Big Wheel

And if there aren't any of those in your area, there's always nudism, which I'm sure would make gigs interesting...

First try:

--Lenny Bruce

Mosaic sets are the only CDs I buy these days for more than $10. ($10 per disc, that is.) My case is the opposite of AfricaBrass's--I only started buying them 3 years ago, and only owned 2 until this December. Now I have 4 and am considering picking up 2 or 3 more if the budget will allow it.

I just picked up Mingus's "Revenge!" for $10, which is the best price I've seen for it. If you don't already have it that would be a good one to order from the Groove.

You sold me, Lon! I just picked it up for $6 at Dusty Groove.

Oh, shit. Both the New Orleans and T/K/M sets are on my short list, but I have too big a backlog and too small a bank account to justify buying right now.

Just curious as to what people's opinions on this one were.

I'm not surprised, considering how it was technically illegal just to play DVDs using Linux, and may still be (I'm not sure what was the ultimate result of the trial of the Norwegian hacker who created the DeCSS program that enabled playback on Linux).

Mine too (think it's actually titled "You Can't Kill the Rooster.") It features the classic line, "when shit brings you down, just say, 'fuck it,' and eat yourself some motherfucking candy."

"O Mama Enit" never fails to put a smile on my face.

Today I did a last-minute in-studio interview with Bill Summers and Irvin Mayfield, who are in town with Los Hombres Calientes this weekend. They were supposed to come in at 12:30 and we had to be off the air by 1, since that's when the station's jazz programming ends for the day and the classical listeners start getting cranky if they don't get their classical on at 1 sharp (our classical audience tends to be, shall we say, a little anal). Summers and Mayfield were coming from an interview at another station and didn't make it in till about 12:40, so the time we had for introductions was scant. Man, was that a mistake. I had no time to tell them what kinds of questions I would be asking them. Moreover, I didn't get much of a chance to size up what kinds of personalities I was dealing with. And in hindsight, I should have been way more careful in how I framed the questions. I try to ask complex and sometimes provocative questions so that we don't end up repeating all the usual inane blather that goes on in these kinds of promotional interviews. But one pitfall of complex questions (and hastily-arranged interviews) is that sometimes the interviewee interprets the question in a way completely different from the way you meant it. I came up with my first question from some ideas that were bouncing around my head from a Q&A session Quincy Jones gave at school two days ago (in fact, the station had also done an interview with Quincy, which ran right before the Summers/Mayfield interview. Basically, Quincy talked about the intermixing of hip-hop and rap, and said that he feels that current efforts to combine the two genres are still incomplete--more melody and harmony are needed to connect hip-hop with the blues. So I prefaced my question with the part about Quincy's talk, and then said, "What are your thoughts on the merger of hip-hop and jazz? Do you see yourselves adding more hip-hop influences to your music in the near future?" What I didn't do, and what I only realized I had failed to do once it was too late, was explain WHY I thought it was a pertinent question. If I had prefaced my question with "You guys include all manner of Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American styles in your music. What do you think about the merger of hip-hop and jazz?" things could have turned out very differently. Anyway, I think Summers kind of started out a little puzzled why I was spending our time talking about hip-hop, and Mayfield was downright irked that I had done so. He started out on a rant about how the critics are always asking jazz musicians these kinds of questions about hip-hop, but nobody's asking Jay-Z and Snoop about what they're planning on doing with jazz. It got worse. My next question was something like, "You guys are one of the only groups that I know of with leadership that spans generations. Some have criticized what they see as a demise of the apprenticeship system in jazz. Do you think it's still an important element of the jazz world today?" Now, in my head, I was really only thinking of the dearth of working bandslike Blakey's or Miles's, but Mayfield didn't really take the question that way, and got even more irritated at the idea that there were no more mentors, period. We took a break to play a couple of cuts from their latest CD. As soon as I flipped off the mikes, chaos ensued. I was surprised to discover that the two had almost diametrically opposite views on the jazz/hip-hop divide--the younger Mayfield is almost straight out of the Wynton Marsalis conservative school, and Summers is WAY more inclusive on these kinds of questions. My question had created a firestorm. Soon the two were at each other's throats, almost shouting, and nearly getting in my face as well. Expletives were flying. I seriously thought that I was about to be responsible for the breakup of the band. After a couple of minutes the very heated conversation turned to a debate about whether something necessarily has cultural/artistic value just because it's popular. "Do you know what the most popular movie in America in 1978 was?" said Mayfield. "Deep Throat. You think that's art, Bill, a movie about sucking dick?" So we get back on the air, and in an attempt to not throw any more fuel on the fire I decide to just open it up and let them talk about whatever they wanted. Except Bill evidently wanted to continue the debate they'd been having off-air, and started right in with talking about his opinion of the cultural value of pornography, which must have been interesting for the classical listeners flipping on their radios for the 1 PM classical show. Easily the most entertaining, educational, and downright frightening interview I've ever done. (It was entertaining once I realized that these intense arguments between Mayfield and Summers may actually be fairly routine, and once I realized they weren't actually going to try to kill me.) In the end, I may be hearing from station management and possibly even the FCC. But it'll have been worth it.

