Lazaro Vega

Simon wrote: "I think that Smooth Jazz plays on this in a cynical way, by drawing on the cultural capital of Jazz to assert, in its name, that this music itself is something of value. If people just said it was instrumental pop - i.e. something without necessary pretentions to such value - I wouldn't have a problem." Having spoken to both Bob James and Ramsey Lewis in the last couple of years the second sentance above needs to begin with "if radio people," because "smooth jazz" is invention of commercial radio, not musicians. Aesthetically some of the "problems" with "smooth jazz" are similar to faults one might find with straight ahead or avant garde "repertory" instincts. Ramsey Lewis was frustrated that younger musicians will take a little piece of his career and try to build their commercial universe around it without understanding what led Ramsey to make the choices he made that led to the music he recorded. That the evolutionary creative process both he and James feel they've lived is misunderstood by many younger musicians looking to cash in on the "smooth jazz" formula. Essentially "smooth jazz" is three or four generations removed from electric Miles where only the commercial impulse is left to inspire, not the music. Does that make sense? Music education is the key to turning people on again. And more bands. We need more bands. In pop, in jazz, in wherever. Regular working bands.

Up for this Wednesday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V7gqcqHRs4...ted&search=

Congratulations on this work. Just saw the notice tonight.

"Much antitrust regulation, they argued, did not benefit the economy but just protected small businesses..." Just?

From The New Yorker Satellite Sisters by James Surowiecki March 19, 2007 When the satellite-radio companies XM and Sirius announced, last month, that they were planning to merge, it looked like a futile attempt to flout antitrust regulations. The merger would benefit Sirius and XM—which, despite signing high-profile figures like Howard Stern and Bob Dylan, have cumulatively lost close to seven billion dollars—but it would confront radio listeners with a satellite-radio monopoly. Not surprisingly, then, when Sirius’s C.E.O., Mel Karmazin, appeared before Congress to defend his plans, he was grilled by legislators convinced that regulators would block the merger. The deal, though, is far from dead. Thanks to an intellectual revolution that, over the past three decades, has transformed the way the government assesses mergers and monopolies, we may yet end up with only one satellite-radio provider in America. And, surprisingly, we may be all the better for it. Antitrust law in the U.S. rests on two documents—the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act and the 1914 Clayton Act. Their underlying principles are clear (competition and lower prices are good, collusion and price-fixing bad), but the laws themselves are remarkably vague, and regulators have had much leeway in enforcing them. In the era after the Second World War, for instance, the government took an aggressive stand against mergers. In 1962, it blocked a deal between the third-largest shoe company in the country and the eighth-largest, even though the new company would have owned just five per cent of the shoe market. A few years later, it barred two California supermarkets from merging, despite the fact that together they controlled less than ten per cent of the market and had many competitors. Bigness, regulators seemed to assume, was always bad. The idea that if mergers were bad for competition they were bad for the economy was intuitively appealing. But it wasn’t always accurate, as a group of law professors and economists, usually called the Chicago School, set out to show in the nineteen-seventies. Much antitrust regulation, they argued, did not benefit the economy but just protected small businesses; it could even make consumers worse off. (Most obviously, economies of scale allow bigger companies to produce more for less, which can lead to lower prices.) This meant that regulators should scrutinize deals through a different lens: if a merger reduced competition but enhanced “consumer welfare,” it should be approved. Later economists have complicated these arguments—there’s now a post-Chicago School—but the idea that mergers should be measured by their impact on “consumer welfare” remains central to antitrust law. Even by these standards, though, the XM-Sirius deal looks sketchy, since monopolies created by merger are usually bad for consumers. So why does the deal have any chance at all? It comes down to the question of what market XM and Sirius are in. If it’s just satellite radio, then they are competing only with each other and the deal would be sure to send prices soaring. But it makes more sense to see XM and Sirius as part of the bigger radio and digital audio markets and thus in competition with AM/FM, HD, and Internet radio. In that case, even a merged company would have only a small percentage of radio listeners, and competition would limit its ability to raise prices. Consumers, then, have little to fear from a merged satellite company in the radio market, and they may actually have a lot to gain. Dominated by chains like Clear Channel, AM/FM radio has become a catalogue of bland choices, pre-programmed playlists, and syndicated talk. A recent study by the Future of Music Coalition found that four companies received fifty per cent of all radio advertising revenue and had nearly fifty per cent of all listeners. Even among competitors, there is often tremendous overlap in music playlists; in this environment, XM and Sirius, which offer real diversity across three hundred channels, are a gain for consumer choice. And there’s no reason to think that this diversity would ebb after a merger; no one wants to pay thirteen dollars a month to hear the same songs he could have got free from his local KISS-FM. The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents commercial radio stations, has lobbied hard against the deal, arguing that XM and Sirius compete only with each other. But the very fact that broadcasters are fighting the merger demonstrates that they view Sirius and XM as a threat. Similarly, for fifteen years AM/FM stations have done everything they could to cripple satellite radio, lobbying the F.C.C. to stop its roll-out in the nineteen-nineties and persistently trying to limit the types of programming XM and Sirius can carry. Just last month, a bill was introduced in Congress—for the third time in as many years—that would bar satellite stations from providing local traffic and weather. Broadcasters understand that a merger between Sirius and XM would help extend satellite radio’s reach, making it a more formidable competitor. Many consumers have hesitated to subscribe to satellite because they didn’t know which company would survive. And desirable content is split between the companies: if you want major-league baseball and Bob Edwards, you need XM, but if you want N.F.L. games and Howard Stern, you need Sirius. Allowing Sirius and XM to merge would eliminate this problem in one stroke. And that would significantly increase the competitive pressure on traditional radio stations, perhaps forcing them to abandon their cookie-cutter model. Paradoxically, by reducing choice you could stimulate more diversity. Sometimes, it seems, you can have fewer competitors but more competition.

