Chalupa

UPDATE Report: Workers dig furiously to rid new Yanks stadium of Red Sox jersey http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3344825

Just tell me when to send the money. I've got a tax refund burning a hole in my pocket.

I think Sackville returned the tapes to Roscoe 'cause they could not remove the tape print through for cd release. Probably never see a "silvering" of this record. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Does that mean the tapes are not usable? What are the prospects of making a master from a mint vinyl copy, can that be done with satisfactory results? Just curious, Kevin the "print" is obvious on the vinyl, just a bit obscured by groove noise. I was just listening to this today. That "print" sounds like a weird echo. Somewhat annoying. I think it could be fixed by someone that has experience w/ Pro Tools or some other sound editing software. Although it would be a major pain in the ass to clean it up.

Wife and kid are out of the house today. So I did my taxes and then listened to Andrew Hill - Invitation (SteepleChase) and followed it up with Roscoe Mitchell - Solo Saxophone Concerts (Sackville). Ahh....

Probably trying to score those elusive Sun Ra albums on Horo.

Any Philly peeps going tonight?

OK the WWF comparison was an hyperbole that I dashed off in the heat of moment after reading that article. MLB has had its integrity damaged by questions about PED abuse. Even without the drug allegations the WWF would still have an integrity problem. However, like the WWF, MLB has done little to address the PED problem because like the WWF they care more about making money than the sport's integrity. What has been agreed to by the the player's union and Selig amounts to little more than band-aid a solution. Kissing the boo-boo won't make it go away. But F it. It's just a game and I guess I shouldn't get so worked up over it. I mean if I were really upset about the whole PED thing I wouldn't even be following the game, or any professional sport for that matter, in the first place.

It's official MLB = WWF http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3341940 Friday, April 11, 2008 MLB, players union agree to more frequent drug testing Associated Press NEW YORK -- Baseball players and owners agreed Friday to more frequent drug testing and increased -- but not total -- authority for the program's outside administrator. All players implicated in December's Mitchell report on peformance-enhancing drugs were given amnesty as part of the agreement, which toughens baseball's drug rules for the third time since the program began in 2002. Thus, the deal eliminated 15-day suspensions assessed against Jose Guillen and Jay Gibbons. The independent administrator, a position created in November 2005, will be given an initial three-year term and can be removed only if an arbitrator finds cause. Until now, he could be fired at any time by either side. But baseball did not heed advice from the World Anti-Doping Agency and turn drug testing over to an outside agency. In addition, the decision over whether a player can be subjected to reasonable-cause testing will remain with management and the union, with any disagreement decided by the sport's regular arbitrator. Also, a joint management-union body called the Treatment Board will supervise the part of the program relating to drugs of abuse, such as cocaine. Reps. Henry Waxman and Tom Davis, leaders of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that has held hearings on drug use, said in a joint statement they were "pleased that Major League Baseball has taken steps to strengthen its drug-testing policy." Yet the changes were not enough for Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of committee that determines the World Anti-Doping Agency's banned-substances list. "It's another incremental step. It's better than it was but not where it needs to be," said Wadler, who faulted baseball for not adding blood testing for human growth hormone and for not turning testing over to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. "This still falls significantly short of the mark, no matter what internal bureaucracy they've patched together," Wadler said. As part of the agreement, players will join Major League Baseball's efforts to educate youth about performance-enhancing drugs, and their union will contribute $200,000 to an anti-drug organization. In exchange for those two provisions, baseball commissioner Bud Selig agreed not to discipline players implicated by Mitchell during his 1½-year investigation. "We are gratified that commissioner Selig chose to accept Sen. Mitchell's recommendation that no further punishment of players is warranted," union head Donald Fehr said. "In many instances the naming of players was punishment enough; in others it may have been unfair." Guillen and Gibbons were suspended in December following media reports linking them to performance-enhancing drugs. Those penalties were put on hold just before opening day as negotiators neared an agreement. "It is time for the game to move forward," Selig said. "There is little to be gained at this point in debating dated misconduct and enduring numerous disciplinary proceedings." The sides agreed that in future investigations, allegations against players won't be made public unless discipline is imposed, and that a player will be given the allegations and evidence against him before any investigatory interview. While the sides agreed that records of negative tests be kept for two years, they did not agree to keep the actual urine samples. Players and owners reached their first joint drug agreement in August 2002, then under pressure amended it in January 2005 and instituted a 10-day penalty for first offenses. After Congress pushed for more changes, they amended it a second time in November 2005, changing the first offense to a 50-game suspension, banning amphetamines and creating the independent program administrator, who shared power with a management-union Health Policy Advisory Committee. In his recommendations, Mitchell said the program should be administered "by a truly independent authority" in the form of an expert who couldn't be removed except for good cause, an independent nonprofit corporation or another structure created by the sides. As a result, the HPAC is being disbanded, and its duties largely turned over to the administrator, Dr. Bryan Smith. In the deal, the sides agreed: • annual tests will rise by 600 to 3,600, an average of three per player. • as many as 375 offseason tests can be conducted over the next three years, up from the current limit of 60 per offseason. • testing will include the top 200 prospects for each year's annual draft. • the IPA will issue an annual report detailing what substances resulted in positive tests, the number of tests given and therapeutic use exemptions by category of ailment. • additional substances were added to the banned list, among them: insulin-like growth factor, gonadotropins, aromatase inhibitors, selective estrogen receptor modulators, and clomid and other antiestrogens. • an automatic stay for an initial suspension will be expanded to players disciplined for conduct unrelated to a positive test. The sides also disclosed a previously unannounced agreement struck during the 2006 labor talks in which they specified the commissioner has authority to discipline players under a just cause standard for violations of the drug agreement that don't carry a specified penalty. "Going into this negotiation, the commissioner was 100 percent correct that we had the best program in professional sports," said Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice president for labor relations. "These changes just solidify that kind of premier leadership position in my view." The new joint drug agreement, which must be ratified by both sides, runs until Dec. 11, 2011, when baseball's labor contract expires. The sides will meet annually with the IPA, the collection company and the laboratory to consider changes. "Given the series of modifications which have previously been made, as well as the flexibility provided for in the current JDA, we do not expect to be renegotiating the JDA again prior to the next scheduled round of collective bargaining," Fehr said. Selig's next step will be to determine whether management employees should be disciplined for conduct mentioned in the Mitchell report. He already has met with officials of the San Francisco Giants, who were mentioned prominently. Manfred said no decisions on management discipline have been made. Selig said any fines imposed on management will be donated to the Partnership of a Drug Free America and the Taylor Hooton Foundation.