Whoever made this list sure likes compilations.

http://www.hugi.is/hahradi/bigboxes.php?bo...=51208&f_id=681

What!? A banning without Masterhit making an appearance?

Sure took me long enough...

Are you guys sure the PMs go through? I sent one yesterday, got the mail error and it didn't show up at all in my "sent items" folder.

I wonder if the decline in the American taste for buttermilk over the last few generations is the result of a change in Americans' preferences for sweeter and sweeter foods. My grandparents (the children of Russian Jewish immigrants) love sour cream on strawberries, a combination most of my friends find revolting.

I interviewed him a couple of months ago--very nice guy. One thing I didn't know about him was that he actually has quite a lot of experience playing Fender Rhodes.

I envy you, man. I'd gladly forget all this shit if it meant I could play like Brad Mehldau or Jason Moran.

Here's a really weird but sorta interesting way to think about the diminished/whole-tone or altered scale: A melodic minor scale is the same as the Dorian mode, except the 7th has been raised, right? You could call it a Dorian #7 (of course, the Dorian already has a flatted seventh, so you're basically making it a natural 7th). So now, slide up the notes of the melodic minor scale. If the melodic minor scale is a Dorian #7, the second mode is a Phrygian #6, then a Lydian #5 (better known as Lydian Augmented), then a Mixolydian #4 (aka "Lydian dominant"), Aeolian #3, Locrian #2 (actually the most common name for this scale).... and then, we come to the mode we've been talking about. The "altered" scale is just a major ("Ionian") scale, except that the ROOT has been raised. Weird, huh? Really, the simplest way to talk about such a scale, if we don't want the problem of two 9s and a disappearing 5th or 6th degree, is to think of it as an Ionian #1. Of course, then there come all these other problems to deal with...

The reason the 4th mode of melodic minor (lydian dominant) is called the overtone scale is because it includes the first dozen or so notes of the natural overtone series. It's sort of an arbitrary designation, since once you get past the 5th or 6th overtone the natural overtones start getting real out of tune, at least with respect to an equal-tempered piano keyboard. The notes of the overtone series starting from C would be: C C an octave up G (the 5th) C again E (the 3rd) G again Bb (the b7) C again D (the 9) E again F# (the #11, though very out of tune on a typically tuned piano) G again A (the 6/13) At that point all the notes of the Lydian dominant scale have been included. See here for a visual representation of all this, or just google "overtone series." At a certain point I side with Jim on the whole Western analysis thing. European theory is simply not equipped to deal well with jazz harmony once you leave the major modes. Once you get to diminished scale harmony, things get REAL hairy. There you have a chord/scale with 8 notes, but you only have 7 letters with which to name the notes. Which one should you double? And how is it that this scale is virtually interchangeable (at least with respect to function) with the 7-note melodic minor mode we've been talking about? I sat in on a workshop with Barry Harris about 6 years ago and he started off by saying something like, "I don't know where all this II-V-I stuff got started. There ain't no such thing as no II. A II is just a IV with the 6th in the bass." Food for thought.

maybe this was actually a BNBB thread?

Yep, I noticed that and just corrected it.

Technically, you're right, Joe. But under chord/scale theory, the idea of a flat 10 poses some problems. Think about it this way: in a diatonic scale, there are seven notes. All the notes have to have different letter names. So if G7#9 is based on a 7th mode of melodic minor, it follows that the scale is: melodic minor: Ab Bb Cb Db Eb F G Ab 7th mode: G Ab Bb Cb Db Eb F G So under chord/scale theory, if you called the sharp nine a flat ten, then you'd really have to call what's obviously the THIRD of the chord a "flat 11." Oops--edited 'cause I accidentally called the Cb a Cbb.