not even a person in the morning, as Greg Brown says. Workshop with the Sponsor today, woke up feeling bound to go, despite misgivings due to the dwindling yet still lingering clutches of the crud. It's amazing to me how quickly these saturdays (the workshp is one saturday a month) come flying around. I have to double check just about every month, often thinking the same though: "the third saturday has to be next week, not this."
Which is not to say. What? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for these workshops. Not to say that.
Poker last night: up 11 dollars, ended up down 4.50. Roller coaster. The Santa Fe poker variations will some day be fully explicated herein. For now, I run late.
Workshop today: step 10.
where I am: a plaintive rendition of the serenity prayer.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
astro's just add water soul snapshots
It's Thursday, and that means "long term transits" are available for free from astro.
Transit 1:
A spiritual cast ***
Valid during many months: During this time your relationships take on a spiritual cast, and you are much more inclined to idealize the people you meet. If a lover comes into your life at this time, the relationship will be so romanticized that it will be in great danger when you discover that the other person is not as perfect as you thought. Overidealization in any relationship is a danger to be watched for with this influence.
There is also a strong tendency to get caught up in an ideal philosophy, a spiritualized world view that is so abstract and removed from the real world that you are neither able nor willing to function here. You may have a strong desire to escape and withdraw from the world, which can be useful in some cases. If you are aware of this tendency and know that it is temporary, you can make positive use of it. There are times when it is important to go off by yourself and meditate upon the meaning of your life and what you are doing with it. The only problem is that you probably cannot go off for the whole duration of this influence, because it usually lasts more than a year. But for part of the time this might be a desirable plan of action.
A spiritual teacher or guide figure may enter your life at this time, and regardless of his or her personal merits you are likely to learn something valuable from the encounter. That does not mean that you should take everything you are told at face value. After this influence has passed, you will be able to reevaluate what you have learned in the light of your own intelligence and experience. At this time your ego drives are rather low, which makes you less interested in questioning what someone tells you. You reflect very strongly on your own failures and inadequacies, not destructively, but with the aim of improving yourself.
Your relationships are characterized by increased empathy and spiritual understanding of other people's situations and needs.
Transit 2:
Out of the commonplace ***
Valid during many months: This influence emphasizes the creative and romantic aspects of your life. It can bring a new relationship or deepen an old one. A new one that comes at this time will be notable for the strength of the feelings involved. It could hardly be described as casual. There is a compulsive quality about the energies that drive you and your partner together, but this is not at all negative. It will merely seem to both of you that this relationship was inevitable, and you will both find that it is a learning experience of the best possible kind. You will learn a great deal about the energies within each of you that are at work in a relationship. You may discover that love is less conscious and that you act much more from blind compulsion than you realized. But this realization is the first step toward becoming conscious of your feelings.
Your existing relationships will also enter a period of creative change. Your feelings are stronger now, and again you will both learn more about the way you operate in the relationship.
Your creative energies will be aroused and if you are in any way artistic, you will be able to put deep, feeling energy into your creations as never before. Others will recognize the intensity that has gone into your work, for which you may very well receive considerable recognition.
Art and love will have one element in common during this time; that is, the experience of them will transport you out of the commonplace into the extraordinary, for that is what you are seeking. Art and love should have a considerable impact on your life now and affect your future for many years to come.
Transit selected for today (by user):
Pluto Trine VenusPlutoTrineVenus
activity period from middle of February 2005 until beginning of December 2006.
Transit 3:
Self-defense *
Valid during several weeks: Past behavior patterns that have become completely unconscious now become active and come into play without your knowing it. Your efforts at self-assertion are undermined by these behavior patterns that you are not even aware of. And unfortunately the people who are alienated by these actions probably will not come out and say so, but will work behind the scenes to block your efforts. The only way you can counter this effect is to become completely conscious of yourself and these little self-defeating acts. If you feel emotionally upset as you often will during this time, refrain from any kind of significant confrontation with others. Instead, confront yourself. It is best at this time to work alone as much as possible.
Transit selected for today (by user):
Mars in the 12th HouseMars 12
activity period from end of August 2006 until beginning of October 2006.
As always, we take astro's readymade mantic proclamations with a grain of salt.
Transit 1:
A spiritual cast ***
Valid during many months: During this time your relationships take on a spiritual cast, and you are much more inclined to idealize the people you meet. If a lover comes into your life at this time, the relationship will be so romanticized that it will be in great danger when you discover that the other person is not as perfect as you thought. Overidealization in any relationship is a danger to be watched for with this influence.
