Category: Uncategorised

I’m going through one of those phases, where I want to soak up loads more ‘new’ old music. This album features the husband and wife rhythm section team of Carol Kaye and ‘Spider Webb’.

I love the lithe funky grooves of ‘Mister Magic’. Evidently so did Grover, and the folk at CTI, as it became the title track of the saxophonist’s 197? album.

As well as being all over tons of amazing music – the track that first made me pay attention to him, way back in my early teens, was George Benson’s version of ‘The World Is A Ghetto’ – Ralph MacDonald wrote some stone cold classics.

He also wrote ‘Where Is The Love?’, a hit for Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, & ‘Just The Two Of Us’, famously performed by Bill Withers, with Grover Washington.

There’s a good longer piece about Ralph online, here. Definitely worth a read.

I’m not really playing at all these days. But the video above is good, nevertheless, showing a particular groove MacDonald often used. Maybe I’ll give it a try, at some point?

Here’s a video of Ralph taking about his illustrious career:

And to finish, Ralph gives Grover a run for his shirt-off money!

Today’s been a funny ol’ day. Slept/lay in till almost midday. Went to work in the afternoon. I’d intended to make some hand made Xmas cards over the weekend. Or failing that, today.

But it’s been yet another day of total and utter exhaustion, combined with below zero motivation. Bummer!

Miles figures here mainly on account of discovering a treasure trove of live 1970s bootleg recordings. It reminded me I still want the Complete On The Corner Sessions. Trouble is they fetch silly money now. Sadly he crashed very badly in ‘72, leading to something of a hiatus.

Been listening to Original Recordings by Dan Hicks, et al. And as a result reading a bit more about Hicks’ history…

Pre-Hot Licks Hicks, with San Fran’s Charlatans. Apparently the handbill below is regarded by some as seminal – ‘The Seed’, no less – in the history of psychedelic rock poster design, etc.

I’m a big fan of the ‘69-76 Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks era. I found out in my recent reading, however, that it wasn’t working for Dan. It was becoming rote. And unsatisfying. Ha! I can dig that, man. Ain’t that always the way, when bread is concerned?

I’d like to read Hicks’ biography/autobiography. It’s called I Scare Myself. And I’ve heard it described as ‘brutally honest.’ I don’t know the details. But I believe he wound up going down an alcoholic black hole. Not sure what else was part of that picture. May learn, if I ever read the biog’?

In the end Dan got sober/clean. The love of a good woman, and a return to making music both helping. And then he upped n’ died of cancer, in his mid-seventies.

I’ve been really enjoying listening to lots of music in the car, whilst working. Recently that’s included – as well as Dan Hicks & co – some Pat Metheny, and lots of ‘Groove’ Holmes, Herbie Mann, Dorothy Ashby, and Grover Washington’s terrific Mr Magic.

As ever, there’s tons more music I want to get/explore, such as the above. Plus stuff like recordings on CTI/Kudu, and labels like Black Jazz, Groove Merchant, and so on. Id really like to acquire all that great Phil Upchurch stuff from the early to mid ‘70s.

It never ends!

And I’ve always got time for Crumb!

Well, as usual these days, I’m in bed pretty early. 8.30 pm tonight. I have an oily start tomorrow. So I’ll read a little War of Wars, and be off to Dreamland.

There’s an interesting story attached to this recording.

Apparently Tony Williams picked up some of Miles’ ways – unsurprisingly; imagine joining the band of the world’s ‘best’/most famous jazz trumpeter at just 17! – and, at this time, wasn’t going out of his way to be charming or ingratiating. Quite the reverse!

If you read this interesting blog post (including the comments!), you can learn more. Here’s an extract from a comment left by one Michael Rusenberg, on the above mentioned blog post:

I was there!

Together with a collegue of mine we had travelled from Cologne to Bremen. For some reason, when we arrived – as I recall – the recording was over, and we met the band (except for TW) in a hotel room.

The[y] were quite frustrated because they had an argument with Beat Clubs director Mike Leckebusch over the given equipment. Beat Club used Orange, but TW insisted on Marshall. (You can see one Marshall speaker behind Larry Young).

As I recall (very vaguely) they split from the recording crew in vital disagreement, demanding that the recording should not be used for release.

I’ve read that they played a 30 minute set. And so far I’m only aware of this one nine minute extract having surfaced.

Rather intriguingly, to me, anything Jack Bruce or Ginger Baker did, outside of Cream – and even a good deal of Cream’s material, to be honest – just doesn’t connect with me. Likewise what Tony Williams or Mike Shrieve have done, post Miles/Santana.

John McLaughlin and Larry Young, on the other hand, have both produced music under their own names, or in other collaborative projects, that I really dig.

Anyway, this footage is of historical interest, it being the only known film of this group.

1. Opening/Bill Graham (00:00) – 2. Incident At Neshabur (01:10) – 3. In A Silent Way – (06:40) – 4. Credits (14:20)

Musicians: Carlos Santana, Jose “Chepito” Areas, David Brown, Michael Carabello, Coke Escovedo, Gregg Rolie, Neal Schon, Michael Shrieve

Today we had Ali and Sofi over. Visiting Antonio, of course. But it’s lovely for us to see them as well.

We drove them back to mums’, afterwards, arriving in Northstowe at 5 pm. Had a tea and a catch up with Hannah. Tim was in Rumburgh. Meanwhile Antonio is off to Suffolk with a new lady friend!

The sunset was amazing today. Once back home we had a delish’ roast, chicken courtesy of Antonio, cooking by Teresa. I’m a lucky guy.

