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So the Chicago free paper had this interview with Keanu Reeves, and I came across his musings on music, many of which have been expressed right here. So come on in, Keanu, you'd be right at home... There's something about Keanu I kind of dig. It may be that blank slate thing -- you end up filling in the gaps (in his acting) with whatever you want to see. He's shallow and complex, but mostly he seems pretty mellow and doesn't let things get to him too much. Whoa -- don't want to go too deep.

Of course, gold is also a haven during uncertain times. I've decided to combine the two and build the extension of my house out of some of these gold "bricks" laying around: Nice, my suggestion is to double check foundations, otherwise the precious house would sink in the ground like Titanic. No problem -- I'll just convert it to a pool then.

Of course, gold is also a haven during uncertain times. I've decided to combine the two and build the extension of my house out of some of these gold "bricks" laying around:

If enough people think the same way as you, these things will change - eventually; perhaps not soon enough, though. MG Actually I just read that the EC is about to allow cell phones on airplanes, while the FAA is so far holding the line in the States. So I think things get worse before they get better. Right now we are in a period of elevating personal rights above any notion of a common good or responsibilities, but the pendulum may swing back. Hopefully we don't get too many vigilantes in the meantime.

PM sent on Alice Coltrane Translinear Light

There are two, related, answers to that, as far as I'm concerned. The first is that everyone should, and does, as far as I know, decide what risks, personal and third party, they're prepared to put up with in their life. There is no such thing as risk free living. I am moderately unhappy contributing to people's passive smoking - though they also have options they can exercise, such as get the fuck out. MG And yet before smoking bans came into force, there were large numbers of employees who really didn't have the same rights to remove themselves from the premises, and it is debatable how many reasonable alternatives there are for workers who wish to avoid smoke. Smoke free coffee shops started doing pretty well in the 1990s but smoke free bars usually failed if their competitors allowed smoking. Even further back, if the boss wanted to smoke, well there was smoking in the office, and on the train, even in airplanes at one point (talk about inflicting your choices/freedoms on others). Personally I find it tragic that adults smoke in homes with children (again those with almost no rights) and the logical conclusion is that one day it will be considered child endangerment to smoke around children. (Probably about the same time that the RealID finally gets switched on.)

I don't know when this happened, but Amazon has added the entire Rounder set as part of its digital sales division. So you can order the Library of Congress recordings as MP3s (and they are DRM-free or so they claim). Anyway, there is a best of, but if you specify the entire collection, it is available at the sale price of $19.95 for all 128 tracks (256 bit rate). Obviously, this is too much for those completely focused on quality, but I thought it was a pretty good deal given that I am migrating almost all of my box sets to MP3 anyway. (I guess the best price I've seen for the set was $55 without the Lomax book.) I was a little hesitant (thinking I would only get the first CD) but I got the whole enchillada. It sounds pretty good on my system. On the whole, I still prefer eMusic, but Amazon MP3s are a better deal than iTunes and they do have the ECM label, so it is starting to be worth a look.

This reminded me of this story: Infant with 4 arms and 4 legs Also born in India. Coincidence? In this case, the parents decided surgery was necessary for the baby to lead any kind of normal life, though many villagers wanted the baby left alone.

Yeah, I'm holding out for 576 (24 meets 24) or 0 (where 24 meets anti-24 and they annihilate each other in a burst of creativity which turns out to be a bad migrane headache in a Daily Show writer)

You know I tried, but I just wasn't willing to install the applet or widget or whatever to get the higher quality stream. Just too cynical (and lazy) for my own good sometimes.

Exactly - I can't help wondering if this whole thing is meant as some sort of tax write-off loophole (or something). From a retail perspective, it makes no sense whatsoever. I wonder if it is a way to cash in on the vanity-press movement. Let the authors essentially pay for the HarperCollins imprint but do nothing that would actually help move books and actually impede their sales in retail outlets. Again, the fact that these books will never be on best sellers lists is a major clue that this isn't going to be the wave of the future in book publishing. Perhaps one day the Amazon best seller list will matter more than the regular best-seller lists, but not currently.

