Chrome

Oh, and welcome to Organissimo, Paco!

Gatton could flat out play, and in a pretty wide range of styles ... most of the stuff I've heard him on is more "rockabilly-ish" or bluesy, albeit with some obvious jazz influences. Like Jeff Beck, kind of. The only disc I have of his is "Relentless," on which he teams with Joey DeFrancesco, and the disc really cooks ... although, again, it's not the "jazziest" of CDs. It does have a cool version of Wayne Shorter's "Chess Players," though. It would have been great to have heard him on a "pure" jazz disc ... unfortunately he committed suicide a number of years ago.

... and I guess that pic answers my question about last night's Brave uniforms, too.

I was at the local Wal-Mart and made an impulse purchase of ELO's early greatest hits for like $7. I'm talking "New World Record" and before, with songs like "Evil Woman," "Living Thing," "Showdown," etc. I'll admit it: I love the stuff ... any other fans?

Speaking of Braves baseball ... did anyone see their game last night? I saw about two innings, but with the sound all the way down on the TV (sleeping baby). What was up with the Brave uniforms? I guessed they were some kind of "throw-back" jerseys to honor Aaron, but they didn't look "real." I mean, they looked kind of like I remember the Braves jerseys looking back in the 70s, but not exactly right. Kind of like a PT Cruiser take on the uniforms, if you know what I mean.

That's pretty cool ... once, when I worked in a bookstore, I had a great conversation with an elderly baseball fan who has seen Walter Johnson pitch! That history stuff is one of the things I love most about baseball. Despite 1993 (and all the other strike years) and despite living in the Detroit area, I remain a big baseball fan. It's like buying jazz CDs ... I just can't stop.

I think your idea of doing a story is a great one. Re Bonds: He's still got 96 to go ... it'll be interesting to see what kind of season he has this year. I wonder if he'll be one of those guys who hangs around too long trying to break a record. And I think the Aaron game was a Monday Night Baseball telecast ... that's another blast from the past, huh? Although I love being able to see a lot more games on cable, there was something about the Monday Night ritual that I enjoyed. It seemed more special.

I can remember watching the game on a small black and white TV in the kitchen ... I was 10, and really had no idea the incredible pressure he was under from bigots. Much later, I read his autobiography, and he included some stuff from the racist hate mail he was getting at the time. It was sick. There were death threats, the whole works. Although I know I shouldn't be, I'm still surprised the MLB all-time home run leader gets so little respect nowadays. Going from the negro leagues to 755 home runs seems like it would get a little more attention.

How is that? I've read about 5 or 6 of Vollmann's books, and have mixed feelings ... I like the books from his "American dreams" novels (the exact name escapes me, but I'm talking about "The Ice-Shirt," "The Rifles," "Fathers and Crows"), but haven't been too keen on the other stuff. Also, how much is it?

Oops, sorry 'bout that!