There is also a strong tendency to get caught up in an ideal philosophy, a spiritualized world view that is so abstract and removed from the real world that you are neither able nor willing to function here. You may have a strong desire to escape and withdraw from the world, which can be useful in some cases. If you are aware of this tendency and know that it is temporary, you can make positive use of it. There are times when it is important to go off by yourself and meditate upon the meaning of your life and what you are doing with it. The only problem is that you probably cannot go off for the whole duration of this influence, because it usually lasts more than a year. But for part of the time this might be a desirable plan of action.
A spiritual teacher or guide figure may enter your life at this time, and regardless of his or her personal merits you are likely to learn something valuable from the encounter. That does not mean that you should take everything you are told at face value. After this influence has passed, you will be able to reevaluate what you have learned in the light of your own intelligence and experience. At this time your ego drives are rather low, which makes you less interested in questioning what someone tells you. You reflect very strongly on your own failures and inadequacies, not destructively, but with the aim of improving yourself.
Your relationships are characterized by increased empathy and spiritual understanding of other people's situations and needs.
Transit 2:
Out of the commonplace ***
Valid during many months: This influence emphasizes the creative and romantic aspects of your life. It can bring a new relationship or deepen an old one. A new one that comes at this time will be notable for the strength of the feelings involved. It could hardly be described as casual. There is a compulsive quality about the energies that drive you and your partner together, but this is not at all negative. It will merely seem to both of you that this relationship was inevitable, and you will both find that it is a learning experience of the best possible kind. You will learn a great deal about the energies within each of you that are at work in a relationship. You may discover that love is less conscious and that you act much more from blind compulsion than you realized. But this realization is the first step toward becoming conscious of your feelings.
Your existing relationships will also enter a period of creative change. Your feelings are stronger now, and again you will both learn more about the way you operate in the relationship.
Your creative energies will be aroused and if you are in any way artistic, you will be able to put deep, feeling energy into your creations as never before. Others will recognize the intensity that has gone into your work, for which you may very well receive considerable recognition.
Art and love will have one element in common during this time; that is, the experience of them will transport you out of the commonplace into the extraordinary, for that is what you are seeking. Art and love should have a considerable impact on your life now and affect your future for many years to come.
Transit selected for today (by user):
Pluto Trine VenusPlutoTrineVenus
activity period from middle of February 2005 until beginning of December 2006.
Transit 3:
Self-defense *
Valid during several weeks: Past behavior patterns that have become completely unconscious now become active and come into play without your knowing it. Your efforts at self-assertion are undermined by these behavior patterns that you are not even aware of. And unfortunately the people who are alienated by these actions probably will not come out and say so, but will work behind the scenes to block your efforts. The only way you can counter this effect is to become completely conscious of yourself and these little self-defeating acts. If you feel emotionally upset as you often will during this time, refrain from any kind of significant confrontation with others. Instead, confront yourself. It is best at this time to work alone as much as possible.
Transit selected for today (by user):
Mars in the 12th HouseMars 12
activity period from end of August 2006 until beginning of October 2006.
As always, we take astro's readymade mantic proclamations with a grain of salt.
sick as a dawg
Went to bed at 4:30 yesterday afternoon and woke up this morning at 7:30. If my math's right that's 15 hours of sleep.
Here's a post I sent to the St. John's College Alumni Mailing List, of which I have been a member since 1994: (The un-narrator is making me cut and paste it here...)
Hatch just got pretty much washed down to the Gulf, I wonder where
they were in their harvest? It's been very wet and stormy around here
for more days than usual.
In other chile news, a collective of growers from Chimayo continue in
their legal struggles over trademarks and preservation.