Then they may well have to make it on 100% internet sales, since I can't imagine any retailers agreeing to this. This would undermine traditional stores, and they might well decide to boycott the new imprint so that other publishers don't try it. There have been a handful of publishers that do print on demand, i.e. they don't have any physical stock laying around, but that's a very niche thing.

Sometimes Amazon really misprices these things and only corrects later. I recall that I bought the Billie Holiday Columbia set put out by Definitive for about $20 and that was a 10 disc set. As far as this set, I have everything except perhaps Presenting Jackie McLean (have to go look) so not too tempting. Of course now that I look, I don't have Presenting JM and it generally runs $14 for a different grey market release. Amazon price is still $18.99 as of today.

PM sent

One thing I wonder is whether any of today's cats would have measured up had they been dropped into the 1950s. For at least some people (no one on this board of course) there is perhaps a fetishization of chronology. Bird and Diz and Monk did it first and best breaking away and moving jazz in a new direction (and actually I would have to agree with that). But there were a lot of people from that era who are given props mostly because they played in that era. Maybe if we swapped Phil Woods and Eric Alexander, or Louis Smith and Nicholas Payton... (Marcus Roberts for Oscar Peterson seems like a pretty even swap. ;-) ) Anyway, this itself is kind of a pointless exercise, but it leads me to my second point about Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence. I think a lot of today's players are in a huge bind, because they can't escape the past and some of them internalize it to the point that it does hamper their creativity. Either they move so far away from jazz's traditions that they lose their audience (who frankly do care more about Blue Note reissues than living artists) or they stay mainstream and get it from the critics who say they don't deserve to shine Monk's shoes. That's how I see it anyway. Nonetheless, I am glad that there are artists out there still making new music, making some attempts at keeping it fresh and sometimes even succeeding.

Perhaps this might be part of the "problem"? Maybe a Kiddie's Korner and an Old-Timer's Lounge will help us keep the peace. Or we can create a fig icon, and if someone is particularly grouchy about the low standards of the day we say Fig You.

Allen and everybody else. Are there any doors left to open or new paths to be blazed that haven't already come before? Jazz is funny in that you have to have to be able to be create something new yet your judged by the past and how/if you play something from the past. Seems like you are criticized either by going to far off or staying to close. Even Ornette and Hank M had their critics back in the day. I think sometimes we see novelty just for the sake of novelty, and that generally doesn't work out that well. Some of the cultural crossing stuff comes off better than others. I have generally not liked the rap/jazz cross-overs (Jason Moran's The Bandwagon is so-so, Soweto Kinch's A Life in the Day of B19 is a bit better but I still wouldn't listen to it that often, and these are to me the best of the bunch). I have liked Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa a lot more where they play jazz that draws on their Indian heritage. To me this kind of cultural fusion can work well, and is one of the few new paths that isn't a creative dead end.

My brother had it and has been very happy so far (I think a year now). Who knows how it will hold up in the future. He's pretty young (35) so I'll have some insight into the long-term results. My eyes are considerably better than his (generally only use glasses at concerts and theatre) so am not tempted.

Yes, there is a reason Val Wilmer titled her book so: it is as serious as your life. I'm going to disagree. Artists wish that jazz or popular culture mattered as much as politics, but that doesn't make it so. Despite the fancy critical schemes we can build up, discussions or arguments about humanities seem to always boil down to tastes and preferences, relativism rules not absolute standards. Since this is how I view things, I come to the board for information on concerts or releases mostly and critical arguments are fairly low on my list, though they can be interesting when put in perspective. However, the eloquence of the argument is what is interesting, not the vehemence and certainly not the fairly boring and predictable piling on that we see so often.

Would that be Midnight in Paris? Not a particularly well regarded album but fine music, I think. The Columbia period is my absolute favourite. I like the earlier Masterpieces and Ellington Uptown, too. And not forgetting from the 1956-62 period my absolute favourite A Drum is a Woman. Columbia apparently had the tapes all ready to go to a double CD for the centennary in 99 and then the project was pulled for some reason. Will the CD ever see the light of day? I wish Sony BMG would do a proper re-issue of this material - the whole period - indeed all their Ellington holdings. In the digital download era has the possibility of this gone forever? A domestic CD would be nice, though this was released on CD in France, along with a few other titles (my favorite of the bunch being Rouse's Yeah). Anyway, there was some discussion of this already. DustyGroove has the Drum import and Amazon carries it to, including some used copies. No bonus tracks though. Since I have this on LP, I probably only would buy it again if additional tracks materialized.

