kinuta

Chet rules. I keep coming back to his music again and again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazzlegends/?focuswin Legends Of Jazz on BBC radio, a talk with Lennie Niehaus.

Congrats. Works great

They should play on your pc. If so maybe you could recopy by connecting your pc to the dvd recorder. I've done this to copy Pal and US Region 1 discs into Japan region 2. The results have been excellent.

Anyone thinking of reading 'The Skull Mantra' my advice is don't bother. I couldn't read more than ten pages at a time without nodding off. Currently Henning Mankell ' The Return Of the Dancing Master '.

As Robert J said, the second one is Enduring Love . I haven't seen the film either but liked the book. I remember a film similar to the first one, I think it involved a piano or keyboard instrument that was dumped in the street at one point. If I suddenly remember the title I'll post it.

James Carter - Chasin ' The Gypsy

Today at work I played Bud Shank disc one.

Just started

Just finished

Well. that's true to a point. Kifujin is very much a written word that isn't used in daily conversation. I've never heard anyone use it so I went to 'The Oracle' (my wife) and she agrees. Goreijo is super polite and a way to talk about a persons' daughter in the third person singular. Okusama literally means wife( of another person) The usage would depend on who is speaking to whom in what situation. If you wanted to say, 'She's a real lady ', you wouldn't use any of the terms listed but would say johin na kata. If a person was talking in a shop and wanted to say 'that lady' she would say ano okyakusama If talking to a customer about another female he would say ano josei no kata. It's complex.. The problem is that in everyday speech the subject 'she' isn't used in these two situations . Kanojo ( literally she ) would be most rude and never used. If a saleman came to the door and the missus answered he would refer to her as okusama instead of anata (you.) Using anata would be very bad and a definite breach of the rules. I suppose ' lady' as in Lady Day would be simply the name plus sama. The bottom line is that there is not one word but many depending on the situation. What's this got to do with jazz ?? I'm off.

The Japanese for 'lady' is as follows- If the person is married it's 'OKUSAMA '. That is pronounced OX- AMA with a slight emphasis on the first syllable. If the person is single the it's ' OJOSAN'. That is pronounced OH- JOE -SAN with a slight emphasis on the 2nd syllable. An alternative for 'okusama' is 'GOFUJIN' pronounced GO-FOO-JIN with slight emphasis on the 2nd syllable. This is pretty formal and not used as commonly as okusama. If I were using it for your dog I would choose ' OJOSAN' as the most suitable. In Japan 'CHAN' is commonly added to the dogs name as a term of endearment. Hope this answers your question.

Jazz In A Weather Vane (V.S.O.P.) is good .

You guys are lucky you don't have ' J Pops ' as the ubiquitous popular genre is called here. Dancing girly boys and talentless cutie pie dancing girly girls. I asked a teenage girl if she really liked the cd she had just bought, her answer ' yes, they are great dancers '.

Maren ' Many a true word is said in jest '. Tokyo suffers from the so called heat sink syndrome in summer. The high day time temperatures , compounded by massive use of airconditioning mean that heat is stored in the concrete building and roads causing the phenomenom know here as tropical night. This is when the minimum night time temperature stays above 26c. This in turn causes many people to leave their air conditioners running 24 hours a day and further worsens the heat sink problem, superheating the upper atmosphere above Tokyo and producing thunder and lightning storms of amazing ferocity. Real Blade Runner stuff. Anyhow, in an attempt to try to do something about this, the govt have ordered all govt offices to set the thermostats at 28C , which many would consider pretty warm, and ordered that all male employees shall henceforth come to work in no tie and short sleeves. Private companies are being urged to follow suit. The result will probably be a huge surge in fan sales and a huge increase in traumatized office workers who can't adjust tobeing unable to hide behind a business suit and tie. Totally trivial information but it will be interesting to see what happens this summer. ps I've just noticed the Japan Times link !

Looks good http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/ascannerdarklyqt.html

After listening to his versions of ' What's New?' and ' I'll Be Seeing You' on ' Les Trinitaires ', I'm inclined to add Andrew Hill to some of the other names mentioned. Thelonious Monk for sure.

A strange coincidence. A few weeks ago I spun a few old Philly soul sides out of sheer curiosity as to how they sounded after 30 odd years and ended up really addicted. I ended up listening to almost nothing but 70's soul for about ten days. Some of it sounds just too slick, but stuck in there are some real gems. A few things I listened to - Shirley Brown Roy Ayers Little Anthony Attitudes johnny Bristol Margie Joseph Bloodstone O'Jays Brainstorm William Bell Blue Magic JR Bailey ( great ) Chilites Creative Source Chicago gangsters Gene Chandler Detroit Spinners to name a few. The O Jays and Spinners stand up very well.

I doubt blue jeans were common back then except in America. I remember buying my first pair of Levis when they first went on sale in UK around 1964. Transistors didn't exist in 1944, maybe in an experimental lab somewhere. in the late 50's in UK most radios were valve type. Gramophone players that were wound up manually existed, my grandfather had a beauty , but I don't think electricity powered models were common outside America. Maybe someone else can elaborate on that. Chemical weapons was my mistake, they were, of course , extensively used in The First World War. Overhead jets is possible but I don't think it would lessen the impact of seeing one close up, let alone getting on one. As you say, the sociological and historical changes must be completely mind boggling.

Nothing constructive but from conversations with various people who have travelled there on business, it's very, very hot and humid in summer and quite badly polluted with photo- chemical smog so it might be advisable to take some surgical masks. This comes from fellow Tokyo dwellers so it must be strikingly so for them to comment as Tokyo is notoriously obnoxious in summer with combinations of dizzying heat and humidity.

I was out for a long walk and started to make a mental list of all things these guys have never seen and are probably unaware of. Starting with tv, antibiotics, mass use of plastic, lps, record players,jets, large airports.missiles, napalm, atomic weapons, computers,nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons,pocket tissues. blue jeans,transistor radios, printed circuits, satellites. sputnik, Vanguard. Apollo Moon landings, Mars landing, after a while I started getting a headache and I hadn't even scatched the surface or got anywhere even approaching the digital era. Please feel free to add things to the endless list.

Barak did you ever see the famous Seinfeld episode titled ' The Drake' ? The gang chipped in to buy the soon to be hitched Drake and Drake-ess a giant tv but things did not work out as planned. Very funny episode.

I feel sorry for them. They would be better off staying where they are. They'll die of culture shock when they see what Japan has become.

I'd like to load up a bunch of pics of Tokyo but can't get the attachment to work anyway I try. Any pointers ?

I thought ' Meet The Parents' was very funny. DeNiro shows a real flair for deadpan humour. It appealed to my British sense of the absurd.