Tom Storer

Thanks for the tip, Tom, I'll look for that one! I really discovered Carmen McRae with her Monk album, the one prior to the Vaughan tribute. Both of those are absolutely killer albums, I find them near perfect jazz singing. I like much of her earlier stuff too, but to me she reached her peak just at the end. I was eagerly awaiting the next record after "Dedicated to You" and was devastated when I heard she had retired due to her health issues. And while it's true that at times she could be all mannerisms, isn't that also true of Sarah Vaughan? I remembering seeing Sarah sometime in the 80's and it was dreadful, she was just hamming it up tastelessly.

My avatar would like to dissociate itself firmly from hypnotoad.

Allen, you ought to see the man live once or twice before finalizing judgment. "Perusing his web site" shows no sense of deep search, just a skimming of the surface. ;-) I like Hersch very much in trio. His solo efforts are better than Keith Jarrett's, anyway. Now those are soporific.

I can well understand objections to Facebook on multiple grounds: their exploitation of private data, the trivial aspect of so many FB posts, and other more philosophical points. But if you worry about "millions of people" reading your FB page, and email messages about "notifications pending"--that's just a question of understanding FB account settings. You can keep your posts visible only to your "friends," and you can disable email notifications. I'm just saying. As for trolls, in practice, your average troll has a very good success rate in message boards. For every poster who uses the ignore button, there's another willing to flame back and forth endlessly. The one-to-one nature of FB relationships means that it's harder for trolls to get traction. This is my experience, anyway: trolls on boards last years before they're banned, trolls on Facebook calm down right quick.

Well, EXCUUUUUSE ME for being born when I was born! ;-) Seriously, grasshopper, if young people are uninterested in the wisdom of their elders, what are you going to do? What I mean to say is that censoring one's spontaneous comments, questions, musings, etc., to try to make sure they are attractive to potential newbies is not likely to make any difference in our tragic march to oblivion. But I see your point about the potential value of duplicate threads (Larry, take note): someone coming to the board through a Google search and winding up at a freshly created thread that is scores rather than hundreds of posts long might be more likely to stay to read it all, while coming across a huge, ancient thread might be daunting. I don't agree with the idea of "old" jazz being in a zero-sum game with current jazz. All of us have nourished our tastes and understanding with significant exploration of the music of the past. It's what anchors long-term jazz listeners: the continuum. The newbie you're chasing may have never heard of the music on the Nessa label, no matter how many times some of it has been released. And it's not like the market is FLOODED with old Roscoe Mitchell records, boring the pants off all the young people and keeping them from listening to Esperanza Spalding. I think you confuse two things: one, actively preventing dissemination of knowledge about jazz; two, boring you on a bulletin board you're fed up with. To say that people who regularly meet online, publicly, to share a wide range of detailed jazz knowledge are "doing their best" to make sure that knowledge dies or isn't passed along simply doesn't make any sense.

Maybe it's because I'm so used to "the other board" that this place seems like a thriving hub of jazz discussion, rather than a "Dead BB Walking." But even if it really is as moribund as you insist, I don't think the moderating has anything to do with it. Maybe Larry can get fussy about duplicate threads, but that's no more than a minor annoyance for a small number of posters. In general, what is killing bulletin boards is Facebook. So many people are on Facebook that it is a handy one-stop socializing point; when enough of your fellow BB members are also on Facebook, you can just hang with them there, with all your other Facebook friends also at hand. Facebook kills off trolls because they are simply de-friended when they get out of hand. As people spend more time on Facebook, they spend less time on bulletin boards. As traffic decreases on boards, they are less and less attractive to newcomers--of whom there are fewer anyway, because they are all on Facebook... A shame, really, because public bulletin boards have unique aspects that Facebook doesn't.

Don't know it, but it looks like fun. Philippe Koechlin, now deceased, was the founder of "Rock et Folk," which is a kind of French Rolling Stone.

I saw him a few years ago playing with the Schuller brothers, Ed on bass and George on drums. The Schullers were very busy players that night and got lots of applause. At the end of the set, Konitz said, "On bass, Ed Schuller <long applause>, on drums, George Schuller <long applause>, and I'm Lee Schuller. Thank you!"

No-but thanks for the offer (; Seriously, the book came first. But maybe Bogosian was how I knew the title. Hacks borrow, talents steal. Or something. I suppose I could Google it, Joel, but what the hell, I'll just ask. Who wrote the book you are talking about and when was it published?

