JSngry

Mmmmmmmmm indeed! Why do you think I'm still lapsed? The protein issue is really no biigie though. Beans and rice combined give you your total protien, and there's a variant of that w/every meal. Got any idea of haw many different types of beans/peas there are? It's vast, I tell you, VAST! Throw in the miso and the tofu, and you got got more protein than you can shake a slab of slow-cooking baby back ribs at!

Too many to mention, but two one that most recently got resolved were Tyrone Washington's DO RIGHT (BIG thanks to somebody for providing the LP) & Joh Patton's SOUL CONNECTION (The same guy who provided me w/a CDR sent me a tip about the LP being at Dusty Groove a few weeks later!). Next on the "settling the score list" - WELCOME by the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble on Leo. Never had a chance to buy that one, but I borrowed a copy for about 5 years, taped it, returned it before we had to relocate, and lost the damn tape in the moving. You can run, WELCOME by the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble on Leo, but you can NOT hide. I WILL track you down!

I sleep when I can, and when I have to. ONLY then.

I pretty much agree. The raw expression of emotion does have it's place, and it can be very satisfying for musician and listener alike as a "vent", a "ain't no other way to get this out now except to do this". But after you've successfully vented and everybody feels better, where do you go from there? What do you do for an encore? And who's going to want to hear it? The rawness of some of the 60s A.G. was necessary, I think, given the times, and given the failure of a lot of "straight ahead" jazz to accomodate both the tension of the time and the growing awareness that linear time and forms were not the be-all and end-all of reality as humans could experience it. The urgency of the times in both these regards led to the hunger for the "now", not the "take our time, get it fully together and THEN do it". It's 1965, Trane, Cecil, and Ayler are splitting the atom, the whole world's on fire, and you're going to shed really heavily for 5 years just so you can have "chops"? Not an option then - it had to be NOW. But now passes, like it inevitably does, and what then? Those who relied entirely on energy and passion to carry the day found themselves with extremely limited options, both musically and careerwise. No doubt a lot of bitterness ensued, but such is life. The new vocabulary survied, often brilliantly so, but those who utilized it the most successfully, in my opinion, were those who took it at more than face value and created a context for it other than merely a ventfest. In this regard, the innovations of the AACM were enormously valuable. They realized that there was a place for the vent, but that the vent was not the be-all and end-all of music in general, and this music in particular. So they recontextualized it, set about creating, as you say, more "objective" contexts for the vocabulary, and in the process incorporated pretty much the entire spectrum of the music. Even created a few of their own. Same thing about Cecil. Cecil has NEVER been about random venting. His music has always had structure. Not always the traditional linear forms, but form nevertheless, usually in the form of "cells" that are dwelt upon, examined, before moving on to the next one, the end result being a "journey" of sorts. If venting goes on within the developement of each cell, then good. But the vent is NOT all that is going on - it's part of a larger design, a consciously designed form. I also think that it ws the unrestrained, often collective vent that Sam Rivers was referring to. Anybody who spent the better part of a decade, like Sam did in the 70s, playing TOTALLY improvised sets that nevertheless had form and contour when it was all said and done, is aware that "freedom" means MORE responsibility, not less, and that a big part of that responsibility is to create a coherent larger design. Ayler's best work had this design, as did/does pretty much ALL of the "free" music that bears repeated listening and examination. Don't get me wrong - I love the vent, love to do it, and occsionally enjoy participating in it as a listener. It's got value, but that value is nearly always entirely of the moment, not for all time. If the expression is ENTIRELY of the moment, so will be the appreciation. To expect more is to expect the unnatural. Of course, there's always a market for the unnatural...

