DukeCity

...Delores?

Charles Ives composed many pieces of music, but with no avenue to have them performed he simply put them in a trunk in his home. Was that music unimportant?

John Mellencamp John Cougar Mellencamp John Mellen Cougarcamp

Welcome JN! I guess we need to think more broadly about the term "organize". I would look at Cage's 4'33" and say that the organizing factor is right there in the title. The fact that Cage puts a temporal boundary on the piece creates an element of organization.

Actually, Chuck, I like the openness of your "organized sound" definition, but I have a little trouble with the "organized" part. Does it matter what the intent of the organization is? For example, a platoon of marching soldiers synchronizes the sound of thier boots to stay in step together. Is that, in an of itself, music? Or how about poetry. When spoken aloud, is it music? Or, on the other end of the organization question, is it possible to create music out of completely dis-organized sound? I don't know the musique concrete movement well enough to cite examples, but wasn't it kind of about having unorganized sound?

OK, while I'm trying to form a serious answer, I'll say: Music is whatever Stanley Crouch tells Wynton to say it is.

Eve Plum Florence Henderson Robert Reed

This list wouldn't be complete without a mention of Bill Tillman. Just ask him!

Prince was good, but I thought it was great that Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolf would do "The Prince Show" bit on that show. In '04, when Prince was releasing the "Musicology" album, he kicked off the tour at the LA Staples Center, and had a live video feed to theaters across the country. For $15 a head, my friends and I got a copy of the CD at the door, and a 'live' show. That live band was KILLIN', even with Candy Dulfer playing some alto. Nobody ever said Prince didn't know about markenting...

OT: What happens to all of the championship memorabilia that gets printed pre-game for the team that ends up losing? When the Seahawks win, where does all of that "Steelers, World Champs" stuff go? Do any pieces ever end up on the market?

Stan Smith Stan Laurel Stan Kann "The Gadget Man"

So, not to jump the gun or anything, but will she be selling individual titles, or putting them into lots?

"The Feedom Principle" has been on my bookshelf for years. I guess it's time I crack it open for a look. We'll have to hear from FFA himself, but from talking to him and other Woody alumni, there was always a pretty good amount of love and respect for "The Chopper". Maybe not the heaviest jazz player ever, but you gotta give Woody props for holding that band together for 50+ years, with a helluva lot of swingin' going on for most of it.

Fred Flintstone Barney Rubble Mr. Slate

Claud Rains Claude Debussy Claude Monet

Them's some yellow teeth!

I think the real question is staring us in the face: Who wins in the Greatest-Musical-Genius-Of-The-20th-Century-Smackdown, Kurt Cobain or Woody Shaw?

Buddy Tate Larry Tate Elizabeth Montgomery Agnes Moorhead Paul Lynde Marian Lorne

Clifford Brown James Dean Sam Kinison

For music teachers, it's much easier to teach a kid to see a black dot on a certain line, and push the corresponding button on the instrument, than it is to help the kid learn to hear what that dot represents. Then some of those students grow up and want to teach music, and ... We end up teaching kids how to "read" music without them having any basis for attaching musical meaning or context to the visual representation. Similarly, it's easier to get a jazz student to memorize the notes in chords and scales and modes than it is to get the student to 'hear' the chord changes, and have accurate internal concepts of the harmony and musical phrases. An analogy with language learning might be: A kid learns to hear, then speak his native language for years before he gets saddled with trying to read or write it. So when the kid is learning to read the words 'mouse' and 'house', those very similar looking and sounding words each have a very distinct meaning to the kid, because he (hopefully) already has some concept of the things that the written words represent.

I'm not sure about having to get pre-permission to do an arrangement, but I did hear a story about the basketball pep band at the college where I teach. Several years ago a student did an arrangement of "Chameleon". Wouldn't have been much of a problem, except there was a televised game, several seconds of the arrangement were heard over the airwaves (cable lines?), and someone on the Hancock team was listening. A fine of about $500 was levied, and the loser band director (no longer here) actually made the student pay the fine! Subsequently, the S.O.P. is for the director to get some sort of liscencing from Harry Fox for new arrangements of tunes. My guess is that the act of writing an arrangment is not a problem, but the minute you actually do anything with the arrangment (perform it publicly, sell it, record it etc.) the Man will start to take notice.

There's some research that points to the idea that our aptitude for music is basically set by the age of 9 or 10. After that, for the rest of our lives we are dealing with realizing the potential that our aptitude gives us. So each of us is a mix of aptitude and acheivement. We all know players who have to bust thier butts to make even small amount of progress as musicians (low aptitude/high achievement), and those who have incredible 'talent' or 'potential' but do little to cultivate it (high aptitude/low achievement) and everything in between. My own experience is that I had that curiosity that FreeForAll was talking about, so I had cobbled together lots of bits and pieces of musical knowledge before I got 'official' training. When I got to college, much of what was happening for me was gathering labels for things I could already hear, organizing musical materials, and developing those skills that FFA mentioned about learning how to learn.

James "Blood" Ulmer Plas Johnson Red Mitchell

OK, how about this: Let's say organissimo is doing a live show at a club in your town with, say, a $15 cover and no drink minimum (but the implicit understanding that most patrons would purchase something). In our hypothetical situation, let's also assume that you've somehow pissed off all three of the guys in the band so there's no way they're putting you on the guest list. Is it OK for you and your date to skirt the guy at the door, and stand by the bar and enjoy the show for free?

If you believe what he said in interviews, what he says in various lyrics , especially on "In Utero" tracks, and what friends said about him in interviews and via other sources, then Kurt Cobain of Nirvana qualifies for the above. Injecting 10x the lethal dose of smack for a hardcore addict into your vein and shortly thereafter blowing off half your head with a large guage shotgun is an indication of an extremely troubled psyche. Originally, Kurt was a guy who had learned how to be happy on $4 a day. Well, ok. But there are those who will tell you that death is the ultimate career move. I'm certainly no Cobain/Grunge scholar, but I can't even imagine that Cobain's icon status was entirely against his will, as per Jim's question. I guess one could assert that Cobain was a reluctant icon, or that he didn't dig it once he got there, but come on: He grew up in a world where he knew what popular music and musicians represent in our culture, and he made business decision after decision, signed agreement after agreement to push his career to where it ended up. He didn't have to make videos, and he did't have to play huge venues. He could have made a decent living playing regionally, or even nationally, in smaller concert venues and clubs and built a fan base, and expressed himself musically without becoming an icon. That his situation was made more complicated by his mental/emotional/chemical troubles is obvious. But he was still a business man, working in the music business.