Rocker Steve Miller hated the Grateful Dead By Dean Goodman Thu Apr 10, 10:32 PM ET LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rocker Steve Miller may have honed his craft in San Francisco during the late 1960s, but don't lump him in with local bands from that time, especially the Grateful Dead. ADVERTISEMENT "I couldn't stand that band," Miller said on Thursday, during a panel at a music industry symposium, recalling the Dead's interminable jams and lengthy tuning breaks between songs. In fact, Miller said it was much more interesting to listen to frontman Jerry Garcia's stage banter than to listen to the band play its psychedelic improvisations. The San Francisco music scene was more of a "social phenomenon," Miller said, and his eponymous band was more musical and more professional than the pack. Miller was speaking at the "I Create Music" expo hosted by performing-rights group ASCAP. The night before, he received a lifetime achievement honor from ASCAP, and performed a half-dozen tunes, including such hits as "The Joker," "Rock 'n Me," and "Take the Money and Run." During the panel discussion, he stressed the importance of having complete artistic control, noting that he held out for such rights when 14 labels competed to sign him after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. He eventually went with Capitol, which still represents him. He recalled that he allowed the United States Postal Service to license his tune "Fly Like an Eagle" in the 1990s under an $11 million deal that gave him final approval of every aspect. But the first few television ads aired before he received the submissions in the mail, and were "awful." Increasingly frustrated, he called the USPS and its ad agency, and told them, "You have to stop sending this stuff by Priority Mail ... Use FedEx." "It was really bizarre working with them," he said. Reuters/Nielsen -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If Steve hated them so much then why did he accept the opening slot on their 1992 Summer tour?