Trumpeting Mediocrity Was Wynton Marsalis ever that good? By Fred Kaplan Posted Wednesday, April 7, 2004, at 2:17 PM PT How good is this guy? For 20 years, Wynton Marsalis has probably been the most famous living jazz musician. For the first 10 of those years, he was also among the most acclaimed. This is no longer the case; nor should it be. His latest album, The Magic Hour, is so stupefyingly mediocre—for eight songs and 62 minutes not a damn thing interesting happens—that it ought to compel a reappraisal of Marsalis' entire career. How good was this guy, ever? Expectations for The Magic Hour were very high. It's Marsalis' first jazz album in five years and his debut recording for the Blue Note label, which signed him up in 2003 after two years of negotiations following his disgruntled departure from Columbia. Bruce Lundvall, Blue Note's president, said, upon signing the deal, "I believe Wynton is on the cusp of an innovative, new, creative period musically." Blue Note has a history as the landmark label of modern jazz. Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, to name a few, all recorded for Blue Note, nourishing the "jazz tradition" to which Marsalis claims lineage. Marsalis' last several albums on Columbia were weak, even in his admirers' estimation. Many figured that on his first Blue Note album, he'd stake new ground, write daring compositions, or at least reconvene the best musicians of his past bands. Alas, no. The songs he's written for The Magic Hour are trite, and the band he's assembled is lame. The album begins with a rendition of Ellington's "Feeling of Jazz" that has no feeling, least of all for jazz. The drummer, Ali Jackson, pounds a stiff 4/4 beat; he might as well be a drum-machine. The pianist, Eric Lewis, plays the same sluggish chords over and over; he might as well be a tape-loop. Marsalis' trumpet solos are clichéd, the occasional bray subbing for emotion. If this is the feeling of jazz, Charlie Parker wouldn't have had to shoot heroin to nod out; he could have just listened to the guys on the bandstand. On one tune, "Big Fat Hen," Lewis takes a one-minute piano solo, and plays exactly the same chords that he'd been playing while accompanying Wynton. You almost wonder if the engineer made a mistake in mixing the track. These are good jazz musicians. So what is going on? Marsalis, who's now 42, is a superb trumpeter and a brilliant educator. (His schoolhouse lectures on music, which aired on PBS a few years ago, are the best of their kind since Leonard Bernstein's telecasts in the '60s.) But he has never been a great bandleader or a composer. He's written and recorded scores of compositions, but I defy anyone to hum a few. On The Magic Hour, there's a ballad called "Sophie Rose-Rosalee" that pays homage to the sorts of ballads Miles Davis played in the mid-'50s. It's nice. But compare it to the real thing or to ballads played by vast numbers of today's horn players in their 40s or younger—Dave Douglas, James Carter, David Murray, Don Byron, Marty Ehrlich, Mark Turner, or Greg Osby, to name a few—and there's no comparison: It's the difference between someone describing an emotion and someone experiencing it. Marsalis made his reputation in 1981, at age 19, as the trumpeter in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. His first album as a leader featured the rhythm section from Miles Davis' great mid-'60s band—Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams—as sidemen. On his best album of that era, Black Codes (From the Underground), he shared the front line with his brother, Branford Marsalis, a tenor saxophonist who had more adventurous jazz instincts. The album had a genuine swing, a restless rhythm, and a slick urban feel reminiscent of great classic jazz of the '50s, impressive but not yet original. For a while in the late '80s, it looked as though Wynton might be as great as his publicists claimed. His 1989 album, The Majesty of the Blues, eschewed virtuosity for a thoughtful, soulful blues. His new pianist, Marcus Roberts, whose influences ranged from Monk to gospel to Leadbelly, gave him scads of rhythmic space and played unusual chords that pushed Marsalis to explore territory he hadn't yet charted. On what might be Marsalis' best album, 1991's Thick in the South, Elvin Jones on drums and Joe Henderson on tenor sax pushed him to greater heights of passion, swing, and surprise. This was the feeling of jazz. Then things took a dreary turn. Marsalis became an institution—literally, through his directorship of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. He started to believe the absurdly extravagant liner notes that Stanley Crouch wrote for all his albums, describing each as a work of greater genius than the one before. Emulating Duke Ellington, he wrote vast symphonic works. The biggest, Blood on the Fields, won a Pulitzer (the first jazz work to do so), but bored everyone who squirmed through it. (At Avery Fisher Hall in New York, where I saw it, half the crowd left at intermission.) The conventional wisdom about Marsalis is that he brought jazz back to life. According to this view of jazz history, the '70s were a dreadful decade dominated by fusion sellouts and tuneless screechers. Then Wynton came along. He dressed clean and played to match. An awesomely versatile musician (Maurice Andre called him the greatest classical trumpeter in a generation), he returned jazz to the basics. He also gave feisty interviews, painting himself as a keeper of the jazz tradition and—to the great annoyance of many musicians and critics—castigating those who followed more commercial or experimental paths. There is something to this story line. The 1970s saw a lot of lousy, dumbed-down jazz. But by the time Marsalis came along, the air was already starting to clear. The most inventive avant-gardists had begun to revive the jazz tradition, in their individual ways while Wynton was still in high school. In 1974, alto saxophonist Anthony Braxton put out a two-volume album of standards called In the Tradition. Arthur Blythe made an album of the same title, on Columbia, in 1979. The same year, Chico Freeman recorded Spirit Sensitive, a gorgeous album of standards in the vein of early '60s Coltrane. In 1980, still pre-Wynton, Sun Ra made Sunrise in Different Dimensions, which included inspired rearrangements of Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, and Jelly Roll Morton. Out of this trend grew an informal movement, which some dubbed "neoclassicism." It consisted of avant-garde musicians who spent the '70s developing their own styles and then applied them to traditional forms, seeking an expressive synthesis of tradition and innovation. By contrast, Marsalis found his voice in a study (and imitation) of those historical forms and, except for that brief period in the late '80s, never developed an individual style. Instead, he developed an ideology of jazz (his notion of tradition was "jazz"; others' notions were not jazz). And, as with all ideologies, his music gradually calcified. This was the true nature of the intense clash that erupted between Marsalis and more progressive jazz musicians (and critics) in the early '80s. Marsalis and his mentor, Stanley Crouch, claimed that this was a debate between the keepers and the betrayers of the flame. Instead, it was an argument between those who saw jazz as a historical body of work to be preserved and those who saw it as a living, evolving art. This may explain why The Magic Hour, possibly the worst album of Marsalis' long career, sounds like a dusty museum exhibition, a rundown pocket watch. Marsalis has always been at his best when he plays with peers or betters—those either more accomplished or free-wheeling—who push him beyond his usual range. Listen to his solo, 10 years ago, on Shirley Horn's You Won't Forget Me, or, more recently, on Ted Nash's Still Evolved: bristling with spunk, blues, wit, swing, passion. The man can play when his bandmates egg him on. Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate

I know there are some fans here ... this is from www.dkt-mc5.com via the Disinfo site: April 1, 2004 An Open Letter from Wayne Kramer Re: Future/Now Films & Rebecca Derminer (Tyner) There have been vicious attacks directed at me in the last few days and I will tell you why I am protecting my rights -- and those of the MC5 -- from Future/Now Films. Last month Dave Thomas, Laurel Legler and Rebecca Derminer (Tyner) entered a motion in court to strip me of my MC5 songs. Now, I must now defend myself both in federal court and in the court of public opinion. This is an effort on their part to coerce me to relinquish my rights to my work and my story. Up to the day I was served with the court papers, I held out hope that they would do the right thing. They are doing this to me solely because I insisted they honor an agreement that was made between them and me at the start of this movie. This is a great disappointment for all of us who worked so hard supporting a film we all believed in. Dave Thomas and Laurel Legler should be explaining their actions to all of you. They are at the core of these attacks and have enlisted many, including Rebecca Derminer (Tyner), to help them. For people who throw the word “righteous” around a lot, they should know that it means right thinking and right conduct. They have demonstrated neither. Around 1996, Dave Thomas and Laurel Legler approached me. They wanted to make a film about the MC5. They said my participation was vital. They also said they had never made a full-length film before. I told them I would assist in whatever way I could under one condition: That I would be the music producer for the film and that I would share in any profits from my story. They assured me, without hesitation, that we had an agreement. We could both benefit from the fruits of our efforts. I would do the music and they would get their movie made. In 1997 I worked with them in Chicago filming in Lincoln Park. The seven-minute trailer-with my interview-was completed and it won them the Roy W. Dean Film Grant award. Through the whole of 1998 and 1999, our office arranged vital interviews for the documentary with people who had never agreed to be interviewed on camera about the MC5. These interviews were granted on the basis of my vouching for the filmmakers. By fall 1999, I came to Detroit to be interviewed at length for the documentary. These interviews proved to be the backbone narrative for the entire film. I worked hard on the interviews and was committed to telling the story as honestly as I could: The good and the bad. We moved ahead with our mutual plans for a companion soundtrack album with some great bands covering MC5 songs. Laurel Legler encouraged us to go into the marketplace to find a home for the soundtrack. We had commitments and even recorded tracks from major artists. Laurel Legler introduced us to third parties as the "music people" on the film. She sent us recommendations for our soundtrack project. We acquired distribution offers from credible music business companies. We even wrote a letter for Dave Thomas and Laurel Legler to their bank illustrating the nature of our agreement so that they could ask for money to get the film produced. We endorsed their project to many companies here on the West Coast, including Warner-Chappell Music Publishing. We attended the initial meetings with Warner-Chappell so that, as prospective partners, Warner/Chappell could see that I was in support of the project. I was referred to during these meetings as the "music producer." We were making great progress and we had substantial offers on the table. After working with Dave and Laurel for four years bringing the film into production, we felt it was well past time to contract our agreement. We wanted what we had agreed on in the beginning of our work together. I made it clear to Dave Thomas that I had created my own job on the film and that we didn't want what was theirs, only what we had worked for ourselves. I didn't want their money, or their credit. In fact, we were creating income for Future/Now Films and their investors and the other members of the band and the widows, whose support we had also encouraged. Dave Thomas refused to discuss this with me. In 2001, after much prodding, Dave and Laurel showed us 20 minutes of the film and it was clear that they had eliminated me from the music production work. We saw 20 minutes of a film with the music finished. I was extremely disappointed. Not by what they had done with the music, but that I had been lied to and used. We wanted answers. The more we reached out, the more they avoided us. I signed their partnership agreement. Their lawyers told us that their agreement was not binding until I also signed an image and publicity release that I found to be egregious. I have not signed the release/waiver. It's excessive. They got what they wanted from me and kicked me to the curb without even a mention of our original agreement. I knew it was binding. I did business based upon it. I committed myself, and all my resources to their film. It was my work and it's the story of my youth. It's also my music. And apparently, it was my mistake in trusting them. By April 2002, with the music work completed without my participation and all