JSngry

Esquivel is why Hi-Fi was born! If you've watched Ernie Kovacs, you've probably heard Esquivel.

For Hi-Fi Buffs...can't relate that mindset to this music, sorry. It's a homemade recording of a club date. The music is incredible, and is very "listenable" as such. For my money, it's a no-brainer addition to any collection of great music. For collectors of Hi-Fi Wizardry, go buy an Esquivel record or something. They're fun!

Virginia Plain Mother Of Pearl Ladytron

Yes. Worthy.

They really were different musics. The standardization came later, and not by the originators.

The 80s were a lot like the 70s, only with more obituaries.

Dude, I knew more than a few hardcore fusion lovers back in the day who hated his playing even then. They called him Al Screameola. For that matter...not every fusion lover loved RTF. They just didn't, especially the people who were already on to Holdsworth/Soft Machine and various other non-Major Label bands that were usually found in the "Imports" section at Peaches. RTF was obviously very popular. But not universally so. The Big 3 - Mahavishnu, Weather Report, and RTF ahd fan bases that only sometimes overlapped, especially as the musics diverged even more widely that they had begun.

Ok, I will push back here - in this regard, James Brown was a LOT closer to Captain Beefhear than to Duke Ellington. Duke could have done it all by himself just fine. But his ambitions went far beyond just being a distinctive comper/arranger/songwriter. Duke wanted an "empire", (int he good way) and for that, yeah, he needed to bring others into the fold, and not just Strayhorn. Strayhorn actually added another dimension. But plenty of others added product, some of it very tasty, and some, like Jimmy Jones more than very. Beefheart, as it now becomes more apparent, was an impulse, an energy, who had some amazing starting points, but really did seem to be totally unable to bring it home into a fainal performative form. For that, he needed the talents and understanding (and indulgences) of people ho could do that. Similarly, Brown, if you believe Fred wesley's accounts, was even more a force than Beefheart, and a lot more involved in getting his collaborators in the specifics, but not in any literal sense. Wesley tells the story of Pee wee being in the room with him while he would grunt and dance and repeat a phrase and Pee Wee would get it, translate to a workable arrangement for the band, later rinse repeat, and oh my, amazing. Trust me, I take a back seat to nobody in my love of James Brown. But it's an adult love, and that means realizing that although it couldn't have happened without him, it would not have happened with only him. This is the story of American Popular Music, and the truth of the matter is that the number of people who can really do it all, even most of it, by themselves are really not but a few. And if you don't believe me, disregard the anthology products and go dig up the OG LPs from the 70s. Now, you may ask yourself, would James Brown need to do something in the style of Tower Of Power? And the answer would be, apparently so, and it doesn't suck, except the horns are nowhere near as tight, but that's kinda the right way for it to be. BTW - I was blessed to catch the James Brown Show in a club (yes, club!) in Dallas in spring of 1981. The hits had long ago stopped coming, he was either without or about to be without a label, young Black people laughed at his old processed hair ass, it was surely a very dark time for The Godfather, probably the nadir of his career. The crowd was at most 300 people, and mostly white Boomers (of which I was definitely one). But it was still THE JAMES BROWN SHOW - SHOW, just like the old days, full service presentation, JUST like the old days, no intermission per se, just band instrumentals/JB teaser, female singer set, band feature set and then...IT'S STARTIME, and good god, yes, it was James Brown, still The Hardest Working Man In Show Business, STILL Mr. Dyneemite, still in there 1000%, still throwing up that hand for EVERY flub, no matter how irrelevant, It was amazing, cementing my truth that James Brown was indeed a force of nature, records be damned, popularity be damned, HERE was the reality of the truth. "Living In America" and all the samples and other deifications were yet to come. I saw the man at damn near the bottom and he was STILL James Brown. Not just anybody can do that. But that was a gig. The broader reality was a LOT more complicated. But I know what I saw, heard, and felt, so let it be complicated.

Except that "conventional melody" never really existed in "jazz", especially once some of it became evolved into R&B. All that honking and shouting and screaming and wailing was mo9st assuredly NOT in the service of "conventional melody"! And then there's Gospel. Oh my, there is Gospel. All of this began long before there was either Ornette Coleman OR James Brown. Sorry, in 2022, that's no longer a valid excuse!!!!!!! Just kidding (sorta). You have history and the internet at your disposal. It's an endless pursuit, but in my experience, the deeper you dig, the more you realize that it's, what did Baraka call it...The Changing Same. Only even moreso than that.

poet-Pee Wee/post Fred JB gets to be a really dicey proposition. For everyone of these: There's a whole lot more of these: Running on fumes, and like fumes, intoxicating until you realize that you're out of air and dying. I got lucky and bought all these in the early 80s when the used and cutout bins were full of them at a few bucks each. And of course I bought therm all, becuase, you know, there would usually be a gem or two along the way. But not that many. There's a reason that those Polydor anthologies were 2-CD set until they covered 1975-1983, and they had to stretch to get a full disc there. Brown would blame the record companies for trying to push him into disco, but...there were very few concessions to disco on these records. I mean, c;mon...this is not the record company's fault:

Miles was not above dropping names and/or being openily influenced by who was propualr at any given time. As well as paying attention to Betty Mabry, who opened him up to aLL kinds of things. Include in that mix Hendrix, and to my ears more immediately than JB, Sly. Here's On The Corner, right here: The only JB record that really "sounds like" Miles is this one, and it's later than Miles already being there. Yeah, he copped the Say It Loud bassriff, but, uh...to what end? A "funky" end? Not like that. People who think that the post-On The Corner music is rooted in JB, really need to relisten to JB, it's not the same thing at all, the rhythmic impetus is totally different, JB is constantly in motion, Miles is about very condensed rhythmic movement in a static space. That kind of on the one, the minimal/static bass line, is not really typical JB at all (except on the bridge, where it is, but there it's not static at all). And it's not like the later stuff where Fred Wesley (with permission!) really DID do it to death. Again, listen to ALL the records, you can hear things devolve as they go along. Except when they don't, which is, unfortunately, not nearly as often as once was. Bass line is everything. One thing Miles did say, although not crediting anybody in particular, is that his music, and Black Music in general is built from the bottom up. Him saying that (I think it was in the 1974? BB cover interview), was a life-changing thought for me, because...yeah, it is. From Wellman Braud on to Paul Chambers to Larry Graham to Bootsy Collins on and on and on, before, during and after. And once you hear it in Black Music...it becomes ALL music. Bottom. Bass. Foundation. I don't think they were different points at all. More like one continuous line. From Free Jazz to Dancing In Your Head is a helluva like more of a single piece than is, say, getting from Blackhawk to On The Corner. That Ornette was still Ornette was as obvious as Miles still being Miles was unobvious (if you believe "popular opinion" of the time...) But I do think (and think is all it is, Dancing In Your Head seemed to come out of literally nowhere, so who knows how it got there. But we do know that Ornette and the Prince Street loft were pretty much open for business 24/7, that Ornette had already been exposed to/preformed with John & Yoko, so electricity was not anathema to him (and Haden played wah-wah on Science Fiction)...but somehow that band got together (almost another Double Quartet) and developed this remarkable telepathy (as does any Ornette group worth a damn, which was pretty much all of them). Jamaladeen Tacuma and Shannon Jackson were every bit the equal of Haden and Blackwell as Ornette bass/drum teams. I mean that. Oh yeah, Decoding Society. Shannon Jackson was another one who did not "need" James Brown to do what they did.

Because the girls are prettier and the martinis are bluer? Everything's so much more amped up these days, except for TV shows. They keep getting greyer and greyer.

I actually got it in the mail late last week but haven't had opportunity to play it yet Hope to get to it this weekend!

We were predicted to get up to 34 today, which isn't really enough to affect any meaningful melting. However here we sit at 42 and significant meltage already! Global Warming returns!

Oh please - as much as I love, seriously love, James Brown, his spirit was not anything that had not already existed. Highly concentrated and distilled with a laser-like vengeance, yes. But Ornette playing roadhouses for all those years...I don't know what James Brown had to offer him that he didn't already have. Screw "records", I'm talking about sightsandsoundsandsmellsandoverallBLACKNUSS. Also - seriously recommend reading the Fred Wesley autobiography. Jaundiced as it sometimes is, it only strengthens the underlying hunch that, although James Brown could never be anything other than James Brown, James Brown's classic records were at least as much Pee Wee Ellis, the Collins brothers, and Fred Wesley as they were James Brown. Go ahead and listen to all those later Polydor JB records, all of them A varied lot, to put it mildly. When they hit, they HIT. But they very often don't. Besides, talking about "funk" and not going to New Orleans (yes, per-JB) is only taking half the trip. Blacknuss.

Remember - "history" has the luxury of having already happened. And of being written by the winners

Not really a link as in direct influence but, definitely a continuation of the path of electric funk that Miles & Ornette began that then kind of evolved into the No Wave/Blood Ulmer scene. So when M-Base picked up, it really didn't seem a radical thought, it just seemed like a continuation of the same way that things were already developing. I was very much NOT surprised that it happened, just pleasantly surprised at the direction it took. Although, to be honest, it took quite a while for Coleman's music (and I say Coleman because of that original crew of originators, he was the only one to really stay the course with it) to get locked into an organic pocket. Ornette never had that problem, regardless of what he was playing or who he was playing with. Ornette was synonymous with organic!

Marc Cary Luc Schiltz Jean Valjean

On the occasion of getting my internet back on, I gladly recognize:

Who's the trombonist?

Oh, we have more than a few of those...yuck. But KRLD is not one of them.

But you won't be the last. Waiting for situations to stabilize here to be able to determine how much, but certainly anticipate pitching in. It's a more than worthy endeavor, believe me!

Oh, TALK radio. Hate it with a passion. KRLD is news, weather, traffic, stock market, etc. No raving lunatics of any ideology. It's basically old school Top 40 radio minus the music, and it's as tight as the proverbial gnat's ass. In times of uncertainties like our current weather/ power fuckedness, it's soothing in a way. Predictable texture, varying detail, the only time it can get kinda wild is during a tornado, and that's ok. Otherwise, it's the kind of drone that you can use when you need a distraction and good information at the same time. Also keep in mind that Dallas is the alleged birthplace of actual Top 40 radio, Gordon McLendon, KLIF, the mighty 1190. And then, the vomitous but powerhouse KVIL-FM, the station that you would here somewhere, whether you wanted to or not. So this tow has a REALLY well-entrenched knowledge base of how that shit works, how it's built. I've just never realized until now how KRLD is doing it with a non-music format. Believe me, these motherfuckers are TIGHT!!!!

Did you skip Body Meta? https://youtu.be/0QkY_E2HRWM