Cover Story — The Beats Go On Philly has long played host to a vibrant jazz community. It’s about time we acknowledged it again. “No group in this city has been as consistently undernourished and underappreciated as the jazz community.” With those words, Philadelphia Weekly introduced its “first annual” jazz issue, dated Dec. 13, 1995. The centerpiece was Elena Bouvier’s huge photo spread “A Great Day in Philadelphia,” modeled on Art Kane’s classic 1958 shoot for Esquire that inspired the documentary A Great Day in Harlem. It seemed this multigenerational jazz family, assembled for a group portrait outside the John Coltrane House on North 33rd Street, was finally getting its due. But the idea lost momentum, and PW’s first annual jazz issue was also the last. It’s well past time, without overpromising, to pick up where we left off. Philadelphia jazz has continued to develop in the interim; it’s the underappreciation that hasn’t changed. Orrin Evans, a young in-demand pianist, felt the pang of recognition watching a Rocky marathon on TV. “Rocky is a great story about what Philadelphia does to its heroes,” he says. “Kids were chasing Rocky down the street. He was riding high. Then he was just Rocky on the corner. You lose one fight, you’re back to nothing. Much like our athletes, we’re the worst at supporting our artists. I go to New York and people talk about [organists] Shirley Scott and Trudy Pitts and [drummer] Edgar Bateman and I’ve watched them, right here, not get the same respect they do when I’m on the other side of the turnpike.” Pride, defiance and apologetics are close to the surface when one talks about jazz in Philadelphia, an underdog music in an underdog town. With little prompting, tireless advocates like saxophonist Byard Lancaster (“Pennsylvania’s first jazz lobbyist”) and drummer Bill Carney (“Mr. C,” Trudy Pitts’ husband) will praise Philly jazz to the heavens and try to take New York and New Orleans down a peg. If their rhetoric smacks of overcompensation, it’s easy to understand why. Philly is where Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Benny Golson, Lee Morgan, frustrated drummer Bill Cosby and so many others got their start, where big clubs drew big talent, and jazz rang out from countless neighborhood bars. The older and even not-so-older generations know a time when Philly’s jazz-mecca status wasn’t in dispute. Ask people, and they’ll recall a half-dozen jazz spots from across the years, without duplicating each other’s lists. The Showboat, Pep’s, the Downbeat Club, the Woodbine, Jewel’s, Gert’s, the 421 Club, Aqua Lounge, Just Jazz, Morgan’s, the Cadillac Club, the Blue Note, the Blue Moon. The names don’t stop multiplying. “I’ve played in every nook and cranny in Philadelphia, just about,” says tenor saxophonist Bootsie Barnes, recounting jam sessions with Sonny Stitt and Dexter Gordon, and rattling off more bars: Chester’s Fun Spot, Mr. Silk’s Third Base, the Sahara. “Back then,” he adds, “a jazz club became a jazz club as long you had jazz played in it.” What’s more, black working-class audiences were there to listen. The point can’t be overemphasized: Philly’s jazz heritage is its black heritage, even if the players and listeners span all backgrounds. Where We Are The health of jazz is inseparable from wider turbulence in the music business, real estate markets and other socioeconomic spheres. Flip open that “first annual” jazz issue from 1995 and you’ll see ads for Zanzibar Blue and Tower Records, as well as a story on Third Street Jazz and Rock, the beloved Old City record store. Gone, gone and gone. Today’s musicians face a different world, with dwindling CD sales, apathetic media and fewer accessible performance venues. Jazz is also evolving to the point where it is “hundreds of microclimates,” as New York Times critic Ben Ratliff has written, and we speak of “the jazz community” in spite of its segmentation. In Philly today there are strong straightahead (“inside”) and avant-garde (“out”) currents, but their points of contact are few. They’re all but different musics, bound together by their marginality. It’s too simple, though, to view jazz in Philadelphia as a story of loss and decay. Despite the divisions and the dramatic shrinkage of the club scene, the city has entered a comparatively healthy phase in terms of live jazz and improvised music. Maybe it’s part of a broader upswing in a place with its share of “spiritual maladies,” to borrow bassist Mike Boone’s phrase. Playing host to Live 8 in 2005 certainly helped. Barack Obama’s landmark Philadelphia speech on race, the make-or-break Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Stephen Colbert’s upcoming Annenberg Center broadcasts from April 14 to 17, the Nutter mayoralty: These things have given Philadelphia, which pianist and bandleader Sun Ra once called “death’s headquarters,” a sense of relevance and renewal. Conditions are