In news of the strange thoughts that go through my mind at 11:00 at
night in the local Albertson's:
This can't go on. It's unsustainable and revving completely out of
control. Shelf after shelf, aisle after aisle, inks, dyes, plastics,
cardboard, sucrose, fructose, corn starch, hydrogenated this and that,
processed, packaged, brightly colored hardly edible swill. Everything
for sale either candy or salt. Forty different "choices" for tortilla
chips, a hundred hundred toothpastes, crowning endless canyons of
distance foods, orange juice from three continents, cheap prewashed
mixed greens in a bag from Salinas that make one wonder "who
fertilized, pesticided, picked and washed?" 18-wheelers on the forlorn
unwinding interstates of America, hauling pallets of strawberries from
Argentina, trains carrying shipping containers through the
owl-and-whiptail dawn of the Mojave and the containers from a barge in
Long Beach, loaded in Taiwan, each container stacked with plastic forks, 10% post-consumer recycled paper napkins, discount mouthwash, the panoply of deodorant and antiperspirant and deodorant/antiperspirant, antibacterial hand soaps, toothpicks (from the soft woods of the rainforests of equatorial Indonesia), tampons,sanitary pads, juice drinks, nail clippers, disposable razors, tender baby squash from Ecuador, socks three pair to a pack knee high and nylon, canned clams, oysters, tuna, salmon, crab, scallops each pound a memorial to roughly 100 pounds of other sea life exterminated, endless rivers of juice, of syrup, of cooking oil, of car parts and paper and batteries (lithium are the longest lasting, innards mined strip-wise) and plastic cups and lawn chairs and mops, brooms,dustpans, garbage bags, and toxic cleaners, degreasers, disinfectants and.
For a few moments I could not move, under those manic cheery light. How have we become used to this? Inevitably, to what slavering, rabid desperate vicious animals will we be reduced when it crashes up against the necessary limits that it absolutely must crash up against?
My Johnny friends largely didn't want to hear my apocalyptic rant. Funny how it is sometimes: we see something as if it's crystal clear, express it, only to find that for others things just aren't that way at all.
The un-narrator also reminds me that "brotherly and harmonious action" ought to be "brotherly and sisterly harmonious action." Except that an exact quote of BobBill's text don't read that way.
Just the way the chapter heading isn't "To Significant Others" but "To The Wives."
Time passes.
Writing a Pick for a reading of a play featuring Ed Asner. He lives here, yet Gene Hackman keeps getting voted Best Local Celebrity. Asner's good for way more fun, the way we see it.
Here's a post I sent to the St. John's College Alumni Mailing List, of which I have been a member since 1994: (The un-narrator is making me cut and paste it here...)
Hatch just got pretty much washed down to the Gulf, I wonder where
they were in their harvest? It's been very wet and stormy around here
for more days than usual.
In other chile news, a collective of growers from Chimayo continue in
their legal struggles over trademarks and preservation.
In news of the strange thoughts that go through my mind at 11:00 at
night in the local Albertson's:
This can't go on. It's unsustainable and revving completely out of
control. Shelf after shelf, aisle after aisle, inks, dyes, plastics,
cardboard, sucrose, fructose, corn starch, hydrogenated this and that,
processed, packaged, brightly colored hardly edible swill. Everything
for sale either candy or salt. Forty different "choices" for tortilla
chips, a hundred hundred toothpastes, crowning endless canyons of
distance foods, orange juice from three continents, cheap prewashed
mixed greens in a bag from Salinas that make one wonder "who
fertilized, pesticided, picked and washed?" 18-wheelers on the forlorn
unwinding interstates of America, hauling pallets of strawberries from
Argentina, trains carrying shipping containers through the
owl-and-whiptail dawn of the Mojave and the containers from a barge in
Long Beach, loaded in Taiwan, each container stacked with plastic forks, 10% post-consumer recycled paper napkins, discount mouthwash, the panoply of deodorant and antiperspirant and deodorant/antiperspirant, antibacterial hand soaps, toothpicks (from the soft woods of the rainforests of equatorial Indonesia), tampons,sanitary pads, juice drinks, nail clippers, disposable razors, tender baby squash from Ecuador, socks three pair to a pack knee high and nylon, canned clams, oysters, tuna, salmon, crab, scallops each pound a memorial to roughly 100 pounds of other sea life exterminated, endless rivers of juice, of syrup, of cooking oil, of car parts and paper and batteries (lithium are the longest lasting, innards mined strip-wise) and plastic cups and lawn chairs and mops, brooms,dustpans, garbage bags, and toxic cleaners, degreasers, disinfectants and.
For a few moments I could not move, under those manic cheery light. How have we become used to this? Inevitably, to what slavering, rabid desperate vicious animals will we be reduced when it crashes up against the necessary limits that it absolutely must crash up against?
My Johnny friends largely didn't want to hear my apocalyptic rant. Funny how it is sometimes: we see something as if it's crystal clear, express it, only to find that for others things just aren't that way at all.