discussion of the accompanying soundtrack unresolved, the film was screened in Chicago. I was asked to attend, still with no explanation offered as to why my job was taken from me. Later, Dave told us that they would not be meeting with us to discuss our outstanding business. We considered withdrawing our endorsement. We discussed it with Dennis Thompson and Michael Davis. We called the investors. We reached out to Dave and Laurel and their attorneys--personally and through our attorneys--by telephone, fax, email and by letter and they ignored our attempts to resolve matters. Warner-Chappell asked us if matters had been resolved. They had not, but we still did not stand in the way of F/NF's efforts to find distribution for the film. Perhaps there was still hope for resolution? We had worked hard on it and spent a great deal of our own money. We agreed to a festival-only license. Warner/Chappell issued a one year-limited gratis license to the filmmakers, which expired in early Fall 2003. They continued to screen the film after the license expired. Still, we remained open-minded. We even offered them the job as the production company on our own performance DVD and event in London last year and we offered--as an olive branch--to host a screening of their film to students in London. To all of this we have been denied consideration. As a thank you, they bullied and threatened our partners on the project. At one point later, Dave Thomas called me and asked what I wanted. Again I gave him my request that he honor our original agreement. He refused. We requested that W/C withhold a license to the music. They honored the request of Dennis Thompson, Michael Davis and me. They continue to do so. F/NF continues to screen the unlicensed film in cities across the country for profit, making it, officially, a bootleg film. The soundtrack album is lost forever and I am being demonized for demanding what was promised to me from the beginning. Am I expected to throw away the rights to my music and my story because the filmmakers have made a "righteous" movie about a "righteous" band? Horseshit. I did all that was asked of me, and much more. All we expected was an opportunity to earn a living doing what could be done with my own music and my own story. If my partners in the MC5 and the widows and friends wanted to tell their story and contribute to this film for their own reasons, or-not, that's perfectly fine with me. I have no quarrel with them. But that is not the reason I became involved. I wanted to work. That's all I ever wanted. I didn't want anyone to give me anything. I do music for film and television for a living. I was willing and able to generate my own paycheck, but Dave Thomas and Laurel Legler took that away from me. Even after they assured us time and again that we were their full partners. W/C is protecting their copyrights, as is their legal responsibility. Their attorneys have sent a cease-and-desist letter to all involved with Future/Now Films, who have brought this upon themselves. Future/Now Films have responded to my right to protect my body of work and my image by filing a motion against me in federal bankruptcy court. They are attempting to blackmail me into agreeing to their license. It's an onerous maneuver. They hold a metaphorical gun to my head and then ask if I'm willing to help them with their "license problems." They have enlisted Rebecca Derminer (Tyner) as their emotional enforcer. She has co-signed their motion. They reveal their contempt for me by having their attorney call with the promise that they want to "make Wayne a star." As if I'm a naïve teenager with rock star fantasy. Dave Thomas has told a professional associate that they will "take Wayne's publishing from him in 30 days." I have also been told that they will "write a book called I Killed Wayne Kramer," and that they are "taking this to the press. We will make Wayne Kramer look like a fucking idiot, the asshole that he is" is soon to begin. This is ugly stuff coming from folks who "sob to journalists" over their troubles. Where is your dignity? Because I required them to be honorable in their dealings with me, and after years of restraint, I've had enough. We have waited a long time to work this out. We have been patient. They've had years to talk to me. I am not an unreasonable man. I was willing to talk right up to the day I was served with their motion to invade my personal life. Now there is nothing in this for me but the expense of defending myself in court and the use of my time writing essays like this one. I don't need their film to make my life complete. I have a good life. I have been telling the story of the MC5 all my life. It belongs to me and my partners in the band, not Future/Now Films. Sadly, my relationship with Rebecca Derminer (Tyner) and her family, that I have worked so hard to mend since Rob's death, has been utterly destroyed. I'm no saint. I've been to prison, I've been to skid row, I've been homeless and in rehab and have known some shady characters in my day, but rarely have I come across people whose actions have been as cowardly, unprincipled, duplicitous and fundamentally dishonest as Dave Thomas, Laurel Legler and their attorneys Bob Labate and Peter Strand. Wayne Kramer