I've worked so many "free" jazz gigs that almost actually WERE free to lose count of. When breaking double digits is cause for happiness... Lowest paying "regular" gig since turning "pro"? $25 to do a blues gig in an Ethiopian restaurant. It was supposed to be $50 (WOW!), but the owner decided that "Just A Little Bit" was all he could stand and sent us packing after the first set. Why the hell he booked a blues band in there in the first place, I'll never know. Then there was this gig I did in Albuquerque way back in 1982. Cat calls me up at 5 in the afternoon for a 6:00 hit. It's a wedding, and it's playing standards and what is now know as Tejano. $100.00. Cool. Get there, and the leader is this guy who plays keys with his left hand, and trumpet with his right. Each hand is less competent than the other. He's drunk at the beginning, and proceeds to get even more blasted as the night goes on. Apparently the alkyhol is hindering his hearing, because he's constantly turning himself up all night long. Spinal Tap goes to 11? This cat STARTED at 11 and went up to at least 53. By the end of the night he's putting his trumpet in his eye instead of on his lips, and more than once his keyboard nearly got knocked over when he went to paw at it to find a chord. ANY chord, maybe even the occasional right one. End of the night comes, and he's forgotten his checkbook, and he'll be right back. Yeah, right... Never even bothered pursuing the dough - I'd rather not get paid than to see him again and be reminded. Some scab gigs is cool, and some ain't. This one wasn't. Live and learn. (B-3er - assuming that your original deal was at or above scale, this is an instance where the Union could have been of assistance had you had a signed AFM contract. Theoretically, anyway.... Just a thought.)

Speaaking of Hank/Thad, my "favorite" Hank Jones on record is a perhaps odd choice - Dexter Gordon's CA'PURUNGE on Prestige. Not so much for his solos, which are fine enough, but for his accompaniments. He really lays out some thick, somewhat dissonant chords in his comp that very much resemble Thad's big band voicings. It's far from Dexter's best effort, but I find myself listening to the album more and more just to hear Hank's comp.

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Y'all gonna be posting a LOT more than me soon. The changing economy is affecting the Lovely & Talented Brenda's job scenario, and Mr. Jim is gonna step in to pick up some slack. I'll still be around, but you guys are gonna have the show a LOT more that me. Just remember me at my best, whenever the hell that might have been! :rsly: :rsly: :rsly:

Did I follow Ohsawa's diet? HELL NO! And I'm not sure that that is an accurate description of it, either. But I never got into him too much anyway. Instead, I really, REALLY dug a thing by Michio Kushi called "The Book of Macrobiotics". That book makes a lot of sense in terms of it's basic principals, at least I think it does. Pretty much, what it all comes down to is recognizoing that all life, including food, has opposites that make up the whole: sweet-sour, hot-cold, ying-yang, etc. The ideal in diet is to eat WHOLE foods that are indiginous to your general geographic zone, and to avoid processed food, additives of any kind, or foods that could not be consumed in whole form some how. Flesh was verboten, although a little fish/seafood could be allowed since it was of the water and not of the earth, but only if REALLY needed. Staples ARE brown rice, miso (NOT soy sauce!), tamari (which IS soy sauce), tofu, and lots, LOTS of vegatables. Fruits had their place, but it was mostly grains and vegatables. No meat, no dairy. After you detoxed your system (and believe me, we can ALL stand some of that!) and lose your appetite for all the crap we all eat (look at an ingredients list and tell me that THAT is what our body functions most efficiently on!), the macrobiotic diet offers a wide variety of recipies that might use a lot of the same ingredients, but all taste different due to a little twek here and there. Your tastebuds return to their natural state, and food tastes like FOOD again! By the same token, crap tastes like crap, and the few times I lapsed, I was shocked at how funky all that fast food tasted, and how cooked meat really tasted like what it was - charred flesh. Yuck. But I lapsed, and I remain lapsed. so who am I to talk. I've not kept up with macrobiotics in over 20 years now, so I don't know what's up w/Kushi or if there are other schools. I suspect the whole altrnative medicine thing might attract some new followers/ideas, but it's really not a "system", at least not as I practiced it. It's a general philosophy about the nature of existence, and the diet is just an application of that philosophy. The whole Feng Shui (before it became so damn "fashionable") trip has a lot of macrobiotic-esqe concepts to it. Look for "The Book of Macrobiotics" by Kushi, and check it out. If your prof doesn't know about it, he/she should. Kushi had a LOT higher profile in America than Ohsawa did, and that book was kinda like the macrobiotic Bible for a while. Hope this helps!