ripe for Philadelphia jazz to ride the coattails. There are great bands to be heard: Bootsie Barnes’ co-led group with trumpeter John Swana; guitarist Matt Davis and his peculiar large ensemble Aerial Photograph; alto sax veteran Bobby Zankel and his progressive big band the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound; Shot x Shot, an adventuresome quartet featuring young fellow Warriors Dan Scofield and Bryan Rogers; and the Odean Pope Saxophone Choir, which will headline at the Blue Note in New York from July 8 to 13. Midcareer soldiers like saxophonist Elliott Levin, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma and drummer Calvin Weston also continue to blast away. And the up-and-comers are impressive. Drummer Justin Faulkner, still in his teens, has done tour dates with Branford Marsalis. Pianist George Burton of Pope’s choir also plays a fine viola in Aerial Photograph. Bassist Evan Lipson is a serious contender in avant-jazz and other experimental settings. Trombonist Daniel Blacksberg, a Warriors member, leads his own exploratory trio and keeps busy in klezmer circles. There are more, of course. Where do they all play? For gifted local artists, mainstream and decidedly otherwise, opportunities are limited. Zanzibar’s demise last year left only two full-time jazz clubs: Chris’ Jazz Cafe in Center City and Ortlieb’s in Northern Liberties. Chris’ owners are considering opening a second, larger space under a different name. Meanwhile, they’re booking bigger and bigger artists (Joe Lovano, the Bad Plus) while remaining a clubhouse for esteemed locals like guitarist Jimmy Bruno, hopefuls like tenor saxophonist Victor North and students from Temple and UArts. Ortlieb’s, still a citadel of old-school hard-bop, is finding its legs under new management as of March of last year, and will soon receive a loaner Steinway from Temple’s jazz department—so we’ll be able to hear Sid Simmons, the brilliant house pianist, on a proper instrument. One can also hope that the historic Clef Club, described by Scoop USA as “underutilized and erratically administered” since its 1995 move to Broad and Fitzwater, will revive under new director Shuna Miah. On April 27 they’ll hold a fundraiser for Jazz Bridge, a musicians’ relief organization. Outside the clubs, presenters are doing valiant work but catering largely to visiting musicians. Mark Christman’s Ars Nova Workshop, the most provocative, books avant-gardists both obscure and well-known, making ample use of International House, the Art Alliance, the Rotunda and other venues. At the other end of the size spectrum, the Kimmel Center has played a vital role since 2001 in maintaining jazz on the Avenue of the Arts. The Kimmel’s Commonwealth Plaza lobby space features student groups and worthy local artists, people who’d struggle to fill the two larger halls. Only at the Kimmel, the Keswick Theatre or the Mann Center will you see such legends as Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin and Chick Corea—although Ars Nova has brought out-music icons Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Cecil Taylor, Kidd Jordan and John Zorn to Philadelphia, in some cases for the first time in decades (in Smith’s case the first time ever). The Art Museum’s Friday Art After 5 series, set in picturesque Great Stair Hall, has attracted the cream of national talent, from Grammy winner Maria Schneider to the thorny and challenging altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa, though on June 13 they’ll feature longtime Philly resident Dave Burrell, the great pianist/composer. Bootsie Barnes The Painted Bride, a black-box theater space, perseveres with a timely focus on jazz globalism (Elio Villafranca, Adam Rudolph), but far fewer jazz offerings than in its ’80s and ’90s heyday. The jazz component at World Cafe Live is far from enormous but almost always relevant, part of a wide stylistic picture. Others include the Annenberg Center, which books high-profile acts (Dianne Reeves, Chris Potter) and special projects (Orchestra Underground); the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, which has brought the likes of Uri Caine and Kenny Garrett to the Gershman Y; and Rutgers-Camden’s Gordon Theater, which has attracted stars on the order of Bill Frisell and McCoy Tyner. It’s key for leading national and international figures, old and young, to make stops in Philadelphia—the more highly publicized and well-attended the better. But locally based musicians are often left to their own devices, creating gigs where they can. Until recently, Orrin Evans took time despite a hectic touring schedule to lead a weekly jam at Reuben’s Marc in Mt. Airy. Tenor sax virtuoso Ben Schachter is hidden away upstairs at Dr. Watson’s Pub on Wednesdays. The young and inventive Joanna Pascale sings standards three nights a week at Solefood in the Loews Hotel. Thank goodness the divey Tritone