Noj

Damn, I am sad to read this. RIP Bill.

Hey Guys, BFrank hipped me to this, thought I would check in. Thanks for the thread, TTK! The last five years have been very eventful for me. I met a girl, fell in love, got married, and now I am a father of two beautiful little girls. When my second child was on her way I was laid off from my job and couldn’t make the rent so we were forced to move into a 400 square foot converted garage. My music collection went into storage while I worked to get my professional life back together and my family into a decent living space. I have been clawing my way up in a special effects company which is very demanding of my time. The rest of my time goes to my wife and munchkins. I’m glad to report I have managed to put a nice roof over our heads. Collecting music and discussing it and researching it has been put way on the back burner for me—but I sure miss this place and all the great music knowledge that’s here! I’ll be back on when time permits. Cheers, Jon

TWO HUGE thumbs up! This and Shawshank Redemption are the only two Stephen King stories that ever amounted to shit on the big screen, while staying completely faithful to the original text. Interestingly enough, they were both short stories. I liked The Green Mile, too.

I laugh at Atomic records in Burbank and their $30 price tags on most plates. The price gouging turned me away from vinyl collecting a long time ago. My bargain spots, where I'd dig through crate after crate of junk and find $3 gems, have long since closed up shop. I've splurged on some vinyl reissues here and there, but at reasonable rates. My cap is at $20 now, and that better be for something special. $750? That record better come with a stereo system.

Thanks everyone!

20% for good service, more for excellent service, less for mediocrity. I rarely receive bad service. For some reason, hostesses do like to offer me the worst table when there are better ones available. I have an amiable air about me.

Himself was a classic in my household. Something regularly quoted. Hilarious, objectively speaking. I could probably revisit it and still laugh, separating the man from his performance.

With all the morons out there claiming the US is a "Christian" nation and that religious freedom involves the right to push one's religious agenda on others, US History testing should involve a whole lot of basic concepts of the Bill Of Rights, the Enlightenment, and the separation of church and state. I only got 25/30 on this test--but if I had been tested in 1993 I would have aced it for certain. I got a five out of a possible five on the Advanced Placement US History exam.

Thanks for the perspective, Allen. The article read as self-deprecating to me, and didn't come across as making Mr. Motian look like anything other than a musician with his mind on other things. I always figure famous folks are just exhausted by the attention so like Hot Ptah I leave them be. I did make an ass of myself fawning over Marcus Allen (NFL running back) once. I won't repeat that lameness.

We demand a playoff. And postgame speeches.

Fun read!

I use a program called iPod Access to download from my iPods. Costs about $20. However, if the files are Apple "purchased AAC" or even worse "protected AAC" files he'll need his friend's password to play them on iTunes, and that will only work if his friend hasn't maxed out the number of computers authorized to play the tracks. He'll want to make sure his iTunes is set to manually add tracks to iPod and NOT to autosync the iTunes library.

Musicians tend to have more peaks than valleys. Even an album at a time. They tend to have songs that are much more inspired and more compelling than other songs. They can have whole albums that don't do a thing for me, despite other (usually previous) albums that were entirely enthralling. There's usually a white-hot peak, where the musician catches lightning in a bottle for a spell, and then it fades out. The truly great ones are able to capture that lightning more often than others. It seems to emanate from them and electrify everyone around them, too. Some here wanted Sonny Rollins to keep catching exciting new types of lightning. Sonny, he just likes tinkering with the one he caught the first time. It makes me think of how some musicians have described feeling as though the music already exists somewhere in the universe, and they're able to tap into it, channel it through their instrument, and the music plays itself. A beautiful muse, she waits for the musician who can hear and interpret her for everyone's ears.

Kneel before iZod!

I think it would have been a more interesting BFT for everyone else had the compiler selected music that Sonny Rollins might have listened to when he was developing as an artist. He probably would have known his predecessors and been able to dive into anecdotes about interacting with them, or by luck a piece might have been something that really meant something to him... Playing him kids younger than him, who were likely influenced by Mr. Rollins himself, I don't see why he would be expected to recognize them.