The un-narrator also reminds me that "brotherly and harmonious action" ought to be "brotherly and sisterly harmonious action." Except that an exact quote of BobBill's text don't read that way.
Just the way the chapter heading isn't "To Significant Others" but "To The Wives."
Time passes.
Writing a Pick for a reading of a play featuring Ed Asner. He lives here, yet Gene Hackman keeps getting voted Best Local Celebrity. Asner's good for way more fun, the way we see it.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
12 steps are not the steps
Back from my home group meeting, Tuesday night Downtown Group, a small affair usually, and not so prone to some of the more formulaic AA Big Book rote approach. Some shared that the 12 Steps are "instructions" for maintaining conscious contact with a Higher Power. No, no, no. Well, if it seems to work for you to think that way fine, what do I know? The way the truth seems to me, there are no instructions, no road map, no magic bullet or magic formula or set of right actions or thoughts. If we could figure it out and then get it right, it wouldn't be God. Saying the 12 Steps are a set of instructions suggests two things: if we follow them "correctly" we'll stay sober, and if we drink again, we must have done something "wrong." Nothing seems further from the Spirit of the program than these eventual conclusions. Reminders, maybe. Tools for spiritual growth, possibly. Instructions? Nope.
Step 1 is where this repeated attempt to latch onto identities and control strategies really goes out the window. I don't want God in a box and I don't want some sort of ritualized and control/fear-based reduction of a spiritual experience. The "common solution" that we can all absolutely agree on and join in brotherly and harmonious action is a mystery, a point without a part, something ineffable that we only talk around or about.
Control based sobriety has some common features: "I was such an asshole before I got sober and now I'm a good person." That's one of the most common. I'll be observing others. But certainly "Work the steps as a guarantee that you'll stay sober" is another one.
Step 1 is where this repeated attempt to latch onto identities and control strategies really goes out the window. I don't want God in a box and I don't want some sort of ritualized and control/fear-based reduction of a spiritual experience. The "common solution" that we can all absolutely agree on and join in brotherly and harmonious action is a mystery, a point without a part, something ineffable that we only talk around or about.
Control based sobriety has some common features: "I was such an asshole before I got sober and now I'm a good person." That's one of the most common. I'll be observing others. But certainly "Work the steps as a guarantee that you'll stay sober" is another one.
change of the century
One of those modest titles that Ornette Coleman used, somewhere between This is Our Music and The Shape of Jazz to Come. I don't have the chronological order memorized, but anyway check out Ornette Coleman and Prime Time (bern nix, charlie ellerbee, shannon jackson, denardo coleman, jamaaladeen tacuma) from a Saturday Night Live performance in 1979. Introduced by Milton Berle, of all people. They perform OC's Times Square. Check it out as another reminder that OC releases his first CD in ten years today.
For several months I've been filling in at the Santa Fe Reporter doing the movie pages. Today's the second day I'm training the new movie person. (If you want to read some of the finest movie reviews anywhere, visit The Santa Fe Reporter and look for movie reviews published before June of this year....) Opera projects (see sidebar) start up in a couple of weeks. I sit in for the arts and culture editor at the Reporter later this week. One drum student. No paying gigs on the horizon. This has been my work life since getting sober and stepping out of a 20 year secondary school teaching career. I don't have any idea how to do it.
Yet I am in fact doing it. Don't ask how, just yet.
A few other rare and wonderful youtube discoveries from last night:
Booker Little with Max Roach, Ray Draper, George Coleman et al
Booker Little, same gig, doing Dameron's The Scene is Clean
A Classic Buddy Rich Solo, unmusical but a real drum lesson
Max Roach, doing his Hi Hat tribute to Jo Jones, elegant and fierce as always
Last Exit playing some smooth jazz
There will undoubtedly be more links, watch this space.
For several months I've been filling in at the Santa Fe Reporter doing the movie pages. Today's the second day I'm training the new movie person. (If you want to read some of the finest movie reviews anywhere, visit The Santa Fe Reporter and look for movie reviews published before June of this year....) Opera projects (see sidebar) start up in a couple of weeks. I sit in for the arts and culture editor at the Reporter later this week. One drum student. No paying gigs on the horizon. This has been my work life since getting sober and stepping out of a 20 year secondary school teaching career. I don't have any idea how to do it.
Yet I am in fact doing it. Don't ask how, just yet.