makes room in its schedule for Zankel’s Warriors, Aerial Photograph and other jazz groups. Across from Tritone at Bob and Barbara’s, or at Natalie’s in West Philly and LaRose in Germantown, the old neighborhood lounge tradition hangs on. Both the West Oak Lane Jazz & Arts Festival and the Trane Stop Resource Institute’s John Coltrane Festival showcase locals admirably, but only for a few summer days. “There’s a strong scene that needs to coalesce in a consistent venue,” says Dan Scofield, one of a number of local improvisers feeling the pinch. He and several friends plan to inaugurate Science Fiction: New Music Sundays at Gojjo, an Ethiopian restaurant at 45th and Baltimore. The focus will be original work, rooted in jazz but with an experimental bent. Dustin Hurt’s Bowerbird series, founded in late 2005, has served this constituency well so far, situating acoustic jazz within a radical mix of electronics, far-out chamber works and other fringe music. Not unlike Ars Nova, Bowerbird will continue to stir the pot and make use of Philadelphia’s unique environments, hosting gigs in galleries, schools, churches, lofts, historic landmarks and so forth. Several of these pursuits have received funding from the Philadelphia Music Project (PMP), an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts. (Full disclosure: I’ve done commissioned writing for PMP.) Like Chamber Music America and other entities, PMP is keen to blur boundaries between music disciplines and foster new interactions. The results in Philly are palpable. “The chemistry here right now is really exciting,” says Gene Coleman, a composer, bass clarinetist and music curator for the Slought Foundation, a PMP grant recipient. “Something is happening that wasn’t happening five years ago.” It may never be New York, where you’d have to clone yourself to take in all the “microclimates” available in a given week. But a Philly night with three simultaneous can’t-miss shows doesn’t seem rare at this point. J. Michael Harrison, host of The Bridge on WRTI-FM, recalls a time “when I felt I had to go to New York to check out the music, and I don’t feel that way anymore. I talk to people down in Atlanta and other places, and they’re not getting it like we do.” Where We’ve Been As critic Francis Davis explained in these pages in 1995, “a great black migration from the Carolinas” during and after World War II brought John Coltrane and many others into Philadelphia, where they heard their idols in the flesh and were inspired to chart their own course. In Lewis Porter’s John Coltrane: His Life and Music, we learn that Trane heard Charlie Parker for the first time on June 5, 1945, at the Academy of Music. Odean Pope took up tenor after hearing Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb with Lionel Hampton at the Earle Theatre at 11th and Market. In the ’50s when Coltrane mentored Pope, they’d gather with pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali (born William Langford) for deep practice sessions. “Hasaan was one of the great forerunners of what we do today,” Pope argues. “I used to say when you heard musicians from Philly, out of five notes they played, three might be related to Hasaan.” (Amazingly, the pianist appeared on only one release, the Max Roach Trio featuring the Legendary Hasaan.) Following Coltrane’s death in 1967, Philadelphia proved hospitable to avant-garde jazz as it gathered steam. The Sun Ra Arkestra moved into its communal house on Morton Street in September 1968. Though Sun Ra died in 1993, members of his group still reside there, and plans are afoot for a 40th anniversary commemoration later this year. Starting in the early ’70s, Geno’s Empty Foxhole, in the basement of St. Mary’s Church at 39th and Locust, was where the Arkestra, Charles Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and others played memorable shows. By the middle of the decade, according to Elliott Levin, the Long March Coffee House provided an outlet for jazz freaks on Rittenhouse Square, of all places. “It would be open until 4 or 5 in the morning,” Levin recalls. “There was kind of a socialist agenda. It was in the basement of this high-rise building, and they were paying the rent on welfare checks.” Elsewhere, J. Michael Harrison remembers “a lot of inner-city outdoor performances with local cats getting together. Turns out they were people like Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Calvin Weston, Papo Vazquez. With the civil rights movement, black power, Sly Stone and James Brown, all that was fusing with their jazz studies. So you’d have ‘Super Sundays’ in the neighborhood, at recreation centers and parks, and Friday night dances and stuff like that.” Players at the time also benefited from Model Cities, a federal program tied to the war on poverty. Based near Broad and Girard, the program enlisted music teachers on the order of Pope, bassist Tyrone Brown