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I thought this was pretty interesting ... Simply Simpson Why pop songwriting's not what it used to be. By Kevin Canfield Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 1:29 PM PT "Auteurs" like Simpson are baring their souls. Be afraid! Earlier this month, Jessica Simpson's new single "With You" reached the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Mainstream Top 40 chart—not particularly shocking, given her popularity and the success of her MTV reality show Newlyweds. What is intriguing, though, is Simpson touting this exceedingly forgettable radio confection as her own, having apparently co-written the single with the prolific lyricists Billy Mann and Andy Marvel. Pop singers used to be mere entertainers; songwriting was largely the domain of professionals who rarely performed. Today, they want us to believe they're auteurs—singers who are also capable of writing their own songs. Britney Spears is credited with writing/co-writing seven of the 13 songs on 2003's In the Zone. Justin Timberlake picks up co-writing credits on all of the songs on 2002's Justified. Timberlake's 'N Sync bandmate J.C. Chasez takes co-songwriting credits on all but one of the songs of his just-released solo debut, Schizophrenic. Even teen star Hilary Duff gets writing credits for three of the songs on her new record, Metamorphosis. Why this shift? Strangely, the celebrity gossip industry of the late '90s and early 2000s may be responsible. Artists, especially those who are expected to talk about their latest creative effort in People and on Access Hollywood, need a story to tell, and an auteur makes for a better interview. Marketing yourself as a singer who bares her soul is much easier than marketing a singer baring a songwriter's soul. Last July, for example, Billboard reported that expectations were high for Gloria Estefan's Unwrapped because the singer wrote several songs in which—you guessed it—she "bares her soul." Similar terminology was used to peddle Shania Twain's second record, 1995's The Woman in Me. "On my first album I was a singer interpreting other people's songs, and on this album I'm singing my own songs," Twain told the Chicago Tribune at the time. "I think the delivery in the vocal is much more intimate and real." More than ever, record companies are looking to sell artists as auteurs. From a business perspective, singer-songwriters can save record companies money that would've been spent to pay professional songwriters. Pop stars are able to cash in on the fat royalty checks earned from their songwriting credits and enjoy the recognition that they gain from their creative endeavors. And the camp of pop singers not as lyrically inclined can reap the same benefits by purchasing material from an independent writer and pawning it off as their own—a longtime practice in the industry, for which Elvis was infamous. Pop music critics have also been instrumental in this shift. As Norah Jones can attest, critics may not take an artist seriously unless she writes a substantial portion of her own material. (Which is why Jones' camp has so strenuously reminded the public that she wrote or co-wrote six of the 13 of songs on her new record. She had songwriting credits on just three of the 14 songs on her 2002 debut album.) Such pressures were uncommon in earlier decades. The biggest hits of the '50s and '60s were written by songwriters like Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who co-wrote songs like the Searchers' "Love Potion No. 9" and Ben E. King's "Stand by Me." Sammy Fain wrote hits for Johnny Mathis, the Four Aces, and others. Ronnie Shannon wrote Aretha Franklin's version of "I Never Loved a Man," and Don Covay was behind her hit "Chain of Fools." Frank Sinatra's albums rarely credit him as a songwriter. But by the early '60s, performers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez hit the pop charts with songs they'd written themselves. The emphasis on the authenticity of their songwriting reflected the gestalt of the era. And it influenced Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and scores of others. As groups such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones emerged on the scene, they proved that commercial bands could also offer immensely catchy singles, even if they did write their own material. Even then, Baez, Dylan, and others were a breed apart; divas like Cher or Barbra Streisand or Diana Ross still never troubled themselves with writing lyrics; those were the chores of a songwriter. Even Michael Jackson's first solo albums, Off the Wall (1979) and Thriller (1982), were largely written by others. (Later, Jackson supposedly began to write the bulk of his lyrics.) Madonna may be credited, to a certain extent, with fueling the new growth of today's new "self-contained" acts, as they're known in the industry. After she arrived on the music scene in 1983 with an eponymous debut record that she had written herself, pop stars as auteurs started to become the rule, not the exception. But Jessica Simpson is no Madonna, and her eager attempt to repackage herself as a soulful auteur may not be the most savvy business decision: As veteran music journalist Jim DeRogatis recently noted in an interview, "Sometimes [these pop stars are] blissfully ignorant of the songs they allegedly wrote." (Simpson apparently believes her writing skills should not be limited to songs: She and husband Nick Lachey are said to be shopping a marriage advice book—more evidence of her aspirations to auteurdom.) No one begrudges Simpson her ambitions. But spend three or four minutes with Simpson's "With You"—"With nothing but a T-shirt on/ I never felt so beautiful/ Baby as I do now"—and you might find yourself longing for the days when professional songwriters ruled the pop charts. Happily, there's no reason to think that the future of pop music is one in which all of the songs will be written by the artists themselves—there are still pop singers who show no inclination toward songwriting. More important, it's pretty clear that there are plenty unequipped to write anything at all. And as the novelty wears off in songwriting, as in most things, the marketplace will hopefully begin to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. Thank God for capitalism. Kevin Canfield is a writer in New York.