>From AllAccess.com: As ALL ACCESS reported on MONDAY (NET NEWS 3/12), NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO is planning legal action aimed at overturning a ruling from U.S. Copyright Royalty Judges that raised royalty fees for webcasters. Now we know that legal action will come tomorrow, as NPR VP/Communications ANDI SPORKIN said in a statement, "NPR will begin on FRIDAY, MARCH 16 by filing a petition for reconsideration with the COPYRIGHT ROYALTY BOARD panel." SPORKIN called the CRB's ruling "a stunning, damaging decision for public radio and its commitment to music discovery and education, which has been part of our tradition for more than half a century. Public radio’s agreements on royalties with all such organizations, including the RIAA, have always taken into account our public service mission and non-profit status. These new rates, at least 20 times more than what stations have paid in the past, treat us as if we were commercial radio -- although by its nature, public radio cannot increase revenue from more listeners or more content, the factors that set this new rate. Also, we are being required to pay an Internet royalty fee that is vastly more expensive than what we pay for over-the-air use of music, although for a fraction of the over-the-air audience. "This decision penalizes public radio stations for fulfilling their mandate, it penalizes emerging and non-mainstream musical artists who have always relied on public radio for visibility, and ultimately it penalizes the American public, whose local station memberships and taxes will be necessary to cover the millions of dollars that will now be required as payment. We ask that the online royalties be returned to their historic arrangement and that public radio can continue to provide its vital service to music discovery."

"Room 608" from the Horace Silver Quintet on Blue Note. He does well in Monk's sextet and on Andrew Hill's "Point of Departure," too.

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/7...C25729E002048FF

WNUR in Chicago And thanks! the CD is here!

http://tinyurl.com/29wzl6

David Murray has a release called Speaking In Tongues featuring Fontella Bass possessed by the spirit.

? Time to look in the discography! From his session index: Kenny Dorham & The Jazz Prophets Cafe Bohemia, NYC, 1st set, May 31, 1956 Kenny Dorham & The Jazz Prophets w. Kenny Burrell Cafe Bohemia, NYC, 2nd set, May 31, 1956 Kenny Dorham & The Jazz Prophets w. Kenny Burrell Cafe Bohemia, NYC, 3rd set, May 31, 1956 Kenny Dorham & The Jazz Prophets w. Kenny Burrell Cafe Bohemia, NYC, 4th set, May 31, 1956 Phil Woods 7 VGS, Hackensack, NJ, June 15, 1956 Kenny Dorham & The Jazz Prophets NYC, July 19, 1956 The July 19th session does not appear to have been issued. The ABC session was done right before the Cafe Bohemia stand.

Will have to check those as "Alfie" 's'been the favorite. Did a night on Fathead this past Thursday and played many of his High Note releases. "Davey Blue" stands out, especially for "Cristo Redentor" (on alto). Think Fathead played a little gospel when he was with Ray? Also dug out a couple of the sessions he did with Jimmy McGriff -- unpretentious and swinging.

For what it is worth there's a figure Sonny Rollins plays during his solo on "My Old Flame" from "Jazz Contrasts" which Trane picked out and turned into the head of "Like Sonny." Trane runs that figure at length during, I think it is, his solo during "On Green Dolphin Street" in the 1960 concert Stockholm Concert with Miles. (Lewis Porter points out the allusion in "My Old Flame"). Picked up that Jazz Prophets group cd originally on ABC out of the blue a few years ago and dig it.

Thanks Allen. Looking forward to checking out the trio tracks, especially, with Sandke and Robinson.

