CTC Command

Frank Zappa once said, "Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny." And if you want to hear jazz, Zappa certainly recorded a fair amount--pretty much every Zappa album has at least one track that would qualify as "jazz." But there are "jazzier" artists I'd recommend before FZ, or perhaps it would be better to say that jazz wasn't Zappa's primary intention, but he often committed many acts of jazz in the course of his artistic pursuits. Jazz... There is a great episode of "Reading Rainbow" that would be an excellent intro to anyone new to the artform, but who knows when that will be on again? I'll briefly summarize how Levar Burton sums up what jazz is. Jazz happens when a highly proficient musician/musicians start playing on a theme, then improvisize off of that theme, often deliberatley creating tension by playing with time signatures, dissonance, strange key changes and unusual chord patterns before returning the listener back to the 'comfortable and familiar' of the original theme just before the end. There are many styles that jazz can follow--Ragtime, New Orleans/Chicago, Bebop, Big Band, Jazz Folk, Jazz Fusion, Hard Bop, Post-bop, Avant-Garde (or "Out There") Jazz, Scat, Latin Jazz, Mainstream Jazz, M-Base, Acid Jazz, Smooth Jazz (can be often mistaken for elevator music or Muzak...), Swing, and Lounge. One could document the styles, or just list the various "greats" and the style or styles they created or contributed to. I'm just going to throw out some names and genres that I would recomend to someone starting out, stuff that come to mind as signinficant which means its really stuff I've listened to more recently than other genres/artists. First post was quite excellent, Nate--I'm not up on all those old guys like I used to be, but Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet...all good "old stuff." I have nothing to add or amend to that list, and would recommend anyone who likes the old old stuff to listen to Ray Smith's Jazz Decades streaming on WGBH Sunday nights. Personally I really like the direction that jazz in went after the late 40's, when Miles Davis and Charlie Parker first started to stand out from the Big Bands like Duke Ellington, so that's mostly what I will recommend here. Trumpeters Dizzie Gillespie and Miles Davis, along with Charlie Parker, basically these three took jazz out of the Big Band era in the late 40s and into the solo/improvisational Bop or Bebop style played in smaller groups...Bird went in the ground, Miles went Cool and Dizzy went Latin...Meanwhile the Modern Jazz Quartet, led by pianist John Lewis--with the cool vibes of Milt Jackson, took jazz in a more erudite direction. They're an incredible West Coast sound ensemble -- give Django and Concorde a good listen...also the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond on alto sax, whose musical goal was to try to make his horn sound like a "dry martini." He succeeded brilliantly with that. Brubeck's 1959 Time Out and his 1963 At Carnegie Hall are good places to start to hear that West Coast / Cool Jazz sound at its best. One essential jazz musician from this era is saxophonist John Coltrane. He came to the fore playing Hard Bop with Miles in the mid-50s, developing an absolutely mind-blowing style of playing called "sheets of sound." He also began deliberately incorporating overblowing into his playing, much the same way Hendrix would deliberately introduce feedback into his compositions a decade later. (My Favorite Things and Giant Steps are a good starting place to begin with Coltrane -- anything he did in the 50s with Miles Davis, Red Garland or Thelonius Monk. Coltrane's essential masterpiece, A Love Supreme), with his classic quartet of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. After 1965 Coltrane parted ways with modal jazz and went way out into free jazz--a lot of squonk and honk; some people like