BREW already recorded and released, next to no "old" material in the book. Partially representative but only partially.

I'll agree that nothing could go back to the way it was (well, it COULD, and has, but how honestly is another issue entirely), but that doesn't make me sad at all. It's exhillirating to hear the music opened up to the degree this band did it. To me, it's inspirational to know that there need not be an imprisonment of "style" by "material", that you can STILL play the old songs and not have to be restrained by/to the old ways. If there's a lesson to the PN set for me, that is it. As for Carter and Hancock being "secondary", I guess it depends on the individual listenng perspective, how each person "hears" the music, and how one priorotizes the various inputs one receives, but I just don't hear it that way at all. This was very much a GROUP group, and you couldn't, WOULDN'T, have had the same results with other players. Herbie's comp was crucial to the direction the music took - it could be said that in a very loose sense that he provided the color, texture, and diversity of a Gil Evans orchestration at a fraction of the price. Herbie didn't just accompany and follow, he very often LED through his accompaniment, both harmonically and rhythmically. If the raw drama of this band came from the Davis/Shorter/Williams triumverate (and I believe it did), it was the ability of Hancock to instantaneously read those individual dramas and immediately provide them with a context that gave them relevancy to both the moment and the material. I'll not even get into how crucial Herbie's harmonic developments were to expanding the pallates of the frontline soloists, Wayne's in particular. The importance of the role of context creator/provider might not be readily apparent, but if you hear the MUSICAL (as opposed to the human) story of this band as a constant expansion of the possibilities inherent in song-form music, an expansion that perhaps never breaks but just evolves into something else, then Hancock's contributions throughout, especially when he's dialoguing with the soloists, probing and prodding their minds to see where tey want to go, how they want to go there, and even offering suggestions along the way (the guy would have made a GREAT care salesman!), are anything BUT secondary - they virtually define the nature of the group, because context is what gives individual ingredients coherency, right? It's a TOTALLY different dynamic at play in the strolling passages that it is when Herbie's in there, and listening to how and when he decides to lay out and when to jump in is a study unto itself. If anything, it's his SOLOING that is "secondary", and that's not a dis or even damning with faint praise. It's just recognition that his accompaniment was of the VERY highest level, and, really, quite often, "accompaniment" is an innaccurate term for the level and degree of interactivity he provides. Carter is a musician that many, including myself, have often knocked & mocked mercilessly, and often justifiably so (or so it seems). But his work with Miles is beyond reproach. The role of a bassist in a music like this is difficult to describe succintly, becasue there are no succinct functions other than HOLD IT ALL TOGETHER, and when you're dealing with a music and musicians as mercurial as this and these, it's almost a joke to describe it that way. Let's just say that if Herbie was an architecht, then Carter was a foreman, an enforcer, the guy who kept the blueprints on the dable when the winds were b;owing at hurricane force. And - listen closely and you can hear him, Herbie, and Tony (musically) talking amongst themselves more often than you might think, plotting and planning in the corner between rounds, so to speak. If Tony was the "flash" of the rhythm trio, the star running back, then Herbie was the offensive coordinator, and Ron was the lead blocker. An inadequate analogy for a trio inside a quintet, a unit who more often than not is never really a trio but 3/4 or 3/5 of a group, but hopefully it rings true within its limited intent. Carter's contributions might SEEM "secondary", but their effects, their RESULTS, are anything but. I must admit to having a somewhat "jaded" view of the PN material, in that it's been a key ingredient in my musical perceptions for 25+ years now, dating back to the first time I heard the original Japanese LPs and went TOTALLY apeshit, eepecially over Wayne & Tony. ESPECIALLY Wayne. But I can no longer hear this material as anything but a TOTAL group effort, and it's had a profound effect on my entire musical esthetic, how I listen, how I play, how I listen WHILE I play, what I like to play, how I like to play it, who I like to play it with, etc etc etc... The beauty and profundity of the music ultimately comes, for me anyway, from how PERFECTLY integrated a unit it was, how there were no "primary" or "secondary" voices in the overall scheme (from moment to moment perhaps, but that's all), how the whole band functioned as, to use a cliched but nevertheless accurate term, "a living organism", each component equally vital to the health and success of the whole. Amazing music, amazing individuals, amazing band. But certainly not the death of anything, especially jazz-as-we-once-knew-and-loved-it. THAT honor might belong to the quintet that followed - the Davis/Shorter/Corea/Holland/DeJohnette "Lost Quintet" that followed and is only documented on private tapes, and a band that made the Plugged Nickel band sound as "yesterday" as the Plugged Nickel band made the FIRST Great Quintet sound. But if they were killing the music, it was a MOST glorious and euphoric murder, artfully executed and fully anticpating a new life after the old one got snuffed out, the death perhaps being a prerequisite to the creation of the new life, and the band being facilitators of life rather than cessators of it. Nature's funny like that.

I've read Chamberlain's book and recommend it quite highly. Chuck is right about the price, and he would know about the inaccuracies better than I, but I tend to read biographies with an expectation of such things occurring anyway. Bottom line - you get a very real picture of a musician who spent his life in the shadows, and the musical analysis is quite good as well.

Oh yeah - Stan Getz on "Girl From Ipanema"...

Zoot on Phoebe Snow's "Poetry Man". Very nice. Curtis Amy can also be heard on Carol King's "It's Too Late". Fathead - too many to mention, but his half-chorus obligatto on Donny Hathaway's version of "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" (on EXTENSIONS OF A MAN) is beyond my capacity to describe.

Fran Warren brings out the houarnedohgge in me. Why must I be like that?