GA Russell

Of course I meant Sun Tzu. I think that Lao was the fellow who said, "The long journey begins with but a single step." And it's Walden! I must have been tired when I made that post!

LOL That was why I watched! I love a football game played in the mud.

It's on my calendar. In the interim, do you guys need me to pick up anything from the supermarket while I'm out? TTK, you're making me laugh!

Second! I forgot about this! Since everyone has dropped the ball about reminding the rest of us in early November, TTK I appoint you to do so next November.

Happy Birthday Tony!

OK, I've found out what NPR is doing. Anat Cohen, John Pizzarelli, Irvin Mayfield and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. It will be on WBGO, so we can listen to it on the internet. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=46923 Anyone know of anything else live on the internet?

In the past, NPR has broadcast live jazz New Year's Eve performances. A couple of years ago they had Joe Lovano and McCoy Tyner at Yoshi's but I couldn't stay up that late. Does anyone know if NPR or anyone on the internet will broadcast live New Year's Eve jazz concerts?

Happy Birthday L!

I used to feel that way about the Richard Twardzik date which was released on PJ as The Last Set, but since it was included in the Mosaic PJ Trios Select, I guess it doesn't qualify anymore.

Here's a Christmas Day article from the LA Times discussing the growing popularity of rabbit ears. In the LA area, many stations are broadcasting in foreign languages, which has stirred immigrants to go the over-the-air route. http://www.latimes.c...ars25-2009dec25,0,5668446,full.story I can't get the link to paste properly. I'll ask Jim what the problem is.

Happy Birthday 2009 Alexander!

ejp, if you have the patience, it will certainly be rewarded. The current devices have glass screens which crack easily. It is expected that plastic eInk screens will be released in 2010. They will be much more durable. We will know a lot more about what is in the pipeline in two weeks when the Consumer Electronics Show is in Las Vegas. I throughly researched this (with special thanks going to clave for steering me to mobileread.com) over more than five months. I ran out of patience. My jetBook Lite wasn't released until perhaps three months after my research began. But you can be sure that no matter how long you wait, there will be something better and cheaper expected another six months after that.

I got a jetBook Lite for Christmas! I will soon learn how to download books and transfer them to my device. In the meantime I am reading a couple of books which came included - HD Thoreau's Waldon Pond and Lao Tzu's The Art of War. My impression of the JetBook Lite is very favorable. It has a 5" screen which I thought might be too small, but it is fine. The Toshiba screen is very readable. It did not take me long to figure out how to navigate through the system. Some eBook readers are counter-intuitive.

It's 2009! Happy 40th jmjk!

medjuck, my memory is the same as yours. But I remember once reading in Time Magazine, "Only suckers pay list price." In New Orleans the LPs were discounted a dollar. One store sold monos at $2.59 and stereos at $3.59. I know that they were discounted even further in Washington, DC, where there was one level fewer of middle men. (For example, in 1968 in Washington, stereos went for $2.89.)

Here in Raleigh we have lulu.com which publishes as many/few as you would like. It is owned by Bob Young, formerly of Red Hat, and the owner of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. The price of their books is good, but they had a high shipping cost the last time I ordered from them.

Merry Christmas everyone! Peace on earth, and goodwill toward men!