it, other people call it noise. Ornette Coleman (another early leader of the Avant garde "free jazz", start off with "The Shape of Jazz to Come"), Eric Dolphy is another free jazz sax player -- Out To Lunch is required listening. Ben Webster was another often unsung sax great of the 50s and 60s, more west coast though, and defintely not avant garde. Talk about "acid jazz" though, one night in the mid-80's WGBH played 6 hours of nothing but late 50s Ben Webster while my friend Uncle Meat and I were tripped our asses off, sitting his AMC Gremlin and drinking cheap--ah, never mind all that. Ben Webster's warm warm tones will be permanently etched in my mind...Another great alto sax player from this time is Cannonball Adderly. More about Miles Davis. First the guy invented Be-bop with Charlie Parker. Then in the early 50's Birth Of The Cool laid the foundations for Cool Jazz, but then he abandoned it almost immediately for hard bop and his first great quintet with Coltrane, then went Modal with Sketches of Spain and the classic jazz album of all time, Kind Of Blue. After this he puts together his Second Great Quartet with Wayne Shorter (sax), Herbie Hancock (piano), Tony Williams (drums) and Ron Carter (bass), a group that composed some of the greatest most sophisticated Modal & Post Bop ever laid down. Almost anything any of those guys recorded in the sixties is worth a listen, especially Wayne Shorter's stuff. Then Miles plugged jazz into the wall in the late 60's. First he invented what would later be called ambient with In a Silent Way and then all out Jazz-Rock Fusion with his next release, Bitches Brew. Out of those sixties Miles Davis bands came just an amazing slew of 70's fusion: Tony Williams Lifetime, Chick Corea's Return to Tomorrow, Wayne Shorter's Weather Report (with the incomparable Jaco Pastorius on bass, well, maybe Les Claypool is comparable...). John McLaughlin, guitarist on Bitches Brew, founded the absolutely brilliant The Mahavishnu Orchestra--check out Inner Mounting Flame and especially Birds of Fireif you really want a good dose of jazz fusion... Just before Hendrix died he jammed with Mclaughlin, but perfectionist that he is McLaughlin won't let the tapes of those sessions see the light of day (hell, it's taken nearly 20 years just for "the lost Trident sessions" to see the light of day)--but is you want an idea of where Hendrix was heading, Larry Young, (also from Davis' B-Brew band) jammed out on Hendrix's posthumous "Nine To The Universe" Too bad Jimi choked to death one week before he was scheduled to go into the studio with Miles himself... By the time Chick Corea left Miles to form Return to Forever (employing the young Stanley Clarke on bass) jazz fusion began to blur into prog rock, and bands like King Crimson, Yes, Traffic, Emerson Lake & Palmer and even the Grateful Dead begin to sound jazzier and jazzier as a result... And the masterpiece of it all, Miles Davis 1975 Agharta. No band ever jammed harder or more telepathically than Miles band did that afternoon in Osaka... absolutely amazing stuff. This is getting long, so I'm just going to throw out some more great names from the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Each of these guys put out some phenomenal material (and those that's still alive still do): Freddie Hubbard, Paul Desmond, Horace Silver, Red Garland, Roy Haynes, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, McCoy Tyner, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson... Current--go check these guys and gals out if they come to a jazz fest or club near you: Joshua Redman, Eric Alexander, Christian Scott , Anat Cohen, Brad Mehldau, Esperanza Spalding, Kenny Baron, James Carter, Steve Coleman, Joe Lovano, Cyrus Chestnut, John Scofield, Christian McBride, Wallace Roney, Chris Potter, Geri Allen, Marcus Miller...Medeski, Martin and Wood and The Bad Plus are worth checking out too.