and the late pianist Eddie Green and drummer Sherman Ferguson—the members of Catalyst, one of Philly’s most innovative (and unrecognized) early fusion groups. Bobby Zankel took full advantage of the bargain-rate study opportunities at Model Cities. “I just recorded albums with Odean and Tyrone,” he notes, “so these associations are still going on.” Zankel, an associate of avant-gardist Cecil Taylor, came to Philly from New York in 1975 and found himself welcome in the organ joints on 52nd Street between Spruce and Market. “It was an opportunity to get seasoned playing in front of people who were real jazz fans,” he recalls. “Also, three or four nights a week there were Latin jobs. I remember places around Fifth and Erie, Fifth and Allegheny. A lot of older people would come to these things and dance like crazy.” Dave Burrell left New York for Philly later, in 1985, but he’d already made regular trips with bassist Wilbur Ware and trombonist Grachan Moncur III to play the Aqua Lounge and other 52nd Street spots. “We couldn’t wait to get down here,” Burrell remembers. “Philly offered a sense of family, and we started making permanent friends. Fifty-Second Street was really lit up then.” The same-numbered street in New York was synonymous with the bebop revolution, an irony lost on no one. Uri Caine, the renowned pianist and Philly native, came up in the same period, playing lots of Fender Rhodes and backing former Miles Davis sidemen Hank Mobley and Philly Joe Jones. “It was a rich experience,” Caine recalls, “with a lot of characters and support for younger musicians. You don’t realize what it is until it’s over.” The neighborhood bar scene began falling off, and according to Francis Davis, “by the late ’70s or early ’80s there wasn’t really a full-time, big-name jazz club. There were no equivalents of the Village Vanguard and Sweet Basil’s in New York.” But enough was going on for Davis to write a jazz column for the Inquirer between 1984 and 1989. There was the Kool Jazz Festival, renamed the Mellon Jazz Festival, a well-heeled George Wein production that undertook joint efforts with the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, the Clef Club and other entities (including Ortlieb’s and Chris’ Jazz Cafe in later years). Thanks to such promoters as Rick Luftglass, Dave Gold and Fred Miles, there were concerts at Haverford and Bryn Mawr and the Chestnut Cabaret, as well as Grendel’s Lair, which facilitated Pat Martino’s comeback after a devastating brain injury. Davis also recalls milestone events at the American Music Theater Festival (now the Prince Music Theater), including operas by Anthony Davis (X) and Duke Ellington (the previously unperformed Queenie Pie). The Painted Bride established itself during the mid-’80s as a clearinghouse of avant-garde jazz (Ronald Shannon Jackson, Butch Morris), and remained busy for more than a dozen years, booking such bona fide giants as Jack DeJohnette and Sam Rivers. Deep River Productions, run by the late David Sempliner, had also taken up the avant-garde mantle by the mid-’90s. Until early 1998 there was Sarah Caine and Steve Wood’s Shanghai Trunk Company, which booked avant-garde acts mainly at the ill-fated Five Spot. Picking up the unsustainable Shanghai’s pieces, Craig Baylor and Alan Kayser began Sweetnighter Productions, precursor to the presently thriving Ars Nova Workshop. “The ’90s seemed more like a hodgepodge and a lack of organization,” says Ars Nova’s Mark Christman, who as a Drexel student became curatorially inspired by frequent trips to the Knitting Factory. His goal was to create a new home for “the post-Coltrane free-jazz continuum of the ’60s and ’70s, the loft scene and the downtown New York scene. We saw all these intersecting communities without options in Philadelphia.” In March 2000 Christman kicked off Ars Nova with a Wednesday series at the Plays and Players Theater. He also held many a concert at Tritone, but ultimately found the bar environment ill-suited for the music. Philly’s current straightahead jazz scene developed on a parallel track with the opening of Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus in 1987. The late, great Shirley Scott led the “Haus” band with drummer Mickey Roker and bassist Arthur Harper. Young newcomers, including trumpeter Terell Stafford, now director of jazz studies at Temple, apprenticed under these hardened veterans. Then Zanzibar Blue opened in 1990 at its original 11th Street location, another stronghold of mainstream jazz in the thick of the “young lions” period. Chris’ Jazz Cafe, then a young club as well, was situated to catch some of that buzz. And while the Mellon Jazz Festival cooked in multiple venues during summer, the PECO Energy Jazz Festival provided heat briefly during winter. Today there’s no brand-name jazz festival in downtown Philly. The ’90s also saw Philly or area native sons honored in the prestigious