JSngry

Hey, drugs can make the impossible look easy.

I remember being kind of pissed off about this one back in the day, I mean, c'mon. Brackeen, Izenzon, Motian and this is the record you get? Fuck you, ECM, you suck the life out of jazz (is there one period of sustained ride cymbal on this record? Maybe?). Etcetcetc…. Heard today, it's a marvelously high-level program of "chamber jazz" played by a trio of masters. The silence and space is in the music itself, not in the record label, it's how the musicians played the music themselves, and I don't think any of those three would have played it like this if they didn't mean it. Yesterday, it pushed me away, today it pulls me in. Same record, same music, different me. Fashion fades, substance doesn't. Substance is there for you to dind it when you want it, but it's also there even if you don't want it. If facts are stubborn things, then substance is the apex of facts.

Speaking of Sam Brown...this might be my favorite reading of "Song For Che" by anybody. Brown's acoustic playing is perfect in both conception and execution and makes it sound like the "folk song" it was no doubt intended to be instead of the "protest anthem" it was also no doubt intended to be. Too often, "protest" comes only in bright colors lacking in both overtones and undertones and speaks only of itself. This one is resonant, redolent, and speaks for itself.

My wife likes Ben Webster. Is that jazz? Her father was a welder, but I've not noticed her liking Bob Dylan. Is that jazz, the not liking of a person who practices the same trade as your father, recognizing that your economic heritage is not necessarily your spiritual destiny? She also plays country in her car when she drives alone, and then on the rare occasion that I drive it and it comes on when I start the car, she denies listening to it except every once in awhile. But...every time, you know? So, this having something you can't let just everybody see because you know they will use it to marginalize you, yet hiding it in plain view, is that jazz? She's also always in the back yard, playing around with plants and shrubs, always looking to refine the shapes and spaces to meet her own esthetic imperatives. Is that jazz? She also feigns embarrassment about her flatulence, but never actually tries to hide it. This core acceptance of bodily functions, is that jazz? I don't know, maybe she likes jazz more than I do, just not in a musical way.

This great record: with this kinda bullshit cover: This Motian/Haden thing...a constantly roiling cauldron always ready, willing, and able to accommodate any additional ingredients.

Will they mail you the packaging if you pay them for it?

Do people still listen to this record? I know I hadn't. At first it sounded "dated", but with further listenings, it all fell into place, because, no, it's not dated, I'm the one that's dated. This is pretty much where these people were then, pretty damn accurate, imo. So don't blame shit for being real, that's about the best thing it CAN be. Also, is it just me, or is it ok to use the word "enigmatic" when referring to Sam Brown? Maybe if he had lived longer? I'm really hearing him here.

Yes it is.

Listened to it just last week, in fact. It's mostly a Don Friedman trio demo session (with Pete LaRocca) that is modestly pleasant. Solid, and it would certainly have been useful for getting gigs in places that couldn't afford big names but still wanted a big name sound to get people in the house. There's also a lo-fi-ish tape of LaFaro and Bill Evans running around looking for harmonic options on "My Foolish Heat" that is....interesting, sorta, although I myself do not really like that song very much, so to me it sounds like, ok, you found that to do with it, so what, it's still My Fucking Foolish Fucking Heart, so big deal. Bill does most of the invention, Scott just catches up along the way, and, yu know, 50+ years later, it's hard to to listen at it and thing jessus guys, the song's not that hard, really, but...what they were finding then was not tehn common, so...you had to be there, and with this record, you can be. It's nothing radical, it's just a lot more movement to the harmony. We take it for granted today, and again, it's STILL "My Foolish Heart", but I can appreciate what they were doing at the time, and get over how it might sound like two guy who don't even know the song. And then there's a little interview reminiscence from Bill about Scott where the interviewer gets kinda ghouly about wow this must have really fucked you up, and Bill just kinda gets allanalytically detached and says oh yes it was a terrible blow, i don't think he's really dead, i think he's still here, etc. I think there's heroin in his voice, but maybe not, maybe it's just how he was about that type of thing. If that sounds like a pleasant kind of auxiliary addition to you well-rounded jazz record collection, then carpe-diem. One fair warning, though - it appears that Don Friedman has offered the demo session in slightly fuller(?) form (and with his own reminiscences) for the Japanese market. Whatever you do, though, don't look at a picture of LaFaro's wrecked car. That shit will fuck you up.

Of what?

So not happenin'...

No. And that it doesn't is why I'm not buying it. It really doesn't matter.

yeah....that ain't happenin'...

Nobody would claim that he wasn't good, much less that he was bad. But considering the greatness of Hank's greatness, then no, this is not all that great.

sorta?

Does anybody have these, from 1901? https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oldest-stereo-recording?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b7517eb942-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-b7517eb942-66759733&mc_cid=b7517eb942&mc_eid=d9ad91657b

I'll take 'em all, myself. and be careful what you think about Sidney Bechet, if you're not careful, you can fail the whole exam by getting that one wrong. I thank god hourly that I didn't rush to take the test, otherwise I would have failed. And there are no makeups, this ain't no drivers license, this is LIFE!!!

There are those who would LOL at that statement while suggesting that the the "classic Blue Note era" had already ended by then.

No, but I'd like to see love survive without it.

Add this and you got four!

or?

Excuse me if I don't shed the tears here, but I don't see how reforming the USPS can't help but be "political" or even "partisan". That's just how government works. My concern is one of good faith and transparency, always at a premium in this system, but....perhaps we are creating a "new normal" in that regard also. If so, I'm not a fan. I mean, there's infinite varieties of chocolate for every taste and inclination, but bullshit, or just common shit, is not one of them.

Is the information presented as fact in that article in fact factually correct? A quick scan suggest that it is. Determining motive, though, that would veer into the political, or at least the speculative. Nobody would deny that getting the USPS to run more efficiently is not something that can and should be done. And that may be all that's going on here, the establishment of a newer, harder "new normal" for the USPS and its customers, one that we are not going to like OTOH...how many times does the sun have to rise in the eastern sky before you can safely tell what it is by the way it looks and where it is? If Larry wants to delete all of this, fine, no objections here. But I'm inclined to let it stand, and caution against further explicitly and entirely political commentary about the article, and strongly urge that any other articles posted be carefully and objective screened for a highly favorable fact/inference ratio. Facts after all, are facts. conclusions drawn, however, are not facts. A conclusion will either prove to be accurate or not, but until that happens, a conclusion is not in and of itself a fact. We'll know when we get there.

Yes, Amazon copies are pricey: https://www.amazon.com/Troubled-Waters-Deep-Soul-South/dp/B00013MWYS Discogs copies, somewhat the same: https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/3782260?ev=rb However, Discogs seller MRCLEANWAX has a good-ish domestic rate, and Japanese seller minatobe is offering it for $18.00 total, which kinda sounds too good to be true?

Need to get the day started this way today.