Clifford Brown/Max Roach

Thanks, Michael.

I can recommend Kindermusik for kids, especially younger ones. I started my daughter at a local Kindermusik when she was 18 months old and the results have been great. She's now 11 and quite accomplished on the piano, having played a marvelous rendition of "Moondance" at a recent recital. She can also bring home instruments from her regular school's music class and quite quickly learn to pick out tunes on those as well (violin, recorder, now trombone). The Kindermusik stuff incorporates a lot of basic music theory into play time, and the parents attend classes with the kids until the kids are about 4. My younger girls are attending Kindermusik classes now. We look at it as musically enhanced nursery school. Plus, I think it helps them naturally develop a desire to learn and play an instrument. Also, after Kindermusik, my eldest daughter started private lessons with just a keyboard (for both space and $$ reasons). When it came time for her to advance beyond this, we talked to her teacher to get advice on what to do next, given our constraints. Ended up with a nice electric piano that seems to be doing the job so far.

My daughter brought home a slide trombone yesterday from her music class* ... it was the first time I got to really see one in person. My question: how do you know what note you're playing on the thing? I mean, there don't seem to be any "stops" or anything on the slide ... is it just by ear? If you want to play, for example, a C, how do you know how far out (or in?) to hold the slide? (They passed out the instruments before starting to teach the kids, so she doesn't know yet either. We just all goofed around with it last night ... my younger girls, 4 and 2, were even able to get a sound out of it! It was a riot.)