Too funny! If he hadn't been a great saxophonist, Konitz could have done stand-up.

At least Vidal outlasted Buckley. That must have been a matter of no inconsiderable schadenfreude for him, as long as it lasted.

I like Hersch quite a bit, and I think he's getting even better as the years go by. As for his comments on this and that, I think he is no doubt a perfectionist regarding his own work and carries that mindset over to anything he's asked to judge--as a result he can end up sounding schoolteacher-y, nitpicking, or ungenerous when in fact he's just being honest--if undiplomatic. Most people are more diplomatic--they are just as critical but keep it to themselves. Hersch's openness about what he doesn't like and why is no doubt vexing to the people he's talking about, but fascinating and informative for us lay readers.

Thanks for posting these! I was in the audience. This was last Thursday in Paris. Great concert! During the 5/4 number shown in the first clip I turned to my buddy as KR was comping during the Scofield solo and said "Kurt Rosenwinkel in the role of Dave Brubeck." At one point I also characterized it as "Dave Brubeck meets the Allman Brothers." ;-) Another person who was there told me he had taken his wife, who isn't that much of a jazz fan. She said she thought it was good but "why does Scofield have to make jazz faces?"

Yeah. Suck it up, you wimps!

There are two or three people I hold a grudge against. Usually I am the most forgiving of men, but sometimes something happens that just isn't trivial. But I didn't shoot them to death, nor will I. I just stopped frequenting them.

Some favorites from the 1980's: - "Scratch," from 1985, with Dave Holland and Daniel Humair. - "What If?" from 1986, with Wallace Roney, John Stubblefield, Cecil McBee and Victor Lewis. - "Live at Fat Tuesday's," from 1988. Same line-up as above but with Eddie Henderson replacing Roney.

I had no interest in electronic books until I was given an e-reader as a gift. Then I discovered that: - It's handy to carry dozens of book in one light device. - It's practical to be able to read it with one hand while holding on to the pole in the metro when you don't have a seat. - It's VERY comfortable, for these old eyes, to be able to increase the font size. - The lack of back-lighting is also easy on the eyes. - To read electronic books, you don't have to give up real ones. You can do both (although not at the same time, usually). I've been using my e-reader to read public-domain classics, which you can generally get for free, so I haven't spent a penny on it. Contemporary books I purchase in real-book format, so I can share them. Lack of easy shareability is the greatest drawback to e-books, in my view.

O, OC! U, MAIIAWAIB.

Wait a minute. Do you mean there are two individuals, one who goes by Maurice "Kalaparusha" McIntyre (MKM) and the other who goes by "Kalaparusha" Maurice McIntyre (KMM)?

My favorite version is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-A9c6VNeRQ

Pete C and I are among the relatively few remaining regulars at another jazz message board that kind of imploded gradually over the years due, I believe, to bitter, aggressive bickering that crowded out other topics and made the place unattractive to potential new members. That board tried having a moderator at one point, but it didn't last. If it had been moderated, perhaps the constant stream of ad hominem attacks and childish, nasty sarcasm would have been stopped, and things might have turned out differently. Regardless of the merits of actively reorganizing threads to avoid duplicates, regarding which opinions may legitimately differ, I think the prevention of flame wars is by far the most important task of a message board moderator. So moderation at Organissimo might prove essential. Already I have the feeling that there is a lot more venom than there used to be. With moderation, ill-tempered threads (such as this one) nonetheless remain civil, because posts that descend into vulgarity and nastiness would be removed. Big Wheel, I think your criticisms in post #57 make sense. On the other hand, keep in mind that Larry is a volunteer moderator and not necessarily versed in the best practices of website interaction design, nor does he necessarily have the time or energy to be as scrupulously meticulous as a paid professional would have to be. We all need to cut each other some slack here, IMHO.

In that case I prefer Bartz, Barron, Williams and Riley to Sphere. IMO, Bartz is the far more compelling sax player of the two. Isn't!

I beg to differ. Regardless of how they billed themselves, and no matter how great each of them was, with Bartz, they were just Bartz, Barron, Williams and Riley. With Rouse, they were Sphere.

You mean you didn't admire my restraint??

Yes, yes. Browsers are just amazing that way! ;-)