From Pink Floyd?!?

I actually find a lot of the upbeat pop gives off pretty good vibes, at least in a junk food kind of way. For example, I happened to flip on the radio yesterday coming home from work and they were playing Pink's "Get the party started" ... it certainly got my party started. Or think about something like Motown ... plenty of good vibes for me there, too. Hell, I've even been known to crank up that Sheryl Crow cover of "First cut."

An excerpt from Public Law 108-72 108 TH CONGRESS, 1 ST SESSION SEC. 6. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING JAZZ APPRECIATION MONTH. (a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds the following: (1) On December 4, 1987, Congress approved House Concurrent Resolution 57, designating jazz as ‘‘a rare and valuable national American treasure''. (2) Jazz has inspired some of the Nation's leading creative artists and ranks as one of the greatest cultural exports of the United States . (3) Jazz is an original American art form which has inspired dancers, choreographers, poets, novelists, filmmakers, classical composers, and musicians in many other kinds of music. (4) Jazz has become an international language that bridges cultural differences and brings people of all races, ages, and backgrounds together. (5) The jazz heritage of the United States should be appreciated as broadly as possible and should be part of the educational curriculum for children in the United States . (6) The Smithsonian Institution has played a vital role in the preservation of American culture, including art and music. (7) The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History has established April as Jazz Appreciation Month to pay tribute to jazz as both a historic and living American art form. (8) The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History has received great contributions toward this effort from other governmental agencies and cultural organizations. (B) SENSE OF CONGRESS.—It is the sense of Congress that— (1) the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History should be commended for establishing a Jazz Appreciation Month; and (2) musicians, schools, colleges, libraries, concert halls, museums, radio and television stations, and other organizations should develop programs to explore, perpetuate, and honor jazz as a national and world treasure.

My Funny Valentine: Chet Baker

How about Randy Johnston? I've only got one of his discs (In-A-Chord), but he's pretty funky ... this particular CD also features Joey DeFrancesco, Eric Alexander, and Mickey Roker.

... and one incident of family violence: Couple arrested after 'Passion' fight Thursday, March 18, 2004 Posted: 11:30 PM EST (0430 GMT) STATESBORO, Georgia (AP) -- A couple who got into a dispute over a theological point after watching "The Passion of the Christ" were arrested after the argument turned violent. The two left the movie theater debating whether God the Father in the Holy Trinity was human or symbolic, and the argument heated up when they got home, Melissa Davidson said. "It was the dumbest thing we've ever done," she said. Davidson, 34, and her husband, Sean Davidson, 33, were charged with simple battery on March 11 after the two called police on each other. They were released on $1,000 bail. According to a police report, Melissa Davidson suffered injuries on her arm and face, while her husband had a scissors stab wound on his hand and his shirt was ripped off. He also allegedly punched a hole in a wall. "Really, it was kind of a pitiful thing, to go to a movie like that and fight about it. I think they missed the point," said Gene McDaniel, chief sheriff's deputy.

Has anyone else seen this? (Note the DARPA involvement.) Thought control tech tried on humans Wednesday, March 24, 2004 Posted: 2:08 PM EST (1908 GMT) WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists who trained a monkey to move a mechanical arm using thought alone said on Tuesday that experiments in Parkinson's disease patients show the technique may work in humans, too. Electrodes implanted in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients transmitted signals that might someday be used to operate remote devices, the team at Duke University Medical Center reported. In 2000, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, the neurobiologist who led the studies, made headlines when he trained a monkey to move a robotic arm using thoughts and electrodes implanted in her brain. Last October, he refined the experiment, training a monkey to move the arm without even bothering to move her own arm. It showed she consciously knew she was controlling the device with her thoughts. The hope is to create artificial arms and other prosthetic devices to help severely disabled people. The researchers are also getting funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, presumably with secret military applications in mind. But experimenting on people is tricky. Nicolelis said he and colleagues took advantage of brain surgery being done on patients with Parkinson's disease. These operations involve the use of deep brain stimulators that work to help counteract the severe tremors of Parkinson's, an incurable disease marked by the destruction of certain brain cells. In order to find the best place to put the stimulators, surgeons at first temporarily implanted arrays of 32 microelectrodes. The patients are awake during surgery so they can guide the surgeon. Nicolelis and colleagues were given five minutes to add their own experiments to the procedure on each of 11 patients. Identifying the right neurons They gave the patients a video game to play while the electrodes sent their signals from within the brain. A computer had five minutes to analyze the signals and correlate them with the hand movements used during the video games. "We were surprised to find that our analytical model can predict the patients' motions quite well," said Nicolelis. "We only had five minutes of data on each patient, during which it took a minute or two to train them to the task." The key is to find the individual neurons that are activated when someone consciously thinks about a movement and then makes the movement. Studies have shown that these brain cells remain active even in amputees. Electrodes and the right computer program can translate the faint signals made by each neuron into something that can be used to operate and direct a machine such as a robotic arm. While the monkeys had wires implanted in their skulls that were connected to a device that controlled an external robotic arm, Nicolelis said his team had recently designed a wireless model of electrode that worked in monkeys. "Something like this would be implanted. It would remain in place and continuously send activity from the brain areas," Nicolelis said in a telephone interview. His team will report its findings in the July issue of the journal Neurosurgery. Dr. David Turner, who also worked on the study, said the most obvious application of such technology would be a robotic arm for a quadriplegic. Another possibility his team is working on is a thought-controlled electric wheelchair, or a keyboard that could be used by patients paralyzed by injury or disease. Nicolelis said his team was seeking Food and Drug Administration permission to do more experiments on human volunteers. "As soon as we have permission to proceed, we are building a whole apparatus," he said.

