Chrome

Regarding the title tune, what do people think of James Spaulding's version, from his CD also called "Brilliant Corners"? I'd be especially curious to hear someone with a music background compare (briefly) the technical aspects of the two bands' playing (Spaulding vs. Monk) ... I've been listening to jazz heavily for about 6-7 years and I'm trying to get a better handle on this kind of thing. Thanks in advance.

Does anyone have any input on this CD? I've got Wilson's first two and like them very much. But on this, she wrote lyrics to Davis' tunes, right? How does that come off? Are the lyrics any good?

When I wrote "very much of its time," I just meant that it had a sound I associate w/1970s piano-led jazz. Kind of free/fusion-y type of thing going on ... I'm (obviously) not a musician, but Tyner sounds very "sparkly," if you will, with the notes flying out of the piano like shards of light off a Fourth of July sparkler, yet not sounding too "boppy," and then you throw in the flutes/saxes whirling around and the percussion and, voila!, it's "very much of its time."

Always lots of discussion here about who is "the best," "most influential," etc., when it comes to musicians ... but what about those players who, admittedly, aren't quite in the upper echelon, yet who still have a special place in our hearts/ears? I'll start things with Houston Person: He always seems to deliver the goods, with a nice tone, and even though you usually know what you're getting on his discs, his music never seems like just "more of the same thing." Two of my favorite Person CDs are "Talk of the Town" and "The Lion and His Pride."

Are you talking about the type with "sleeves," kind of like photo albums? I always wonder if the discs are getting abraded somehow when you slide them in the sleeve things.

I got this CD at the local Border's Outlet for $5.99 and was quite surprised to hear the energy in everyone's playing. It's a 1978 live date from San Francisco and features: George Adams - Flute, Sax (Soprano), Sax (Tenor) Charles Fambrough - Bass McCoy Tyner - Piano Joe Ford - Flute, Sax (Alto) Guilherme Franco - Percussion, Conga, Berimbau Sonship - Drums, Orchestra Bells The music is very much of its time, very late 1970s, and the exuberance of everyone involved really comes through. I'm just getting into Tyner, and had always thought of him as intense in a kind of introspective way. On this CD, though, he's just seems more outgoing ... still intense, but more "fun" ... the crowd seems really into the music, and I can picture the musicians smiling as they played. Great solo piano version of Naima, too.

I've noticed this, too ... I get the feeling some of the musicians are positioning these snippets as transitions that are supposed to pull separate pieces of music together under one big concept, if that makes sense. In my head, though, I treat them pretty much the same way I would a breakdown alternate track ... it doesn't really stand on its own because, obviously, there's so little time for something to develop, but it can be interesting to listen to and provide some added insight to a performer. So I guess I'd call 'em filler, but not necessarily irritating.

I think Alexander really had it right about people type-casting him as "That Peanuts" guy ... the situation is different from him just doing any old soundtrack. Guaraldi wrote what has got to be the most recognizable tune from one of the most-beloved Christmas specials of all time, based on the work of one of the most widely known and loved cartoonists of all time. Does anyone have any first- or second-hand info on what Guaraldi thought about the whole thing?

The thread about cleaning jewel cases got me thinking ... what does everybody do with boxed sets that don't have jewel cases for individual discs? And that got me thinking about what everyone else does with all of the extras. I always end up buying empty cases and using them for the discs. This also gives me a chance to noodle around on the computer to come up with my "own" CD art, track listings, etc. Usually when I get a boxed set, I put the discs on the rack with my individual CDs, put the booklets on a "music-only" bookshelf, and let my kids use the actual boxes for school projects, storing toys/stickers, stuff like that. I know some of the packaging is pretty cool, but I just don't have the room to keep all the boxes around. Anyone else?

My home remedy is to always have some spare jewel cases around ... besides the "sticky residue" problem, a number of my used CD purchases come with cracked/damaged cases that I like to replace.

