Have done before and had fun. Trolley anyone?
11:46:06 PM    comment []  Google It!  

"The New Jazz Thing! TNJT! The Team for The New Jazz Thing! Team New Jazz Thing! Live On Jazz 88 San Diego, 88.3 FM, Thursday evening, 6 to 9 pm PT. Internet Webcast Returned Soon?

An experiment to create a community for The New Jazz Thing! You give me your email address, Eteamz (who provides this community software service) has to collect some info which they promise not to share (insert privacy policy link here now!). I can remind you weekly about The New Jazz Thing live each Thursday, it always helps to get a reminder...at least for me! They also have news, message board, chat, etc. Kind of like Yahoo Groups...maybe we should find out how much alike or different (more important).

Anyway, I ramble, it's about having a way for me to communicate with you when I'm not posting at http://TheNewJazzThing.com or you're not reading http://TheNewJazzThing.com.
5:23:40 PM    comment []  Google It!  

"This much didn't change in 2002: the disconnection between what's popular and what's important. Jazz is no different in that respect than any other genre driven in whole or in part by commercial imperatives. There's an immediacy to what's popular; Jones and Krall were everywhere this year, impossible to miss. But it takes time to recognize what's important -- to ascertain whether the bassist Dave Holland's extraordinary Anglo-American quintet, for example, will reshape the way musicians think about writing for and playing in a small ensemble, rather the way boppers did in the 1940s."

And god (or which ever diety you are celebrating this season) bless his soul for digging deeper into that which should be dug, musicians and writers like Holland, Maria Schneider, and Kenny Wheeler.
2:22:40 PM    comment []  Google It!  

"Top-flight artists, from Wynton Marsalis to James Carter and Cyrus Chestnut, found themselves without label deals -- major or minor -- as several of the majors dropped their jazz divisions altogether or shifted their focus to the more lucrative world of reissuing historical material."

I have no idea why any writer, like Ken, wouldn't have their own weblog. It's amazing, especially when he both writes and photographs, as these words and pictures of Berklee Music School grads shows (nice Krall photo)...

"In live performance, and in portraiture, musicians reveal a sense of themselves that extends beyond the moment. Capturing it is the challenge. Sharing it with others who understand is the joy."

Thought I'd share.
1:46:35 PM    comment []  Google It!  

"Ms. Oxenhorn runs a shoestring operation that tries to improve the lives of ailing and struggling jazz musicians, most of them over 50. She spends her days arguing with landlords ready to evict them, finding them free medical care, paying for food, getting horns out of hock."

The Jazz Foundation of America does good work. It was one of their volunteers who found that lost 1968 tape of pre-reggae Bob Marley earlier this year.
10:53:55 AM    comment []  Google It!  

"What's next? I think that falling prices for storage, bandwidth, and digital cameras will result in weblogs going multimedia over the next year. Jeff Jarvis has already experimented with video-blogging on his site: two-minute video clips with professional-looking titles and backgrounds generated by computer. Mobileweblogging, taking advantage of the ability to post pictures and text via cellphones, may offer anyone the opportunity to be a reporter. The next time there's a major disaster or terrorist attack from an area where there are a lot of cellphone-equipped individuals, the first photos to reach the outside world will almost certainly do so via weblogs."

If you're a reader here (you know, you, you, and you), I've been writing about this type of mobility in weblogging for a long time. Gotta take some steps in that direction soon.
10:13:40 AM    comment []  Google It!