Big Wheel

Haven't seen much yet that's very appealing to bargain hunters. The best I've come across so far: -Amazon has some scattered music deals, with the recent Beatles remasters at $8 a pop. -J&R has a bunch of decent movies for $3-4.

Put them on the sfbay craigslist right around, oh I don't know, 4:20 PM. I suspect you'll find a hungry customer.

Agreed - though there is indeed rap on Voodoo (the one track where Method Man and Redman guest, and although it's lewd it's also pretty awesome). The story of how Voodoo was made is cool - it sounds like D'Angelo eventually wrote and performed most of the material himself, but it came out of this sprawling marathon where he and Questlove and others would often just play whatever struck their fancy, old 70s soul covers, you name it. Would love to see a DVD showing some of the more interesting moments.

You might be thinking of Hugh Schick. In case anyone was curious what Schick is up to these days, he's the guy in the black baseball cap in the photo. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703904304575497990334592752.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB10001424052748704129204575506281365314958%26articleTabs%3Darticle

Randomly came across this clip of Branford on Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. Good stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQaUQO_FFM0

Just curious -- why do you think that all of the segment that you find vital, creative, and interesting exists underground? Why does the larger community that must in some way give (and/or have given) rise to this segment of the music not have enough of a taste for this segment to make it a popular, above-ground thing? Where's the disconnect, if that's the way to put it? Isn't that simply the norm for the vast majority of great 20th century art, regardless of genre? Bebop was underground, the new thing was underground, Morton Feldman was underground, hell, rock 'n' roll was pretty underground at the beginning. And most things that start out underground stay underground - Cecil Taylor's music never erupted past the underground in my book. The only reason Cecil appears in jazz history textbooks and today's underground hip-hop doesn't appear in hip-hop history textbooks is that it's too early for most academic types to start in on analyzing the latter. Genres get old and The Man ruins them. Jimi Hendrix --> Starship --> hair metal. Public Enemy --> most shitty contemporary hip-hop. Maybe the disconnect is that the big players of the music industry got so good at marketing that they suddenly realized they didn't have to focus at all at finding and distributing quality music. Any band, good or bad, would become the hottest new thing as long as they put enough marketing oomph behind it, so who cared if the bands were good or bad as long as the shareholders got their usual dividend every quarter? Yeah, eventually something bubbles up that changes things (like the way Seattle post-punk eventually killed hair metal), but the mass public only gets sick of bad music years after that music actually starts sucking - and chances are they would have gotten sick of it even if it were good. Although Justin Bieber does sound all right if you slow him down 800%.

13 replies and nobody mentioned Yusef Lateef? Also Steve Turre on conch shells along with trombone.

That street looks exceptionally tame. Here's a video a relative of mine shot for a webshow he put on there: http://vimeo.com/1981364

Online or in the store? I'm going to be in Boston in a few weeks.

Just to recap because I can't remember if it was spelled out in detail here. If the price is similar at grooves-inc and amazon.fr, customers in the US will get a better deal at grooves-inc because shipping is free, whereas amazon.fr will charge you for international shipping outside of France/Switzerland/Benelux. Do I have that right? And grooves-inc generally has better prices than ordering from CAM Jazz directly?

Shazam doesn't seem to find a match when I hold my phone up to my laptop speakers. If this song is part of a Flash game as this graphic suggests, perhaps the game developer had a random studio band play a few custom things like this for the game?

I don't know what all the fuss is about, it's only F4240 in hexadecimal...

Reminds me of when the Rose Kennedy Greenway was being unveiled in Boston. One of my friends' reactions was "What the hell did Rose Kennedy do besides have famous men coming in and out of her vagina? They should call it the Rose Kennedy Urban Birth Canal." Who went in? Joseph P. Kennedy wasn't exactly an unknown...

Reminds me of when the Rose Kennedy Greenway was being unveiled in Boston. One of my friends' reactions was "What the hell did Rose Kennedy do besides have famous men coming in and out of her vagina? They should call it the Rose Kennedy Urban Birth Canal."

My point is that at least there's an easy argument at hand for Thad as an innovator and a great. You might not agree with placing him right NEXT to Ellington, but it's not laughable like saying Delfeayo Marsalis is one of the nation's pre-eminent jazz masters. IMO Jones was significantly better than Haig, Wallington, Flanagan. Solal didn't come on the scene until around 1950. Tristano, Nichols, Williams, undoubtedly towering greats, but not easily categorized as bebop piano players. I really like Albany and Perkins (hell, I even produced a 10 hour radio program devoted to Perkins), but let's not kid ourselves about where the consensus here lies. Again, though, the point isn't to say Hank Jones is God, it's just that he's clearly more qualified than Ellis Freakin' Marsalis to get an NEA award as one of the top jazz musicians in history, and there's no shortage of non-laughable cases to be made for such a candidacy. I'm glad to know even Allen Lowe draws the line somewhere.

