jazzypaul

Fuck the nursing home thing and the assisted living thing. And, except for the cases where severe medical care is necessary, fuck the kids that would put their parents in these places. Call me old fashioned, but I WANT my parents living with me when they're old. I WANT them around my kids to give advice, keep them entertained, and pass on their wisdom. I WANT my kids to get grandparently love for more than simply the holidays. Not to mention, what's better: being around a whole bunch of old people waiting to die, or around a bunch of young people that want to live life?

I love how the Burton/Coryell albums are somewhat of a footnote, because they deserve SO MUCH BETTER. Those records are freakin' cool. And, unfortunately, out of print and almost completely unavailable in this hemisphere. Now that Sony and BMG have merged, I think they could easily put out an "essential Gary Burton" two disc set of the four albums that they did together (they'd easily fit on two CD's), and hopefully turn on a whole bunch of people onto some forgotten gems. As for the Larry Coryell at the Village Gate disc, it's pretty cool. Not in any sort of best of list, but a good record to pull out every once in a while for sure.

congrats! We're quickly nearing our first anniversary, and it's been great so far. I wish you as much happiness as we've had! And I will most certainly point a toast in your direction on Sunday.

I'd get into trouble if I wasn't listening to jazz at work...

damn good at it.

Saw them on New Years 05/06 at the Note. That was a sweet night. They DO put on a fantastic show. Not really jazz, but not really not jazz either. Definitely worth a listen.

Well...you still gotta be in the weight room. The difference is, on the juice, you'll stay bigger longer. Which helps in baseball, because with such a busy schedule, who's going to be able to do two and three hour per day workouts during the season? And you'll get bigger faster, simply because you'll need less recovery time in between workouts. So, having between October and February to be able to work out every day is going to have its, uhhh, advantages. Shit, if all you had to do to get lean muscle was take steroids, I'd be in Tiajuana every other weekend.

Say Hello to Everett, great guy and what a voice!!! He's an Indy guy...see him all the time! Wish I could make it in to see your band! I will be in on the 18th to see the Mingus Epitapt show @ the CSO. m~ Everett seems like a great guy. It's pretty rare to find a guy that NOBODY says anything bad about. I'd love to see the Epitaph show, but I'm playing that night in boystown. And being that we were double booked for the gig we were supposed to play the next morning, we might be playing really really really late.

my trio (which can be heard here) will be opening up for Everett Green at T&JJ's in Maywood (about a 15-20 minute drive from downtown). We hit at 6:30 if you're interested at all. If not that, then yeah, kinda hard to top Vonski!

Well, it didn't happen in New York, or Boston, so who cares! Seriously, it was a hell of a pitching job, Tim, well, lets call him Tim K., on Baseball tonight mentioned that not one pitch was thrown above 90 MPH! And to do that against the Ranger's lineup is very impressive! No it ain't; this is the RANGERS were talking about here. Seriously, that was freakin' cool, even if it was against my team. I know! The sad part was, we're packing to move on Saturday, so I didn't even see it! I just started getting phone calls after the game was over, and I went over to the computer to look it up, and sure enough, Buerlhe pitches a no-hitter! Sweet!

Now I've seen everything. Buerlhe throws a no hitter, and out of all of these supposed baseball fans, nobody mentions anything? Interesting. Anyway, 27 up, 27 down. The closest anybody comes to getting on base is Sammy Sosa (walked), and he gets picked off at first. Beautiful.

I was at that show in the second row somewhere. I was having conversations too, but they were of the whispered "man, that's some bad shit" variety. Usually, nobody minds those.

Speaking as a musician, I'd rather see seats filled and people talking than play to an empty house because people wanted to go somewhere where they can talk. If they paid money to be there, it's because they want to be there. And more often than not, I've seen people who looked like they couldn't care less during a set come up afterwards and make a point to tell you that they really enjoyed it. One of the biggest things I ever learned was that music is the soundtrack for people's lives, not the reason for it. That said, I like to hear music as much as the next person, especially if I'm paying $25-100 for the experience. But if the venue doesn't have a quiet policy, you can't blame people for yammering.

What about Blues Brothers? The (car) body count is through the roof on that. Or maybe it doesn't matter if they're just cop cars? And Bullit wrecked two of the most classic cars of all time in one chase scene!

Very cool and organic Amazing Grace! Thanks Greg! It was funny, that one just popped out of a jam on a gig, and people loved it. After that, I decided it had to be out on the CD (which is due out in early June). By the way, the unmixed version of Bright Size Life is up on the page now! Check it out!