Wow redneck, this is doubly your lucky day. I've been thinking, and I am going to send you some of my checking account deposit slips, just so you won't run out. See how nice I am? :bigsmile:

Ah, yes, Dark Messenger! We have been expecting you! Velcome to Beat King!

Ozzy's Testicles er, I mean Ozric Tentacles freakin' shred Rickio! I would love to catch them live if they are indeed still an active entity. Dude, Alternative, imho, true alternative, is akin to college radio--pop/garage/emo inspired stuff, whereas whatever progressive is seems to carry the torch began by jazz fusion and art rock from the early 70's. That's just what my brain tells me... And getting around to the point of this thread eventually here, Porcupine Tree...Think Tree was this band about 10 years, really cool...They did a song about porcupines...ah, it's lost. If you can find any of their stuff though check them out. Maybe I'll get ambitious and put together a thread on Think Tree later. Or maybe I'll go to bed...hmmmmmm. WHat will I do? Stay tuned!

Oh well. I figured someone else around here was numb enough in the head to have gone and gotten themselves all inked up, or at least a little bit. But so far it looks like most of you guys have wasted your money not on tattoos but probably on other stuff like food, gasoline, computers, beer... Well, I'll post one more in the hopes someone else will come along that has butterfly or a tasmanian devel with a hockey stick or SOMETHING! Here's the last one I got, about 4 years ago, to commemorate the birth of my son. My tattoo artist liked it--his wedding day had been my son's birthday! RIP Skott...

Or we could just chop off our arms and liberate ourselves from typing, clapping, and masturbating.

Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin Reminds me of a Russian Kurt Vonnegut. It's short too, you guys could rip through this in a day or so. Had to read this for next week for my reading seminar, "Culture Shock In Russia." Once in a while you get assigned something good, lol.

PJ Olssen - The Whistle Song Urge Overkill - What Is Artane? T. Rex - Jeepster And burning Dr. Octagon's Instrumentalyst, soon it will be sitting in my shared files, lol...

And don't just post a pic--every tattoo has at least one story behind it. Don't be shy! I'll get this rolling with the purple burning upside-down skull on my right leg. I don't know why, but this always gets very puzzled reactions from most "normal people" who look at it. They ask me why it's upside-down, and depending on what kind of mood I'm in I'll say one of the following things: 1) If it were rightside-up, then it wouldn't be a purple flaming UPSIDE-DOWN skull now, would it? 2) I put it that way so I could see it rightside up. What the fuck do I care if it -looks upside-down to you? 3) I wanted to get it painted on my Harley's gas tank, and the tattoo shop wouldn't let me have the art unless I owned it myself. It's a flipped-over skull on fire--I always thought it was a cool tattoo and its a good reminder to ride as if every car on the road is trying to kill me, and so far I've got home safe every time.

Those sound like some nice fancy shootin' pistols fer you rednecks, but fer us swamp yankees up here in southern RI we likes a 16 gauge pump shotgun, with the No. 2 shot. Not much gits past that... A'course, The Hunter will probably have the last word on the North Coast gun totin...

:dancin: :dancin: :dancin: Congratulations Janet!!! :dancin: :dancin: :dancin: This morning I randomly reached into the clean cloths pile and pulled out my ZeroPaid shirt, which I haven't worn in a while, and decided to put it on anyway. Now I know why. you've always been my super mod, Janet! (no offense to CH, he just isn't my type lol) Perhaps I'll visit ZP more often than once a month....and maybe I'll even post there again!

My vote goes to Steven or Fetal Elvis...

I remember having this conversation on ZP sometime within the last six months, and someone threw that same statistic out. I won't dredge up the nonsense that accompanied the rest of that old thread, but I think that's probably true of most internet forums, and probably a lot of other situtations in life. Just think back to school, 30 kids in a class, 3 talked all the time, 1 or 2 might add something once in a while and the rest sat there and listened or at least gave a reasonable impression of people listening, amused by the antics and reparte of the idiots who spoke out all the time...you'll never guess which group I was in, lol. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt...

My first exposure to Pink Floyd was in summer school, 1978. Eighth grade, I had to retake algebra...doh! During our 20 minute cigarette break one morning some of the heads from North Stonington grabbed the cassette player* out from their car and they threw in "Pigs Three Different Ones." That was my introduction to Pink Floyd. I had never heard anything so fucking badass and visceral before in my short and fairly sheltered life...nor had I yet heard anyone use profanity in a song either...it was definitely a profound experience on many levels. There is an element of funk and backbeat to Pink Floyd that just sends their tunes to another level beyond most of the other art/prog bands. Years later I was in a band that covered Pigs Three Different Ones--we had such a blast with it! It is just an awesome tune no matter if you are just listening to it or playing it. *remember those old flat rectangular cassette players before the boombox? the tape went in the top all the buttons were at the end record rewind ff play & stop...one speaker pointing straight up at the other end, 4 d batteries, lucky if it would last 5 hours...somehow we were all so used to the crappy tinny sound it put out it sounded as good as headphones on, standing around in a parking lot or out in the woods somewhere. Especially if you drank and smoked enough...