A few other rare and wonderful youtube discoveries from last night:
Booker Little with Max Roach, Ray Draper, George Coleman et al
Booker Little, same gig, doing Dameron's The Scene is Clean
A Classic Buddy Rich Solo, unmusical but a real drum lesson
Max Roach, doing his Hi Hat tribute to Jo Jones, elegant and fierce as always
Last Exit playing some smooth jazz
There will undoubtedly be more links, watch this space.
Monday, September 11, 2006
aspirations
as in literally waking up in the middle of the night with half-digested linguine from Fatso's rising in my gorge. Very pleasant. Fatso's is Santa Fe's answer to the kind of Italian food you can get in South Philly or the North End of Boston or the right neighborhoods in Baltimore and Brooklyn. Huge portions, laden with cheese, clams, sauce, the whole deal. Problem is twofold: if you aren't in digestive shape for the onslaught, it's rich. Also, about a third of a single order makes for a meal, so whatever digestive issues you might be having are almost guaranteed to unfold over several days. You can't just throw the leftovers away, they're too good. I noticed that Fatso's now has an "NSF" column for many menu items, standing for "Not So Fat." Maybe I'll give that a try next time.
Recovery stands poised between what worked for the first couple of years and isn't completely sitting right anymore (like the linguine) and something new and mysterious. I advocated for pushing forward to 4th step work last week with The Sponsor, and of course haven't done a smidgen of writing on it whatsoever since then. Today marks exactly 29 months of sobriety.
Radio show this week: Fall Fundraiser for KSFR. Should I play "friendly" music or Braxton/Taylor/Coleman with the voiceover: "I will keep playing this until we get our pledge goal...."
Several amazing finds on YouTube last night by simply entering a musician's name in the search box. Video of Ornette from 1974 with Blood Ulmer, Billy Higgins, Sirone, for an Italian TV show. Very strange and transitional sounding, yet another version of Theme from a Symphony. A strained quality to the proceedings. Then: CT from the One Night with Blue Note tribute video, Braxton playing Impressions, Mahavishnu Orchestra in a bizarre BBC television broadcast, chopping their way through Noonward Race (with obvious petulance and ill humor on the part of Jan Hammer who seems particularly frustrated with Billy Cobham).
Destination-out supplies great South African jazz with Brotherhood of the Breath-- yet again they offer something I've not heard before.
Recovery stands poised between what worked for the first couple of years and isn't completely sitting right anymore (like the linguine) and something new and mysterious. I advocated for pushing forward to 4th step work last week with The Sponsor, and of course haven't done a smidgen of writing on it whatsoever since then. Today marks exactly 29 months of sobriety.
Radio show this week: Fall Fundraiser for KSFR. Should I play "friendly" music or Braxton/Taylor/Coleman with the voiceover: "I will keep playing this until we get our pledge goal...."
Several amazing finds on YouTube last night by simply entering a musician's name in the search box. Video of Ornette from 1974 with Blood Ulmer, Billy Higgins, Sirone, for an Italian TV show. Very strange and transitional sounding, yet another version of Theme from a Symphony. A strained quality to the proceedings. Then: CT from the One Night with Blue Note tribute video, Braxton playing Impressions, Mahavishnu Orchestra in a bizarre BBC television broadcast, chopping their way through Noonward Race (with obvious petulance and ill humor on the part of Jan Hammer who seems particularly frustrated with Billy Cobham).
Destination-out supplies great South African jazz with Brotherhood of the Breath-- yet again they offer something I've not heard before.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
cactus photos courtesy of the unreliable narrator
Another love of mine besides music: cacti. The Unreliable Narrator always has her cell phone camera at the ready.
The above are all seed grown, 5-7 years old.
Astrophytum capricorne v. senile in flower.
Stick insect on a Peniocereus johnsonii.
spines...they are around all year, even if the plant flowers for only 1 day.
The above are all seed grown, 5-7 years old.
Astrophytum capricorne v. senile in flower.
Stick insect on a Peniocereus johnsonii.
spines...they are around all year, even if the plant flowers for only 1 day.
playlists!
I dj a radio show every Thursday from 1-3 Mountain Time on Santa Fe's community supported public radio, KSFR (live streaming). I've done 5 shows so far and figured I'd post the playlists here. The Station Manager and I are still in conversation over the balance in my show, which is called Inside Out, between more traditional jazz and more challenging music. It's fascinating trying to put together a jazz show for a day time slot that has some edge to it. We'll see what happens....