King Missile Wernher von Braun Kenny Werner Warner Bros. Brecker Bros. Cannonball and Nat

I'm coming over to Jim's house tonight for dinner. How long is the drive from Chicago?

One thing I like about Douglas is the fact that he seems open to just about anything. Tiny Bell Trio to Freak In...that's a helluva lot of ground to cover. And to my ears, he does it convincingly. Strangely, given the vast size of his output thus far, there's only a couple of things that I've really loved. But when he's on...damn, he is on.

I don't really see a problem with kid "harnesses." Actually seems pretty brilliant.

MySpace page: myspace.com/paulabellatrio Same page I put up on a thread in the artists' section a couple of months back, but now our version of Amazing Grace is on there too. Coming soon on that very page: our takes on Bright Size Life, Losing My Religion and Baby Baby All The Time. Enjoy!

Ours used to have a decent jazz selection, but now I agree that it's pretty poor. And what's unfortunate is that they've essentially run all the other places in my town out of business. We have one FYE left in the mall, and Circuit City. That's about it locally. What seemed funny to me was that the local one to me at one time had a jazz (and pop, for that matter) selection that rivaled Tower's (at its peak). Hell, there were a few times where I went to Tower for something, THEY didn't have it, and Best Buy did. I found the Black Lion Thelonious Monk box there! But, as soon as all of the local places started shutting down, Best Buy's selection got smaller and smaller, and smaller. Now it's nothing but the stuff you'd expect K-Mart to carry. If that's the way they're going to be with their music, who says they won't be the same way with electronics if Circuit City ever shut down? I'd rather spend the extra $$ and go somewhere that I'm not afraid of.

The German troops never invaded Algeria during WWII. Algeria was run by the infamous Vichy government of France until the November 1942 allied invasion of North Africa. General de Gaulle moved his headquarters to Algiers a bit later. Brownie, I'm still figuring out the history here. I do know that she was part of the French resistance against the Vichy government. It's very confusing to figure everything out, because grandma wouldn't talk about this stuff, and so all of the accounts we got of what happened all came from her younger sister, who doesn't speak a word of english outside of "you speak francais!" So, everything came in translation from my aunt and uncle (my french isn't nearly good enough to keep up with her), and stuff was sure to get lost. What I do hear was absolutely fascinating stuff, however.

Damn. So, Wednesday before last, my grandmother passed away at the age of 95. She had one helluva great run, doing everything from teaching ballet to fighting germans in Algeria. When she came here, she busted her tail to help provide for her four kids, her ten grandkids and six great-grandkids. She was also a fantastic painter and a lover and supporter of the arts. Everything I know about warbling French bistro singers, I know because of her, and while my trio's in the studio, we're cutting a version of Edith Piaf's La Vie En Rose in her honor. On Thursday before last, the turbo on my car decided to stop working. Now my car that could do 140 is struggling to do 80 downhill. Uggh. Then on Saturday, my dad broke his ankle in two different places. They put him in a cast, and after looking at it, the doctor decided to operate. So they operated on Monday, and he freaked out coming out of anesthesia. So they decided to keep him an extra day. While they were keeping him, his blood sugar skyrocketed to 550 (he's a type I diabetic, btw), so they had to keep him an extra day. Wednesday morning, all of the sugar and all of the stress to the body causes a heart attack. Once they get that handled, on Thursday, his kidneys "fell asleep." All of the chemicals that they had to pump into his body in order to see everything on the cat scans had shut down his kidneys. Just as they were about to put him on dialysis, they finally started working, although just enough to not worry about dialysis yet. Then on Saturday, he stopped breathing momentarily. So, on came the oxygen mask and some gargantuan air pump which forces you to breathe (but it's not the same as a respirator), and finally yesterday, he FINALLY had a good day. It looks like they're keeping him for another week to keep an eye on him and make sure that nothing else bizarre happens. But, amongst all of this, there is a bit of good news...my beautiful wife is expecting. We go in for our first doctor's appointment later in the day. All in all, an interesting couple of weeks to be sure...

Simply playing devil's advocate here, but... [rant]If you think about it, the tailgater and the shooter are engaging in roughly the same activity. Bad driving is almost as deadly as people shooting at bad drivers. Think about how many of us have stories about how we're still lucky to be alive after some idiot was trying too hard to drive too fast for the situation. And think about how many people have died because of those same drivers. While I don't condone going around and shooting at bad drivers, I sure wish sometimes that someone would go around pouring sugar in the gas tanks of those who can't fathom following the traffic laws that are in place for our safety.[/rant]