Here's his LA Times obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-james-gurley24-2009dec24,0,1577562.story James Gurley dies at 69; guitarist with Big Brother & the Holding Company He became the center of the psychedelic band's free-form style with his spellbinding finger-picking on the electric guitar. The group launched Janis Joplin to stardom. James Gurley, second from left, was known for his spellbinding finger-picking on the electric guitar. Others in the band, which became a sensation with its 1968 "Cheap Thrills" album, were, from left, Peter Albin, David Getz, Sam Andrew and Janis Joplin, who was launched to stardom. (Sam Andrew) Related James Gurley | 1939 - 2009 By Valerie J. Nelson December 24, 2009 James Gurley, a virtuoso guitarist with Big Brother & the Holding Company, the psychedelic rock band that launched Janis Joplin to stardom, died Sunday, two days before his 70th birthday. Gurley was pronounced dead at a Palm Springs hospital after suffering a heart attack at his Palm Desert home, according to the band. "James was the spirit and the essence of the band in its early days," Sam Andrew, a Big Brother singer-guitarist, wrote on the band’s website. "James was the most unusual person I ever met, a pioneer, a real original. . . ." In 1965, Gurley was playing guitar on San Francisco's coffeehouse circuit when Chet Helms, Big Brother's manager, invited him to jam with the nascent band. Gurley's spellbinding finger-picking on the electric guitar "proved to be the missing component," according to a biography on the band's website, and he became the center of Big Brother's free-form style. Many of his peers consider Gurley the fountainhead of psychedelic guitar-playing, which "gets improvisational and goes out to this place where the beat is assumed," Barry Melton, lead guitarist for Country Joe & the Fish, told Guitar Player magazine in 1997. "The music is kind of out there in space, and James Gurley was the first man in space! He's the Yuri Gagarin of psychedelic guitar," Melton said. Gurley "was the star of Big Brother," the group's drummer, Dave Getz, said on the band's website, "and then Janis came along." As they played informal concerts in a basement ballroom of a San Francisco boardinghouse, Helms told the band, "You need this chick I know in Austin," Dennis McNally, a historian for the Grateful Dead, said in a 2005 Times interview. "The band went, 'Right, right.' He sent a friend of his to Austin to bring Janis out here, and the rest is history," McNally said. With Joplin joining the group as lead singer in 1966, Big Brother soon turned into one of the Bay Area's leading attractions. Her fierce, "blues-soaked delivery provided the perfect foil to the unit's instrumental power," according to "The Encyclopedia of Popular Music." Big Brother became a sensation with its 1968 "Cheap Thrills" album, which featured Gurley's intense, raw sound on such hits as “Piece of My Heart” and "Ball and Chain.” After Joplin left the band in 1968 for a solo career, the group disbanded. She died of a heroin overdose in 1970. Big Brother reconvened in 1969, with Gurley and Andrew in the lineup, but after releasing two more albums, the band broke up again in 1972. In 1987, the early members of Big Brother reunited and Gurley toured with them for a decade but left after a falling out. "James was a large personality," Getz wrote on the band's website. "He had real charisma. He was as unique an individual as they come. For a moment in time he was 'the man.' " Born Dec. 22, 1939, in Detroit, Gurley was the son of a stunt-car driver and learned at an early age to be adventurous. As a boy, he sometimes served as a "human hood ornament" by riding on the front of cars while his father drove through walls of fire and other obstructions, according to a biography on the band's website. By age 19, Gurley was teaching himself to play acoustic guitar, partly by listening to records by Lightnin' Hopkins, a country blues guitarist. Gurley also was inspired by a 1963 performance by jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. "I heard a lone saxophone raging like a madman," he told the Palm Springs Desert Sun in 2007. "I said, 'That's the way to play, like a madman.' And that's what developed my style: Play it like crazy." After Joplin joined Big Brother, she and Gurley had a brief affair that ended when his wife, Nancy, confronted them while holding the Gurleys' young son, according to the 2000 Joplin biography "Scars of Sweet Paradise." On "Pipe Dreams," his 2000 solo album, Gurley included a song "For Nancy (Elegy)," a requiem to his first wife. When she died of a heroin overdose in 1970, Gurley was charged with murder for injecting her with the drug but was eventually sentenced to probation. "I was a wild man, alcohol and drugs," Gurley told the Oakland Tribune while in San Francisco in 2007 for the 40th anniversary concert marking the city's Summer of Love. "I'm just glad to be here myself." Since moving to Palm Desert in the 1970s, he had performed with a New Wave band with his oldest son, Hongo, and recorded with New Age drummer Muruga Booker. When asked what advice he would give a young guitar player, Gurley once responded: "Don't listen to anybody." In addition to his son Hongo, Gurley's survivors include his second wife, Margaret; and another son, Django. The band is planning a public memorial to be held early next year in the Bay Area.

I suppose that Arnold Stang is best known as Top Cat, but he was on television a lot when I was young. He was a favorite of my parents. Here's his LA Times obituary. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-arnold-stang23-2009dec23,0,332365.story

Happy Birthday 2009 alocis!

The Bombers released Barrin Simpson today. It looks like the new management wants to put 2009 as far behind them as they can, and they are disposing of anyone who made uncomfortable headlines. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/blue-bombers-release-barrin-simpson/article1409091/

I'm sure we all agree that calling in the police was uncalled for. And I expect that all of us are skeptical of the complainant's claim that the music was injurious to his health. But the Guardian article refers to the complainant as a "purist". I see it in terms of feeling that the concert was not as billed, and therefore a fraud justifying a refund of the ticket price. I'm not familiar with Larry Ochs' music, so I have no opinion as to whether it should be called jazz. However, I have an opinion of "smooth jazz", and I don't think it should be called jazz. If a Kenny G concert were advertised to the unsuspecting as "the latest and most advanced modern jazz," I wouldn't have any trouble demanding my money back. So for that reason, I don't have a problem with a ticket-buyer calling into question whether the music performed was in fact jazz.

Greg, I like a cd that was released on Verve twenty years ago called You've Got a Date with the Blues.

Anyone else find it odd that news reports are saying that she died in her husband's home? Was that not her home too?

I too am very surprised with my home state's ranking. My recollection of growing up in New Orleans (and I admit that this may tell you more about me than it does about Louisiana) is that nothing happens there that does not involve the consumption of alcohol. Maybe everyone is too sauced to care about the mosquitoes! Or maybe the Saints were undefeated when the poll was taken!