Latest Victoria's Secret model: Bob Dylan Singer appearing in new series of ads Tuesday, April 6, 2004 Posted: 9:54 AM EDT (1354 GMT) NEW YORK (AP) -- New, from Victoria's Secret: the MiracleBob? Bob Dylan appears in a new series of commercials for Victoria's Secret, his grizzled face intercut with shots of model Adriana Lima cavorting through Venice in a bra, panties and spike heels. Don't worry. The 62-year-old Dylan keeps his clothes on. Dylan's song "Love Sick," from his Grammy-winning 1997 album "Time Out of Mind," provides the musical backdrop for the spot, which airs in 15-, 30- and 60-second versions. It promotes a new line of lingerie, the "Angels" collection -- which explains the wings on Lima's back as she prances across a palazzo near a Venetian canal. "It's weird," said New York disc jockey Dennis Elsas, who's played Dylan music for three decades. "I would be hesitant to say it's awful or wonderful. It's just strange." The commercials began airing a week ago, and will run for the next two weeks, said Ed Razek, chief creative officer for Victoria's Secret. The company experienced an immediate uptick in sales once the spots ran, he said. Dylan was not a hard sell when approached about the campaign, Razek said. The company already had decided to use the song when its corporate boss, Les Wexner, suggested inviting Dylan himself. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer quickly agreed, although no one's quite sure why. "I can't speculate to his reasons, I never talked to him about why he decided to come to the party, but he did," Razek said. "He's iconic, a living legend." Dylan's spokesman did not return messages for comment about the campaign. Little backlash It's the first time in his 40-plus years as an international star that Dylan has appeared in an ad campaign, although his "The Times They Are a Changin' " was used in a Bank of Montreal commercial in 1996. Back then, Dylan was ripped for selling out. His association with ladies in lingerie, as opposed to some corporate entity, failed to produce much antipathy -- particularly in an era where Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel and Sting recently licensed songs for commercials. But the strange mingling of Dylan and decolletage prompted plenty of comment, from a New York sports writer's Sunday column to various Internet chat rooms. "On first glance, this is wrong on so many levels, but after viewing it I really admire Bob Dylan," wrote one Dylan fan in a chat room. "I only hope that when I reach Dylan's age someone approaches me to ask if I would like to be paid to fly to Venice and do a commercial with several supermodels." Once you reach that level of acceptance, as Elsas observed, the Dylan spots don't seem so bad. "What would you rather have Bob Dylan selling, ladies' underwear or cat food?" Elsas asked.

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult MC 900 Ft. Jesus Del tha Funkee Homosapien The Crucifucks

Thanks for the reply, B3-er. I remember when I couldn't log on here for a day or two and I went into some kind of horrible withdrawal. The idea of Organissimo being shut down for good would really be too much to bear!

Not to turn this into the Joan Osborne thread, but her cover CD ("How sweet it is") is absolutely fantastic.

Kind of related to the "Songs that make you feel good" thread ... for me, there are some songs where just hearing the first couple of notes puts a smile on my face. It goes beyond just recognizing the song and then mentally saying, "Oh, yeah, it's 'Night in Tunisia,' I love that" ... it's more like ... well, I guess I'm metaphored out right now. Anyway, for me it's hearing Bobbie Timmons start up "Moanin'."

In a recent thread, one of our kind moderators mentioned something about people using up a lot of bandwidth by cutting/pasting huge articles, etc., in the political forums. While I get a great deal of entertainment out of those forums, if they are in any way impinging on the rest of the site somehow (I don't really know what "using up bandwidth" means), I think we should reconsider getting rid of them.

The legal ones include Buying books Buying CDs "Conjugal relations" ... which, of course, eventually leads to: Spoiling my kids Blue M&M's (the rice krispies ones) Wheat beers

The version of "Love is a many splendored thing" on Clifford Brown/Max Roach's "At Basin Street."

If true, this is just so nuts ... I would think that a significant part of the audience for BN discs is going to respond just like AfricaBrass ... I know I won't buy any of the copy-protected discs. Seems like a recipe for disaster ... I'm going to have to start stocking up now.