Show 1, Aug 10, 2006:
Sonny Rollins Softly...Morning Sunrise A Night at the Village Vanguard
Charles Mingus Original Faubus Fables The Complete Candid Recordings 1960
Art Ensemble of Chicago Dexterity Message to Our Folks 1969
Eric Dolphy Epistrophy Last Date 1964
Joe Turner Cherry Red The Boss of the Blues 1956
Captain Beefheart Harry Irene Shiny Beast 1979
Ornette Coleman Street Blues Tone Dialing 1995
John Zorn Blues Connotation Spy vs. Spy 1989
James Blood Ulmer Sphinx Music Speaks Louder Than Words 1997
Bill Frisell Twenty Years Bill Frisell with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones 2001
Mahavishnu Orchestra Celestial Terrestrial Commuters Birds of Fire 1973
Miles Davis Black Satin On the Corner 1972
Miles Davis Sivad Live/Evil 1971
Thelonious Monk Brilliant Corners Brilliant Corners 1956
James Booker Sunny Side of the Street Spiders on the Keys 1993
Show 2, Aug. 17, 2006:
Keith Jarrett Shades of Jazz Shades
Albert Ayler Ghosts Love Cry
Oliver Nelson Yearnin' Blues and the Abstract Truth
Ronald Shannon Jackson Charming the Beast Texas
James Blood Ulmer Layout Are You Glad to be in America?
Material w/ Bill Laswell Disappearing Memory Serves
Steve Lacy Louise The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy
Serge Chaloff Body and Soul Introspection: Neglected Jazz Figures of the '50s and '60s
Pepper Adams In and Out Encounter!
Duke Ellington Happy Go Lucky Local Ellington '55
Archie Shepp Wherever Junebugs Go Live in San Francisco
Charles Mingus Reincarnation of a Lovebird Complete Candid Recordings
Fire Caught Fire Untitled Live at Zeitgeist
J. A. Deane/Out of Context Dark Passage Music for WENOMADMEN
Ornette Coleman The Artist in America Skies of America
Jimmy Lyons/Sunny Murray Riffs #5 Jump Up/What To Do About
John Coltrane Resolution A Love Supreme
Show #3, Aug. 24, 2006
Miles Davis Love for Sale Circle in the Round 1979
Elmo Hope St. Elmo's Fire Trio and Quintet 1957
Paul Bley When Will the Blues Leave? Footloose 1992
Cecil Taylor Remembrance Remembrance 1989
Duke Ellington Diminuendo in Blue/Blow by Blow Introducing the Verve Jazz Masters
Henry Threadgill Off the Rag Rag, Bush and All 1989
Booker Ervin Gichi Texbook Tenor 2005
John Coltrane Africa (alternate take) The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions
Grilly Biggs Excerpt High Mayhem Festival 04 2005
Andrew Hill Refuge Point of Departure 1988
Clifford Brown/Max Roach Powell's Prances at Basin Street 1990
Miles Davis Friday Miles At Fillmore 1997 Originally released in 1970.
Show #4, Aug. 31, 2006
Miles Davis If I Were a Bell Relaxin'
Mal Waldron Inchworm Update W
John Coltrane Blue Train Blue Train
Elmo Hope Hot Sauce Trio and Quintet
Elmo Hope Stars Over Marrakech Trio and Quintet
Herbie Nichols Double Exposure The Complete Blue Note Herbie Nichols
Herbie Nichols Cromagnon Nights The Complete Blue Note Herbie Nichols
Sun Ra Rome at Twilight New Steps
Sonny Rollins St. Thomas Saxophone Colossus
Joe Turner Roll 'Em Pete The Boss of the Blues
Ben Webster Pennies from Heaven The Art of the Jazz Saxophone
Duke Ellington Edward the Second The Intimate Ellington 1971
Show #5, Sept. 6, 2006
Sarah Vaughan Can't Get Out of This Mood This is Jazz 20 S
Stanley Turrentine Gravy Train Joyride
Cecil Taylor Things Ain't What They Used to Be New York City R&B
Ornette Coleman Broken Shadows Broken Shadows
Sonny Rollins Solitude Live in Europe
Sonny Rollins Valse Hot Three Giants!