At first I thought you might be referring to the Bayou club recordings, but I see from the literature that Roy and Hawk recorded with Joe Jones ( not Philly Joe) in Buenos Aires June 16 1961. Body and Soul was one of the tunes. These are aparently part of a West Wind CD entitled Jazz Festival in Latin America.. there were 6 tracks, Body was a feature for Hawk, The Man I love for Roy. Love for sale a trio for Tommy Flanagan. The rest of the Cd was by other artists. This may be what you have or some bootlegged verion of it. PD: Okay, I have to ask: did you just KNOW that? I went home and dug up the disc, and that seems to be pretty close. "West Wind 2018" is printed on the disc and there's a little blurb indicating "Rec. at American Jazz Festival in Latin America, 16 Juli 1961 at Teatro Municipale, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil." According to the track listing: 1. Rifftide: Hawkins, Eldridge, Flanagan, Abdul Malik, Jones (Jo, not Philly Joe) 2. The Man I love: Eldridge, Flanagan, Abdul Malik, Jones 3. Body and Soul: same as 1 4. Love for sale: Flanagan, Abdul Malik, Jones 5. Caravan: same as 1, but essentially a 6-minute Jones drum solo 6. Love come back to me: same as 1 The sound is okay, the playing is very enthusiastic, the uncredited liner notes are somewhat surreal. Some blah blah blah, then they end with "Later in his career, bearded like the prophet he was, Hawkins continued handing down his huge-toned jazz commandments until in 1969, ominously taciturn and worn thin from a permanent diet of lentil soup and brandy, he died."

How about the Singing and Swinging Betty Roche? Roach? Ro-shay?

I've often wondered if that stuff were literally addictive ... my kids certainly act like it is.

I'm at work, so I don't have it with me, but I found a Hawkins disc titled "Body and Soul" that was labelled as a live recording from ... somewhere in South America. Roy Eldridge was on it, and I think Philly Joe Jones was the drummer ... but there was no indication of the CD's manufacturer, and I couldn't find anything like it on AMG. Ring a bell with anyone?

Does anyone know if Elvis plays or sings on the disc?

I've used and can recommend Powell's, too. Plus, they're independents, if that kind of thing is important to you.

???

The New York Scene (1984) on Concord is really good. It features: Jean Toussant - tenor Donald Harrison - alto Terence Blanchard - trumpet Mulgrew Miller - piano Lonnie Plaxico - base I also enjoy the Prestige "Child's Dance" sessions ... kind of a different approach for Blakey w/some Stanley Clarke action going on. And I've got a disc called "Hard Bop" from the mid-1950s w/Jackie Mac and Bill Hardman that totally cooks.

Wewease Bwian!

From www.autoextremist.com: (This is a great site for any interested in the auto industry.) New Words for 2004. Occasionally the Internet provides us with things that we just can't do without, like the following "Essential additions for the workplace Vocabulary": BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard. SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end. CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles. PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on. MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato. SITCOMS: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiney. SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use. XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace. IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials and Michael Jackson's affairs are examples. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again. ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. 404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located. GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, etc. OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake. WOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks. CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously passing gas while passing thru a cube farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust.

