Tom Storer

Pete, was that the Rahsaan Roland Kirk benefit gala that also had Sarah Vaughan & Dizzy, Count Basie, Marsh/Konitz, etc. etc.?

This is fantastic. I attended three out of four of those concerts! Didn't see Elvin Jones. After the Braxton concert a friend of mine and I snuck backstage (we were 18) and got talking with Dave Holland. I mentioned some "Early Circle" that had been released from about five years previous and Holland said, "Oh, that's old. You should listen to what's happening NOW." Then someone called him and he said, "Could you guys watch my bass?" and disappeared for a few minutes, leaving us holding his bass. I was awestruck. Seeing Nick Brignola on the street after the Ted Curson concert I went up and complimented him and asked how he spelled his name. He said, "Thanks. B-R-I-G-N-O-L-A," turned unceremoniously and walked off. (I also talked with him in later years and found him to be very warm and forthcoming.)

I would guess he meant "pink" to mean merely politely left-leaning, as Jim suggested, in other words not by real, militant conviction. If they had been "red," maybe Gennari would have had more respect for their positions.

According to copies of the indictments available on the Web, none of the people arrested have, so far, been charged with anything more than distributing illegal and, need it be said, morally reprehensible porn videos. Bill has not been charged with personally harming any child, only with helping distribute the results via this bulletin board. Which is bad enough, of course, if the charges are accurate.

The crimes as described in the press and indictments are indeed shocking. But these people are in the hands (or the sights) of the legal system now. It's up to the courts to determine guilt or innocence. Was Bill really involved and if so to what extent? It's possible that we'll never know, if media attention trails off.

I saw a New York Times cooking video on how to make perfect fried chicken, so I gave it a try for lunch. It worked! Basically you marinate chicken parts overnight in buttermilk plus whatever flavoring you like (I used red onion, garlic, chili powder and paprika), then take it out of the fridge long enough in advance for it to reach room temperature; dredge it in highly seasoned flour, then pan-fry it: five minutes covered, uncover and cook the other side six minutes, flip again and cook for five more minutes. Best fried chicken I've ever eaten, if I do say so myself. A couple of nights ago I tried another NYT video suggestion, spicy shrimp salad with mint: delicious. I'm now a big fan of New York Times cooking videos.

I was having trouble with downloads but it turned out I was using an older version of their downloader. I got the most recent version and now it's working fine. I don't know what problem you have with the search engine... I find it very useful. You can search by artist, label, album title, song title... The results include both exact matches and fuzzy matches. It's a perfectly good search engine IMHO.

That they should! I'm content to savor the memory. For three or four years, that theater, in a town adjacent to Paris, had an annual concert series with absolutely killer programming. I saw a whole bunch of stuff there, including the Mingus Big Band, led by Jimmy Knepper and featuring a saxophone section of John Handy, David Murray, Clifford Jordan and Nick Brignola. Also a Monk tentet thing with the members of Sphere, Steve Lacy, and others. Then there was a change of town government and the theater didn't get the same grant money anymore. The concerts lasted a couple more years with comparatively uninteresting programming, then disappeared. Sic transit gloria mundi.

And what Shawn and Sinton are saying is that saying "I play jazz" means "I am repulsive, weird, and you're probably going to want to go home early"... to 98% of the music-buying public. In other words, even if you think that people would agree you play jazz, you should avoid mentioning it and hope they don't notice.

I stumbled across a very cool French-Canadian drummer/composer on the improv/musique contemporaine side of things: Isaiah Ceccarelli (no relation to the swinging French drummer André Ceccarelli). I got both of his CDs available on eMusic and recommend them both: Bréviaires d'Epuisement has vocalists and clarinettists and Ceccarelli's percussion; the vocal pieces are sometimes reminiscent of early church vocal music, and the overall atmosphere is one of calm reflection despite the (comparatively) unorthodox sounds and textures that also appear. Here's a pretty good review of it: http://www.squidsear.com/cgi-bin/news/newsView.cgi?newsID=1296 His other CD on eMusic is called Lieux-Dits, featuring two reeds, guitar, bass and drums. There's a bit more "jazzy" feel to parts of this but many other things as well. Eclectic, fun, serious. Lieux-Dits is from 2006, Bréviaire d'Epuisement is from this year. Both on the Ambiances Magnétiques label. Poking around on Google, I see there is a strong avant-jazz scene in Montreal. Further investigation is in order.

Sorry, butchered it somehow in the original message. Now corrected there.