How much sleep do I need? Almost always more than I get, lol! I have no idea how much sleep I really need anymore. First, my 'biorythyms' are permanently set to "night," and I often experience bouts of insomnia--one might guess either or both by the times on my posts... I used to be one of those people who could function for days on end with only 3-5 hours. But now it seems like I could use 7-9, though I usually only get 5-7. It's wierd--i'll find myself taking involuntary naps at the coffee lounge at school (I usually esconce myself in one of the comfy chairs there, hmmmmm) in the early afternoon like 1 or 2 or especialy while my son is watching his cartoons from 5-6. Most days if I try I could easily take a nap in the afternoon, unless my coffee meter is running on '10.' And I am so all ready for bed at 6 pm. But then after cooking dinner, getting Ian ready for bed and getting everything ready for morning I catch a 'second wind' and then I start messing around on the computer or cleaning...if I'm still up when Futurama and Family Guy comes on its all over. Waking up in the morning is not my favorite--why does the pillow and blanket feel so much more comfy in the morning than at night? That's what I really want to know...

:D Welcome Rickio! This place is so up your alley, dude!

I just came back from seeing it a few minutes ago too, and all I can say about Kill Bill Vol. II is ASUmusicMANS TOTALLY FUCKING RIGHT ! GO SEE KILL BILL ! The trailer for the the Jet Li / Tarantino flick "Hero" looked interesting as well. BUT GO SEE KILL FUCKING BILL II!

My latest mugshot--about 4 days old...

Collideous, you badass motherf-----! :scratchin: Welcome to BeatKing! :dancin:

OMG! FreakinWeasel! What in the hell are you doing here? Oh yeah, you like cool music and p2p and food and air, just like me! :rotfl: Welcome also to the illustrious Trilobyte, you are welcome to the free buffet and oxygen too!

Yeah, look at this when you let notbob in, then even the wild indians start showing up, lol j/k Welcome my dear friend--I've have truly missed you! but I could no longer abide the bad vibes and acrimony back in the land of closed threads and banned regulars. I visited twice since I stopped posting over there and within minutes of flipping through the threads i would have to leave... But now you are here, and that is a good thing. And you got 8 years coming up shortly--we'll have to throw A SEXY PARTY for you!!! :strumma: :jammin: :horny: :jammin: :horny: :jammin: :horny: :strumma:

Just the way the universe works, I found this right after posting my little rant above... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4749156/

Just another example of how W's "tax cuts" for the rich are forcing up the cost of living for the reat of us peons. States, municipalities and towns that are struggling without federal money while still having to meet the guidelines of underfunded federal programs like "No Child Left Behind" have to make up the money from somewhere. It's robbing Peter to pay Paul...at URI students have to pay $100 a semester for a parking pass, and there are still more students than parking places. Everyday the campus safety officers are writing tickets by the assload and the tow trucks are hauling cars away from morning 'til night. That's one way to fund higher education, I guess. Don't get me started. And don't even talk to me unless you are a REGISTERED VOTER. Let's make sure W is a one-term president just like Poppy.

NotBob! Welcome to BeatKing! :strumma: This place is becoming increasingly more and more like our old home away from home, with the very noticible exception of the absence of one particularly large abcess. Maybe when he's the only one left over there he can close his own threads and then ban himself...meanwhile enjoy yourself here, nate. You are among friends! :bigsmile: TMBG...what a great little band. Chicks dig 'em too.

No wonder we haven't been able to find WMD's in Iraq...we should have invaded Europe!