International Thelonious Monk Competition. Saxophonist Tim Warfield placed third in 1991; Orrin Evans finished second among pianists in 1999; bassist Darryl Hall won in 1995. According to Mike Boone, “There was a whole crew of guys—Orrin, Reid Anderson, Matt Parrish, Jaleel Shaw, Duane Eubanks—who were reaching past what they’d already heard. There was new vocabulary going on. I ended up playing with them, and it pulled me along too.” Where We’re Going In every area of music, categories are being dismantled, and jazz is caught up in the process—Herbie Hancock’s Grammy for River: The Joni Letters was just one highly visible sign. In addition to being “America’s classical music,” jazz is also a node of alternative and even pop culture, an art in dialogue with other urban, global and experimental forms. Young jazz players are hearing different sounds, acquiring new skills and moving a wider crop of listeners. Mickey Roker, the “dean” of Ortlieb’s and former sideman to Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and many others, is accepting of the music’s evolution: “When I started, we used to play for dances a lot, so you didn’t mix up the beat so much. Now these guys are mixing up the beat, playing over the beat—it’s a different ballgame. Some of the stuff these guys are doing I could never even think of doing. But everything changes in time. I remember when there was no penicillin.” In terms of outreach to African-American audiences, the most significant Philly development in years was the West Oak Lane Festival on Ogontz Avenue, which will stage its fifth annual event June 20 to 22. It’s an interesting mix: Bootsie Barnes, Khan Jamal, Byard Lancaster & the Blues Messengers, the Sun Ra Arkestra and others will rub elbows with Ashford & Simpson, the O’Jays, War, Mandrill and Pieces of a Dream. This isn’t a watering-down, though there might be a fine line sometimes. Philadelphia jazz has always been about connections among black music genres. Uri Caine remembers how Gamble and Huff session players used to hang in the jazz bars, and he cites his sometime colleague, the late Grover Washington Jr., as a key link in Philly music genealogy. The Philadelphia Experiment, a 2001 Ropeadope album bringing together Caine, star bassist Christian McBride and drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson of the Roots, included covers of tunes by Washington, Catalyst and Sun Ra. King Britt, who remixed The Philadelphia Experiment in 2002, is intermingling DJ culture and live bands in new ways at his recently revived Monday night Back 2 Basics party at Silk City. Similar things went down at the Roots-affiliated Black Lily, at Wetlands and the Five Spot, where Jill Scott, Erykah Badu and Jaguar Wright put in appearances. Jazz careers are starting to reflect pan-stylistic realities. Bassist and Temple alum Derrick Hodge has found himself employed by Terence Blanchard and Common. Orrin Evans has backed Mos Def. At his now-discontinued jam at Reuben’s Marc, Evans would veer from heated improvisation to hits by the Stylistics, Sam Cooke and Smokey Robinson. The goal was not only to draw an existing black clientele to jazz, but to draw white listeners into East Mt. Airy as well. In Evans’ view, creeping resegregation has affected the makeup of not just audiences, but also bands, in Philly and elsewhere. He recalls recent gigs where he was “not just the only black guy on the bandstand, but the only black guy in the room,” which illustrates that there are probably more white jazz players, and fewer black jazz listeners now than at any time in history. “There are a few people who cross the line and play with everybody,” Evans continues, “but if you step back and look, it’s really divided. The reality is that the division will probably always exist.” Yet superb artists of Asian, Latin and other backgrounds make it clear that jazz isn’t just a black/white proposition. Philadelphia’s jazz scene mirrors the flawed conditions that exist everywhere, and yet it’s gathering strength as a bellwether for the Delaware Valley and mid-Atlantic region. Events are happening at Montgomery County Community College, the Jazz at Cliveden series, the new Jazz Club at Longwood Gardens and the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival in Wilmington. The High Two and Dreambox Media labels are documenting local and regional players, and Florida-based Porter Records is reissuing gems from Philly’s avant-garde past. Jason Fifield’s documentary in progress, viewable in segments at Phillyjazz.blip.tv, is poised to introduce Philly’s artists to the world. The time may come, as Mr. C envisions, when aspiring players, instead of “leaving here for New York as soon as they get their act halfway together, can stay in Philly and get their just due.” Photos for the story can be found here: http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/16790/cover-story