I know the debate about whether to call jazz "jazz" or not has been done to death. Nevertheless, saxophonist Josh Sinton has an admirably frank blog post about it. http://joshsinton.com/2011/06/12/the-j-word-or-bye-bye-jazz-w/ http://joshsinton.com/2011/06/19/the-j-word-redux/ His basic point of view is that the label "jazz" effectively places musicians in a scorned ghetto roped off for uncool, pointy-headed intellectuals, regardless of the content of the music so labeled. But he also says other things which he then glosses over somewhat, such as "jazz culture is not what could be termed a nurturing culture" for its practitioners. And this: "I don’t feel wanted, needed or necessary to jazz, its traditions or its current culture. I’ve met some lovely people and played with some astounding musicians, but none of that stems from being called a 'jazz' musician. That’s just getting lucky." Sinton plays in the diverse, hard-to-sublabel area of "jazz" that rarely if ever involves straight-ahead swing, jazz standards, and rhythm changes: not in the Marsalis wing. I wonder if his exasperation and disappointment are directly related to the Marsalisite/non-Marsalisite division in the jazz world, or if that division is an effect of the same causes rather than the cause itself. I'd like to hear the testimony of working musicians, if possible. Is Sinton just a bitter crank or have things passed a point of no return for many musicians we would call "jazz musicians" by default but who find themselves ill served by the name? (Note: cross-posted on another forum)

Whisky isn't like wine--it doesn't mature in the bottle, getting better (or worse) over time. What matters is how long it was aged before it was bottled. A 12-year-old whisky remains a 12-year-old whisky no matter how long you keep it around before opening it. Admittedly, 100 years in the ice is outside the usual parameters and who knows what the effect might be... but I don't think it can be assumed that the whisky would taste any better than if it had been opened and drunk a century ago.

Damn. I miss all the fun.

Careful, if you get that one rolling we'll all start in relating our quirks, and this would soon be the world's longest thread!

I like Scofield's trio records with Steve Swallow and Adam Nussbaum, or, in later years and currently, Swallow and Bill Stewart. I also like the quartet records with Joe Lovano.

Thanks for that link, Big Wheel. Puts things in perspective:

I guess we all have our quirks.

I heard the latest and it didn't thrill me, I must say. I love Sco live, but lots of his albums strike me as less than full-strength... all concept, little warmth. "A Moment's Peace" isn't bad--with a band like that it's clearly at quite a high level--but it didn't sound inspired. Your mileage may vary. But I'd see them live if they came through town.

It was a "style point" decision made long ago & far away. Maybe you wanted us to feel warmer & fuzzier by replying to JSngry rather than jsngry, or you were signifying that you're somehow more "personal" or something... maybe you were valiantly resisting the cold impersonal digital world.

I recently ordered Craig Taborn's solo CD on ECM, Avenging Angel... and a new one by Aaron Goldberg with Guillermo Klein that looks promising...

Yeah, in some cases it can make the name easier to read, things like FredDietz@blah.com rather than freddietz@blah.com. That said, there are lots of people who don't understand that email addresses are not case-sensitive.

Like GA Russell indicated earlier, it's up to the prosecution to convince the jurors not that the defense theory is ridiculous, but that the prosecution theory is airtight. It's not enough that the defendant is very likely to have been somehow involved in either the death or some weird coverup. If you charge someone with capital murder you have to present convincing evidence that that person actually did the murder. The defendant might be a bad person, a liar, an unnatural mother who partied instead of mourning. That may be a crime in many people's eyes, but it's not the same crime as murder. Again, juries don't pick between "proven innocent" and "proven guilty," they pick between "proven guilty" and "not proven guilty."

Last Friday I saw Will Vinson at the Sunset in Paris. He's a British alto saxophonist from New York, and he was playing with Laurent Coq (excellent French pianist subbing for guitarist Lage Lund), Sean Fasciani on bass, and Jochen Rueckert on drums. I've seen Vinson before in Ari Hoenig's quartet. I've always liked him but I didn't realize quite how good he's become. He played his own compositions plus a standard or two and a couple of Monk tunes. He has a very charismatic personal tone, and swings hard while playing imaginative lines over rich and complex tunes. He sounded very spontaneous and well prepared, always the right combination, and managed to be always lyrical but with depths at time sardonic and edgy. I had a great time and will be picking up his CDs--I think he has two out now. He has personality... not your average modern jazz A-student with polished skills and no identity. Keep an eye out for him.

Nash has long been part of the straight-ahead elite, in my view. I've seen him numerous times over the years, starting from when he was with Betty Carter at the start of his career; also with Ron Carter and of course Tommy Flanagan's trio. Always a delight, always swinging.