(no subject)

[kamomil]

Well I went to a lady from work's birthday thingie, on the weekend. It was held north of Dundalk. Wayy out in the country. I peed in the woods, and the mosquitos took full advantage, and I now have bug bites all over my ankles. I'm just glad I didn't brush up against any poison ivy. I am most certainly glad that I didn't get sunburnt. I think if I ever end up with skin cancer, the first place it will hit is the tops of my shoulders; they are so flat under the sun, and they don't make an appearance all the time, and so are unprepared when they do get sun exposure.

I bought Ah Um, by Charlie Mingus. I listened to it on the way to Dundalk. It is pretty good. I like it. It is pretty standard type jazz, nothing shockingly dissonant, yet it is not boring either. I can't get used to the original version of Pork Pie Hat, I have listened to the Uzeb one for almost 20 years, and the timing is pretty different - the Uzeb one is draaawwwwwnnn out.

I bought Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, I have yet to crack it open cause I'm not sure about it.

I have been googling jazz people, and reading up on which "must have" CDs to have. I got the Mingus one I really wanted, but I wanted On the Corner by Miles and didn't see it in the store. Jazz is so well-documented, it was fairly easy to get reviews of several artists' material, and figure out for myself which ones I would enjoy. However for the jazz fusion stuff, I might be on my own; people tend to like older jazz stuff. I will be hunting for Thelonious Monk & Emmylou Harris next. I am told that her Daniel Lanois stuff is not to be missed.

I am *this* much closer to buying a PC. I know, Mac, but my Nokia phone only communicates with PC. Besides, I'm so used to the ones form work that I want a loverly one for my very own. I have become very proficient with DOS FTP on the work PCs, as they have no floppy or CD drives.

Heh I am at work, and I am clone-tooling out subtitles so I can use the graphic for something else. I was working on a graphic of a traffic jam, and accidentally clone-tooled out a truck along with some subtitle characters. LOL

Comments

[kamomil.livejournal.com]

The only Zappa album I have is Sheik Yerbouti, and I like the one song where he has taken a drum track from one live show, and married it to the rest of a song from a separate song & session - ha hah. In the liner notes, he says "all of the sensitive interplay between the bass and drums... never happened" ha ha! If you have different ideas about how music should go, if the end result is intriguing, well, nothing wrong with that.

I didn't know Zappa wrote charts for his band, but it makes sense. I think Uzeb, don't know if they read charts, but the end result, they sometimes play an extended melody line that sounds like a solo, but the whole band is playing the same melody, all hitting the same rhythm points dead on. It is NOT improvised, however the composition sounds like it might have stemmed from an improv session. They are using all kinds of crazy modes, not in a contrived way, and not just defaulting to the blues scale.

I went to York U for visual art, and when I did run into jazz program dudes, they were pretty snobby. I don't know if the students are reflective of the values of the music program faculty, I think Humber might be a more well-rounded music school. I am going to the jazz fest in Montreal this summer (!) and I am looking forward to it, I think that Montreal is more progressive than Toronto in terms of jazz development.

I think it's asinine to hold up a particular bunch of decades of music and say that they're the best decade of all.

Music reflects the culture of the people; going back and playing some crusty old standard the same way someone else has, is like when the medieval people copied illustrations from other books, they were somehow above trying to paint from actual real plants and people.

It's all context; what sounds too new-fangled for one person's ears, might be possibly be held up as the next generation's anthem. Kurt Cobain & Nirvana are a good case in point. They kind of went under my radar, but people 5-6 years younger consider it a pivotal point in their music. *old school jazzers take note!!*

[jeffkahl.livejournal.com]

Yeah Zappa used to audition his drummers by having them sight read something in like 15/8 or something like that and then they'd have to sightread the solo from "The Black Page" which is like drumming insanity.

[jeffkahl.livejournal.com]

I went to York U for visual art, and when I did run into jazz program dudes, they were pretty snobby. I don't know if the students are reflective of the values of the music program faculty, I think Humber might be a more well-rounded music school.

I think snobbery can exist in any school and in any faculty. I noticed when I auditioned for Humber they tended to look at anyone that isn't nothing but a seasoned chopsmeister who cut their teeth on Ted Reed's "Syncopation" and Gary Chester's "New Breed" drum instructional books like they have four heads.

I also knew someone who just recently graduated from the U of T Music Faculty with a major in jazz vocal performance. She said there was a real sense of community even amongst the earlier years. There's competition certianly but not to the point where it becomes "dog eat dog"

I am going to the jazz fest in Montreal this summer (!) and I am looking forward to it, I think that Montreal is more progressive than Toronto in terms of jazz development.

I've never been there for the Festival Du Jazz but I've heard nothing but good things about it. My favorite performances I've seen on Bravo (from previous festivals) have been Oscar Peterson from the late 70's/early 80's with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen, Buddy Rich's big band, Jean Luc Ponty with Jack DeJohnette and Keith Jarrett. I also heard they had the Funk Bros (the Motown house band that played on all of the classic Motown tunes) two years ago.