From wired.com: Dogging Craze Has Brits in Heat By Leander Kahney | 02:00 AM Mar. 19, 2004 PT Giving new meaning to the term "flash mob," the British have invented a new sex craze called "dogging" that mixes sex, exhibitionism, mobs and the Internet. Dogging combines technology with swinging, cruising and voyeurism. To wit: Crowds big and small watch exhibitionist couples who've met on the Net have sex in cars, and sometimes join in. "Dogging is the broad term used to cover all the sexual outdoor activities that go on," says the dogging FAQ at Melanies UK Swingers, a popular dogging site. "This can be anything from putting on a show from your car, to a gangbang on a picnic table." Dogging appears to be popular and widespread, attracting heterosexual couples and single men and women of all ages, income brackets and backgrounds. Not surprisingly, however, dogging meets tend to attract more men than women. Dogging is most often practiced in cars at rural parks, lover's lanes and superstore parking lots. The term dogging has a number of suggested origins, but it probably refers to the "walking the dog" excuse proffered to spouses for an evening's absence. Dogging sessions are usually organized through the dozens of dogging sites and message boards that have sprung up in the last couple of years. Photos are exchanged and meetings arranged by e-mail or mobile phone text message. At the meet, cell phones and text messages are used to confirm meeting places and, crucially, identities. Cameras and videophones are increasingly used to record what goes on. "Technology is vital and is the main driver (of the dogging phenomenon)," said Richard Byrne, a lecturer at Harper Adams University College in the United Kingdom who produced a survey (PDF) last year that found dogging to be a widespread and growing problem in Britain's country parks. Dogging is so prevalent, 60 percent of U.K. country parks are affected by it, Byrne's report estimated. In addition, cases of sexually transmitted diseases in some districts rose markedly last year, prompting health authorities to post safe-sex warnings on dogging sites, according to the BBC. One dogging group on Yahoo has 22,000 members. Although dogging has been growing in popularity for the last couple of years, it only reached the mainstream earlier this month when soccer player Stan Collymore, one of Britain's most famous athletes, admitted to attending numerous dogging meets. Naturally, Collymore's confession sparked a storm of tabloid controversy. Dogging is becoming so popular, or so notorious, that a trio of music professionals this month released a single celebrating dogging -- and an accompanying sexy video.

Did George Russell ever record any trio dates?

Thanks for the tips ... of the discs mentioned, this is the only one I have ... the version of "Under My Skin" on that is fantastic! Speaking of Tim Hagans, what do people think of his playing? I've got his "Audible Architecture," but I don't find myself putting it on too much.

I've got a number of great discs with two tenors playing together (Lockjaw/Griffin, etc.) and really like the format ... can anyone recommend something similar with two trumpet players?

I'm pretty sure the annual Detroit electronic music festival is over Memorial day weekend ... it's a big deal if you like that kind of thing. And there's an exhibit of paintings at the art institute highlighting Whistler and his students/followers that continues through June. And if you've ever wanted to see a baseball game, the Tigers will be in town that weekend ... should be easy to get tickets. And there's this organ trio based close to Detroit ... Organissimo or something? Perhaps they'd be in town.

It's a 4-page story, but I only posted the first page ... the rest is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040322&s=morton Raw Material Miles Davis by Brian Morton Print this article E-mail this article Write to the editors ince Miles Davis died on September 28, 1991, the merchandising machine has been in overdrive, pushing repackaged classics (Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain), niche compilations and concert anthologies (Mellow Miles, Heard Around the World), and posthumous remixes aimed, as Miles himself often did, at a new constituency beyond the jazz audience. His two principal labels, Columbia and Warner Bros., have collated his work with saxophonist John Coltrane and arranger Gil Evans. More sumptuous is the boxed set of his appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival between 1973 and 1991, twenty CDs and well over twenty hours of music. The Miles Davis estate has had the trumpeter's famously lithe silhouette, familiar from re-issues of Sketches of Spain, registered as a logo. Even the art market was briefly flooded with Miles's psychedelic doodles, the legacy of a time when he seemed to prefer sketching backstage to playing trumpet on it. It is an astonishing afterlife, though one that perhaps says more about the music industry than about the protean artist it celebrates. True fans are always archeologists, and boxed sets are the potsherds of genius. But they're also often long on chaff, a triumph of commercial packaging over musical insight, and some of the recent Miles Davis boxed sets have left one wondering, Do we really need to hear every note Miles played in the studio? The much-trumpeted Complete Bitches Brew Sessions was actually no such thing, but a bland collage of complete and unedited takes that offered little insight into how Davis and his team worked. The earlier Complete In a Silent Way Sessions boxed set was more fruitful, but left most listeners feeling that the original album edit was as close to perfect as anyone might wish. The two most recent Miles boxed sets are exceptions to the rule. Nothing short of revelatory, they alter our understanding of two of the most overlooked recordings--indeed, moments--of Miles's career. The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, a work of electric jazz recorded in 1970, shows how an apparently minor soundtrack project led to one of Miles's most dramatic stylistic and demographic shifts, a phase in his career when his and his audience's understanding of "jazz" was robustly challenged. The straight-ahead jazz on In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, Complete, a generously augmented version of two live LPs taped at the San Francisco club in 1961, seems, at first, a more routine affair. Yet it arguably contains even more significant revelations.