Looks like they worked up to the recording and it sounds like it: there are all kinds of things happening to hold this together. The eels thing is a trip, though, wow. Who thinks of that? Whales and wolves and other critters with Paul Winter in a romantic (classic sense, not sexual sense), sentimental, even nostalgic "environmental jazz" thing in the 70's. But eels just for their sound. "Baby baby its a wild world...."

Big tubes in their servers? Man, that has to be expensive, just paying for the bandwidth. I wonder how many on-line listeners that allows. They must have the Stay Puff marshmallow man as a sugar daddy. All sugar. Sucrose to burn.

Cornetist Rob Mazurek's avant "super group" where, "the overall organic approach included actual organic sounds - for example, the sounds of electric eels recorded by Mazurek at INPA research laboratory in Manaus. The juxtaposition of two drums, two basses, two mallets, multiple flutes, two cornets, bass clarinet, ARP synthesizer, guitar, trombone, voices and flugelhorn all played important roles in the development of the final sound. "“Psycho-Tropic Electric Eel Dream” is a group improvisation centered around the sound of electric eels. The electric eel tanks Mazurek recorded at INPA contain two species of eels, Pulsating and Waveform. The sound was recorded in a special tank of 15-20 eels of various sub-species, each with its own tone. The results are fascinating tonal clusters not unlike the sound of violins." There's so much going on here that after three full passes through the album it hasn't completely sunk in. Nichole Mitchell's flute is a centerpiece in the work. http://www.thrilljockey.com/artists/?id=10140

The flutes on "Joy Spring" make a sound unlike anything else. It seems the start of "Joy Spring" is upcut on my copy -- it jumps to a start a hair into the piece.

I slept on "Citizen Tain" forever and keep hearing from his fans that it is the album to have. The reunion of the brothers and all.....

The one with Arno? Our friend in Ohio, Jerry Lynch, has recorded nearly every web cast we've done since first going on the web. It is a good solution for listening to a program that goes until 3 a.m. He can listen on his own time, and he'll BUY the music he hears that he enjoys. Not to mention he has great taste.

Sequed some of this with John Carter's "Castles of Ghana."

(Copy of letter sent to Congressman Markey via his web site. Also phoned his office with thanks). Thank you Congressman Markey for your advocacy of more intelligent rules and fees for Internet web streaming services. I'm the Jazz Director at Blue Lake Public Radio (www.bluelake.org) and the over regulations of programming content in the DMCA -- where you may only play 4 pieces by the same artist in the a 3 hour period -- makes it impossible to broadcast a radio program which gives the listener a true idea of the depth and scope of Duke Ellington's contribution to American culture, for instance. It isn't just Ellington, though, it is the entire 78 rpm era, the Swing Era, which is forgotten in this legislation. Of course that was America's greatest musical era. What's ironic is that music from the 1920's and 1930's has survived every technological advancement known to modern man starting with acoustic recording, then electric recording, then radio, then long playing microgroove recordings and on and on -- even digital audio tape. But it managed to stay connected to the people, to the music's audience. The DMCA programming regulations separate the music from anyone interested in hearing it in depth via the web. Depth is what educational, non-commercial programming provides. Yet that strength isn't allowed on the web stream, not without the work of getting web stream waivers from the copyright holders. However the majority of labels who hold the rights to the 78 rpm era won't sign. They say to block the stream when doing that kind of programming. Keeping the music from the audience is antithetical to a radio station's mission. In any case, thank you for your advocacy of something other than the profit motive. Radio is about connecting with people's imaginations, not their wallet. The rules overlook the fact that people use the radio to listen to music and that listening and purchasing are two separate activities. The way the web streams are being regulated it is as if each listener is using the stream as a delivery system for purchasing music, and that's a fundamental mis-reading of the audience. Of course broadcasters should pay to be on the web -- that's not the issue. The issue is fairness and, especially, keeping the audience in mind. It's the only way music will stay "on the air." Thanks again, Lazaro Vega Jazz Director Blue Lake Public Radio 300 East Crystal Lake Road Twin Lake MI 49457 WBLV FM 90.3/WBLU FM 88.9 www.bluelake.org

That's not true. FM channels pay BMI and ASCAP rates to broadcast FM. Those royalties go to composers, though, not performers. These web cast rates go to performers. And these rates apply to podcasters. Podcasting music is about impossible if you follow the rules as "on demand" downloading of music is seen (not by me but by these lobbies who've written the laws) as a point of purchase as opposed to listening. Now that I've read the article they do deal with this issue. This, too, about the laws governing program on the web: "Their reasoning was that a digital radio transmission was not a radio broadcast at all, but a sequence of perfect digital copies of music performances provided to the user, who could then copy them rather than paying to own a CD." This is the point where things went completely wrong. People listen to the radio to fullfill their imaginations. A very small percentage to "steal" music.