You hip to Ornette? If not, might as well start there. Shepp's Impulse! sides are good starting places, because they're not always "free", so there's some context there. Same w/early Cecil - you want/need to make a transititon from the hard bop to the freer stuff, these are sides to assist. How far have you gone on the Trane ride? INTERSTELLAR SPACE is one you'll probably listen to for the rest of your life once you get on board. Simply some of the most fully realized music ever captured on record. AEC - ANYTHING. Do you and Chuck BOTH a favor and get his AEC box while he still has it available. PLEASE check out Henry Threadgill - a guy of your intelligence and humor should be able to scope this guy out in nothing flat! There's SO much more, and plenty newer things as well. Geez Moose, what got you on this kick anyway?

Sounds like my kinda guy!

Yeah, me too. Harmless enough on it's own, but still.... ".com", dig?

Maybe, but I don't know...................................... http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread....s=&threadid=563

OK, I'll show my ass - who's Jack Purvis?

The technical criticisms were somewhat justified, but I just don't give a damn. I like the guy's feel. Sue me!

Can you feel the hot tip of my mouse pointer constantly poking you in your cyber-eye to see if it will cyber-bleed? Oh, the feeling of cyber-impotence...

I was, very briefly, "Mr. And Mrs. Truth".

I don't know that I've ever seen any specific names mentioned in the "charlatan" charges, other than the occasional dis at Cecil, Ornette, AEC, etc. It's always been a more generalized thing. BUT - the loudest cries came, from what I can gather, in the fallout from the whole "October Revolution" movement. And, like John said, from the perspective of those who criticized, it WAS legitimate criticism often enough. I mean, Giuseppi Logan was NOT a badass motherfucker of a saxophonist from a traditional standpoint - his technical fluency seems to have been very limited, at least on the recorded evidence I've heard. But he had a voice, and he expressed that voice VERY distinctively. And for the time he did it, that was enough. In my opinion, if it was enough then, odds are it should be enough for today. "Not aging well" is really more about the judger defining his/her personal evolution than it is any intrinsic worth on the part of what's being judged, I think. Something we all need to do, sure, but hardly an absolute standard. In terms of established artists checking out and commenting on the free scene, it's also worth noting that "free jazz" is by no means whatsoever a monolithic or monochromatic music. The range of the music is just as vast, maybe even moreso, than any genre. I'd not expect any established musician who was soloistic in their concept to have much, if any, intrest in collective "energy" blowouts or pastoral explorations of the implications of space and silence. But I can see them checking out some of the devices used, as well as checking out the types of free jazz that focus more on looser forms and more open-ended harmonic concepts. You stop growing, and you die. Sometimes that growth is stimulated from within, sometimes from without. Besides - I HATE playing Free Jazz. Show me some money dammit! :rsmile:

Is that really Greg? I recognize the speakers and the sparse decor in the picture, but not the person. Somehow, that's not surprising....

Most I ever made for a nite was $1000.00 - New Year's Eve 1999 going into 2000. I've got a cuppla society and party bands I work with that usually pay in the $150-$250 per gig range. Unfortunately, they only work a few times a month each. No matter how much you make - when you got teenaged kids, it's NEVER enough!

Tell me more...

Now THAT'S information! I always thought was "Cuss - Koona". Although, I suppose the double "S" would have been built into it, eh? Anybody know of a good deal on a calcamoolator? I done rolled one Braxton album too many offa mine and it done broke.

I doubt it's you, Ed. I've got a VERY small amount of "name recognition" over there from my musical endeavors over the years. That probably accounts for whatever welcome I've received, that and the freindly "cross-posters" like Kevin, Omar, Uli, Jim Dye, and a few others who know me from both boards. But it IS a more diverse bunch over there, "socially" speaking, than I had imagined. Pick and choose (and wait), I suppose, is the way to break in over there, if that's what you want. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I VERY much like the vibe here, and that it's a ".org" rather than a ".com". Even if this site never blossoms into a megasite (maybe it will, maybe it won't, it's cool either way), it's great to have a place to hung out with old friends away from the outside world, cyber or otherwise. I've always dug hanging at after hours clubs, and to know that right now there's an after hours joint open 24/7 is just WAY too cool!

But FUZZIER? I doubt it...

FREE is where you can hear "Lucky Southern", if you dig that tune.