Thelonious Monk Bemsha Swing Brilliant Corners
Max Roach/Cecil Taylor Duets (Excerpt) Historic Concerts: December 15, 1979
Cannonball Adderley Stardust Money in the Pocket
Show 1, Aug 10, 2006:
Sonny Rollins Softly...Morning Sunrise A Night at the Village Vanguard
Charles Mingus Original Faubus Fables The Complete Candid Recordings 1960
Art Ensemble of Chicago Dexterity Message to Our Folks 1969
Eric Dolphy Epistrophy Last Date 1964
Joe Turner Cherry Red The Boss of the Blues 1956
Captain Beefheart Harry Irene Shiny Beast 1979
Ornette Coleman Street Blues Tone Dialing 1995
John Zorn Blues Connotation Spy vs. Spy 1989
James Blood Ulmer Sphinx Music Speaks Louder Than Words 1997
Bill Frisell Twenty Years Bill Frisell with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones 2001
Mahavishnu Orchestra Celestial Terrestrial Commuters Birds of Fire 1973
Miles Davis Black Satin On the Corner 1972
Miles Davis Sivad Live/Evil 1971
Thelonious Monk Brilliant Corners Brilliant Corners 1956
James Booker Sunny Side of the Street Spiders on the Keys 1993
Show 2, Aug. 17, 2006:
Keith Jarrett Shades of Jazz Shades
Albert Ayler Ghosts Love Cry
Oliver Nelson Yearnin' Blues and the Abstract Truth
Ronald Shannon Jackson Charming the Beast Texas
James Blood Ulmer Layout Are You Glad to be in America?
Material w/ Bill Laswell Disappearing Memory Serves
Steve Lacy Louise The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy
Serge Chaloff Body and Soul Introspection: Neglected Jazz Figures of the '50s and '60s
Pepper Adams In and Out Encounter!
Duke Ellington Happy Go Lucky Local Ellington '55
Archie Shepp Wherever Junebugs Go Live in San Francisco
Charles Mingus Reincarnation of a Lovebird Complete Candid Recordings
Fire Caught Fire Untitled Live at Zeitgeist
J. A. Deane/Out of Context Dark Passage Music for WENOMADMEN
Ornette Coleman The Artist in America Skies of America
Jimmy Lyons/Sunny Murray Riffs #5 Jump Up/What To Do About
John Coltrane Resolution A Love Supreme
Show #3, Aug. 24, 2006
Miles Davis Love for Sale Circle in the Round 1979
Elmo Hope St. Elmo's Fire Trio and Quintet 1957
Paul Bley When Will the Blues Leave? Footloose 1992
Cecil Taylor Remembrance Remembrance 1989
Duke Ellington Diminuendo in Blue/Blow by Blow Introducing the Verve Jazz Masters
Henry Threadgill Off the Rag Rag, Bush and All 1989
Booker Ervin Gichi Texbook Tenor 2005
John Coltrane Africa (alternate take) The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions
Grilly Biggs Excerpt High Mayhem Festival 04 2005
Andrew Hill Refuge Point of Departure 1988
Clifford Brown/Max Roach Powell's Prances at Basin Street 1990
Miles Davis Friday Miles At Fillmore 1997 Originally released in 1970.
Show #4, Aug. 31, 2006
Miles Davis If I Were a Bell Relaxin'
Mal Waldron Inchworm Update W
John Coltrane Blue Train Blue Train
Elmo Hope Hot Sauce Trio and Quintet
Elmo Hope Stars Over Marrakech Trio and Quintet
Herbie Nichols Double Exposure The Complete Blue Note Herbie Nichols
Herbie Nichols Cromagnon Nights The Complete Blue Note Herbie Nichols
Sun Ra Rome at Twilight New Steps
Sonny Rollins St. Thomas Saxophone Colossus
Joe Turner Roll 'Em Pete The Boss of the Blues
Ben Webster Pennies from Heaven The Art of the Jazz Saxophone
Duke Ellington Edward the Second The Intimate Ellington 1971
Show #5, Sept. 6, 2006
Sarah Vaughan Can't Get Out of This Mood This is Jazz 20 S
Stanley Turrentine Gravy Train Joyride
Cecil Taylor Things Ain't What They Used to Be New York City R&B
Ornette Coleman Broken Shadows Broken Shadows
Sonny Rollins Solitude Live in Europe
Sonny Rollins Valse Hot Three Giants!