I'm looking to replace an older Aiwa unit I have and wanted to get some opinions on a new bookshelf-size system. I've only got about $300-$400 to spend and the only "must haves" are: it has to be a multi-disc system and it must have that function that plays back all CDs at the same level when more than one are loaded into the player at the same time, if you know what I mean. I'm not a big audiophile, but I do want to get the most out of my $$$. Thanks in advance!

Am I the only one who doesn't know what a "saxello" is? It can't be a combination of a sex and cello, can it?

I got one of those new $20 bills over the weekend ... what is that thing growing over Jackson's left eye?!?! I never noticed it on the old bills; although when I checked, it's there, just not so obvious. Yuck!

I went through much the same thing years ago when I decided that, regardless of my fascinating degree in "Socio-economic policy problems," I wanted to be a writer. The tips I can provide are: 1. Consider crafting your resume to focus on the specific skills you have that can be transferred to whatever job you applying for, instead of making the list of actual jobs the main thing; although, of course, you still need to include a job chronology ... I mean literally use a header that says "Job Skills" or something similar. This both keeps the focus on what you can bring to a company and makes your resume stand out from the rest. 2. In cover letters, always keep a positive spin ... never even write anything like "Although I don't have formal training in architecture, I can blah blah blah." Instead, it should be "My unique background allows me to bring a fresh perspective to blah blah blah." 3. Spend some real time thinking about ALL of the various facets of your past experiences and how they could help you at a different job. For example, you posted about grant-writing for a non-profit ... if you really wanted to pursue that, couldn't you truthfully say that your time w/the KC Symphony Chorus gave you valuable insight into the workings of a non-profity type organization? Of course! Good luck!

... and lest we think it's only rock bands:

What exactly is being "pixilated" here? That could explain a lot of things.

And I always thought the holes were round so you could hold 'em on your finger when you fumbling with jewel cases, etc.!

Thanks for the responses. Dan G.: Often a dilemma ... I'm usually more of a "start it all over" kind of guy.

Every time I get out of the car, even if I'm just going to pump gas, I carefully eject whatever CD I'm listening to and put it into its jewel case before getting out of the car. When my wife's driving, she often just shuts the car off while the CD is going. Before I continue arguing with her about this, I thought I'd get some feedback: Does turning off the car with the CD going somehow hurt the CD in any way? Or am I just being overly careful?

This has been driving me crazy all day, so I thought I'd share ... My wife and I were finishing up some holiday shopping yesterday at the local Toys R Us and when we checked out, there was this "guard" at the exit, who looked like every bad "rent-a-cop" stereotype you could imagine ... and he had a pistol! I mean, a real gun. I was just waiting for some kind of "Hokey-Pokey Elmo" riot to break out and the bullets to start flying.