We rounded off a lovely Sunday with a bath and The Pink Panther. Teresa’s still downstairs, watching the end of the movie. As usual, I’m up in bed!

Hallelujah! Sublime… I wonder if there’s more footage from this concert? I do hope so.

Ok, so there’s this:

Personnel:

Marvin Gaye, Keys & Vocs
?, Guitar
James Jamerson, Bass
?, Drums
?, Congas

Turns out the footage was shot at a live fundraiser, called Save The Children, in Chicago, 1972.

Can’t find credits for the backing group…

I’ve never really like the whole French (& NW European?) Postmodernist ‘school’.

I was subjected to three years of it at Goldsmiths College, at what was a nadir of my own life, as I exited my teens and embarked on ‘adult life’.

Baudrillard was a big part of it, along with Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, et al. I found it all profoundly depressing and unhelpful. And, by and large, I still do.

Ok, they did/do have some insights. We’ll come to some of those in dew coarse. But it’s frequently attached to a lot of extremely foetid ‘thinking’, which I’ve always reacted against, and still do.

The solipsistic primacy of language in postmodernism has always been an issue for me. It’s a kind of academics disappearing up their own arse line of ‘philosophy’, as far as I’m concerned.

Perhaps Baudrillard is dead right? But in a very specific way/context? If by ‘we are all Buster Keaton’s’ he’s referring to all humanity, I think he’s fundamentally and profoundly wrong in his conclusion. But I’ll come back to this.

If, on the other hand, he means a certain type of professional intellectual, such as writers, or particularly a certain quite specific type of academics? Well, he might be on to something there.

I’ve never liked the language of postmodernism, with its signs, signifiers, tropes, simulacra, and whatnot. It can all – or some of it – be read and understood, or decoded. But there’s an awful lot of wordy guff that tends toward confusion and opacity.

I have, in truth, no idea whatsoever, what the impact of what we currently call AI will actually evolve into. Most of the discussion around it I find so vexing I simply don’t want to get embroiled.

I’ll give a couple of examples from my own personal human interaction side of life. First, there’s a guy I know who works in music education who boasts that AI is a great tool for all sorts of reasons, but most often/loudly, the marking of students work.

Second, there’s a family member, of sorts, who uses AI, mostly covertly, but also openly, to create poetry. I have what I believe are fundamental issues with both of these scenarios.

Maybe in time my position on all this will change? I’m a firm believer in Evolution! Both as a process that shapes the development of biological life, and as a way to develop personally.

But, at present, I believe that marking essays and writing poetry are skills to be acquired, practiced and developed. Delegating these activities to computers running AI is something else.

Returning to a line of thought broached earlier; if Baudrillard means we’re all clowns, or fools? Well, surely that is as true before AI (whatever that is) as after. But he clearly doesn’t mean that.

It’s my view that Baudrillard and his ilk are – or aspire to be, in certain respects – Punk. Enfant Terribles. But armed with a library of polysyllabic thesaurarii, as opposed to snot and distorted guitars.

His series of essays on the Gulf War – written before during and after, and called Won’t/Isn’t/Didn’t – are titled like high-fallutin’ click-bait. He can’t possibly mean that, can he?

And of course he thereby cleverly draws the potential reader in, before – like a punk magician – stunning us with his intellectual sleight of word. And here we come to what these folk might be getting right.

In the modern world, especially the online world – saturated as it is with imagery and words, reality (or at least certain views on reality) gets harder and harder to discern.

Baudrillard argued that the Gulf War wasn’t a war – not in the old-fashioned Battle of Waterloo vein – but an atrocity, falsely sold to the domestic audience (and the rest of the world) as ‘war’.

All of this is actually generally and genuinely interesting. Why did/do we really go to war? What actually constitutes war? And so on.

My own gut feeling, in relation to AI and the future of human thought (be it generally, or as an academic profession) is that as AI evolves – and certainly in light of developments so far – it is already adding to our difficulties in discerning what is real.

Will or should AI replace human thinking? It shouldn’t, in my view. But that doesn’t mean it won’t. We’ve already seen numerous human inventions overtake and virtually enslave us. Agriculture, for starters. And more recently/perniciously, money, for example.

Baudrillard is widely regarded as a pessimist or nihilist. I don’t want to be either. But I fear I may be both. So might it be that whilst I really dislike Baudrillard and Postmodernism, I might have to concede that he might – as much as I want him to be wrong – actually be right?

I do hope not!

I was out delivering this afternoon. In some lovely villages, like Barnack and Helpston.

On Bishops walk, Bainton, there’s a massive Sequoia, or Giant Redwood. More or less in someone’s front garden!

The picture above does it no justice whatsoever. It has a presence and impact that requires being there. The picture below, however, does a marginally better job…

A bit later in the day another tree presented a different eye-catching look…

I got home in the dark. I’m not massively keen on delivering in the dark. But at present I’m only getting depot shifts. Which are longer. And occasionally I can’t avoid doing evenings, if I’m to hit my earning targets.

Mozzer’s grocery store shifts have almost totally dried up. For me, at any rate. I wonder why? In the last three weeks I’ve only done two! And usually they account for 50% or more of my hours.

Once home, Teresa had a lovely curry ready. Antonio pitched in with a healthy salad. My contribution was cherry pie and extra-thick double cream!

Then it was bath, ‘n’ bed. Where I am now.

The plan was to read some more War of Wars, and then off to Snoozey-ville. Tomorrow is a blessed day off. Hallelujah!

I realised today that I don’t have Dan Hicks first studio album (pictured above). Nor his 1978 It Happened One Bite. I’ve remedied the former omission. And I look for’ard to bathing in that goodness soon.