Speaking as someone who doesn't really give a crap about the NEA and thinks Phil Woods's email rather bolsters what I've heard through the grapevine about him (giant douche), you're comparing apples and oranges. The point isn't that naming a whole family per se is ridiculous, it's that the Marsalis family, taken as a whole, doesn't punch its weight compared to past winners. Elvin: a true giant and innovator, maybe THE defining post-bop drummer Thad: brilliant writer, the next logical step in big band writing after Ellington Hank: Criminally underrated, a contender for the best bebop pianist behind Bud (and Monk if you count him as bebop) Wynton and Branford have been discussed to death and I'll give you them for the sake of argument. Delfeayo: By all accounts a reasonably good trombone player, but you could probably name a dozen of his generation who are more distinguished Ellis: to be honest I haven't heard enough of Ellis's music to pass judgment, but I have a hard time believing he'd even be famous outside New Orleans in the year 2010 if it weren't for his kids. Ask any young pianist who didn't grow up in New Orleans who his top 10 influences are on the instrument, I can almost guarantee you Ellis will never make the list. Probably wouldn't even crack the top 20. Jason: Again, great drummer, extremely talented. But not head and shoulders above a dozen guys his age (or younger).

Are you 100% sure that the SIM reader is the only thing wrong with the phone as a result of the water damage? If not, it would suck to go through all this time and effort only to find that the phone is still busted. I'm assuming you've also tried the carrier at this point (AT&T?) if you got the phone through them. Failing that you might want to try some independent little repair shop in your area to see if they are familiar with this handset and might have a line on parts. In California these usually amount to one or two Asian dudes in a tiny little operation, but I suspect that some of them might have a connection to the Chinese factories that make the parts, if you know what I mean... Failing that, the best solution might actually be to get yourself a Twitter account and tweet the living shit out of your experience, making sure to add Nokia's account so they see your displeasure. The main Nokia account is @nokia. It'll probably help to have at least a few followers so they know you have a bit of a megaphone. I know this sounds ridiculous, but social media is so new to most of these companies that many of them devote extra effort to customer service via Twitter that they NEVER give to people coming through the usual channels. Case in point was when I angrily tweeted AT&T about terrible DSL customer support and one of their reps on Twitter apologized and offered to look into it within about 5 minutes of my posting. And if that doesn't work? Find the number for Nokia US and dig through the phonetree to find executives at the director or VP level (some research using Google will help identify good candidates). If you don't think the squeaky wheel gets the grease, watch what happens when an angry customer manages to get some bigwig's assistant on the line and screams at her for 10 minutes. Unlike customer support reps, these people are not used to being confronted by the great unwashed, and their bosses will move heaven and earth to make sure that those peons in customer support do whatever it takes to make that fucking person go away.

