Chrome

Oh my god those early "video games" from Mattel! I had the original football and basketball games, still have the latter. It's funny, the game turned up in the basement one day and I showed it to my 10-year-old son/Gameboy addict, expecting him to start laughing. Instead he started playing it ... took me a couple hours to get the thing back from him.

Reminds me of the Stephen King story in which some drug dealer crashes on a desert island w/nothing but a big bag of coke. Well, I guess he must have had some sharp implements, too, 'cause when he started getting hungry, he'd use some "anesthetic" and cut off a piece of himself for dinner! You know, I once tried snorting coke once ... but I almost drowned.

Soylent Green is people!

Oh, you know those brainy jews ... probably part of their conspiracy to take over the world.

Another funny way to do this is just to make up your own "George-style," as in George Costanza from Seinfield. Anyone remember the episode where George went around telling people his porn star name? His was: "Buck Naked." Mine would be: "Dante Inferno." (I'm a writer, so ...)

I was trapped in East Lansing, Mich., for the early 80s and there wasn't exactly a happenin' music scene up there. I couldn't/can't stand most of the synth pop/skinny tie stuff ... so much of it sounded, I don't know, "soulless." I liked REM, X, the Blasters ... bands that played what I considered "real" music. I liked Elvis Costello a lot, but even his music (not the lyrics) sometimes sounded kind of empty to me. In fact, I was so desperate to hear people actually playing "real" instruments that I started exploring this weird stuff called "jazz." And the rest, as they say, is history.

You know, when I'm relaxing at home, there's nothing I like better than surfing the Organissimo bulletin board from my Hepple chair.

My favorite part of the story is the very last line. Jagger knighthood: Richards rages Thursday, December 4, 2003 Posted: 9:55 AM EST (1455 GMT) LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Keith Richards is not amused. The legendary Rolling Stones' guitarist has flown into a rock and roll rage against Mick Jagger over the singer's decision to accept a knighthood, the ultimate nod from the British establishment. "I don't want to step out onstage with someone wearing a coronet and sporting the old ermine," Richards told British music magazine "Uncut" in an expletive-rich interview. "I told Mick it's a paltry honor ... It's not what the Stones is about, is it?" The Stones, still rocking after 40 years, made their names with crunching rock classics including "Satisfaction," "Street Fighting Man" and "Brown Sugar." A 1967 Stones' album was entitled "Their Satanic Majesties Request." Despite his near spotless rebel credentials, Jagger, 60, is scheduled to become "Sir Mick" at a Buckingham Palace ceremony on December 12. He will join British musicians Paul McCartney and Elton John who have already been knighted by Queen Elizabeth with a touch of the sword. Richards' own chances of arising Sir Keith, already thought slim after 59 years of hard living, will have receded even further.

JSngry: Sure, his "Bermanized" name was Art "of War" Blakey ...

I guess my point was just that musicians have been borrowing from other musicians probably from the time Art Blakey's earliest relatives first knocked a stick against a log and liked what they heard. Whether it's remixing, dubbing, quoting, covering or whatever, the difference -- to me anyway -- is primarily the way these things are physically accomplished.

Catesta: That makes it sound as if your problem is only with how it's all done ... if the Parker remix thing was made of actual musicians playing the Parker stuff on actual instruments, would that somehow make it better for you? More devil's advocate-y stuff: How about the practice of "quoting" another song in a solo? Isn't the only difference between this and sampling, the fact that in the former, a real person is playing a real instrument, and with the latter, it's a recording of someone doing the same?

And before god strikes me dead, let me just say that that Coltrane stuff was written from a "devil's advocate" point of view ...

What if you take someone's original music, in the sense of their written composition, and then improvise a solo over it ... something like "My favorite things" for example? Did Coltrane's version "disrespect" the original in some way? After all he took someone else's original music and used it to make his statement. In fact, wouldn't that apply to all "cover" versions?

I haven't had a chance to listen to the samples, but the concept reminds me of some of R.L. Burnside's newer CDs. Burnside is a fantastic blues player, up in his 70s, and he started making discs with some famous (?) techno-type producers/remixers/whatever. While I wouldn't exactly call the results "blues," it is pretty fascinating stuff and definitely works for me. Especially the disc "Come on in." I'll never forget a review I read for this disc that began something like: "This is the kind of disc that will make the purists vomit ...." While I understand people who don't like this style of music because it doesn't "sound good" to them, I just can't get the attitude that rejects a kind of music because it somehow "disrespects" what a different artist has done.

Does anyone know whatever happened to the drummer Brian Blade? I mean, as far as recording as a leader? I loved the two Brian Blade Fellowship CDs, but the last one came out in 2000.

Oh yeah, Wynton Kelly ... I realize a lot of generalizations go into this, but it seems like if you have a piano player and, say, a sax player, and both are of roughly the same skill level, it's the guy with the horn who gets the better reputation, etc. My theory is that it's because piano players get more lumped in with the rhythm section. Anyway, I think Kelly's definitely suffered from this kind of thing, at least among those outside of the "jazz elite." I loved Kelly at Midnight!

White Lightning: Cool avatar ... but I'm suddenly in the mood to inflate all of my kids' pool toys!

BFrank (and other Morphine addicts): I kept meaning to go back and re-listen to Yes after reading your post, and I finally did this weekend. It was like seeing one of those 3D "magic window" type pictures, where everything is kind of blurry unless you look at it the right way. I put on Yes and all of sudden it was like "Hey, they ARE a sax/bass/drum trio!" What a great band they were.

In case anyone's curious, the closest I could find for me was Destination Out by Jackie McLean, recorded 9/20/63 ... I'm 9/28/63.

Has anyone else ever gotten some kind of vicarious thrill out of discovering a certain recording was made on their birthday? You know, kind of like finding out someone famous was born on the same day as you were? For example, Unity by Larry Young was recorded 11/10/65 per the liner notes ... anyone here born on that date? I'm sure there's some easy way to look up this kind of thing on a data base, but that takes all the fun out of it.

Dan Gould: Spahn isn't the only pitcher to hit .300/win 20 ... check out Babe Ruth's line in 1917. He was 24-13, with an ERA of 2.01, and hit .325. The year before, he won 20 as well, with an ERA of 1.75! A lot of people don't know/recall Ruth came up as a pitcher, and an incredibly effective one, too.

I don't know that specific session, but I've got Byrd in Hand and Byrd Live at the Half Note, both w/Adams, and the two really work well together on this music.

Yet another fan here ... and, yeah, the writing is hilarious, but I'd love to know what the real lowdown behind the original show is. Does anyone know anything about the source show? What are those people competing for? It looks like it would be Law Suit City if it were an American show. Pryan: MXC is Most Extreme Challenge Elimination and it's on Spike. They take some kind of nutty Japanese game show that has people doing cheesy yet dangerous obstacle-course kind of stunts. Then, someone dubs the entire show in English a la "What's Up Tiger Lily?" It has to be seen/heard to be believed.

Jacman: Have you ever read "The Worst Journey in the World" by Apsley Cherry-Garrard? I love adventure/survival books, too, and this was one of the best. This guy went to Antarctica w/Scott (but wasn't on the Pole team) and was part of a group that went to collect penguin eggs ... in the dead of the Antarctic winter. This is the journey of the title. Amazing stuff.

This thread is hilarious! Thelonius "We have nothing to sphere but sphere itself" Monk Freddie "Old Mother" Hubbard John "General" Patton Art "You either love him or you" Tatum