Good to see the Phils and Mets picking up exactly where they left off last September. Chase Utley got hit 3 times by a pitch today tying a MLB record.

$122.50 w/ over 4 hours to go..... http://cgi.ebay.com/Spiritual-Jazz-LP-Indi...1QQcmdZViewItem Dang. EDIT: sold for $127.50

Nice package, ahem.

http://www.audiojunkies.com/blog/730/an-in...wall-of%20sound

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,347212,00.html 'The Grid' Could Soon Make the Internet Obsolete Monday, April 07, 2008 The Internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds. At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds. The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call. David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said. The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates. Cern, based near Geneva, started the grid computing project seven years ago when researchers realised the LHC would generate annual data equivalent to 56m CDs - enough to make a stack 40 miles high. This meant that scientists at Cern - where Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web in 1989 - would no longer be able to use his creation for fear of causing a global collapse. This is because the Internet has evolved by linking together a hotchpotch of cables and routing equipment, much of which was originally designed for telephone calls and therefore lacks the capacity for high-speed data transmission. By contrast, the grid has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, meaning there are no outdated components to slow the deluge of data. The 55,000 servers already installed are expected to rise to 200,000 within the next two years. Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the grid project, said: “We need so much processing power, there would even be an issue about getting enough electricity to run the computers if they were all at Cern. The only answer was a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research centres in other countries.” That network, in effect a parallel Internet, is now built, using fibre optic cables that run from Cern to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East, Europe and around the world. One terminates at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory at Harwell in Oxfordshire. From each centre, further connections radiate out to a host of other research institutions using existing high-speed academic networks. It means Britain alone has 8,000 servers on the grid system – so that any student or academic will theoretically be able to hook up to the grid rather than the internet from this autumn. Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet. “It will lead to what’s known as cloud computing, where people keep all their information online and access it from anywhere,” he said. Computers on the grid can also transmit data at lightning speed. This will allow researchers facing heavy processing tasks to call on the assistance of thousands of other computers around the world. The aim is to eliminate the dreaded “frozen screen” experienced by internet users who ask their machine to handle too much information. The real goal of the grid is, however, to work with the LHC in tracking down nature’s most elusive particle, the Higgs boson. Predicted in theory but never yet found, the Higgs is supposed to be what gives matter mass. The LHC has been designed to hunt out this particle - but even at optimum performance it will generate only a few thousand of the particles a year. Analysing the mountain of data will be such a large task that it will keep even the grid’s huge capacity busy for years to come. Although the grid itself is unlikely to be directly available to domestic internet users, many telecoms providers and businesses are already introducing its pioneering technologies. One of the most potent is so-called dynamic switching, which creates a dedicated channel for internet users trying to download large volumes of data such as films. In theory this would give a standard desktop computer the ability to download a movie in five seconds rather than the current three hours or so. Additionally, the grid is being made available to dozens of other academic researchers including astronomers and molecular biologists. It has already been used to help design new drugs against malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills 1m people worldwide each year. Researchers used the grid to analyse 140m compounds - a task that would have taken a standard internet-linked PC 420 years. “Projects like the grid will bring huge changes in business and society as well as science,” Doyle said. “Holographic video conferencing is not that far away. Online gaming could evolve to include many thousands of people, and social networking could become the main way we communicate. “The history of the internet shows you cannot predict its real impacts but we know they will be huge.”

So has anyone found a cheaper price than $16.99* from Da Bastids??? Edit: * = plus $3.90 for shipping

I just received in the mail this morning both of Ran Blake's albums he recorded for Horo - STILL SEALED - for $33. The seller still has 3 sealed copies of Crystal Trip in stock.

His gun or his toupee?

A man was telling his neighbor in Sun City Center retirement home, 'I just bought a new hearing aid. It cost me four thousand dollars, but it's state of the art. It's perfect.' 'Really,' answered the neighbor. 'What kind is it?' 'Twelve thirty.'

Anthony Davis - Lady of the Mirrors (India Navigation)

Dead on Vinyl http://www.lonestardeadradio.com/vinyl.htm

http://cgi.ebay.com/MINT-LP-The-Missing-Li...1QQcmdZViewItem Edit: OK $89 isn't "madness" but it is about 3 or 4 times more than it usually fetches.

Two more shows to be aware of.... both happening at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of their "Art After 5" series.... Friday, May 23 Trio 3 - Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman, and Andrew Cyrille. Friday, June 13 Dave Burrell

last night - Debashish Bhattacharya