Here's an Internet game I just finished playing. I analyzed it with the Rybka engine afterward and was particularly pleased that my exchange sacrifice on move 26 was most likely the best one, preserving my advantage. I tend to be way too much of a materialist most of the time. 2 minutes per move [White "my opponent (Greece)"] [black "me"] [Result "0-1"] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 c5 4.d5 b6?! My knowledge of the Indian/Benoni-type defenses is very weak. My plan here is usually to try to drag an opponent's pawns off-center with the c5 push, but when that fails I often play too tentatively and fail to strike at the center fast enough. 5.Bf4 Bb7 6.Nc3 d6 7.dxe6 fxe6 8.Ng5?! Qd7 White had a significant advantage after move 7 but is attacking too quickly. Still, this move and the threat of Nb5 looked very scary over the board. 9.Qd3 Nc6 10.Rd1 e5 10...Be7 was probably a bit better according to the computer. 11.Be3? a6? Castling queenside or 11...Nd4 was far better, but Nb5 was still worrying me. 12.Nd5 Nxd5 13.cxd5 Nb4! 14.Qc4 b5? Moving the queen to a more offensive position was way better. I tend to be way quick to try and grab space and push an opponent's queen around. 15.Qb3 a5 16.Rd2 c4 17.Qd1 Nxa2?! Playing 17...h6 first, kicking away the knight, is better now that White can't play Qg6+, but I missed it. I also didn't like the looks of White playing Ne6, even though with White's queen on Qe4 I can reply to Ne6 with Qxe6!. 18.Qc2? Rybka says 18. g3 is the only way to preserve White's slight advantage. I haven't a clue why White thought it was a good idea to first block his king's pawn with 11. Be3 and then refuse to play g3 to let the bishop out the other way, with the fianchetto. 18...Nb4! 19.Qe4 Be7 20.Nxh7 O-O-O! Turned out to be best, but I was very reluctant to play this move because the rare occasions I castle queenside as Black tend to end very badly. 21.Ng5 Rdf8 22.f3 Bxg5 (...Rf5 is way better) 23.Bxg5 Kc7 24.f4? Qf5 By this point in the game, I was kind of obsessed with getting White's queen off the board so I could finally take the pawn on d5. I missed the much better ...Qf7! which both wins the pawn anyway and prevents White from playing 25. fxe4?? because of 25...Qf2+ 26. Kd1 Qxf1+!! 27. Rxf1 Rxf1#. After 24...Qf5 my big advantage is gone. 25.Qxf5 Rxf5 26.e4 Rxg5!! With White finally about to start developing his kingside pieces and bearing down on the center with his pawns, I didn't see any other option than to take his one mobile piece out of commission. 27.fxg5 Rh4 28.Re2 Bc8 ...Nd3+ is the only way to continue holding on to an advantage, but that blocked-in bishop on b7 seemed useless. 29.Kd2! Nd3 30.b3? Nc5 31.bxc4 Nxe4+ 32.Ke3 Ng3! Forking both rooks AND the bishop. My exchange sacrifice pays off nicely in the end. 33.hxg3 Rxh1 34.Rf2 b4 35.g6 White's extra two pawns on the g-file are worthless, but 35.g6 was concerning. I wasn't sure I could promote one of my monster passed pawns before White after 36. Rf7+. 35...a4 36.Bd3? b3 36...a3 would have wrapped things up nicely according to the computer. 37.Be4?? Inexplicable. 37...a3 38.Rf2f7+ Bc8d7 My one huge blemish in this part of the game. After 38...Kb8! White is crushed. 39.Bf5 a2 40.Rxg7 a1=Q Only the immediate 40.Rxd7+ would have left him any kind of a chance. Rybka gives 40. Rxd7+ Kb6 41. Rxd6+ Ka5 42. Ra6 a1=Q 43. Rxa1 Rxa1....but then white's tripled, blocked g-pawns and my passed b-pawn mean he's toast anyway. 41.Rxd7+ Kb8 42.Rd8+ Kc7 43.Rd7+ Kb6 44.Rxd6+ Kb6a5 No checks left. Here comes the fat lady. 45.g7 Qa1d4+ 46.Ke2 e4 (Qd1+ mates faster) 47.Ra6+ Kxa6 48.Bc8+ Ka5 49.g8=Q Too late. 49...Qd3+ 50.Kf2 Rf1#

Machito didn't really adopt the elements we use to typically define "jazz" like improvised solos until around 1947-1948, but then he did in a BIG way. And probably he was mixing things more subtly before then.

From this discography it looks like at least 80-90% of Guerrero's pre-1952 Imperial output was straight-up Mexican in style. Rancheras and corridas mostly rather than mambo or rumba. This radio program by his son suggests that his more jazzy/mamboish groups didn't really come together until around 1949. My guess is that he was tuning in to the stuff Perez Prado was doing and dabbling in that style a bit for variety's sake (Cuban music was popular and influential in Mexico too) while keeping the Mexican stuff his bread and butter. No doubt the man was a giant of Chicano music, but to compare him in any way to Machito or Chano Pozo seems like a real stretch unless your attitude is "it's all in Spanish, therefore all "Latin" music is basically the same."

It's important to keep in mind that the fusion of bebop with Afro-Caribbean music was very much a product of the specific historical conditions in New York in the 1940s, namely, the immigration of large numbers of Puerto Ricans and smaller numbers of Cubans to New York. Not to California. New York. Imagining a scene like the Palladium Ballroom happening in the Southern California of the 1940s is a lot like imagining a Minton's just springing up in the middle of Portland, Maine. Why would major talents try to make a living playing charanga and conjunto gigs in a place where there was little to no demand for them to play charanga and conjunto? Mingus's explorations with Mexican-ish styles in LA have been amply documented, but obviously that's a very different thing than what Chano Pozo and Machito were playing at the time.

I don't think so...a DNS server just takes what you type into your browser (www.organissimo.org) and turns it into an IP address like 12.156.43.104. Unless lots of people are creating links to Organissimo like http://12.156.43.104 I don't think an IP address change should really cause any problem. From wikipedia:

I can see why this edition of the band is not to everyone's tastes, but when they were on during that night at the Pier, they were ON. That version of Whippin' Post kills!

This is probably the result of a repricing that Ryko did for its Zappa titles last winter (see this post upthread). When I was researching this nobody really gave a good explanation for the price drops, so I'm still not sure whether Ryko is trying to dump overstock to prepare for a big deletion of its Zappa catalog, or whether it was just a more routine move on their part.

No video that I could find, but during the whole jazz/Letterman nonsense here I learned that Paul Shaffer was the first person to say the F word live on SNL. The skit parodied the Troggs tapes and the cast was supposed to say "flogging" instead, but Shaffer slipped.