Just one more quick thought, I watched Moliere's The Misanthrope on Sat. (Very good production but an incredibly cramped theatre -- my knees actually have bruises!). Anyway, if you haven't seen or read it, the hero decides he will tell everyone exactly how he feels about them -- no more polite evasions -- just the brutal truth. Well, it seems the society doesn't have much use for such unvarnished truth, and he is essentially driven mad and decides to try to run away from society. I think Moliere's underlying message is actually more subtle, however. Clearly Alceste is treated unfairly by the fops and dandies of the court and he is unsuited for the casual hypocrisy that is so prevalent in high society (then as now) but being brutally honest for its own sake is no more appealing a virtue (and we have seen how hard the self-righteous fall). Trying to keep an even keel, like his friend Philinte, recognizing the faults of society but not trying to hold himself apart (as the one honest man in a thousand) is in the end a more reasonable way of life.

I guess I hadn't thought about it a lot until the Oscar Peterson RIP thread, but it definitely seems true that there is an enormous amount of negative energy directed to those musicians who achieved mainstream success but not for the right reasons or for playing music that is/was too conventional. Or perhaps the number of positive/negative messages are balanced the emotional vehemence is certainly on the side of the detractors. I do find this unfortunate and even a little sad. There are artists I don't care for and a handful I really dislike, but I don't feel it is my life's purpose to tell other people to avoid them (not saying that you should hold your tongue or that I want to enforce civility on the board -- just saying it is unfortunate). I wonder if this resentment springs from larger problems: the fact that the world and the music world in particular has moved in a direction we don't like, that the artists we want to champion don't succeed for any number of reasons, personal frustrations creeping in. Anyway, I am taking stock of my life and am making a real effort to be more positive in my interactions with others, as well as to make concrete steps towards my goals (one of which is to spend at least as much time in creative writing as I spend here ;-) ). This isn't easy for me, as I do have such a negative outlook when I think about "the big picture" but already I am a little happier than I used to be. Back to the thread, I thought Redman's work with the SF Jazz Collective was really quite good, and I will try to check out his latest disk. I actually met him very briefly in Toronto at the Jazz Fest -- this probably was 1993 or '94 right when he had his first album, and he had a free outdoor set. He signed a program and we talked just a bit about him trying out the soprano saxophone. He seemed pretty down to earth for a guy that got his break "the wrong way" ;-) . (My smilies aren't working. I'll fix them later.)

Well, it is sad but he had a long and full life. RIP. I noticed that a while back Clarke really praised Stephen Baxter, who I think is a pretty good sf writer, and they actually collaborated on a couple of books. I wonder if it is any good. Many of these writers really tailed off significantly, particularly once half their stuff was co-written. I kind of feel that way about the late Asimov books, and don't get me started on the "New" Chronicles of Amber. Anyway, with his passing, I think all the sf figures I really cared about when I was a kid have passed (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and Zelanzy -- not saying Zelazny was necessarily in their league but he was huge for me when I was growing up). A handful I came to later are still around like Harlan Ellison, Ian MacDonald and David Brin. There are certainly some very sf good writers out there, but I just don't have the same emotional attachment and simply don't read that much sf anymore.

Broke down and pre-ordered Miles from India and Very Saxy from CD Universe (they have the best price by far on Miles from India) Some odds and ends from Amazon marketplace and eBay: Illinois Jacquet: The Soul Explosion Jack McDuff: Screaming Willis Jackson: Soul Night Alive Milt Jackson: Night Mist Nik Bartsch: Holon Toumani Diabate: The Mande Variations I should like all of these but am the most interested in hearing the last two. This weekend I hope to pick up Horace Silver and Jimmy Smith CDs from a local shop (supposed to be on hold but it doesn't always work out).

So whatcha tryin' to say, Allen?