Sorry in advance for the looooooooong post, but ... No Matter How Much You Promise To Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew it Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again. A Symphonic Novel Edgardo Vega Yunqué Farrar, Straus and Giroux 656 pages Size: 6 x 9 $25.00 Hardcover Pub Date: 10/2003 ISBN: 0-374-22311-4 An epic novel of jazz, race and the effects of war on an American family This sweeping drama of intimately connected families --black, white, and Latino-- boldly conjures up the ever-shifting cultural mosaic that is America. At its heart is Vidamía Farrell, half Puerto Rican, half Irish, who sets out in search of the father she has never known. Her journey takes her from her affluent home to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where her father Billy Farrell now lives with his second family. Once a gifted jazz pianist, Billy lost two fingers in the Vietnam War and has since shut himself off from jazz. In this powerful modern odyssey, Vidamía struggles to bring her father back to the world of jazz. Her quest gives her a new understanding of family, particularly through her half-sisters Fawn, a lonely young poet plagued with a secret, and Cookie, a sassy, streetsmart homegirl who happens to be "white." And when Vidamía becomes involved with a young African-American jazz saxophonist, she is forced to explore her own complex roots, along with the dizzying contradictions of race etched in the American psyche. Edgardo Vega Yunqué vividly captures the myriad voices of our American idiom like a virtuoso spinning out a series of expanding riffs, by turns lyrical, deadly, flippant, witty, and haunting. ----------------------------------------------- I read another review of this somewhere else that indicates the author actually weaves real jazz players into the novel, too ... For example, the character Billy Farrell was supposed to have played with Miles Davis before going to war ... and a number of other musicians are characters, too. This reviews makes the book sound a little lame, but other reviews I've seen (but can't find right now) play this up as a pretty gritty book that has a significant focus on New York jazz in the '60s. Here's some more stuff about the book/author: With a story that mixes Puerto Rican and Irish, jazz and the symphony, Edgardo Vega Yunqué’s new novel is as American as the city itself. "I edit in the morning, and then at night I write hot,” says Edgardo Vega Yunqué, who claims he works on six or seven novels at once (“You don’t get your relatives mixed up, do you?”) but until now has published only two, along with a story collection. For the 67-year-old Brooklynite (via East Harlem, the South Bronx, and Puerto Rico), the latest—which Farrar, Straus & Giroux publishes this fall—is the big one, both literally and figuratively. Right down to the title. No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain’t Never Coming Home Again has a kitchen-sink quality—which isn’t to its detriment—even after being edited down from 1,200 pages to a meager 658. “I didn’t want to feel restricted by a straight line of narrative,” says Vega. “I wanted to go into the digressive mode of novel-writing. I used the idea of a symphony, but also of the mural. You see a lot of different faces; you jump around from one to the other and see the relationship between them.” The fleet-footed looseness of jazz improv and Nuyorican slam poetry pervades Vega’s style. The plot, meanwhile, is both simple (half-Irish, half–Puerto Rican Vidamía Farrell finds her long-lost father) and sprawling (wars are fought, musical movements die, racial conflicts erupt). “My life hasn’t been all that exciting, and maybe that’s why I write fiction,” says the writer, but he’s being a bit coy. “By the time I was 10 years old, before I left Puerto Rico, I had seen three people killed in front of me,” says Vega, who caught another eyeful after coming to New York at age 13 without a word of English. “Death has been a big part of my life.” He found respite on the Upper West Side during the sixties and seventies, throwing parties, helping draft dodgers, and raising a family that includes stepdaughter Suzanne Vega. Perhaps there’s a parallel with Barry, Vidamía’s benevolent stepfather in his novel—though, says Vega, “Suzanne is a wonder child. Vidamía was just a bright kid.” In the nineties, he ran the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, a vast Lower East Side visual- and performing-arts space. All of which makes him one of the city’s great supporting characters. Is he ready for more? “I don’t want much,” says Vega. “I live very frugally. I’m basically a schmuck. I don’t want to be a star; I just want the book to do well.” —Boris Kachka

If I just think about my BNs, the only one that really stands out in a negative way is John Patton's Understanding. I was expecting a typically groovy outing from Big John, but the sax player he's matched with on this date (Hugh Alexander) doesn't do anything for me (except irritate me) in this context.

Oops, thanks for the corr, Noj. I was focusing more on the "letdown" than the "BN" part of the thread ...

A New Perspective was one of the first jazz CDs I ever bought, but I had already heard "Cristo Redentor" (it still blows me away) and knew what to expect regarding the voices. The playing is pretty incredible, but I certainly understand how the other stuff might be off-putting for some listeners. My biggest let down has been with a Sonny Stitt two-fer I recently picked up ... "Goin' down slow." The strings on this seem so out of place ... I was expecting something way bluesier that more lived up to the disc's name.

Does anybody have a satellite radio subscription? I do a fair amount of commuting and the concept seems tempting ... both XM and Sirius are supposed to have jazz-only stations. Does anyone have any input on this stuff?