Thelonious Monk Bemsha Swing Brilliant Corners
Max Roach/Cecil Taylor Duets (Excerpt) Historic Concerts: December 15, 1979
Cannonball Adderley Stardust Money in the Pocket
Here Goes
We do not know about blogging, and so we blog. Further proof for the weary that we don't have to know how to do something in order to do it. The Unreliable Narrator set this crazy thing up for me as a present for my 45th birthday. What is this thing? One of 25 million or more blogs on Al Gore's info superhighway. I picture myself wandering through the massed population of LA County mumbling to myself about Cecil Taylor.
Speaking of whom, listened to most of One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye for the first time in a long time this morning. (Prompted by certain comments at destination-out.com indicating a preference for CT's solo piano performances over his ensemble work). What struck me most was how it takes more than an hour for Lyons and Malik to enter (already after a series of solos and duets that are not included on the Hat Art lp, but are on the CD), and their brief intertwining lines segue immediately into a Malik solo. Also jumped out at me how wily Shannon Jackson was, how resourceful and what a formidable foil for Taylor's excursions.
Having caught a Ruth Zaporah show last night here in Santa Fe at CCA, I'm thinking about improvisation. "Form is possibility," said Taylor many years ago. Zaporah's arena is her Action Theater, which uses as its seed a gesture or movement. She was electrifying, further proof that improvisation need not meander, fall flat, lack form. I read somehwere on the internet someone's opinion that Keith Jarrett's "American Quartet" captured a kind of freedom within structure, unlike "Andrew Hill or Cecil Taylor, who were willing to let everything go." How could anyone's ears make a distinction like that? It's why, if "jazz" is not a terrible enough term, "free jazz" is perhaps the worst of the worst. If you have a relationship with your materials, your body, and your instrument, as Taylor also pointed out many years ago, form will arise out of the activity itself. If you can't hear the structures in Taylor's music (let alone Andrew Hill's!) we respectfully submit that your ears are a mess, not the music.
Anyway, why would a common preference be for Cecil Taylor's solo piano work rather than his ensemble performances? Pondering, pondering. What is the difference between the aesthetics of the two? I'll be listening and maybe offering some ideas. One thing is for certain: Cecil Taylor's "unit" recordings from various periods absolutely kick ass, representing the art of improvisation in all of its sustained, fluid beauty. The statements of Jimmy Lyons alone are, without exception, worth the price of every CD he's on.
Speaking of CDs- Ornette Coleman's got his first new one in 10 years coming out Tuesday, 9/12. Called Sound Grammar. No word yet whether or not Bush will declare a National Holiday.
Speaking of whom, listened to most of One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye for the first time in a long time this morning. (Prompted by certain comments at destination-out.com indicating a preference for CT's solo piano performances over his ensemble work). What struck me most was how it takes more than an hour for Lyons and Malik to enter (already after a series of solos and duets that are not included on the Hat Art lp, but are on the CD), and their brief intertwining lines segue immediately into a Malik solo. Also jumped out at me how wily Shannon Jackson was, how resourceful and what a formidable foil for Taylor's excursions.
Having caught a Ruth Zaporah show last night here in Santa Fe at CCA, I'm thinking about improvisation. "Form is possibility," said Taylor many years ago. Zaporah's arena is her Action Theater, which uses as its seed a gesture or movement. She was electrifying, further proof that improvisation need not meander, fall flat, lack form. I read somehwere on the internet someone's opinion that Keith Jarrett's "American Quartet" captured a kind of freedom within structure, unlike "Andrew Hill or Cecil Taylor, who were willing to let everything go." How could anyone's ears make a distinction like that? It's why, if "jazz" is not a terrible enough term, "free jazz" is perhaps the worst of the worst. If you have a relationship with your materials, your body, and your instrument, as Taylor also pointed out many years ago, form will arise out of the activity itself. If you can't hear the structures in Taylor's music (let alone Andrew Hill's!) we respectfully submit that your ears are a mess, not the music.
Anyway, why would a common preference be for Cecil Taylor's solo piano work rather than his ensemble performances? Pondering, pondering. What is the difference between the aesthetics of the two? I'll be listening and maybe offering some ideas. One thing is for certain: Cecil Taylor's "unit" recordings from various periods absolutely kick ass, representing the art of improvisation in all of its sustained, fluid beauty. The statements of Jimmy Lyons alone are, without exception, worth the price of every CD he's on.
Speaking of CDs- Ornette Coleman's got his first new one in 10 years coming out Tuesday, 9/12. Called Sound Grammar. No word yet whether or not Bush will declare a National Holiday.
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